My Collection of Mostly Broken BMW's - MTechnically's Garage

I always use 20psi in my Motive.  Just remember to replace the tubing on it every so often!

Alright, so I decided to run out for lunch today, to finally do a little driving in the M5. I pulled out of my neighborhood and immediately noticed a problem. The second I got the car over 40MPH there is a massive shimmy coming from the front end and the steering wheel is shaking pretty badly. If I give the brakes a hard stab it goes away temporarily, but any normal effort braking seems to bring the shimmy back. Got the car back home and the drivers side was quite hot and smoking. Passenger side seems normal.

I'm at a bit of a loss here. I'm guessing that the pads or caliper are sticking, but I'm not really sure why. I made sure to liberally grease the pads and the seals on the pistons are brand new. I'm really not sure what to do to solve the issue and now I'm concerned that I've ruined that brand new rotor. berkeley, why can't anything seem to go right with this car?

What about the caliper guide pins?  You take them out, clean them and grease them?

I did clean and grease them initially, but I did have to did disassemble and reassemble them a couple of times after I mixed the calipers with the wrong carriers. My game plan is to disassemble and liberally apply grease and see if that solves the issue.

So during the weekend I was able to jack the M5 up and found that the anti-rattle clip was putting too much pressure on the pads and causing some binding. I greased everything up as best as I could and left the clip off for now. Seems to have solved the issue of the smoking brakes. 

But the wheel shudder was still there. I wanted to make sure that it wasn't some sort of manufacturing defect on the new rotors, so I swapped the old ones back on. Seeing that they really weren't that worn to begin with. The problem was still there, and it's leaving me scratching my head at this point.  The car drives perfectly normal under 40MPH, but almost instantly it begins to shudder, between 40-65MPH. It seems to dissipate after a hard braking event, but it seems to creep back as you drive on. I recall reading a thread here about wheel weights falling off if the car isn't driven much, and I basically immediately started working on the car when balancing didn't solve the issue I was dealing with originally. 

Only suspension components on the front end that haven't been replaced yet are the front wishbones and the tie rod ends. I have the wishbones on hand, so I think that I am going to replace those during the week. I'm off this Friday, so I'll probably have the wheel weights checked again. If that doesn't solve the issue the car will be going to the shop. And maybe it will be going up for sale at this point. I was prepared to shell out some time and money to keep this car on the road, but at this point it's starting to feel like all I do is worry about what's wrong with this car.

So I've been chipping away at the 2002 the last month or so. Didn't get it 100% the way I would want, but the state of the panel, kid 2.0 incoming, and winter on it's way I decided that the Bondo portion of the project was at it's end. Primed it a couple weeks ago and noticed some more glaring issues, so I went back at it.

Finally sanded, reapplied primer and laid down the single stage today.

I'm pretty happy with the results given my complete lack of experience and doing this all by hand and with spray cans.

Didn't manage to totally remove the worst of the damage, but it is way less noticable now.

Now I just need to mount the air damn an order up some fog lights, just in time for winter...

On the other side of the garage, the M5 saga continues. I ended up going to get the wheels balanced, and found out that they didn't road force balance them the first time around. They found that both wheels on the passenger side were a little out of balance, but nothing too extreme. At first, it did seem like the vibration had improved. But once again, as I began driving some more, the intensity of the vibration increased. Dropped the car off at another local independent mechanic that specializes in BMW's. Gave him the run down and left it with them.

A few hours later they gave me a call to let me know that the calipers are seized on the front of the car. At this point, nothing really surprises me. If I had more time or patience I'd love to figure out why these calipers are giving me so much trouble, but I really do need this car to be ready when kid 2.0 arrives. So I went hunting for some calipers. Unfortunately, the calipers are not common and it seems that no one has them in stock. You can find them on multiple sites, but they are all backordered. Fortunately, I found a decent price for rebuild calipers, $212 per corner with a $125 core charge included. That'll be less than $200 out of pocket for the set. The only issue is my calipers have to be taken off, sent to the West coast to be rebuilt, and then shipped back. It's going to be another two weeks until this car is back on the road.

It's compounding issue like this that are really making me wonder if I want to keep the car around long term. I do enjoy the car when it works, but it's been a lot of time, effort, and money to track down what should be simple issues.

Last night, I worked on getting the the '02 back together. 

Reassembled the headlight buckets, installed and aimed the lights, and started getting the grills on. They are a little bit worse for wear, but replacements are a bit on the spendy side.

