My BMW E39 528i touring

[PranK]

The new project has arrived. I have wanted one of these for such a long time, well before that meathead Clarkson drove one in Africa.

I really wanted an E34 but I have some medical issues that mean I *really* can't bump my head and the lack of airbags in the E34 made it just too big of a risk. 

I don't know why I've always liked these older touring BMW's to be honest, but man I love this car.

She's been pretty well maintained for her 243k's with what appears to be only a single oil leak at the oil filter housing gasket. It has a bunch of updates including later model bumper and headlights, 7 series billion-way adjustable seats and it came with a few spares and another set of wheels with legal tyres.

I got a unregistered car permit from the RTA and drove it back from Canberra on Saturday.

                 

First cab off the rank is cleaning it up for blue slip. I dont know how picky they'll be but I figured I'd clean the headlights, fix the oil filter housing gasket, replace the speed sensors (throwing errors) and swap the OE wheels (the M Sport wheels have a big chunk out of one of the tyres.)

I also need to replace all 6 gas struts - 2 for bonnet, 2 for hatch and 2 for hatch glass. The car tries to eat me whenever i open any of these.

My plan for this car;

Ultimately, this is a budget car. I can't afford to throw lots at it and its because I have another car that I got this, if something breaks its no big deal. I will just maintain and repair it really. But eventually I want to do a manual conversion. It actually looks pretty straight forward for E39's and the trickiest part will be sourcing the parts. 

I do need to replace some suspension arms or bushes because wow, she's a floaty old girl.

She's also fantastically slow. Like really, really slow. When pulling back out on to the freeway on Sat after a quick pull over I needed to wait until no cars were visible before going. 

Oh, and the guy I bought it from had a gorgeous R31 GTS-X in the garage. 

[Duncan]

Like a Stagea, but not as cool!

Hope you have enough garage space for this, or is something going to leave to make way for it?

[Milkmun]

Can't go wrong with tourings/estates/wagons. 

[MBS206]

It's got a problem Prank... It looks like both washer spray caps have fallen off this car... 😛

[PranK]

3 hours ago, MBS206 said:

It's got a problem Prank... It looks like both washer spray caps have fallen off this car... 😛

Should have checked that. 

On the plus side, I got my Bluetooth adaptor.

[Duncan]

Oh man, I showed the nephew a DVD the other day.....cassette would have blown his mind

[PranK]

While doing my tailgate struts I found some rust.

Also replaced my bonnet struts. Such a cool satisfaction with that job.

[soviet_merlin]

Ooo! Would make me go "nice wagon!" seeing it on the street. I'm surprised it's slow. But inline 6 so it sounds nice at least?

I do agree though. E34 would have been amazing. My favourite BMW wagon. Though I imagine borderline unobtainable as well.

[PranK]

15 hours ago, soviet_merlin said:

Ooo! Would make me go "nice wagon!" seeing it on the street. I'm surprised it's slow. But inline 6 so it sounds nice at least?

I do agree though. E34 would have been amazing. My favourite BMW wagon. Though I imagine borderline unobtainable as well.

Yeah, the E34 touring is like hens teeth. 

This one is really nice, she's a touch rough but we'll get there.

Horrible, broken key buttons were irritating me so I bought some replacement buttons and new batteries. The pic makes them look gross still but it is such a difference. I accidentally broke a little bit of the new button on one of them by using a pick to get it in place.

Super good service by the guys at Remote Pro who offer free shipping regardless of order. Hats off to them.

 

[niZmO_Man]

So which car is getting the Diet Coke livery?

[PranK]

So, I've been a little busy on this car.

I replaced the bonnet struts which is always satisfying but very confusing that nobody else on the planet seems to do this. Its just my routine first thing I do on any car I buy.

The boot struts for both the tailgate and the separately opening glass window was a bastard. And, I found a fair bit of rust in the strut cavity. I filled it with rust converter and cleaned up as much of the dirt as I could. There was so much dirt.

One piece of the trim was barely hanging on and so I've left it off. I'll try to get a replacement. You can see how disgusting and dirty it all was in this thread;

I had to remove the little clips that hold the struts on the ball. The ones I took off had no clips and it was impossible to get them on with them in place. Fingers crossed they stay put.

So, I turned my attention to the headlights, they were in a bad way and likely would stop rego. I took the headlights out and found the adjusters were all just loose. So, I fixed those and unclipped the lenses to clean them up. Couldn't believe how easy it was to take all this apart compared to the E90.

 

I also cleaned up the stockies which was awesome, these are super cool with lug nut covers. They're in good nic but the tyres are shot. I was going to use these for rego but in the end got a fresh pair of rubber for the 17's on the front of the car instead.

