Minor update: the car came with a fairly depleted tool kit.

Ben Smith has kindly donated the tools from his now deceased 328i. It hasn’t filled all the gaps, but we’re a lot closer now, especially given the screwdriver from my old Vauxhall Vectra! I’ve also got a warning triangle, but it’s a big one from an E36 and so doesn’t fit in that tool tray, and is instead stored under the boot floor.

I’m still in limbo on a number of other things: finding TWS 10W60 is harder than I’d expected, I still don’t know what the DME fault code means, and I’m still tracking down some facelift lights. I hope to have news on at least one of these things soon!

Not as much progress as yesterday, but the car is still better than it was this morning and so today is worthy of a note.

Very dull to start – the headlamps had residue of beam blockers for European travel stuck on them which looked quite minging. Quite why this was done, given that it’s easy to deflect the beams mechanically by twiddling controls on top of the lamp units, is beyond me.

Note the goo at about 5 o’clock on the left lens.

Some white spirit soon cleaned that up.

Here’s the quite obvious positive terminal cover I replaced yesterday:

And a general shot of the engine bay:

The air filters turned out to be a bit minging, and the chambers were full of crap, so I’ve hoovered those as best I can. I doubt it’ll make any difference, but it made me feel better.

I’ve removed the silly Traffic Master buttons and panel and put some front cup holders in:

I had a spare E30 bonnet left over from the E30 M3 project which was knocking around in the garage. Given that the M5 is roughly the size of an ocean liner I need every inch of space, and so I’ve given this bonnet to Ian Haynes – it goes at least 0.1% of the way to repaying his assistance over the last few years. Getting it in the 330d wasn’t easy, but I managed it once I’d worked out that I needed to shove a bit of it out of the window!

In return Ian has lent me his Carsoft apparatus which I plugged into the M5 for some readings:

I read out the DME codes first (engine’s the most important thing!), and I got this output, which currently may as well be in Greek:

Single diagnosis DME / DDE - Status: Error!

Module Info: DME / DDE

BMS 46

BMW Part Nr: 7833965
Hardware Nr: 01
Software Nr: 13
Diagnose index: 60
Code index: 00
Bus index: 12
Production date: 13/00

BMS_FEH.DXT

92

- Single diagnosis completed!

Now as far as I can tell the line at the end that starts ’92′ is normally a three digit code followed by a textual explanation, for example ’117 IDLE SPEED ACTUATOR ACTIVATION’, but in this case there’s just the number 92 and no explanation.

No doubt I’ll find out soon enough that code 92 means that armageddon is nigh!

The weather and a hangover have meant that today hasn’t yielded huge results, but there have been positive steps forward. This morning I collected some goodies from Vines BMW, and then headed down to Southampton to see a man called Rudi.

Rudi charges £80 to fix knackered dashboards where the pixels don’t work. I tried to take a photo of my dashboard before the operation, but typically this morning most of the pixels were working.

Note the car has done 113,615 miles, but most of the pixels displaying the first digit aren’t working. Also, the unit to the left that displays the five green, one yellow and one red service blobs didn’t work at all. It took Rudi about 5 minutes to remove the cluster.

He then took it into his house to work his magic. In the meantime I deployed some of the parts I obtained from BMW. I’d bought a new cover for the positive battery terminal under the bonnet – that was about a pound. No photo because of the torrential rain at the time.

Next I went to work on the broken rear cup holders. Unlike some, I don’t think cup holders are especially important in the rear – people there aren’t driving so they can hold their own poxy drink. As such I opted not to replace this broken mess, but to substitute in a storage tray that set me back about six quid.

Much neater – and no tools required! I’ve also bought, for £30, a set of new cup holders for the front, but as yet I’m not sure how to perform that operation so given a bit of research and a day without rain I’ll attempt that.

After about 40 minutes Rudi was back and demonstrated the cluster working perfectly in test mode.

The results of these small changes are very pleasing. It was horrible looking down at the dashboard to see a broken mess, a nasty feeling starting the car without knowing how many service blobs were left, and seeing a gaping coggy hole in the rear where the cup holders should have been.

Today was also my first proper run in the car. I just managed to eek 29mpg on the way back up the motorway, so on a run this car doesn’t use much more fuel that the E30 M3. I expect that at higher cruising speeds, due to the ratios and breeze block characteristics of the E30, that the M5 might actually be more efficient.

