u/ayebug

While gutting and demoing the separate garage of a newly acquired house I found this cool bayonet! The house was purchased after a man in his late 80’s passed away, the whole house was a time capsule from the early 90’s, and I guess he stopped using and going in the garage years and years and years ago after the roof started leaking and mold and moisture starting getting in. The attic of this old garage had steps built up to the rafters, where the man built and framed a small room! The garage has a peaked roof, so when he built the room, he only framed a square section enough to walk around and have head room. I started demoing the old drywall and water damaged framing and found this bayonet under a pile of wet newspapers from the 50’s alongside a bunch of other old stuff! Wondering if anybody could lead me in the correct direction for dating this piece? My first thought was Civil War era potentially?

After a couple weeks of securing all necessary parts to begin my manual swap on the 530, I began the quick weeklong task of swapping everything in. I’ve done a lot of research on manual swapping these M60’s before hand on BMW forums before tackling this job due to the fact I wanted to avoid using a stock clutch and also avoid spending a ton of money while doing it. Many people on the forums say you can’t run certain parts and every answer contradict each other they just haven’t tried it. IF YOU DONT WANT TO RUN AN OEM FLYWHEEL OR CLUTCH (and also not spend thousands on a flywheel and clutch kit) Get an E39 M5 flywheel, alongside an 328i FX Racing stage 3 clutch. You can run an aftermarket m5X clutch in these cars, it just has to be able to clear the hump in the flywheel. Everything swapped in with no issues or problems at all. Broke in the clutch and she feels great, highly recommend this setup for anybody who’s in the same boat!

I’m currently going through the process of manual swapping my e34. So far I have the transmission and everything else complete and installed except for the driveshaft. I bought my ZF off of my buddies old ‘94 530, and I also bought the driveshaft off of another manual ‘94 530. When I went to install my driveshaft it’s about a whole inch and half too short. I measured the length of it to make sure I didn’t get scammed and it’s a manual driveshaft for sure, I swapped rear halves so I can run it to my old auto diff that is installed and welded, but it’s just too short. Is there a difference in how much the diffs from manual cars and auto cars have? Thinking of extending my driveshaft a little bit but don’t want to if it’s not necessary.