I Bought a Heavily Neglected Executive BMW & Immediately Started Restoring it - Project Rottweil: P1

coming up engine begging to be saved actual fire heated seats an unusual activity major issue fellas [Music] sup I'm in a situation where I need a daily from my daily you know what I mean been daily drying my 2001 E46 325i touring with the 5-speed manual better known as project cologne for the last three years and I'm ready for a change I want something a bit faster a bit bigger but most importantly more comfortable Behind These doors is just that so let me show you what we got project cologne is not going anywhere it's not for sale I adore that thing and we're still going to do the 330i swap at some point hopefully this Century mine is the supercharger because we're going to supercharge the thing that's behind these doors also like what you see brand new merch check it out now let's go inside because it's pretty cold outside not that it's any better inside I turned the lights off for a dramatic effect might even kiss the music there's the Alpena and it's beautiful brand new paint project cars through and of course project Marseille oh anyway project Rottweiler is right around the corner it's been hiding there for quite some time now that's not it that's project of day that poor thing has been sitting for far far too long project Rottweiler is right over there can you tell what it is that it is 2003 E39 530i touring and it looks like it's finished in Toledo blue over gray leather interior and it is as you would imagine extremely broken but all is well because it has a heated steering wheel [Music] I give you a heavily neglected and broken 5 series storing that doesn't stay up so I gotta use this flimsy stick Parts we're going to start wrenching immediately but first I need to replace the battery because it's completely dead in the meantime my chief editor can tell you the story of how I ended up with this fine automobile a while back when lovely patreon Teemo gifted me his 1998 E39 528i touring at the time I couldn't keep it so I gave it away to another patreon Lewis who fixed it up and racked up many more kilometers with it that touring is living a happy life with Lewis in Spain at the moment anyway driving that car back to the workshop the sound of the silky smooth rev happy 6-cylinder beautifully well put interior the general feel of robustness and the sheer amount of comfort while driving down the road it just hit me while I fell in love with the brand in the first place and how much more comfortable E39 is compared to my E46 specifically on the Autobahn at higher speeds my first oil leaking machine was a 2002 E39 530i and that's the car that started everything that took me all over California reliably in comfort and the car that I learned to wrench on one night I was curious to see what was being offered for sale when I came across this diamond twin to my original E39 Toledo blew over gray leather interior except this one is a touring and exactly what I wanted facelift 530i no sunroof and beautiful color combo it was listed by a dealer in the town of Rottweiler and upon calling and asking basic questions I was told it was in good condition and here's what that condition looks like oh [Music] we have rattle at the bottom [Music] have you ever seen this Sparks in the seats you drive it and it fries your ass how convenient is that look at it it's gonna set itself on fire thank you it's good isn't it this is the point where the bar would yell at the dealer and drive home in Anger after wasting six hours driving back and forth to see it but not this idiot this idiot was excited as I found a true diamond in the rough it's practically brand new except it's not 218 000 kilometers check engine light is on why it wouldn't be just listen to it fur is like a kitten my biggest concern was rust but to my surprise it has minimal rust for a German driven E39 the biggest part is this one here and of course the tailgate and the trunk hatch that's the number one raw spot on every E39 touring so these will need to be addressed it's not what you think but all other common E39 rust spots ain't Rusty around the fuel filler cap side skirts rear arches bottom of the doors jacking points the floor of the car it all looks unbelievably rust free it left me a present which is incorrect coolant the paint itself is in terrible condition we have weird hand print stains all over 184 dents covering every panel deep scratches and the right side of the car has been keyed naturally the front bumper scuffed up pretty badly the same goes for the rear one on the plus side it's all original paint it was never repainted and we are going to try and Salvage this paint with the exception of the bumpers and rust those parts need to be repainted then we have Rusty brakes both power folding mirrors are broken headlight covers the weather as well as the inner taillights windshield seal is disintegrating and the pixels are out in the cluster just to name a few issues the interior is as you would expect cleaned and detailed no it's disgusting but what attracted me the most besides being neglected which is my favorite type of condition and not a rust bucket is the equipment this specimen is one of the most well-equipped e39s I've ever seen we have factory installed high glass Shadow line window trim a very rare option on non-m sport touring a heated steering wheel big navigation heated and active Comfort Seats with lumbar rear window shades electrochrome power folding mirrors tow hook and my favorite it's a slick top yes I wanted this thing the asking price of 4450 Euros was optimistic to say the least and when I went back to their office to discuss the price they told me the last price is 4 000 which I said I'm not sure I'd pay 2 000 for it the lady laughed me out of the office and told me this isn't a car for me that it's not meant to be put back on German roads and that it's for expert sale in other