E12 M535i Project - 08-21-19 Update

[leadphut]

Ivo sent this link to me this morning.

http://www.justdashes.com/2016/07/dashb ... -pad-ease/

I guess Just Dashes is pretty proud of the work they did on my dash.

better than Just Rashes

yikes! don't bother.

[the_illermiller]

The perseverance and attention to detail in this thread really stuck with me. So much so, that I immediately asked Chris if I could draw it and use it as one of the first pieces in my fledgling business. Some of you have seen this already I'm sure, but I put this together for Chris:



While it is digital, it's not just a photoshop filter over an image. Some WIP



If you want your own, you can check out my store. I have a couple other prints available in various sizes and will be adding more variety (non-BMWs) over the next couple of months. Cheers, Chris and thanks for encouraging the plug!
https://www.ridgewerks.com/

[M. Holtmeier]

Wow, Chris. I'm blown away at what you've built. Congrats!

I've got to get out to some west coast meets.

[wkohler]

Over the last couple of months, I hadn't done much. I had been so busy with work that I put the car out of my mind for the most part. Also, picking up the M coupe kept me pretty distracted (in a good way). 5erWest was approaching and I wasn't sure what to take. I had started working on a punch list for a couple of cars and figured that since I had a couple leaks on the M535i that needed to be sorted and I'd pretty much reached the end of my rope with them and my time was very tight, I decided to have them sorted professionally. When I picked up the car, I couldn't believe what happened.







The car was outside for about 90 minutes from when they called saying they were filling up the trans with oil and when I could pick it up. In that time, the Just Dashes dashboard suffered failure in multiple places. There were more issues than I photographed, but they convey the effect. I was crushed and livid and just felt terrible. Here I just wanted to get a couple things worked out so I could enjoy the car and hopefully take it to Oregon. I spent a huge amount of money on this dash and it's ruined. I called them when I got home and was told this was very unusual. I sent them the photos and was told to wait for a call from the production manager who was out, so it might be a day or two. I parked the car in the garage and didn't touch it for a while.

I was pretty much looking at taking the '87 M535i again, but one Sunday, I was working around the house and I decided to just take the E12 M535i out for a drive and just see how it felt. I made a couple of adjustments to the clutch pedal height and checked a couple things and ended up driving it around for a couple hours. Even took it down to South Mountain and drove the Summit Road in the park and with it being so hot, the bicycles were few and I could actually drive the road, which was nice. I spent about an hour or more in the park and stopped every so often to take a photo or two.





More time went by and I made a couple more adjustments here and there as time permitted and I felt that since I had about 1000 miles on the car since putting it back together, there's really no reason it shouldn't go to Portland. Sure, the dash is a bummer, but the rest of the car is sorta decent and maybe it would be a good trip for it.

A couple weeks went by and I finally got a call back. He started out talking about how hot it is in Phoenix and that I shouldn't expect the dash to hold up to those conditions despite the website saying "it will stand up to decades of blazing heat" and it was only outside for a short period for this failure didn't seem to matter. I had sent photos taken during installation showing other shortcomings and the beginning of the failure on the right side of the cluster binnacle and I do think that helped. At this point, he said they'd redo the dash and pay special attention to various areas. By the end of the call, I was reasonably satisfied with the solution despite the fact that I have to pay to ship to them and I also have to remove the dash with the windshield in place. I made everything much more difficult during installation to ensure we would do it in the safest manner, one time. Now I get to undo all of that.

I got an alignment (shop has really weird hours and the last two times I tried to take it, they had been closed for a vacation).



I bought some tape.



And we hit the road. I was in bed for about 25 min before leaving around 4:30 am on Thursday, July 13.



I met up with Vince and Eric at Vince's hangar in Pacoima, then headed north. Despite (or perhaps because of) my preparation for various component failures, the trip up was uneventful for this E12. The M535i ran well and despite the lack of AC and driving with two windows down for the entire trip, it was actually somewhat enjoyable. I was pretty tense and anxious for the first couple hundred miles, but once we settled into the seemingly unending wasteland of California's central valley, I was feeling pretty good, but not good enough to jinx the trip. Also, somehow, I managed to stay awake and alert. Spent the night in Williams, CA and a full night's rest was just what I needed. I was content that the M535i was running well and was looking forward to the long, but interesting and scenic drive to come on Friday.

