TGreene's Calypso 525i/5 DD

[TGreene]

In June of last year I had a rusted 530i/5 in the driveway with a bad engine and a M60B40 on an engine stand in the garage. Browsing craigslist as always, I came across a really good looking Calypsorot '95 525i 5-Speed about an hour away in Maryland for $3,000. I called the guy up and set up an appointment, knowing that I would most likely walk away.

I met up with him and it was clear that he did not know much about cars. He had just bought it a few months prior and had already ruined the 2nd gear from poor shifting. He told me that he had been warned by his friends about owning a BMW and when he took it to a shop to get an estimate on fixing the transmission he regretted not listening to their advice.

The car had other problems too. The driver's door brake was ripped out. Lots of little interior trim parts were missing. The seats were twisted. The hood was bad. It had angle eye headlights. The driver's fender and the rear quarter panel had significant dents. The rear seats were torn up. The list goes on.

But, it was Calypso and the paint looked decent. After DDing an Islandgrun with bad paint for a year, I had come to value a cleaner canvas and I made him an offer. He wanted to cancel the insurance quick and to get on with his life so we made a deal a few days later.

I parted rushed a part out of the rusted 530i/5 to make room for the new 525i/5 and then bailed down to Florida to visit my brother. When I came back I got to work getting ready to DD.







The door panel fell off one day. Great!



Where the door brake should be:



The PO had disconnected the passenger window motor since the window had come off of the track. I ended up suspecting bent regulator arms so I installed another known working regulator while I was at it.





Next I swapped over the front suspension from the '92 Islandgrun which was Vogtland springs and Bilstein Sport struts:





The rideheight with 16'' Style 5s:







Pulling out the interior to clean it:





And replaced the cabin air filter since it was relatively accessible:













Cleaning stuff:



Reassembly:





Before:



After:

[Steve547i]

Calypso is the best color. Good luck with it.

[e34DD]

Looks nice..Love the Color..

[cmgreensr]

Looks like a nice place to start Trevor. Just remember that door panels are highly overrated!

[bhch142]

How did you clean all the nasty crumbs and grit out of the seat buttons?

[E34ührer]

Man that looks like a nice 525. Calypso that isn't faded....WOW.

[Matt Z]

Any plans to put the M60B40 in?

[TGreene]

How did you clean all the nasty crumbs and grit out of the seat buttons?

I took them apart and took them inside to clean them with soap and water.

The side trim is held on by two torx screws and a little tac under the seat and then the buttons pop right out of it.

Any plans to put the M60B40 in?

No, I would stay I6 if I swapped it and this is a DD so I don't think power is the goal. I have the M5 to waste money on.

[cincyE34]

Nice car, and it cleaned up good! Its also the best color on E34's!

[e34Croak]

Sweet! Damn, you've already put in a lot of work on that thing. Nicely done



In before a noob not realizing who you are makes fun of those angel eyes.

[staystackin]

n1ce ang1e eyez br0


But seriously, awesome job cleaning up that interior man!

[Psykick5]

You make me want to take apart my entire interior and clean it! How long did it take you?

If I did it I'd probably do in stages.

[e34DD]

Im coming over want to help me clean my Touring LOL.


Looks Great!!!!!!

[rotaryboots]

I'd trade my island grün for a calypso. The search continues for style 5's.

Great car.

[TGreene]

I feel like a need to update the thread a bit but I don't have my pictures. Jamie (JamieNL) and I did a lot of work a month or two ago. We ripped out the angel eyes and replaced them with some ellipsoids.

We made a trip to the junkyard and got lucky and found a '94 that had decent paint. The hood and front bumpers were trashed (My hood is very dented and the front bumper is very faded) but the driver's fender and door were worth taking. Swapping out the fenders got rid of a large dent that would even cause rubbing. However, when replacing the fender the bumper had to come off, and the bumper was bolted onto both fenders from the inside to keep them snug. The holes this created in the front bumper will not do so I am looking for a matching replacement. Some of the original bumper guides are torn so I need to set it all back to how it should be. Also at the junkyard I snagged some rear upper seatbelt covers and installed them.

We installed the rear headrests and E32 rear center storage console from Joel. The combination of the headrests and the storage console make a huge different IMO. You can see the headrests in this picture, as well as the E39 M Parallels that I drove down to Richmond for and the 20MM spacers it has up front:



I also fixed the passenger seat twist.

The car did not pass Virginia state inspection because of a missing fog light and a broken stud on the passenger side upper strut mount. I have been driving it with a failed inspection sticker for a few weeks. (What a rebel!)

I also just snagged an M5 rear bumper cover off of eBay, and was given a set of 20MM spacers for Christmas by my family for the rear.