words this car would be scrapped or parted out I wasn't ready to give up just yet so I started texting with the dealership owner and I offered him a cool 1500 and shortly after we agreed on 1 600 European bucks from being stuck rotting away for the last few years at the end of the lot and destined to never see the road again suddenly the future of this E39 never looked brighter it had three previous owners came with four Keys Leather Pouch with all the books and manuals including the original service book and the sales contract from 2015 where it was sold at the last owner with 137 1 000 kilometers for six and a half thousand Euros who then successfully destroyed it all things considered this was actually a pretty good deal a lot of car for the money anyway time to start restoring this beauty back to its original Glory I started off by cleaning up the engine bay before pulling it into the shop I can't believe it but the AC actually works [Music] broken cats the first thing I want to find out is if the engine is any good so we are going to perform a compression test properly nasty man I missed working on E39 the clips for these ducks here are usually broken you have to rotate them and then take them out and people tend not to do that and these are intact look at that nice mustard foreign not terrible but they definitely need to be changed this one is a little bit gummed up let's see what the cylinders look like carbon under pistons and then we have a nice cross hatching on the cylinders this looks great this one looks great as well nothing out of ordinary here all right I pulled the fuel pump fuse now I'm going to connect the compression tester and we're looking anything above 10 bar and most importantly consistency across all cylinders [Applause] between 12 and 13 bar that's excellent all of the cylinders are between 12 and 13 bar which is healthy for an old unit the indestructible M54 engine hands down one of the best engines the BMW ever built and one of my favorites I love this six cylinder engine brand new spark plugs before we drain the oil I want to run the engine flush so I'm going to put back the ignition coils I think it has an exhaust leak as well the engine is now nice and warm so we're going to put engine flush from liquid Molly cheers now we're going to let it work for about 10 minutes remove the oil filter so that the oil from the oil filter housing can drain into the pan [Music] oh no what uh major issue fellas we have an oil leak just kidding BMW without oil leaks like beer without foam that's how you know it's good come come closer as you'd expect it's delicious we have a coolant leak Brewing here as well we have all sorts of good leaks going around here foreign sir sold me a car that leaks oil time to do the tour of rockwild let's start where the action is AKA oil leaks that's our coolant leak the temperature sensor over there is leaking there's a small o-ring not a big deal because we are replacing the entire cooling system power steering line is leaking right over there oil pan gasket is leaking probably also the oil filter housing gasket broken lower part of the fender liner all of the control arms look original gonna replace all of that here pretty much the same the brake rotor is incredibly Rusty but no worries we are upgrading the brakes more leakiness here hopefully that's just the oil pan gasket and not the rear main seal but we'll see the transmission however bone dry Flex joint is shot has a lot of cracks and I can see fibers coming out of it and now the chassis usually every almost every E39 that's been living in Germany all its life is a rust Bucket from underneath but not this one I can't believe it I mean there is some small surface rust here and there like you can see that over there but that's nothing I mean look at the pipes and most importantly look at the jacking points usually these are completely rotted out here's one over there looks excellent another one over here more goodness on this side the side skirt as well without any rust it's just pretty unbelievable you can see a little bit just starting there but we can put fluid filament stop it from spreading oh here as well again this is nothing compared to what you usually see on German cars this a bit Rusty and leaky apparently the rear suspension you're gonna overhaul here everything as well that's the airbag rusty exhaust but the floor looks really good all around pretty decent and where the tourings E39 tourings usually rust are the points where the subframe connects to the body and this one actually looks decent that's one of the things that I checked when I bought it you can see something a little bit here and there we're just gonna coat the entire Underside with fluid film or some Rust protective film and that's going to stop rust from eating this car all together so it's actually pretty solid in Germany this game passes rust free Gerard Butler okay fellas and senoras this car is going to get a thorough service first thing we're going to do is replace the valve cover gasket and overhaul the Venice unit so I'm going to start taking apart everything around the engine so we can have a nice and easy access oh we have a zip tie here there's another one over there looks like a professional zip tie player worked on this car the fan clutch oh really was it that easy drain the coolant kind of need a new fan shroud more zip ties the guy was really dedicated to his profession original and very much shot Miley or melee garbage it's going straight into the trash can this one is original I'm going to remove the radiator as well have more space compressed there blow out the Dust what do we think will it be like project cologne full of varnish and sludge my money is on varnish and sludge what yep say hello to Varnish further proof that this car was neglected and abused this is what happens when you don't change oil regularly you get varnish all over inside of the engine a