540i parts on your unicorn M5? BLASPHEMY!

but in all seriousness...git 'er dun! she will live to see another day (and 300K)

 

Subscribed for the win. Any plans for wheels Tim?

 

haha. You guys are so subtle with my wheel condition. :crying: Yeah I will try and figure out a way to get them done while the car is laid up. My tire guy is gonna be pissed as I just had him mount these tires last month, and he mounted 2 others this past spring. With the car being immobile is the best time to get them done though.

I also have plans to buy new side molding/trim all around, as mine is faded and the black plastic restore products don't last long enough. I just need to manage the money to get the most out of it.

I also have ideas about having the bodyshop fix the few small bubbles in my paint in various areas. I have to see what they're going to want for some of this work.

 

Oh no! That really sucks. Glad you can sort it back out though!

 

Time to learn how to paint.

 

Yeah right. I don't have the patience for body work. I can bolt on and line up body parts, trim, etc. but sanding, filling, primer, paint... not for me. And not having any prior experience makes painting the ///M not only a bad idea, but stupid.

 

I am so glad you decided to repair this, repairing it will be a very easy process as you will discover Your off to a great start by getting those parts for a song

I would test fit the hood ASAP to see if you will need the fenders though it looks like you already bought one, probably not a bad idea, but it may be the mounting location tweaked vs the fender itself. And how do you know the hood was repainted? Did the previous owner say that he repainted it? They dont clearcoat underneath and sometimes dont even use a metallic layer underneath, so it can appear a different color. For instance if you look at an estoril blue Z3 (very metallic) under the hood it looks more like laguna seca blue (not metallic at all)

 

Yeah my goal for the next night or so is to get my hood off and this one on. I did pull my hood as straight as I could get it by hand so it would close more, and it looks pretty close, but it's still bent so I can't tell for sure if the alignment is good. Only way to know is like you said, mount the new hood and take a look.

I am certain the parts I got were repainted as there are rock chips and handling chips in it and you can see the original layer of paint underneath. Plus the seller said the car was painted. Also, the underside of the new hood is a different color than mine. I did figure out about the no clearcoat underneath method. The good news is I removed the insulation under the hood and did not see any dents that may have been repaired with bondo on the top side. The hood really does look straight.

 

Looking good so far!

 

try your hand at shadow chrome while you're in there :hihi:

 

Dude, i thought this is a DIY forum. hiha And the guy's just built a big new garage!

 

An English wheel will take those kinks right out of there, BAM, brand new hood again!

 

You haven't seen where the kidney grills go. :eek7:cherrsagai

 

Tim,

posted in your wtb thread.

 

Tim,
Good luck with the restoration.

I had the usual corrosion (behind the filler door, rear number plate lamps and corner of the boot lid) done for $600 with a few other odds and ends when the rear fascia was replaced if that helps to give you an idea of the cost; but I didn't do any prep work so my cost was likely a bit higher.

 

Your garage looks like a good place to be.

(hypothetical buddy helping you unload parts): "Where do you want me to set this quarter panel?"






....."Over by those heads will be fine"
:cheers:

 

Just don't scratch the ZX10r!

 

So good news and not as good of news. I removed my hood last night and set the new one on there. I didn't bolt it down, but just by shifting it around it looks like everything should line up fine. Score there. Bad news is I must have been drunk or cross eyed looking at the parts I bought, as once the new hood was next to the fenders it's obvious that the "new" parts are not anthracite. It really doesn't matter as I'm having the hood painted on both sides anyway, but for down the road if I use those doors they will have to be cut in as well as painted on the skin. Oh well. Still hard to beat the price on that stuff.

Still waiting on the darn insurance check to show up. Hopefully it will be in the mailbox today. In the mean time I can still order a few smaller things. I also closed the deal on a pair of MY2000 headlights in good condition and a "new" steering wheel, which is one of my non-accident related restoration parts I wanted to do. Thanks to member jdauria for those!

 

Good luck with your rebuild.

