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Static E28 build
Some of you may have seen my S10 floating around the forum, and now I would like to introduce my latest project. A 1986 BMW 535i. I'm going to try to make this a very detailed thead so bare with me here. But for starters heres a picture of my S10:
I learned a lot from that build but I was truly never satisfied with it, while I had plans of improving it to my satisfaction, I came across my E28 for a price to good to pass up.
A brief backstory behind the car starts as one day my friend informed me about a set of style 5's for sale but said that the guy (a coworker of his, and now of mine) was also selling his E28. Now I was in no position to grab another car for the heck of it but I ended up going down that night to take a look at the car. We showed up and I didnt know what to expect at first to be honest. The car appeared to have sat for a decent amount of time, it was covered in dirt, the hood was primered, and it looked really tired. But I proceeded to inspect the car, inside and out and check for rust and the norm. As im looking up and down this thing its becoming apparent that this car has no rust. I mean none. Now, if you're from New England or any other state or region that gets snow you fully understand that when youre going to look at something youre expecting to find some rust. Im telling you there was none. One spot on the strut tower but other than that I just couldnt believe it. So I handed him some cash and he handed me a title and then suddenly I owned an E28.
Once I finally got my car to my work I wanted to give it a general inspection, look under the car, check the components, etc. Now I knew going into this the car needed some work. The interior was almost completely ripped apart, no front seats, and the dash had some cracks. The engine needed a general clean up and tune up as well but ran just fine, and the suspension was all there but just, old looking really. So I set out for a plan. Something I have always really wanted to do, build a car from the ground up essentially. I knew from the second I saw it I wanted to go all out so this will be my online journal of progress and learning this car and testing my abilities. Anyhow, here are some pictures of the initial inspection and cleaning.
One thing I was not expecting was the amount of parts this car came with! I wasn't prepared with how many parts the p/o gave me. Nonetheless I was pumped! Just a general overview of what it came with outweighed how much I paid for the car itself. I took the time to take some of the bigger things home and reorganize them in the car as I had no real place for them at my house quite yet. Once the car was dried off I jacked it up and took a look over everything and got a good view of underneath the car.
Not too bad! Just a little dirty, once the suspension is pulled out of it i will be giving it a fresh undercoat to seal in the original undercoat which has held up remarkably. A few things to note here is the leaky diff, and the scale that has accumulated on the trailing arms and such. Also two mufflers lol. The front suspension was about one in the same, rusty and old looking. No pics of that though.
As time went on, planning the future layout of the car I began the parts search. It wasn't too far after I came across a set of front and rear seats with door cards about an hour away in Connecticut. I hopped in my daily and drove down, ended up showing up at some sketchy dungeon looking place with one guy and an E21 stuffed in a corner. As I loaded the interior into my truck the sound of obscure 80's dance music overwhelmed me. I needed to get the fcuk out of there. Despite the high levels of sketch I definitely got a great deal on the interior.
Not the original color but the bolsters are all well, I plan to simply recover these in the original black. There not sport seats but hey, I don't really care
.Back to the random parts search! I had been spending a lot of time searching about different coilover systems that the aftermarket offered. I was mostly interested in a true coilover and not a hybrid or piece it together style system. This sort of gave me less options but I ended up coming across someone parting out their E28 who had a set of BC Racing Extreme Lows on his car. After talking to him for a bit we set a time and we met up. Ended up grabbing the coils and a 3.73 LSD out of a 325is ready to go into an E28.
Having the coils already welded onto the strut tubes saves me a bit of effort which is nice. I plan on cleaning them up and coating them, also replacing the wheel hub/bearings. I hope to run these until next year or so and then possibly replace them with some Broadway Static coils but we'll see how these do.
With all of that out of the way this brings me to todays progress. After switching jobs and a few other falling outs I had the car towed to my house from my old work.
I was totally pumped to be bringing this home to actually have an opportunity to start putting in some work. My first real order of business was to go through each and every part I had for the car, write down part #'s, and figure out if it will actually work on my car. There was a lot of stuff so this actually took me a little while but I found some pretty good stuff hiding in my trunk. This is just a smidge of what was in there
Notable things seen here are 540i brake upgrade, new water pump, thermostat, misc sensors, control arms, sway bar links, accessory belts, radiator hoses, and more. Also seen here is my eye sore of a hood and US front end. I neatly reorganized this mess of a parts pile and threw it on my old cart.
