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Mykk's E34 540i/6 progress thread

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    Mykk's E34 540i/6 progress thread

    Hey guys,

    Here is my progress thread of the Rod-Storation of a '95 540i I picked up relatively cheap, non-running, on craigslist.

    It's a clean little car, my intention is to have a cool cruiser that I can mod and keep on the road while I bounce around the west coast for work between Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas and all surrounding areas.












    The previous owner said it ran until it blew up a water pump and he disconnected the battery while replacing it. With a new battery the car didn't respond to the key. So I bypassed the EWSII by replacing the 484 DME with a 404, cutting the wire at pin 66 and splicing the leads at the EWS module.

    At the same time of the DME replacment I installed a +30hp ACS copy chip.



    So now I had cranking but no fire, I pulled the fuel pump to see what it looked like and discovered someone's wiring repair:



    I installed an 340lph pump and fixed the wiring:



    With the new pump I had crank, cough, pop, backfire and enough white smoke out of the tailpipe to block out the sun. A sign that injectors are stuck open. Pulled the injectors:



    Then ordered a set of Bosch II four hole misters to replace these rusty squirt guns. The Bosch's arrived, and after looking at the OE style pintle caps I thought the four hole's in the injector tip looked a bit shrouded. So I popped them off and drilled them out:





    The intake manifold was nasty so I pulled it with the intention to clean it and replace the CCV:



    The mechanical fan exploded, as by evident by the marks in the radiator core. It's not leaking so I'll run it for now. But I did install a set of universal 12" electrics fans, utilizing the OE wiring and relays but with a 180 degree thermo switch.





    After some research online I opt'd to find the early M60B40 manifold with the velocity stacks. I found one in the classifieds of a forum, paid for it and got it coming. It arrived only to find out the seller was mistaken about what kind of manifold it was and it turned out to be a really late B40 manifold with the M62B44 style bellmouth in the plenum, identical to what I pulled off my engine. Tired of waiting to get my top end back together I just cleaned my OE manifold, painted it and put it together:





    I did snag an M62 cable throttle body without the restrictor plates on the throttle blade.



    I do like to block off the Bosch IAC valves and control idle rpm via the throttle stop screw, I've done it on two other OBDI cars and it's just my preference.

    A test fit of the manifold on the engine shows that my intake elbow will just barely clear. But it does! I wanted to run an elbow with a gradual bend instead of an tight corner. I will also want to make heat shields once it's all together.



    When it comes time, soon, to pull the valve covers to replace gaskets they too will get sand blasted and painted black.


    I actually found this spoiler on the side of the road, I think it came off a new gen civic. But I kind of dig it, adds a little batman to the car:



    Other fix's/ planned mods:

    The pressure power steering hose leaks badly, a new one is on order.

    All of the exhaust hardware is either broke, rusted or missing. My plans are to run high flow cats as the mufflers, connect the banks with an H-pipe, turn the pipes out to the side and run straight 2.5" pipe down the sills as "sidepipes" with a kickout before the rear wheels.

    I do have a set of 18" M-parallel wheels that came with the car, but the chrome is pitted and pealing/chipping. I will gradually restore those wheels, sand blast and re-chrome then new tires. But that's a long term project as I wear the rubber out on the 15"s already mounted.

    I also have a pair of sport side mirrors to install.

    Then, knowing me I will install lowering coils.



    Stay tuned, more will be posted. Cheers -Mykk

    #2
    I decided against the spoiler today. Pulled it off. Installed the intake manifold, but I've still got a crank & no fire. I even pulled the spark plugs and dripped some 30w oil into the cylinders and tried again, it sounded promising and almost caught but still no go. I convinced myself this engine has no compression and I started sourcing a M62B44 to replace it.



    But first I wanted to see what the compression gauge said about the matter. All cylinders read the same, although it took 7 or 8 cranks to get up there. And i am keeping in mind that this is after I added oil to the rings.



