Facelift Lighting Upgrades

I know some might call me a heretic but I've always been partial to the facelift lights. I sourced a set of 2001 lights to use as cores for this project, and bought billet aluminum adjusters, Morimoto Mini D2S projectors, adapter brackets to fit them to the lights, and various other bits needed for the retrofit. I wanted to do LED angel eyes and have them be bright enough for DRLs which meant drop in LED bulbs were out, I had those for a few years and they were never bright enough. Back in 2018 I bought a set of Umnitza Orion rings only to discover that they didn't fit in facelift lights so shelved them, so I got them back out and cut the PCBs out of the plastic housings. I almost ruined the first one, but it went smoother after that. I don't remember how I did it other than that it was a pain in the rear.

Turns out they fit nearly perfectly into the original housings, behind the clear angel eye rings. A little epoxy and they aren't going anywhere.

They are also extremely bright. How long they'll last? Who knows, I don't trust aftermarket electronics too much but we'll see.

Projectors installed into the housings with the adapter brackets. The EvoX-R projectors are a drop in fit but quite outdated at this point, the Mini D2S has far better performance.

Headlights assembled and adapter harnesses made. Sumitomo sealed connectors here, and the OEM adapters for the turn signals. The LED controllers have a high and a low mode, right now I just run them in "high" whenever the lights are on like the stock angel eyes but at some point I'll tweak the wiring so they run as DRLs on high mode and change to low when the lights are on. Probably when I do the electric fan conversion with the engine service since I'll have a constant +12V up front at that point.

The real aggravating part of a retrofit like this is getting everything aligned perfectly. Projectors always have slight variations in the output and angle, so getting everything just right is a lot of trial and error. I stacked washers on the mount brackets so the cutoff of the new projectors sits just below the hot spot of the original high beams, so when you enable the bi-xenon high beams the hot spots all align and give you crazy good visibility far down the road.

New lights installed and PPF wrapped to protect the DJ Auto lenses. (and headlight washers deleted)

For the rear light conversion, I cut off the factory plugs from the lights and soldered on leads running to a 6 pin sealed Sumitomo connector, then cut the plug off on the chassis and did the same thing. These plugs often rust and stop working or intermittently work which is really annoying, so this is a permanent fix. (much more annoying to replace a tail light though)

Here are the wire connections to convert to the facelift lights from the pre-LCI chassis.

Right Side Tail Light Connections

Wire Color	Purpose	LCI Pin #
Brown	Ground	4
Black/Green	Reverse	3
Blue/Brown	Turn Signal	5
Black/Blue	Brake	6
Grey/White	Right Running Light Bulb / CELIS	1
White/Brown	Left Running Light Bulb	not used

Left Side Tail Light Connections

Wire Color	Purpose	LCI Pin #
Brown	Ground	3
White/Yellow	Reverse	4
Blue/Green	Turn Signal	2
Black/Brown	Brake	1
Grey/Violet	Left Running Light Bulb / CELIS	6
Grey/Green	Right Running Light Bulb	not used

I designed and 3D printed these block off plates for the headlight washers. Painted with "matched" paint from automotivetouchup.com and it was actually really close, then cleared with 2K urethane clear coat. Sometimes it's not close at all but I got lucky.

I also installed the LED tail light bulbs from newer BMWs, part 63267193293. The connector is different, so you have to cut off the factory connectors and crimp on new terminals (connector kit 61132360043)

 

Getting closer to current day, this project started in December 2024.

The diff started leaking pretty badly so I parked the car until I could deal with it, and ordered the seals thinking it might take me a few hours.

Oh how wrong I was.

Once I got the car on jack stands and looking at what I was dealing with, I started to realize just what I was in for. The diff was so coated in gunk I could not tell at all what was leaking, so I decided to pull the whole thing out. Exhaust comes out, driveshaft comes out, a bunch of heat shields come out, remove the axles from the flanges, drop the diff. I was planning on rebuilding the shift linkage so before I got to the diff I did that. The car had Rogue Engineering shifter bits which were kinda crappy so I tossed those in the trash and replaced with OEM parts, and an E60 545i lever. It also had unicorn nugget bushings which made a ton of noise so I switched those back to OEM.

