The Polar Run is one of the few large events I attend every year, and as a 3 time rally vet, Team Hoonicorn made their presence once again known to the field this year with yet another Black BMW purchased for less than $1,000. A 1995 E34 525i Automatic. This car is a far cry from the 2015 rally’s 89 325i coupe with an eBay turbocharger kit and Megasquirt EFI and last year’s 1988 325iX coupe with an improved eBay turbo setup.

 

Not only was the 2017 season vehicle the first automatic, it was also naturally aspirated — qualities that actually should have been up-sides for the rally environment and the number of miles involved. Unfortunately that was not the case. This General Motors 4L30-E electronically controlled 4 speed overdrive automatic transmission has such wide ratio spreads that entire transmissions could be placed between them. Combine that with a healthy but low (180-hp) M50B25TU under the hood and a laiden cabin, this car was quite slow indeed compared to the turbo missiles of years past.

The sacrificial E34 was purchased site unseen from a local friend of mine that had the car since new, putting 231,000 miles on the odometer and Minnesota winter road salt every year. BC racing coilovers with 1000 in/lb springs, a new OEM steering box with spherical thrust arm bushings actually made the car handle like a race car, but ride quality suffered on the other hand. The original tan leather heated seats still worked beautifully and the well broken-in foam was good at keeping us fresh on the 632 round trip miles.

Fitted already with a high end but several year old Kenwood head unit, I put out an APB to local friends on a cheap subwoofer and amplifier to add some punch to this ghetto ride as the original 10 speaker audio system still sounded ok but lacked low mid range and low range entirely. $5 later, I had a 12″ subwoofer in a box — shortly after, a 4 pack of Surly Furious netted me a vintage kicker amp and I was in business!

$250 buys you a car with ease these days, but not one without its fair share of issues. This car was FAR from an exception in that department, both before and during the rally. After being dropped off at the location of the car for pickup last summer, I turned the key and the freshly topped up Optima Redtop battery easily wound the sickly sounding starter in to the flex plate and the M50 strongly cleared its throat in to life for the first time in over a year. Intermittent misfire lead to a butter smooth idle and the check engine light for lambda quickly shut itself off as the engine warmed. Just aft of the rear left wheel, we notice moisture on the ground, taking a knee near the rear of the car and peering under the lowered, perforated unibody we see that the fuel supply hard line is so badly rusting, a 12″ section was seeping fuel out from all sides. No big deal, I’ll cut it out and replace that section with some ethanol resistant rubber for the rally, and although the fuel was dripping directly on the exhaust pipes, I decided to just drive the car home to see how she would do.

The Previous owner warned me that the car desperately needed brakes, they were pretty bad at first, but after putting over a thousand shake down miles on the car pre-rally, I noted that they were actually just fine other than a tremendous amount of surface rust from sitting so long.

Moving the car at home in to the lower garage for storage until a later date in the fall, the brake pedal goes limp, then the low brake fluid light comes on the dash. Unbelievable, I thought, hard line failure. I had scrapped multiple cars in the past for this issue, including our 2015 rally steed. Since I already had the car and own the flare tools, I decided to drive the car upstairs with front brakes only, toss it on the lift and at least see where the failure was and if it was fixable. Much to my surprise, the ‘T’ fitting was not only not to blame like it usually ends up being on E30s, the E34 has a 4-channel ABS system which means each rear brake line has its own hard line to the ABS pump, and the outer most hard line had failed much like the still leaking fuel supply line under the car.

I’m already under the car, may as well fix this stupid thing! Fuel line first. I slice out the rotten leaky steel and hose clamp a new 12″ section of rubber line on the existing hard line only to find out that the hard line had just sprung a NEW leak about 24″ in advance of the new rubber patch hose. Great! Now I get to waste more expensive fuel hose on this turd. Deciding to not risk it, I cut the hard line all the way back to the middle of the car where there is no corrosion and zip tie the new rubber line to the existing evaporative emissions line to stem that nasty leak once and for all.

