Summitp's 540i thread

[summitp]

What's going on bimmer post people. I just wanted to get a little thread going on the 2000 540i I picked up the other day in Chicago.

I've been a fan of V8 5 series for a while now, and I had a couple of different e34 540i 6 speeds. I thought they were great cars. They were good at everything.

Now I've got my first e39. A 2000 model year 540i with the 6 speed manual transmission. Car came with m sport suspension, sport seats, etc. nicely appointed in titansilber and grey interior. As it sits, it's got a hair over 102,000 miles on it, and a full service history going back 20+ years. The car has been babied, not driven in winters, and generally lightly used.

My son and i grabbed a couple cheapo early morning tickets on Saturday Nov 2 to fly out to Chicago and pick the car up. We took it downtown for some lunch, then we hopped on i-80 and started heading west. We arrived in Salt lake City the following day around 630pm. The car was a delight (as much of a delight as can be expected for 1500 miles of non stop driving) and was a smooth and fast ride across the middle of the country.

It is now being driven everyday, and I am so happy to be back in a V8 5 series. The space, the comfort, the poise, the smooth effortless power, the sporty handling. BMW did it right with the e34 and the e39.

I intend to use this thread as sort of a log of the work I do to it along the way. So, yeah, cheers, here she is!

[summitp]

First things first. Get rid of the license plate holder and slap a clean impact strip on that front bumper. Trunk needs to stay open while I load and unload kids hockey gear, so 2 new stabilus lifts, same for the hood, it kind of stayed up, but new ones were put in. The center tray in the center console was starting to crack so a new one was installed. It took my kid about 10 minutes after left Chicago to break the front cup holder, so a new one was installed.

I did not have record of the primary timing chain tensioner being replaced, so I slapped a new INA brand one in. Really very easy job that just takes about 20 minutes. The original appeared to be in very good condition, and had plenty of spring left to it. The updated version has a longer spring, but there really was nothing wrong with the one I removed. I suspect people who have tensioners that don't move well, or where the spring seems to have collapsed and cause rattle at startup have cars that saw extended oil change intervals.

I also dropped off the stock style 66 wheels off to get some continental dws rubber installed.