Grinders E39 ///M5

In Nov of 2014, I bought a 2000 E39 M5 from my father. He was the original owner of one of the earliest E39 M5s in the states. It's in an M5 specific color that was only made for one or two years, "Silverstone Blue" so it's kinda rare. But I have to say the color is VERY close to a non-M specific color, so meh.

At the time of writing this it has about 97k miles on it.

I have yet to do any real photo shoots with it, so I only have some cellphone snaps.

Table of Contents:
Pictures
Mods

I'll update more as I go!

Mod List

Installed Mods:
Square 18x9.5" Apex Arc-8 with Michelin PSS 285/35/18
DICE Mediabridge with bluetooth dongle
Dinan RSB (middle setting)
Ultimate Cup Holders

Wanted Mods
Facelifted Steering Wheel (or better)
Simmbones Front Lip
Tilting/Sliding center console
Grafxwerks lighted sills
E60 short shifter
Weathertech floor liners
Slimmbones XL Fog Covers
Beastpower Swaybar brackets
EVO-XR Headlight Upgrade (with facelifted headlights)
Louder horn
Muffler delete with Timmay tips
Front Swaybar
Endlinks F/R
Opened front grille for brake ducts
540 brake ducts
Lemfoerder Control Arms OR X5 thrust arm bushings
Rear Diff/Subframe brace
Rear cupholder delete

Dream Mods
Supercharger Kit
Coilovers
CF Body panels
Dry sump oiling
Track wheels/tires

Maintenance To-Do and Log


Log



To-Do
CPS (2x intake, 2x exhaust)
MAFs (2x)

Nice! Looking forward to seeing where you take this.

Well, for the forseeable future, not much. I just blew all my modding money on new wheels. The OEM setup is narrow (245) up front and wide (275) in back. But it's also set up to understeer dramatically. A typical remedy to that is to do a square setup all around with the OEM 275s, but since I'm me, I went 285 all around and the fronts barely clear both sides! Also, wow tires are expensive for this. I think when I got my last set for the Subaru it was like $500/set total. With these the tires were $1200 new (I got them used on the used rims), but it'll also chew through them I'm sure. Oh, at least the other advantage of my square setup is that I can actually rotate tires.

In the future, I think it's a pretty easy mod to do:
Brake "ducts" (brake cooling)
Muffler delete (weight savings, sound)

We'll see what the budget allows for. Ms are NOT cheap to mod.

CANT. WAIT. FOR. MORE. PICS!!!!!

Well in an hour i'm leaving for a road trip through the "mountains" (east-coast version) and eventually ending up at fallingwater. I'll see if I cant find a place to take some good pics along the way.

Welp, I ordered a Dinan rear sway bar. They've been out of production for a while, but Dinan decided to do one last production run and for some reason made it *cheaper* than before.

Now i gotta figure out what swaybar bracket I want to get. The OEM ones are a paper-thin aluminum that break even under daily driving, let alone anything spirited. There's an almost identical OEM bracket made from steel, and costs $3 a side, so I'll probably go with that to at least try. I've read that you have to trim the Dinan bushing to make everything work, which makes me a little uncomfortable. The nuclear option is beastpower brackets but they cost over $100 and are WAY overengineered:

vs

Dinan RSB installed. Most refreshing mod to perform in a LONG time: four bolts, no jack required. I decided to just re-use the OEM aluminum mounts. While I was doing the install i realized just how HUGE the mufflers are, and I cannot wait to just cut them out and save all that weight and get more sound. I tried to link to a pic, below, but i'm not sure it's working:

View attachment 6896

I drove the STI today so no RSB impressions, but i'm a little nervous! Most of my driving has been FWD or AWD, with one low-powered RWD; understeer is nothing new to me, but oversteer is. With the stiffer rear, I'm just waiting for the back to step out, but I'm excited to learn how to control it.


On another note, I think the car is down on power. Every time I floor the STI, I swear it's quicker, even though its down on BHP, lots more driveline loss, but I suppose it's lighter. My current theory is the MAFs and CPS might need to be changed (technically not wear items, but the consensus is they need to be changed eventually). Secondary would be the pre-cat O2 and the spark plugs. I really need to find a stock M5 and do a highway pull with them, just to see if we're close or if I really am down on power.

Rear wheel drive you will love. It can be so much fun!

I'm really looking forward to it. To be honest though, my only real powerslide adventure was when i was 17, in the very same M5. I meant to hit "sport" and hit "dsc" (traction control) and then gunned it around a curve...total leadfoot. I was TRYING to show how awesome DSC was (still dumb) but I ended up hitting a telephone pole at 2 am and I think I still might be traumatized from it. I have hundreds (probably) of hours of performance driving time under my belt, but I still have flashbacks to that one incident. Powerslides seem scary, letting off = worse slide. In some cases you even have to add throttle to increase weight transfer to regain traction to the rear, IIRC. Just totally counterintuitive.

Any tips for converting from AWD to RWD, other than take it slow and ease in?

I recommend you find a good big parking lot somewhere and just go balls to the wall. For sure you will be applying the gas when your brain say no. I long for my S14 again. I had so much fun in that car. I do have this advice... It takes an erratic or extreme action to begin a slide but it takes steady throttle to maintain it. If you practice in a lot you will find that sweet spot.

Ugh, i just typed up a LONG update to this thread and accidentally hit F5 on my laptop and the whole thing went away!

The gist was I had to replace the battery and it sucked since i was stranded. You all might want to check out a NOCO Genius GB30. Very cool. Works super awesome on a dead STI, not so well on a dead M5.

Do "good" jumper cables make a difference? A 1- or 2- guage cable (copper or copper coated aluminum (CCA)) are pricey, but rated for much higher amperage than the standard.

