Australian Alps Tour

[M540i LE]

Introduction


There is no doubt that Australia is one of the best places in the world in which to live. But it is also clearly, not near the top of the list when it comes to the enjoyment of fine motor vehicles. We have outstandingly high quality roads with relatively little traffic, but to counter that, we have over-policing driven at times more by revenue raising and police benchmarking than road safety and a system that promotes unrealistically high prices for a lot of the finer machinery that comes out of Europe.


In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, this latter fact was represented by the fact that there were only 44 E34 M5’s ever sold officially in Australia. And what’s more, 43 of them all arrived in one boat in late 1990, following which BMW Australia progressively ‘complied’ them with Australian plates over the next 3 years as demand required. As such, we have 1990, 1991, 1992 & 1993 complied and first registered M5’s here – all of which were built in mid-1990 and came with the 3.6 motor.


In addition, there was one 3.8 5 speed sent here in 1993 for evaluation, that was driven by the M-D of BMW Australia. This car still exists and was up for sale in mid-2006. The asking price was some 24,000Euros – which even seemed a lot to us given its very tired state. I have since heard it sold for only a bit over 10,000Euros – which annoyed me because I would have paid at least that much for it.


Anyway, once these initial forty three 3.6’s were sold, Australians couldn’t buy a new M5 again until the E39 was released some 5 years later. BMW Australia decided largely for cost reasons that the 3.8’s were too expensive to comply given the limited number likely to be sold at the very high prices that would have to have been asked here at the time. But as the E34 grew older, BMW Australia realised they needed something to ‘keep the flag waving’ for the E34 range until the E39 model appeared and the 1995 BMW 540i Manual Limited Edition was the result.


There were only 70 of these made for Australia and they were each fitted with an individually numbered plaque (under the handbrake lever). They are similar in concept and execution to the 200 US M-Sport 540i's and the 32 Canadian M540i's produced in 1995.

The LE's were the closest thing to an E34 M5 available in Australia after 1993 and came with almost all the 1995 M5 good bits (like full M5 suspension including switchable EDCIII struts, full M5 sports interior, etc), except for the motor and the body kit. But despite missing the M5's 250 KW 3.8L six, the LE's smooth 210KW V8 did provide some compensation - particularly given that all LE's came fitted with the 1995 M5's 6-speed manual gearbox (no other 540i was available in Australia with a manual gearshift).


As a result, we have a fairly limited total pool of 114 E34 M5’s and their cousin, the 540iLE’s, in Australia. In addition, there are probably between 10 & 20 E34 M5’s that have been brought into Australia as personal imports by Australians returning home after extended periods overseas and 1990 M5’s under the now defunct 15yo rule.


As moderator of the 2 Yahoo Groups sites set up to register Australian M5’s and the 540iLE’s respectively, I decided earlier in 2006 that it would be nice to see if we could get as many of the owners of these ‘E34 supercars’ together in one spot as we could and, even better, to have a bit of driving fun while we were at it.

The idea was put to the members of the two groups and before long we had expressions of interest from over 20 drivers – although we had managed to attract a few E28’s, E24’s and even a Porsche 911S!


The next step was to work out what we wanted to do and where we wanted to do it. As the idea of both a track day and a tour appealed to most, we decided to do both. This could be achieved by meeting between Melbourne and Sydney at the Winton Raceway – which was also conveniently close to the Victorian Alps (part of the Australian AustraliaGreat Dividing Range). After a bit of too-ing an fro-ing, it was agreed that we would do a day at Winton on a Friday, followed by a two day tour of the Victorian Alps. Not long after, dates and routes were agreed upon and work commenced towards final planning.


As the dates came closer, some dropped out, and some came on and we ended up with the following 12 drivers confirming they were coming for all or part of the extended week-end:


M5’s
Garry W – Sterling Silver M5 - Melbourne
Geoff B – Calypsorot M5 (originally a UK car) - Melbourne
Geoff C – Alpine White M5 - Sydney
Ian G – Alpine White M5 - Sydney
Bill H – E39 M5 engined black M5 - Melbourne


540iLE’s
Frank V - Calypsorot 540iLE (#15) - Sydney
Peter W – Petrol Mica 540iLE (#17) - Sydney
Luke W – Tobago Blue 540iLE (#24) - Canberra
David Br - Arctic Silver 540iLE (#28) - Melbourne
Richard L – Cosmos Schwarz 540iLE (#41) - Sydney
David Bu (me!) – Arctic Silver 540iLE (#62) - Hobart


Other
Ian W – Silver E28 M535i owned by Luke W and driven by his dad – Canberra


Wednesday 25 October 2006


As noted above, most of the participants hail from Sydney or Melbourne. These 2 cities are about 875 kms apart by road and our meeting point (Wangaratta) was about 240kms from Melbourne along that road. Canberrians are sort of between Melbourne and Sydney as well, although closer to Sydney.


