SUMO's next project BMW M535i

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This might look familar... Sparkle's gearbox donor car, has now become part of the SUMO fleet. Its now wearing the "correct" 7 inch BBS Maule rims

What is it?

It's a South African E12 M535i. Considered by the purist's not to be a "true" M car, as it wasnt built in Germany, and didnt have all of the same bits that the European ones got. The main differences is that these cars didnt get the front and rear spoilers, they dont have the "sport" dogleg C/R gearbox, and they have the later 535 engine block.

The Project.......

The car needs quite a bit of tidy-up work, and we arent going to restore it (yet) Most of the doors need the lower skins repaired, along with a couple of spots around the wheel arches and the LF guard is throw-away. The Drivers Recaro needs to be recovered.

the priority at this stage is.......

My 5 speed is currently at GearTech in Palmerson North getting a speedo drive installed (my box was a late E28 Getrag, which has castings for the speedo drive but there is no drive gear on the main shaft), once this is done, the gearbox can go into the car.

Get the fronts seats out so that I can lift the carpets (and clean everything), so that I can replace the Central Locking and Electric Window wiring. Once of the previous owners had installed an alarm and ripped out/damaged the orginal wiring and activators. Fortunately I kept the wiring off Sparkle's old 528 (that I wrecked).

Once the driveline is working, get an exhaust built for the car (it currently has no exhaust)

Once the car is mobile on its own, the new list will start ....bodywork ...check the suspension out, Sparkle reckons it was fairly soft ....it has Koni's on the rear....

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The current state of play......

The gearbox is finished, I've just got to pick it up from Palmie. The guys at Geartech were pretty onto it and had it finished in 4 days.

The interior is pretty much out of the car. Once I opened up the doors , I found somebody had ripped all the BMW central locking activators out and replaced them with after market, not only that but the South Afican wiring is different to the standard E28 wiring so..........

Having to rip all the central locking/electric window wiring out of the doors and replace the main loom for the function, fortunately there is a seperate loom that controls this, that plugs into the main power distribution point...so all the interior is out.

Once I pulled the loom, I worked out why they replaced the C/L activators, with these SA cars there is a gyro style accident switch attached to the firewall (under the dashboard), looks like a big flouo light starter!. The plonkers who had installed the alarm/new central locking had obviously not checked why the C/L wasnt working because the switch was tripped....oh well the E28 either doesnt have one, or its built into the C/L relay pack, so the old switch is now history.

So the next few weeks will be spent getting the gearbox back in and the car running as well as finishing off modifying and installing the door electrics

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Got the car running a couple of months ago.

Its now sitting at a mates place waiting for an exhaust to be fitted.

We have wrecked two E12s to get some decent doors for the car.

Hopefully this weekend we are collecting another E12 that will give us the "correct" front and rear spoiler for an E12 M535i.

I'm tempted to have the car painted white and fire the motorsport stripes on.

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Parts car turns out to have the correct Front and Rear Spoilers, a set of 7 x 14 BBS Maule's, and as a bonus its got the early Motorsport Steering Wheel and a set of Bilsteins.

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The car is now back from having the exhaust fitted, and I've been tinkering with the car. The interior is now pretty much back together.

We have stripped out some spare rear doors, and are converting them over to take the E28 interior...frigging Hybrids , and at the same time getting a front guard stripped, to replace the rusty and dented LF one.

The rust in the LF pillar has been exposed, and crap, its a little worst than expected.

The Motorsport rear spoiler has been fitted up, but I've still got to kill some rust under the paint on the bootlid, but it wont need fixing as the spoiler covers it.

Spent most of the day fitting the towing eye toi the front , and trying to mount the horns somewhere that the front spoiler wont hit.

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Spent the last week working on the car.

I scored another front and rear spoiler off TradeMe, so decided to fit that rather than my original one.

It will probably will stay with this colour scheme for a while, I want to get the car VINed.

On the list still:

Brake hoses

Work out what other rust needs to be done.

