19birel's Silber-Grau BMW E60 Progression Thread

[19birel]

Introduction

Hey everyone, some of you may remember my previous "daily driver" build where I breathed some new life into a non-running $900 B5 Audi A4.

Before:
IMG_2007 by Ayrton @ Drive19, on Flickr

After:
a4 (1 of 1)-18 by Ayrton @ Drive19, on Flickr

While I loved the car it was more of a project than a daily (and the car I actually daily'd was meant to be my project), and then it failed inspection a couple months ago and all said and done it would cost me about $1k in parts to fix as much of the suspension needed replaced. While it did mean that I'd finally have coilovers and a few other nice mods, having $5k into a $3k car that was 18years old and far from where I wanted it just didn't feel right. I found a couple other cars I was interested in and then posted the B5 up for sale and within a couple hours someone had committed to buying it. Then, a week later I got a call from a co-worker saying that a customer was looking to sell his 530xi, the next day I drove it home from the guy's house

Here are the details and some pics

2007 BMW 530xi, 6MT, 164k miles (at time of purchase), purchased from original owner who was a former 4x superbowl winning NFL player, was a special order european delivery, full service history at BMW dealership. The car has adaptive Xenon headlights, sport package, cold weather package, premium dakota leather, BMW Individual Anthracite Maple interior trim etc. etc. etc. I also got a set of OEM winter wheels with tyres included in the deal.

bmwspring (1 of 1)-4 by Ayrton @ Drive19, on Flickr

Untitled by Ayrton @ Drive19, on Flickr

bmwspring (1 of 1)-2 by Ayrton @ Drive19, on Flickr

*note these interior pics are from right after I picked up the car, I have since detailed it.
Untitled by Ayrton @ Drive19, on Flickr

Untitled by Ayrton @ Drive19, on Flickr

The E60 is such an upgrade over my old B5, and I got such a deal on it acquiring this car has more than made up for the loss I took on the B5. I love the silky smoothness of the inline six, the comfort, and the driving dynamics, honestly couldn't be happier. My plans for the car are tackle any and all maintenance and then do a few OEM+ mods to really make it my own, and I've already gotten started.

Current Progress
First, the po had mentioned that the car was burning a little oil, so I replaced the oil separator and all the crank case ventilation hoses
Untitled by Ayrton @ Drive19, on Flickr

Next was chasing down a slight misfire at high rpm, first I replaced all 6 coilpacks and then an injector and now the issue is gone and no more codes. I also picked up a sweet ZHP M-Performance shift knob.
Untitled by Ayrton @ Drive19, on Flickr

Untitled by Ayrton @ Drive19, on Flickr

Maintenance Checklist
Oil Separator /CCV hoses X

Ignition Coils X

Replace Faulty Injector X

Moonroof weatherseal

Paint Touchup X

Mod Wishlist
ZHP Shift knob X

M5 titanium iDrive knob

Rear sway bar

LED Angel Eyes?

Wheel spacers?

By next weekend my maintenance list should be complete, now just debating whether or not I want LED angel eyes (they are white or whiteish blue instead of yellow) and if I want to bother with spacers on the stock wheels. I have some other ideas and plans lined up, but I'll save those for later. If you guys have any suggestions for it, let me know, stay tuned!

[stranger]

IMHO yellow angel eyes look better.
Other mods? Maybe soft close or auto boot open? Bumpers from M5?

Nice car, waiting for other mods.

[19birel]

IMHO yellow angel eyes look better.
Other mods? Maybe soft close or auto boot open? Bumpers from M5?

Nice car, waiting for other mods.

Thanks! Yeah, I'm on the fence about LED angel eyes, I like how they can been seen during the day, but I do really like the stock yellow. Softclose doors would be a very involved retrofit and not really worth it to me, auto boot open is already fitted as standard.

I've been looking at different lip, skirt, and spoiler options for it, wheels, and also considering LCI taillights, just have to figure out what order I want to do things in. I have a few smaller mods in the works though,hopefully they'll materialize in a week or so.

[19birel]

Long time without an update, been mostly just driving and enjoying the car, but I have done a few things here and there.

First, I installed some LED projector puddle lights, I know a little cheesy projecting the BMW logo on the ground when the doors are open but for $11 the novelty was worth it to me
Untitled by Ayrton @ Drive19, on Flickr
Install was easy and they fit nicely
Untitled by Ayrton @ Drive19, on Flickr

Next I got some touchup paint and finally got around to painting that darn towhook cover.
Untitled by Ayrton @ Drive19, on Flickr

Untitled by Ayrton @ Drive19, on Flickr

Untitled by Ayrton @ Drive19, on Flickr

Untitled by Ayrton @ Drive19, on Flickr
Pretty good match

Untitled by Ayrton @ Drive19, on Flickr

Now I just have a few rock chips to touch up, then I'll do another paint correction and the car should be looking A+.

Hit a milestone the other day, I've already driven this thing more than I drove the old Audi, purchasing a well maintained car is great haha.
Untitled by Ayrton @ Drive19, on Flickr

And finally, I decided to smoke my headlight reflectors, the amber looked so annoying and as E-Codes aren't in the budget this was the next best thing, I love how they turned out.
Untitled by Ayrton @ Drive19, on Flickr

Untitled by Ayrton @ Drive19, on Flickr

More to come, sorry for the slow progress, trying to save up some money to wrap up my VW project and being back in school is making that difficult haha.

Suggestions always welcome!

[19birel]

So I did a free little performance mod the other day. Apparently the North American spec E60s have a secondary charcoal filter in the airbox for emissions purposes; M5 owners reported a 20hp gain on the dyno with the filter removed (very similar to what one gains with a Dinan intake), and 530i and 550i owners were reporting increased throttle response and top end power. I didn't have high expectations for this mod, but figured a second air filter much be pretty restrictive and was interested to find out how much power it was sapping.