We rolled into town around 6:30pm on Friday. The second day of the caravan is a pretty tightly scheduled 10 hr drive from north of Sacramento to Portland and with lunch and fuel stops as well as the occasional blown off coolant hose, time goes quickly.

The show went well. About 80 cars showed and we had four E12s, which was nice. I think that's been the highest number since 2012 where we had a few. E12 B7 Turbo and a couple of '79 528s joined my M535i this year, so it was a nice group.

As usual, I failed to take any photos, so here's a shot I stole from @vintageeuro on Instagram:



It ended up being a great day for this E12 M535i since it was voted both Best E12 and Best in Show. I was pretty surprised given the great cars that were there this year. Definitely honored to have received it.

We had a great drive out to Hood River and on some great roads, including the killer Cooper Spur road. Joel323 rode along with me on the drive this year and it really was great to have another person in the car and he could tell me what to expect on turns for Cooper Spur also. That was pretty sweet. Amazingly, the car handled it all with aplomb and while there were times I wish I was in the M coupe that was on our ass the whole time, it was great to drive the E12.

I stayed up in Portland for a few days after the event and even got to watch the odometer turn over to 150k.



Headed for home around 4:30 Friday morning. I drove 1,003 miles (according to the map - a few more miles with fuel and food stops) to Corona, CA where I spent the night at photopark's house. By this point, I was confident in the car and even thought about finally admitting that I put together a pretty good car. Fortunately, there were no issues on the trip back aside from the odd piece of crap person trying to run you off the road so they could be a couple car lengths further ahead on I-5. I spent plenty of time in traffic both Friday on the 210 and Saturday on the 91 and 60 and didn't have any temperature events or anything like that. It really did great.

Made it back into town around 10pm on Saturday night. The car ran great and ate up the miles. Overall, it was a great experience to take the car on the trip to Oregon, and to come back with Best E12 and overall Best in Show was just icing on the cake. I've put a lot of effort, time and money into this car and I was glad I got to enjoy it and to get generally positive feedback on the car from others as well.



So, now that it's all cleaned up and back to where it was before the trip, I guess I need to gear up to start taking things apart again. :/

[tig]

Best in show: Deserved.

[muleskinner]

That really sucks about the dash. My car hasn't spent much time in a shop, but I always tell them "please, please, pleeeeeease don't leave it sitting out in the sun". For a little extra piece of mind, I recently put a dash pad in it.
Hopefully they get yours right the second time around. Great road trip story.

[Karl Grau]

Are you guys discussing whether or not you're going to look for the big W?

[vinceg101]

^^^This was my Pit Crew.
They were actually waiting for me to catch up after I had pulled over when my engine temps spiked. You should have seen them go into action when I showed up, it was inspiring.

[But yes, put a large Duck-billed cap and overalls on Chris, and I think you're on to something]

I have to say that despite all the trials & tribulations Chris has had with this car, it really turned out fantastic. It is truly an impressive feat of hard work and dedication that more than shows in all the details. I spent a lot of time behind Chris and trying to catch up most times.

[zentropy]

Great story! Love the car. The rear of the E12s look so good with the spoiler.

[grbbenny]

"Fortunately, there were no issues on the trip back aside from the odd piece of crap person trying to run you off the road so they could be a couple car lengths further ahead on I-5."

OMG I love your droll writeups!

Congratulations on both the car and the awards.

[Adam W in MN]

Great pictures and write up, I'm happy to hear the car is providing so many trouble free miles of use! The dashboard situation sucks of course, but maybe you'd be better off putting in the 99% crack free one and just living with that one since it's still factory and shouldn't get any worse? Get the JustDashes one repaired since they agreed to redo it but then set it aside when they finish it.

[wkohler]

Sorry I haven't had much to report lately on this car.

Obviously we know about the failure of the dash from Just Dashes. They agreed to redo the dashboard, but I wanted to take the car to 5erWest and SoCal Vintage and I didn't want to risk missing either of those with the car. I did take the car to SoCal Vintage (the 10th Anniversary) and I was parked with a bunch of excellent 5-series examples. I had no expectation of winning anything, but to my surprise, the M535i took the award for best 5-series. Really quite the honor.

