1988 535i "Pam Ballam"

Post your photos and videos here!
Post Reply
cam_belph
Posts: 7
Joined: Jun 26, 2021 10:50 PM
Location: Memphis

1988 535i "Pam Ballam"

Post by cam_belph »

Hey all, I purchased my first BMW this May and have been working on it since then, so I thought I'd start a thread to share and track the car's progress over time.

It's a black 1988 535i in surprisingly decent condition considering the price I paid and the first impression I got. Odometer shows 118,008 miles but must be missing a gear as the odo has stopped ticking miles. There is very little rust, virtually none on the body and some surface rust on the underside. The muffler sound like it might have rusted through somewhere but I haven't pinpointed where yet, I plan to replace exhaust from cat back. The car came with almost all original documents and accessories, only missing one tool from the tool kit, even has the sun visor and micro fiber cloth. Came with a set of 1000 Miglia wheels mounted as well as all 5 factory bottle cap wheels and center caps. Check it out:

Image
Image
Image

So upon initial inspection with the seller it was seen that the coolant system was deleted. Seemed like about a big of as red flag as you could imagine, but this guy had, at the time, a reasonable explanation and some surprising words for how he'd kept up the car without a coolant system. The radiator was still in place but had a broken connection to the overflow tank and the other hoses to the radiator were either missing or in the passenger floorboard. His explanation was that the car had a head gasket leak on cylinder 5 which caused coolant to bleed into the oil. He did say that he would either let the car run for about a minute or run it around his secluded circle drive on occasion. When he offered up the keys to me and said take a lap and park it quick, I did. It cranked up quickly, idled decently and pepped it's way around the drive just fine. I backed into his drive and shut it down quickly, happy with the health of the car despite it having it's coolant system having been partially deleted.

I paid Scott a grand and he signed the clean title and away I went with the car on the trailer. This was my first project car and I was reeling with anticipation for things to come and also taking a serious recollection of what I had gotten myself and my garage into. I stopped at my local car wash and power washed what I could, took the car off the trailer, took some pics and put it into the garage and started researching parts.

This is my first project car, named Black Betty, Pam Ballam. I'll keep going with what I've done to this car and what I plan to do with it. It's a great car and I'm happy with it in my garage while I work on it and when I take it around town. Pics below of when I got it home:

Image
Image
Image
knunger
Posts: 744
Joined: Feb 12, 2006 12:00 PM
Location: Tucson,AZ.

Re: 1988 535i "Pam Ballam"

Post by knunger »

Wow - the uber rare 'coolant system delete'!

Think of how much weight is saved not having to drag all that water around!!
cam_belph
Posts: 7
Joined: Jun 26, 2021 10:50 PM
Location: Memphis

Re: 1988 535i "Pam Ballam"

Post by cam_belph »

So the first few things I ordered were an upper gasket kit, set of coolant hoses and some head bolts. I started looking at options for radiators and almost settled on a new aftermarket before I found an OEM lightly used radiator on Ebay, which came with 30 day warranty, I ordered that one and started to get to work on taking off everything necessary to get the the head gasket. I bought my first set of jack stands and eventually upgraded my 15 year old floor jack and this helped get the car up to a more comfortable height to work on. What a major pain it was at times to get everything out without damaging it. Thankfully there are a lot of resources on this and other sites, including Youtube, and I also eventually bought the Bentley manual which was well worth the money. Getting the valve cover off was a small success as I'd never done that on a vehicle before. I eventually got everything else out of the way/ removed so I could take the head off. The gasket looked fine, I couldn't spot any cracks or obvious evidence that it was the cause of any leak.

Next was to disassemble the head, which again I was thankful for the resources on the web. This went fairly well. Once everything was removed except for the valves, I decided on a machine shop to deck the head and dropped it off that following week. Despite the owner stating that he was 8 weeks out, he called later that afternoon and said the head was ready to be picked up! I was lucky that on the day I dropped mine off, they already had several other heads set up on their benches to be decked that same day, lucky me! I ordered some replacement valve and exhaust manifold studs, as well as a rocker hardware replacement kit. Some pics of the work:

Image
Everything looks nice, clean and lubricated.

Image
Head removed, dirty, but consistent carbon buildup.

Image
Before and after cleaning the block and pistons.

Image
Bottom side of the head.

Image
Top side after hot bath and decking.

Image
Bottom side looking beautiful.

