Beeeemer 5er E39er

[New Jersey]

that grey leather is a deal breaker
sweet ass cars though

[New Jersey]

[brester240]

first things first, its just a car. check anything you would on any other car you wanted to buy.

most crap people complain about is just bmw tax, kinda like initial d tax on a corolla.

they are easy as hell to work on, parts arent that expensive if you shop around, and they are pretty damn reliable.

e39's are also apparently very safe, ive seen ones that have taken pretty hard hits/flips/whatever and the occupents came out pretty good.

quick things to look for:

open the back doors, and feel around the bottoms of the door panels, and the rear seat area. you are looking for moisture/moisture damage. the vapor barriers on e39's for whatever reason do not stick to the door, and they will leak rain water etc in like crazy. a lot of people dont notice it till its to late and dont get it fixed. they just cover it up with deoderizers so they dont smell it. the door panel will start falling apart, and you will get mold, etc. pretty easy fix for the door panels, as long as there is no damage.

check for the hvac fan operation. turn it on and off, make sure the fan varries speed, and turns on and off with the switch. the blower motor resistor/final stage tends to go bad, the fan will stay on. if it gets bad there will even be smoking coming up the windshield out the defroster vents. if it get real bad there could be a dash fire. just had one the other day as the car was getting dumped off the flatbed. there is an updated part, it takes about 15 minutes to replace it.

same deal with the aux fan. they go bad, and stay on. listen  for the fan with the car off, you can here it from the front of the radiator, with the hood open or closed. its about an 1.5 to 2 hour fix if you take your time.

check the battery, if the owner says they are having trouble with the battery dieing, or they have a new battery in the car saying the old one died, its a good chance you have a bad final stage or aux fan. if they have an aftermarket battery, check to make sure the vent and all that is hooked up, or the battery will vent inside the trunk obviously, you can get corrosion problems and be breathing in garbage.

check the lights, taillights in paticular, unplug the connector and check all the pins. pull the sockets and check the contacts. the plug thing is mostly e46's, but check any way. the bulb/socket thing is mostly x5's, but e39's do it too. on the plug, the ground can get overloaded after a while, and the ground will burn up in the connector. on the sockets, same deal, the pins on the sockets where it touches the board can burn up, you will get intermittent bulb out warnings and all that crap.

check the cluster, radio, and climate control panels. go through all the funcitons, turn on the lights, what you are mostly looking for is missing pixels in the led displays. easy to fix, but they are expensive parts. cluster is between 900-1500 or so.

make sure the key/keys work with all functions. remote lock/unlock, trunk etc, make sure if they have multiple they all start the car.

check all the buttons on the dash.

in the engine bay:

check the radiator for traces of leaking around everypart of it. top, bottom, inlet, outlet, check over the expansion tank. check around all the bleeders.

check for play in the fan/waterpump, look around the wp, t-stat, basically the whole front of the egine for traces of coolant leaks, most likely you will see white powdery buildup/streaks in the area of the leak.

biggest, but common pain in the ass leak is the valley pan, which somebody already mentioned. its a pretty easy job, but its a bit labor intensive. you have to pull the intake off etc, and there are also some water pipes that run throught there that you'd want to change the seals of while you are in there. also if you are gonna do that, might as well do t stat, waterpump, etc.

thats about it for the engine troubles, they are pretty reliable. just check for oil leaks, and bad ticking noises. a little ticking from the valvetrain is normal, you should be able to know the difference.

suspension is pretty solid on them, nothing to bad goes wrong. just check for play in all the links and bushings. normal shit. easiest way to check for bad bushings is to tap the breaks while driving about 5 mph. you will feel the nose shudder.

transmission is pretty solid. if you can get under the car, check the rear seal for leaks, and the guibo (the rubber donut at the front of the shaft) for cracks or being completely broken.

thats all i got right now, if i think of anything else, ill add it, or any specific questions you got, fire away.

[brester240]

[chmercedes]

what u talkin bout angry? grey leather is the steez

[chmercedes]

[brester240]

gray leather sucks.

its barely one step above tan.

[brester240]

[matt]

I hate tan, and I work in an R&D lab with microscopic white pigment, and even when you wash your hands, it always shows up in dark colors; so, black is out of the question.  Plus I HATE black in the summer.


So, gray is the steez for me.


Brester, thanks, I'm going to check all that.

I've also heard to knock on the cats when the car is cold because they have gone bad.  I also heard later models are better because BMW kept improving engine stuff each model year.

