Pete's M5 - Fresh Paint inbound...

[Kevin Bacon 5]

We need slow drivers, or there would be nobody to overtake and fast drivers to and envy :notworthy:

 

Slow drivers aren't a problem as such, again, it's inappropriate slowness that causes problems.

 

For example, Mr Pensioner in his Honda CRV or Toyota Avensis doing 45mph on the extremely busy A12 at 17:30 - rush hour! This causes HGVs etc to overtake and clog up the outside lane and it just bounces back down the road like an accordian, eventually bringing traffic to a complete stand still.

 

His "I'm in no hurry, I will drive at what ever speed I like" attitude is bloody selfish and they think they are doing the right thing by not speeding and saving the planet by burning less fuel......when the only thing he is really burning is people's tempers. On a dual carriageway, you must keep up with the flow of traffic, it's quite simple really, and I've seen coppers ushering pensioners off the roads before for being a nuiscance and holding everyone up - and rightly so.

 

And if that isn't bad enough, you get a line of them, all doing 45-50, and driving so close together you can't take your exit off the carriageway! :censored: :D

[swiftkid 1]

 

His "I'm in no hurry, I will drive at what ever speed I like" attitude is bloody selfish and they think they are doing the right thing by not speeding and saving the planet by burning less fuel......when the only thing he is really burning is people's tempers.

 

and the petrol he is saving from the environment is just being replaced by all the people having to put their foot down to overtake

[BigTartanJudge 0]

Nice motor Pete, time for a set of Hayward and Scott rear boxes with a Supersprint x-pipe methinks :wink:

 

 

 

 

Thinking about one of these myself next year, so much car for the money, winner :D

[pete_griff 0]

thought i would do a v quick update on this as it's been a while now.

 

still loving the car. that doesn't mean i wouldn't sell it if the right car came along, but it would have to be something very very special now to make me part with the M5.

 

 

replaced the following bits and bobs since i've owned it:

 

? Replace horrific interior wood trim with ally trim

? All oils changed at more than regular intervals (engine, gearbox, rear diff)

? OEM (LuK) Clutch, dual mass flywheel, spigot bearing, release bearing, pivot arm, retaining spring and arm guide, “short-shift” from E60 M-Sport 5 series.

? crank rear-main seal, rear-diff main seal.

? replace clutch slave cylinder with newer item and bleed system with new fluid.

? rubber “Guibo” transfer donut, propshaft centre bearing, re-grease rear proshaft cv-joint, gearbox mounts.

? brake discs/pads all round, handbrake shoes and cables. New pistons & seals in front callipers, new goodridge brakelines with new fluid and thorough system flush.

? air filters, fuel filter, FPR, spark-plugs, cabin filters.

? Water pump, thermostat, coolant, crank front-main seal.

? Aux belts and tensioners/pulley assemblies.

? Centre tie-rod, track-rod ends, front drop links.

? Rear tyres (pothole damage)

 

 

 

stuff on the to-do list:

 

- new mafs

- new pre-cat lambdas

- fit re-conned injectors

- fit new vanos o-rings

- fit new rocker cover gaskets

- once all of the above is done it "should" be running perfectly - then it's REMAP time :norty:

- track down one or two interior rattles that are driving me bananas!!! (car would be pretty much silent inside if it wasn't for those)

- possibly then move on to think about paintwork and wheel refurbs

 

 

 

 

changing the brakes/lines and fluid has made a bigger difference than i thought it would, so i'm going to be sticking with the standard brakes for the time being. recon i'll go for some ferodo pads next time though (would have originally but no stock around at the time); the red-stuff are pretty good fair play to them, but they're already developing heat-stress cracks through the braking material and i can seemyself having to change them sooner than i should do as a result. i do give the brakes a pretty hard time (and i recon they would fold under "proper" track use), but the pads should have lasted a little better than they look as though they will do - IMO of course...

there's not much else i would want to change on the car if i'm honest. OBVIOUSLY it could be a bit faster, but then i'm hoping to re-capture a few lost horses with the new mafs etc and then boost things up again (probably see around a 30bhp increase) with the remap.

the only mod i'm in any danger of making any time soon is to fit an ipod kit so i can use/control my iphone through the standard oem headunit without having to mess around doing it on the phone then the head unit etc.

