Hello, and 1st question.
 

Hello everyone, First post here :)

Im new to the BMW World, but I have quite a bit of experiance behind me with other Cars.

I just got myself a '85 528e in beautiful condition for 1500$

runs great, but as any 17 year old car it has a few interesting problems.

Primarily, I keep blowing the fuse wich controls the Power seats, antenna, and Cig lighter. I was wondering if this was a common problem people had ? Easy Fix someone can refer me too or is it time to hit the Harness w/ a DVOM ?

Secondly, Im hearing what sounds like may be a little Slop in the Rockers. Having no experiance with BMW's specifically, could someone detail to me the rocker arm setup on the 2.8L Engine and Procedure for adjustment ?

Thanks... Ive gotta say in terms of that Solid feel and overall appearance of quality, The BMW Blows my Camaro away. Of course the Camaro out Handles and out powers it by a Mile (its nowhere near stock), But I think the BMW has the potential :)

Additionally, while I have your attention.

I was at the Pick n' Pull Looking for Parts for the Camaro, When I stumbled on a '78 530

It had a Header, was this factory Or not ? And is the 530 Of the Same engine Family a the 528 Such that this header would fit my Car ? Would it be a worthy investment ?

This car is so new to Me I havent really gotten any sort of feel for the performance capabilities of it, Prices on parts, and avaliability of such.

As far as I know, No 5-Series came stock with headers. Personally, I'm not a fan of headers, I dont believe they really make much of a difference on a stock engine, except making your car run hotter.

The effects of going to a header assembly are only realized when you have some wild setup like a extrude-honed cylinder head with big valves, and a radical cam. You would also have to wrap the headers with a heat insulating fabric to keep from melting any wires close to the header. The stock manifolds do a great job of expelling exhaust gases, and dissipating exhaust heat.

Thanks Jared, I agree as the stock manifolds Look pretty well designed.

However, I have plenty of experiance with headers on other vehicles and have never seen a Negative improvement in performance resulting from the addition of a well designed header.

Keep in mind that the torque curve on BMW's is a lot different then most cars. The powerband usually kicks in on the high end of engine revs. Here's a good analogy to help you out.

My uncle is big time into shifter karts. They are the small go-carts that have a 250cc 2-stroke motor. These things really move, He's been clocked at well over 100MPH. There is an exhaust setup on them that involves installing baffle plates at the end of the muffler. Here's the thing, if he wants to setup the kart for acceleration, (i.e. low end power), he adds more baffle plates to the muffler, increasing the backpressure, thereby lowering the powerband, so that it wil kick in at low RPM's. If he wants top speed, he removes the baffle plates, which decreases back pressure.