P_Roloff

Visited a friend in Minneapolis this past weekend and one of the days we drove the course of the 2020 OC Rally down to Suncrest Gardens pizza farm through western WI. All in about 1k miles over the weekend. I’ve done about 3500 miles on the car this summer with really no issues. 
 



 
On the X5 I replaced spark plugs, coil packs, air filter, intake duct, and fuel vent tube. Running awesome. 🤌🏻

Fixed the offroad issue with some 18's and 31" all terrains (Falken Rubitrek) 
I dig the look, and will enjoy it even more once I get the 20mm spacers in the rear! 



I've got a bit of clearance work to be doing, but nothing major! 

How about for every month he doesn’t work on it, we replace one random (preferably hidden) stainless fastener with a zinc plated one until it gets worked on again?

How about for every month he doesn’t work on it, we replace one random (preferably hidden) stainless fastener with a zinc plated one until it gets worked on again?

How about for every month he doesn’t work on it, we replace one random (preferably hidden) stainless fastener with a zinc plated one until it gets worked on again?

How about for every month he doesn’t work on it, we replace one random (preferably hidden) stainless fastener with a zinc plated one until it gets worked on again?

Lol! Definitely was inspired a bit by the first thread I saw from @YoungCR and his E70!
I’m planning on fully deleting the EGR + DPF and tuning sometime soon (I’ve heard that can put these N57s into the 600wtq range). I just know with this mileage the carbon build up is going to be insane from the emissions components. Say a prayer for me lol

Yep, original clutch. That’s the plan if they have to pull anything at all, it still grabbed well but I could tell it was getting to the very end of the clutch range it felt like. 
 
Honestly wouldn’t be that upset, I have a whole pile of parts for them to replace if they do the clutch so it wouldn’t be that bad of a thing to happen. And then it’d be done and good to go for another 100k+!

Man, we’re going to have to rename this site WIDiesels at this rate! Congrats on the pickup, I love the color combo!
Any plans for deleting or upgrading?

I decided I wanted a bigger daily driver to haul odds and ends + the dogs. The E90 is great but just doesn’t cut it size-wise.
Originally set out to find an E70 X5 35d with the beautiful M57. I’d been searching for a while when suddenly saw an F15 35d pup up at a similar price point. It’s a bit high mileage at 145k, but overall pretty good shape. Came with plenty of maintenance records and some nice extras: Yakima roof rack with Thule wind deflector, thule ski box, remote start, OEM hidden hitch.
Sadly not an M Sport, but I really think the Imperial Blue on Terra interior makes up for it. I’m equally pumped and nervous to dabble into the diesel engines!

 

118,9xx: First time stranded!
Clutch pedal went to the floor leaving my neighborhood this morning, it’ll be on its way to the shop tonight. Luckily, I was close enough to walk home but definitely an inconvenience. Hoping it’s just a slave cylinder and it can be back on the road quickly, I have no time to look at it or fix it (or the e30 or e28 to drive in the meantime, I should really get on those). 
 
Oh well, not bad for ~60k miles of ownership so far to have this be the biggest inconvenience with it so far. VANOS is starting to rattle in addition to torque loss down low, so that along with brakes front and rear are on the docket for this fall once time becomes available. Really need to catch up on maintenance with this one. 

Got some new wheels. Style 193's from a coworker who was moving and no longer needed them, got them for a good price. They came on Michelin Pilot Aplin winter tires. I am planning on keeping these off until winter, running them with the winter tires, and then next spring, swap the Michelin Pilot Sport 4 S's I just got onto them to be my spring summer tires.
 

116,4xx: 
Oil change and filter, used the oreilly’s house brand full synthetic because they had nothing else in 10w-40 and I figured that’d be better than running something lighter weight from Castrol or Mobil.
Replaced the two front tires with used takeoffs as a stopgap for when the 17’a go on, I’ve had approximately zero free time in the last month so that project has stalled. The fronts were down to the wear bars, rears are still okay for a little while, so just wanted to buy myself a few weeks before I can hopefully get the true summer set finished up. 
 