Need the hives suggestions on rivets. I have a pop rivet tool, but I haven't had a ton of good luck in the past. Any recommendations for tools and actual fasteners? 

I used rivnuts and stainless hardware to mount my airdam. I prefer them to pop rivets for anything I might want or need to remove.

Looks Great!

In reply to 02Pilot :

I just bought an assortment of metric rivnuts and stainless steel button headed allen bolts. Hopefully that will give the look of rivets without the ne to drill them out if I need to remove the air damn for some reason.

In reply to OjaiM5 :

Thanks! This is the first time I've ever done any kind of body work. I'm sure anyone how knows what they are doing or looking at will see tons of faults, but I'm just glad it looks better than when I started and not worse!

In reply to MTechnically :

Get some Cleco fasteners while you're at it. Makes the mounting process much, much easier.

Well tomorrow is the big day. It's my birthday and I'm having kid 2.0. Obviously, I'm not going to have a whole lot of time to spend working on the cars for the next few months. Apparently, the jet stream is trying to make things easier for me. This week we go hit with a pretty brutal cold snap for this time of year.

It doesn't seem that I would be able to get out to the garage even if I wanted to.

Fortunately, the 2002 is back together now. My buddies came over last weekend and helped me get the hood back in the car.

This was just before slapping the cover on for the winter. I'm a little bummed that I didn't manage to drive the car much with the new Comp 2's this year, but that's more motivation to get things done early on next year.

The M5 saga continues. It took almost an entire month for my calipers to get rebuilt by Stoptech and they failed to powder coat them for good measure. They also managed to ship them back to my house and not to the shop as instructed. Obviously, I'm not too impressed with them at the moment. Hopefully, the shop will get the car done tomorrow so I can have some more good news on my birthday.

The E34 continues to chug along. Though I think I've got a vacuum leak  or something. The car seems to have a bit of a rough spot  between 2-3,000 RPM. Seems to idle fine, but on a cold start it doesn't seem to run a higher idle initially. I'm wondering if the two symptoms are related. Once the M5 is back I'll see if I can't figure out what's causing the issue. 

The last week and a half have been a bit of a whirlwind. As I've been mentioning, I became a dad again late last week, on my birthday no less.

Already attempting her best Clint Eastwood impression.

Mom and baby are doing great. First couple of days were a true exercise in sleep deprivation, but she's settled into a pretty good routine. We are extremely thankful that things are going more smoothly than the first time.

In the garage it's been a bit of a rollercoaster. The E34 has been characteristically reliable, but after of bought of first winter here in the Midwest the car needed a wash. Seeing as I'm not exactly flush with time these days, I took the car to a local self wash. As I was washing, I noticed a little water on the dash near the A pillar. Seems that the rust in that area is worse than I thought.

Here's an up close of the cancer.

And another right at the bottom of the the A pillar.

Obviously, this is some seriously bad news when it comes to this car.

What's most frustrating is that for the most part the car still cleans up really nicely. I'm honestly not sure what to do with the car right now. It's a bit of a forever car for me, but I don't think I have the time or space to do the major surgery involved in fixing the rot. I have toyed with the idea of driving the car further into the ground and just sourcing a clean shell, but that's not particularly easy to do with E34 tourings these days.

After another few months in the shop the M5 is back in business.

Turns out that the brand new, OEM supplier (Lemforder), thrust arm bushings failed in about 2000 miles. That caused the bulk of the shimmy, especially in the steering wheel. I don't recall doing anything that would have caused such a premature failure. Either the parts were defective, or they were installed improperly by the shop I had handle that job.

Unfortunately, there is still a vibration coming from the car at about 45MPH. It not longer comes through the steering wheel, but it's definitely still noticable. The shops theory is to ensure that the wheels aren't bent and eliminate the hub centric rings. The car came with some OEM Style 65's that were very poorly repainted. I figured now is as good a time as any to refinish those wheels to see if we can't eliminate the wheels as the source of the vibration. I took them to a local powder coater to see what they could do. They said they would strip them and assess whether or not they could coat them.

Here's a picture they sent after stripping them. Now, they told me that the wheels are chromed underneath the shoddy paint, but that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. The wheels are aluminum, which I understand can't actually be chrome platted in the sense of actually bonding anything to the base metal. The OEM finish is shadow chrome, which is actually a three stage painting process and not actually chrome platting. 

I'm not sure why someone who deals with tons of wheels, and is highly recommended doesn't seem to know the difference...

To be fair, I haven't seen the wheels strippes in person yet. So maybe I'm dead wrong about that. If I'm right, I think I'll be stripping them myself and taking them somewhere else to see if I can get them redone properly.