After wasting WAY too much time on that fuel line repair, I shift my attention to the titanic esque condition brake line. 11mm flare wrench and vise grip immediately round off the corroded fitting. Of course, why would it be easy? Snipping the hard line out of the existing fitting with a wire cutter, I get out the 11mm bolt extractor and impact wrench. I figure if anything will cut this loose, it’ll be an impact and a nasty reverse thread extractor — one ‘ugga-dugga’ on the impact and it zips right out much to my relief. The same trick works on the other side of the hard line and the two sections of old line are now on the shop floor to use as a pattern to bend the new OEM BMW steel hard line. An approximation bend later and the new line is flared and installed on the car, crudely juxtaposed next to flaky brown wet rusted steel with its brand new black powder coated line and zinc plated fittings I bleed the rear brakes and throw the wheels back on the beast. Brake pedal now feeling like a brand new car, I put the car back down stairs for storage once more.

 

Weeks later, the first Rally event is fast approaching, a Vinyl application party at a local underground parking ramp, and a lull in progress on my turbo S52 E30 wagon project upstairs due to shipping delays and ECU faults, the E34 comes back upstairs once again for a roof mounted eBay 32″ LED light bar, a water pump and a fresh set of spark plugs to cure the subpar power output. All three of those jobs go off without a hitch and the car stiffly bounces its way back west to get rally official with Polar run decals and a slew of vinyl graphics donated from my good friends at Blunttech.com (new BMW parts, best prices and service around) Bimmerworld.com , Mishimoto , BC Racing , Exedy , Garagistic and the list goes on. Our car definitely had by far the most legitimate sponsor livery of any in the 55-vehicle field!

 

Skipping right ahead to rally morning, the car if fully loaded, fully fueled and all systems operational, another team member comes up to our car in full Umbrella Corporation costume, asks for our rally passport log book and issues three blue viles of ‘antidote’ or ‘virus’ to our team which we simply stow in the cup holder as we look at one-another in a confused manner. Slowly prying ourselves out of the cozy interior to the drivers meeting in the parking lot of the Minnesota Masonic home parking lot in Bloomington we are issued the checkpoint sheet and all set off behind team Pants, Young Guns and Rushing. Quickly making our way to the first check point south of red wing, then to the unmanned checkpoint near Winona, the car hasn’t skipped a beat and we’ve near front-of-pack as we rally stage a twisty hillside gravel road that abruptly turned unplowed logging road as flashbacks of last years’ polar run come blasting by. Drift Couch decides to slowly plow ahead on the unplowed road, we follow in our 2 wheel drive lowered BMW. Even after scraping the bottom of our car on the plowed ice berm at the bottom of that beautiful but neglected road, the car is still fully operational and doing well. Wisconsin river baisin roads lightly tossed with road sand meant I could shuffle our pedigreed rally car sideways around every bend and that’s exactly what we did behind drift couch for the next 30 miles while Alex Bellus bravely hung out the back window of to capture some sideways shots of our team chariot. Seveal hair pins later, the brake pedal beings to feel vague, I have cooked the tired old stock brakes on this poor car driving it like a rally car, so I slipped the automatic shifter in to ‘Manual- 3’ and take it easy for a few miles. the pedal firms up again when I press it and then goes completely limp. two or three presses later, the MID on the car’s gauge cluster shows ‘LOW BRAKE FLUID’ ‘SEE OWNERS MANUAL’ and the red indicator illuminates on the gauge binnacle. I immediately know that one of the other rear brake hard lines had just failed probably due to boiling brake fluid pressure or something along those lines. At the very bottom of the brake pedal travel lies the front brakes, still working just fine but stopping a 3,600lb car with two 195 section contact patches is definitely not smart or safe, just 1/3 of the way through our week-end adventure.

Shortly after arriving at Checkpoint 3, the lunch stop, my team and I decide the smartest course of action is to still do the remaining checkpoints but take the boring GPS route in lieu of the scenic route that cooked the brakes in the first place. The car pushes through and we finish the remaining checkpoints to arrive safely at our creepy final destination summer camp resort.

Our trip home from the dells was all highway and the car did extremely well with albeit terrible fuel economy reading at 20.3MPG on a 100% highway tank with a 2.5 liter engine. It seems silly to complain about something as mundane as a brake hard line failure on a 20 year old minnesota car, and especially one that hasn’t skipped a beat mechanically and got us there and back in relative comfort. This car’s last hoorah was just that and is slated for part out and scrap now — but we have grand plans for #HoonicornV4 and #polarrun2K18 ! follow those hash tags on Instagram for project updates and as always, follow youtube.com/user/camper1234599 for updates on my channel!