Arktis Monkey E28 (1986 BMW 535i)

[J.Desimone]

I bought my first BMW in 2010. It was a E82. I built it up over the years and it went through many different phases. Here are some of the highlights in order:

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I loved the car, but it had to go and it was time for a new project. Every E28 I ever saw I loved, especially when lowered. I started the search and found a lot of cars outside of St. Louis, but nothing local. I was this close to buying a 1988 528e 5-speed (black/black) when I found a local 1986 535i 5-speed (blue/blue) in decent condition with only 140,000 miles on it. I made the purchase, named him Arktis Monkey, and started the build.

[J.Desimone]

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First step was to replace all the fuses, which was a great idea, because the speedo started working again. Next up was to figure out why the brake lights weren't working after the fuse was replaced. So, I swapped bulbs one side to the other and they started to work!
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Next step was to remove the ugly pin-striping and janky glued-on 535i badge.
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[J.Desimone]

I decided to take my first "long" drive (30 miles) up to a friends house for a good ol' fashion seafood boil! I've never had a bigger smile on my face when driving a car. No A/C, rear windows and sunroof don't work (yet), but I loved every minute of it. Engine and transmission are great.

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Next step was to tuck the bumpers and re-paint the front grill black. I got the front one done and the grilles look great. It was a lot harder than I thought it would be and the pressurized shocks scared the crap out of me when I drilled through them, but I got it done. The rear on the other hand is a different story. There are 3 mounts and the 2 corner mounts are so rusted that I couldn't get the bolts out. So, I tightened it back up the best I could and left it.

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Time to take the wheels off and see what I got. Low and behold, Bilstein's with Eibach springs!! I can definitely adjust the rear height using the spring clips, but I'm not sure about the fronts. I may have the chop the springs.

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Now it's time to re-work a set of BBS LM's I had laying around and do a test fit.

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[J.Desimone]

So, the BBS LM's... I have yet to find a real photo of an E28 on BBS LM's. The specs are 18x9 et40 and 18x10 et50. I knew that people have ran 18's before and the width wasn't too bad, but the offset definitely had to decrease. So, I took them apart and reverse mounted them for the test fitting. The reverse mount probably changes the offset about 15-16mm, so et24 and et34. Still not low enough, but heading in the right direction. After test fitting the rear then the front, I found that maybe with a 5-15mm spacer it would be perfect. On the rear the wheel hit the lower control arm and the front it hit the strut. Spacers will solve that problem.

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I ordered up some parts:
- BBS RS gold bolts (longer shoulder and bolt, in general)
- BBS valve stems
- Gold stud conversion
- 5mm, 10mm, and 15mm spacers
- 215/35 and 225/35 tires
- Front and rear Pfeba valances
- Trunk seal gasket
- Historic license plate
- An assortment of decals

[FreshPrinceSTL]

looks promising Joe. cant wait to see the finished product.

[indiejack]

Can't wait to see this thing take shape!

[Chasen88]

+1*^ for sure.

[royalife]

bad ass

[J.Desimone]

Started getting some parts in and the weather cleared up, so time to continue the work. I got the bolts, valve stems, studs, spacers, 215 tires, trunk seal, plate, and some decals. I decided to fit the wheels first to make sure I had the right spacers. I think I'm going to be okay with a 5mm on the front and 10mm in the rear, so I may be selling my 15mm that I got. Not sure yet. I'll wait until the wheels have tires on them and then see how that goes.

So offset is currently looking like
18x9 et20-ish
18x10 et24-ish





Rear fitment, obviously without the suspension compressed...





Had to clear the control arm and strut tube... the control arm sticks out further than the strut tube, though...





Front fitment... suspension not compressed...



Pretty close to the strut tube, but still about a 3-5mm gap... just enough... but with a tire it may be an issue...



Disassembled all the wheels and started to clean up the brake dust a bit...





I found a paint that is the exact same color as the powder coat on the centers, so I'm going to clean them up and spray a couple coats on them to freshin them up a bit...



Before...



This is after cleaning with acetone and then lightly brushing them with Medium 1 steel wool.



Then brushing the crap out of them with 0000 steel wool and then cleaning them again with acetone...



Then I polished them 3 times with mother's mag/aluminum polish and a large polish ball... they were actually not in too bad of shape, so it was pretty easy to get them shiny again... sometimes you really have to work. The photos make them look better than they really are. They are not perfectly smooth mirror finish, but good enough for me.



I put a nice, thick 3 coats of wax on them after the 3rd polish was done



Taped them up to protect the lip and keep paint off some areas... with the wax they'll be easy to clean up...