Charging around some back roads in the wet made me even more enthusiastic about what is without doubt the very best engine I’ve ever owned. It may actually be the best I’ve ever driven – the only other contender is the current M3 V8 (I’ve not driven the current M5). In the wet it’s possible to go really, really fast without ever exceeding 4,000rpm – the engine is so, so flexible, with oceans of torque available so low down.

All that torque means that effortless, wafting oversteer is also available on tap, and with a big heavy motor up front the car, although quite a large vessel, is good fun to slide around. On a more negative note the Vanos is quite a bit noisier when the oil is hot – I guess it gets thinner, and it also leads me to suspect that it’s not running 10W60 TWS like it should be. I’ll be adventuring down to Cornwall in a couple of weeks and so may pop in to Opie oils and stock up.

I really like this car. It’s brilliant! Not since my M3 Evolution Saloon (5 cars ago in 2005) have I owned a car that’s felt so vastly competent on the road.

In any case, I’ll stop dribbling about it and tell you what’s new. Tyre pressures were a bit down, so that’s been sorted. Here are a few pictures of it outside my gaff:

I’ve ordered a few bits from BMW too: a cubby hole compartment to replace the mess that is the broken rear cup holders, new front cup holders to replace the Traffic Master panel in the centre console, and a cover for the positive terminal under the bonnet (missing).

I’ve also got the number of someone in Southampton who fixes the dashboard display pixel problem. I’ll call them tomorrow and see what I can arrange.

Oh, I’m getting 20 to the gallon at the moment. It’s fantastic.

Tonight wasn’t quite as planned. Ben Smith arrived to see the car – but our main job was to get the 106 Rallye back on the road. So the M5′s first task was to tow the 106 to our workshop:

The M5 is a pretty competent towing car! The whole episode amused me – the train’s power to weight was still considerably more than the 106′s when it’s in rude health – and that’s not a slow car!

So, I’ve just got a few shots of the interior as most of the evening was taken up working on a silly French car. Here’s the driver’s view of the cabin:

I noted my car has a build date of May 2000, and as such has the black dials (rather than the grey dials sported by later M5s). I think I prefer the ones I’ve got though.

As can be seen above, the car has had the appalling ‘Traffic Master’ system installed (the installation is at least smart), with the net effect that there’s no front cup holders. In the rear, like nearly every other E39 on the planet, the rear cup holders have been destroyed:

There’s plenty to do then! I check the oil and other fluid levels where all seemed to be fine. The xenons are nice and bright, and overall the car seems to be in good shape. Diane said “but you told me it was a heap – it’s really smart!” – maybe I did talk it down a bit.

Smart as it may be – I’m sure it’s still itching to bust.

Olly Bloxham (a man who is at least partially to blame for this project’s existence!) kindly offered to take me to collect the car today. This is a little earlier than planned, mainly due to my wife’s 106 Rallye twanging its clutch cable yesterday morning, which hastened our need for an additional vehicle!

I was a little disappointed to find that the car came with no paperwork beyond its stamped service book and an MOT certificate – when I consider the beautiful folder I handed on with the M3 when I sold it. Anyway, the car looked smart and even among the impressive company within Saffron’s showroom, had significant presence.

Outside we took a quick photo of the 800hp convoy before heading home.

The 30 mile journey back was generally slow – I used the time to get used to the excellent cabin, set up the OBC, seat position etc. Apparently I managed 32mpg – despite thoroughly checking that the uber saloon’s sideways mode was functioning as expected!

The car felt fast today, and it feels straight, composed, quiet, and ultimately incredible given its mileage. It’s been looked after – I hope I can keep it that way.

As I edge closer to collecting the car I’ve started a discussion thread on matters here. Due to some kind people reading that, I’ve received some offers to help me on my way.

First of all my friend James O’Sullivan has offered to swap the lights for the facelift efforts on his now knackered E39. They should fit – I’m not counting chickens before they’re hatched, but here’s hoping.

Adam Tier has recommended a place to get the dot matrix display looked at for reasonable money.

Olly Bloxham has a couple of known good MAFs knocking around should mine give incorrect readings.

I also found a very interesting thread on m5board.com about high mileage E39 M5s.

Can’t wait to get the car now and get cracking!