With the shows pretty much over for the year, I decided to pull out the dashboard to return it. Of course, it wasn't something I wanted to do, so I put it off until Christmas day. It was one hell of a fight. I had to unbolt the defrost vents to get the dashboard out and there was too much material on the sides that I had to fight to get it past the a-pillars. E28s have a lot more room, so I think if it was a dash for one of those, it wouldn't have been as much of an issue. I returned the dash shortly after the first of the year. I never got a message saying they received it until I called a couple times to check on it. I had the tracking info saying it was delivered, but no acknowledgement from them. I had copies of all the correspondence with the company in the box, so there shouldn't be any questions.

A few months went by and in March I started wondering what was going on. Irwin, the head guy, said that after they received it, they'd put it right into production instead of waiting. Didn't sound like that was happening. I followed up in March and got several excuses. They had to get a new vacuum forming machine, then they had to remodel the production area, etc. Ok, that's fine, but I've got a show 3rd weekend in May that I'd really like to take the car to, so I'd need some time to get it installed since I didn't know if the windshield would need to be removed. They said they'd get it to me in plenty of time to get it installed. I took the M535i to storage right after removing the dash and it could be driven, so I had to periodically exercise it. There were other things to do as well, but without the dash, I didn't have much motivation. I kept following up and every time I call, it's "call us back in 2 weeks." Finally we hit first week of May and I said I was running out of time. I want it done right, but you've had it four months and this is getting ridiculous. It finally shows up three days before the show in San Diego. Gee, thanks. Add to that the box was crushed because it was shipped UPS.

I opened it right away and they seem to have gotten lucky. While the packing job was embarrassing compared to the initial one, there was no obvious damage to the dashboard. It did look better than the previous one in some respects, but in others, I wasn't sure. I tried fitting a couple of vents and it was going to be a struggle, so I just put it aside and didn't worry about it for a few months.

Over this period, there was discussion between Ray, myself and Darin about a trip east to Phoenix to give us some much needed motivation and help with some projects. Ray had a pretty large project on deck and I really wanted to stop thinking about this dash. Darin is great with these sorts of projects, though his E12 experience is limited. Either way, we have worked together on enough fiddly crap that we found we work well together. With the holiday and Darin's work schedule of alternating off-Fridays, this weekend was the perfect opportunity for a trip.

Admittedly, I should have spent more time preparing things but with work and a recent knee injury, I've haven't been 100%. I got the car from storage and we started looking at the dash, transferring the ducting and installing the vents. Nothing really fit properly. I did a considerable amount of trimming of the vinyl and some of the other impediments and got them to fit reasonably well. I also worked on the edges of the dash that made removal of the previous attempt such a nightmare. Then came the cluster. No chance of it fitting. Having already broken one on installation the first time, I didn't want to chance it. I grabbed one of the factory dashes out of the closet and the cluster just plopped right in, no muss, no fuss, no need to even push a second time. For a solid 10 minutes, we shifted our attention to the factory dash, looking at just installing it crack be damned. But then I'd have a $2400 boat anchor sitting here. The next dash that goes in the E12 isn't coming out, so I said we need to at least try. Out came the razor blade again. I spent about an hour on the cluster aperture, trimming vinyl and foam. I finally got the cluster to get into position with minimal persuasion. Once we were satisfied with that, it was time to offer it up to the car. We didn't get off to a great start. The ducting was fighting us. The dash was up too high to get the whole thing inside the car and the ducting needed a lot of persuasion to get into position, not to mention potential for damaging the windshield. We gave it one last shot and suddenly it just fell into place and we looked at each other dumbfounded. At one point, 3.5" of the right side of the dash was outside the car. Seemed like a non-starter. A couple more hours of assembling the accessories and ancillary panels and we were done.




It was clear that this was a 2-person job and I don't think I could have done the job, let alone had the motivation to keep going without Darin's help, so he was invaluable. While it's not a really important project, it's been 10 months since I took it out and it's just nice to see it back in the car and I don't have to think about it as a project that needs doing.

As for what's next on the M535i, there's a few teething issues to still work out, but I'm more inclined to start tackling that stuff now that the dash is back in it. Also, the poor fitment on those pedal pads is driving me nuts.

[LeiseyJr]

I love that keychain.

