'95 E34 540i sheddy purple V8 barge
Discussion
After selling my RX-7 (read about that here) I needed something fun, cheap and with a bit of grr. I started a 'what car' thread ( here) and eventually decided to go for an E34 540i as it seemed to fulfill all of my requirements (obviously economy not one of them!)
I bought the car at the end of April with 155K and a few minor niggles but engine and transmission seemed in tip-top shape with evidence of brand new replacement cats last year. It was up for £1350 and in the end I bought it for £1025.
She's a late model, N-reg, facelift E34 (wider kidney grills and shadowline etc.) with lots of toys - far more than I imagined having previously thought the E34 was just a slightly bigger E30!
She's a car with lots of 'firsts' for me: My first V8 (M60 3982cc 32V, 286bhp 295lbft), my first touring/estate (really, really changed my opinion of estates - infinitely useful!), first car with traction / stability control, first with parking sensors etc. etc. lots of things that 'modern' cars have but still with and old school BMW charm like my previous E30s.
Here is a pic of the car when I bought her:
When buying the car I had this romantic notion that I would fix all the niggles and have the car in perfect condition ready for our summer holiday in June down in north Devon. The list of jobs I completed in time looked like this:
Oil / filter service
Replace air filter
Repaint flaking roof rails
Fix whistling passenger window
Fix rear hatch electrics including opening rear glass
Reattach tool kit to rear hatch
Replace passenger side front foglight
Fix loose windscreen wiper
Find a headunit to fill the dash (bargain £20 Kenwwod MP3 CD)
Unfortunately there were a couple of jobs that didn't get finished in time:
Air-con - I got it regassed the morning we were due to go off on holiday. An hour after refilling all of the gas was gone and it was plainly obvious to see that there was a big hole in the radiator where it has escaped from (btw - thanks Kwik-Fit for taking my money and not telling me there was a blatant leak in the system). Anyway I've bought a guaranteed non-leaky one from ebay, just waiting for a moment to put it in.
Big double sunroof - I bought a new motor but it seems that no matter what I do I can't get the mechanism to re-sync. When I've got a few hours spare I'll silicone-grease the whole lot and fiddle with the electrics until it resets properly.
Still the car was in good enough shape to get us to Devon so off we went. in the end we covered 650 miles and the car drove faultlessly with a few neat and effortless overtakes thrown in for good measure where appropriate (this car really comes alive at overtaking speeds 50-60mph, the V8 is in it's torque sweet-spot and she flies!). The fuel economy on the tour wasn't brilliant averaging about 22mpg but still I never bought the car with the intention of using it as a daily (I have a pushbike for that). Another benefit of the big engine is that it seems no matter how many people or how much stuff we have in the car it makes no noticeable difference to the performance and we took a lot of stuff with us!
Incidentally my wife, who hated my RX-7, absolutely loves the barge, she was always a fan of E30s and this ticks the same boxes for her whilst making transporting our 9 month old baby daughter a pleasure - the Quinny-Buzz (a pushchair for those not yet in the know) disappears into the cavernous boot along with any other baby paraphenalia. I think she's a bit disappointed to be driving her fiesta again this week for the sake of fuel economy!
The day after we came back from our Devon trip it was the PH meet at MB world, sadly I don't think my car netted much attention or photographs but it was a lovely day and the event was great fun as usual.
I washed the car the night before and took some pics:
You can just see it here amongst some more exotic metail:
Now I like to see what my cars can do (in a safe and appropriate environment) so I took the opportunity this last weekend to take the barge down to the Thorney Island drag races at the 'modified madness' show. It was odd driving into an MOD base looking for a car show especially as we got there pretty early and there wasn't much organisation or direction. Eventually we found our way to the 'scrutineering' queue (not that anything of significance was checked!) and then on to the RWYB queue. It felt a little bit amateur in comparison to Santa Pod but that added to the grass-roots, red-neck charm of the event. There was a great mix of cars running the strip (well, runway) from tuned Porsche GT2s and Bentleys to stripped-out diesel hatches with a fair amount of turbo jap cars and american muscle in between.