In other news, I bought another car! It’s crusty, non-running, and has more damage than I originally thought, but I paid less than $1k for it (and it’s a NC car, so really no rust underneath) so I figured that at worst it’ll get parted, and at best I’ll have a fun beater to use to keep miles off of the e34. 



Stats: 1988 535is, salmon silver over blue with a 5spd. All of the “is” specific parts are gone with the exception of the LSD. The only remaining seat part is the rear seat bottom, but I have a spare set of e30 sport fronts that I’ll be tossing in once I make some adapters. 
 
It appears to have been set up for track/DE work before it took the hit, it’s rocking bilstein sports all the way around with what I believe are racing dynamics lowering springs. I noted some new suspension bits like dogbones in my inspection of the car as well, so it appears to have been already at least partially gone through. Brake is still firm, and it has braided lines throughout. Interior is partially gutted, with no door cards or carpet and an electrical cutoff in the rear seat bulkhead. Overall, not bad for a car that’s been sitting for at least 5 years. 
 
Current plan is to try to get it running, then evaluate my costs and options from there once I can suss out the rest of the systems in the car. If anyone has e28 fenders, grilles and high beams/headlight assemblies they’d be willing to part with, I’m interested and on the lookout. 
 
I also picked up a set of 17x8.5 MOMO heritage 6’s the other day off their site, they’re holding a buy two-get two sale thru early September and I couldn’t resist. Hoping they show up quickly, at which point they’ll be installed on the e34 with some Pilot Sport A/S 3+’s. 

110,657
Oil change and filter, just received all the VANOS rebuilt parts, valve cover gasket and a few other odds and ends so I can take care of a few leaks and the VANOS system all at once. Replaced all 6 coils with Bremi units and solved an idle misfire/stumble when pulling away from lights.
Planned on replacing rear brakes due to the “low brake pad squeal” noise starting and had all the parts necessary in hand, but pulled the rear wheels and had decent pad left. Probably going to take care of them later this summer when I have more time. New giubo is also in hand, the old one is a bit cracked and provides a good excuse to replace the shift shaft and input shaft seals on the transmission as well. Also going to be a “when I get to it” project, probably slated for this fall.
 
112,8xx
Took a ~800 mile round trip to the boundary waters over Memorial Day weekend, not a single hiccup and averaged something like 23-24mpg even with a big ass canoe on the roof the whole way. Had awesome weather, great fishing, and an overall good time. Got to bomb a total of around 40 miles of forest roads to and from the entry point too, which was a riot.

In other news, I finally picked up the M-Systems! Not overjoyed with how they turned out and I think I’m going to polish them out further myself, but the bulk of the work is done. The shop that did it was unable to get into the sharp corners of the lips to fully polish them out, and also managed to round over the corners of the valve stem openings so probably wouldn’t go back, but after the 2 months that I waited I was just happy to have them back.
Pics:

 

116,4xx: 
Oil change and filter, used the oreilly’s house brand full synthetic because they had nothing else in 10w-40 and I figured that’d be better than running something lighter weight from Castrol or Mobil.
Replaced the two front tires with used takeoffs as a stopgap for when the 17’a go on, I’ve had approximately zero free time in the last month so that project has stalled. The fronts were down to the wear bars, rears are still okay for a little while, so just wanted to buy myself a few weeks before I can hopefully get the true summer set finished up. 
 
In other news, I bought another car! It’s crusty, non-running, and has more damage than I originally thought, but I paid less than $1k for it (and it’s a NC car, so really no rust underneath) so I figured that at worst it’ll get parted, and at best I’ll have a fun beater to use to keep miles off of the e34. 



Stats: 1988 535is, salmon silver over blue with a 5spd. All of the “is” specific parts are gone with the exception of the LSD. The only remaining seat part is the rear seat bottom, but I have a spare set of e30 sport fronts that I’ll be tossing in once I make some adapters. 
 