The shift shaft seal sucked to replace, I spent at least an hour trying to get the old one out, and to put the new one out I drilled out the middle of one of the unicorn nuggets to make a tool to push it in perfectly. What eventually got it out was pushing one side of it further in with a flat screw driver and hammer to unseat the seal from where it's been sitting for the last 25 years, then once it started moving was able to get it with a pick. Just trying to pull straight out did not work at all. Also replaced the output flange seal, shifter bushings, trans mounts, and other consumables in here.

The boot for the rear CV was ripped, so $350 later I got a new one and packed it with Redline CV2 grease. I wish the boot was available by itself, the CV was fine otherwise. Also did new CSB and new guibo for the driveshaft.

Once removing the diff I pressure washed it to get most of the grime off before messing with any of the seals.

I 3D printed this installation tool to install the flange seals at the exact depth of 21.5mm and it worked great. Resealing was pretty straightforward overall, just the 3 oil seals, 2 big O rings around the bearing carriers (part 33111214144 not listed on RealOEM, my dealer got them overnight) and RTV for the rear case. BMW provides a gasket, but says to use sealant on both sides, so I just didn't use a gasket and did the standard bead of RTV to seal it up.

Flange O rings.

Diff back together.

I was originally planning on just doing OEM diff bushings which worked out fine for the rear two, but then I got to the front one and realized it was some weird crap that you have to compress just to install it, then looked into it more and found out about the unicorn egg, and since I didn't want to wait for shipping I just made one myself on my harbor freight mini lathe without about 0.002" interference and pressed it in.

Since I was this far in I decided to replace the rear wheel bearings, which turned into blasting and painting the rear hubs, as well as rebuilding the rear axles. The outer CVs aren't serviceable according to BMW, but I cut the cover off and serviced them anyways. I did a full writeup of the axle rebuild process here if anyone is interested DIY: E39 CV axle shaft inspection + rebuild It's extremely messy but I think I can get a lot more life out of these axles now.

Rear wheel bearings done, hubs blasted and painted silver to prevent future rust.

Finally got the rear end mostly back together.

Then I put the car back together and all was well!

But that's not what happened. I was waiting my turn for the rear subframe bushing rental tool and decided to go ahead and pull the motor out.

 

I 3D printed this installation tool to install the flange seals at the exact depth of 21.5mm and it worked great. Resealing was pretty straightforward overall, just the 3 oil seals, 2 big O rings around the bearing carriers (part 33111214144 not listed on RealOEM, my dealer got them overnight) and RTV for the rear case. BMW provides a gasket, but says to use sealant on both sides, so I just didn't use a gasket and did the standard bead of RTV to seal it up.

View attachment 991847

Flange O rings.

View attachment 991849

Diff back together.

View attachment 991848

Would you sell that seal driving tool? What tool is needed for the input seal at the front of the diff or is there only one depth to install to?

Also, how was the NVH with the solid front diff mount?

 

Great work so far. I subscribed to this thread to see you bring the m5 back to its former glory!

 

Good work! What's the reason you pulled the motor out? Chain guides?

 

Loving the scope creep and all the details.

 

The original plan with the motor out was just do timing chains, rod bearings, and all the seals, gaskets, and hoses but not separate the heads. Just a basic mid-life refresh on the motor, but after I did the rod bearings and chain guides I did a leak down test and found that cylinder 3 had very little compression and seemed to be leaking quite badly out the exhaust valves, so I pulled the head to investigate. What I found was just a big blob of carbon stuck in the valve seat, I tried the tap the valve to blow stuck carbon out trick before that and it didn't work, but with the head off and seeing how crusty they were I opted to have the heads rebuilt at VAC, then at that point might as well do main bearings and clean up the pistons which were also caked in carbon, and here we are at the point of a rebuild.

Something interesting to note though is that during inspection I found the top ring gaps to be consistently 0.0024-0.0025" and the bottom rings in the 0.0020-0.0023" range, but according to the TIS the top rings are supposed to have smaller gaps than the bottom ring gaps. It seems like most engine builders agree, and like to run the bottom rings looser to prevent pressure build up between the rings from unseating them and resulting in worse blow by and oil consumption, and as a very non-empirical observation, the pistons with larger bottom ring gaps seemed to have less carbon build up on them. The TIS does not list a service limit for S62 ring gaps, but based on other engines specs, 0.0025" is about the limit of what I'd want to run on the top ring and more in line with what you'd see in a boosted motor.

