Sold my M4, bought my dream car

[Aaron]

This car came up for sale nearby, and I had to have it. 1991 850i 6MT black on black. Pure sex on wheels, but overall a terrible car. Uncomfortable, bad steering, bad shift feel, slow, silent, and all of the usual 90s BMW problems. But God it looks good.

I plan on keeping it and driving it for a while, so mods/repairs will be coming.

[Series8217]

Bad ass. Great color combo. What exhaust are you going to put on it?

[ericjon262]

me: *sees pictures* "I've never heard anything good about those cars but they look cool"...

Me 0.3 seconds later:*reads post* *chuckles*

cool ride, and V12! oooh aaah! is there alot of support for them, or are you kinda on your own when it comes to anything outside of basic repairs?

[Aaron]

Probably not much for exhaust, there aren't many aftermarket options. Headers are tempting, an X-pipe, quality mufflers.

Haha I'm not sure there's much good to say about it if I'm honest. V12 is cool as hell, but it's also not great either. They're reliable, silent, and super smooth, but that's about it. Nothing that stirs your loin's.

I want to delete the rear seats, swap in E92 sport seats on custom brackets for legroom. Do something with the stereo that looks OEM but sounds better and offers modern tech. More power/sound would be nice, I have a plan for a rebuilt 5.4L with some bolt-ons but that'll struggle to hit 375 which I'm not sure will satisfy me.

[ericjon262]

planning DIY headers? I'd bet from an engineering standpoint some wicked cool stuff could be done on a V12 for headers, but space could be a massive headache.

[Aaron]

I don't have the time honestly, there's a guy in the Ukraine who builds headers for these though. Quality pieces, though they are shorty style.

[ericjon262]

I don't have the time honestly, there's a guy in the Ukraine who builds headers for these though. Quality pieces, though they are shorty style.

yeah, in a similar boat, I'd love to make a set of headers for the Pig Rig, but if I do that, it'll be down way too long for it, and I'll end up spending more than I would on a set of off the shelf headers. The next engine in the Fiero might get something special, but only time will tell.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Great purchase! I was looking at one right out of school, but the payment & insurance would have been like 30% of my income at the time and that didn't seem smart.

The front lateral links are the same as E24, E28, E32, E34, E38, E39 (and maybe some others), but the E31's use ball joints at the inner pivots. The ball joints are not available separately, and the loaded arms are getting extremely rare. My dad and I had a machinist make up some shells to install more common Lemforder ball joints for Mercedes rear suspensions in the lateral arms in his E24. Let me know if you need that for your car.

Also, does it use bolt on steering arms like the aforementioned chassis? If so, you may be able to install roll center spacers for an E34 and preserve the suspension geometry even when lowered.

What width/offset are those MPARs? I guess they're replicas, as I didn't think the originals had that much lip. I have a set of 4x 18x8 reps and 2x 18x9.5 OE wheels if you're interested.

cool ride, and V12! oooh aaah! is there alot of support for them, or are you kinda on your own when it comes to anything outside of basic repairs?

The M70 and M73 V12's are the Caddy 4.9 of V12's. They're SOHC based on the M20 inline six, but with significant changes to the valvetrain. Head flow still sucks, so power potential is quite limited for a V12. You can just tell by the fact that it's a BMW that makes more torque than horsepower that it's not a hot-roddable engine. There was an 850CSi with a 5.6 liter version that made 360 HP. While that's not a bad number, it shows how limited the engine is. The good thing is that they use timing chains instead of belts, so they run forever with little (well... less) maintenance than the M20's. The engines themselves are reliable, but I have heard of the throttle-by-wire system giving problems.

[The Dark Side of Will]

me: *sees pictures* "I've never heard anything good about those cars but they look cool"...

Me 0.3 seconds later:*reads post* *chuckles*

Front/rear dual zone climate control--as in, two completely separate blowers, evaporators and airboxes (and heater cores too?) and lots of other things that are way too complicated for their own good.

That 6MT trans is 530(560?)G... it's bullet proof and eternal.