1983 635csi Christmas Car

[derrith]

I have been looking for a 635csi as a project for a while and had the opportunity to pick up a decent example.

3/83 production 635csi
10:1 motor, 4hp-22.
Originally agate green metallic, resprayed poorly in RED! with overspray. But it's presentable.
Brown and Pearlbeige interior with Recaros

Came with Alpina closed lugs but I'm trading those to my boss for a rebuilt dogleg transmission.

Previous owner had the car since 2002 and was a bit sad to be passing it on. Last year his wife was no longer comfortable taking the car on long trips so they sprung for a honda. It had sat since then.

Can't in good conscience track my M5 anymore so I wanted something that I could build and enjoy similarly but would be a lot less heartbroken about if I wrecked it. This car has good bones and I'm enjoying owning a six series for the first time.

[Ralph in Socal]

Nice car!! Looks very good from the pics. I would really be loving it if it was the original Agate Green.

Ralph

[derrith]

Have tackled some maintenance.

Replaced the leaky water pump with a new one plus new hardware. Noticed the cooling fan was closer to the radiator than I usually prefer, both transmission mounts were sheared, exhaust side cylindrical engine mount collapsing forward. Replaced all those. New spark plugs and an MSD Blaster 2 coil. Valve adjustment. Found the rear banjo bolt for the cam oil feed slightly loose. Dropped in a new differential mount and a 4.10 open differential to wake the car up from the 3.07 while I get ready for the manual swap.

Swapped out the alpinas for gold HRE 504s borrowed from my M5 for now.

[Shipper 01]

Nice.

With the dogleg you will need to look at diff ratio. Otherwise you'll top out on the track. but, more than likely you have a nice tall diff.

Nice looking car. I've tracked mine and they are a hoot.

[derrith]

Nice.

With the dogleg you will need to look at diff ratio. Otherwise you'll top out on the track. but, more than likely you have a nice tall diff.

Nice looking car. I've tracked mine and they are a hoot.

I’ve got a 3.07 and 3.25 limited slip for the manual swap. My brothers m535i has a dogleg and we swapped his 3.07 for a 3.25. Done a lot of track time in that and my M5 as well.

Once I start trailering the car may go with a 3.46.

[derrith]

Did a few more things.

It’s an early 3.5l car so it has the weird cap and rotor. Was going to replace but i only had the later style motronic cap
and rotor. Cleaned everything up though. Swapped in a set of magnecor 8.5mm wires. May back date it to l jet style distributor.

I had put in a set of WR7DCs when I first went over the car. Swapped out for the correct WR8s. Changed the power steering filter.

Car idles smoother, pulls harder after all that. All butt dyno of course. Still hasn’t fixed the bad cold start and intermittent hot hard start. Probably need to do new injectors and might as well have the AFM gone through as well. That’s next.

[Austin]

Nice looking car. Congrats on your score.

[tschultz]

Looks really nice!

Red is best on E28, but still quite nice on E24.

[derrith]

Picture of the plug wires.

[derrith]

Looks good with the HREs.