On the way I wasn't sure if I was going to take the barge on the strip but once I got there I couldn't resist. I felt a bit ridiculous taking my 'family estate' (complete with kiddicare window blinds) up to the starting line especially having to wear a helmet to do it. having never launched or run an auto up the strip I really wasn't sure of the best way to go. I put the gearbox in sport and turned the traction control off (to try to prevent bogging down).
For my first run I just went with the 'mash the accelerator and hope technique' but the launch was painfully slow (In a manual I'd be launching at 5000rpm not 500!) this netted me a 16.8 @ 91mph - the terminal speed was about right but the launch ruined the run. For my second go I thought I'd try something different, I didn't want to destroy the gearbox on the start line so I guessed that 3000rpm would probably be safe(ish) so I revved to 3K in neutral and then on the green light slammed the shifter into drive. There was an awkward fraction of a second where nothing happened and then the 'box took up the slack and launched me fast enough for a (still pretty slow) 2.7s 60' time and I went on to a 16.6 @ 90mph. I only did two runs as I had to get back to Woking for lunch .Overall I was pretty happy with the terminal speeds but 1800kg of car and driver and a long ratio autobox kinda blunts the car's drag ability, once on the move about 50-60mph she really shifts but this wasn't her forte - I might take her racing again but if I do I'll be sure to strip out 200Kg of seats and spares and fit an LSD with a shorter final drive that way I might see something close to the low 15s that the manual saloon version of the car gets.
I think my mate Nick had a pretty good day though in his stripped out mk4 prelude. His first two runs (both 15.3s) were getting really close to his previous best time but his third run netted him a 15.1 @ 94.3 so a new best ET and terminal speed - seems those Toyos made a difference!
My pics here
Some videos (in HD too):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmM2oKWxLbc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Zo0kRpfCtw
Nick's pictures and videos here
I'm going to try to keep this thread up to date as a kind of blog for the car. Any comments appreciated!
I bought the car at the end of April with 155K and a few minor niggles but engine and transmission seemed in tip-top shape with evidence of brand new replacement cats last year. It was up for £1350 and in the end I bought it for £1025.
She's a late model, N-reg, facelift E34 (wider kidney grills and shadowline etc.) with lots of toys - far more than I imagined having previously thought the E34 was just a slightly bigger E30!
She's a car with lots of 'firsts' for me: My first V8 (M60 3982cc 32V, 286bhp 295lbft), my first touring/estate (really, really changed my opinion of estates - infinitely useful!), first car with traction / stability control, first with parking sensors etc. etc. lots of things that 'modern' cars have but still with and old school BMW charm like my previous E30s.
Here is a pic of the car when I bought her:
When buying the car I had this romantic notion that I would fix all the niggles and have the car in perfect condition ready for our summer holiday in June down in north Devon. The list of jobs I completed in time looked like this:
Oil / filter service
Replace air filter
Repaint flaking roof rails
Fix whistling passenger window
Fix rear hatch electrics including opening rear glass
Reattach tool kit to rear hatch
Replace passenger side front foglight
Fix loose windscreen wiper
Find a headunit to fill the dash (bargain £20 Kenwwod MP3 CD)
Unfortunately there were a couple of jobs that didn't get finished in time:
Air-con - I got it regassed the morning we were due to go off on holiday. An hour after refilling all of the gas was gone and it was plainly obvious to see that there was a big hole in the radiator where it has escaped from (btw - thanks Kwik-Fit for taking my money and not telling me there was a blatant leak in the system). Anyway I've bought a guaranteed non-leaky one from ebay, just waiting for a moment to put it in.
Big double sunroof - I bought a new motor but it seems that no matter what I do I can't get the mechanism to re-sync. When I've got a few hours spare I'll silicone-grease the whole lot and fiddle with the electrics until it resets properly.
