Deciphering What I Want vs What I Think I Want - e39 540

For a number of years, I had a good equation going, SUV to handle camping, skiing, climbing, etc, and a fun car to have a laugh in and autocross every now and again.

Last year I berkeleyed this up by selling my fantastic gx470 for a 1st gen sprinter. This was what I actually wanted and a fun story. The seller agreed to drive the van from his home in northern VT to my folks in Massachusetts, everyone got along, and the van was as described. A few weeks later another stranger from VT came down to my folks place to drop off a motorcycle that would be hitting a ride to CO to be delivered to his son. This also worked out well for everyone, his son even had a sprinter build that he showed me around when I dropped off the bike. While I had intended to fly out and drive the van back, my mother decided she needed to get to a quilt store in Missouri and my Dad wanted a road trip. Miraculously the van had no trouble driving out to me in Denver and they had a blast. Win win.

This left me with a 15-year-old van camper conversions project and a NB miata. I know some of y'all daily miatas, but I'm terrified of Colorado drivers in the snow, rain, and I guess dry. Always. They're the worst. I've been rear-ended in the miata sitting at a red light. This combined with how expensive hardtops are forced out the miata so I could get what I thought wanted, a race car! Errr an r53 with racetechs, wildwood 6 spots, some suspension bits, and other go fast parts. It's brilliant fun, and it's not un-dailyable, but the reality of time spent hooning the car vs driving to a trailhead, sitting in traffic, listening to my wife being unhappy about the seats, etc. doesn't add up perfectly. I seriously overestimated how much I would drive the van for not-overnight trips. It also feels wrong to bring the car closer to stock.

Getting to the point now, Golfduke's 2003 540i. I saw his ad and immediately thought of my Dad, who had driven one of these ages ago, and now uses it as a benchmark for all other cars. He was vaguely interested but waffled on storage and ultimately passed. At this point I couldn't get the car out of my head, and my wife was not as upset with my car ADD as I thought she might be. She has made it clear that if I get and keep another car we get another dog, but that seems fair. Golfduke was accommodating, and my folks were happy to go get another car on my behalf, so history repeats itself and I've bought another vehicle on the rust coast without ever seeing it.

Colorado offers 3 month tags and 90 days to register a vehicle after purchase, so the clock is ticking, but not very fast. I've been lurking on GRM long enough to know I'm supposed to start a thread before actually getting the car, though. And a boring thread I expect this to be. I want to put the car on coilovers and rip off the exhaust and slap on an lsd to do smokier burnouts while blasting Wait Wait Don't Tell Me, but I'm going to try not to do most of what I think I want. Hopefully, that will leave me with what I actually want from a car... And a very boring thread where I document how reliable 20 year old BMWs are. Ha!

Out with the old, probably


In with the older. Whenever I can go get it.

Another Colorado guy, welcome!  I'm a little surprised you think drivers here are worse than in Massachusetts, I have the opposite feeling.  MA drivers are crazy. 

My friend's business in Castle Rock does Sprinter conversions, Cave Van.

MA drivers are crazy, but I feel as though they are predictably crazy. It's a mixed bag out here. I'm guessing you don't experience the pleasure of ski traffic? I've also had the joy of a previous commute on i25 which seemed to involve an accident and the included traffic every. single. day. 

Cave Van does some neat stuff. Fortunately, the van is as done as it needs to be to use. I'll to keep chipping away at it but my work seems to be acceptable for now. Ignore her, it's heated, this is just the way she operates...

Quilt store in Missouri - that would probably be Missouri Star. I know far too much about quilt shops.

I've never found CO drivers to be particularly crazy. The closer you get to the ocean, the more aggressive the drivers get. Except for CA, where they're mostly on their cellphones. I find CO far more relaxing to drive in, even in the Denver area. Ski traffic is just clogged up, nobody has room to do anything :)

Cool van. I like the insulated windows.

Let's see, Mini, Miata, campervan, E39, Colorado...hang on a second.

HEY, I know that car!!!

It looks great, happy to see your dad cleaned it up.  I felt so bad, living on a mile of dirt road plus it being mud season AND pouring rain, no amount of prep could have made that car clean...

I hope you enjoy it as I have.  It was a lovely car for me, I just want a really meaty project to dive into, which this car is assuredly not. 

Keith Tanner said:

Let's see, Mini, Miata, campervan, E39, Colorado...hang on a second.

Must be something in the water in CO...

Glad the car stayed within the forum. 

I was at the junkyard this past weekend and saw one that had the rear qtr curtains intact. Tried to pried them off to send to golfduke as I remembered seeing a picture with them missing. I failed, I tried as hard as I could but could not figure out how to remove them and did not want to break them just in case. 

If they are not present let me know and I will try again. 