So I was wrong about the wheels. They clearly were chromed at some point and then someone tried to remove the chrome with a media blaster...

So those wheels are total junk. Severely pitted and would need a ton of work even if that wasn't the case. So I'll be looking into seeing if a local wheel repair company can check my Schnitzer wheels for any bends.

After driving the car more, I'm becoming increasingly more suspicious of the driveshaft. Which was also new just a few thousand miles ago. I bought it from Turner Motorsport, so I don't think it's a quality issue with the part. My best guess is that the CSB was incorrectly installed or that the guibo is damaged.

A small quality of life upgrade today. Ever since I bought the car, I haven't been a big fan of the shifter in the M5. It's always had some flex which really didn't inspire confidence when going for a more aggressive shift.

Some PO had swapped out the original shift knob and boot. For some inexplicable reason they replaced it with a 5-speed knob and a pleather replacement with tricolor stitching. 

Not terrible, but it really feels cheap in comparison to the rest of the extended nappa leather.

Enter the OEM M5 shift knob.

The design is a one piece, integrated boot and knob, that really feels like a much higher quality unit. 

A nice touch is that this knob also lights up. For some reason the connectors where not compatible, but two crimp connectors solved the issue pretty painlessly.

As per usual, I found some hackery that caused the job to take twice as long as it should have.

Duct tape, weird cut marks and the compression fitting is manged. Luckily I was able to get the new knob on tighly enough for the time being. But I'll probably replace that shift lever at some point.

With the holidays and the new baby at home I haven't had much time to get out into the garage. My motivation levels are certainly not helped by the fact that the garage is hovering around forty degrees, which is great for this time of year, but ultimately still kinda terrible for wrenching. 

In order to eat the elephant that is the list of things that are mostly broken, I needed to take another bite. One of the things that has bothered me about the M5 ever since I bought it was some wind noise coming from the A-pillar. It's quite noticeable once you get above 65MPH, which is where I spend the bulk of my commute mileage. It's due to the rubber trim around the windshield drying out and coming lose from the channel it is meant to reside in.

I do feel some extra pressure to keep this car up, because driving around in a clapped out old M car says things about me that I would prefer the general public not know about me. I think I've put myself at a disadvantage with this car because it's nice enough that little things tend to bother me more than they would on my other cars. Lately I have been arriving to work and have to push the trim back into place, which is kinda embarrassing when you own an old super saloon. So I determined that it had to be fixed.

I also noticed that the cowl was absolutely ROACHED.

The rubber edge at the top is meant to keep water from intruding into the place where the wiper mechanism lives. It doesn't look to horrible here, but vanished to the sands of time as if I were Thanos when I touched it.

It only makes sense to do both of these jobs at once, so I ordered up more parts. I like new parts. New parts smell nice.

Another reason to replace the trim early is that it allows dirt and other detritus to sit out of sight and fester. I would like to keep the festering to a minimum on this car for the foreseeable future, so this adds a little peace of mind. I also masked off the paint near the trim just to be safe when it came to the installation of the new trim.

The job in and of itself is relatively simple. One thing I would highly recommend to anyone who has to do this kind of repair, I believe E46, E60, and E90's all share a similar cowl and trim design, would be to get a set of non-maring trim tools. They are an invaluable asset to not completely berkeley up your trim or paint or what have yous, and what have yous are expensive on fine German automobiles. You definitely don't want to berkeley them up. Also get yourself a Costco membership, so you can buy micro fiber towels in bulk. That way you can use them in a completely sacrificial manner and not feel too bad about it.

At this point in my relationship with this car I've learned something. If a puller of any sort is mentioned, I buy it. This is a wiper arm puller. Previously, I thought I was great and wise and couldn't possibly need that silly special tool. This car has made a fool of me enough times that I save myself the headache and just buy the damn tool the first time around. As it so happened, I needed the tool. See? I am learning.

Here we have the car at maximum disassembly for the job at hand. Luckily there was no nasty rot lurking beneath the cowl. I cleaned the area and began putting the car back together.

I did run into one snag when trying to get the fresh trim into the channel. I couldn't seem to get enough leverage to force the trim at the top of the windshield in. I tried using my trim tools, but I worried about damaging the trim. Suddenly I had an idea and ran to the kitchen. This thing worked GREAT. Maybe don't mention it to Mrs. MTechnically.