Still the car was in good enough shape to get us to Devon so off we went. in the end we covered 650 miles and the car drove faultlessly with a few neat and effortless overtakes thrown in for good measure where appropriate (this car really comes alive at overtaking speeds 50-60mph, the V8 is in it's torque sweet-spot and she flies!). The fuel economy on the tour wasn't brilliant averaging about 22mpg but still I never bought the car with the intention of using it as a daily (I have a pushbike for that). Another benefit of the big engine is that it seems no matter how many people or how much stuff we have in the car it makes no noticeable difference to the performance and we took a lot of stuff with us!
Incidentally my wife, who hated my RX-7, absolutely loves the barge, she was always a fan of E30s and this ticks the same boxes for her whilst making transporting our 9 month old baby daughter a pleasure - the Quinny-Buzz (a pushchair for those not yet in the know) disappears into the cavernous boot along with any other baby paraphenalia. I think she's a bit disappointed to be driving her fiesta again this week for the sake of fuel economy!
The day after we came back from our Devon trip it was the PH meet at MB world, sadly I don't think my car netted much attention or photographs but it was a lovely day and the event was great fun as usual.
I washed the car the night before and took some pics:
You can just see it here amongst some more exotic metail:
Now I like to see what my cars can do (in a safe and appropriate environment) so I took the opportunity this last weekend to take the barge down to the Thorney Island drag races at the 'modified madness' show. It was odd driving into an MOD base looking for a car show especially as we got there pretty early and there wasn't much organisation or direction. Eventually we found our way to the 'scrutineering' queue (not that anything of significance was checked!) and then on to the RWYB queue. It felt a little bit amateur in comparison to Santa Pod but that added to the grass-roots, red-neck charm of the event. There was a great mix of cars running the strip (well, runway) from tuned Porsche GT2s and Bentleys to stripped-out diesel hatches with a fair amount of turbo jap cars and american muscle in between.
On the way I wasn't sure if I was going to take the barge on the strip but once I got there I couldn't resist. I felt a bit ridiculous taking my 'family estate' (complete with kiddicare window blinds) up to the starting line especially having to wear a helmet to do it. having never launched or run an auto up the strip I really wasn't sure of the best way to go. I put the gearbox in sport and turned the traction control off (to try to prevent bogging down).
For my first run I just went with the 'mash the accelerator and hope technique' but the launch was painfully slow (In a manual I'd be launching at 5000rpm not 500!) this netted me a 16.8 @ 91mph - the terminal speed was about right but the launch ruined the run. For my second go I thought I'd try something different, I didn't want to destroy the gearbox on the start line so I guessed that 3000rpm would probably be safe(ish) so I revved to 3K in neutral and then on the green light slammed the shifter into drive. There was an awkward fraction of a second where nothing happened and then the 'box took up the slack and launched me fast enough for a (still pretty slow) 2.7s 60' time and I went on to a 16.6 @ 90mph. I only did two runs as I had to get back to Woking for lunch .Overall I was pretty happy with the terminal speeds but 1800kg of car and driver and a long ratio autobox kinda blunts the car's drag ability, once on the move about 50-60mph she really shifts but this wasn't her forte - I might take her racing again but if I do I'll be sure to strip out 200Kg of seats and spares and fit an LSD with a shorter final drive that way I might see something close to the low 15s that the manual saloon version of the car gets.
I think my mate Nick had a pretty good day though in his stripped out mk4 prelude. His first two runs (both 15.3s) were getting really close to his previous best time but his third run netted him a 15.1 @ 94.3 so a new best ET and terminal speed - seems those Toyos made a difference!
My pics here
Some videos (in HD too):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmM2oKWxLbc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Zo0kRpfCtw
Nick's pictures and videos here
I'm going to try to keep this thread up to date as a kind of blog for the car. Any comments appreciated!
So far over the last 2K miles the car has been running nicely with no if any hiccups. Well that was until last weekend.
