ok.. so you may remember i posted a "what car thread" for a freind looking for an HPDE car. well, he ended up going with a 1985 bmw 535. we test drove it and realized it had tranny issues since the shifter wouldnt get us to reverse or 4th, and there was a disturbing vibration in the driveline, But the problem appeared to be due to a worn shifeter ball cup and a broken lock ring. there were other cars to look at so we didnt write it off completely and called it quits for the weekend
unfortunately, the owner called my friend later that day and lowered the price while offering to include a spare engine and tranny. combined with the fact that it was canary yellow, and all the other cars we saw that weekend had issues too, my friend bit and bought the car.
so. now it is in my backyard and we have finally gotten under it to see what we really have..... I'M SCARED!
the PO apparently fif some serious rigging to this car. there is a gap betweenthe guibo and the drivesahft that is about 2 inches thick....... AND HE FILLED IT WITH A STACK OF WASHERS! the support bar for the shifter is also zip tied to the chassis and swings a good inch side to side! the carrier bearing is shot to b ut that was somewaht expected when we felt the vibration.
clearly there is something about this transmission that isnt OEM since it is too short and the chassis doesnt have a provision to support the shifter assembly. i know pelican parts indicates that there is a difference between early and late 85 535's that shows up in the shifter linkage asembly (plate vs suport bar type), but was there also a difference in transmission length associated with the difference in model years? or does anyone have any idea of what kind of tranny we DO have?
It's possible that someone performed a transmission swap on that car and didn't have all the pieces.
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I know that some auto e28's don't have the shifter support arm bracket built onto the chassis in which case you'll have to ad one.
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You may have the incorrect (Automatic? Other?) driveshaft installed.
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The transmission number should be on the casing near the clutch slave cylinder. Should be a either a getrag 260 or 265. The 265 will have a removable bellhousing and the 260 will not.
That was my first thought as well. Maybe someone swapped in the 5 speed and didn't have the proper drive shaft for the swap, and just rigged up what they had.
BTW, if the 5 speed is the original transmission, it should have the removable bell housing.
are the 260 and 265 both the same length? it seems odd to me that someone would go through the trouble of getting all of the clutch pedal, lines, and all that for an auto to manual swap but NOT get the driveshaft for the swapped tranny,.but who knows. this PO did a lot of weird stuff!
i do think some sort of trany swap occurred though since the driveshaft bolts are very corroded in place but the tranny ones seemd a little loose.
I think the 260 and 265 do take different driveshafts, but I'm not positive. I would suggest going to the www.mye28.com website, joining up and then posting a question in the tech section.
stuart. thanks for the tip. found a great sticky over there. after a fair amount of degreasing, it looks like the cars original '85 model specific 265/6 tranny was removed and an '86 model 260/6 unit was put in its place. since the original 265/6 wasnt in an m3 model it should have had a sheet metal shifter support but now has the later cast model explaining the lack of a chassis attachment for the shifter support.