little bit of sludge as well that being said it's not as bad as project cologne that thing had massive chunks of sludge stuck in the cylinder head this one is not as bad the camshaft looks perfect on the bright side the intake side camshaft looks perfect as well anyway let's remove the vanish unit we're going to have oil here now you're going to pull out the caps here we have left-handed threads meaning we undo the bolt clockwise disconnect various connectors foreign yep now we're going to rebuild the variable and knocking Valencia better known as the Venus unit we are going with B some parts that York from propstone Tech kindly provided me with prop syntek is b-sun sales partner for Germany and Europe York has been rebuilding Vanos units since 2008 with their parts and knows everything and anything when it comes to Vanos there are many kits out there available for this repair but the majority of them are a subpar quality your explained to me how the use of poor quality materials used in those kits can lead to premature failures and actually cause irreparable damage to the Venice unit he has a phenomenal write-up on his website showcasing the damage and how a ring made of soft material fails on the other hand in all these years they never had any failures on units were built would be some parts I highly recommend checking him out and getting a kit or revealed service from him the link is in the description first we're going to remove the camshaft sensor foreign this is the intake side and that's the exhaust side yep the seals are shot look how much play we have here this one has a spring so it'll want to pop up let's check out this one yep way too loose let's inspect the boards for wear should be nice and smooth as it turns out this unit is bad more on that in a bit now I want to take this apart completely and then we can put it in the ZZ machine okay I should have loosened these while the Vanos was still bolted to the engine and that's the vanish unit completely disassembled and what I would love to do here is put this in the vapor blasting cabinet and make it look all nice and shiny but we can't do that it's far too risky we have small passages all over the place and media can get stuck in there and then it's going to be a nightmare so instead we're going to put this in the ZZ machine foreign and we have a problem this vanish unit is not usable this bore here is damaged I can see and feel obvious imperfections in the surface and this should be smooth as glass they're like deep scratches of valleys or something this is going to be a bit difficult to show on camera but you can see the lines right over there they are deep like scratches and I can feel them with my finger with that in mind this unit is not usable and we're going to put all of this on the side thankfully I have a spare unit that we're going to open now and inspect and hopefully we can rebuild that one this is a used unit that I bought a while back this one supposedly has around 180 000 kilometers wow I was told that it was untouched super super loose let me try the old one in there oh this one feels better let's see what we have here this one is smooth as glass no lines no damage or anything like that here's the thing I'll be comparing the old unit with the new one here and the one that I took off the car is in far worse conditions than this one and actually someone was already in here messing with stuff you can see marks on the bolt here clearly so someone at some point probably rebuilt this unit and this piston here scored all around well this one is quickie clean someone might have used wrong parts or rebuilt it incorrectly which resulted in all this damage and those lines on the inside of the Vanoss housing here's another thing on the right is the cover of the old vanish unit and on the left is the new one and you can see a clear difference in the surface here this one is a lot rougher it's not smooth it has more scoring marks while this one is well mirrored finish and that's how a good vanish unit should look like the ZZ machine the most important thing here is to use a Degreaser that's not going to damage aluminum in any way I tried few different things and some of them discolored one of them even starts eating at aluminum and that's really bad it's something you don't want especially when you have finely machined and Polished surface like covers and housing of the Vanoss unit so I got a tip from a nice subscriber to use this Dusty used for degreasing and it's safe and aluminum I've been testing it as well and I cleaned the other cover with it in here and it didn't touch aluminum at all it just cleaned it and that's exactly what we want this has been cooking for about 35 minutes look at the cover nice I ended up talking to Jurgen he told me that it's quite common for him to find his court and pit Advantage units it all depends on the service life of the car the oil change interval and what kind of oil was used so if you're doing this job inspect the van is tuned it thoroughly make sure there's no damage of any sort and if you find something you can reach out to Jurg and he'll probably be able to help you out because he has a lot of spare parts this unit is thankful in really good condition but I also got to thinking why don't we polish the surface here and asked Jurg about this and he told me that's in fact one of the things that he does because this is where the O-ring seal and I already went ahead and Polished this one here and it looks perfect really nice and shiny and now the surface is smooth which we want for a perfect seal so some simple metal polish fresh carbon fiber and now I'm going to go over this cover and Venice housing as well before this is how it looks now we're going to thoroughly wash this we gotta make sure we remove all of the Polishing Compound I'm going to do the same with the housing it looks beautiful doesn't it now you're going to do the anti-rattle repair