 

With all the money your saving by DIY-ing this sort of work, you should consider giving it a complete respray. Car could probably use it being nearly 15 years old now, and theres never a better time to get it done then when your already getting a few body panels painted. If your already painting the hood and bumper you will be getting paintwork done on the fenders too for blending, and if you are getting the doors done too, then that is already half the body panels. At that point I would really consider paying an extra $600-$800 or so to get some fresh paint around the rest of the car too, then you know it is 100% matching in color

Great time to get the roof painted black too :M5thumbs:

 

Yeah I've considered getting the whole thing painted. I wasn't planning to paint the doors now, I guess that wasn't clear in my other post. At a minimum I'm having the hood, bumper and fenders painted. I'm seeing if I can get a new rear bumper to replaced mine that has multiple cracks. 2 are from the previous owner, and 2 are from me backing into an iceberg this past winter. So add a rear bumper to the paint list, THEN I want to see about fixing the small rust bubble that appeared on the passenger side rocker, fix the rust behind the fuel door in that typical spot, and I have bubbles at the top of the windshield in a spot.

how about a wrap at this point?

A good suggestion, but not a path I want to take with my car. I do really like the look of the matte colors of wrap.


I'm a bit more traditional in that I want the car to look original and stock, except for mechanical upgrades I feel are better than stock such as shifter parts, exhaust, and at some point headers.

 

how about a wrap at this point?

 

I was going to suggest this, but then it wont be painted to match underneath, and he will just end up increasing his costs for a paint down the road by adding "remove vinyl and residue" to the required prepwork. And if he gets it sprayed now, he needs to wait at least 6 months to wrap it...

Definitely a possibility though, if he wants it non-matching underneath. Personally wouldn't bother me, and I'd just change the vinyl up every few years.

 

if we're going to get crazy we might as well just plastidip the whole thing.

who are we kidding. Probably going to just spill some beer on it and call it a day

 

MAN!!! I see the damage. I feel your pain, I am in same position right now. I should have just gotten a check from insurance company and bounced. I regret not fixing my car myself at this point.. you live, you learn, I guess.

 

You should take the left over insurance money and get a RK or ESS kit

 

Haha. Yeah that thought crossed my mind more than once, but I think the responsible decisions will prevail. The thing is, I can never get myself to spend money on the cosmetics of my car normally. I can always find a way to spend money on mechanical and go fast parts, so while I have a chunk of money that I didn't work hard for, I'd better spend it on the cosmetics and other things I've wanted, such as electronics for the interior - a V1 or laser jammer, and somehow get an AUX port wired in so I can listen to music on cross country/long trips.

No progress on the car this weekend other than to finally get the insurance check on Saturday. Time to start spending on the big items!

 

Heh yeah I'm still stuck with the old cassette deck adaptor

 

As promised to those I met last weekend at Clemsterfest, here is a brief update and new M5 parts porn.

I got the new core support bolted up last night just to the frame rails so I could see how it looked in relation to the fender mounts. It is slightly off. You will see in the pictures that the driver's side hole doesn't line up meaning that the passenger side is likely bent. My body shop guy is coming over tomorrow to give me advice on the metal work and pricing on painting various items, including the whole car.

I bought a bunch of stuff from Adam including a lot of things not needed for the repair, but more for restoration or because he had something that I will need soon and is heavy for shipping. I also bought new BMW parts for the same reasons. I got to see where all those past parts orders have come from, as I went to Tischer BMW to pick up the new front and rear bumpers I negotiated from them. I have to give them a plug here as they definitely helped me out! Kudos to getbmwparts.com and in particular Jason who helped me.

Hopefully the bent metal will be an easy fix. I'll update tomorrow night after the body shop guy visits.

Enjoy the BMW parts porn!

 

Looks good man, nice pile of parts!

 

So I had the body shop guy over and we looked at the misalignment of the core support. Seems as though the inner fender area on the passenger side got a little tweaked. He thinks a combination of pulling and hitting in certain spots should get it close. It appears to be about 1/8" to 3/16th off. After the visit he called the adjuster to submit for additional broken parts. He told me the guy should be calling me and will want to stop out to see the broken parts since the dollar value is likely over $400. ( I think it's close to $1,000 actually). Of course I haven't heard from the guy yet, so everything keeps getting delayed. Suffice to say the car won't be done in the next week like I originally planned for when this happened.