In reply to mikeonabikesmith :

I go skiing quite a bit, head up Thursday afternoon and come back down Saturday afternoon.  My work commute is on I25 Monday-Thursday.  CO drivers have nothing on MA drivers, who ignore red lights, drive on the shoulder, make insane passes, etc, etc, etc

Slippery said:

Glad the car stayed within the forum. 

I was at the junkyard this past weekend and saw one that had the rear qtr curtains intact. Tried to pried them off to send to golfduke as I remembered seeing a picture with them missing. I failed, I tried as hard as I could but could not figure out how to remove them and did not want to break them just in case. 

If they are not present let me know and I will try again. 

Thanks for the offer! Not sure what's what yet and don't want to pester my folks too much, though I think they're having some fun with this. Enough fun to drive the car to Chicago for a quick vacation. I'll drive the remaining 15 hours to CO solo. Left on my own I'd have a full set of tools and a parts car worth of spares, this is probably better but still slightly nerve-racking. Surely, it can't be worse than the drive they did in an old diesel van that nobody works on.... Just a couple weekends to go before I find out

Fair enough docwyte, it's been almost a decade since I was in MA and even longer since I lived near the city. The Fri/Sat weekend is the dream.

FWIW, I found the trim panels locally and they are installed, and no longer missing! 

golfduke said:

FWIW, I found the trim panels locally and they are installed, and no longer missing! 

Well, the car is great so far. Find a problem, and it resolves itself! I even found enough cash laying in the UPS parking lot to cover temp tag & shipping fees to get those tags back to MA.

The plan now is to meet my folks in Chicago next weekend for a quick visit and car handoff. They get a road trip, I get to cut the drive in half. Feels like a win win, though, I was sort of hoping my Dad would have a bit of fun in the car before sending it my way. Oh well. 

I told myself I wouldn't order any parts before actually getting my hands on the car but some basic maintenance items seems fine. Thinking:

• Everything to rebuild the shifter (+ install e60 shifter, thank you Golfduke)
• New, slightly stiffer trans mounts as a why not while I'm down there
• Fuel filter
• All air filters
• Plugs
• Strong maybe on engine mounts based on a comment from my brother who has owned an e39 and driven this one
• Bike rack(s). I've been a hitch mount guy for a while now and will probably splurge on at least one new roof tray as I can't find any evidence of folks successfully running a hitch + rack on these and I don't really want to guinea pig it if there's another easy solution. I do wonder how much worse efficiency I'll get with bike(s) on top vs on the back, which is a stupid thought from a guy who just bought a 20 year old v8

I believe Golfduke did a bunch of maintenance during his ownership so I'll probably push diff and transmission fluid a bit longer. Future plans I hope will be limited to cosmetic items, suspension bushings and dampers as needed, and perhaps something to make the engine sing a bit louder. I'm putting it in writing here. I will not lower this car. Probably.

Shaping up to be a boring thread (fingers crossed). More to come next weekend

I'll put my list of uncompleted projects that I intended to tackle if/when I get to it- 

- Short shifter

- Remove the clutch delay valve and rebleed

- Remove the stock resonator

- Fix the passenger seat twist

I'm not a betting man, but when you actually, physically see and drive the car, I'm 99% sure you're not gonna want to lower it.  It's already pretty damn low, haha.  It has a great stance as it sits IMHO, and the car is much much smaller in person than it is in pics.  Also the reason why roof rack on this car was a no-brainer-  It's not hard to remove/replace bikes on a roofline that's chest high.   But again, you're the owner and you can make those decisions for yourself!  

Good luck next weekend!!! 

E39s are a really handy size. Large enough for four grown humans, but not swollen.

In reply to Keith Tanner :

Agreed.  It's Goldilocks for me in terms of sizing.  Bigger than the E46 3 series and before the model bloat of the rest of the BMW sedans... 

In reply to golfduke :

Fantastic size, wild to me that these are smaller than a modern accord coupe. I had been casually watching for an e91, and was surprised to see how relatively similar the two dimensions are. Though I must admit it feels bigger inside than I remember, not in a bad way.

But that also means I've been in the car, which means no problem getting it out to Chicago. I'm hyped on it, enough little things to do to keep me busy (a good thing) but it looks and feels good. Not sure how I got it in my head that suspension would be worn to 90s Buick levels of slop. Assume the worst I guess. Feels like exactly what I was looking for in the brief driving I've done. My leg of the trip starts this morning. 

Parked up in front of the Frank Loyd Wright house

Looking great.

Might be worth removing the roof rack and putting it in the trunk for the trip. The BMW one on my e46 gets loud at highway speeds, it comes off quite easily.

Slippery said:

Looking great.

Might be worth removing the roof rack and putting it in the trunk for the trip. The BMW one on my e46 gets loud at highway speeds, it comes off quite easily.

That'd be totally easy if the previous owner wasnt a jerk and lost the keys for them... haha. 

In reply to golfduke :

If its a BMW rack it was made by Thule. You can get replacement keys. There should be a number on the cylinder. 