Up next was the, for me, very time consuming task of reassembling the head. It only took 2 tries to see what I was doing wrong, then a 3rd to realize another error, but on the 4th, everything went back correctly. During any free downtime, I cleaned various parts, like the intake, valve cover, etc. Then I went on to reassembly, which was difficult, but not as bad as I thought it would be, minus some mistakes that would come to light later. At this point I started slowly filling up the coolant system with the new hoses and radiator installed, checking for any leaks. I didn't spot any before I finished working on it for the night but then found a puddle of coolant on the floor the next morning... It took me a couple of days to really be able to look for the leak and with some creative camera positioning I spotted the leak on the back of the head, where the return to the overflow take is. I realized at this point that on paper gaskets I was supposed to use gasket maker. Boy oh boy, what a task it was to remove that fitting with the head installed. I got frustrated enough with using traditional wrenches that I ran to the parts store and picked up my first set of ratcheting wrenches, with the ever handy pivoting heads. They helped a lot and I've used that set of wrenches on many other tasks on this and other vehicles since I picked them up. I tore that gasket in half during removal, so another trip the the parts store got me a roll of gasket material. Making a new gasket wasn't too difficult but getting the fitting back onto the back of the head with the gasket in place was a pain! With everything tightened up I added some more coolant/ water and left it alone for the night. No leaks on the next morning! This is as cleaned up as I had everything before I finished putting the intake on:

Image

With the car still on jacks I attempted to start the car and lo and behold, it fired up after about 30 seconds! It didn't Idle too well so I looked at the distributor cap to see if I had plugs in the wrong order, I found that the distributor cap had snapped into 3 pieces. So I ordered a new one and while I waited for it to arrive I thought I'd try my hand at some paint correction. This was a first attempt just to see how the paint would react, I improved the process slightly and will have plenty more pics to show the improvement and more details on what happened with the car next:

Image

Thanks for reading.
knunger wrote: Sep 17, 2021 11:48 AM Wow - the uber rare 'coolant system delete'!

Think of how much weight is saved not having to drag all that water around!!
Imagine my sorrow when I got to the point of filling the cooling system back up and adding all that weight back in, HA!
muleskinner
Posts: 1339
Joined: Sep 08, 2007 11:17 AM
Location: John Graham ATL

Re: 1988 535i "Pam Ballam"

Post by muleskinner »

Always fun to watch people resurrect these cars. Nice work.
stuartinmn
Posts: 9380
Joined: Feb 12, 2006 12:00 PM
Location: Minneapolis

Re: 1988 535i "Pam Ballam"

Post by stuartinmn »

It's cleaning up nicely. Fixing the odometer is pretty straightforward, there's a detailed how-to in the tech FAQ section: https://www.mye28.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=26424 and https://www.odometergears.com
Mdreamer
Posts: 526
Joined: Feb 12, 2006 12:00 PM
Location: Atlanta, Georgia

Re: 1988 535i "Pam Ballam"

Post by Mdreamer »

Very cool. Welcome!
Bonsaibacker
Posts: 929
Joined: Oct 26, 2017 3:36 PM
Location: Palatka FL

Re: 1988 535i "Pam Ballam"

Post by Bonsaibacker »

Congratulations and great start. Looking forward to your progress- lots of potential.
Ibmotoren
Posts: 77
Joined: Apr 26, 2019 9:38 PM
Location: Bay Area, CA

Re: 1988 535i "Pam Ballam"

Post by Ibmotoren »

Always nice to see a once proud car being resurrected. Looks like she’s in good hands now. Looking forward to updates on Black Betty. Thanks for sharing.
cam_belph
Posts: 7
Joined: Jun 26, 2021 10:50 PM
Location: Memphis

Re: 1988 535i "Pam Ballam"

Post by cam_belph »

Thank you all for the welcome, advice and encouragement. It's a daunting but fun learning process. Daunting because I really don't want to ruin this car/ engine and it's also something that will carry me and my family around on occasion, so I don't want my shoddy work to end up leaving us stranded somewhere, or worse! But patience and test runs will keep us safe and on track.

Thank you for the links, Stuart. I'll eventually open up the gauge cluster and see for sure what is needed to get the odo ticking correctly.

In between where we left off and what I did to the actual car next was fun and rewarding. I wasn't too keen on either set of wheels that were sold with the car. I did clean up the original bottle caps and intend to keep them with the car, but I did start searching for other wheels that would tickle my fancy and hopefully be a good deal. I found a decent looking set on Craigslist for a cool $100, so I talked with the seller and left before dawn on a 7 hour round trip to pick up a set of aftermarket wheels that just happened to have BMW center caps. They cleaned up well. One of them had the paint chipping off badly, so I decided I would try to repaint it to either match or very obviously contrast the other wheels. In taking the color paint off I ended up having to take the primer off as well and since these are aluminum wheels and I have a knack for polishing I decided to try my hand at sanding off the machine and casting marks off of this wheel and bringing it to a full polish. Boy, what a task! But it did pay off. The pictures don't do the work justice, it looks much cooler in person. Pics will follow. I also have a buddy who just happened to have a decent set of tires from one of his project cars that would fit, so he gave them to me. They are too wide and too tall but I can cruise on 'em! Car feels so much better on some decent rubber.