Now with less junk in my trunk I can focus on my search for rust of any sort. I have a decent leak going into my trunk floor so I tried finding out where that was coming from too. I took out all the carpeting, spare TRX wheel, and the rest of the actual interior. Pleasantly surprised to find nothing worth noting, going to give it a good vacuum tomorrow and finish cleaning it up.
Pictures make it look like ass but seriously its nice in here. The only rust you see trickled down from the brake rotors that were hiding in my trunk. Im going to clean in here very well tomorrow and possibly put the carpeting back in. Not sure if I want to dye it in here yet. Moving to the interior its admittedly a disaster in here. The p/o threw away the front seats but somehow removed the passenger seat without taking out the seat rail. Im going to attempt to get the rail out tomorrow and remove the carpet so I can scrub down the floorboard and make sure everything is good and clean. I also plan on dying the carpet aswell as some other pieces. The reason the dash is taken apart was because the p/o was replacing the blower motor. I don't plan on running any HVAC in this car so I'm going to remove it all inside, fix the messy wiring, and start putting the interior back together.
God its a mess in here. You can see where the dash is cracked, until I can find a crack free replacement, I'm probably going to run a dash mat to cover it up because I'm cool like that. Essentially I want a clean interior that is OEM looking but refined. I wanted to swap the interior to cardinal red but black interiors in the 80's were a lot less common than today and I feel its something that can be appreciated. One thing I forgot to show was the glass sunroof I have for it from a SAAB 9000. Truly an OEM+ im going for here. Finally for shits and gigs I threw up a set of Momo Extreme wheels I have up next to it (yes thats tape holding them upright)
I plan on refinishing these back to its original finish while I build my Epsilons seen here.
I'll leave you with that, not too fancy now but what I have planned for these will be the icing on the cake once its all said and done. Anyhow, if you've managed to read this far congrats! If you just looked at all the pics and said, "wow what a shitbox" I probably would've said the same. Hopefully more updates tomorrow
I learned a lot from that build but I was truly never satisfied with it, while I had plans of improving it to my satisfaction, I came across my E28 for a price to good to pass up.
A brief backstory behind the car starts as one day my friend informed me about a set of style 5's for sale but said that the guy (a coworker of his, and now of mine) was also selling his E28. Now I was in no position to grab another car for the heck of it but I ended up going down that night to take a look at the car. We showed up and I didnt know what to expect at first to be honest. The car appeared to have sat for a decent amount of time, it was covered in dirt, the hood was primered, and it looked really tired. But I proceeded to inspect the car, inside and out and check for rust and the norm. As im looking up and down this thing its becoming apparent that this car has no rust. I mean none. Now, if you're from New England or any other state or region that gets snow you fully understand that when youre going to look at something youre expecting to find some rust. Im telling you there was none. One spot on the strut tower but other than that I just couldnt believe it. So I handed him some cash and he handed me a title and then suddenly I owned an E28.
Once I finally got my car to my work I wanted to give it a general inspection, look under the car, check the components, etc. Now I knew going into this the car needed some work. The interior was almost completely ripped apart, no front seats, and the dash had some cracks. The engine needed a general clean up and tune up as well but ran just fine, and the suspension was all there but just, old looking really. So I set out for a plan. Something I have always really wanted to do, build a car from the ground up essentially. I knew from the second I saw it I wanted to go all out so this will be my online journal of progress and learning this car and testing my abilities. Anyhow, here are some pictures of the initial inspection and cleaning.
One thing I was not expecting was the amount of parts this car came with! I wasn't prepared with how many parts the p/o gave me. Nonetheless I was pumped! Just a general overview of what it came with outweighed how much I paid for the car itself. I took the time to take some of the bigger things home and reorganize them in the car as I had no real place for them at my house quite yet. Once the car was dried off I jacked it up and took a look over everything and got a good view of underneath the car.
