Individual sterling silver E34 540i6 project

So I bought that sterling silver 540i6 that's been floating around North Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia the last few years.  It is apparently 1 of 3 1995 540i6's that were painted sterling silver and labeled individual from BMW.  I like sterling silver (my wagon was sterling silver) and the price was right so it made perfect sense to scoop it up and start tinkering with it.  It'll make the perfect driveway friend with my red M Sport and alpine wagon.  I'll probably hold on to this one for a while but bets have already started to take place for some reason. 

I drove it home and it did fine.  Pulled awesome but has the 55-60mph shimmy.  With the stock 2.93, 6th gear was quite nice.  

It has a slight miss, I was told cylinder 7 is misfiring.  It just needs a tune up and to be gone thru.  At higher engine speeds it runs fine.  You can feel it at idle.  It looks like the spark plugs are close (or may be) to original just from looking at them.  I swapped coils and it still had the miss so I'll move on to other diag.  I have a pretty substantial M60 spare parts bin because of my M Sport so that's a good thing.  It grinds going into 3rd but doesn't pop out of third, typical 420g.  There are plenty local to me so I'll swap it later and go into 3rd only if needed.  It kinda sucks because 3rd is a fun gear.  

A parts list is being made so nothing gets missed.  :)

Pics.

It came with some Dinan bits.  Should net me about 10whp if that :)

Interior is in good shape.  It needs a radio (I have many so that's not an issue) and the side bolster repair

Paint tag which I thought was neat.

My alpine wagon.  I recently swapped the interior to black in it because tan sucks.

beautiful cars.  nice find!  

Great looking car. I'll be following along. I recently acquired my first BMW. A 530i touring with manual swap E34.  If you want to let those tan interior bits go, I'm in need of some.

I'm about to do a cooling system refresh on my M60, got any source for good info for it?

Thanks.

Those Seats!  I've never noticed the paint tag on the strut tower is upside down...is that typical?

When you write “it just needs a tune up” are those your words or the seller’s??

and what, exactly, does that mean?  A miss could just be a plug but I (and I haven’t seen everything) have never seen a miss just be a plug.   I hope it’s something simple and easy. 

Do you have emissions checks that this would fail you on?

In reply to jfryjfry :

My words.  The seller told me about the miss and I already started working on what needed to be done in my head.  Usually it's a bad coil pack but I went thru and tested all of those and they checked out fine.  I start simple and go down the list from there.  Typically when I say complete tune up it also includes an intake reseal, pcv plate, knock sensors (if needed), and just about every seal on top of the engine.  M60's and pcv plates don't mesh well if they have never been replaced or replaced with a non-OEM part.

The wagon I'm the last picture needed the same thing.  Turned out it was missing one of the intake gaskets so it was leaning out really bad on cylinder 2.  I drive that car everyday and like it a lot.  

In reply to Indy-Barely Functional-Guy :

I usually buy thru FCP, Rockauto, or Az Autohaus.

Let me know what tan bits you need and I'll see what I have.

In reply to Hoondavan :

It is typical.  Usually the paint tag is on top of the strut tower.  I never got why it was placed upside down though.

So the last day and a half have been pretty amazing in terms if digging into this cars history.  The rough idle is due to low compression on cylinder 7 from being money shifted by the guy that sold it to the guy I got it from (two owners ago).  It has a bent valve most likely.  Not really happy I have to rip this apart because I was looking forward to just driving it.  I am glad I haven't put any money into this engine because it would have been a waste.  The seller offered a spare b40 that came with this car originally so that's cool.  The impatient side of me found another b40 with 150k verifiable miles on it (friend selling it) and bought it before the seller offered that other b40 to me.  I plan on selling the extra b40 since I do not need two.  This car is worth saving though, it is in good shape has a nice color combo.  It it were another alpine white with tan interior car, I'd probably part it.  

The m60 fits into the rear of my wagon just fine also.  

I just saw the wagon pic in IG. 

Are you going to replace the whole engine or just swap the heads?

In reply to Slippery :

Replace the whole engine.  The one in the wagon has about 60k less miles than what's currently in the car.  I do plan on tearing into the old engine to see how bad the damage is.

Update.  Finally got some time and motivation to work on this :) 

I started working on this car last week and into the weekend.  I picked up a new transmission over the weekend as well so I could get everything done at once and be done with it.  I was going to run the old transmission and just shift into 3rd when needed until I found another 420g locally.  Someone was looking out and asked if I still needed a transmission which was cool.  This will be nice and running properly soon.  I plan on ordering a few more parts this week and cleaning the engine bay so there is not a lot of grease and grime left over.  

