E34 535IS Manual

[Simca 49]

Here's my 535IS, had this for almost two months now. Probably the nicest car I've owned so far and am very happy with it!

 

It's got 340 000 km on the clock but it seems to be very well maintained, so far I've only had to fix a couple of small things. It feels very tight (as tight as a 31 year old heavy sedan can be anyway), it seems like a lot of the suspension has been recently replaced. Someone once loved this car very much and I am hoping to continue that love. Currently I am very happy with realOEM and the countless genuine parts websites online that are almost better priced than used parts anyway. I have already bought a new sunroof mechanism cover panel and a new bit of bumper trim that was missing for some really good prices.

Right now I am still working on:

• Trying to figure out what is causing the slight miss at low rpm and under load
• The headlight washer system (no clue what is holding this back)

Any help or tips would be appreciated.

Also any tips on fuel economy or is it just always bad?

[Driftit 2078]

Nice one.  I look forward to pulling my 535is out of storage towards the end of the year.

Have you checked the basics for the misfire?  These motors are pretty simple.

Start with the ignition system.  Check the plugs, leads, coil and cap.  Number one source of misfires.
Check for cracks in the intake pipes after the Airflow meter.  Make sure all vacuum hoses are connected and not cracked or split.
Then check the Air Flow meter itself.  It's an old trapdoor design.  You may need to youtube/google on how to check them over.  Be very careful not to change anything in them without instruction.

Also don't get sucked into the expensive Iridium spark plugs.  Get some standard copper ones.  They are dirt cheap and last around 30,000kms.  The plugs are so easy to change on a M30.  I was buying them in bulk boxes and changing them for every race meet.

[BM WORLD 1283]

• Trying to figure out what is causing the slight miss at low rpm and under load

Also any tips on fuel economy or is it just always bad? yea but if its not running right ecnomy will be bad 

fix the miss , etxc ,. vac leaks from many hoses around the manifold . bad afm . worn dizzy and rotor , worn plugs ,  high resistance on HT leads 

bad fuel pressure reg , 

 

• The headlight washer system (no clue what is holding this back) washer pump failure , or block jets 

•  

[Simca 49]

Thanks for the advice guys, will definitely take a look at it all when I get some time off.

Also just figured out this car used to belong to @rxsumo on here. Sent him a message about it but not sure if he's still active on here. Pretty cool to find old pics of the car though.

[Olaf 3317]

@Simca, rxsumo passed away last year.  He is missed.

Great that you've got one of his former cars.  Enjoy it.

[Simca 49]

19 hours ago, Olaf said:

@Simca, rxsumo passed away last year.  He is missed.

Great that you've got one of his former cars.  Enjoy it.

I'm sorry to hear that. Would have been cool to hear some stories and history about the car. It's at least nice to know it was owned by an enthusiast.

[Simca 49]

A lot has happened over the year and a half that this car has been in my possession. Some parts of it extremely embarrassing, but some I am also quite proud of.

Around this time last year I went through pulled the cut up head unit wiring loom out of the car, yes the whole thing, and replaced it with that of a less molested car. Wanted that premium factory looking head unit:

 

Some time very close to this I had the whole AC system regassed

Then I made a fatal mistake and cooked the motor, like proper cooked cooked. Completely my own fault but lets not get into that:

Anyway a new motor was acquired, and before I put it in I had the head rebuilt, and gave the engine a general tidy up and paint and replaced all the gaskets:

In the same time I have also got some H&R springs for the car:

 

It's been back together now for over 6 months, and I have been doing problem free driving for the whole time. I have noticed that I am getting another small oil leak coming from the front timing cover, and the seals I replaced on the gearbox aren't doing too much, but for my sake that's going to be ignored for now. Since then I have bought a set of BBS RKs for the car (that came with a free e39 540 that I have been working on) and I have now started doing a sounds upgrade (that I will get into in the next post since its quite text based):

 

Yea that's it... Looking for some clear fronts to match the rears, that's about it. Happy with how it looks, and it handles pretty decent too. Do think that the H&Rs are maybe a bit too harsh for me, but I'll ride them out for now.

[Simca 49]

Here's some sounds stuff I wrote up as a message might be useful to anyone with NZ spec e34s coming across this

I have been doing a mild bit of reading online, from what it seems our NZ spec cars are practically different from all other cars online. At least to my info the Sony headunits were all dealer fitted, rather than put together in Germany, so they all have inherent wiring funkiness.