Accordingly, in order to meet in Wangaratta or Winton on Thursday night, or Friday morning, most were able to leave on Thursday at some point.

However, as I was coming from Hobart and also wanted to be there Thursday night, I had to leave Wednesday – so the adventure started a day earlier for me than it did for everyone else.


It started out uneventful enough with a 300km drive on Tasmania’s main highways – the Midlands Highway (for about 190kms) followed by a further 100kms on the Bass Highway. I left Hobart about 3.00pm and arrived in Devonport almost exactly at 6.00pm, after a stop for coffee on the way. The road is heavily policed, busy and has a 110km/h limit punctuated by about 25kms of 50, 60, 70, 80 & 90km/h stretches. However, I managed to have some fun opening it up occasionally when overtaking and generally found the car to be running very well.


After a bite to eat, I joined the queue to drive onto the boat, parked the car, grabbed my overnight bag, locked the car with the BMW remote and went upstairs to settle in for the night.


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Thursday 26 October 2006


David Bu & Garry W


The ship takes about 11 hours to sail the 427kms across Bass Strait and arrived in Melbourne at 7.00am on Thursday 26 October.


After a night of surprisingly good sleep – considering I was sitting up in a ‘business class’ seat all night - I was rudely awoken by the morning announcements at 5.50am. About an hour later, I and everyone else on my deck were called to our cars.


I arrived at my car and pressed the button to unlock – but nothing …


I tried again and again – but nothing … No door unlock, no response whatever.


After a few minutes, cars started moving – but not mine. I decided to ring Andrew Brien at Southern BM to see what advice he had and he said he would make some quick calls to see what might have gone wrong with the alarm/remote system.


In the meantime, I unlocked the door manually, setting off the alarm – and noticed that the alarm was pathetic and getting weaker in volume very quickly.

By this time, I was holding up cars behind me and had come to the attention of the guys whose job it is to guide cars off the ship. I explained the problem to them and suggested it might be my battery (even though it is almost new and I had just driven 300kms). They said to wait until all cars were off and they would try a jump start. If that didn’t work, they would tow me off.


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Around 7.40pm, I finally had the car hooked up to a high tension jump lead (with surge protector) and the door unlocked, the EWSII disarmed and I could get in and start the car. As I was not really sure what had caused it, I headed straight for Southern BM – about a 20 minute drive south east around Port Phillip Bay.


At this stage, I was just pleased I had got the car going without the risk of damage caused by the tow that the ship guys were planning.

Below is a pic taken of the car after I drove off the ship (the Spirit of Tasmania II). As you can imagine, the engine is still running!


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20 minutes later, just after 8.00am, I arrived at Southern BM and Andrew was straight onto it. To complicate matters, the car had developed a strange random tick, or click – similar in sound to morse code tapping noises.


Nothing could be found to explain the battery drain. In the end, we concluded that it must have been the alarm going off all night – set off by the motion of the ship. As I have not had any charge problems since, I reckon that conclusion was as good as any.


The ticking noise was another matter though. Despite having had the car checked locally before leaving, Andrew found a number of issues requiring immediate attention. The first was that the fan was touching the wires that send the signal to the oil temperature gauge. These were tied back and addressed. But what became obvious was that the engine was vibrating far too much. Up on the hoist and we found that the engine mounts were totally shot. One was in 2 pieces. No way I was heading to Winton the day after with those mounts – and they were probably the reason for the sender unit wires touching the fan.


However, neither of these explained the ticking noise. Andrew and Jimmy started at the front and worked backwards trying to find the source of the noise through elimination.


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In the end, although not absolutely sure, they concluded it was a problem with the clutch or the pressure plate. As such, they had some doubts about the longevity of the car given the 3 days ahead of me. However, as I will relay below, the ticking noise caused no issues over the week-end and despite 2 BMW dealers also looking at it, whatever it is, 4 months later, still presents just as a ticking noise – no worse, no better, still random and causing no problems.


Anyway, the engine mounts were ordered, #62 was driven to the local BMW dealer for a KDS alignment (not available in Tasmania) and then back to Southern BM for the engine mount fitment.


It was great of Andrew and Jimmy to fit all the extra work in. I did have a booking, because I wanted a thorough check of the car by people I can trust absolutely, but they went beyond what could reasonably be expected to help me. The booking also involved fitting a big bore throttle body I had ordered the week before from Sydney and which arrived that morning.