The front bar of this car is from a late(r) model one. I don't think it's quite LCI but who knows. I'll need to find out. Anyway, the bar was missing the fog lights and the wiring and plugs were for the original ones so I got new plugs and some cheap fogs. I wasn't sure if missing original equipment would hamper my blue slip attempts.

Had a couple of these little fellas helping out.

But not Ben who got stuck behind the pool heater ....

How embarressment. 

I ordered new speed sensors for all corners because I knew one was out. I just got cheapies and will replace them with Bosch items when I can find Bosch items. Again, this was just for rego.

Alas, it seems the blue speed sensors are not the same as the grey ones. Back they went and replacements ordered. In the end, with my new scan tool, it was just rear left that was shot. Replaced it and cleared the codes. All good now.

Lastly, my aux (thermo) fan is being a bit odd. Its powering up at strange times and NOT powering up when I think it should (100C). While this can be caused by a few things, the most likely (for me) is the ambient temp sensor. Given mine reads -40.0C regardless of the temp, I figured it would be good to replace it.

In the end, the sensor wiring was abysmal with (terrible) attempts made by somebody to fix it.

 

I fixed this all up but the sensor is only attached using pins into the wires. The plug is not there. Despite trying and trying to connect it securely it wouldn't work so a replacement sensor and plug is on the way.

Oh, I also ordered a replacement piece of trim for the part missing here at the bottom. Ordered from Latvia for $70 delivered. I took a bit of a leap of faith because I didn't have the exact part number and, as usual, there were eleventy billion pieces of trim that looked to fit.

Nailed it.

Well, its not totally perfect but I think its more a 28 y/o car problem than a trim problem.

And, as of today .....

I have bought the workshop manuals 2nd hand off a guy in tassie. 1000+ pages of E39 goodness, hopefully it helps me with the fan. I also have a new temp switch on the way incase its the problem.

Stoked.

[PranK]

Customer states,I got an oil leak. 

Customer was raht.

[PranK]

So, got some bits..

 

New oil filter housing gasket (main problem I'm trying to fix -see leak above) 

While you're in there's:

New belts, pulley and tensioners. 

Vanos oil line

New oil drain valve

New water pump and pulley 

New fumoto valve (all my cars have these).

Some of this stuff seems ok now that I've pulled it out but I still have no idea how old it all is. 

The belts looked fine and then I noticed this. Like somebody has hooked it with a pick. 

[PranK]

This is another issue I'm fixing. This little valve stops all the oil from draining to the sump when the engine is turned off. What happens eventually is that the engine is a little noisy and has the oil pressure light on for a few seconds after turning it on. Basically it takes a few seconds to build the pressure when all the oil has drained. This valve is a non serviceable part and is attached to the oil filter housing, BMW suggests to replace the entire housing if this valve fails. 

As it turns out this valve can be removed and that means you can get an aftermarket replacement, which I did.

The failure, for me at least is that the valve doesn't seat properly after a while, which I've demonstrated. The new one is a ball end and always seats properly. 

[PranK]

For the record, I hate the colour. Even if I'll never see it again, I know its in there.

[soviet_merlin]

I always find it both fascinating and educating seeing you go through all this. It's a bit like "BMWs are great. Except with one massive caveat: as long as you fix this two page long list of things where components are broken by design"

Every now and then I consider getting a BMW. And then I read your posts and think that maybe the RB life is not so bad after all

[PranK]

100% hear you. I won't defend them but I will defend my ability to work twice as hard to keep them running. 🤣

[soviet_merlin]

Hah, I have no issues with what you are doing whatsoever! You clearly know what you are getting yourself into.

2 hours ago, PranK said:

This little valve stops all the oil from draining to the sump when the engine is turned off. What happens eventually is that the engine is a little noisy and has the oil pressure light on for a few seconds after turning it on. 

It's just funny reading things like this.

"What's that noise?" "Oh, that's normal. That's just the engine not getting any oil. Nothing to worry about. It'll go away in a moment"  

[PranK]

2 hours ago, soviet_merlin said:

It's just funny reading things like this.

"What's that noise?" "Oh, that's normal. That's just the engine not getting any oil. Nothing to worry about. It'll go away in a moment"  

This, honestly, is entirely BMW life. There's so many little things that once you know about you are either more relaxed or more uptight! 🤣

Fwiw (and slightly in my defence) our X5 has been flawless! The biggest issue we've had was problems with the front diff which ended up with a 2k rebuild but other than regular servicing with good oil and filters we've had no out of the ordinary costs or problems. it's been amazing and we've put 90k on it over about 5 years. 

It's just the other two. The problem kids.

[soviet_merlin]

It's flawless.

(Except for major maintenance bill that non-car people would feel salty about for years afterwards)

Just kidding. Life's too short to be bored driving a Camry.