It appears to have been set up for track/DE work before it took the hit, it’s rocking bilstein sports all the way around with what I believe are racing dynamics lowering springs. I noted some new suspension bits like dogbones in my inspection of the car as well, so it appears to have been already at least partially gone through. Brake is still firm, and it has braided lines throughout. Interior is partially gutted, with no door cards or carpet and an electrical cutoff in the rear seat bulkhead. Overall, not bad for a car that’s been sitting for at least 5 years. 
 
Current plan is to try to get it running, then evaluate my costs and options from there once I can suss out the rest of the systems in the car. If anyone has e28 fenders, grilles and high beams/headlight assemblies they’d be willing to part with, I’m interested and on the lookout. 
 
I also picked up a set of 17x8.5 MOMO heritage 6’s the other day off their site, they’re holding a buy two-get two sale thru early September and I couldn’t resist. Hoping they show up quickly, at which point they’ll be installed on the e34 with some Pilot Sport A/S 3+’s. 

Awesome, great to know. Provided it runs, I’ll take a headlight set and grille set. I’ll kill over the interior, I can’t decide if I want to just replace the rear seat so I can put people back there in a pinch, or if I want to go all out and put door cards and some of the other things back in. The old rear seat looks solid but has a few spots of mold at the bottom edges on the side, anyone have tips for removing that to try and save it? I’m thinking I’ll steam clean or just soap and water scrub the rest of the interior, it honestly doesn’t look bad but I want to make sure I get rid of any mold, mildew or mouse turds that are still lurking. 
 
Diagnosis process I’m thinking is something like this: Put a battery in and check if the fuel pumps are running, and then make sure it’ll turn over (disconnect fuel pump relay and just bump the starter), drain fuel tank and put some fresh stuff in there, and replace fuel filter. Drain and refill oil with the cheapest crap I can find just to have fresh stuff again. Crank without fuel pump to circulate oil. 
 
Check CPS to make sure the wire isn’t just cut or something. Make sure all other obvious things are plugged in and appear to be functional. Give er a crank and see what happens. If no start, check for spark and pull plugs. 
 
I’m taking a vacation next week so I probably won’t get to it for another two weekends, but I’m excited t get the old thing revived!

116,4xx: 
Oil change and filter, used the oreilly’s house brand full synthetic because they had nothing else in 10w-40 and I figured that’d be better than running something lighter weight from Castrol or Mobil.
Replaced the two front tires with used takeoffs as a stopgap for when the 17’a go on, I’ve had approximately zero free time in the last month so that project has stalled. The fronts were down to the wear bars, rears are still okay for a little while, so just wanted to buy myself a few weeks before I can hopefully get the true summer set finished up. 
 
In other news, I bought another car! It’s crusty, non-running, and has more damage than I originally thought, but I paid less than $1k for it (and it’s a NC car, so really no rust underneath) so I figured that at worst it’ll get parted, and at best I’ll have a fun beater to use to keep miles off of the e34. 



Stats: 1988 535is, salmon silver over blue with a 5spd. All of the “is” specific parts are gone with the exception of the LSD. The only remaining seat part is the rear seat bottom, but I have a spare set of e30 sport fronts that I’ll be tossing in once I make some adapters. 
 
It appears to have been set up for track/DE work before it took the hit, it’s rocking bilstein sports all the way around with what I believe are racing dynamics lowering springs. I noted some new suspension bits like dogbones in my inspection of the car as well, so it appears to have been already at least partially gone through. Brake is still firm, and it has braided lines throughout. Interior is partially gutted, with no door cards or carpet and an electrical cutoff in the rear seat bulkhead. Overall, not bad for a car that’s been sitting for at least 5 years. 
 
Current plan is to try to get it running, then evaluate my costs and options from there once I can suss out the rest of the systems in the car. If anyone has e28 fenders, grilles and high beams/headlight assemblies they’d be willing to part with, I’m interested and on the lookout. 
 