My plan as of now is to clean the cylinder walls with lacquer thinner to try to remove the baked in glaze in the cylinder walls and open the 2nd ring gaps up to to 0.0027"ish. The pistons measure out perfectly and there is very little wear in the bores besides 3-4 single score marks, and cylinder leakdown was in spec except for #3. I'm sending the pistons and wrist pins off for WPC treatment and will then do a ceramic thermal barrier top coat on the pistons.

On one hand, the safe bet with alusil is not to touch it, which I'm inclined to do. But the more adventurous side of me wants to buy a profilometer on ebay and try to replicate Partee Racing's video on alusil cylinder honing and go at it with a 600 grit alox flex hone to get to 5ra then hit it with the Sunnen AN30 until 15ra and run new rings.

I'll spare most of the teardown photos as they aren't particularly interesting, and we'll see it all again during reassembly. This thing could have definitely used a few more oil changes though based on how stained the crankcase is.

A few cam caps had stripped threads, so I bought an M6 timesert kit to do the repairs, some people recommend taking caps from another motor and that is usually fine but that is a little sketchy IMO. So far I've run into 2 bad threads but have only gone through half of the caps. I made a little jig to bolt the caps into my drill press with an XY table so doing the inserts is pretty quick and should be stronger than new. Once the insert is in with red loctite I use a 3.5mm ball end milling bit to cut the side of the threads to allow oil to flow to the cam then flush out any shavings with brake cleaner and clean the whole cap in the ultrasonic cleaner. You also want to recess the insert a bit so oil can flow around the stud like the original caps allowed. I also added a slight chamfer to the bolt holes to reduce stress risers in the sharp edges.

Scraping one of the pistons. 145k miles of MY2000 oil consumption I guess. After scraping the pistons went through the chem dip bucket to loosen up the gunk, then ultrasonic cleaning to finish them off.

Drilling an M60 guide rail since the S62 rail is NLA. I used the $3.99 micro drill bits from harbor freight, and wrapped one of them in aluminum foil until it would fit in my dremels collet. The bit I used measured at 0.97mm. I did a few practice holes on the old guide. The O ring under the rail is part 11421741129 if anyone is wondering. The old metal rail was quite crusty as seen in the previous pic so I left it in the ultrasonic cleaner for more than an hour to get it looking new again.

Oil pump components cleaned and inspected. Everything looks good with no abnormal wear or damage. I'm not a huge fan of the plastic spring base for the overpressure relief valve so I might machine one out of aluminum.

The lower oil pan had been stripped out and helicoiled crooked, so the drain plug was leaking, so I drilled and tapped to M15x1 (yeah it's an odd thread but its what die/tap I had on hand) and made a thread insert on the lathe. Then used a milling bit in the drill press to flatten out the area around the drain plug so I can install a Fumoto ball valve and not have to worry about the oil pan falling apart every time I change the oil. I left the topmost threads of the insert un-formed, so as it was tightened in it would deform and lock itself into the pan, as well as installed with red loctite so it should essentially be permanent, and is a billet part so should be more resistant to stripping than the cast pan.

With the ball valve installed and torqued, I cut the back side so oil can still drain properly through both the insert and the valve threads. If you install a valve (or do a repair with an insert) without making this cut like the pan comes with, the last 3/8" of the pan will never drain.

Cylinder glazing. Pretty slick surface. Wiping down with lacquer thinner results in a noticeably less glassy surface that is slightly rougher to the touch. Will it improve cylinder sealing? No clue but we're going to find out.

 

This is amazing work

 

Awesome work! Also cool to see the full leather sport interior since that was only available on the 2000 model year cars.

 

View attachment 991882

 

This thread warms my heart. Good on you for saving this (mechanically) poor M5. IMO what makes it easier to stomach is that the body/cosmetics are in good condition.

That carbon build up is obviously from blow by like you mention but ultimately it's because the engine wasn't worked properly . These engines love a good, repeated beating once warm. I solved my 2000 M5's carbon problem by simply driving the car harder, more often. The good news is your cylinders didn't get scored from the carbon beside the one you mentioned. @herrubermensch can comment on the rings, et al.

If you know off hand and don't mind sharing, how much did the stock suspension components run you? My Dad's M5 is bone stock with 107k miles on original struts/shocks. I want to replace them but keep it "original", so thinking to bite the bullet and buy the OE parts like you just did.

