It all triggered about 2 months ago, when my friend bought a car. This left him with his new BMW E46 330i, previous daily driver Toyota Avensis and BMW E34 525i, which will be center piece of this blog.
E34 was sitting in the garage for about 8 years and was driven about 2-3 times during those years. I had offered him to sell the car for me about 2 times and he always refused - he wanted to keep it as Sunday car. When he bought his E46, he wrote a message in a forum "All what's left is to understand what to do with my old cars". Out of curiosity I sent him a message "I offer you a bottle of your favorite drink, give the E34 to me". He agreed with one rule "You pay the taxes and shit. I'm giving you keys of garage and you need to figure out how to get it out of there. I'm not touching it". I was shocked.
I called him later and we agreed to meet next day in the garage to see if the car would fire up.


The car looked as I expected it to look. A bit dusty, interior trim torn apart, some plastics and fuel door missing.

The battery was flat and dead. It took us some time to figure out that it was completely dead.
Next week I got new battery and returned to garage. The car was cranking but not starting. It was clear that something was not working.

I have car mechanic education myself, however electronics is not my strenght. I called my GFs brother who is THE BOSS in electronics. We went to garage and figured out that fuel pump is not getting any power. We checked all relays and they were all alive. We checked pump and it seemed to be alive. Later we discovered that DME block is not giving any power to fuel pump. After hours of work we pulled the fuel pump out of the tank and tried to start it alone. It was dead. As we later figured out, DME was smart enough to sense the dead pump and block it off.
After some days I got slightly used pump from E34 540i and installed it. The car fired up instantly. However, the revs went straight to redline. As this BMW has mechanical throttle, I checked and lubricated all throttle linkage in engine compartment and it seemed fine. I tried to start it again but no luck - still going to redline.
I started to look in the pedal side and found out that accelerator was out of hinge - I pushed it back and car started smoothly. Finally, it was running. But not for long...


I rolled it out from garage and left idling. After some time I heard some strange noise. I turned my head and at that moment the radiator exploded. Well, it washed engine bay at least...

I pushed the car back into garage and left it for some days. I ordered new radiator and parts for cooling system.

Parts time! I received my order about a week later and returned to garage.
I replaced the radiator, thermostat, cooling fluid, gaskets and stuff. I still need to replace water pump (bought already) and fan thermo-clutch.
After all this work I gave it a shot and car started again. After 2 hours or so of cooling circuit bleeding, the car was running normally. I took the first test drive around the garage and called it a day.


My next task was to prepare the car for legal work and technical inspection. As the car hadn't been driven for so long, it was deleted from Latvian vehicle register and I needed to get it to VIN check. It meant it needed to go to Technical inspection station. I tried to figure out what could go wrong in Technical inspection. All the lights was working but horn wasn't. So I called my electronics guru again. Fixed that. I found the missing interior parts all around the garage and bought the ones which I could not find there. Interior was complete but still disgusting.
I decided to give it a shot and took 1 day driving license. On my way to Technical inspection I swapped the front tires for better ones and washed the car. At some point I noticed that car was vibrating for some reason. I walked around the car and realised that one of rear wheels was holding only on 3 bolts (out of 5) and all of them were totally loose. Luckily I had some spare bolts so I lifted the car and tightened all of them. This took out the vibration.


Next big stop was VIN check. The guys at the station were quite surprised to see E34 rolling in and even more surprised when I told them the storry of this car. VIN check went smoothly.

After that I needed to complete registration. My friend told me previous day that he'll do a distance registration for me, so he doesn't have to come to registration office. However, some unpaid parking tickets changed his plans. I spent about an hour chilling in the car and waiting for him. When he arrived, we decided to do Technical inspection. I knew that most probably I'll fail. So I rolled in the station and just looked what will happen. Inspector was quite suspicious when we just walked around and laughed about how good the car was. Of course, I failed the technical inspection and got 1 month to fix the problems. After inspector learned that car was sitting in the garage for 8 years, he was shocked - condition of a car seemed too good to be true.

After that we changed the owner of a car and it was officially mine. Now I have 2 black BMWs and I love them.
The car is total money pit and I don't care.


I'll probably post part 2 after some time or update this to freshest info.
Special thanks to all my friends who have helped me on this one :)