First car

[Zains28]

Hi my name is zain and I’m 17 yrs old from melb Australia I just bought an 1986 528ias my first car about 2 weeks ago. I don’t have much knowledge on e28s or cars in general the car is pretty much left in all stock parts exept for the m tech steering wheel and I think the wheels itself are off a 7 series. As I’m not even old enough to get my license idm spending money n time to get the car looking shmick and at its best potential(pretty much want a show car) performance and aesthetic wise.

It runs n drives since my dads mate is an auto electrician and helped me out a bit. There are a couple problems that I have found :
-Driver door doesn’t lock
- none of the interior Electrical works ( light, radio,etc)
- Coolant light is on and was leaking
- Oil needs a change
- handbrake is completely broken
- needs a Wheel alignment
- ac doesn’t work at all
- need Rear Brake pads
- Speedometer doesn’t work

Could anyone help me out in giving me a list of mods to start with since I’m not sure we’re to start thanks.

[Mike W.]

Hey Zain, welcome to the group!

I'll try to help out a little bit, but you've got a bit of a laundry list going. First off, search, there isn't much that hasn't been covered.

-Driver door doesn’t lock

I'd guess mechanical, sometimes the end of the lock cylinder in the door breaks off. You'll have to take the door apart and take a look.

- none of the interior Electrical works ( light, radio,etc)

Check fuses. And check them with a meter after pulling them out one by one. The old bullet fuses can crack the fuse link and look good, not blown, but broken and be hard to spot.

- Coolant light is on and was leaking

The coolant level sending unit only lasts so long, they go bad. Might be the problem. If you do change it out, keep the old nut, often the new ones aren't threaded far enough and you have to reuse the old one.

- Oil needs a change

Change it!

- handbrake is completely broken

Might just be way out of adjustment and need to be taken apart, adjusted and put back together properly. But sometimes welding is required.

- needs a Wheel alignment

Take it to a shop.

- ac doesn’t work at all

This might take time. Probably a leak, but might be electrical. Lots of places to leak on a ~40 year old car.

- need Rear Brake pads

Cheap and easy. You'll probably want to do rotors too, they're a consumable.

- Speedometer doesn’t work

This could be several things, search a bit.

[Zains28]

Appreciate it mike.
It’s booked to go in mechanic in about a week and I’ll keep y’all updated on how it goes

[1st 5er]

Welcome to auto ownership and MyE28.com.

A great deal of satisfaction can be had by repairing things yourself. Along with that comes a huge economic gain as well.
Most of the things on your list are quite simple to address with a decent tool set, a bit of patience, and some bandwidth to search here for solutions.

Best wishes getting your stuff sorted out
and look forward to hearing of your successes.

[topher800]

If you do change it out, keep the old nut, often the new ones aren't threaded far enough and you have to reuse the old one.

I would really like to stress the bold part. About anything you do to the vehicle. Keep all old parts, get them back from the mechanic, whatever. You only have to hold on to them long to be happy with the new. But I’ve changed a couple items (e.g. cowling to windshield rubber gasket on an old Willy’s jeep) and the new one was so off the mark, and I didn’t understand that the original tooling had been lost and the new one was totally wrong, but I had left the old with the installer and it was gone by the time I figured out there just were no good replacements anymore.

[stuartinmn]

Be sure to check out the Tech FAQ section here on the board, it lists a number of common issues and how to fix them. viewforum.php?f=9 Also, don't worry too much about making modifications until you get the car baselined. When you do get to the mod/update stage, there's some good information in the FAQ and Tech Help section over on the http://www.m535i.org/main.html website.

The e28 repair manual from Bentley Publishers is a useful thing to have. It's written from the perspective of a US spec car, but for the most part applies to cars built for other countries. It's still available new but you may be able to find a used copy off Amazon or Ebay for less money. http://www.bentleypublishers.com/bmw/re ... anual.html

[Blue Shadow]

I would spend the time and money on making the car a reliable, working, safe daily driver before dumping funds into geting the car looking shmick and at its best potential(pretty much want a show car) performance and aesthetic wise. But you have time and can hopefully do both before you are behind the wheel with your mates egging you on to do something stupid while driving. Hold my beer and watch this comes to mind.