 

i'll try and get some decent pics of it up at some point now the ghastly wood interir has gone and the sun has come out to play :D

[Kevin Bacon 5]

LOL, I'm not the only one who hates wood in cars then :lol:

 

You've put some sterling work into that car mate :salute:

[CrazyDave 0]

Some of Pete's handy work from the DG Open Day :lol:

 

He's easily lead to the dark side.

 

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[mic_VR 3]

Some of Pete's handy work from the DG Open Day :lol:

 

He's easily lead to the dark side.

 

rsz_dsc04150.jpg[/attachment:n0qsqjdy]

 

Seriously Pete, tut tut ........ :nono:

[coullstar 0]

Must be great having a car thats so good in the first place you dont really need to tinker with :lol: .

[pete_griff 0]

LOL, I'm not the only one who hates wood in cars then :lol:

 

You've put some sterling work into that car mate :salute:

cheers pal, hopefully very soon it'll defo be running 100% and i'll be happy with it to go for remapping :norty:

(and yes - wood if effing horrible and should never have found it's way into cars in the first place)

 

 

 

Some of Pete's handy work from the DG Open Day :lol:

 

He's easily lead to the dark side.

 

Corrado conversion V2 (3).pdfrsz_dsc04150.jpg[/attachment:50nc553d]

 

Seriously Pete, tut tut ........ :nono:

yeah...... ummmm.....

apologies for that.

 

Mic i'm never listening to a word you say ever again! (however if it's wet then donuts are on the cards no problem! :wink: )

 

 

 

 

Must be great having a car thats so good in the first place you dont really need to tinker with :lol: .

that's the reason i bought this one (and the evo as well, but hey ho!) - hopefully once i've gone through it and am happy with it top to bottom i won't have to touch it for a while....

maybe

 

 

 

 

 

 

ANYWAY!

 

when was the last time you went out, just for a drive, just because you could?!?

well i didearlier today to make the most of the amazing weather - bullying bikes when you're in a big inconspicuous car is great - to see them turning around thinking "wtf is that masive beemer still doing behind me?!?" - LOVE IT!!!

 

i also promised you some piccies, so here you go. the car needs cleaning so apologies for that but you'll just have to live with it! also a couple of picsof the roads up in the Brecon Beacons and just how they looked today - priceless...

[pete_griff 0]

and the Beacons...

[KADVR6 0]

looking good pete, if your after some new MAF's try cotswold BMW as i got my new one from there, genuine BMW and was £48 cheaper than BM.

 

oh yeh my alternator went pop today £645 for a new one :shock: bloody water cooled alternators :cuckoo:

 

must meet up soon.

 

karl

[coullstar 0]

oh yeh my alternator went pop today £645 for a new one :shock: bloody water cooled alternators :cuckoo:

 

 

Foook me :shock: ,thats a fair kick in the nuts.

[CorradoVR6-Turbo 0]

and you thought the raddo had high running costs :lol:

[pete_griff 0]

bit of an update - hoping to get a pretty major service done on Friday in order to totally sqaure the car away before i go away and leave it with a friend for 6 months...

 

on the to-do list:

 

- engine, gearbox and rear diff oil change

- coolant flush with new water pump seals (where the other new seals haven't seated properly when replacing the pump and thermostat recently)

- new oil separators

- new cam position sensors x4 (for some reason these particular sensors seem to have a shelf life - great!)

- new oil-pressurised chain tensioner bolt

- new vacuum line going from throttle bodies to fuel pressure reg

- ultrasonically cleaned and re-furbed injectors to go in

- new pre-cat lambdas

- new rocker cover, throttle body and plenum gaskets

- new vanos o-rings and vanos top-cover gaskets

 

got that little lot to do on Fri, so fingers crossed i'll get it all done in one day and be able to drive the car home again...