I also picked up a set of 17x8.5 MOMO heritage 6’s the other day off their site, they’re holding a buy two-get two sale thru early September and I couldn’t resist. Hoping they show up quickly, at which point they’ll be installed on the e34 with some Pilot Sport A/S 3+’s. 

116,4xx: 
Oil change and filter, used the oreilly’s house brand full synthetic because they had nothing else in 10w-40 and I figured that’d be better than running something lighter weight from Castrol or Mobil.
Replaced the two front tires with used takeoffs as a stopgap for when the 17’a go on, I’ve had approximately zero free time in the last month so that project has stalled. The fronts were down to the wear bars, rears are still okay for a little while, so just wanted to buy myself a few weeks before I can hopefully get the true summer set finished up. 
 
In other news, I bought another car! It’s crusty, non-running, and has more damage than I originally thought, but I paid less than $1k for it (and it’s a NC car, so really no rust underneath) so I figured that at worst it’ll get parted, and at best I’ll have a fun beater to use to keep miles off of the e34. 



Stats: 1988 535is, salmon silver over blue with a 5spd. All of the “is” specific parts are gone with the exception of the LSD. The only remaining seat part is the rear seat bottom, but I have a spare set of e30 sport fronts that I’ll be tossing in once I make some adapters. 
 
It appears to have been set up for track/DE work before it took the hit, it’s rocking bilstein sports all the way around with what I believe are racing dynamics lowering springs. I noted some new suspension bits like dogbones in my inspection of the car as well, so it appears to have been already at least partially gone through. Brake is still firm, and it has braided lines throughout. Interior is partially gutted, with no door cards or carpet and an electrical cutoff in the rear seat bulkhead. Overall, not bad for a car that’s been sitting for at least 5 years. 
 
Current plan is to try to get it running, then evaluate my costs and options from there once I can suss out the rest of the systems in the car. If anyone has e28 fenders, grilles and high beams/headlight assemblies they’d be willing to part with, I’m interested and on the lookout. 
 
I also picked up a set of 17x8.5 MOMO heritage 6’s the other day off their site, they’re holding a buy two-get two sale thru early September and I couldn’t resist. Hoping they show up quickly, at which point they’ll be installed on the e34 with some Pilot Sport A/S 3+’s. 

I bought an small e-bike, primarily for commuting to work without getting all sweaty. I needed something small, because I live on the 2nd floor and have no desire to haul an 80 pound bike up and down the stairs. My commute is 4 miles. Traffic is intense.

Slow progress is still progress!
 
After some extensive measuring I decided on some Polk DB+ 6.5" component speakers for the front and 5x7" coaxial speakers for the rear. While I had the front all pulled apart for the amp I decided to start there with the speaker upgrades. My car originally came with the basic 4 speaker sound system so I did not have the tweeter housings in the doors. The Polk tweeters have a nice basic black grill but are an odd rounded shape on the outside so they wouldn't necessarily be an easy fit in stock e30 tweeter pods. I didn't want to just surface mount the tweeters on the stock blanks so I decided to design and print some mounts of my own. I started with a basic model of a tweeter blank I found online and modified it to be mounted with a screw and perfectly fit the Polk tweeter at an angle that matched the stock ones. After a bit of trial and error I printed the final parts in ASA. To finish them up I sanded them down, sprayed with filler primer and sanded again to completely smooth them out, then a coat of texture paint followed by a final pass with SEM trim black. I mounted the tweeters from the back with hot glue so that they wouldn't be impossible to remove if needed, we'll see how that holds up in a hot car. 



 
Good news for me is that cars with the base sound system still have the tweeter wiring going into the door, so these just plugged directly into that and fit perfectly! I'm super happy with how they turned out. 

