What did you do to / for your E53 today??

[andrewwynn]

I went "full nutso" on my smoker. Got the one that does up to 15 psi air for checking for coolant leaks while cold.

[BimmerBreaker]

Originally Posted by andrewwynn

I went "full nutso" on my smoker. Got the one that does up to 15 psi air for checking for coolant leaks while cold.

Per BMW TIS, cooling systems should be checked at 1.5 bar - about 22 psi. Also not sure Id want to use a smoke device in a cooling system.



This is from the E39 pages but all BMW's from this era take you to the same set of instructions

[andrewwynn]

Mine is smoke or air. I don't think I'd use mineral oil in the coolant either.

[Factory6speed]

Hey guys. I've been trying to post for a while. But I ended up having to get a new phone and forgot my password. And the reset password doesn't work. The admin still hasn't seen my email. But I just correctly guessed my password and I'm back.

I've been working on this thing pretty much 7 days a week. The E36 remains a fantastic daily driver. I did just have to do the cam angle sensor on it. And apparently got a faulty sensor and had to do it again, but it's good.

Anyway, the past several weeks I removed the sunroof cassette again that was dripping and not going down the drain. Looked at everything. Home Depot got involved and a small piece of weather stripping and some silicone was added on top of the cassette in front of the wind deflector. I think there is supposed to be a seal there but it was missing. There was some rubber on the corners and it looks like there is supposed to be a piece on the front that was missing. This thing had been out at least once before. Or it's not supposed to be there I couldn't really find a good picture. Either way, it's back up and not leaking.

What I think I really missed though was the alignment pin. I read ISTA again and there's an alignment dowel pin on the left front side of the cassette. It even says in case of leaks cassette must be exactly aligned. When I did this back in March I did not see this and did not put a pin in there. So I put a wheel hanging pin up there and got it nicely aligned. It also says there is no rear pin on the e53 into use the rear glass before tightening it. Which worked out as I left the rear glass on this time.

Before fitting the cassette up I decided to reinstall the redone headliner shade. Water stained light gray is now black. It was a little tricky getting that to operate smoothly and get the springs on the left side figured out. After 3 or 4 days, the roof is functioning perfectly and not a single drip. Passed a very long pressure wash test and also a torrential rain / near tornado.

Then I set about getting the black headliner up and all the black upper interior pieces. It was a real pain getting the three clips on the rear of the headliner to slide horizontally all at the same time. I about lost it with that but eventually got it. I cut a small notch in the leftmost clip which gave me a little wiggle room. I also sprayed the fabric dye stuff on the new to me black pillars and sun visors. The a pillars were sun-faded towards a blue but the fabric spray stuff worked. This took way longer than it should have to get everything up without breaking anything. It is a million times better than that light gray and water stained mess. I'll put some pics up once I get it out of the garage again in the daylight. The black rear upper cargo hooks were super hard to find. I'm happy about those.

Once the interior was finally finished, a few more mechanical things,

- the s54 hydraulic timing chain tensioner OE from INA finally came off back order. That is a no-brainer. Replaced original spring tensioner with 130k on it
- new Bosch front oxygen sensors, was getting a few mixture codes.
- new valve cover gasket. Genuine valve cover bolts. I should have replaced the valve cover. It was hard to clean.
- new fuel filter, replacing original 2005. More chassis cleaning and light rust removal fluid filming stuff in that area.
- new slave cylinder, as the old one was rusted and I could never bleed it. New metal clutch pipe as it was a little crusty. CDV pill deleted. I had one hell of a time getting the rubber line to separate from the pipe. Two pry bars for a tiny little o-ring. Rust..
- but the brakes again, bled the clutch

Now this is where everything has gone wrong. After bleeding the clutch, I touched the clutch pedal and heard a ping noise. Pushed it a few more times and heard some fluid gushing noises, and there's fluid dripping out of the bell housing. I didn't align the slave cylinder push rod correctly on the fork, and the rod is now down in the bellhousing.

When I went in there before to clean and grease the fork, the fork was barely on. Just trying to clean it it felt like I was going to knock it off. I couldn't even clean it. I suspect when the clutch was done previously (not too long ago unfortunately), the metal clip was reused and it doesn't have much clipping left to it.

When I went in trying to get the rod back the fork was already sitting cockeyed. So, no two ways about it the transmission has to come off.

The exhaust bracket bolts are soaking. I did order the UUC single mass kit, because why not. We'll see how it goes. I'm going to take the transfer box off first. And I think I can leave the whole exhaust in place which is great. I never did have to replace the output seal, that was a false alarm, it was already replaced. The tech I had inspect this saw all the grease from it and presumed the trans was already low, but it's been holding the level and is no longer actively leaking. I guess I'm going to do all the transmission seals the shifter bushings and the shift pin stuff. I did order the rear main cover as well.

[andrewwynn]

I feel your pain.

One of my first car jobs ever we were changing lifters in a push rod car, pulling them out the top with a vice grips until one slips and falls into the crankcase. Oops. I guess we pulled the cam shaft out first for no good reason.

Reminds me of a YouTube video a guy drops a bolt into an open spark plug hole. 10 minutes long clipped video of him tearing down the motor to get to the bolt.

[Happy]

Originally Posted by Factory6speed

Passed a very long pressure wash test and a torrential rain / near tornado.

Shiet… That’s one way to test it!

Originally Posted by Factory6speed

I did order the UUC single mass kit, because why not. We'll see how it goes.

