ChrisO

Learned what a Lancia 037 is today



Pretty damn attractive 

Learned what a Lancia 037 is today



Pretty damn attractive 

Learned what a Lancia 037 is today



Pretty damn attractive 

Sorry I haven't updated in awhile, very busy with school and weather is just finally getting nice where I wanna be in my garage
I appreciate all the suggestions from everyone, I'm going to put some oil in the cylinders and re-run the compression test. I also visited home this past week and grabbed my borescope so I can check out the cylinder walls and pistons.
I can easily hook up pressurized air to the hose that came with my compression tester kit so I'll do that also if the compression numbers are still low
For now I've been pulling the car apart, I had a moment today in the garage as I was gutting it (easily lost 400lbs today) thinking how cool it would be to rebuild it, completely simplify the car, cage it, put some light bucket seats in it and use it, until the carpet came up and the skirts came off 

I had a lot of fun getting this skirt off. A PO jacked on the fender seam and bent the fender/skirt up into the body of the car with the bolt holding the skirt on smashed inwards. When all this shit fell out after the skirt came off I knew it was no good

Yeah its bad up front. Extending beyond this hole towards the frame rails under the undercoating is completely soft. The metal has rusted away just leaving a sheet of just undercoating haha

Can see the hole to the front right of the jack point, although it looks mostly intact it's made up of multiple layers of metal and they are all swollen with rust in-between the layers.

Rear wheel well, same story as the floor pan, completely rusted through under the undercoating up about a solid 6in beyond what you can see

random firewall rust holes on the passenger side

Hard to tell but this is a hole into the rockers

Same story but worse on the passenger side

Mysterious rusty puncture hole in the battery area
Yeah so I've played this game before and I'm not going to again. I'm sure the inside of the rockers is horrifying
Funny thing is though, parts of this car are really rust free, the rear jack points, pan and rockers dont even have surface rust. No rust on the quarters, no rust on the rear trunk lip, fenders aren't rusted through. This was a texas car until 2002, The rust is probably from sitting uncared for in a wet environment with trapped water for 11 years and not salt. Shame

Making progress





Idk what I'm doing with everything, I want the shell gone and all the regular e34 parts gone. I'm just kinda gonna hang on to everything M5 specific for now
It sucks doing this to this car, it really does. I feel bad every time my garage opens and you see such a special car with nothing but a M5 badge left on the rear. 
 
 
 

Sorry I haven't updated in awhile, very busy with school and weather is just finally getting nice where I wanna be in my garage
I appreciate all the suggestions from everyone, I'm going to put some oil in the cylinders and re-run the compression test. I also visited home this past week and grabbed my borescope so I can check out the cylinder walls and pistons.
I can easily hook up pressurized air to the hose that came with my compression tester kit so I'll do that also if the compression numbers are still low
For now I've been pulling the car apart, I had a moment today in the garage as I was gutting it (easily lost 400lbs today) thinking how cool it would be to rebuild it, completely simplify the car, cage it, put some light bucket seats in it and use it, until the carpet came up and the skirts came off 

I had a lot of fun getting this skirt off. A PO jacked on the fender seam and bent the fender/skirt up into the body of the car with the bolt holding the skirt on smashed inwards. When all this shit fell out after the skirt came off I knew it was no good

Yeah its bad up front. Extending beyond this hole towards the frame rails under the undercoating is completely soft. The metal has rusted away just leaving a sheet of just undercoating haha

Can see the hole to the front right of the jack point, although it looks mostly intact it's made up of multiple layers of metal and they are all swollen with rust in-between the layers.

Rear wheel well, same story as the floor pan, completely rusted through under the undercoating up about a solid 6in beyond what you can see

random firewall rust holes on the passenger side

Hard to tell but this is a hole into the rockers

Same story but worse on the passenger side

Mysterious rusty puncture hole in the battery area
Yeah so I've played this game before and I'm not going to again. I'm sure the inside of the rockers is horrifying
Funny thing is though, parts of this car are really rust free, the rear jack points, pan and rockers dont even have surface rust. No rust on the quarters, no rust on the rear trunk lip, fenders aren't rusted through. This was a texas car until 2002, The rust is probably from sitting uncared for in a wet environment with trapped water for 11 years and not salt. Shame

Making progress





Idk what I'm doing with everything, I want the shell gone and all the regular e34 parts gone. I'm just kinda gonna hang on to everything M5 specific for now
It sucks doing this to this car, it really does. I feel bad every time my garage opens and you see such a special car with nothing but a M5 badge left on the rear. 
 