We also briefly spoke about paint while the body shop guy was over. I told him I'd remove all trim, etc. that needs to come off in order to respray the entire outside of the car. I would then do all reassembly including the bumpers, which will be off the car as they are new in the box still. The only thing I need done that's extra is to have them spray the basecoat under the "new" hood and then bolt it up and get it aligned. The price he gave as a base estimate seemed very reasonable and within my budget. One reason for wanting to spray the whole car is that I have some rust bubbles in 3 specific areas... roof to windshield line, gas door, and one rocker has a nickel sized bubble. There are also various small dings throughout.

They would only spray the outside for this price, and I think that is all that is needed. Anyone see a reason I would need to spray the jambs? I'm not changing the color of the car...

 

Tim, do you have a pic of the OE bumpers? Are they primed as expected?

 

They were in the back of the van at ClemsterFest! I could've shown you both bumpers! I did open the boxes to make sure there was no damage, and what I remember is that they just looked like molded plastic all the way around... no primer. Also interesting to note that I ordered the front bumper part number for no PDC, no headlight washers, because the part number for the bumper WITH headlight washers wasn't available. Come to find out that this bumper has the holes cut out for the washers! Interesting...

 

Minor update: I went to my local dealer to try and source some screws for the front bumper "dog leg" plastics that everyone breaks. My screws were rusty and since everything in the front will be new, I wanted new screws. Unfortunately RealOem doesn't list these parts. Come to find out niether does the dealer! We searched for a long time and even tried finding the size screw under different model cars to no avail. So I later went to Napa Auto Parts and found the match! Very surprised at that. I also wanted to replace the "nuts" that these screw into and they also are not listed. I bought generic ones from Napa and I'll see if they work.

While at the dealer I ordered the under hood decals for the hood and the core support... well I ordered some. Unfortunately we could not find a good result for the "Run in" initial service and oil sticker. Some of you are aware of my quest to find the correct sticker that says 10w-60 on it. Turns out that regardless of the sticker that your car came with, that only the generic "use synthetic oil" sticker found on ALL cars is available. We even searched the part number for an E90 M3 that I've seen an "updated" 10w-60 sticker on (Adam's M3) but it too was subbed to the generic decal! Short of reproducing the decal, does anyone have any ideas on my search? My last thought is to call/email BMW NA. The parts guy gave me a number I could call. I'm having the same problem with the xenon headlight sticker... also updated to a "modern" deal that looks nothing like ours.

I also noticed I forgot to post the pic of the core support holes not lining up...

 

Minor update: I went to my local dealer to try and source some screws for the front bumper "dog leg" plastics that everyone breaks. My screws were rusty and since everything in the front will be new, I wanted new screws. Unfortunately RealOem doesn't list these parts. Come to find out niether does the dealer! We searched for a long time and even tried finding the size screw under different model cars to no avail. So I later went to Napa Auto Parts and found the match! Very surprised at that. I also wanted to replace the "nuts" that these screw into and they also are not listed. I bought generic ones from Napa and I'll see if they work.

While at the dealer I ordered the under hood decals for the hood and the core support... well I ordered some. Unfortunately we could not find a good result for the "Run in" initial service and oil sticker. Some of you are aware of my quest to find the correct sticker that says 10w-60 on it. Turns out that regardless of the sticker that your car came with, that only the generic "use synthetic oil" sticker found on ALL cars is available. We even searched the part number for an E90 M3 that I've seen an "updated" 10w-60 sticker on (Adam's M3) but it too was subbed to the generic decal! Short of reproducing the decal, does anyone have any ideas on my search? My last thought is to call/email BMW NA. The parts guy gave me a number I could call. I'm having the same problem with the xenon headlight sticker... also updated to a "modern" deal that looks nothing like ours.

I also noticed I forgot to post the pic of the core support holes not lining up...

This might help
http://www.m5board.com/vbulletin/e3...-discussion/318321-part-numbers-oe-windscreen-running-stickers.html#post3973593

 

Slightly OT but did the 10w-60 oil sticker come on 00' only? Mine is an 01' and reads 15w30...?

 

See above. That's the decal, and yes they only put that on 2000 M5's (at least in the US) then they switched to a 5w-30 decal, and then to just the generic one, which is all that seems to be available... :crying: