New project (well sort of)

[Kiwi_BMW 89]

A few years ago I was looking for a NZ new E60 as a bit of a project, with some specific thoughts about what I wanted, the E60 hadn't really appealed to me when it first arrived on the scene in 2003. But with age it has grown on me and for a 2003 design it has aged pretty well.

I had recently done some work on a 530d in Olivin and the colour seemed to suit the shape and made the car look better, I liked the 6 speed but if I wanted a E60 it would have to be petrol. The V8 power looked good but the problems of the V8 put me off them.

I had a E39 530i msport that had been a great car, I liked the agility of the 6 over the V8 and the M54 engine had been pretty bulletproof,  so I narrowed down my search to a Olivin, NZ New, 530i with black interior........not much to ask for.

I ended up buying the below a NZ new 2004 Olivin metallic 530i, luckily it was reasonably cheap as it had a few faults, the car was in Auckland which meant a flight and roadtrip home. This was pre covid, so this thread has been in the making for a while now.

The day before the first lockdown I sold my E39, it had only been on TM for about 3 days and I got what I'd paid for it several years earlier, so apart from maintenance the loss on selling it was nothing........but in some ways I still miss it.

 

I'm happy to say that the choice was a good one, in my opinion, and quite a bit of work has been done on the E60 since I got it, some of the work has gone well and has  added to the vehicle I purchased and has made it a more enjoyable vehicle, but it has developed a fault, which I'm certain has been caused by me and it seems it will be a bit of a "project" to remedy. More on that in time, here is the E60 I bought.

It had failed a WOF, because of a leaking brake hose and needed a tyre replaced. I had a friend in Auckland do the brake hose, get the tyre done and get a WOF on it so it was legal to drive.

Some of the faults, apart from the WOF issues were a bent bonnet, it hadn't been shut properly and had flown up, and a few knocks and bruises, ie both bumpers. and one of the bonuses were the comfort front seats and black interior. It seems light colour interiors are real easy to find on NZ new vehicles.

I arranged to pick up a bonnet in Putaruru and also Msport suspension and front & rear bumpers, so first stop after leaving Auckland was to pick up the bonnet, suspension and bumpers. They helped remove the bent bonnet and fit the replacement bonnet, olivin and carbon swartz go together quite well. The front and rear bumbers and suspension fitted into the rear quite easily after the seat was folded down.

The car made it back to Dunedin with no problems and then the work began.

 

Edited August 22, 2022 by Kiwi_BMW

[Kiwi_BMW 89]

With lockdown it was time to remove a few parts and add a few items the car didn't come with,

The NZ new E60's are pretty basic, no CCC, no phone, usually not wired for them either, std stereo, so I needed to remedy this.

After a bit of work out came the seats, centre console, dash and sill trim etc as I needed to get to the wiring to add some wires and also a MOST cable to the rear.

I added the MOST cable to the rear, and added wiring for the rear parcel tray blind. Next was to add all the wires for the Logic 7 stereo amp. While I was doing that I added a mic and added a combox. 

The Logic 7 amp is quite a bit bigger than the standard amp.

Since I wasn't able to find a dash from a E60 with HUD, I had to cut a hole in the original dash and add the HUD brackets and trim. Thanks to a Andrew who gave me some measurements I managed to complete this on the first attempt.

 

The '04 E60 with adaptive headlights has a control module in behind the glovebox for the adaptive function, well I removed that module and fitted a LM2 which incorporates the adaptive functions into the Light module. The advantages of this is that the LM2 supports Angle Eye daytime running lights, programmable welcome lights, cornering fog lights and also LED taillights. Led tail lights were fitted also, after i got the retrofit wiring kit. The retrofit wiring kit on Ebay is for a LHD vehicle and on the LHD E60 the light module is on the LH side of the vehicle, so I had to make a modification to that wiring to accommodate the RH location of the light module.

With the dash out I also removed the Mask and fitted a CiC unit.

[Kiwi_BMW 89]

Some of the items retrofitted are, HUD, latter rain light sensor fitted so the HUD would work, Light Module 2, LCI tail lights, Logic 7 amp and speakers, Combox, Aux, USB in the centre consol and in the glovebox.