 
 

You need to put oil in the cylinders and recheck.  I have seen dry cylinder walls cause extremely low compression.  I had a flooded M50 show 30PSI on compression test and with a little oil it jumped back to 180.  It also wouldn't start because compression was so low.  I just cranked it over with the plugs out and injectors unhooked to dry the fuel away and added a squirt of oil to each cylinder and it started right up.  That was on my e36 a couple months ago when it was extremely cold out and had a failed start attempt.

Took a day off work to work on the car.
Diff out.

Not terribly difficult but a ratcheting 19 mm spanner would have made life easy.

Bought some new hardware for it.

Tank out. Biggest pain in the ass was the center bolt. Believe it is supposed to thread into the frame, but the nut broke so I was able to use a 13 mm spanner to get it to brake but it was a bitch getting it to hold. Maybe it is supposed to be a nut, but it looks like the welds broke.

Assuming this is where one of the leaks was from.

Started moving over some of the stuff over from the old tank. I am trying to find this pipe on the far right, but can't seem to find a part number from Real OEM. It has a good amount surface corrosion but nothing that looks like it potentially leak. I would prefer to just replace it.
There is also another hard fuel line that does not run next to the feed, return, and brake line. It runs along the edge of the car that looks really corroded that I would like to replace but I can't find it on Real OEM either. Or I'm looking at it and don't notice. I didn't take a picture, but it hangs on these individual plastic hangers. What is this line?

I see that pile of shit in Oconomowoc all the time. 

Well I ended up putting in a offer on the 93 M5 @Jdesign had found last year and yesterday after class I went to pick it up
the drive was about 2 1/2 hours from Eau Claire, I rented a U-Haul pickup and trailer and it was a perfect day for the drive down. It was my first time towing anything ever and it was super easy, even with a 4000lb car on the back. Everything felt very planted. It was a great deal I thought at $220 for the 24 hours and 300 miles I had it.

Everywhere south of Arcadia, WI had some pretty impressive roads, hills and bluffs, especially closer to the Mississippi River. I’m definitely driving down that way this summer.
The seller was a great dude and was a huge help getting the car on the trailer
Its a 93, Schwartz II with a less desirable dove type interior. The only option it has is power seats, everything else is standard. The car is dead, but has around 190k miles on it



The full rig

I got back to Eau Claire around 9pm and unloaded the car, it then took my roommate and I two hours to push it 8 feet into my garage because the entire parking lot was ice. It was horrible, zero traction to push

secured in the garage

I haven’t even had the chance to look at it yet, this afternoon after class I’m going to dig in. A few things I’ve noticed so far, the car has no severe rust except for a area up front by the driver fender in the floor pan, a hole about the size of a ping pong ball. It’s surprisingly clean, rust wise. Honestly tho the car is beat to shit. It’s been sitting for 11 years, it last ran in 2008. The coolant reservoir is empty, and the oil almost seems sticky... maybe it’s just 20w50 in 19° weather? Just about every rubber line and hose in the engine bay is dried out.
This car/thread could go a few different ways
1. The motor hasn’t suffered some kind of catastrophic failure and I get it to run and drive and enjoy it 
2. The motor has suffered catastrophic failure and a s50 gets swapped in or something  (eh)
3. I part the car out, keep the wheels, mirrors, bumpers, skirts and rear trunk panel to put on a 530i/540i that I’ll daily (this is probably going to be the winning option)
Im pretty much looking to replace my Passat as my daily driver. Either way I want it to be a e34. For now I’ll post me messing around with the m5 and all my findings 

RIP_S38.com

Bingo.  Rebuild that S38 and make something that will make @DrLeadFoot feel bad about his S62 touring.

Well I got around to compression testing the motor this morning.
Test was dry and cold but 
Cylinder #1 gave false hope, decent number for a cold motor?

Cylinder #2-4 crushed my dreams, I triple checked all of them and they were in the 60-70psi range

And back to a more normal number in cylinder #6...

I made sure to check each cylinder multiple times in different orders to make sure it wasn't user or equipment error
So yea thats bad.
So the car needs:
Major engine work All new coolant hoses A gas tank A new battery A cam pulse sensor  A intake boot New tires New brakes rear shocks every busing that is rubber in the car I also found a hole by the battery under the rear seat where it looks like something punctured the body?? It's all rusty now
I'm still super happy with my purchase, but the amount of money and work it's going to need is gonna be too much. If the thing didn't have rusty jack points and holes in the pan I'd consider "bringing it back from the dead"
I know it's a rare car but it's a easy $7000 in parts, and even if this was driving I don't see anyone paying over $8k with the overall condition/ rust. Decent rust free ones with similar miles go for 11-15k it seems like 
I still have my new M3 I'm trying to build, and my main focus is on that, not tearing down a s38  when I have no major engine work experience
Sorry guys but I'm gonna look for a decent 535i to throw some fun parts on and beat around in 😓
 
 

Well I got around to compression testing the motor this morning.
Test was dry and cold but 
Cylinder #1 gave false hope, decent number for a cold motor?