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While all this was going on, the owner of 540iLE #3, Anthony, dropped in to catch up with me. Unfortunately, he was unable to join us on the tour, but he wanted to call in and say hi anyway. His is a very nice Cosmos Schwartz over light silver grey leather car – with a chipped DME, enlarged throttle body, BMC intake and a full custom exhaust. It sounds verry nice and I took the opportunity to record a little video of it driving up and down past Southern BM.




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(note the little E30 Hartge in the background)



Then things got a little more interesting, when Gerry, the owner of #16 turned up in his techno-violet over anthracite M-cloth 540iLE. Like Anthony, Gerry was unable to join us on the tour.








Some time after the two LE's had left, Garry W turned up in his E34 M5, which of course, until about 4 weeks earlier, had been mine:

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We were running a couple of hours behind at this point. As a result, rather than leave Southern BM at around 2.00pm as planned, we didn’t get on the road until closer to 4pm. I was also on the look-out for a phone shop as I had forgotten my phone charger – so further delays followed. Despite this, we did eventually get moving and Garry and I headed off. In the interests of driving pleasure, we took the long way (via Yarra Glen and Yea). What we didn’t count on was the late Thursday afternoon traffic which delayed us significantly, and it was about 5.30pm before we reached the outskirts of Melbourne (some 2.5 hours later than we expected). After that, it was clean driving all the way to Wangaratta.

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Ian G, Geoff C, Luke W, Ian W, Richard L

In the meantime, the first Sydney contingent (Ian G, Geoff C and Richard L) were well on their way. As Wangaratta, the town we were staying at, was about 6 hours drive from Sydney and 3.5 from Melbourne, they had left Sydney around lunchtime.

Along the way, they came across a nice looking Tobago blue E34, driving with a very nice E28 M535i – which of course turned out to be Luke W and his father, Ian W who had joined the Hume Highway from Canberra. They joined up and the 5 cars continued towards Wangaratta.

Around this time, Ian G had the first (but not the worst) of his troubles of the week-end:

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This necessitated a new tyre at Albury Wodonga and delayed the group by a good hour.

As a result, this group of Sydney and Canberra guys arrived at our lodgings around 7.30pm. Despite our delays getting away from Melbourne, Garry & I were only about 30 minutes behind and arrived at about 8pm. This brought 7 of us together and things were looking good.

In the interest of staying somewhere that would promote camaraderie between a bunch of guys who basically didn’t know each other, we had decided to stay in what was essentially a holiday camp. We had rented out the whole of the ‘hostel’ which could sleep up to about 30 people in bunk bed style. And it only cost A$25 each a night!

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Not long after, Peter W, who had left Sydney after the first group, arrived in his immaculate low km (88,000km) 540iLE (#17) – Petrol Mica over bi-colour leather.

As none of us had eaten, we decided to head into Wangaratta for dinner and ended up at a pizza restaurant in the main strip.

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From the left – Ian W, David Bu (me), Geoff C, Richard L, Garry W, Ian G, Luke W (Peter W taking the pic).

Later that evening, around 11pm, Frank V arrived in his unique Calypsorot over parchment 540iLE - #15 – unique because it was ordered with an individual interior and other special bits not part of the Limited Edition package. It also has a Unichip, custom stainless steel exhaust and a custom intake. One week before the tour, Frank had it on a rolling road dyno and it returned a figure of 232kw. It was measured immediately after a standard Ford Falcon XR6 Turbo, which standard is supposed to put out 230kw – and gave almost identical peak power results. #15 also sounded fantastic.

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After a few more beers and some contemplation on how those of us over 6’3 would go sleeping in the kids bunks (and at 6’4 or 192cm, I felt short next to Ian G and Garry W), we retired for the evening.

Friday 27 October 2006 – Winton Track Day

Friday morning saw a few of us up early and keen to get into it. As it was dark when most of us arrived, the first priority was checking out the cars. And taking lots of pics.

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At about 8.30am, after breakfast (thrown in for the A$25 a head), we set off for Winton. But we didn’t get far before drama.

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Oil from Ian G’s motor was leaking onto the extractors and catching fire. At one point, there were flames – which an amazingly calm Ian managed to extinguish by blowing on them. Ian thought at first that the smoke billowing from under the bonnet was oil he spilled when topping up that morning. What it turned out to be was oil spilling out of the cam cover – as the oil filler cap hadn’t been put back on properly.

All seemed ok, so we continued on our way to Winton – about 30kms from Wangaratta.

Only one stop to check on Ian’s car on the way, otherwise easy driving.

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We arrived sometime before the track opened for the day and secured a good position undercover for all cars.


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Having modified the intake on my 540iLE under instructions from Stevie, I had passed on the benefits to some of the others. Ian W took it to heart (he is a mechanic) and set to modifying the intake on his son Luke’s #24.



More to come ...