 

Yeah the only real cosmetic issue is the driver side rear door paint match is a tiny bit off in some lighting, it's not terrible but as far as cheaper M5s go I'm not complaining. The car also has little to no rust which is nice.

The stock suspension stuff ended up being nearly $4000 for the shock/spring assemblies from FCP and various related bits since the M5 shocks/struts are not available as Sachs parts, only BMW branded. If I had known how involved this was going to get I probably would have just done Koni yellows again like I did on my 540i and saved the nearly $2000 difference. My 540 was a 2003 "M-sport" model which shares the suspension part numbers with the M5, and IMO the full OEM M5 setup rides a little bit nicer, but I'm not sure about $2000 nicer.

I talked to the guys at VAC about potentially re-ringing with their S62 rings and it pretty much boils down to if the cylinders are in decent shape and oil consumption is tolerable I'm better off not messing with them. I might change my mind though lol.

I'm basically just dumping photos from the past 3 months in a manner as disorganized as this project so this should be the last blob before things are more organized and chronological. With any luck, reassembly of the bottom end should start in a few weeks, I'm basically just trying to figure out the best way to clean the block since it's all brown and nasty inside and waiting on new main cap bolts. I also bought a set of used Supersprint headers which I'm having V bands welded on then ceramic coated, since I can't bring myself to put the engine back in with the awful stock headers. Once the car is back together I'll have it towed to my local fab shop to have the exhaust buttoned up. Unicorn headers would have been ideal, but I didn't want to wait 3+ months for them, and of course somebody posted a set for sale on Facebook today.

Rod Bearings

Rod cap side on top, piston side on the bottom. The rod bearings on this motor were in better condition than I would have expected, and also showed a sort of intermediate wear state that I hadn't seen before. The top side bearings for journals #1 and #5 are nearly perfect, with #2 showing the starting signs of wear, and the rest showing slightly more advanced wear.

Just from visual inspection and feeling a slight ridge with a fingernail, it seems like the outer layer of the bearing has just disintegrated, and measuring with a ball end micrometer shows that the worn patches are 0.0002-0.0003" lower than the surrounding smooth material. The worn patches aren't polished smooth and are sort of rough which tells me there is no contact happening here to cause this. The crank journals themselves are absolutely perfect (next photo) and showing no signs of metal to metal contact, and the bearings don't show signs of contact or lubrication breakdown either.

My best guess as a non-professional is the outer layer of the bearing is just reaching it's fatigue limit and gradually failing, and most of the photos we see are of more advanced failures where the outer layer has worn completely through on the top side of the bearing, starting from the point of highest pressure like we see here. I know the S62 isn't as known for bearing issues as other S motors but it seems like a permanent fix here is just using a stronger bearing. The bearings I'm putting in are WPC treated OEM which theoretically should be slightly stronger but if I can get 150k miles of service out of them I'm not going to sweat it.

Rod journals up close from when I was changing the bearings but before I tore the whole bottom end apart. Crank looks like new. The new WPC treated bearings showed 0.0015-0.0020" depending on which one you checked which is within the factory range of 0.0011-0.0026, but after talking to Peter I'd rather be at 0.0020" or above. This is technically "fine" though so I might just run it, since the options for gaining clearance mostly involve using aftermarket "race" bearings available in +0.0010" size which I don't really want to do. This is just plastigage though, so now that everything is properly apart I'll check again with my bore gauge to see what the exact numbers are and maybe they'll be more promising.

The rods themselves measured out perfect, so I just polished the big and small end bores lightly. Also filed the cracked edges in the big end bore slightly so they don't scratch up the backs of the bearing shells and leave shards behind. Ball hones seem to be looked down upon but in high grit (800-1000) are great for this sort of cleanup, they remove virtually zero material and just condition the surface as well as nicely debur any edges, I'm talking less than 0.0002" dimensional change. Then a trip through the ultrasonic cleaner, dried, oiled, and put away until assembly time. I'm pretty impressed with the rods, factory forged steel I-beams are nice.

The balance pads are quite large though, so on a more in depth build you could probably save a few hundred grams in the rotating assembly just by cutting down the balance pads without sacrificing any strength. I'm not planning on having the rotating assembly balanced though so I'm not going to mess with it.