[wkohler]

I've never had a key fall off so many times in my life. Not a fan.

[LeiseyJr]

I've never had a key fall off so many times in my life. Not a fan.

I use one of these 2M key-chains; simple design and my key doesn't fall off. If you are looking to change.
https://www.2mshiftboots.com/product/m- ... -key-chain

[wkohler]

I'm going to just try some thread locker or something.

[oldskool]

Dammit Kohler. Just spent another hour going back through this and then regained new interest in my subtle projects. Imma buy a car in your honor shortly, Stimpy

[tschultz]

Is that shift knob correct? I thought the early cars used a wooden twist on knob with BMW emblem in it...

Than again, my dads E3 had a similar knob:

[wkohler]

My 530i had the same knob that was in the E3. It's a little different with the top of the knob being a little thinner and having a sharper radius on the edges than the one installed in my M535i.

I pulled the knob out of an '80 528i that hit the yard 3 weeks before I bought the M535i. Same color combo and I was so mad when I went back to pull that car apart the day after I made the deal and found they crushed it the afternoon before. Story of my life. That was back in the time where there was so much inventory coming in, cars would sit in the yard 2-3 weeks and that was it. Was a pretty nice car, clear was gone and it had a pretty serious oil consumption issue from the looks of it, but it would have been a great source of rust-free body parts and nice interior bits. Hardly anything was removed from it. The brochure showed a leather knob which I've looked at having reproduced for the car but I do like the wood for a variety of reasons. It's the only car I have where I can show my respect for wood.

[1st 5er]

He said "wood".

[tschultz]

My 530i had the same knob that was in the E3. It's a little different with the top of the knob being a little thinner and having a sharper radius on the edges than the one installed in my M535i.

I pulled the knob out of an '80 528i that hit the yard 3 weeks before I bought the M535i. Same color combo and I was so mad when I went back to pull that car apart the day after I made the deal and found they crushed it the afternoon before. Story of my life. That was back in the time where there was so much inventory coming in, cars would sit in the yard 2-3 weeks and that was it. Was a pretty nice car, clear was gone and it had a pretty serious oil consumption issue from the looks of it, but it would have been a great source of rust-free body parts and nice interior bits. Hardly anything was removed from it. The brochure showed a leather knob which I've looked at having reproduced for the car but I do like the wood for a variety of reasons. It's the only car I have where I can show my respect for wood.

Thanks for the detail, I can see they aren't quite the shame knob even.

I just would have guessed the knob would have matched the '80 635 knob, but I guess it makes more sense that it matches the other e12 offering.

The interior looks great, probably as good as new (if not better!).

[Bonsaibacker]

What a beautiful car. Newish to the forum and getting caught up on everyone's cars is fun and inspiring. I am so impressed with your inventory- quality, caliber and care. Thanks for sharing and continuing to share.

[Spen]

Chris, there is an e12 at the yard locally and I recall the dash is in ok shape. If there's anything you personally need, I'd be happy to pull it for you for my cost for the parts and shipping. Having driven an M90, I really enjoy the driving feel of the engine and I can only imagine yours is a real hoot.

[wkohler]

I guess every so often, I have to update things, right? Apparently it's true that projects aren't really ever finished. Of course, I've had to fix a few things and then I also fixed some stuff that wasn't broken.

One of the more annoying things I've had since I put the car together was the fact that I had what amounted to E24 rear trailing arms. The arm itself is the same between the two cars, but the E24 has a wider track in the rear and vented rotors. The offset of the rotor is different and the vented portion of the rotor was added to the back side, so the stub axles themselves were actually longer, pushing the hub flange closer to the fender. That explains why the tires always rubbed from day one on the car. Of course, what was also apparent is that the rear subframe and trailing arms doesn't look to have ever been out of the car with the yellow paint being present on the fasteners when I removed it, so I have no answers, though it wouldn't surprise me to the find that this was all done after the fact. Anyway, this really created a problem trying to come home from San Diego in 2017 with stuff in the car. There was considerable fender to tire interference. We had to come up with something to prevent this, so JP at La Jolla Independent helped us with this:



Basically, it involved adding another spring perch flipped upside down to help raise the rear of the car. With it loaded up with all the crap, it was okay, but it kinda sucked to drive empty. Felt like I was staring at the road in my jacked-up Nova. Also, the rear wheels had some positive camber and it just didn't like to go around corners. That said, it was drivable and I didn't make it a huge priority. That is, until I registered for the 2019 Targa California. Now I gave myself a reason to fix this.