Short term list is now:

* Valve cover gasket, spark plugs and spark plug boots.
* Replace the valve cover gasket
* Fix a slow leak in the front right tire
* Remove the Navy sticker left by one of the previous owners on the back windshield
* Fix the radio wiring as the speakers come in and out
* Replace the front struts with something not as harsh and Bilstein Sports
* Properly mount the front and rear bumper covers using new supports

Long term list:

* Paint and install M5 rear bumper - maybe get my hands on a front and go for a two-toned look
* Narrow hood and grill conversion (Die, wide hoods!)
* Replace the transmission with a good unit, and install new drivetrain mounts and parts
* Oxygen sensors, intake gaskets, clean ICV etc.
* 3.23 LSD

Something that is also significant to this thread is that my Islandgrun 525i/5, which although is a hideous car on the outside(rust, faded paint, dents all over), runs very well with many recently installed parts and was just recently totalled* when it was hit while parked. The damage is cosmetic and my sister-in-law will continue to use it as a beater until she can find a car she likes, but it means that I will be parting the car within the next few months. (I put in the asterisk because they have sent me a check for the full value of the car minus the $750 to buy it back, but I am under the impression that the state of the title will not change, and the car will remain street legal)

The Islandgun has almost all of the parts that I would need to make the Calypso a really solid car:

New Engine mounts
New Transmission Mounts
ZF Transmission with 20k on the flex disc and CSB
Great fog lights
New upper strut mounts
New Oxygen sensors

This is good and bad, because it means that I will be putting off repairing a lot of things on this car. I don't want to spend money now on parts that I know I will have my hands on soon enough.

[yongElayne]

Just remember that door panels are highly overrated

[upallnight]

I'd trade my island grün for a calypso. The search continues for style 5's.

Great car.

I have a set of Style 5



All 4 are in similar conditions as this one



Comes with the center caps as well as the special tool to remove the center cap.

$250.00 plus shipping.

[ShapeShifter]

^not style 5's.

Very nice work! Your gonna make a great mechanic somday ;-)
LMK know if you want to sell the billie sports.

Happy New Year!

[upallnight]

Happy New Year to you too. What do you want to give me for the billie sports?

[Trasportador]

I have to give it to you TGreene, you really are a serious trooper. Looks good, congrats on the purchase. Didn't you pick up an M5 recently as well?

[E34nication]

Great work Trevor. Love the attention to detail.

[TGreene]

The front of the car has been plagued front the start. First I removed the angle eyes and put in some ellipsoids while at the same time replacing the broken headlight surrounds. Then I replaced the driver's fender. Now, time for the fogs and getting the front bumper to fit as it should.

Here is a bolt that was used to hold the bumper cover up to the fender rather than just buy the rubber bumper guides that this bumper cover does not have:







After a bit of a battle with the rusted bolt, here it is along with the damage to the bumper cover that it left:



On to the fogs!

My brother and I are working on finishing the garage so my work station is the bumper cover sitting on top of a trash can. Here are fogs from parts cars with some brackets from junkyards. Mixing and matching to get a good passenger's side projector fog ready to go in.



The previous owner put in the other type of fog light (spacing on the name of them) and had spliced in the other wiring, so I had to change it back. Luckily I had all of the necessary connectors:





Alright, on to the front struts. As mentioned above, I broke off one of the studs on the passenger's side upper strut mount and it caused me to fail the state's inspection. Also, the Bilstein Sports were not cutting it for me. I once thought that I could handle the harshest ride possible, but apologizing to my passengers on sectioned highway with Vogtlands, Bilstein Sports and 18'' wheels was getting annoying. I pulled the entire front strut assemblings from a 110k mile 540i in the junkyard. I headed over to Jamie's house.





The front struts were not leaking. This is a video of how they performed. I don't know how to consider them. What are your thoughts?



The brake lines were looking rough so we swapped in the lines from the junkyard set and used the power bleeder to make it a five minute job. I am thinking that stainless steel lines are going to be ordered soon.





We did the sway bar end links while we were at it. Cory can testify to their condition since she was the one that first saw them when these same ones were on my Islandgrun 525i in Raleigh (I swapped them over with the front suspension to this car when I got it).





With the front wheel off Jamie quickly figured that the slow leak was coming from a plug in the tire. Some spit confirmed it:



I put on the ACS Type IIs that have been in the garage for over a year. Having been recently balanced, driving with them on made it clear that the M-Pars were not. Symptoms that I thought were due to bad front steering parts are now totally gone. The car has no shimmys and it feels great.

As it sits now, the car has the ACS up front and the M-Pars still on the rear. I still have to swap in the driver's side strut from the 540i, too, so it is a bit of a frankenstein at the moment. Soon it will all be uniform with the ACS on the rear with the 20MM spacers installed and with a nice new state inspection sticker. The to-do-list is getting shorter.

[jfj707]

Amazing the difference that good wheels/tires can make. Great update.

[TGreene]

Spent another hour or two out enjoying the weather today.

I need to vacuum again and the floor mats are keeping the interior down, but overall it is a great car to get into:





Door gaskets are being jerks.





Since I was taking pictures, here is another of the E34 center console and the rear headrests that I got from Joel. Thanks again, Joel. They really make the car what it should have been from the factory.





Using some junkyard gaskets I replaced the bad sections and made some spacers to set them all right again.

After pulling up on the gasket's sill covers you can see the seam. A little bit of pulling and it comes right apart.



Starting at the top, I made sure to push the gaskets back in as hard as possible. I would work from the top down to the left, then from the top down to the right. Soon you are left with nice tight gaskets aside from a bit of a gap that needs to be filled:













Fun with knives!

The OBC started to dim a few months ago. Now it is so bad that it appears dead during the day. I went to the old parts bin and got another one.

The radio has to come out before you can access to OBC's release lever.



Now the OBC has been replaced the radio is back in.

[e34DD]

car looking great!!!!!!!!! great work.