Cam Caps

Similar deal for the cam tunnels, but the caps were showing some scoring and minor wear so a high grit ball hone cleaned them up nicely as well as added a slight crosshatch for better oil retention than the near mirror-finish they came with. The picture is a little bit deceiving, it looks much rougher than it actually is due to the post processing of my iphone camera. I finished going through the remaining caps last night and ended up having 3 of them with ruined threads that needed Timesert repairs. If anybody else runs into this, DM me and I can help, I've gotten pretty good at the repair process. Under 20 minutes start to finish lol.

VANOS

Cleaning the VANOS housings ended up being a much bigger ordeal than expected too. There are several blind oil pathways so getting them clean took lots of brake cleaner and degreaser. I also took apart the VANOS pumps without realize what all bits were in there, then got to crawl around the garage finding all the parts after it exploded. There are 4 pistons, each with a spring and spring seat behind it. The spring seats often stay in the inner rotor but might fall out later so watch out for that. Compressing all 4 pistons at the same time to put the outer ring back on is a bit of a chore.

I also don't particularly care for the fact that there are PCBs inside the VANOS assemblies. My background is in electrical engineering including some PCB design, and the only purpose for the PCBs is to hold the flyback diodes that protect the DME from the current generated by the collapsing magnetic fields when the solenoids are shut off, but these could easily be mounted directly to the solenoids along with the wires soldered direct to the solenoids, overall reducing the complexity and the number of solder joints in the assemblies significantly. I like making wire harnesses and I ordered the components needed so I'll make custom VANOS harnesses in a future post.

Other Junk

My turn for the subframe bushing tool came up so I knocked those out in an evening. With the exhaust out of the way it's a pretty easy task, other than cranking the old bushings out which did NOT want to move. When I got them out I found that they were still nearly as stiff as the new Lemforder bushings and not cracking at all. New bushings went in easily with a bit of soapy water for lubrication and I installed them along with Spoon "rigid collars" which are essentially just tapered crush washers that serve to take up the slack in the subframe mounting bolts and ensure the subframe is perfectly aligned with the chassis. Do they fix anything? Not really, but they are satisfying to install and not very expensive, I did them on the front subframe too. On Bimmerforums, user @neilschelly has a subframe bushing tool rental if you need it.

I've also been taking care of other nice to haves in the engine bay now that there's plenty of room. I never cared for having soft brake lines right next to the headers, so I made some custom hard lines to connect directly from the rear brake pipes to the DSC module. I could only find the 10mm to 12mm bubble union overseas so I'm still waiting on that last bit to arrive. I made them with a handheld tubing bender and pre-flared brake line segments which happened to be available in exactly the right lengths, if you didn't know they weren't factory you almost couldn't tell. If anyone else wants a set I made 5, and will sell them at cost which was about $45. The DSC module crapped out and started throwing phantom precharge pump codes a few months after I bought the car so that got sent off to Module Master for repair and all was well after.

Then other boring stuff like replacing all the PS hoses, new mounting studs for the oil filter housing and PS reservoir from McMaster Carr, cleaning all the oil and gunk that had accumulated in the engine bay, replacing heater hoses, cleaning/rebuilding the heater valve assembly, replacing the bearings in the alternator, etc. I'm waiting on the timing covers to come back from vapor blasting so I can get the heads shipped out so hopefully by the end of the week.

 

Wow you are an absolute beast! I'm locked to this thread like glue from now on, nice work here!!!

 

One of my large posts with engine teardown pics from last night is stuck in mod approval purgatory, who should I message about that?

Edit: hmm seems like it isn't anymore, not sure if it was a glitch or what showing that it was.

 

I love the work and dedication. You are mad man! Do your custom made brake lines replace all the rubber lines in that area? And they install with standard flare wrenches? If yes, please hold a set for me. Traveling on vacation now and will send payment next week.

 

That's correct, these are OEM style plastic coated steel hard lines with M10x1mm flare nuts with 11mm hex, nearly identical to the OEM brake pipes, and will bolt right in using the same 11mm flare wrench you'd use normally. These lines replace both the 2 rubber lines and the 2 short hard lines coming out of the DSC module with just 2 hard lines with unions connecting to the chassis lines. Rather than buy a bubble flaring tool I opted to just buy preflared straight pipes and bend them since it seemed like a better way to get guaranteed perfect flares. For anyone who wants to make their own, you just need a 10" and a 14" pre flared pipe, 10mm union, and 10mm to 12mm union.