Remove the rear set bottom (one 10mm centrally located bolt below the seat bottom, lift up) and see if there is a sheet of tractor feed paper attached to the driver's side (your model) seat bottom metal frame or on the floor. It has the build code for your car. The SA codes are the options and we can decode them. With the VIN maybe one of the online decoders still works to get that list but many of these stopped working a few years ago. US cars came loaded all the ROW cars were optioned as selected by the buyer, importer or whatever. Be good to know what options you have.

From www.e38.org/e28 a long list of good and bad links on many things BMW:

Door lock, http://www.bimmerboard.com/forums/posts/6271 shows power door lock mechanisms inside the door. The ring on the back of the lock breaks easily and then the lock just rotates with no action.

Speedo out but odo works is speedometer gears.

Rear pads is not hard work, time to learn to do it since it is a good way to save half the cost of letting a shop do it. On the rear, rotors just need to be a good thickness and not have a thick lip on the edge to be able to be reused, but rotors are generally changed every second set of pads.

Find the Manual and do the Oil Change Service, Inspection I service and Inspection II service, change brake fluid and coolant and you will have reset the maintenance clock to zero and can know the car is properly maintained.

Lubricate the hood hinges driver's side (for you) is NLA and goes bad quick. Lubricate all sorts of other parts.

Let us know when you get all that done and we'll post up another list. But we need a list of what you want to do to the car, too.

[nostalgia5386]

Welcome Zain! I have been viewing the site for about two years and just haven't had time to post. I purchased a '87 535i 5-speed during the pandemic and have brought it back to life. I feel like they are never done, but I now have mine to the point I am using it as my daily driver. While old cars have a few quirks I really enjoy driving it every day and talking to people about it. There just aren't that many E28s on the road anymore so I get a lot of comments on mine.

I just flushed my diff fluid and changed the dogbones (rear pitman arms). My current list of projects I am working on is:

Water pump- ordered a Graf from ECS and will be my next project once it arrives
Leaking Powersteering - ordered a gasket kit from ECS and plan to dig into that in the next couple weeks
Rear subframe and rear sway bar bushings - just ordered PowerFlex bushings and hope the get them on soon
Brake Bomb - just arrived from FC Euro (guess not many vendors hip them) and will be attacking it over the next couple weeks

I have one issue that I can't figure out. My suspension makes a lot of noise ONLY in the rain. It it quiet when the weather is nice, but all sorts of knocks when I drive in the rain. Any ideas on where to start with this?

Appreciate any insights you all may have and excited to participate more on the site. I love my E28 and can tell the people on this site feel the same way.

[Shawn D.]

Welcome! Please read and heed the Forum and Tech FAQ sections!

I have one issue that I can't figure out. My suspension makes a lot of noise ONLY in the rain. It it quiet when the weather is nice, but all sorts of knocks when I drive in the rain. Any ideas on where to start with this?

Appreciate any insights you all may have and excited to participate more on the site. I love my E28 and can tell the people on this site feel the same way.

I strongly suggest making a separate post in the Tech section about this.

[Zains28]

2 days ago the car was running n driving. In the morning I was going to drive it to an auto electricians house so he could do some work on it. The car wouldn’t go into drive this is probably a problem with the transmission. Could anyone tell me if this would be a “BIG” thing?

[Mike W.]

2 days ago the car was running n driving. In the morning I was going to drive it to an auto electricians house so he could do some work on it. The car wouldn’t go into drive this is probably a problem with the transmission. Could anyone tell me if this would be a “BIG” thing?

That depends. Does the shift lever either move not at all, or like it's not connected to anything? Probably not a big deal. If it moves, feels like you're doing something to the tranny, but nothing is happening, or reverse only, that's not a good sign. Both statements are "probably", far from a sure thing.

[Zains28]

So the lever moves n all but it just doesn’t click into reverse or drive only neutral n park and sometimes 1or 2

[Aldo525]

So the lever moves n all but it just doesn’t click into reverse or drive only neutral n park and sometimes 1or 2

As Mike said, could be a bad sign but maybe could be a clogged filter or low oil level....check that, change the oil and filter first.

[gadget73]

Check the fluid level. Autos won't engage if its too low, or sometimes they are really slow about it.

also from my own experience with changing nasty fluid in a 4HP22, don't just drain and fill it. I tried that because I forgot to order a filter. It stirred up a bunch of gunk in the pan and clogged the governor up. Not a major deal to fix, but annoying. Not a hard job to do fluid and filter on these, its got a drain so it doesn't make a huge mess. Do not over-torque the bolts, they aren't real big and it goes into aluminum. Not hard to either strip out the aluminum or snap the bolts.