ger's M5

ger · 19th July 2012, 22:59

I thought it might be a good idea to bring everything I've done together into one thread, sort of a project thread.

I'll start from the beginning and I'll update it often to bring it all up to date. Any comments welcome, but remember that these first posts are for work I did a good while ago.

November 2009.
Bought the car. It's a Nov 2000 facelift model, LMB, pretty much standard. Car had seen better days but was mechanically sound and seeing I like palying with cars, it was ideal for me.

I had to sort the headlight adjusters as soon as I had it, I mentioned this here in my first post on m5board!:
http://www.m5board.com/vbulletin/e39-m5-e52-z8-discussion/149580-can-someone-help-i-need-headlight-part.html

January 2010.
Bought some 13cm speakers for the rear of the car, thinking they'd make a world of difference. I was very wrong. Car has the ordinary business radio and no amp, subs or anything good in the sounds department. Seed sown, remember this for later!

Very soon after I modified the wiper arms to take e60 flat blades, I like how these blades work. I followed a guide on the bmw5 forum here:
http://forum.bmw5.co.uk/topic/22408-aero-wiper-project-now-finished-with-how-to-guide/page__st__30

February 2010.
During this initial time I also had to:
Strip down and repair the mirrors so that they folded, the little internal gears had worn so I managed to get hold of some broken 2nd hand mirrors and strip them down for the bits.

I also discovered that the mirror/window control switch had a burnt out chip in it, sorted that out as well.

Also discovered that you can reverse the wing mirror folding action by simpy swapping the two motor wires in the connector, they are a solid blue wire and a solid white wire (by solid I mean only one colour, there are no trace colours). A bit on this here:
http://www.m5board.com/vbulletin/e39-m5-e52-z8-discussion/172186-auto-fold-mirrors-new-module-help-please.html

Through sheer luck I got hold of and fitted an alcantara headlining and associated bits, very nice.

Fitted a glass sunroof panel instead of the steel one. This meant that I took out the roof lining again, as I wanted to sort a 'drag' fault to the sunroof mechanism, it was a slider of sorts that had broken. Learnt a lot about the sunroof mechanism, DIS was handy in re-setting the control.

I got another key and discovered all about 'key memory' which is a pretty cool feature that allows many options/settings to be assigned differently to different keys. So, I would have my seat, steering wheel, heater, radio and maybe a few other quirky options (bongs, closure etc) and my wife would have her settings on her key (but she never drives it, but that's not the point!).
I was surpised that the dealer would have wanted about £100 to set this to 'on' using the diag, I did it myself with my own one for free! That was a good feeling.

...

ger · 20th July 2012, 20:01

Here's a little update:

March 2010
Following a post on here, I changed the driver's seat sponge. It was wearing badly at the outermost bolster, there was loads of little bits on the carpet beneath. Car felt much better after this, and comfier. But, it's starting to leave little bits again, I want to return to the area and see what's up, I'm thinking of bonding a tougher material to go over the metal frame in the bolster (a canvass/denim type material, quite tough but pliable enough not to be noticed).

The seats are rather heavy, since they house about six different motors! Not particularly difficult to remove, just watch your back if you ever remove one!

Have a look here:
http://www.m5board.com/vbulletin/e39-m5-e52-z8-discussion/155334-best-mod-your-100k-mile-m5.html

May 2010
I had an engine light appear, turned out to be the exhaust cam sensor for bank 1 (this is the easy to get to sensor, I was sure glad to realise that!). Car felt better after changing that.

June 2010
Decided that I'd had enough of dead pixels on the dash, so ordered a new ribbon off ebay and fitted that, wrote it up and I think it's in the 'How To' section:
http://www.m5board.com/vbulletin/e39-m5-e52-z8-discussion/158260-pixel-fix-replacement-ribbon-diy.html

and a picture of the now working dash:

June 2010
A few more jobs including sorting out leaking rear door cards (butyl seal had given up) and changing the diff and gearbox oil.
September 2010. Relocated the TCM switch (tyre pressure monitor re-set switch) to the redundant manual headlight adjuster on the dash trim, thanks to this post:

http://www.m5board.com/vbulletin/e39-m5-e52-z8-discussion/49876-empty-switch-next-fog-light-switch-e39-2.html#post531719

and this one by aok2me:
http://www.m5board.com/vbulletin/e39-m5-e52-z8-discussion/108263-interior-trim-should-i-mess-2.html#post1196326

I cut the hole using a lazer cutter in work. I measuerd up the original hole and worked out the postion for the blank on the machine and let it run.

