Tweet
Been lurking on the forums for a while now and even made a couple threads about her, but I figured it was about time for a build thread, given that I'm constantly doing something new to her, and wanted to share some of my custom mods that some may not have seen on other E39's...
Well! Shall we get on with the tale? It all began at the beginning of this year. I was shopping around for a used 5 series, and if the budget allowed, one in the E39 platform. After a couple weeks or so of looking at various used ones on Craigslist, i had honed in to the perfect one for me..there she was, a bone stock alpine white 528..with a beige interior sitting on beautiful yet abused OEM style 5's...I had to have her! So after a trip out to Riverside, CA, I saw her for the first time, and to some disappointment, she wasn't quite what she appeared to be in the online listing.This included a cracked windshield, warped brake rotors, a ripped off passenger visor, paint cancer on the roof, and an odometer reading of 220k....a whole 20k more than the seller had prior admitted to, but these were all minuscule issues to me, well besides the high mileage, I knew i could restore her easily and roughly cheaply with some good ol' fashioned elbow grease and man hours. The asking price was $3,500
After thirty mins or so of "negotiating", and me picking on as many problems as I could sink my eyes into, i got the final price to $3,200, which in my opinion, was a pretty damn good deal for a '99 with only minor cosmetic defects. I had brought a friend who is a mechanic, and the engine passed his bar. Amazingly the engine purred so smoothly at idle, I was questioning if it were even running or not, anyways long story short i proceeded to drive her home with a giddy, childish like, anticipation to get home and begin cleaning her up and doing my first mods.
I got home around midnight and began further inspection of every nook and cranny of this ultimate driving machine, I was in awe of the many cool features that my measling three grand had gotten me, and though to myself.."someone once payed upwards of 30k for this car" and now she was mine, and at my full disposal of being whatever i wanted her to be, it would just take some time, learning, and above all...patience.
Unlike some very blessed people on here who have endless dollars to throw at their ride, I only had the small remainder of my paycheck to put towards my new project, so patience would be the only thing that would get me through the agonizing pain of wanting my car to be where I'm at least happy with it. The several months that would follow, would bring me to that point, and as of now, I'm proud of what I have made of her with the limited budget and resources that allowed..
I can say that I don't think i'll ever be done with modding, Theres just so much that can always be improved, and i feel like I'm just barely taking the first bite..of this stance burrito..
Anyways, here's some pics of the first four months i owned the car, they are in poor quality, as i didn't have an iPhone to take decent pics, but I'm glad i still took pictures of how she once was, i can see now how far I've come..even though to most, it isn't far at all...
This was how she looked at the used lot I bought her from, it was January 31, 2013...an attractive, grandpa's BMW
Something about the car being 100% stock just made my teeth cringe, fortunately I had a rattle can of flat black and some sandpaper lying around to get rid of the ugly, and rock pitted kidney grilles...of course I knew the front end still looked like ass, with a pitted bumper, busted fog light, and hazy headlight lenses, but I could at least go to bed that night knowing my car had something done to it..
Next mods were eBay lights, and black plasti-dipped wheels
The ebay's came with chrome corners inside..ugly! Those had to go, so i took the lights apart and painted them flat black to closer resemble the newer OEM housings
Next mod was painting the roof black to fix the flaking clear coat problem..came out great for doing it myself
Cleaned her up, and took some pics of the new setup..
next I purchased an M5 "style" bumper, why anyone would waste money on a true OEM one is my guess, some are just anal like that and if I had money I'd probably do the same
After this, the car remained this way for a while, i was happy with it, and had my focus on some other things at the time..several weeks passed, and I had been saving up for coilovers so she could finally be low...unfortunately I did not take any more pictures of the car till about a month and a half ago..before that i had done some more mods, I had taken apart the style 5's and polished the lips, and painted spokes silver with gold bots, and wrapped them in 205/40/17's, smaller than the original 235/45/17's...the goal here was to get LOW!
Here's some pics of just after she was dropped..
After weeks of looking at plastic brackets of where fog lights "should" be..and given I was low on cash, I decided to make some one-off projector fogs custom..
I started out with a cardboard template...
Then I matched the template with some sheet metal..
I then used the projectors i had laying around from an old headlight retrofit, and fixed them to the sheet metal with screws and bolts
Test fit..
After painting the brackets flat black and sealing off All gaps in the projector with aluminum high heat tape, the finished product appeared
I used a black sharpie to color over the "teeth" that remained, took a pic the next morning..
Some more pics from may of 13'
June 13'
I have always loved the look of slammed cars with roof racks, so i went out and got a cheap one..
I also raised the rear about half An inch, I wanted to have more of a raked stance, plus I was sick of scraping EVERYWHERE, amazingly this height increase made a difference. Cool thing about coilovers is I can always go low again if i want, but I'll be leaving her like this for now
Since I've posted on here, everyone seems to just point out how sunk the front wheels are, I am aware of this, however i have not had the extra $160 for 35mm spacers to bring them out..I HAVE 35's in the rear and it's still not flush..seems like ill have spent some $400 in spacers by the time I'm done.. Wider wheels just aren't in the budget right now so I got to work with these. Also, i just ordered center caps and should be receiving them later this week, and for now I'll leave you with a photoshoot I did earlier today of how the car currently looks 6/16/13
Comment