The OAP - ‘85 525e - Plans are afoot!

I managed to get a couple of free hours over the weekend so popped out and did a couple of bits to make the OAP a little less, old!

Firstly was the 12v socket. The original BMW socket and lighter worked absolutely fine but the old style socket wouldn’t hold onto phone chargers etc. I bought a twin USB socket from eBay a few weeks ago so it needed to be fitted.

The panel that socket lives in was only held in with two 8mm bolts and then just lifted out.





A couple of twists of the socket with some long nose pliers and it pulled out of the panel.



Then I had to unclip the orange illumination ring and cut down some of the plastic so the new socket would fit.





With the panel trimmed the new socket and securing ring fitted perfectly and could be refitted







With that sorted it was time to move onto the next “modernisation”. The car has central locking but not remote central locking. As lazy as it sounds, having to put the key in the door to unlock the car was quite annoying and now that it’s dark so early I can’t actually see the door lock when I’m trying to lock/unlock the car! I picked up a universal remote central locking kit from eBay for about £15 and had a quick read up online about what I needed to wire it to in the car. It was really easy, only slowed down by me being anal with routing all the wiring along the original loom. If I could live with it being slapdash then I could’ve had it done in about 25 minutes. With the soldering, heat shrinking and taping it took me about an hour and a half. I forgot to stop and take pictures but it’s all working as it should and it just makes the car a slightly easier daily.

I’ve got a LOT of spares for one of these if you need anything. Actually, a 70% complete spares car

A brief update to the OAP, sadly with just one picture (it was getting dark!)

I’ve been using the car as my daily but for the last few weeks it’s been feeling a bit underpowered, stuttering a little under load and generally feeling like it’s in the wrong gear all the time. I had to pop round to my garage to sort something else out so thought I’d give everything a quick glance over. I spotted that the overflow pipe going from the rad to the header tank is weeping slightly at both ends, mainly because the pipe is rock solid, so I’ll be replacing that. I checked all the HT leads were on properly and all the vacuum pipes were intact. Couldn’t see anything wrong with anything there. I then pulled the top off the air flow meter (this has been removed by someone before so just lifted off) and noticed the copper pickup was barely touching the track. I “adjusted” the pickup very slightly so it was touching the track with a little more force.

While I was under the bonnet I wanted to adjust the kickdown cable to try and solve the issue with the gearbox seemingly always being in fourth! Just two 13mm nuts to undo and I wound the cable out one turn, then did the nuts up again.

Now the main reason I had to pop to the garage was because on my way to work yesterday I went round a corner and heard something clonk under my seat. I carried on driving and a couple of minutes later noticed that my seat belt felt loose! I got to work and had a look and noticed the lower securing bolt had come undone from the seat and the belt was just flapping about!! Good job it happened when I was nearly at work and not while I was miles away from home and my tools! Anyway, I got that done back up today and put a block of locktite on the bolt to stop it happening again.



With those small bits done I just took a drive to the nearest Tesco garage to fill up with Momentum. Wow, the car is completely different to drive. No stuttering, no lack of power and the car is now in the correct gear the majority of the time! Amazingly what five minutes adjusting things can do!

Today was insurance renewal day. A bit of messing around on the various comparison sites and I've got a years fully comp cover with agreed value for £125! For the first time ever I've paid the full policy amount in one go

Performance Direct. I’ve used them on and off over the years and always received good service from them.

A brief update on the OAP. I’m currently at home dying of Covid (possibly a slight exaggeration!) but I’ve been cheered up a little by a parcel arriving from America

It’s a pair of Moosehead Engineering Spherical Upper Control Arm Bearings. These are apparently the bearings to have and will improve steering feel, remove the typical 5 series brake shimmy and don’t really wear out! I’ll be fitting these instead of the Whiteline bushes that I bought last year. I’m just waiting on a load of bits from Autodoc and then I can get going on refreshing the steering, suspension and brakes all in one go.

The car has decided to test my patience this week!

I wanted to change the spark plugs as the NGK plugs that were fitted were the incorrect ones. I bought a set of the correct Bosch plugs and fitted them the other day. On the way home the car started misfiring occasionally and smelling rather fuelly! I nursed it along for a couple of days as it was still driveable and did a bit of googling and checked on the E28 Facebook groups. A few people suggested I fit a set of NGK plugs as they seem to work better in some of the 525e models despite being the incorrect plugs. So yesterday I fitted a set of the suggested NGK plugs and it's made no difference I've ordered a set of HT leads as I suspect it's one of those giving up but they're going to be a week or so to arrive!

To add insult to injury I was meant to be taking the car to an exhaust fabricator on Thursday to have a new exhaust made which I've had to cancel and then just to make things worse the car decided to backfire this morning when it misfired and blew a hole in the already ropey sounding exhaust So it now runs like a sack of curse word and sounds like a bloody stock car!

Spotted this in the car park at Volksworld show today .

Looked spot on .

👍

I finally got around to having my new tyres fitted today. The ones that the car came on had plenty of tread but were cheap budget tyres that weren’t exactly grippy! Plus they were the wrong size which meant the fronts would rub occasionally and the steering was ridiculously heavy.

Anyway, the new Michelin tyres are much better and the correct size