I started off just trying to come up with a way to replace only the small pipes, but that would have ended up being DSC->hard line->union->tiny 1" hard line->union->chassis hard line between them which just seemed obnoxious, everything was just way simpler and cleaner making new hard pipes and it looks OEM since it's just DSC->hard line->union->chassis. I haven't been able to figure out why there was ever rubber hoses there to begin with, since neither the DSC module or the lines in the chassis have to move at all.

The lines I made might need some slight massaging to fit though other E39s though which should be easy to do by hand, the lines on my car seemed like they might have been bent a bit by previous mechanics who replaced the rubber lines but it's all I have to go on for fitment. I suppose I should try to make a heat shield for the DSC too...

 

I concur with your thoughts re: rod bearings, et al. Personally, I think those bearings were replaced. I've seen a lot of S62 rod bearings, and level of wear certainly varies/doesn't perfectly track with mileage, but by 100k+ miles I expect to see much more wear than that.

re: block staining - super common with the largest culprit for it being the blow by and air leaks. Oil change frequency has some impact, but not as much as you might think (IMO). At least in my experience, S62's that remained well maintained (change VC gaskets when needed, fixing other air and oil leaks quickly) AND that didn't consume much oil have had nearly pristine or only light golden coloring on the block/internals. Engines that burned a lot of oil and/or have had unmetered leaks end up with more of a dark brown, varnish-y look with some actual build up occurring.

re: ABS/DSC heat shield - there's a forum member and FB group member making these. With your skill level and ability to source materials, you could make your own for much cheaper though.

re: stock suspension - I've had a couple sets of Koni yellows and was happy with them at first, but I found the ride deteriorated after 50-60k miles. For my Dad's M5, I'll at least be able to reuse the stock springs since they don't have any rust on them or too many miles.

Thanks for the plethora of posts and pictures!

 

When I was opening up the bottom of the motor I didn't see anything to suggest that anyone had ever been in there before, but 25 years is a long time so it's certainly not impossible that they'd been done before but I doubt it.

I pulled the crankshaft out of the block last night, the main bearings are actually showing a little more wear than I would have expected, on M62s I've torn down in the past the mains usually looked brand new, but not terrible. What is the consensus on main bearings for the S62? I was planning on using Glyco bearings and King thrust washers assuming clearances are correct with them.

When doing more cleaning I discovered that the bank 1 cam chain tensioner assembly is not supposed to come apart, presumably because the piston would fall out without the chain installed since it points down. The piston can be yanked out fairly easily though, then I broke the crimp off the piston to clean out the sludge inside. It can be assembled without the crimp just fine, it will just fall apart if you let it. The steel sleeve is crimped into the aluminum housing as well though, and I can't think of a good way to remove it short of just machining the crimped part of the housing off completely so I opted to just flush it out with brake cleaner since there's a few access holes for oil flow.

Is there a solution for the plastic guide pads on cam chain tensioners? both the M60 and M62 parts don't look like they would fit and also have the oil holes in the wrong place that would have to be plugged and redrilled, and I'm not particularly interested in spending $600 on new tensioner assemblies when all I need is the $5 plastic bits. I'm planning on just reusing mine since they are in decent shape and maybe flipping the pads from top to bottom to even out the wear.

I've searched but not found anything so far...I've wondered if the M60 guides with the "deflection wheel" instead of the U guide could be retrofitted. It looks like one would just bolt up no problem.

https://www.realoem.com/bmw/enUS/showparts?id=HE63-USA-11-1992-E34-BMW-540i&diagId=11_4840

The front of my block:

The deflection wheel mounting bracket, it appears to share the oil feed and bolt hole locations with the S62 U guide.

I suppose the most obvious hurdle here is mounting the 2 straight guides going from the wheel up to the cylinder heads, since the S62 only has the upper mounting bolt holes (the M7 bolts sticking out of the top of my block) and is missing the lower ones which should be a little higher than the deflection wheel mount, but perhaps some sort of bracket could be fabricated to solve this issue. If the mounting studs on the right of the block were modified , a bracket could be attached to one of those holes for example. I'm tempted to try to find some cheap used/aftermarket M60 timing parts on Ebay to play with while everything is torn down. Probably a pointless endeavor but I enjoy the process.

 

I must say, you have an impressive thread going.