[matt]

[brester240]

.  I also heard later models are better because BMW kept improving engine stuff each model year.

well thats true with pretty much anything, but then the price starts going up. either way you shouldnt have much to wory about.

[brester240]

[Cybernetic $Lindz$ of Car Design Past From the Future]

Brester, this goes for my future purchase as well, would you rather have a 99-00+ car with higher miles, or a 97-98 car with low 100k miles?


Also, Matt, if you get that 99 car, you gonna change the wheels! Yuck city. That 97's wheels are cool, though. And lately I've been thinking that e60 M5 wheels would be totally awesometown on an e39.

[Cybernetic $Lindz$ of Car Design Past From the Future]

[stealthx32]

Man, I've been all over the BMW boards the past month looking this up too.

Rom tuning seems to be a bitch.  Apparently each ROM has it's own set of "bad sectors", which changes which location fuel maps, ignition maps, etc are stored on the chip, so there is no one way to just load up an ECU, go to a memory address, and flip some parameters.  Biggest following for chiptuning is the 413 ECU, which is '92-95 E36's, but that doesn't help anyone here.

Screw the V8's.  The recirculating ball steering on the 540 is outdated.

The '01s got all the latest cosmetic updates, with LED tails (I forget what they call 'em...BMW owners like to name everything), and new HIDs that were better somehow.  It remained the same till they died in '03.  I'd probably end up paying money for the taillight and headlight update, so getting the '01+ makes sense for cosmetic reasons.  '01 was also they year they switch from the 528i as the top i-6, to the 530i....so you get the extra displacement plus they go from single VANOS to double VANOS, which gives you even more torque, everywhere.  It's also aluminum, while the older M52's were iron blocked.

Sport package is a must no matter what year you get, the schoolbus steering is uncool.

[stealthx32]

[Cybernetic $Lindz$ of Car Design Past From the Future]

A lot of BMW's have "outdated" shit, but they work so well, its not like it sucks.

Also, just to make your pussy wet, look at how dope this car is on AC Schnitzer type IIIs.


 

[Cybernetic $Lindz$ of Car Design Past From the Future]

[Damnit]

R Magics look better IMO...breyton wheels are def. a good buy


hard to find a good picture of them.

[Damnit]

[brester240]

Brester, this goes for my future purchase as well, would you rather have a 99-00+ car with higher miles, or a 97-98 car with low 100k miles?

me? id try to go for the newer one, just because of the nice little things that have been updated like stealth said.

what he said about the 6cyl cars is also pretty much on point, not that the older engines were bad, but the newer ones are just that much better.

but i disagree about his talk of the steering box setup in the v8 cars. it may be dinosaur like, but it still works very well in my opinion, and is more then capable for a nice daily driver.

as for the tuning issues, i dont really pay attention to that. most i would do to a daily is intake, maybe exhaust, and software like shark injector is more then enough. and of course coilovers.
if i really wanted to "build" one, like a project car, id start with a 6cyl car, and swap an ls1/t56 setup in.

miles dont really mean all that much, the condition of the car is more important to me.

i have customers that come in with 02 whatevers with 200k on them that are perfect, and on the other end people bring ing 05 e65's that are used as taxi's with only 25k on them that look like they have been to iraq for 17 years.


 

[brester240]

[Flybert]

Those AC Schnitzer wheels look a million times better in my opinion.  e39 540 touring 6-speed.  Now that's where it's at but hard to find.

[Flybert]

[matt]

Brester, this goes for my future purchase as well, would you rather have a 99-00+ car with higher miles, or a 97-98 car with low 100k miles?


Also, Matt, if you get that 99 car, you gonna change the wheels! Yuck city. That 97's wheels are cool, though. And lately I've been thinking that e60 M5 wheels would be totally awesometown on an e39.

haha, I kinda like the 99 wheels better than the 80s-style ferrari wheels on the 97.

I'm going to hopefully buy the 99 today.  I'll post when I get home.  I'm trying to keeps mods minimal to none, so maybe lights, and wheels well down the road.  But any $$ and time I get I'm putting into getting my drift car back on track.  Lindz i'm sure you know how it is with a crazy school schedule.

[matt]

[matt]

so, I bought it.


it's too quiet.

I'm used to transmission whines, air leaking in from every seam of the car, the headlights pointing 2 feet in front of the car.


it's freaking awesome.


The MPG gauge is like a video game, try and keep it as high as possible.  I averaged like 32mpg on the highway from VA to MD.

Shit is badical.

it's dark now, i'll try and post pictures later; but, it's the one I already posted so....

[matt]

[omen2853]

have any girls jumped into it yet?

[omen2853]