Essentially, all I needed to fix this was the E12 stub axles. The brake calipers have spacers in them which I could remove and reassemble, so everything should work. I ordered two new stub axles. I can only get one. Great. Walloth and Nesch show one available, so I order like $1200 in stuff from them for the 2002, an E24 project I've been working on and various other crap. They send me an email after shipping the order saying that the entire reason I placed the order was NLA and they're refunding that cost. Ugh. So this left me to try to find a car with the parts. I figured I'm in for buying entire trailing arms since no one wants to pull these. JP tells me about a car in the yard in Chula Vista. I figure I'll be there in two weeks for St. Paddy's day. It literally just hit the yard and no one wants this crap, so maybe I'll be okay. So I start monitoring the inventory every day to be sure. I'm checking other cars with older dates to see how long they stay on the yard. Seems like I'm going to make it! Sure, I could have paid someone to go get the trailing arms, but I don't know if I'm cheap or just don't want to bother anyone, who knows. Probably both. I head over to San Diego the Thursday before. Ray and his son Jack go as well. We're all sitting at Darin's Thursday night and I check the inventory. No E12. You have got to be kidding me. I decide to tag along with them anyway on Friday and I ask about the car at the gate. Not in the system so they say it's been crushed. Jack and I go over to look in the prep yard to see if the car is still there. Couldn't see anything. Great. Ray is pulling parts, and I find a bunch of Volvo 240s, so decide to make the most of my time there. Thats when Ray calls and says the car is still there. They're just starting to pull the row out. No way! So I get to work and get the left trailing arm pulled. I have the right most of the way out but they have to move the car. While they moved it, they dragged it around, bent the crap out of not only the backing plate but most importantly the bolt for the sway bar. Ugh. In the end, I prevailed. Add to that, the guy at the window couldn't understand what I was buying so I paid for a hub and a control arm. Out the door for $50. When I got home, I broke them down and here we go.





Cool. Then, I got busy. But, I also ended up talking about exhaust systems with some one and found that SuperSprint makes an entire system for the E12 M535i. Including headers. Neat. Then I got an email from Turner Motorsport saying they were having a sale. Crazy. This stuff showed up 7 weeks later. Oops.









So, I had a huge month coming up where it was going to be non-stop work with some traveling involved too (The Vintage). Targa was coming the first week in June, so this stuff needed to get on the car! I got started the next week.







I love how it looks basically stock. Sounds pretty good too. Honestly, at first I wasn't sure how worthwhile the upgrade was even though everything went together perfectly. The only complaint is that the bracket for the front hanger on the muffler comes straight out instead of going up and out, so I'll have to come up with another option for that. Had a bit of minor fettling to do to the heat shield over the idler arm as well, but I'm impressed.

So, now that the important part is finished (upgrading the perfectly fine stock exhaust), I moved on to the swap of the stub axles and removal of the extra spring perches. I was prepared with new lock rings for the nuts and got to work.







Wow what an improvement!

Time for Targa California. I loaded up with my spare parts, some sparse cleaning supplies, put some film on the headlights, swapped the kidney grille and hit the road. Then I stopped at a rest area.











The M535i performed flawlessly. I was pretty impressed with it by the end. The exhaust also opened up a bit and changed color so pretty excited about that too.

The other thing I decided to do with the car this year was take it to Monterey for Car Week. You may remember that this was the plan in 2016 when I was jamming on it constantly trying to get it done. We then had a bit of a setback about 2 weeks out from the event, which essentially killed all momentum until early 2017. I received an email looking for E12 5-series cars to take part in a special display. I had done so many events already this year that I wasn't sure I could handle another one but I had two thoughts. When are they going to feature the E12 again, and why are they featuring it now? I submitted the M535i for consideration, received an email back saying they'd love to have the car and registered for the event. This was soon followed by an email to all club members saying that they could park together if they registered with an E12. So, so much for being special I guess. Given I have driven the car to Portland, LA and most recently have done a couple thousand miles of driving across the desert and then all around central California, I knew I had my work cut out for me to clean this guy up!