this is the intake side piston side to side plate here is normal but we are looking here for axial place so if I rock the Piston like this and hold the shaft in the back it shouldn't have any play if it does that means that the bearings inside are shot so this is normal but if I hold the shaft in the back and I would try to do this that is not good that is too much play and that's what we want to fix rubber for safety washer needle bearings uno mas washer there it is there should be another washer now I'm gonna go clean this that's nice and clean new bearing new needle bearings so those are the new parts the rest we're going to reuse so I'm going to clean them I'm not gonna coat the inside of it in oil right now in order for us to check for play correctly it needs to be dry if everything is okay then I'm going to submerge all of this in oil pairing make sure it's fully seated I've set the impact to the lowest setting and we're gonna do quick three clicks that's it and I'm gonna hold it and we have no axial play whatsoever and this is actually not good this shouldn't be this hard to turn further adjustment is needed now you're going to take the center washer per B sand repair instructions we're going to take 400 sandpaper place the washer on it and move it up and down for about 10 seconds with moderate pressure then rotate it 90 degrees repeat that for another 10 seconds and then flip it on the other side and repeat the same process now I'm gonna wash this out of brake cleaner nope still not good so I ended up Consulting with York about this and he told me that from the factory all of the parts internally have different tolerances so I took apart the old Piston from the old Vanoss unit and took that washer and it's actually thinner than the one that came from this one uh this one is 3.28 and the one that I put in now is 3.27 and now it's rotating freely otherwise I will be sending this washer for days still no axial play which is the important bit and it's rotating freely so this one is done this is the second piston I ended up using 180 grit then 400 and then 1000 because this one was difficult to rotate as well and now it's perfect I put it on the intake side because on the exhaust side I can't hold this shaft it's not long enough and let's see axial play beautiful now we're going to replace the seals in the easiest ways to Simply cut them and then break them there's another one underneath Plastic Fantastic now you're going to clean the piston and the grooves oil and clean gloves I like to make one full circle and make sure that the O-ring sits properly very good now I'm going to repeat the same with the other one now we need to resize the Teflon seals we're going to pop it in for about two minutes we can do the same here with the top one let that sit for about two minutes as well now just go around and make sure that the seal is sitting straight which it is beautiful straight as an arrow brand new plugs you're going to replace the stock O-rings that come on them with the upgraded vital ones as well reassembly time fogging oil for men pretty inside of the piston clean gasket spring foreign solenoids I actually forgot to order the O-rings but here's a nice tip buy yourself a box with O-rings preferably ones that are good quality and this one happens to have the exact one that we need 21 millimeter in diameter and 2.5 millimeters in thickness and that's this guy here we're gonna torque the fan of solar noise once the vanish unit is back on the car I'm going to use thread sealer on the screw plugs pay attention thread sealer not Locker I don't want these guys to leak good and tight brand new original camshaft position sensor for the exhaust side and it doesn't come with an O-ring of course it doesn't but I think I ordered it a bit of oil and that ladies and gents is in depth and how to properly rebuild a Vanoss unit on M54 engine well we have nice and easy access I'm going to replace the intake camshaft position sensor to get the orange as well again brand new Original Part couldn't find the OE one and for the camshaft position sensors you have to use either OE in other words Original Part would be NW logo scraped off original nothing else put a replica in there and the car is not going to work properly the engine that is brand new gasket according to tis these are torqued to 10 unit meters but they are so easy to snap I'm just not going to risk it I'm going to go by hand and I can feel when the bolt bottoms out I'm not going to push it past that point and it starts properly like that that's it lubed up caps rotate them left to right to make sure they're fully seated brand new plugs let's tighten up the Vanoss solenoids before we forget excellent plugs in the bolt here we're going to do a bit later because we still need to remove a lot more stuff in the front of the engine let's poke some sludge would anyone like a piece of sludge it's like fudge except it's not foreign poked and vacuumed all of the sludge that I could get to that is a sentence you don't want to say when working on an engine I clean up the valve cover and the cam cover as best as I could but this varnish is like rust it's really difficult to remove now we're going to apply our TV on the half moons and where the Vanos meets the head I prefer to smear it with my finger and remove the extra in the back as well easier than on E46 because you have more space now you're going to go in a crisscross pattern from inside to out and slowly tighten the valve cover you the torque for the valve cover bolts is 10 millimeters but you don't really need a torque wrench here because you will simply feel when the bolt bottoms out and you can't go any further like here that's it sometimes it's better to go by hand because the head is aluminum and you can strip the threads really easily brand new oil cap brand new Bosch ignition coils made in Slovenia the connectors we're going to do a bit later now we're going to