Mine went from Sony head unit through RCA to a Sony amplifier that was stuffed somewhere under the dash. This already had a bit of funky wiring, the illumination circuit was abandoned for example for the lights to be always on running off the head unit activation signal. From the small (like 17watt RMS per channel or so) Sony amp through the factory speaker wire into the boot and through the factory amp in the boot. At first I wasn't sure why it was amplified twice, but it is not being amplified twice, the factory Blaupunkt amp had been gutted by the dealership, and was only being used to run the crossovers. At first I thought my car had been f**ked with when they fitted the Clarion head unit and that the POs must have done all the gutting themselves, but the "factory" loom for the Sony that I had gotten was equally f**ky, used the same connectors, and had the Blaupunkt amp gutted as well. From the Blaupunkt amp it went into the speaker circuit like normal. They also ran some Sony CD changer instead of the factory CD changer system.

My original plan was only to run the head unit off the boot battery (was originally intended for the phone that has been removed) because I thought it would be an incredibly nifty modification, rewire the plugs into an ISO connector so I could always upgrade the head unit later, and then to run the RCA to the back and move the Sony amp to where the CD changer used to be. Then when I had all the wiring out I thought "I mean seeing as the Sony head unit has RCA I might as well run a better amp off it instead". Then I thought, might as well run fatter speaker wire while it's all apart. And then I thought I hate taking the parcel tray out I'll do the speakers while it's all apart.

The issue still remains that the car has a component speaker system, with woofer and tweeter in rear, and woofer, mid range, and tweeter in front. My plan was to buy speakers with separate, non inline, crossovers so I could run everything still through the factory Blaupunkt crossover system. Ideally in 5 1/4" inch so I would have to do modifications to fit it all. Along the way I realised that maybe running my audio through a thirty year old gutted Blaupunkt amp is never going to give the best sound, and also that 5 1/4" component speakers with external crossovers are not exactly very common in NZ. Not wanting to buy cheaaaap 5 1/4" speakers, and knowing I could get a half decent price on Kicker stuff I bought some Kicker CSS 6.5" component speakers. Now I plan to use the external passive 2 way crossovers that come with the speakers for the rear, and then I bought some 3 way passive crossovers off AliExpress (lol) to run the front speakers. At this point I still have the issue of the mid range speakers in the dash, which are in standard form 2" speakers. I haven't really found any affordable 2" mid range speakers at all. So my options are: either I blast the music through the factory Nokia speaker (which will be doing the majority of the grunt-work being around 1000hz to 5000hz on the Chinese crossovers), I risk it and buy a 2 3/4" mid range speaker (Kicker does some that aren't toooo bad in price) and hope to god I can make it fit, or not run the mid range at all and just run the two way setup (audio engineers on webforums say no to this as the big woofer is blasting directly into our legs and gets muddled and funky and yuck sounding).

I am doing it in the way I am doing it now so that it will leave a semi decent amount of modularity in the system for later on. People say that passive crossovers are sh*t. Yeah, in an ideal world I'm running my RCA pre out through an active pre amp crossover and amplifying each speaker channel individually with one 6 channel amplifier for the front and one 4 channel amp for the rear and I guess to top it all off a monoblock amp and a sub as well. But I like having money to spend on other things, and I also like having things in my boot without worrying that I take a corner the wrong way and I damage 2500 dollars worth of Audio equipment.

I'm going to keep the NZ fitted Sony head unit for now, mostly again because I am being a cheap bastard, but also aesthetics. It's most likely going to become the limiting factor in the audio quality, so maybe down the line I upgrade to a modern head unit with 3 high voltage RCA pre outs with USB input for flac music, but I hate the spaceship look of modern head units and don't want to splurge and spend 600 dollars on an old clarion or something funky like that. Maybe I buy a Kenwood, I don't think they look too awful and have an RGB capable display so I should be able to get it to match the interior reasonably well.

I actually already sort of have my mind made up, I probably will buy a modern Kenwood, and also probably a sub since I've made it this far.

I have a lot of trouble with project feature creep issues, everything seems to be going steadily to plan but man I do have a tendency to expand on everything I do.

Anyway here's some pics of the work I've done to fit the 6.5s in the rear. Took some minor dremel work but it will fit:

Here's some brackets I have gotten 3d printed by my brother (have yet to try them). One to fit the tweeter onto the rear tray, and one adaptor/spacer to fit the 6.5s into the kick panels, and a smaller one to fit the tweeter into the factory location in the rear (fronts will just glue in):

Alright that's about it I think. That's about up to date with the car.