My plan was to start on it August 1st and then do some work eating that elephant up until when I had to leave. Well, turns out scheduling doesn't always work out so I got started late. Plan was to leave Tuesday, August 13. I started cleaning late on Saturday, August 10.





I left late on Tuesday. Original plan was to drive straight through Tuesday and get started bright and early Wed. Didn't work out with various work commitments and I was so far behind. I had nothing ready to go. I found a set of lights to swap in for the trip, put the trip grilles in and headed out.



I spent the night (4 hours or so and a much needed shower) in Corona and met up with a few people in Huntington Beach at 5am Wed. We arrived in Pacific Grove, CA around 12:30. Checked out the Little Car Show and then I came back to OcCoupe's shop and started cleaning again. Then one of my old cars showed up!



It has an S38B36 now and got plenty of coverage through the weekend so I'm sure you will find it somewhere. Anyway, back to me.

I spent the entire day Thursday cleaning the car. I got up at 8 and stopped at 8pm.



It's been a good run, but I had to finally say goodbye to this.







Here we are Friday morning.



Look what I found next to the big ///M:



And happy to announce that the M535i placed first in the M class. The next oldest car was a '99 M Coupe. 9 cars in the class. I got to speak with a couple of the judges and they thought it was far and away the best-prepared of the cars they judged. Of course, I couldn't do it alone. I had plenty of encouragement and facilitation from others. I also want to thank OcCoupe for making some space available for me to do work on the car that would have been very difficult at our rental house.



It took three extra years, but there we go. The trip home went really well. Car drove great. Made it in one shot and got home just in time to go to the post office with the photos to mail. As for what is next, there's a couple minor things here and there I need to look at. Other than that, I'm actually pretty happy with it.

[tig]

Very, very, impressive. Well deserved

I'm curious about how the car had the e24 subframe to start with?

[Bonsaibacker]

Great work. Standards that are second to none.

[vinceg101]

Bravo, sir. Bravo.

[Adam W in MN]

Great story and recap of whats been going on with the car. I remember the e24 rear setup I think in one of your write ups or you told me, but I had forgotten about it and didn't realize you were still working to change all that (and still dealing with rubbing issues). I feel terrible about all the stress and text messaging ive been causing knowing you had that rear end work underway on the car plus the cleaning and detailing prep for Monterey!

Just think back over the years with this car and all the stories and how far it's come; like when it was hit while parked in your own driveway!

[Bonsaibacker]

I spent the night (4 hours or so and a much needed shower) in Corona and met up with a few people in Huntington Beach at 5am Wed. We arrived in Pacific Grove, CA around 12:30. Checked out the Little Car Show and then I came back to OcCoupe's shop and started cleaning again. Then one of my old cars showed up!



It has an S38B36 now and got plenty of coverage through the weekend so I'm sure you will find it somewhere. Anyway, back to me.

Car was featured in the recent video "uncovering the secret BMW collector" for anyone interested in checking it out.

[wkohler]

Very, very, impressive. Well deserved

I'm curious about how the car had the e24 subframe to start with?

Thanks. As for the subframe, no idea. I have no records from the car before my time aside from letters from NHTSA and EPA that the car was legal at the time of importation (I had to source those myself). This car stayed in Europe until 1989, so who knows what has happened. Honestly, going back and looking at the photos of when I got the car, it's kinda tough to tell it's the same car. but really there wasn't a ton on the car that had been messed with. It was just mostly in dilapidated original condition. Now it's in pretty good shape. What I do know though is that if you wanted the vented rear brakes (which this car did have before I took it apart), you had to have the E24 stub axles. No big deal with the original 14" wheels and tires so who knows. Lots of time went by for the car to get into that condition, so my money is on someone changing the trailing arms at a minimum. They have the E24 backing plates (oops, no Pebble Beach for me) so it would have been either a trailing arm swap or the entire subframe as one unit. Really without any supporting documents or first hand knowledge it's anyones guess. Still disappointed I didn't realize what the cause of the issue was before. So much time elapsed from when the car was last driven to being taken apart to being reassembled that I really didn't give it much thought. I guess I was so surprised at the lack of rust and how well everything came apart that I didn't give much thought to the origin of components. Or something.