set about replacing the belts pulleys thermostat water pump oil filter housing gasket power steering reservoir power steering lines remote intake manifold replace the column pipes that run underneath it CCV rebuild the resolve and million coolant lines around the engine look how cracked the belt is ah Miley again I don't like Miley melee however you pronounce that parts had too many of them fail and I simply don't use them someone changed the power steering fluid and look at this pulley it is shot this is not the original unit can't rebuild it this is Vico and uh yeah look at that it's bad you can't close look at that yep that's a bummer I'm trying to be nice here and not break you you're not getting any choice firm Plastic Man there we go disconnect the fuel line I thought the throttle body could come together with intake manifold but nope sure can't throttle body removed let's connect the CCV connection here there we go and looks like we have one giant nut there oh goodness all right one more connector here 's what we have here the starter is right over there two hard coolant pipes that we need to replace oil filter housing and you can see inside of the engine a little bit this is Port injected engine so the valves are pretty clean now you're going to unbolt the oil filter housing so that's the notorious oil filter housing gasket a two dollar gasket that loves to leak oh this one is actually not that bad it's not all plastic so it was replaced let's start with the coolant pipes oh no did that break it did I guess that's why we were replacing it o-ring there we are all right now we're going to flush the head get all of that pink coolant out ah no this one broke as well honey I just goes to show that you really need to replace these coolant lines preventively man what kind of crappy plastic is this there we go it was cut fried [Applause] new coolant pipes and we're going to use a bit of rhinoplast on the O-rings just because I want to be absolutely sure that these are not going to leak a rhinoplast applied and the reason I'm using it is because the surface of the engine is not in the greatest condition I'm not really sure if it's going to seal properly but with this it's going to seal 100 percent we're going to replace the rest of the coolant lines a bit later make sure this is nice and clean otherwise it won't seal properly brand new Venus line gasket and oil pressure switch we have a dowel here and here that we need to line up and then push the housing in oil pressure switch these can fail causing a massive oil leak ever since I saw that on Alpena I am now replacing them preventively the Vanos line ouch and now the action is going to move on the need of the car we need to replace the cats the oil pan gasket and the flux joint that means dropping the entire exhaust system the subframe and removing the prop shaft foreign I've been soaking these for days oh that actually came out yes unbelievable all four came out oh look at that big ball of rust get lost no one likes you divorce more divorce good it missed my head and then if I straighten you perfect and you can chill out on the side relax here's how this professional job went down and bolted the exhaust then pushed it to the side and now we have plenty of space to do whatever we need three dollar question do we have a leaking steering rack what do you think and nope The Sting rack is good we're also going to overhaul the entire suspension so I'm going to bolt all of the suspension components that are bolted to the subframe so we can remove it let's pop the tie rod ah there you go this is why we are going to overhaul the entire suspension most of these components are original and as you can see very short this one is cracked as well and plug the sensor on the steering rack and now I'm going to copy paste the same on the other side we need to unbolt this power steering line that'll come down with the subframe ouch is there an end here on both the power steering line now I need to disconnect the steering column yes we're going to disconnect it from underneath now we can undo the engine mount bolts we need to put back the engine hook here first the thermostat needs to go back in and this is the attachment point where we're going to support the engine from above [Music] the engine is in the air and supported now I can start loosening subframe bolts all right that's the steering column disconnected which I previously forgot to disconnect foreign there we go the subframe is out okay I'm gonna start spraying rust Loser on the exhaust manifold nuts they look Rusty first I'm gonna go around with brake cleaner and compress there and just clean around the perimeter [Applause] I also forgot to detach the oil lipstick okay [Music] okay we need to unbolt the power steering pump as well swing it out of the way like that now we can pull it out foreign that's one varnished engine and with that side of varnish we are going to end the first part here in the next one we are going to replace the rod bearings address other issues reassemble it and see how it runs after a major surgery I hope that you enjoyed this episode and if you did perhaps consider subscribing as we have more wrench Fest episodes coming up on this project see you then thank you

Channel: M539 Restorations

Views: 769,471

Keywords: e31, bmw, 850i, 850ci, restoration, revival, barn find, e39, e38, m5, 740i, 840i, 840ci, 850csi, csi, 8er, 8 series, classic cars, bimmer, 540i, v12, 535i, 750, e46, m3, m70, road trip, m73, budget, first start, car project, b7, b8, alpina, restore it, e34, e32, e24, hoovie's garage, hoovie, tavarish, doug demuro, vin wiki, vice grip garage, car throttle, samcrac, e60, s85, v10, challenge, m54, 3er, 325i, chrisfix, detailing, disaster interior, detailing geek, top gear, edd china, cartrek, Abandoned, dealership, alfa romeo

Id: bc7btJx98ko

Length: 44min 49sec (2689 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 24 2023