 
I also got the 6.5" woofers mounted in the kick panels. The speakers have the normal 4 mounting holes as well as an inner circle of holes that turn out to line up perfectly with the 5.25" speaker pattern (which I would assume is intentional). Because they'll be tight under the kick panels I printed a ~3mm spacer to keep the mounting screw heads off the speaker surround as well as keep the kick panel from interfering with speaker cone movement. 

 
These Polk 6.5's are pretty shallow and also don't protrude too much beyond the mounting surface so zero modification to the chassis was required to fit them. I did however, have to modify the kick panel trim. I removed the sound insulation/speaker mesh and trimmed away the plastic ring around the speaker grill and the back side of the one screw hole. I also used a heat gun to flatten them out a bit as they had warped into a concave shape over time. The speaker sticks out maybe 5mm further than the original so these have to flex around them a little bit, but once installed they look completely stock and don't have any gaps. I may go back and replace the sound insulation at some point, but going to try without for now. 

I don't have a pic of the kick panels installed but it looks completely stock. No need to space out the hood release on the driver's side and zero clearance issues with anything there. I am still working on the passenger side but so far it looks like the glovebox will clear without issues as well. 
 
Next job is wiring in both crossovers and finding places to mount those!
 

Last week I had a customer come into my work and they asked me if we worked on foreign vehicles. I said "Yeah, I dont think theres really anything were afraid to work on." After talking to him a little while longer I found out that he wanted to schedule getting a radiator replaced in his 96 318ti so he could list the car for sale. I told him that I might be interested and asked how much he'd be looking to get out of it as it sits with a bad radiator, and he told me he was looking to get $2750 for it as is. I then asked him to bring it by so I could take a peak.

The car shows up and it is pretty beautiful, one of the best condition 318ti's that I have seen. At only 120k miles, the boston green glistened, the dove leather interior was damn near spotless, and the A/C was ice cold. It was a southern car almost its an entire life, and was a one owner vehicle until the PO bought it a little over a year ago. It has a small rust spot on the rear quarter and one of the jack pad areas, but the rest of the car was extremely clean. I took it out for a spin and aside from the coolant leak the car drove phenomenal. We shook on $2700 (including a new radiator and hoses), and I drained my bank account and brought her home.

 

Drove the car around for a couple days and so far I have been pretty happy with it. The car is currently under the knife in my garage at the moment waiting on some new intake hoses that ripped during disassembly, and it turned out the radiator hoses he supplied were some cheap bright red ebay silicone hoses that fit horribly so I am also waiting on a set of all new OEM rubber hoses from FCP.

Current plans arent anything crazy, just want to get the car squared away so I can have a comfortable and quirky summer daily!

Did a deep clean on the carpet Sunday because of the lack of humidity. Really wasn't dirty but wanted to just so I know that it's done.
Seats pulled out and then I used a drill with a brush attachment and some interior detailer to first agitate the carpet, then went over it with the carpet extractor. No after pictures, but have some before pictures. Usual crumb and change accumulation, but really not much else.
Under the rear seats had a pretty good accumulation of crud that was nice to clean out as well.
 


Pulled the subwoofer covers and cleaned those as well.

Also stripped, clay bared, and sealed my windshield. Used the following to do so.

No joke, I've hit at least 3 squirrels/chipmunks and my lip continues to take a beating but thankfully I've gotten pretty OK at fixing carbon pieces.  It's not perfect but it's a solid 5 footer.  I could have spent more time sanding the resin after it hardened to get it to conform to the curve upwards better but I figured if anything I just added some stiffness to an area that's bound to get hit again.
Here's how it started:

Here's how it went:


 

I’ve been daily driving the e30 for a couple months now. Other than one scare when it wouldn’t start at work it’s been great! Thought the starter failed after I got to work one day but it was actually the engine to frame ground. I assume the starter is grounded to the engine block? Anywho. 
 
Anywho, here’s some neat pictures from cruising around the area last night. 
 

Highly recommend the m18 mid torque as a beefier gun for suspension/driveline/brake work, I use it arguably more than the stubby. They’re great complements to one another, especially if you ever work on anything heavier.