I was to travel from Surrey down to Brighton for a friend's stag do. Not too far at all, just 60 miles or so each way. I thought I should check the fluids before setting off as I hadn't for a couple of weeks. To my shock and surprise upon opening the bonnet I discovered that the radiator cooling fan had completely separated itself from the half of the viscous coupling and it was sitting at a funny angle, leaning against the radiator with one of it's eleven blades missing. Funnily enough my wife hadn't noticed anything odd about the car over the last week. My first thought was to bodge the fan and coupling back together with a hammer which worked for about 30 seconds before they separated again (doh!) I then trawled local motor factors but was unable to find the exact part I needed and was therefore fanless for the immediate future.
Anyhow having driven the five or so miles around and between the various shops it seemed that my temp guage wasn't moving from it's happy, central position so I decided to risk it down to Brighton. I kept one eye firmly on the guage the whole way but it seems that cruising at 70-80 all under 2500 rpm down the motorway kept enough air flowing over the radiator for there to be no problem.
The first stop on the stag weekend was a bit of jetskiing which gave me and the car a little time to cool off but then I had to take five of us back to the B&B which unfortunately meant a 3mph, 40 minute crawl along Brighton seafront. This really got me worried but once again the engine behaved creeping along at its 450rpm idle and seemingly never getting too hot! I then parked up for the night hoping that everything would be fine for my drive home the next morning.
Morning came and I can't say that the sleep I got between 5:30 and 8:30 was particularly refreshing but back to the car and she woke-up happy as ever and took me home with not a single complaint.
I've now sourced a replacement fan and coupling and a quick bit of googling has told me that once these couplings get a bit old they are prone to a bit of 'exploding' but I am very happy that 20 years ago a fastidious German over engineered these car to keep on going!
I was to travel from Surrey down to Brighton for a friend's stag do. Not too far at all, just 60 miles or so each way. I thought I should check the fluids before setting off as I hadn't for a couple of weeks. To my shock and surprise upon opening the bonnet I discovered that the radiator cooling fan had completely separated itself from the half of the viscous coupling and it was sitting at a funny angle, leaning against the radiator with one of it's eleven blades missing. Funnily enough my wife hadn't noticed anything odd about the car over the last week. My first thought was to bodge the fan and coupling back together with a hammer which worked for about 30 seconds before they separated again (doh!) I then trawled local motor factors but was unable to find the exact part I needed and was therefore fanless for the immediate future.
Anyhow having driven the five or so miles around and between the various shops it seemed that my temp guage wasn't moving from it's happy, central position so I decided to risk it down to Brighton. I kept one eye firmly on the guage the whole way but it seems that cruising at 70-80 all under 2500 rpm down the motorway kept enough air flowing over the radiator for there to be no problem.
The first stop on the stag weekend was a bit of jetskiing which gave me and the car a little time to cool off but then I had to take five of us back to the B&B which unfortunately meant a 3mph, 40 minute crawl along Brighton seafront. This really got me worried but once again the engine behaved creeping along at its 450rpm idle and seemingly never getting too hot! I then parked up for the night hoping that everything would be fine for my drive home the next morning.
Morning came and I can't say that the sleep I got between 5:30 and 8:30 was particularly refreshing but back to the car and she woke-up happy as ever and took me home with not a single complaint.
I've now sourced a replacement fan and coupling and a quick bit of googling has told me that once these couplings get a bit old they are prone to a bit of 'exploding' but I am very happy that 20 years ago a fastidious German over engineered these car to keep on going!
MrMoonyMan said:
Launching an auto.
Do not do it by reving it and going from N to D - quick way to kill the box.
Instead, use both feet. Get the revs up to about 3.5 thou in gear holding it on the brakes.
You're quite lucky to have got away with it...
I've had a few people tell me off Do not do it by reving it and going from N to D - quick way to kill the box.
Instead, use both feet. Get the revs up to about 3.5 thou in gear holding it on the brakes.
You're quite lucky to have got away with it...
but I expect destroying the box would have just sped up a manual conversion!I'd tried hold the brake with my left foot but the car starts to break free from about 1500rpm!
Gassing Station | Readers' Cars | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff