Was requested to post some info/photos of my old e34 M5s after mentioning it on another post, so here goes...
Had a Corrado VR6 that I used for trackdays for quite a while (about 1 a month for 6 years)...
...it had Eibach/Koni suspension, AP brakes, Schrick cams/head/intake/valves...and about 20% more power than standard.
I never actually got bored with it, but I'd started a job that required a 200 mile each way commute (with hotel stay in-between) and the track set up was too harsh/uncomfortable/compromising for the motorway & country lane commute.
I started looking for something else, and considered all the big & powerful models from Mercedes (C43/E55), Jaguar (XJR), Audi (S8/RS6), BMW (M3, M5, 850CSI), Holden (Commodore), Alpina (B10S/Bi-Turbo), etc. but decided I really wanted to stick to a manual gearbox, and that limited the choices to the M3/M5 and Alpina (rare 3.3S was available in manual).
After looking around for about 6 months, I'd decided the M3 was too common and the Alpina was too expensive to insure (about double what the M3/M5 would cost), so concentrated my search on an e34 M5.
I did know that there were 2 versions - an earlier 3.6 315bhp version, and a later 3.8 340bhp version - and obviously I knew I wanted the 3.8!
Had a look at a few, but some of the dealer ones were in terrible condition for the price the were asking and were not in great colour combinations...but I finally found one that I liked and was a private sale...
I had 6 years, and 100,000 miles of pleasure/pain with it!
It was also slightly 'down-badged'...
Pleasure due to the joy it brought both on road and track. Pain due to the efforts of local BMW dealers trying to screw me over for every penny when the car needed a service (every 6,000 miles).
It would go in for a service and come out with a bill for thousands as they'd found something that made it unroadworthy - but wasn't covered by the warranty!
Eventually I caught on, and realised they were taking me for a ride and started taking it to specialists.
Unfortunately the damage had been done - i.e. dealers charging me for work and either not doing it, or not actually pointing things out that really were dangerous and just doing the lucrative jobs instead - and the engine expired at 170,000 miles.
At this point the cars were not worth much, and it wasn't worth spending £8k on an engine rebuild, so I went out and bought another runaround...
...a 1990 3.6 M5!
That did a similar job as the previous car, but was a bit slower due to a bit less power, but it was also a bit lighter and felt completely different - less torquey, but more willing to rev.
That car also lasted a few years, until a fateful trip to the Nurburgring where it started to cause problems on high-speed/high-rev runs. We couldn't diagnose it over there, so I drove it back carefully (couldn't exceed 2500rpm).
Over the next couple of months we investigated the cause, but it kept pointing to something we'd replaced already (a few times). So we started stripping the front end down. We eventually found an obscure production change that BMW made between the initial builds and the following year (probably due to this issue), where the crank damper was changed from a single, central bolt to a 5-bolt system. This single bolt was becoming ovalised and you couldn't tell at normal revs/speeds that it kept knocking the crank sensor out of position. Once this was replaced, all was fine...
...but in the meantime, I'd got bored of using cheap hire cars and went out and bought a Z4MC...
Had a Corrado VR6 that I used for trackdays for quite a while (about 1 a month for 6 years)...
...it had Eibach/Koni suspension, AP brakes, Schrick cams/head/intake/valves...and about 20% more power than standard.
I never actually got bored with it, but I'd started a job that required a 200 mile each way commute (with hotel stay in-between) and the track set up was too harsh/uncomfortable/compromising for the motorway & country lane commute.
I started looking for something else, and considered all the big & powerful models from Mercedes (C43/E55), Jaguar (XJR), Audi (S8/RS6), BMW (M3, M5, 850CSI), Holden (Commodore), Alpina (B10S/Bi-Turbo), etc. but decided I really wanted to stick to a manual gearbox, and that limited the choices to the M3/M5 and Alpina (rare 3.3S was available in manual).
After looking around for about 6 months, I'd decided the M3 was too common and the Alpina was too expensive to insure (about double what the M3/M5 would cost), so concentrated my search on an e34 M5.
I did know that there were 2 versions - an earlier 3.6 315bhp version, and a later 3.8 340bhp version - and obviously I knew I wanted the 3.8!
Had a look at a few, but some of the dealer ones were in terrible condition for the price the were asking and were not in great colour combinations...but I finally found one that I liked and was a private sale...
I had 6 years, and 100,000 miles of pleasure/pain with it!
It was also slightly 'down-badged'...
Pleasure due to the joy it brought both on road and track. Pain due to the efforts of local BMW dealers trying to screw me over for every penny when the car needed a service (every 6,000 miles).
It would go in for a service and come out with a bill for thousands as they'd found something that made it unroadworthy - but wasn't covered by the warranty!
Eventually I caught on, and realised they were taking me for a ride and started taking it to specialists.
Unfortunately the damage had been done - i.e. dealers charging me for work and either not doing it, or not actually pointing things out that really were dangerous and just doing the lucrative jobs instead - and the engine expired at 170,000 miles.
At this point the cars were not worth much, and it wasn't worth spending £8k on an engine rebuild, so I went out and bought another runaround...
...a 1990 3.6 M5!
That did a similar job as the previous car, but was a bit slower due to a bit less power, but it was also a bit lighter and felt completely different - less torquey, but more willing to rev.
That car also lasted a few years, until a fateful trip to the Nurburgring where it started to cause problems on high-speed/high-rev runs. We couldn't diagnose it over there, so I drove it back carefully (couldn't exceed 2500rpm).
Over the next couple of months we investigated the cause, but it kept pointing to something we'd replaced already (a few times). So we started stripping the front end down. We eventually found an obscure production change that BMW made between the initial builds and the following year (probably due to this issue), where the crank damper was changed from a single, central bolt to a 5-bolt system. This single bolt was becoming ovalised and you couldn't tell at normal revs/speeds that it kept knocking the crank sensor out of position. Once this was replaced, all was fine...
...but in the meantime, I'd got bored of using cheap hire cars and went out and bought a Z4MC...
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