And here we are with everything back together. Ultimately, it didn't really make the car look much better, but I know I've made an improvement and that's certainly enough for now. I definitely needed this to go well as this car and I are on rocky ground as of late. I have on numerous occasions thought about moving it on so I can focus on the other two projects that have not been getting any attention.

Weather seems like it's going to be very mild for this time of year, so maybe I'll have time to tackle the brakes on the E34 soon. Otherwise I'll be avoiding thinking about rewiring the headlights for the M5, god it's a mess.

Nice, I think I will do the same with my windshield trim.  Good work on the other bits as well!

In reply to OjaiM5 :

It's worth doing if your trim is at all lose. I need to replace the rear trim as well, but it's not nearly as bad, so it's waiting for warmer weather.

I need to get the OBD II port fixed as well, because I failed my emissions check due to a lack of communication between the car and the port. Another known issue one the early E39 M5s. The hits keep coming, so I need to address things as I can or it will really start to snow ball.

I just drove mine today, damn beast! So much fun. I started pulling out all the sunroof stuff and am getting ready to weld in the metal one. Pretty stoked on making a slick top. 

Sorry about the emissions stuff. I had a hard time smogging, not what you want to spend time and money on. Good luck!

I'm really not sure if this is the right place to post this kind of thing.

I've come to the realization that the space that I work on my cars is generally speaking, unacceptable. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy to have a garage to keep the cars in, but the space currently leaves a lot to be desired. The parking area is 21x20 with a raised step that is 4x11. It's not a bad space, but it certainly hasn't been optimized.

Recently, I've been reading thru some garage threads. This has been giving me some ideas about what I want to do to maximize the space I have to work with. I finally realized that the lighting in my garage was completely insufficient. Three overhead sockets with some 60W equivalent bulbs. Obviously, that's not really conducive to actually getting any work done, especially if the door is closed or any work getting done at night. So it decided to get a couple of overhead LED lights.

Definitely an improvement, but I've not done a great job at keeping the space organized over the years.

There's an opportunity to improve upon the work of the PO here. Those overhead shelves are handy, or they would be if I trusted them to hold any weight at all. I'm planning on rebuilding these shelves in a more trust worthy manner once the weather starts to cooperate.

I'm hoping to build a shed in the following months. To get the mower out along with some of the larger yard equipment out of the way.

I'm also trying to organize things a little bit better inside the house. I've been keeping and new parts in the basement in order to keep them out of the cold and damp that is the unheated garage.

Bought a couple of shelving unit to try and control the chaos a little more. These Gladiator shelves measure 48Wx18Dx72H. I'm really happy with them. They go together very easy and seem sturdy enough to handle a serious amount of weight.

Previously this room had a little walk way to get around in, but these shelves really help make a more useful space.

Ultimately, these are small changes, but they certainly help with keeping things better organized. Little things like this also really help with keeping momentum going. That's something I've definitely come struggled with in the past, but I hope sharing with you guys will help keep me honest.

In some ways there isn't much going on in my garage. It's been really cold and I've been generally too tired or busy to make it out to the garage. But in other ways I feel like there is a lot going on right now. I've been think alot about the fleet and realizing that I've made an error in judgement. 

I thought I could handle three old cars. I thought I wanted one of my dream cars. I thought my dream car would only need a few thousand dollars more than a normal car in maintenance.

I turned out to be basically dead wrong about all of that stuff, and for that reason I've come to realize that I don't want my E39 M5 anymore. The realization came as a bit of a shock and a relief, to be honest.

I've had the car for a year and driven a little over six thousand miles, and in that time I have not truly connected with the car. It's highway manners are impeccable. Power delivery and sound are addictive. But I can honestly say I enjoy driving my old and slow E34 more.

Part of that has to do with the driving experience. The M5 feels heavy in comparison. Great for inspiring confidence when you are cruising over 90MPH, but I hardly ever manage to get near that speed. 

The M5 has also been broken. Much more so than I really could have anticipated. I've spent  what I paid for the car in maintenance. The down time coupled with the cost has really put a damper on any enjoyment I've gotten out of it. 

So I've decided to move on. It will give me more time and money to focus on the 02 and E34 , and I've got something interesting lined up as a replacement.

So who wants an E39 M5?

Out of the two of us I would have thought mine would have had the horrible problems. I guess you never really know how a car is going to behave. Sorry it didn't work out. I saw a post on youtube recently where a young guy bought a $10,000 e39 M5 and said there is always the $10,000 more rule with these cars. I am beginning to believe it. 

Sad to see it go but hey, you have a killer 2002 and e34!