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Well the 535 is on the road

Since the last update the car has had a fair amount of time spent on it.

The brake hoses have all been replaced with braided ones.

Spent most of the day on the car today getting ready for the sprints next weekend.

The new driveshaft that we had built obviously wasnt really checked well before balancing as the centre bearing was fcuked, which gave a rotation noise under normal driving.

The 528i has donated its driveshaft so that should solve that problem.

Another issue that needed sorting was the exhaust manifold touching the steering shaft on hard acceleration, after suspecting a stuffed engine mount,found that the RHS engine mount bracket was bent, and one of the last owners had fitted a larger mount to compensate. So we ditched the bracket, and the wrong mount, its still hitting a little, but I suspect some new engine mounts wouldnt go amiss.

The list is getting a little smaller.

Still to do is to fit the race seat, get the heater working, fit the chrome on the LHS,fit an alarm.....

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Time for an update.

Stunning photo courtesy of Snoozin of the first sprint

The day was wet, and we had issues with the LF caliper sticking locking the front wheel, there were are few other issues resulting in a less than stunning 1:36 lap time.

So in the in betwen meetings, I sorted out the race seat and harnesses, attached the missing piece of chrome, sorted the sticking caliper, and removed the rear sway bar....along with getting the stereo working and fitting a OEM aerial.

The next outing was a complete washout, with only practise being completed before the meeting was canned....we still got the 11th fastest time out of 54 cars

The December meeting was fine with no real work being needed on the car in between times.

Out in practise, we immediately broke into 1:30's and that's about when the dramas started to occur.

Being fine, and setting a hot pace (1:30's were my personal target times), I thought it might be got to go onto my old race tyres to set what we could get out of them....only to find that my wheel bolts were too long....back to the road tyres, by now I was really starting to get a desire to break past the 1:30 mark, but a combination of terminal understeer, and a shifter that got really sloppy and would select 2nd put paid to that.

However in the end I finished the day with a 1:29:90 official time, but the work list has now got greater:

So...

Need to fix the shagged selector joint.

Work out how to dial out the oversteer....maybe reconnect the rear bar for dry days.

Remember to carry some shorter wheel bolts for the race wheels.

Swap the driveshaft for the rebuilt one

Replace the rear speakers, so I can hear the stereo on the track , and

Perhaps fit the Bilstein suspension rather than konis that are currently fitted

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Been doing a couple of things on the car over the last month, so time for an update.

Swapped the shifter for the spare unit.

Installed the rebuilt driveshaft.

Ripped the rear Koni's out to find that the rear springs had been cut - badly, and the Koni's were set on their lowest setting. Installed the Bilsteins with standard springs - although set on the lower platform setting.

Then time for the roadtest, the rear end squat has been reduced heaps, but I gained a pattering noise from the front exhaust -

Couple of weekends ago decided to sort out the front shocks, I've got some Bilsteins for the front but they will probably need rebuilting, so I thought I'd check to see if Koni's were fitted to the front, and if they were, what the adjustment setting was. As it turned out it did have Koni's fitted and they were set on the lowest settings, so I cranked up the shocks and reassembled everything. While under the car, I thought I'd fix the exhaust leak. As I had the exhaust "floating" while I sorted the gearshift and driveshaft out, I thought I'd stuffed the font pipe gasket. Easy fix, get some sealer and whack the gasket back on - job done - brap

Frigging things still leaking and it sounds like its coming off the motor

Order up $90 worth of gaskets from BMW, to replace the manifold to head gaskets.

I ripped the heat shields off the manifold, and found somebody had been there before, with some pretty ugly welding and the manifold was cracked around both number 5 and 6 ports.

Two taps with the hammer and it looked like this:

A closer inspection shows that the inner wall of the manifold had disappeared, that would have allowed the exhaust coming out of 5 and 6 to screw up the flow coming from the front 3 cylinders

The car seems a lttle happier in the engine, and the exhaust now has a crisper bark , and its a heap tighter in the suspension