I posted about putting m60/m62 tensioner pads on the s62. It can be done. I fitted the pads with a minor bit of clearance to the tensioner body pad, and installing the pad from the other side. The factory pushed the pad on from the outside, and the width difference meant cutting one m60, and using an m62 (or m62tu) for the other. The machined pad on the block is now the retainer for the bottom pad.
Passenger head is now using the m62 installed from the back (shown)
Drivers has the cut m60 installed from the back, using the guide posts to stabilize. Also shown you can see the hacksaw marks. Better to leave rough as they are fragile to cut, learned by cracking one.
The s62 pad oil hole issue in a non starter, as the lower body has no oiling hole, and the upper plunger has one center supply hole, feeding two small holes directly where the chain rides, (the chain) which had nearly burnished those holes closed with chain wear on my high miles donor engine.
Point of interest, m60 with double cam c

hain has one oil hole. M62 pads with the same cam chain has one oil hole.
Using my highly accurate HF drill index to measure the oil holes from the good pad off the body, (tension side both broke removing) shows the holes to be .078" on the back and .042" on the face, which is nearly 50% closure.

As far as the glorious m60 chain wheel and guides, the s62 heads have no provsion for mounting m60 guides, and the oil feed port to the tensioner rail is .250" off, as are the guide rails.
I learned all this building my 4.4 s62 hybrid.
Yeah, don't have an ultrasonic cleaner. Flash really shows residual 3rd baked on dirt.

 

Ahh I figured somebody had to have tried the M60 wheel, bummer that its just a tiny bit off. I know a guy who does low production CNC stuff, there's a few potential solutions I can think of but it would likely boil down to not worth the time or effort when the U guides still usually take 200k+ miles to fail.

Good to know about the M60/62 chain guides. Its crazy to me that BMW wouldn't sell the pads separately like they do for the other V8s but they have to get us somehow.

 

I think they are getting us every way.
Soon to having nothing available.
Tensioner pad swap is best when you have one good one left. I think its the drivers top that is most compromised using the altermates.

 

WOW! Unbelievable the progress you have made with your M5 so far! Truly a labour of love - you've got some skills, patience, and deep pockets to tackle what you have so far!

I'm an e39 obsessed guy, follow the auctions online, forums, reddit, IG, facebook, etc,.....and I actually recognize this car because of the photo of it beside the black 540i - i saw it somewhere online (maybe reddit r/e39 or instagram, can't remember), but this is the car that sold on Cars n bids (I remember it because I had my eye on this exact car and was going to put a bid on it!)

Fast forward some time and I found an extremely well sorted 2000 Silverstone/Silverstone which I bought several months ago. I too have a 2003 black on black 540i Msport...which i have driven since 2018.... We have similar taste!

Unfortunately my m5 did not include the leather dash which I was dying to have, so I got a shop to stitch me a cover and I adhered it myself. Also did the LCMiiib upgrade to facelift the tail lights, also added facelight headlights with fog lights, facelift steering wheel, Rogue SSK + DSSR, new tech graphite trim, leather euro lower dash, new exhaust, etc the list goes on....

Two things I should mention:

1) you were wondering what audio setup to go for, mine might be of interest to you - I opted for an unusual choice. I got a Kenwood headunit + a DSP retention module so I could keep the original DSP amp and pair it with new bavsound speakers (they sound epic when paired with a good headunit, DIY friendly, no PCN needed). I paired the headunit it with a NXG39 to make it look OEM, and added 12" sub with its own amp - the result is sublime.

2) What you did to the angel eyes is genius. I always thought the original angel eye rings were not bright enough, so i got the cotton eye rings which look stunning when on, but when off, looks a bit weird and out of place, and so I went back to stock. Your solution is actually the best one I have seen because you added the light rings BEHIND the angel eyes rings, so it still looks stock when the lights are off, and perfectly bright when on.

Definitely following this thread!

 

I haven't been able to make my mind up on the radio situation. I'm torn between an Avin Avant setup, MK4 nav+bluebus (easiest), or doing the business radio swap+bluebus (hardest). I like the aesthetic of the business radio the best and I have the trim piece for it to match but it's also a royal pain to do the swap. Nice to know about the bavsound speakers though, I've seen them but not seriously considered the upgrade.

I sort of wish mine didn't have the leather dash TBH, the sun here in Texas just bakes the crap out of any car unfortunate enough to be outside. Where did you source the euro lower dash pieces? It seems like they used to be everywhere but are getting harder to find/pricier.