Cylinder #2-4 crushed my dreams, I triple checked all of them and they were in the 60-70psi range

And back to a more normal number in cylinder #6...

I made sure to check each cylinder multiple times in different orders to make sure it wasn't user or equipment error
So yea thats bad.
So the car needs:
Major engine work All new coolant hoses A gas tank A new battery A cam pulse sensor  A intake boot New tires New brakes rear shocks every busing that is rubber in the car I also found a hole by the battery under the rear seat where it looks like something punctured the body?? It's all rusty now
I'm still super happy with my purchase, but the amount of money and work it's going to need is gonna be too much. If the thing didn't have rusty jack points and holes in the pan I'd consider "bringing it back from the dead"
I know it's a rare car but it's a easy $7000 in parts, and even if this was driving I don't see anyone paying over $8k with the overall condition/ rust. Decent rust free ones with similar miles go for 11-15k it seems like 
I still have my new M3 I'm trying to build, and my main focus is on that, not tearing down a s38  when I have no major engine work experience
Sorry guys but I'm gonna look for a decent 535i to throw some fun parts on and beat around in 😓
 
 

Par for the wibimmers course
 

Honestly whatever comes first a e34 touring or a 5 speed 535i!
The tourings seem next to impossible to find

That's a bummer.... but it makes sense to part out. Spending the money to rebuild the engine/etc just wouldn't make sense if the shell isn't in good shape. Swapping the M5 parts to another E34 would be pretty sweet though (M5 touring replica??)

Well I got around to compression testing the motor this morning.
Test was dry and cold but 
Cylinder #1 gave false hope, decent number for a cold motor?

Cylinder #2-4 crushed my dreams, I triple checked all of them and they were in the 60-70psi range

And back to a more normal number in cylinder #6...

I made sure to check each cylinder multiple times in different orders to make sure it wasn't user or equipment error
So yea thats bad.
So the car needs:
Major engine work All new coolant hoses A gas tank A new battery A cam pulse sensor  A intake boot New tires New brakes rear shocks every busing that is rubber in the car I also found a hole by the battery under the rear seat where it looks like something punctured the body?? It's all rusty now
I'm still super happy with my purchase, but the amount of money and work it's going to need is gonna be too much. If the thing didn't have rusty jack points and holes in the pan I'd consider "bringing it back from the dead"
I know it's a rare car but it's a easy $7000 in parts, and even if this was driving I don't see anyone paying over $8k with the overall condition/ rust. Decent rust free ones with similar miles go for 11-15k it seems like 
I still have my new M3 I'm trying to build, and my main focus is on that, not tearing down a s38  when I have no major engine work experience
Sorry guys but I'm gonna look for a decent 535i to throw some fun parts on and beat around in 😓
 
 

New trunk! 

Took the hot rod out for a spin today while the 335xi is at the shop.

The car has a new fuel pump and fuel lines, the previous owner just put the tank back in in the last two years
I havent personally cranked it, but in the last two years the previous owner tried to get it to run on multiple occasions
I really appreciate the advice from everyone, I'm definitely going to put some oil down into the cylinders before I try to start it and put a quart through the motor. I'm probably going to pull the valve cover gasket to take a look at the sludge and make sure I see no obvious damage
For now, there isn't a chance I could have gotten it to run today. I went over the engine bay very thoroughly and found several different issues that would prevent the car from running.
The cam pulse sensor that surrounds a spark plug wire is destroyed. Unfortunately this is a $170 sensor, and is s38b36 specific and only available as a genuine BMW part.  @straight6pwr you were right, it's already expensive

Next pretty much every vacuum line is bad. The one off the fuel pressure regulator is completely split in half



The intake boot post-maf is torn wideee open
The maf plug was half plugged in 

So I need to order that cam sensor and a intake boot, and redo the vacuum lines. All pretty simple things, I'm going to pull the plenum off and redo all the vacuum lines while I wait for the sensor.
I did put power to the car today though, just to see if everything worked. All headlights, tail lights, turn signals all work. Blower motor works, windows work, all seat functions work. Radio turns on but nothing comes out of the speakers, assuming It's thanks to the hellish wiring and amp/sub set up in the trunk.
It was a good feeling to see the car come to life with power

Just under 192k miles
A lot for having sat the last 11 years, would probably be over 250k if it never stopped running
I spent most of the day just degreasing and cleaning inside the engine bay, it was really bad and now I have a pretty clean motor to work with
 

The itb throttle linkage was pretty gummed up, I really focused on that and it's much better now
Gave the car a wash on the outside the best I could without running water, I just wanted to make it look less like a abandoned car in the parking lot of my apartment haha

But yeah, no wonder the car wouldn't start... More to come

I feel like I have heard this before... 5 or 6 largely important items compromised will obvious cause issues LOL. Im willing to bet it fires right up when it comes time.