Untitled by Ayrton @ Drive19, on Flickr

After removal
Untitled by Ayrton @ Drive19, on Flickr

I noticed that there is slightly more throttle response and a tiny bit of extra power, certainly not night and day, if there is any power gain it's probably closer to 10hp as it's not all that apparent. I did get a reasonable amount of intake noise which is cool though

[hinrichs]

Crazy they had a dual filter in there. I am sure it flows well, but still dumb.

[19birel]

Crazy they had a dual filter in there. I am sure it flows well, but still dumb.

Yeah, I was surprised they did that too. But given that the extra noise is more noticeable than the power gain, and it's apparently needed for emissions, I can see why they did it. I'm just glad it's not a permanent fixture in the airbox.

[19birel]

Well I have an update for you guys that I'm sure you weren't expecting, because I know I didn't see it coming lol. The other day a rather uncommon set of wheels popped up on my local Craigslist for an unbelievable price. I hadn't been planning on buying wheels for this car until next summer but this deal was just too good to pass up. So here they are, my newly acquired AC Schnitzer Type IIIs

ACS (1 of 1) by Ayrton @ Drive19, on Flickr

ACS (1 of 1)-5 by Ayrton @ Drive19, on Flickr

ACS (1 of 1)-2 by Ayrton @ Drive19, on Flickr

ACS (1 of 1)-3 by Ayrton @ Drive19, on Flickr

ACS (1 of 1)-4 by Ayrton @ Drive19, on Flickr

ACS (1 of 1)-6 by Ayrton @ Drive19, on Flickr

and of course a quick little mockup
ACS (1 of 1)-8 by Ayrton @ Drive19, on Flickr

I'm beyond stoked about these, my original plan was just to get a rep OEM wheel or maybe a set of Niche's but these far better than either or those options. As you may have noticed in the pics, the wheels need some TLC, the finish is bubbling on some of them, and they all have curb rash and brake dust stains.

Since the tyres are dry-rotted as well, rather than mount them for the remainder of the decent weather this year, I'm just gonna go straight to refinishing them. I think I'm gonna go with the standard silver finish but if anyone has any suggestion let me know, I'll be tackling this on my own (as much as I can) so I'll keep you guys updated on my progress. Side note, seeing that mockup has me finally digging my car's shadow-line window trim, I was gonna wrap it matte chrome (so it looks like the standard trim), but I think I'll just do it gloss black, thoughts?

Stay tuned!

[becausephilchow]

Shadow-line trim is beautiful, keep it.

Personally, i'd just stick with silver, lower the car, make them fit nice, and call it a day as a daily driver. Some M5 bits and pieces would be great too. Was there an MSport Kit for the E60s? I believe there was no?

[hinrichs]

Nice score on the wheels, they are going to look great. I would stick with silver as well, easy and will look great.

[philohlean]

Had a sneaking suspicion I'd see those wheels again. I was really hoping a friend of mine with an f30 would be picking those up, looks like he was second in line behind you haha. Found them on CL a minute too late. I vote keep them silver.

[19birel]

Shadow-line trim is beautiful, keep it.

Personally, i'd just stick with silver, lower the car, make them fit nice, and call it a day as a daily driver. Some M5 bits and pieces would be great too. Was there an MSport Kit for the E60s? I believe there was no?

Yeah, there was an M-sport kit for these cars, although only available from factory on the 550i in the US. I definitely would like M-sport side skirts, I have considered getting a front bumper as well, but I think I might just go for a valence of some sort. Ideally I want a balance between the sportiness of full M-sport and the classiness of the standard kit.

Nice score on the wheels, they are going to look great. I would stick with silver as well, easy and will look great.

Thanks! Yeah, I think for achieving the look I want and considering that this will also be a DIY project, silver is the way to go.

Had a sneaking suspicion I'd see those wheels again. I was really hoping a friend of mine with an f30 would be picking those up, looks like he was second in line behind you haha. Found them on CL a minute too late. I vote keep them silver.

Yeah, I figured that they would probably sell soon so I jumped on them immediately! I really got lucky with them haha.

I agree, silver is definitely the move; the more I look at the mockup the more I'm convinced.

[19birel]

Made some progress on the car the other day, touched up some rock chips and a few of the scrapes in the bumper left by the PO, they don't look perfect but they look better than having black streaks on the bumpers and the chip touchups will at least protect the metal. Forgot to take pics of that, but a vid of the process might end up on my youtube channel in a few days, link HERE In addition to that though I restore my yellowed side markers which I do have pics of.

How they started


After a two stage polish


Then I masked them up and hit them with three coats of clear, 1 dust coat, and 2 wet coats. Without the clear coat they'll just turn yellow again in a couple weeks

After the dust coat


Wet1


Wet2


Finished and installed, my apologies for the crap pic, but I think they turned out well. Looks nearly good as new and didn't cost me a dime (I already had the clear coat and polish laying around)


Then today I received my BMW Motorsport steering wheel roundel from Renown, I really like it ties in nicely with the ///M badging on my shift knob.


One with the real camera


Hoping to get a start on the wheels soon, I've just been pretty busy with school and life in general so they've been on the back burner for the past few weeks.

Also did a little photoshoot of my buddy's E30, its a little rough and an auto but it only has 36k miles on it! He's thinking about selling it too if anyone is interested. Here's a few from the shoot









I also made a short vid of it, it's on my instagram page @19birelcrg_ayrton if you wanna see it and give a follow if you're keen

[WheelerDealers]

such clean examples

[19birel]

such clean examples

Thanks!