E61 M5 Touring life

[Jun 233]

If you need the clutch centering tool, I have one. I had to buy one as Jon didn’t have one when we did our flywheel and clutch.

[Twistee 454]

Thanks for offer, I think BMWorkshop have one as I know they have done clutch and flywheel replacements on S85's before. But you never know, tools go walking and if I recall the alignment tool is not cheap. If they are stuck I will reach out. Cheers.

[Twistee 454]

Got pulled up by a very nice gent at New World this evening. He seemed to know some of the other Bimmersport users, has an E39 M5. On the off chance that he does float around on here, sorry if I seemed like I was rushing you I really needed to do the school run shopping - you know being a vaguely responsible parent and what not . Feel free to chat anytime, would love to see yours in the flesh. 

Cheers. 

 

[Twistee 454]

Being a good(ish) dad I grabbed a hot chocolate for my daughter, put it in the cup holder - you can see where this is going. Anyway how to I get the gear selector surround off so I can clean hot chocolate out of the switch gear. Yes it was a FFS moment, can't win some days. At least it's not terminal just sticky buttons, nothing quite as exciting as jamming the DSC off in the rain thanks to some sugary goo in the button. Skids on

 

[GorGasm 563]

Haha, kids.  I got my boy a hot chocolate on the way to daycare the other day.  Told him multiple times to hold it carefully.  15 seconds after driving off he has tipped it all over himself.

Stripped him down in the daycare car park and put on his spare clothes.  Picked him up later and he's managed to get his clothes wet/dirty (which he never does) and had nothing to wear. 

[aja540i 1906]

7 hours ago, Twistee said:

Being a good(ish) dad I grabbed a hot chocolate for my daughter, put it in the cup holder - you can see where this is going. Anyway how to I get the gear selector surround off so I can clean hot chocolate out of the switch gear. Yes it was a FFS moment, can't win some days. At least it's not terminal just sticky buttons, nothing quite as exciting as jamming the DSC off in the rain thanks to some sugary goo in the button. Skids on

 

It just pulls upwards, if you have to remove it completely the knob just pulls off as well, but it takes a bit of force!

Edited July 21, 2023 by aja540i
spellign

[Twistee 454]

Note to self, don't drive the M5 while incredibly angry at not so better half first thing in the morning with traction control off and the full beans turned on in the very wet. Sideways was a welcome de-stress in the middle of nowhere for a while until a large deep puddle engaged the pucker factor to the max. Need to finish the Subaru build so I can be angry with AWD instead :D Or just get a divorce, but I doubt the M5 would survive that carve up, bugger. 

[GorGasm 563]

I feel ya man.

[Twistee 454]

So 5 years to the day after my wife's Golf GTI got side swiped by a kid learning to drive while we were having breakfast at the local cafe, the M5 got backed into at the same cafe. Thankfully both times someone witness and recorded the whole thing for me and then found me to provide all the evidence. Without sounding like a racist POS, the "taxi" driver in a Prius backed into it, got out, freaked the f*ck out and then ran for it. 

So I need a new drivers headlight, support panels, guard and possibly liner which had some rubbing on the way home, front bumper is cracked and possibly the bonnet has a tweak. Who do I go to when insurance asks to get this properly fixed and not just thrown together and kicked out the door. In this age of CCTV and cell phone cameras why do people think they can get away with this sort of BS. 

 

 

This picture is after I pulled everything off the tire, I only got a wheel alignment done two days ago FFS!

 

 

[Spudooli 18]

Can recommend Precision AutoWerk on Archers Road on the Shore. They did a great job on my car and the service excellent.

[elias 253]

On 8/12/2023 at 4:00 PM, Spudooli said:

Can recommend Precision AutoWerk on Archers Road on the Shore. They did a great job on my car and the service excellent.

would second this, extremely expensive (got to pay for that fancy waiting room somehow) but if insurance is paying id be going there 

[Twistee 454]

Cheers folks it's all insurance based so price is not an issue as long as they accept the assessment .

 

Edited August 14, 2023 by Twistee

[Twistee 454]

Taken a while to get the assessment done, waiting on the final decision but at this stage it looks like new genuine parts ex Germany. No idea how long that will take, but at the same time I'm getting the rear bumper skin repainted and the drivers quarter done as someone burned through the clear with a polisher. So now I'll have a brand new headlight and a pretty good passenger one, I know the subtle difference will bug me..... real world problems. 

Edited September 7, 2023 by Twistee

[aja540i 1906]

I'm about halfway through a 3 month wait for my new sunroof mechanism coming from Germany by sea, too big to air freight apparently, I was told 11 weeks by sea....

[Twistee 454]

4 hours ago, aja540i said:

I'm about halfway through a 3 month wait for my new sunroof mechanism coming from Germany by sea, too big to air freight apparently, I was told 11 weeks by sea....

Great, so using those numbers I'll be lucky to have anything this side of Christmas. Oh well I can get the bearings and clutch done while I'm waiting at least. I don't envy you working on the sunroof.

[Twistee 454]

Claim approved. Now just waiting to get the parts lead time.

[Twistee 454]

Apparently new E60/61 bumper skins are rare as hens teeth, BMW in Malaysia have one which is making its way over in 6 weeks. So provisionally booked in for mid November to get sorted. Probably a big enough lead time to get the bearings and clutch done before hand.