For the tensioner pads I think I am just going to reuse my originals. They don't have much wear on them so that seems like the safe bet.

 

With the radio choice, it's one of those things where you think about how much money, effort, and time to spend based on how long you plan on keeping the car for. The Avin is the best aesthetic choice as it looks perfectly OEM but I've heard about all kinds of frustrations and issues, as with most chinese android type aftermarket head units, Plus it comes in at about $1k after you tack on a few goodies that you'd need. This is what led me to go with a reliable, high quality Kenwood headunit + DSP retention module . The bavsounds have mixed reviews and I can tell you that with the stock headunit, the bavsound sounded marginally better than stock, but with the kenwood, it sounded like a different set of speakers - significantly better. I get the appeal of MK4 nav + bluebus, but I need carplay/google maps.

I hear you about the leather dash and I live in California. It gets insanely hot here as well. Despite that I had my heart set on the leather dash. It looks opulent and is M5 specific, really changes the feel of the interior to me. I got the lower dash from a Alex on this board aka nosferau666 - he's a pleasure to buy from.

Looks exactly like OEM:

 

Lights look great.

I've had the Orion v4 angel eyes on my 540 for about 4 years now with no issues. They are nice and bright paired with the Evo-XR's.

I am planning to do the same retrofit build on my 540 on my new M5. But now I'm curious about the Mini D2S you installed. Where did you source the bracket and is it a simple drop in with the bracket?

I remember when I did the Evo-XR's all I did was install new threaded rods and it went right in.

 

These are the adapters I used: Hella E55 to G5 Projector Retrofit Brackets

They fit perfectly with one caveat, I had to cut the thin metal strip off that runs along the bottom of the "ring" part of the bracket as it interfered with the solenoid at the bottom of the Mini D2S projector. You could also use them with MLED projectors but since the E39 already has Hella gen3 ballasts the HIDs are cheaper and arguably still a bit better.

To mount the bracket to the chrome thing inside the E39 light I used the original mounting studs with the M4 thread section cut off to turn them into bolts, then M4 screws from the hardware store to screw the projectors to the mounting brackets. I stacked up washers (on the top side IIRC) to get the new projectors cutoff to line up just below the existing high beams so they'll work together properly when the bi-xenon high beams are engaged, but this step is optional. Getting the cutoff angles to perfectly line up was a chore too because it drives me crazy if they are even a tiny bit off. There's a little piece inside the projectors you can bend a bit to set the angle of the cutoff.

I've started on the long and tedious process of prepping the block. It not really needed but I like to deburr the deck surface gently with a small file. Having all the edges smooth prevents lint from getting caught during cleaning and a deburred block is just so much nicer to work with. It's also pretty incredible just how much junk lacquer thinner will lift out of a "clean" bore. Even after wiping with acetone, the first rag will come out nearly black.

For the deck surfaces I scrape the whole thing gently with a razor blade then scrub vigorously with a brass brush by hand - no power tools! The brass is soft enough that it won't really remove any material and the factory machining marks are still visible, but it does a great job of removing stuck on grime. You have to be careful though as some cheaper brushes are "brass plated" steel bristles and will ruin a block or head surface in a few seconds if you aren't careful.

I'm not sure how I'm going to clean the crankcase though. I don't really want to hand the block off to a machine shop, the guys local to Austin, TX are generally awful, so I might just have to settle for not being able to fully remove all the oil staining and clean it myself with hot soapy water. At least the main caps and oil squirters fit in the US cleaner so those were easy. The timing covers are finally back from vapor blasting so the heads can get shipped off.

Speaking of oil staining, I didn't make the connection before for some reason but the S62 has no manifold vacuum assisted crankcase ventilation due to the ITBs, the oil separators just feed into the intake plenum which has little to no vacuum, so it makes a lot more sense why these engines are always filthy compared to the M6x motors. Rather than pulling fresh air into the crankcase to replace the blowby gasses, it's all just blowby gasses. I spent hours and hours researching this exact issue and possible solutions for the ITBs I have on my NSX and ended up with a dry sump (that I have yet to install...), but at one point had been looking into adding a belt driven vacuum pump. I wonder if something like that might be possible here, maybe next to the AC compressor or PS pump.

The M10x1 to M12x1 bubble flare unions arrived so I finished up the brake lines in the engine bay. I guess BMW used different size fittings so you can't get the connections mixed up.