Not too bad! Just a little dirty, once the suspension is pulled out of it i will be giving it a fresh undercoat to seal in the original undercoat which has held up remarkably. A few things to note here is the leaky diff, and the scale that has accumulated on the trailing arms and such. Also two mufflers lol. The front suspension was about one in the same, rusty and old looking. No pics of that though.
As time went on, planning the future layout of the car I began the parts search. It wasn't too far after I came across a set of front and rear seats with door cards about an hour away in Connecticut. I hopped in my daily and drove down, ended up showing up at some sketchy dungeon looking place with one guy and an E21 stuffed in a corner. As I loaded the interior into my truck the sound of obscure 80's dance music overwhelmed me. I needed to get the fcuk out of there. Despite the high levels of sketch I definitely got a great deal on the interior.
Not the original color but the bolsters are all well, I plan to simply recover these in the original black. There not sport seats but hey, I don't really care
.Back to the random parts search! I had been spending a lot of time searching about different coilover systems that the aftermarket offered. I was mostly interested in a true coilover and not a hybrid or piece it together style system. This sort of gave me less options but I ended up coming across someone parting out their E28 who had a set of BC Racing Extreme Lows on his car. After talking to him for a bit we set a time and we met up. Ended up grabbing the coils and a 3.73 LSD out of a 325is ready to go into an E28.
Having the coils already welded onto the strut tubes saves me a bit of effort which is nice. I plan on cleaning them up and coating them, also replacing the wheel hub/bearings. I hope to run these until next year or so and then possibly replace them with some Broadway Static coils but we'll see how these do.
With all of that out of the way this brings me to todays progress. After switching jobs and a few other falling outs I had the car towed to my house from my old work.
I was totally pumped to be bringing this home to actually have an opportunity to start putting in some work. My first real order of business was to go through each and every part I had for the car, write down part #'s, and figure out if it will actually work on my car. There was a lot of stuff so this actually took me a little while but I found some pretty good stuff hiding in my trunk. This is just a smidge of what was in there
Notable things seen here are 540i brake upgrade, new water pump, thermostat, misc sensors, control arms, sway bar links, accessory belts, radiator hoses, and more. Also seen here is my eye sore of a hood and US front end. I neatly reorganized this mess of a parts pile and threw it on my old cart.
Now with less junk in my trunk I can focus on my search for rust of any sort. I have a decent leak going into my trunk floor so I tried finding out where that was coming from too. I took out all the carpeting, spare TRX wheel, and the rest of the actual interior. Pleasantly surprised to find nothing worth noting, going to give it a good vacuum tomorrow and finish cleaning it up.
Pictures make it look like ass but seriously its nice in here. The only rust you see trickled down from the brake rotors that were hiding in my trunk. Im going to clean in here very well tomorrow and possibly put the carpeting back in. Not sure if I want to dye it in here yet. Moving to the interior its admittedly a disaster in here. The p/o threw away the front seats but somehow removed the passenger seat without taking out the seat rail. Im going to attempt to get the rail out tomorrow and remove the carpet so I can scrub down the floorboard and make sure everything is good and clean. I also plan on dying the carpet aswell as some other pieces. The reason the dash is taken apart was because the p/o was replacing the blower motor. I don't plan on running any HVAC in this car so I'm going to remove it all inside, fix the messy wiring, and start putting the interior back together.
God its a mess in here. You can see where the dash is cracked, until I can find a crack free replacement, I'm probably going to run a dash mat to cover it up because I'm cool like that. Essentially I want a clean interior that is OEM looking but refined. I wanted to swap the interior to cardinal red but black interiors in the 80's were a lot less common than today and I feel its something that can be appreciated. One thing I forgot to show was the glass sunroof I have for it from a SAAB 9000. Truly an OEM+ im going for here. Finally for shits and gigs I threw up a set of Momo Extreme wheels I have up next to it (yes thats tape holding them upright)
I plan on refinishing these back to its original finish while I build my Epsilons seen here.
I'll leave you with that, not too fancy now but what I have planned for these will be the icing on the cake once its all said and done. Anyhow, if you've managed to read this far congrats! If you just looked at all the pics and said, "wow what a shitbox" I probably would've said the same. Hopefully more updates tomorrow
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