[Twistee 454]

Well, it took months for new parts to "overnight from Japan" ....... The wagon is back in one piece and has done a few thousand km's this year doing what it does best and touring around the country. On a recent trip to Hamilton a friend noticed that she was pissing oil onto his unblemished concrete driveway - FFS. Grabbing a torch we traced the leak pretty easily back to the oil cooler. Unable to work out if it was the o-rings or the hard pipe connection on the cooler I opted to do what I could to get home and change out the o-rings, a quick cleanup of the oil on the cooler and a test drive it looked like there was a reasonable chance that this was fixed. I drove home, bottle of oil in hand constantly checking the oil level which didn't move (although I'm not always confident that those electronic oil level sensors are super accurate). Unfortunately when I checked the cooler the next day it was obvious that the o-rings were not the issue, luckily it was a very slow leak and the underside is now lightly rust protected

Long story short she is now sitting at BMWorkshop sans oil cooler. BMW NZ pricing : well north of $2,000, for a part that is under $800 landed from the usual suspects lol. As I don't want to deal with another cooler crapping out on a known issue the plan is to grab the upgraded aftermarket Mishimoto (sp) version and get that slapped in. 

That's the minor issue I have had since September..... The major issue is the paint job, panel fitment and general zero f*cks given by the panel shop which is currently a tad heart breaking to look at. I'm really hoping that this will be resolved amicably, and until this is sorted one way or another I won't go into any other details other than someone was having a bad day when the new panels were painted and fitted and now the excusasaurus is in full swing. 

It's still an epic car, that never fails to make my day better. 

 

[Twistee 454]

Cars back from BMWorkshop, which was a hilarious exercise after I asked for the low tone horn to be replaced. Who knew that an M5 had a bespoke horn set, FFS BMW. BMW NZ had nothing in stock, eventually a second hand one was found and couriered to BMWorkshop - just the wrong branch. Eventually hours later it arrived, but was stone dead! So another one was found and after many hours of waiting it was still "on the way"......  an executive decision was made to grab a loan car and come back in the morning. Eventually at 5:30 the urgent courier arrived after the horn fiasco had started around 10:30am. 

Had the insurance assessor come out to my place the following day, all I can say is fantastic service by Classic Cover insurance and the assessors they use. I was expecting an uphill battle to even get the repairs checked over, couldn't have been further from the truth and within 24 hours of me calling them they were looking the car over. Assessor was totally unimpressed with the repair and as shocked as I have been, so now we move onto the fun of having the car go back to the panel shop for rework. I still (stupidly) have faith that this will be fixed properly by the same shop that has done a few jobs for me with great results. 

On another note, while I was a BMWorkshop an E60 M5 was dropped off on a flatbed. As I haven't been on the forum for while others may already know this car, but it has been manual swapped. By the sounds of it this was manual swapped by the owner, with a US 6 speed box and all the associated bits as an alternative to doing the SMG clutch replacement. The car was in to have the final coding done and some wiring cleanup, the cat back system was off the car and it was a tad loud - cold start was epic. 

[Twistee 454]

Cars back at BMWorkshop as there is either a thermostat, temp sensor or some other electrical gremlin having a go at the radiator fan control. It's running significantly more than it should and overcooling, which is no good for fuel consumption, my cats etc. So while waiting for the fix I was glossing through the M5 technical training manual HERE and found out the real reason why you cant just manual your 7 speed Getrag - because this would be your shift pattern .

 

[Jun 233]

57 minutes ago, Twistee said:

Cars back at BMWorkshop as there is either a thermostat, temp sensor or some other electrical gremlin having a go at the radiator fan control. It's running significantly more than it should and overcooling, which is no good for fuel consumption, my cats etc. So while waiting for the fix I was glossing through the M5 technical training manual HERE and found out the real reason why you cant just manual your 7 speed Getrag - because this would be your shift pattern .

 

BTW if you need a working thermostat I have one. Just replace mine, nothing wrong with it but had a new one for a while since the 50th M-anniversary when car tried to kill itself. I replaced the expansion tank long ago but thermostat came in late so was only able to replace it yesterday.

[Twistee 454]

Thanks for the offer Jun, what ever the issue it should be covered by the mechanical warranty and they will want new parts. So far  BMWorkshop agree that there is an issue, but have yet to find the source of the issue - hope for some good news today.

[Twistee 454]

Car is ready to collect, faulty oil level sensor / oil temp sensor. So it will get a solid ragging tomorrow and I hope that the displayed temp behaves as expected. 

[Twistee 454]

Wallet is lighter, car is home and after a few hard pulls the temp behaved as it did in the past. Next item of business is the repaint, expecting a call this week from the panel shop. If I can just get the car back to the condition it was in before that f'ing taxi driver backed into it and ran off into the sunset without any more drama I'd be over the moon. 

[Twistee 454]

Well, temp control is still not where it should be. Symptoms - oil temp is slow to warm, oil temp does not reach typical operating temp, oil temp gauge needle hunts ever so slightly at idle while rpm is solid, if I raise the rpm to 1,500 then the oil temp starts to cool. In my opinion none of this is the expected behavior, to date the oil temp comes up to just shy of 100 degrees and it lives there in daily driving. According to BMWorkshop the water thermostat is working as expected as there is nothing in the logs and the water temp sits at 80 degrees, which sounds cooler than expected. In addition the radiator fan kicks on not long after engine start and then lives at a 30% duty cycle, which is not normal.

If anyone with an E60/61/63 M5/6 has a minute to capture an image of where their oil temp needle sits when the engine is at typical operating temp that would be really helpful, while I have a pile of these images from my car it's hard to argue that something is not behaving correctly when the sample size is 1.

Frustrated.