Slippery said:

In reply to golfduke :

If its a BMW rack it was made by Thule. You can get replacement keys. There should be a number on the cylinder. 

they're off-brand (Good off-brand though!  Nordrive), but I'm sure you can get them... I just don't have them right now for this exact trip, haha.  And where the new owner is a fellow bike/ski enthusiast, I think he wants them on more than off, so it isn't an urgently pressing need. 

In reply to golfduke :

Affirmative, I was pleasantly surprised with how little noise the racks made but a wind fairing is probably the more immediate solution. I actually wouldn't be surprised if the cross bars are identical to the Thule stuff, I may put this to the test as I have some aero bars hanging around that may fit. Keys for the feet are numbered so I expect getting a replacement key isn't a biggie. 
I'm still curious how much the racks might impact mileage. I don't think I broke 23 for my leg of the trip, but the car doesn't exactly encourage one to drive slow. Pretty impressive winds wouldn't have helped the situation either. 
In any case the car was really rather drama free, a couple scares with the ignition not wanting to cooperate (not really a surprise and always solved with some patient jiggling) and headlights that maybe broke themselves but seemingly fixed themselves as well. The to-do list remains largely the same but I have got to thinking if I'm going to replace (currently cracked) the rear bumper, I may want to just vinyl wrap the whole thing instead. Saves me paying for paint and trying to polish the rest. I dealt with vinyl a bit in a previous role and while I wasn't ever responsible for full wraps I at least have a head start on dealing with the stuff. We didn't do this wrap, but the car passed through our shop and I remember the matt/satin white looking pretty cool without being in-your-face

mikeonabikesmith said:

I'm still curious how much the racks might impact mileage. I don't think I broke 23 for my leg of the trip, but the car doesn't exactly encourage one to drive slow. Pretty impressive winds wouldn't have helped the situation either. 

I got almost 30 mpg out of my 540/6 driving through Texas at about 70, got bored with how long it was taking to get anywhere and settled for 26ish at a fair bit quicker so I think you'd probably pick up a couple of mpg without the racks 

In reply to mikeonabikesmith :

Glad to hear it went mostly well!  the ignition thing happened a few times to me, but yes- patient jiggling was all that was necessary.  

Excited to see what you do to this. 

With the wife out of town last weekend and the new car in the garage I thought I would probably make some progress. Instead, I went skiing and fell in love with the car, it very much fits the bill for that task. TBD on wintertime, maybe studied snows are the answer. Or an LSD...
On that note, the mini went to its new home early this week, which was a sad moment for me. Don't think I'll be able to find another like it if I ever have the space to own another. In any case, the buyer did not want the snows. A quick look to see just how small those tires would be on the e39 really ruined me. I've never been a big wheel guy but these do it for me and holy E36 M3 am I into this. Adapters to make them fit seems like a no go, and finding a set in the right bolt pattern is equally unlikely, but I can't unsee it.

On a more productive note I did find time to un-twist the passenger seat. There's still plenty of trim to track down but it's looking better inside. And, I have interior lights! Knowing the interior lock button wasn't working I expected to replace the GM III. What I didn't realize is that this module could also impact keyless entry and interior lights. Multiple birds, one stone I guess. Pulled this out, resisted the urge to throw it, and found a matching number unit on ebay.

 

Really quick to unplug the old and plug in the also old but less broken unit. This seems to have solved all my problems except that the alarm now likes to go off when I use that keyless entry feature I was so excited about. Or unlock the car with the keys... So I pulled the fuse labeled alarm, and the alarm continued to go off. It eventually stopped and hasn't returned but that whole keyless entry thing was short-lived as it doesn't seem to function sans that fuse. This in combination with drilling out the steering wheel lock should reduce security to where at least I can drive it. Fun fact, Denver/Lakewood is the 1st to 3rd worst city for vehicle theft depending on who you ask. I street parked my miata for years, unlocked, and only one paste-eating pinecone of a human tried to steal it. This seems fine.

Next on the docket will be getting the wipers to return all the way to the bottom of the windshield when they're off. This for some reason is driving me crazy. + a million other small things including understanding an uneven idle on cold starts. This is shaping up to be a very boring thread indeed, a good thing for me

Those Compos really do look good!

In reply to mikeonabikesmith :

Nice work thus far!  Re: the alarm-  You can still lock the doors, just don't go to the second detent on the key turn.  There's a subtle stop that locks the doors before you go too far into 'this alarm will sound precisely as soon as you're too far to quickly disable it' mode. 

Sorry, I honestly forgot it did that.  Muscle memory of never getting to that point combined with living in rural america had me either never locking the doors, or just going to the first position... 

Wierd about uneven idle...?  Never had that one happen to me.  Hope its something equally as dumb as swapping out a module like the lights and door lock...

Very happy that you're falling in love with it!