Kees

Yeah with 400nm and 286hp it still gets up and moves, although I got absolutely obliterated by a Mercedes EQC the other day, and an F10 550i overtook me like my car was standing still 😂

It’s not been 9 months with my E34 540i, so I thought since its lock down and what not, its time for an update. In the last 3 months I haven’t done a heap. I had predominately just been going out and enjoying the car, as well as going to a bunch of car meets to put some decent kms on her. In the 9 months I’ve had the car, I have put around 5000km on it, which I think is rather impressive given that it’s a third car, gets stored at a place that is 20 minutes from my house, so I actually have to plan when I take the car out. Things done in the last three months: I managed to source a new resistor sword for the blower motor meaning I now have control over my fan speed, and it isn’t simply just full blast or nothing, which is rather nice. I also did a few cosmetic things like replace the badges, re-glue the rear door cards, polishing paint, deal with paint transfer and further source the bits required to complete my tool kit (if anyone has a spare screwdriver or tow hook let me know lol) In July it was also the much-dreaded WOF time. Seeing as it had failed on a couple things last time, I had a quiet confidence it might pass first time or fail on a couple easy things, especially since the place I was taking it was hardly VTNZ. SPOILER ALERT: It failed on 4 things that were neither easy nor cheap to rectify. My car failed on: - Rusty Tow Bar - Play in the right front wheel (lower control arm related) - Play in the left front wheel - Power Steering Leak. The easiest to deal with was the tow bar as I could do it myself. I dropped the rear bumper and removed the tow bar which had rather shockingly completely rusted away (after a lot of swearing and what felt like many litres of WD40 due to the 20-year-old seized and cross threaded bolts). I then sent the car to my mechanic who is known to be a legendary BMW mechanic, especially with E34s. Power steering leak was luckily just a hose clip. The play in the right wheel just required adjustment of the lower control arm. However, the play in the left front wheel required the replacement of a rod connected to the steering box, which of course was not cheap. But hey, it's only money, right? My car also developed a pressure related coolant leak in June. In typical BMW fashion it was leaking in two places which meant it required the replacement of the heater control valve, and an octopus looking pipe which had a pin sized hole in it which is connected to the control valve. Once again my mechanic was superb as he had good used parts available in his workshop. With the heater control valve replaced, my car now doesn’t blast hot air at your feet when you turn the AC on which is also another bonus. I now [almost] have functioning climate controls which do what you want… what a luxury!! Next on the list is to get my replacement sunroof painted body colour, as its starting to really annoy me. I also want to get a nice stainless muffler to replace the stock one to make the V8 sound like a V8. Included are some before and after photos from the day I picked the car up compared with how it is looking now. Also included is the difference between the good resistor sword and the bad one, and a photo showing how badly corroded the tow bar was. She is looking quite a lot better I reckon.

Bimmer.Work seems to work for me. Mdecoder used to work for me but when I created my registry of NZ 540s I used it so many times it thinks I am a commercial entity so no longer works 😅

She's got the BellSouth Aerial and the obligatory holes in the console where the brick would have been mounted! And.... 10 Stacker in the boot!! You nailed it lol I keep an old 90s Motorola in the car just to emulate the baller-ness the original owner would have experienced. Car would have been about ~270K accounting for inflation in today's money but when you were earning 1 million USD in 94' a 540 would have been pocket change to swing.

Yeah I was very lucky to find out the amount I did considering how old the car is! The second owner told me that apparently BMW thought that the gearbox (it would be a ZF box right?) once made only needed very minimal servicing and consequently did minimal servicing to it causing it to seize (no fluid changes or anything). The car had always been serviced with BMW so I think BMW paid for majority if not completely covered the cost of the new gearbox.

Ever since I got my E34 540i back in November 2020, I had a strange feeling it would have an interesting history. Something about having factory parking sensors….in 1994 screamed that the original owner had some money. I always thought it would be interesting to try and retrace at least part of the car’s history, seeing as it has done over 370,000km. The only clue I had of prior owners was I could see on a report that the car had been registered under a company in 1997. I found the director of the company and googled his name. Up popped some old news articles from 2006 detailing he owned some prestigious racehorses and was even a New Zealand actor back in the 70s. Seeing as he appeared to be the third owner, things started to get interesting. I managed to get in contact with him, and actually went and saw him to ask him some questions about the car. He was more than happy to have a chat but didn’t seem overly enthused about the car which was a bit disheartening. He did manage to remember the name of the second owner, “he was a merchant banker from Remuera”, which was very impressive seeing as he had bought the 540 24 years prior. I googled the second owner’s name and immediately I had a plethora of information and a publicly listed contact number. I decided to give him a call on a Sunday and to my surprise he answered. He was happy to hear the car was still around and owned by an enthusiast. He was also keen to see the car again, seeing as it had been around 20 years since he had last seen it. We then scheduled a time to meet and about 3 weeks later I took the car out to Remuera to show it to him. What he had to say about the car was very interesting. He knew the first owner, who happened to be New Zealand’s highest paid salary earner back in 1994! He said the car was bought brand new from the BMW dealer in New Market and was the highest specified 540i available in New Zealand at the time. He bought the car from the first owner in 1997, but sold it soon after to the third owner, only to buy it back in the late 90s and then sold it to the people I bought it off in the early 2000s (who also happened to be a famous architect). This meant my car had always transacted privately and has stayed in Auckland its whole life. I am only the fifth owner which is somewhat impressive for a 27 year old car. The second owner also had a nice collection of vehicles such as an old Daimler and an F10 M5, and exclaimed that the paint on the 540 still looked pretty good considering its very high mileage, which he attributed to his passion for detailing. He then began to recount some interesting things that had happened to the car under his ownership: The car was always looked over by a friend of his, who also happened to be one of Bruce McLaren’s mechanics. While on Holiday in Rotorua, the gearbox locked up and it had to be pushed by a bunch of people up an incline out of the motel driveway. It then got driven home in third gear as that was the only gear that worked. The car ended up having to get a new gearbox at 70,000km, which he was understandably unimpressed about. Another time he recalls being stuck behind a truck with the car fully loaded for the weekend, so when a nice opportunity arose for an overtake, he gave it the boot to wind up the V8. About half way through the overtake the car decided to blow a coolant hose, spraying steam and coolant all over the windscreen, completely obscuring his view, leaving him no choice but to conclude the overtake with no vision and then immediately pull over to sort the mishap. After hearing all the stories about my car, it’s made me fall in love with it even more.

