This is the car I always wanted when I was growing up - my father’s BMW E39 540i. A veritable beast of a family sedan it has a big torquey V8 engine that puts out enough horsepower to make the grumpiest of people grin. It didn’t exactly live a glorious life though, from a truly family sedan to my grandmother’s commuter car. When the car started leaking oil (as every good BMW does), it was left to sit in my grandmother’s garage for 2 years. I didn’t want to let this beauty of a car die that way so I convinced my father to help me fix it up.

We did the classic old leaky BMW maintenance - new valve cover gaskets, new lower oil pan gasket, changed the battery, realized the alternator was broken, replaced that (which was much harder than a normal car because the engineers at BMW decided to push optimal efficiency and made the alternator water cooled). After a host of other small issues the car was back running as good as ever.

Yet it continued to sit. The big V8 engine is not exactly fuel efficient and in a world of electric cars and turbocharged 4 cylinders it’s not economic to drive this car. After off and on driving the rear brakes completely jammed up requiring a brake rebuild. For this first modification we installed new brake rotors, pads and I rebuilt the brake calipers. We also deleted the pesky clutch delay valve greatly improving the clutch feel over stock.

This project is ongoing, as long as the car continues to break it will get fixed and we also plan on adding some modifications to make it even more fun.