I also ordered several preventative maintenance items for it, with a few more planned soon. Its been getting the love over the STI to make sure its in good working order since it has over 100k on it. The subaru will get love soon, but time/money is short since business school is NOT cheap. Hoping to get it track ready for a graduation gift for myself.

Besides pure copper or copper clad aluminum, I can assume the standard cable you refer to is straight aluminum or some alloy of aluminum. For the distance I don't see them being much different from each other though the aluminum needs to be thicker overall than the copper for the same amperage. I don't see copper clad aluminum being much better than aluminum by itself because it's usefulness as a superior conductor over aluminum alone is only seen at high frequencies where the skin effect is observed. For DC and low frequency AC currents, the Copper Clad Aluminum will suffer the same constraints as aluminum at high current. The copper clad aluminum also offers a lower cost than pure copper.

The bets jumper cables are usually copper and are thick but as long as a copper clad aluminum cable is thick I don't see it making a difference.

I figure an update every 14 months is warranted, hah!


About this time last year, my neighbor knocked over a bike in the garage, which fell onto the front bumper. Even though it was a relatively mild hit, the 17 year old plastic kinda shattered at the impact site. My neighbor offered to pay up for a new bumper, so I got that all installed.

We got lucky in that there was pretty much no snow this winter so the RWD did just fine. Over the winter i replaced the lower chain guide tensioner. The first 4 seconds after startup sounded TERRIBLE, but then the normal rattle I'd gotten used to went away. I also had to replace the front Roundel. When on the freeway, I saw the old one let go and hit my windshield! I never realized it'd just a sticker on a metal backing. While I was making an order, to get free shipping, I also got a rear cupholder delete, and a wheel pin for installing my summers with spacers. Getting everything to line up is a PITA, and the wheel pin should make everything super easy now. And the rear cupholders were useless and broken, so the delete just adds a cubby where they used to be. Nobody sits in my back seat anyways, but now i dont see the cockeyed broken cupholders every time i walk to my car from the rear.


I also just pulled the trigger on another $600+ in wear items for this thing. Nothing comes cheap, and everyone on the bmw forums swears that non-oem electronics simply dont work right. And of course, OEM is 4x+ the cost of the generic versions, and then there's two of everything. Like having to buy 2x Bosch MAFs makes me miss the Subaru's "simplicity." But the plus side is that every one of these "wear" items is directly related to power production, so I'm h
oping that I'll regain some of the lost HP.


I bought:
2x Pre-cat O2 sensors
2x MAFs
3x Camshaft Position Sensors (one already replaced)
8x Sparkplugs


Next on my list will probably be a preventative fuel pump change and a VANOS overhaul. And this weekend I'll swap to the summer wheels finally!

Well, almost a year since the last update. I'm getting pretty good at this.

Now that I'm in Dallas the car sits most of the time, but it sucks being in a garage with prohibition on car maintenance.

Since the last update I noticed that the swaybar brackets were snapped, so had to update with some nice shiny aftermarket ones! I also did a total shifter rebuild with a SSK (really just the shifter from one generation later) and holy * did it make a difference! I replaced about 5 parts and wow...17 years of degradation left about 3" of play in the shifter when in gear. Now it's down to about .5" and feels maaahvelous. I also threw in a clutch stop at the same time to remove a ton of dead space between the clutch pickup and the floor. Best $7 I ever spent!

Next on the list is an NBT retrofit. Basically, someone like HolyCrapItsFast decided to reverse engineer the signals from the iBus (my generation) and the current generation, and make them talk through an adapter. So, if all things go to plan i'll be going from this:





to this:



With native bluetooth, maps, iDrive controller, etc...

I still have it on my to-do to 1) meet up with some of the locals (eg Boogeyman) and 2) finally take this to an auto-x or something to finally learn how to drive RWD properly.

Grinder34 said:

Well, almost a year since the last update. I'm getting pretty good at this.

Now that I'm in Dallas the car sits most of the time, but it sucks being in a garage with prohibition on car maintenance.

Since the last update I noticed that the swaybar brackets were snapped, so had to update with some nice shiny aftermarket ones! I also did a total shifter rebuild with a SSK (really just the shifter from one generation later) and holy * did it make a difference! I replaced about 5 parts and wow...17 years of degradation left about 3" of play in the shifter when in gear. Now it's down to about .5" and feels maaahvelous. I also threw in a clutch stop at the same time to remove a ton of dead space between the clutch pickup and the floor. Best $7 I ever spent!

Next on the list is an NBT retrofit. Basically, someone like HolyCrapItsFast decided to reverse engineer the signals from the iBus (my generation) and the current generation, and make them talk through an adapter. So, if all things go to plan i'll be going from this:

http://www.howzit.co.za/h_images/1_bd27110192c1a3b12d391af673ebeb20.jpg
https://www.igotasti.com/vBforum/im...lZSKHvJrR70J95rjam6srKQhO9UVZWUwNVlZWUAf/2Q==
https://www.igotasti.com/vBforum/im...lZSKHvJrR70J95rjam6srKQhO9UVZWUwNVlZWUAf/2Q==

to this:

https://www.smugmug.com/Vehicles/540/i-8rdKKpS/0/X2/IMG_5616-X2.jpg

With native bluetooth, maps, iDrive controller, etc...

I still have it on my to-do to 1) meet up with some of the locals (eg Boogeyman) and 2) finally take this to an auto-x or something to finally learn how to drive RWD properly.

Click to expand...

Its Boogieman!!!! Haha. Take it to MSR cresson. Awesome track just south of Ft Worth.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'll probably take it to an auto-x first, just to learn the limits and handling!

I also got my headunit in for the technology upgrade.



Gotta love people who clearly dont care about their job! Its going back, with a new one on its way!