I didn't do this the last time I refinished them, but always told myself I should have... decided to paint the inside of the barrel black, so it doesn't show any brake dust ugliness. I used a rubberized paint, which I don't really like after it has finally dried, because it always stays tacky... but it's paintable, so I painted over it with some gloss black caliper paint that resists heat, brake dust, and it durable.







After the final coat of the rubberized stuff



Put a couple fresh coats on the centers...



Some of the black parts of the car were faded and chipped from all the years, so I decided to paint them and make them look like new.







Time to deep dive into why the windows aren't working on either rear door...

start with the driver's side rear, because at least that one would go up and down about an inch. Well, someone decided one day it was a good idea to jamb a Hampton Inn pen into the glass track/channel... GOOD IDEA! So I removed the pen and after moving the glass up and down a few times, I'm guessing the previous owner was a little too lazy to clean the tracks and/or maybe adjust them slightly. I'm going to get some silicone type cleaner and get it working/adjusted eventually. Good thing is the switch and motor work great. It will be nice to have some more window-open-ness in the car, since there is currently no A/C and St. Louis decided recently to get hot as F!





Time for the passenger side rear... this was interesting. First thing is that there is no door pull handle, so I'll have to order one of those, or I may go to a couple junk yards soon to see if there are any E28/E30's I can scavenge. Previous owner thought it was a good idea to zip tie a piece of wood to the track and hold up the glass. At first I couldn't figure out why, but I knew that neither the switch on the front console nor the door would even make the motor "jump" like it was trying to work. So, first I took the switch from the rear driver's side that I knew worked and tried that, no luck. Knowing that switch worked I left it there and disassembled the center console to get to the window switches, and swapped front passenger that I knew worked with rear passenger... no luck... swapped them back. Finally I decided I wanted to investigate the regulator/motor, so I took that unit off and out of the door. I was able to separate the motor from the rest of the regulator to take a peak... Regulator works fine, so must be the motor. When I turned the motor shaft manually, it felt gritty, almost like it was full of sand or something. I don't think it was designed to be taken apart, but I had to know what happened to it and knew that I most likely had to replace the motor anyways. Well, come to find out one of the magnets exploded/disintegrated at one point. I cleaned out all of the debris and reassembled the motor with just the single magnet to see if it would work... just for the hell of it. It actually worked! But, not consistently enough for me to be happy with it, and it would have just delayed the inevitable. So I made a mountain of magnet debris on top of my empty Keystone can and threw it out.













A full days worth of work completed, so I decided to give him a bath. One thing that still bugs me is the boot lid. It's perfect and flush on the passenger side, but not the drivers side... almost like it's bent or something. I think after the windows/wheels, it will be my next focus to straighten the trunk out and install the replacement trunk seal. The trunk bugs the crap out of me every time I walk up to the car. Any ideas, let me know.

[indiejack]

Coming along Joe! What size tires you thinking about?

[J.Desimone]

Coming along Joe! What size tires you thinking about?

Thanks Jack! I'm going to run 215/35 on the 9-inch and 225/35 on the 10-inch. Got some brand new Nankang NS-20 on ebay for $300 all four!

[laBeef]

Awesome!

[J.Desimone]

Very productive day. Went to two pick-n-pulls today and found a bunch of older BMW's to pick parts off of. Two highlights were the ellipsoid headlights I got for $4/piece and the motor that was $3. Got a bunch of random trim pieces for free, oh and an original tape deck for $5.









And can't forget the decals I got from RIVAL HOUSE in the mail... they hooked me up with 3 extra decals... awesome!!

[J.Desimone]

Late night of work... wheel parts are ready to be assembled. Just did one wheel so far. Spent some time coming up with a process to do it right. Will do the rest tomorrow and get tires mounted hopefully before the weekend.



Individually wrapped gold BBS RS bolts... man the guys at Black Forest Industries are really obsessed about the quality of their bolts. BBS LM bolts, in my opinion, are too short when the centers are reverse mounted. The BBS RS bolts are a heck of a lot longer and have a slightly longer shoulder, hence, safer.



Centering the center of the wheel is an issue when reverse mounting BBS LM's because they weren't really designed to be reverse mounted, so I read somewhere about using razor blades as shims and they worked perfectly. I think I was able to torque the centers in place pretty dead on center... however, we shall see. Torqued the bolts to 20 ft-lb and used a dab of blue loctite. Also to note, the overspray from painting the inside of the barrels wipes right off with some acetone. I think waxing them 3 times before painting was a good idea, too.



And here is the finished product... minus the BBS valve stems. I'm very happy with how they turned out. The gold bolts and reverse mount make them look awesome. The gold 90mm studs don't hurt, either.









Longer BBS RS bolts from Black Forest Industries. Sad to give up the original BBS bolts, but it's nice to have fresh bolts going on these once again.



And good night from Saint Louis. Tomorrow is another day.

[Welfare]

Looove the wheels.