I finished cleaning and resealing the engine last night (9/16/2018).  The valve cover gaskets were done by the previous owner so I'll paint them later and replace the gaskets then.  People say it's a hard job but I've never found it to be a difficult job.  I really want to get the car running so I can give it a proper shake down at this point.  There was some questionable half-assed stuff on the old engine that I'll show later.  

New transmission from an E39.  Lucky score.

Getting started

Pardon the mess

Old engine harness had a repair done to it at some point.  Whoever repaired it did a good job but I thankfully the new engine came with a new harness.  The old harness had one of the O2 sensor wires hit an exhaust down pipe at some point. 

 
During.  I bought a 12x12 canopy since I had to have a tree removed due to it raising my driveway for shade.  It worked really well for the rain also.  

New engine.  I still need to give it a final cleaning.  I plan on finding a new top cover since someone painted the silver parts black.

Old engine stuff.  Whoever resealed the intake on the old engine did some crappy things.  They used some sort of sealant and most likely did not get a new rear intake gasket.  The PCV plate was not genuine as well.  Whoever did the intake job ran out of proper hardware so they used a sheet metal screw for one of the bolts and ruined the intake manifold.  I put a flashlight where the brass fitting was supposed to be and you can see light thru it.

More sealant for the rear coolant manifold.

The flywheel was resurfaced to where there was no raised area for the clutch disc.  The clutch would slip if I started the car in gear and did not make any effort to lunge forward like a car with a regular flywheel.  

The new engine came with everything needed so the messed up parts were discarded.  

The hardest part of the job so far was replacing the radio and one of the pins that holds the bottom seat frame to the top seat frame on the driver seat :D

How it currently sits.  Looks like it's in one piece to the neighborhood lol.  I took the evening off tonight.

Looks like a fun project. I had an E34 M5 that I just sold earlier this year. It was great to have the experience, and the S38 made amazing sounds, but I kind of think I would've had more fun overall (maybe less stress?) with a "regular" E34. Someday if the right Touring comes along I may jump into that lake of fire again. Your wagon looks great too.

In reply to Duder :

Thanks.  I have another 540i6 M Sport that's been awesome.  I was looking at E34 M5's before I found the M Sport and went that route instead because it's more streetable if that makes any sense.  Everything in it except the engine was M5 so it was a good compromise as well.

I got the engine in this evening.  I transferred the clutch from the old engine to the new engine since it was installed not long ago.  I decided to not use the flywheel on the old motor because it was resurfaced so much that there is no longer a raised area for the clutch disc.  The clutch was fine and I did not notice any slipping the day I drove it home.  What I did notice was how it did slip after starting the car in gear by mistake one day.  I believe this also could to be due to the fact that the rear coolant plate was leaking quite badly.  That may have had something to do with the slipping on a cold start.  No telling at this point because I will not have to deal with it anymore.    

Engine in.

I decided to start taking the old engine apart to see how bad the damage was.  Made it this far.  I'll dig into it later this week, time permitting.  

Rear coolant plate.

My 540i6 is a 540i6 again.  I also replaced the rear main seal, rear main gasket, and pressure washed the engine bay.  The old engine was nasty but the engine bay was not terrible.  It cleaned up nicely.  I should have this up and running by next weekend if I put in a little time after work this week.  I also ordered some more parts for it that can be installed with the motor in the car.  Can't wait to get this going again.

I made some good progress last week and previous weekend.  I decided to take it easy last weekend and not work on it much.  I removed the heads from the old block and found some bent valves.  Three bent exhaust valves with one being pretty bad and two slightly bent intake valves.  The crosshatches look great for being a nikisil block.  Money shifting is real :shifty

I got the front end back on the car over the course of last week.  The wiring harness, shift linkage, and radiator are back in the car.  The shifter is a lot better now.  I still need to connect the power steering system, exhaust, and fluids but it's all coming together finally.  One of the bolts for the starter harness was seized and the post was free spinning in the solenoid so it had to be replaced.  I have a few M60 starters on the shelf so it wasn't a total loss.  Wish I had noticed that before but oh well, it wasn't a complete pain to replace.  Already swapping parts before it gets started for the first time lol.

As it sits.

Hopefully by next weekend I'll have it running. :)

Are you replacing the timing chains?

In reply to mbruneaux :

No sir.  M60's do not suffer from guide failure like the M62's do.  These have double row chains and an idle sprocket in the middle of the V.  

Beautiful car 

I drove my friends white one in Seattle back in 2008 for about a month. It was such a great driving beast. Had AC Shnizter wheels and slightly lowered if I recall 

Nice looking car. Glad it went to someone who could & would fix it. This car could have taken an ugly turn with a lot of people after they found out it wasn't a spark plug..

i never realized that the brake boosters on these cars where front mounted, i've seen it a few times in custom applications but never from an OEM, pretty neat.