I browsed around e28goodies' website and picked through a few items I felt I really needed. From the other side of the world I ordered extra angle hood gas springs, front and rear window molding kit in chrome and a fuel injector rebuild kit. Shipping was fairly swift to me at about 11 days. From Pelican Parts I ordered a couple sets of bullet fuses, a front hood roundel, some grill mounting clips and some fresh air vent clips for the exterior vents behind the rear doors, the driver side was very loose with I picked up this car.

I had already ordered some gas springs for the hood from a parts store and they served their purpose while I did initial engine bay work. The new springs installed fairly easily, although they did not include clips, but wow they really do lift the hood up nearly 90 degrees, so much more comfortable to work under the hood now! Note that if I weren't as tall as I am I would have great difficulty trying to close the hood now. The window molding kit was a must have, as the stock ones were cracked, shrunken, faded and warped. I kind of regretted getting chrome instead of shadow line until I started removing the originals and noticed where they were tucked in under the corner metal fittings, they were originally chrome. It's a subtle detail after they've been installed, but knowing what they looked like before makes all the difference. Install was mostly painless, pics will follow. The fuel injector rebuild kit was straight forward to install although I haven't yet noticed any difference from before. Cold idle was the same after rebuilding, although since then I have made more adjustments and gotten some marked improvement. New roundel looks great, grill mounting clips don't quite match mine but they work, I might try to find the exact match later but for now they are doing their job and blend well enough with the others. Fresh air vent clips work perfectly, wing insert is mounted flush and secure.

Short side story: PO had "fixed" driver side view mirror by essentially using something like liquid nails to keep it from falling out of the housing. Passenger side was not fully functioning but not broken either, could still be adjusted. I was working on something in the interior and my always involved 2 year old daughter was on the passenger side of the car on a step stool poking and prodding. I heard a bit of a clunk then rattle and turned my head to see what the noise was and I see the passenger side mirror dangling out of it's housing and my daughter is suddenly invisible, lol. I was slightly frustrated by this and asked her quickly what she had done, she quickly told me that her mom had done it! It honestly cracked me up and I really had no reason to be mad, she's always gentle and if her little hand could break that mirror then it was destined to fall of anyway. Her mom wasn't too keen to hear that she'd been blamed. I, very luckily, found a seller on fb marketplace that was parting out his e28 and I got his very decent side mirror set for a very decent price. They're installed and looking fine, although not functional. I have to look into the control switch, read about it here and in the Bentley bible and see what can be done.

I know this is getting long. Something cool that I thought others here might appreciate is that I found out how to safely disassemble the kidney grill parts. I wanted to do this because I've been painting the hood grills and the actual grills themselves too and I wanted to match the black plastic in the kidneys to the other freshly painted parts. I thought I could just mask off the chrome surrounds, but after looking closely I decided I didn't have the patience to try taping off properly and upon closer inspection figured out that I could remove the chrome surrounds and actually put them back on in exactly the same way they were before disassembly. I used black trim paint on previously mentioned parts and love the look, although the paint is just a tad glossy for my taste. I also spent more time polishing different panels and trying out different waxes and coatings on the paint. New wiper blades too, for less than $4 each, too! More updates will follow in future posts, along with some requests for knowledge. For now, please enjoy some pics of the work and progress:

Image
One of the new wheels after it was home and cleaned up.

Image
This is the one that I crazily decided to hand sand and polish.

Image
Stock wheels cleaned up for posterity.

Image
This is the first trip I took in Black Betty out of the neighborhood after the engine work. Looking fine.

Image
Before new window molding.

Image
After, hard to tell a difference in the pics.

Image
Playing with paint correction.

Image
New wheels and tires mounted, wife is not a fan, I'm not 100% sold on them myself either, tires are definitely too large.

Image
Comparison of before and after trim paint.

Image
Front view after hood paint correction and coating, lipo, grill paint/ chrome polish and new roundel. Nothing amazing but much better than before.

Thanks for reading, sorry for the long post!
Mdreamer
Posts: 526
Joined: Feb 12, 2006 12:00 PM
Location: Atlanta, Georgia

Re: 1988 535i "Pam Ballam"

Post by Mdreamer »

There is absolutely no need to apologize for the long post! Great work so far. Your car is coming along very nicely, and I enjoy reading about the progress you're making.

Don't worry about the wheels--if you decide you want to sell them you should be able your money out of them easily. :)
Post Reply