I’ve got a UUC short shifter, DSSR, 8lb flywheel, and Kevlar M5 clutch. You can’t go wrong with anything UUC for your manual E53!

Looks like you’re moving right along!


E53 RiPPeR
XOuTPoST jUNkiE
ReVELaTiON 22:21

[EODguy]

Leak location...

Preheating...

Welding...

Some shade tree shit, but when needs must... https://cloud.tapatalk.com/s/667680ce...621-WA0006.mp4https://cloud.tapatalk.com/s/667680de...621-WA0008.mp4https://cloud.tapatalk.com/s/667680e8...621-WA0009.mp4

Sent from Embassy network using Tapatalk

[Factory6speed]

Originally Posted by Happy

Shiet… That’s one way to test it!



I’ve got a UUC short shifter, DSSR, 8lb flywheel, and Kevlar M5 clutch. You can’t go wrong with anything UUC for your manual E53!

Looks like you’re moving right along!

Yeah, the flywheel is really light. I'm worried it might be too light, but we'll see how it goes. I don't think the OEM clutch was all that great.

It was a proper weekend of wrenching. I've got the transmission down and am looking at the crankshaft. I've never lowered one like this before, it always seemed dangerous. A lot of work again, but not too bad. I didn't have to touch the exhaust which is great.

Saturday morning I removed driveshafts, the front heat shield, the rusted to s*** transmission crossmember, and the transfer case. I just left the front prop shaft attached to the case. I used the floor jack to lower the crossmember and the transfer case. It was actually quite graceful. I detached the sway bar from the end links and removed the bushings, but I still couldn't get it out, so I just tucked it all the way forward enough out of the way.

I put the engine support bar up so I could tilt it back, with a floor jack under the rear of the transmission for a bit while I loosened everything. I lost my good e14 socket on one of the top bolts. It fell off the wobble extension and went into another dimension. Later it was discovered way up there underneath the starter. Thankfully I have some junk etorx sockets in the drawer but they are bad and made me really nervous. Before I removed the bottom two e14s I swapped the floor jack for the small harbor freight transmission jack under the middle of it.

I knew about the starter dowel pin thing, I put a 4 mm Allen bit socket on the long extension and hit it with a hammer. But I guess I didn't hit it hard enough because everything still got hung up up there towards the starter. I had to hit it much harder a second time, then grab the starter with my hand and it freed everything up. Then I had to lift it back up so it would come off the splines straight the rest of the way, and finally right down. The hf jack was pretty good but I wouldn't want to try it with the transfer case attached.

There's a tiny bit of corrosion from the brake fluid in there but nothing that big of a deal. The clutch disc unfortunately is about mint, it was changed around 2021 and the car probably hasn't seen more than 10k miles. The flywheel looks original and is a bit of a wreck. The transfer case input and transmission output seals are good, I probably won't touch these, it's the shift rod seal that's been leaking.

The fork definitely was not clipped on all that well, the clip is flimsy like I thought. But there's the remnants of my failed slave cylinder install. All that for that. The rear main is not leaking but I'm going to do it anyway. I bought the whole cover thing so it will be easy. Tomorrow I'll do that and put the flywheel up. I need the holder tool and a couple other misc parts I forgot, then I'll do the bell housing stuff and put it all back up. Should finally be good.

Also since the transmission crossmember was rusted beyond repair I picked up a southern one from ebay, and throughout the week cleaned it and wet sanded it, hit it with the etch primer and black chassis paint. I should have used the flapper disc and got all those little imperfections from the casting off but it looks good. I also got some replacement yellow zinc bolts and washers from belmetric for the crossmember, as BMW wants $45 per bolt for those, again like the stiffening plate bolts.

I also have to figure out if I'm going to do the transfer case mount bushing or not. I have the parts sitting here. There are some tiny cracks in it but it's still okay. I think I can get it out with a couple relief cuts from the demo saw. Then to get it in put it in the freezer 24h and maybe figure something else out to press it in.

It's too hard to post pics on this site with the size problems so here's a link to the pictures I took, https://imgur.com/a/clutch-e53-29uVo12

Not sure why the crank has that green almost paint stuff on it what the hell is that. I can't imagine this is some sort of aftermarket crank. Or somebody did something to it. I've never seen the m54 crank from the factory.

[Shane2jz]

Well today I had some ramp time and finally sorted out my rear prop issues. Ive replaced the rear section of the prop with a low mileage section from an auto (mine's a 6sp manual) and returned it's own front section of the rear prop with a new guibo and support bearing and carrier. All my cluncking on the transition between acel and de-acel have gone courtesy of the second hand rear section and all my vibrations at certain speeds and their harmonics have also gone now ive returned its own front half, very happy.

While it was up in the air I replaced the transfer case fluid as I've had the worn oil message and noticed occasional "skipping" and this has now cleared up too, so all in all I'm very happy. Except, I've today discovered that INPA that has until now served me well so far with my E53, my wife's E83 and my E63, doesn't let me delete the worn oil message or does it do the transfer case recalibration procedure. Looks like Im going to have to bite the bullet and find a laptop to run a copy of ISTA.

[andrewwynn]

Let me know if that helps. I have the same oil wear message ever since I bought my latest X5 and none of my three scanning solutions all of which have the function to reset it, actually work. I'm not too concerned because I changed the fluid myself but it's annoying to have exactly one code when I scan!