September 2010
Changed power steering pipes and flushed the system. Bought a 5litre can of power steering fluid and made up a reservoir and a drain can so that the old fluid could be properly flushed out. A lot of fluid gets pumped in no time when you run the engine! However, there's nice, clean and fresh fluid in there now. I had seen this post:

http://www.m5board.com/vbulletin/e39-m5-e52-z8-discussion/163480-power-steering-flush-reservoir-replacement.html

This one is handy regarding power steering pipes too:

http://www.m5board.com/vbulletin/e39-m5-e52-z8-discussion/161197-p-s-flush-diy-pics-added.html

ger · 21st July 2012, 00:41

Another update:

October 2010.

Early on in the month I changed the diff input shaft seal. Whilst I was there I changed the prop intermediate bearing (and added the butyl seal), gearbox mounts, propshaft spigot bearing, handbrake cables and shoes.

Removed the EGT sensor, a relic from the early cars and made a blanking plug to seal the hole (had the car been a month younger, this would not be on the exhaust system at all). Also changed some suspension parts. Car was up in the air, what do you do!

A difficult part of this job was the exhaust system, which runs from the front to the rear in one piece and it's really heavy, especially when you're under the car.

Discovered that the handbrake cables like to corrode into the rear hub carriers but got them out in the end with a good old fashioned 'persuasion device'!

Also found that one of the gearbox mounts had completely split! Really glad that a one-piece version is in there now.

Input shaft nut marked so that it can be returned to the same position to keep the preload the same.

Gear lever carrier rear bush filled with sealant to stiffen it up a bit, it felt very weak, much better after this. This part used to be about £15, now it's closer to £70!!

I also painted the rear diffuser black, it's hardly noticeable but I think it looks better. No pictures I'm afraid.

At the end of the month, just before we were to go for a short weekend break, I decided to reverse into someone's car in the work car park! No excuse really, my fault entirely. Sorted the other person's car through a very good repairer but decided to tackle my own bumper myself (and the pot was now empty!). We managed to go for a short break with the bumper very roughly painted/patched up. It was later removed and properly painted.

Here is the car immediately after the impact, oops!

I collected all of the bits off the floor and set about to plastic weld them back together. The years of repairing motorbike fairings came in handy now

Just before adding the final two bits:

To help strengthen the repair, I added an aluminium mesh, it was melted into the plactic (that took ages!). This was on the inside of course.

Filler added to even out all the rough bits:

I spent some time preparing it after this, getting the shape spot on , there wasn't much filler left on it!
Also took my time to prep it, painted it in the garage. Result wasn't bad at all:

December 2010.

I cleaned up my injectors and had a tidy up of the top end a good while ago, wrote about it here:

Recent compression test, injector clean and cam timing check

Car runs better after this work and as I discovered, a bit more efficient (always welcome!).

m5rosemont83 · 21st July 2012, 01:38

Awesome man..
I'm gonna want to clean my fuel injectors and do my timing now..
Lol

M3orM5 · 21st July 2012, 03:28

Nice !

StreetKa · 21st July 2012, 04:16

This is really great! one question though did you have some kind of manual or you just have an experiance on bmw ? i am soon to be owner of an e39 m5 and i am 100% diy-er

ger · 21st July 2012, 11:07

Thanks for the comments.
My family have always been quite practical and we've always looked after our own cars, so I suppose I have a fair amount of experience.

However, I immersed myself into the manuals so that I was familiar with the car and I'd been reading a few things on the forum for a few months before buying it. You can never know too much. I think it's daft to try to do something without reading up on it beforehand, you usually end up doing a better job.

The available manuals are TIS (from ebay etc and lately most of it is on 'spaghetticoder.org,' together with wiring information), an old Haynes manual, a downloaded Bentley and downloaded torque specs.
Realoem.com (and bmwfans.info) are also fantastic for part numbers but also to see what, how and where various parts go and fit together.

This forum is a mountain of knowledge, filling in the sometimes huge gaps left by the manuals. Some of the people here are very knowledgable and we all should respect and thank them for their contributions, I certainly do (thanks guys!).