 

replaced both MAFs recently which has made the car a little more urgent and a fair bit smoother, but didn't make as much difference as i was hoping for. i recon that the car is down on power so i'm really hoping that renewing the rest of the engine's sensory running gear should sort things out. have done a compression test and all is well there, so it's got to be a running issue (that is if i'm not just thinking it's down on power when it isn't really!)

 

 

anyway - here are a couple of piccies of the various bit that are sat waiting to go on.

 

and don't worry Kev - i'll make sure i get plenty of pornographic pics of my ITB's x8 when i've got the plenum off - just for you! :wink:

[Jim 1]

I still curse the fact you ever let me drive this car Pete. I'm still desperately working out a way to be able to afford an M5 or maybe an E46 M3. I was absolutely smitten with it!

[coullstar 0]

Thats a hoorin lot of oil there!! Castrol though... :wink: . Was trying to get a friend to buy one of these this week but he shit scared of the running costs.

[pete_griff 0]

I still curse the fact you ever let me drive this car Pete. I'm still desperately working out a way to be able to afford an M5 or maybe an E46 M3. I was absolutely smitten with it!

haha - well i'm very sorry Jim!

i've just put some new rubber on the front of it and a while ago it's had the steering all renewed and various other tweeks since i've owned it. i'm hoping to recapture a fair few lost ponies on friday, so if that's the case you'll have to take it out again and "refresh" yourself! :D

also - a good friend of mine bought an e46 m3 a while ago and i get to drive that on a fairly regular basis - ABSOLUTELY LOVE IT!!!

the noise from the straight six is orgasmic and his is a very very tidy example, so it pulls unbelievably well (another reason why i want to get mine running 100%!)

whenever i drive his it gets me thinking naughty things about anti-roll bars etc etc. i recon i'll leave it totally standard though despite how tempting it may be.

gotta love the m3, but there are loads of them about and they're definitely a lot more "in your face" than the m5 - i love the subtlety of the m5 - you only know what it is once it's flown past you and you see the badge on the back; m3's are too obvious for my tastes.

 

 

 

Thats a hoorin lot of oil there!! Castrol though... :wink: . Was trying to get a friend to buy one of these this week but he **** scared of the running costs.

damn right about the oil - sump capacity of 7.5 litres! :shock:

the oil is specially designed for bmw m-series engines (read "we'll rape you on costs" there!). castrol wouldn't be my first choice as i'm more of a silkolene fan, but go with the official stuff and all that.

i had been changing my cars a fair bit before i got the M5, but i'm really quite taken with it - every little repair i do on it makes it just that little bit noticably better each time and it's keeping me interested and happy at the same time without screaming at me to modify it etc. i've also been getting braver over the summer months, now i've got decent tyres all round and renewed brakes, steering etc etc the traction control has been going off more and more and it's an absolute hoot - i swear bmw designed it to go sideways and not forwards! steer with the rear baby! :D

and yes - running costs are pretty horrific if i'm honest. i'm hoping fuel will be a little better after i've done all of the above, but i average about 18mpg as it stands right now. it helps loads being able to do all the mechanics myself - i dread to think how much i would have spent if i had to pay someone to do it for me :?

[KADVR6 0]

your gonna be having a very busy day tomorrow mate. oh yeh if you wanna leave the m5 somwhere safe while your away?? then my drive has room for it :norty:

[pete_griff 0]

well got some of it done today but not all unfortunately...

 

 

sorted -

 

- engine, gearbox and rear diff oil change

- new oil separators

- new cam position sensors x4 (for some reason these particular sensors seem to have a shelf life - great!) - ABSOLUTE BA$TARD OF A JOB!

