Road trip story & Project thread: 2001 Titanium Silver e39 M5

[nextelbuddy]

so whats the deal here? you sold the silver M5 or now you have 2 m5s? its so hard to keep up since the beginning of the thread where you had another M5 i think to start off with . from beginning to end, how many m5s have you had so far? are you buying and selling in search of your ultimate M5? or do you just like buying them?

[Sreten]

On page 13 you can read what happened with the silver M5, but to cut it short - it's sold. Now I only have this one which is my 3rd M5 in total.
Ultimate M5 for me would be an Estoril blue one so that would be nice someday. I enjoy in every bit of it, searching, traveling, buying, then fixing and driving it, and the selling part sometimes. It's how I stay on top of it. I do wish to have a small BMW dealership one day just because I love doing all of that more than my current profession so it is getting out of hand.

This M5 should stick around for a while as I have plans for it but I might get something else on the side to get my fix.

[Sockethead]

My dream is restoring cars in retirement... if my body still works by then

[BMWCurves]

Fuck me, even in it's open-air transported state, it's a gorgeous car. I look forward to all the stuff you do to make this beautiful, classic M5 that I'll drool over.

[Sreten]

My dream is restoring cars in retirement... if my body still works by then

Exactly. I could definitely see myself doing this long term. Hope your dream comes true, Rob!

Fuck me, even in it's open-air transported state, it's a gorgeous car. I look forward to all the stuff you do to make this beautiful, classic M5 that I'll drool over.

Danke, Will! Should be a fun project. It is absolutely filthy now and it won't get a proper wash until I get tags.

I did a visual inspection over the weekend and it's pretty much what I expected - typical M5 stuff.

Front thrust arm bushings are shot and control arms appear to be original so I have a complete Lemforder kit coming to refresh the suspension.
The ball joint on rear lower control arm is shot, power steering lines are leaking all over and made a big oily mess. I was expecting diff to be seeping oil because is super common but it's dry.

Rear sway bar link failed spectacularly.



Then I discovered why are the cold starts loud and why Supersprint Magnum is louder than Eisenmann Sport mufflers which shouldn't be the case.

The car also has a Supersprint X-pipe. Somehow I missed this in Italy and normally I wouldn't mind this because it sounds awesome but this is a no-go for German TÜV. It's an instant fail at the inspection and now I'm trying to source original resonators. But, I might take it to the local inspection station and hope that the inspection guy is not familiar with these cars and overlooks this but I doubt that will work. They are usually thorough.

Supersprint mufflers have been on this car for roughly 15 years since production date reads 2003.



The parts list keeps getting bigger but hopefully first round arrives this week and the refreshment treatment of this M can be under way.

[san]

Didn’t you keep the eisenmann exhaust? Why don’t you just swap that?


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[Sreten]

Yes, I still have the Eisenmann exhaust, but I wanted to run Supersprint mufflers for a while just to get a better feel for them and make a comparison to Eisenmann and decide which one I like better for the long run.

Anyway, Supersprint Magnum mufflers are not the problem as they have necessary TUV approvals engraved on them so they will pass the inspection. Problem is the X-pipe which I'll have to swap out for stock resonators.

[Sreten]

Last weekend my girlfriend was out of town and the M5 got my full attention.

Started off with the easy stuff.
New wiper blades and cabin filters.





The car came with some sort of K&N air filters and one of them was actually falling apart. I don't have experience with them and didn't feel like experimenting so I chucked them away and went with good old MANN.



New timing chain tensioner.





New oil separator hoses. Old ones were so sticky and soft that you could stretch them like a gum.





New oil cap and trunk struts since the original struts were so weak.





Fresh spark plugs.



Rear sway bar links and bushings.



The ball joints on the rear upper control arms and guide links are toast.



Replaced the upper control arms and still waiting for the guide links to arrive.





Now the big job that I did on Saturday. I diagnosed that the thrust arm bushings were shot with everything else appearing to be original to the car. I decided that the best course of action is to replace everything.

Bought complete Lemforder kit and Meyle HD sway bar links.





Back when I did the overhaul job of the front suspension on my old 530i with a friend, the biggest issue we had was with the sleeve coming out with the ball joint. We wasted so much time on that crap.

This time I wanted to be sure I have the proper tools for the job and I bought off Amazon this ball joint separator.



Which is the same tool as this one, just branded as KS Tools in my case- https://www.ecstuning.com/b-schwaben...958sch01a~sch/

This nifty tool saved me and worked great with one little modification. The bolt kept sliding so I drilled a hole in the swing arm to keep it place.





Apart from getting 3 complaints for working in the backyard of the place where I'm renting my garage, everything went swimmingly.
Once the ball joint lets go, it's like being shot at and scared the piss out of me. Though it is a satisfying bang.

Lower control arms were okayish but everything else was toast.







Using my trusty torque wrench, torqued all of the ball joints to specification, finger tight for the bushings and then lowered the car - drove back & forth and onto the ramps for the final torque under the load.

This is a good website with torque specs for the suspensions which I cross-referenced with TIS - https://www.how2fixvideos.com/BMW_su...que_specs.html





This was a hell of a job to do in one day. It was a pretty good workout that left me sore and took me about 45 minutes to wash all the filth away that I brought home.

Following this - on Monday I took the car to TUV to see what will they find and how big is my homework going to be.



The car failed the inspection but to my surprise not because of the X-pipe! The list was pretty short and embarrassingly enough the car failed the handbrake test and there was an excessive play in the right rear wheel.

The handbrake was sorta working in the past few days but I did feel it was on the weak side. This was a quick and easy fix by removing the rear wheels and adjusting the little gears for the parking brake shoes and readjusting the cable.

TUV guy wasn't precise with the play in the rear wheel and just wrote it off as a wheel bearing which I thought was unlikely. At first, I thought it might be the upper guide links but after double checking, the play is coming from the lower ball joint. The rubber on the ball joint is intact from the outside but if I hold the wheel at 12 & 6 o'clock there's so much play that I can move the whole wheel just by pushing with my thumb.
This isn't a quick and simple fix but I'll get it sorted next week, I have the parts and the ball joint tool on order and waiting for the delivery.

When I go back to TUV, they'll be looking only into these two things and hopefully that should be it. After seeing the roads in Italy on which this car was driven, it comes as no surprise that the complete suspension is shot. I'll be doing an alignment after I complete the work and probably later down the road I'll replace the struts and shocks, just gotta decide if I want to go with Koni yellows or pony up for the OE parts.

I did get to talk to the TUV guy when I went to pick up the car and he was a really nice guy. He's also a BMW enthusiast who owns E30 M3 and E34 M5 and gave me compliments about my M5. I didn't want to say anything, but there's no way that he missed the X-pipe. My guess is that there was some comradery between car guys and he turned a blind eye on it and I'm super happy that I don't have to swap it out. He himself said that the car sounds fantastic.

This is where I am at the moment and priority stays the same - pass the TUV and get it registered.
Future plans are Vanos maintenance and more general maintenance, refurbish the headlights with Hella G4 projectors, upgrade the Vanos accumulator - the start-up rattle when warm is simply unbearable, etc.

[Sockethead]

Wow! that's a helluva lot of work to be doing on the ground! Suspension work isn't all that complicated but it"s a PITA.
That's cool you found a decent TUV guy... I imagine some of them are dicks.

[slater]

nice work, man!! that's a good day's work.

that torque wrench looks sweet. i want one.