Project Big Six-y: 1991 BMW 535i/5

[Jake]

I took advantage of the nice weather yesterday to tackle a small project. The trunk lid that came with the car had, at some point, had the latch mechanism re-welded in, for reasons of which I am not sure.



Regardless of the reason, I had my trunk latch precision-adjusted with a 5 Gum package and a Post-It note. It took several slams of the trunk to get it to latch.



One (particularly hungover) morning, I found myself in Alexandria pulling parts from another 1991, that was conveniently painted black. I took the trunk lid as it was non-janky:



In my hungover-ness, I didn't really want to un-clip all the pesky wiring from the connectors. So, I just cut the harness and took it all with me. This presented a challenge yesterday, as I had to exercise more precision in removing my car's wiring from the old lid. Not a problem, there were holes cut out to give you wiring access with little challenge. Got things somewhat apart:



And, surprisingly for this car, everything came apart and went back together with very little issue. The new lid is debadged, so there is no "535" on the trunk to clue people in as to the meaning of my license plate. Oh well.

I did consider leaving the car as an E34amino:



A little spray-in bedliner and we'd have been in business!

I did swap the key lock to the new trunk lid. Was actually very easy to do -- two rods move when you turn the key, so you disconnect those and use a small (8 mm?) ratchet to undo the two bolts holding the lock cylinder in. Simple.

Anyway, it's nice to have the trunk shut on the first time, every time.