- new oil-pressurised chain tensioner bolt

- ultrasonically cleaned and re-furbed injectors to go in

- new pre-cat lambdas

- new rocker cover, throttle body and plenum gaskets

 

 

 

 

still to do -

 

- coolant flush with new water pump seals (where the other new seals haven't seated properly when replacing the pump and thermostat recently)

- new vanos o-rings and vanos top-cover gaskets

- new vacuum line going from throttle bodies to fuel pressure reg

 

 

 

 

should (touches wood!!!) finish it tomorrow without any issues. really looking forward to seeing how it drives afterwards.

will post the pics up tomorrow - left the camera with the car tonight.

pics are niiiiiice! :)

[Jim 1]

Awesome skills mate. Look forward to seeing some pics. You must be saving a few quid doing this yourself!

 

Have you got a good workshop manual for the M5 or something (for torque values, etc) ?

[KipVR 1]

Hey Pete looks like we're both making some progress on our moneypits!

 

Would there be any merit in driving it in-between fixing the injectors and doing the vanos so that if it does go better, you would know if it was the vanos or the injectors that made the difference?

[pete_griff 0]

Awesome skills mate. Look forward to seeing some pics. You must be saving a few quid doing this yourself!

 

Have you got a good workshop manual for the M5 or something (for torque values, etc) ?

cheers pal. to be honest, even though i'm saving money it's more important to me to know that everything has been done right with a decent amount of care and attention - you wouldn't care as much if it wasn't your car would you!

i say that as a generalisation though, as there are a couple of garages i know of that do actually care about what goes out of their doors - DG Autotech being the prime example here!

 

and yeah i do have a workshop manual, but most of the stuff i've been doing is very straighforward and doesn't require torquing - just the chain tensioner bolt really off the top of my head...

 

 

 

 

Hey Pete looks like we're both making some progress on our moneypits!

 

Would there be any merit in driving it in-between fixing the injectors and doing the vanos so that if it does go better, you would know if it was the vanos or the injectors that made the difference?

hey pal - really pleased to hear yours has been making progress :D

i'll be honest, after seeing the seals around the vanos solenoids, i don't know what all the fuss is about! - mine were perfect, so it was a bit pointless getting them apart but hey ho!

and where i would have liked to do things one at a time, to get at the cam-position sensors and the injectors (the two most likely culprits for power loss) the plenum has to come off, so i'm not going to do that in two separate jobs.

 

 

 

 

anyway - got it all back together yesterday after a fair amount of effort due to zero space around the bloody thing to work on it.

MASSIVE THANKS to my friend who was helping me as well - i wouldn't have done it all unless he was there.

anyway, got it all back together, started it (with no error codes thank god!) and it started, idled etc perfect - HAPPY DAYS! then about 30 seconds later i hear this drip, drip, drip - :censored: :bad-words:

the same fecking water leak was back, but this time even worse!

as it was getting late we left it and will hopefully sort it all out tomorrow. the leak was a right tw4t to find though - spent about an hour looking all round the back of the block (as that's where it was running off) and couldn't see anything. turns out i was leaking from the frankly quite craply designed thermostat housing at the front of the block then running down the vee and out through the gearbox bellhousing!

we'll see tomorrow how it all goes, but hopefully now i know the cause, we'll get it squared properly with no future issues...

 

here are a few pics of proceedings.

[pete_griff 0]

and some more

[Leonard 0]

Your a brave man! Or just very talented :grin: Good effort.

 

Beast of an engine, love it 8)

[Kevin Bacon 5]

Awesome stuff mate :notworthy:

 

Loving the 8 fog horns and ITB goodness :D That intake setup is pure engineering sex, I love it! That engine would turbo extremely well :norty:

 

I reckon shifting all that PCV gunk from the intake and throttles will sharpen it up a bit, good work mate!

 

How on earth did Ascari get 625hp out of that engine? Looks like BMW did some good stuff to get 400 from it so finding another 225 doesn't seem feasible without forced induction to me :shrug: But then again, if you could replicate what Ascari did, it would be brutal :D