Damn, only 180k too 😔
Options:
1. Replace M60B44 and life carries on
2. Get a B40 bottom end and build a stroker motor. Car value raises to $20k on BaT.
4. Commence GMW #2, worth $40k on BaT
4.  S62 swap, car becomes worth $80k on BaT.

Cylinder #8 is shot.  Need a motor... hmmm.  What to do, what to do??

The car has a new fuel pump and fuel lines, the previous owner just put the tank back in in the last two years
I havent personally cranked it, but in the last two years the previous owner tried to get it to run on multiple occasions
I really appreciate the advice from everyone, I'm definitely going to put some oil down into the cylinders before I try to start it and put a quart through the motor. I'm probably going to pull the valve cover gasket to take a look at the sludge and make sure I see no obvious damage
For now, there isn't a chance I could have gotten it to run today. I went over the engine bay very thoroughly and found several different issues that would prevent the car from running.
The cam pulse sensor that surrounds a spark plug wire is destroyed. Unfortunately this is a $170 sensor, and is s38b36 specific and only available as a genuine BMW part.  @straight6pwr you were right, it's already expensive

Next pretty much every vacuum line is bad. The one off the fuel pressure regulator is completely split in half



The intake boot post-maf is torn wideee open
The maf plug was half plugged in 

So I need to order that cam sensor and a intake boot, and redo the vacuum lines. All pretty simple things, I'm going to pull the plenum off and redo all the vacuum lines while I wait for the sensor.
I did put power to the car today though, just to see if everything worked. All headlights, tail lights, turn signals all work. Blower motor works, windows work, all seat functions work. Radio turns on but nothing comes out of the speakers, assuming It's thanks to the hellish wiring and amp/sub set up in the trunk.
It was a good feeling to see the car come to life with power

Just under 192k miles
A lot for having sat the last 11 years, would probably be over 250k if it never stopped running
I spent most of the day just degreasing and cleaning inside the engine bay, it was really bad and now I have a pretty clean motor to work with
 

The itb throttle linkage was pretty gummed up, I really focused on that and it's much better now
Gave the car a wash on the outside the best I could without running water, I just wanted to make it look less like a abandoned car in the parking lot of my apartment haha

But yeah, no wonder the car wouldn't start... More to come

The car has a new fuel pump and fuel lines, the previous owner just put the tank back in in the last two years
I havent personally cranked it, but in the last two years the previous owner tried to get it to run on multiple occasions
I really appreciate the advice from everyone, I'm definitely going to put some oil down into the cylinders before I try to start it and put a quart through the motor. I'm probably going to pull the valve cover gasket to take a look at the sludge and make sure I see no obvious damage
For now, there isn't a chance I could have gotten it to run today. I went over the engine bay very thoroughly and found several different issues that would prevent the car from running.
The cam pulse sensor that surrounds a spark plug wire is destroyed. Unfortunately this is a $170 sensor, and is s38b36 specific and only available as a genuine BMW part.  @straight6pwr you were right, it's already expensive

Next pretty much every vacuum line is bad. The one off the fuel pressure regulator is completely split in half



The intake boot post-maf is torn wideee open
The maf plug was half plugged in 

So I need to order that cam sensor and a intake boot, and redo the vacuum lines. All pretty simple things, I'm going to pull the plenum off and redo all the vacuum lines while I wait for the sensor.
I did put power to the car today though, just to see if everything worked. All headlights, tail lights, turn signals all work. Blower motor works, windows work, all seat functions work. Radio turns on but nothing comes out of the speakers, assuming It's thanks to the hellish wiring and amp/sub set up in the trunk.
It was a good feeling to see the car come to life with power

Just under 192k miles
A lot for having sat the last 11 years, would probably be over 250k if it never stopped running
I spent most of the day just degreasing and cleaning inside the engine bay, it was really bad and now I have a pretty clean motor to work with
 

The itb throttle linkage was pretty gummed up, I really focused on that and it's much better now
Gave the car a wash on the outside the best I could without running water, I just wanted to make it look less like a abandoned car in the parking lot of my apartment haha

But yeah, no wonder the car wouldn't start... More to come