Haha definitely wouldn't burn up the new tyres 😂 Whats funny is one time I was at that spot taking photos and a random guy with an E30 saw the E34 and just started doing doughnuts in the middle of the road lol

Not sure how many people will see this, but back in November I made the wise decision to buy a high mileage V8 E34. At only 18 years old not only were the future fuel costs daunting, but so too was the project I had undertaken. I assumed that buying the car would force me to become more mechanically minded and try to do things to the car myself. My other car which I have had for a few years is a 2009 Peugeot 207 GTI which I have tried to keep fairly tidy and have never had the confidence to do anything major to it, always opting for the easy option of taking it to my mechanic. When I got the 540 however, my confidence to try fix things myself grew. The car was in a bit of a state when I got it. It had heavily oxidised paint, a completely rusted out sunroof, quite a bad looking patch of rust where the little piece of plastic trim behind the rear door goes, and was generally filthy. Of course there were many small broken and cracked pieces of trim on the interior and exterior, but nothing too major. Because the car had some significant flaws, I had confidence to do things to it because I knew that anything I did, successful or not would not greatly impact the state of the car. I started by polishing off the oxidised paint. If the paint came off, who cares, it already looked terrible. What this mentality resulted in was me achieving some stuff that I never expected I could do with such little experience. I am pretty happy with how the car currently is. I still need to get my sunroof resprayed as well as sort out the piece of plastic bumper trim on the back of my car, and source a driver's arm rest or get my current one reupholstered. I have slowly been addressing bits of the interior, replacing things like the dome light housing, shifter roller etc. By far my favourite thing so far has been the new wheels! The car had its factory BBS basket weave wheels, and while they look nice when they are spotlessly clean, being only 15 inches in diameter made them look a bit out of proportion with my car. They were wrapped in Michelin tyres that were quite old and were beginning to dry rot - something that was especially noticeable when going around round-abouts where squeels from the tyres sounded as though you were doing double the speed limit, when in fact you were barely touching 20km/h. I had always wanted to have throwing stars on the car, but never thought I would find a set, and thought I might have to settle for some vaguely similar replica wheels. However, thanks to Facebook MarketPlace and my procrastination of University Lectures, I came across a square set of throwing stars and I just had to have them. They are 17 inch in diameter and I think they propertion the car much better as well as fill the arches and provide the sporty look a 540 deserves. I needed new tyres anyway so I might as well have just gone all out right? Now I have gorgeous throwing stars wrapped in pirellis and it has made quite the difference to the car. The lower side-wall means you definitely feel bumps more, however the wider tyres and fresh rubber mean the car feels significantly more planted on the road than before. Of course with any old BMW, I have fallen in love and now it controls my wallet. Of course I've blown any kind of mental budget by ignorant past self set when I first got the car, but oh well who cares. Anyway, I am writing this instead of doing my philosophy assignment (philosophy is my general education course and I'm not a fan especially with the anti car ideology that swirls around in class) lol so I should leave it there. Here are some before and after photos of the car. Not sure what order they will be in but hopefully you can tell which photos are from before, and which are from after. Cheers, Kees

Haha thanks. She's getting there, cost me a grand yesterday tho 😂

Hi guys, My name is Kees and I have a 1994 BMW 540i. Her name is Floyd (as decided by the previous owner). Apparently she's played more pink Floyd than she has done kilometers. Now that must be a lot of Pink Floyd as she has done a casual 367,000km. She is NZ New and was not in the best cosmetic state when I got her. Photo with the roof racks is what she looked like the day I got her. Most pleased about the restoration of the heavily oxidised paint on the boot lid. New sunroof will hopefully be getting changed to the correct colour in the next few weeks. Has been a bit of a summer project that became a lot more expensive than I thought it would be. Other than that it drinks petrol like there's no tomorrow and blows hot air at my feet when the AC is on cold. IMG_2245.HEIC IMG_2404.HEIC

https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/cars/bmw/other/listing/2175069642?bof=Ps4WkpjS https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/cars/bmw/740i/listing/2889928930?bof=Ps4WkpjS These may not be the absolute oldest but they have definitely been for sale for probably the last 5 years.