jeffbebe

Haha! Don't I know it. Leaning towards incremental performance upgrades which was my original plan. Much as I would love to (and still hope to) supercharge the 540i, it's probably too big a risk at this stage since I've only had the car for a couple of months and really need to find out how stable the engine is and do any remedial stuff that needs doing before boosting it by 140bhp!The purpose of the car was always to be a weekender with very occasional track use so I'm still going to upgrade, but incrementally means A) it's more affordable B ) will place less stress on the engine so that by the time I can supercharge I'll be confident in the engine's stability. It'll also give me time to improve the exhaust system, brakes, etc before the s/c goes in. That said, there's a little devilish voice telling me "f*ck the money, your family won't starve, and the supercharger will be SO MUCH FUN!!!!" haha

I've had no problems on my macbook by doing this: http://www.bimmersport.co.nz/forums/index....st&p=489526 Pretty sure there's a zoom or font size function in Windows that will have the same effect.

It's turned out to be quite an interesting social experiment!

Give or take and not including normal maintenance. Car was just over $8K. I've spent a couple of hundred on body and paintwork. $500 on parts for vanos, valve cover, timing chain guides, etc and expect another $1Kish on labour to do it. Leaves around $5K for the s/c and install + pads and rotors. It's tight but doable but even if I go over, I'm not likely to go $10K over which is what an M5 would cost at least. If I don't take the offer now though, I might struggle to get close to budget!!However, I wasn't budgeting to spend it all at once! Yeah, very good point... But I just love E39s! Hear hear.

Should be able to improve performance by a few horses and fuel economy with a good tune without upgrading other parts. Whether it's worth it is entirely up to you. Would imagine that a remap by a reputable tuner will cost around a grand.

Looks great! Think I'll do that with my bumper trim.... Eventually!

You clearly haven't read The Davinci Code then. sh*t cover, sh*t book.

Brilliant!

Hope that's a bit of mist in the first pic not smoke coming from the engine.

Manufacturing fault on the original that become obvious at 10,000miles (a rattle) - think it was replaced rather than rebuilt. This one is but VF make superchargers for other E39 engines but IMO not worth it for anything other than M62. S/C for a 530 is US$5K plus shipping and installation. For a lot less money you could buy upgrade to a 540 and get similar output. I'm only considering because the jump from a 540 to an M5 is still a lot more than the cost of the V8 S/C. Makes good sense. Yes, I did sell the 528 to reduce debt. I work for myself and work had been down. Things have really picked up so our situation is infinitely improved (though the S/C is still a risk). I've got a 3 year mechanical warranty so no problems if the M62 blows up prior to installing the S/C - though it would be a major bummer afterwards as the warranty will be void once I install, hence why I want to bulletproof the engine first. I don't really think it's a good idea... I think it's a fun idea!! Sell me one for less than $15K which is what I'm budgeting for my car project (including the price of the car). Yep, fair point and exactly why I'm sitting on the fence.

Don't need a regular car as I work 2 mins from home and the wife's got an ultra reliable Mazda 6 wagon. It's a weekender that I intend to make faster than a stock M5, for less than I could buy (and restore) a stock M5. I bet it would! If I decide to pass I'll put you in touch with the seller (or buy it and sell to you with a small 'finders fee'!!) That could work... If I didn't need my testicles any more.

Have been offered an extremely good deal (basically $3.5K cheaper than buying a new one including shipping) on a VF supercharger kit with less than 25,000 miles on it and a reconditioned blower: Trouble is a good deal's still a big chunk of change and will mean a fair few sacrifices for the rest of the year and will almost certainly mean I can't afford to install it for a really long time while I get engine and brakes to a state where I'm (and people that know what they're doing are) confident they'll cope with the extra power. So, what do I do... Bite the bullet? Or keep chipping away at the remedial and prep work to get the car ready for the S/C and then hope I can find a good deal when I get there? (PS I should add that I'm sh*t at waiting for things but my bank manager doesn't always love me for it!).

As Phil pointed out it's been for sale on and off on TM at the same price for quite a while and, in fact, I remember when it was on by the previous owner also for around $30K. The market determines the value of a used car and the market hasn't gone for this one.It's not the kind of car you'd spend a couple of grand patching up so it runs, you'd want to properly restore it and having done that on an E39 528 and started a second E39, I can tell you it's not cheap. With M5 parts being considerably dearer than standard models you'd be looking at $10-20K, depending on the condition of the engine, I reckon. Less if you can do all the work yourself, of course, but parts are still going to be seriously expensive.

I think a mate of mine just did a trans flush for an E34 540. If he did, will find out what he put in.

Yep, so the market has decided it's probably not worth the punt at $30K. Great car but huge potential for becoming a $40-50K car very quickly at that price.

A bit... Ray reckons 10-12 hours and they've done similar vanos overhauls before. Think the V8 would be an unwise job to tackle for the home mechanic!

'Lifetime' in BMW speak is about 3-5 years! That's how long rich folk will own it before flicking it on and buying a new one!!

Hey Ray, I'm interested in this. There's a hole in one of the cats on my 540 so I've been debating what to do. Was planning to save for an exhaust system overhaul - headers, high flow cats and muffler - but if a cat delete isn't a massive pain with the o2 sensors I might do that as the high flow cats are muchos expensive! Will drop by and see you in the next week or so.

Easy then!

He's excellent, very thorough so it might take a little while but worth the wait. Plus he's reasonably priced. Not a small job and to completely overhaul. You need all sorts of special tools to lock the timing chains in order to replace the seals (yours is dual Vanos right?). I wouldn't do it lightly and a lot of very good mechanics would not recommend doing it unless something was pretty seriously (and obviously) wrong with it. I'm doing it because I'm planning to supercharge and the engine needs to be pretty bulletproof before I even consider it.... Baby steps!You can check out the procedue here for your car (just so you know how much work this entails!): http://www.beisansystems.com/procedures/vanos_procedure.htm Thanks. It was on my old car. Pretty certain it's just an aftermarket ACS rep. You can get them on eBay for about $150 painted and shipped (though I'd probably get it painted locally with a white car to ensure the match is perfect).

Ha! Your money's the same colour as mine and I reckon that's probably all they're really worried about!! Admittedly I've not ordered anything from them that is particularly fragile yet!!

Ta very much! Thanks, you're not wrong! I usually leave it parked up in my office car park but needed it early this morning so took it home... And the f*cking starlings that live in our roof eaves shat all over the bonnet! Ggggrrr.Got a couple of packages in the post that made it okay though. The rest of the gaskets and pieces for Vanos and timing guides overhaul from Schmiedmann plus a secondhand airbag module to replace my intermittently faulty one. Got it $40 from eBay... Way better than the $600+ a new one locally would cost! Now just got to find the time to take it up to Ray for recoding to my VIN and save up for the labour to overhaul Vanos as that's a job I definitely can't do myself!

The rest of my Schmiedmann order arrived today except one $4 o-ring which they couldn't get. Sorry, Tom, but it was all well packaged and arrived safely.

I just love the luxuriousness of pleather. All the looks of real leather but the 'wipe-clean' benefits of vinyl.... MMMmmmmn.

This is a really excellent way to promote for your business.