TonySparks

Thanks for all the great feedback, I will be down in the garage tonight having a closer look. I did find this post on www.m535i.org. "You can install the US ECU in a Euro car. The only problem is if you have the Euro car with the 218 bhp motor, there is no O2 sensor. The US ECU takes readings from the O2 sensor in the exhaust to calculate how rich or lean the car is running at that time and then modifies how much fuel is entering the motor. The Euro ECU does not have this input. Therefore when you stick the US ECU into a Euro car, there will be no O2 sensor reading. The car will run on the US ECU without an O2 sensor, but the chip in the US ECU is programmed so that if the O2 sensor fails or is disconnected, or not connected at all, the car will run at full rich. This will foul your plugs and also give you poor emissions." I am guessing that if the M535i did come from a car with a cat converter, this may be contributing to the problem.

Nope, I didn't go for the seats. I couldn't get my head around red leather seats in a car with blue and black trim, just seemed a little to porno for me. The seats in the car look like Motorsport originals, I don't think the red ones came from the donor car.

Hi all, just to keep you up to date, this M535i powered E28 has now taken up residence in the East Coast Bays, Auckland. We won the TradeMe auction with a single bid of $2,800. My son and I jumped on the Intercity coach 7:45am, Saturday morning and headed down to Hastings. By 4:00pm we had taken delivery and were driving back to Auckland. With a one hour stop in Taupo we were back on the Shore by 10pm. What a fantastic drive to get to know the M535i, left a huge :-) on our faces. The car went great other than a strange problem which I am hoping that someone on this forum may be able to advise on. My son was driving and as we hit Cambridge we noticed that the car was running a little rough. The engine had been smooth until then. When we drew up to the traffic lights in Cambridge, the engine cut out. We restarted; it ran rough and died again. The only way we could continue was by keeping the revs up. Once moving at a decent pace, the car ran well, from here we avoided using 5th and found the car moved well between 100-110km/h in 4th at 3500rpm. When we got to Hamilton, the problem seemed to have cleared up. The car was running smoothly and idling easily at the traffic lights. The problem stayed away until we crossed the Harbour Bridge and were approaching the Upper Harbour Highway off-ramp. We were suddenly running rough again and when we stopped at the lights on Constellation drive, the car wouldn't idle and would die if we didn't keep the revs up. We got home, introduced the E28 to its E30 stable mate and tucked it into bed. Today we got the air filter out (looks like genuine BMW) and knocked all the dust out. I also got the plugs out. They were the recommended NGK items but were pretty black and fouled (not oily, just black soot). After a quick clean they were replaced and we took the beasty for a spin. We drove around the shore for 30min, stop start and a quick blast down the motorway. We had one cut out at a traffic light on East Coast road so I am not convinced we have sorted the problem. The car is running smoothly again but I am wondering about the root cause of the problem. I did a bit more investigating as I was worried about the M535i power plant grafted into the 528i body. What I have found is the following. The base car is NZ new and when I ran the VIN I found that it wasn't equipped with catalytic converters. I don't know anything about the car that the M535i motor and ECU was extracted from. I do know that there are two versions of the M535i engine, a low compression 182bhp designed to be used with catalytic converter (all US models, some euro models and all AU models) and the high compression 218bhp designed to be used without a catalytic converter (some euro models and all South African models). I don't know which engine\ECU combo is installed in this E28 and I don't know how to identify which it is either. I had a look at the ECU and it's a Bosch 0 261 200 059 (1 705 619.9) with the number 965 circled. Does this tell me anything? What should I expect if this is a low comp unit installed into a car which doesn't have cat converter? What makes the engine low comp, is this controlled by the ECU or components within the engine itself? I do apologise for the heap of really dumb questions, I am a total n00b when it comes to this stuff. We would be really grateful if anyone could offer advice. We had the car down at Murray's Bay beach today, pic attached. Hope to see you all on the road sometime. Cheers Tony

Hi there, is the boot spoiler still available, cheers, Tony.