In addition to the above the Msport suspension was fitted, the E60 it came out of only had 70k on the clock so I took a chance with it. I removed the front and rear bumber and fitted a factory towbar to it and while the bumpers were off I found the rear and front bumper support had been bent which meant the bumpers didn't line up, a couple of replacement bumper supports fixed that and I found a few bits of plastic trim behind the front bumper are different between the Msport and standard trim bumpers. I also had to replace the centre panel of the rear bumper to accommodate the detachable towbar. The remainder of the trim behind the bumpers were sourced and finally the bumpers would fit correctly.

Once  the interior was mostly back together, and lockdown was finished I got the bumpers, sills, and bonnet painted, so everything was matching.

Also fitted at the time were a set of style 172 rims, spiders as a lot of people call them.

 

While the spiders looked good, they didn't "fill" the wheel arch, and looked too small............something had to change.

Edited August 22, 2022 by Kiwi_BMW

[Kiwi_BMW 89]

After having the paint matched and the exterior looking pretty good it was time to deal with the mechanical's, the car had 240k on it so as per usual needed some TLC.

The engine was removed and plastic water pipes, sump, intake, cam cover, water/vacuum hoses and O rings were replaced, water pump, thermostat, multi rib pulleys, crankshaft seals, and oil housing gaskets were also done. The engine was also cleaned while it was out. I didn't want any oil or water leaks and if there were I wanted to be easily able to see where they are coming from. While the engine was out I also dropped the trans and rebuilt it, looking at the fluid everyone that owned it or serviced it previously took the "fill for life" as the excuse to do nothing.

With a clean engine and engine bay it's now a pleasure to do any maintenance under the bonnet.

After the engine and trans were back in place it was time to do some coding, I added a number of option codes that weren't present previously, HUD, CiC, Logic 7, Aux, Led tail lights and also added Lci headlights coding, then added the headlights.

Logic 7 works

USB works

 

Even got album art to work

So all the retrofits were up and running, although still  unable to get video in motion working and the combox coded to work with bluetooth.

[Cement 784]

That's an impressive amount of pulling apart and putting back together !!

[Kiwi_BMW 89]

9 hours ago, Cement said:

That's an impressive amount of pulling apart and putting back together !!

It is a bit of work, but the end result is what counts.

There is a lot of work still to do, all suspension joints and arms, replace all the brakes with 550i rotors and calipers or maybe something bigger. and some other planned work.

[Kiwi_BMW 89]

Since most NZ new vehicles are pretty basic spec, I had to add a number of wires and cables, like remove interior trim and shark fin to fit the antenna for GPS and phone. Add the bluetooth antenna, wiring for the Logic 7 and extend the Most bus to the rear, add an interior mic and wire it up to the combox. I also added charging sockets to the rear of the centre console. The bonus of the E60 platform is that you can add options that weren't ticked by adding some wiring and changing some sensors. Then some coding and they work, although some items aren't easy like CiC and Combox, the E60 never came with the combox.

The biggest part of adding the HUD was extending the MOST bus, apart from that the two captured nuts to bolt the HUD unit in place are available, and if you got the dash top with the module you already have the next hardest mod for the HUD. The only thing left to do is change the headlight switch and the rain/light sensor and add 8 wires, 2 x pos, 2 x neg, 2 x signal, and 2 x CAN. All this becomes quite easy when numerous owners have done retrofits like this in the past and posted about it in forums........although a lot of posts are incomplete and lack detail so you do need access to wiring diagrams and sometimes need to do a bit of research on part numbers.

When I fitted the Msport suspension I also added M6 front and rear swaybars, which are just slightly bigger in dia than M5 swaybars, time driving the car will tell me if this was a good idea or if the swaybars are too stiff, the inline 6 doesn't have the weight of the V10 or the V8. 

With the 19" spiders in place and the factory profile tyres, 245/35 x 19 front and 275/30 x 19 rear the wheels looked too small for the arches so I also needed to remedy this I fitted 255/40 x 19's to the front to see what this looked like

That seemed to fill the wheel arch better, but those rear wheels looked awfully small. I thought I'd drive the E60 with the 255's on the front for a few days to see if I had created any rubbing problems, nope so the next step was a set of 285/35 x 19's for the rear. That will affect overall final drive ratio, so after a it of research I found out the auto 530i had a diff ratio of 3.46, so if I fitted the 285/35 x 19's to keep the overall final ratio I would need to change the diff ratio to about 3.64/3.65 ratio diff which would mostly correct the speedo error when the larger tyres are fitted.  After a bit of research I found a perfect candidate for the diff replacement.

Has anyone got a NZ new 6cyl petrol LCi E60 they are wrecking?

Edited August 24, 2022 by Kiwi_BMW