    ..after letting this thing crank, backfire and pop I'd say if this were my old small block chevy with a Demon carburetor and MSD distributor the ignition timing is way off. Just find TDC, set the dizzy and let her fire. But being a Bosch Motronic OBDI injection, who knows.

    I do know that when the previous owner pulled the water pump he would have needed to unbolt the harmonic balancer with the crank trigger wheel. Theoretically there should be a dowel pin on the crank hub so that the balancer wouldn't get clocked wrong, right?

    Perhaps I'll pull that tomorrow to make sure, even see if it's possible the trigger ring slipped from the rubber isolator.

    Comment


      #3
      wow - awesome work on saving a cool car. Looking forward to you getting that thing fired, lowered and MEAN!
      91 DS S52 Slicktop, 91 Calypso M42, 89 Royalblau M20, 84 Bahama Beige 323i, M535, Euro e24, ap1

      www.RenownUSA.com
      ig @RenownUSA / @rude.scott

      Comment


        #4
        Found one of the early B40 intake manifolds with the velocity stacks and ordered it, saw pics this time!

        I'll run this one for a bit, then prep and paint the other once it comes in.

        I also ordered a strut tower brace. Pics of everything once they come in.
        Last edited by Mykk540i/6; 11-14-2014, 08:32 PM.

        Comment


          #5
          While awaiting the arrival of the harmonic dampener/crank tone ring I came up with a couple ideas for the exhaust side pipes I want to make.



          Obviously pipe size and dimensions not to scale. I will likely go with the H-pipe design as it seems like it will make for better ground clearance as well as H-pipes make more power and torque below 4k rpm. Also, to my ears H-pipes sound better too. I just hope that with an H-pipe and using thunderbolt high flow cats as mufflers, with 2.5" pipe it just doesn't get too raspy. Otherwise I'll need to look into using auger style exhaust inserts and that can cost 5-10hp.
          Last edited by Mykk540i/6; 11-19-2014, 04:03 PM.

          Comment


            #6
            I Had a customer with similar issues on his M50 swap, If the M50 is anything similar to the M60 their IS a dowel pin but if you just bolt the Harmonic on without paying attention to the orrientation you can byaccidently press it out of the crank wheel.

            Basically He just bolted it on and pressed the pin out through other side of the crank pulley without paying attention to the orrientation. So the engine was getting fuel, spark and compression but the crank sensor was reading the timing as off. Rotated the Harmonic on to the right spot and Boom fired right up.

            Love E34s, good luck!
            1985 325e M50TU(Sold)
            1991 318is Slicktop (Sold)
            1990 325is Brilliantrot S50/5 Lug Swapped.
            1992 525i Manual shitbox Winter Beater

            Comment


              #7
              Originally posted by Mykk540i/6 View Post



              The temp sensor goes in to the radiator, no on it. This won't work properly as it's designed to sense liquid temps, not air temps. Not to mention your engine cares about the temperature of the coolant inside of it, not the temperature of the air coming through the radiator. Screw your temp sensor in to the OEM location on the radiator. If it has a different thread pitch, then you're using the wrong sensor. BMW makes sensors in every temp imaginable, so it's just a matter of ordering the right p/n.

              Other than that though, it looks good! Nice work.

              Comment


                #8
                Nice work man. The fuel injectors and intake manifold looked about the same on my e34. Nasty
                sigpic
                "The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten."

                Comment


                  #9
                  Originally posted by TimKninja View Post
                  I Had a customer with similar issues on his M50 swap, If the M50 is anything similar to the M60 their IS a dowel pin but if you just bolt the Harmonic on without paying attention to the orrientation you can byaccidently press it out of the crank wheel.

                  Basically He just bolted it on and pressed the pin out through other side of the crank pulley without paying attention to the orrientation. So the engine was getting fuel, spark and compression but the crank sensor was reading the timing as off. Rotated the Harmonic on to the right spot and Boom fired right up.

                  Love E34s, good luck!
                  That's really encouraging, glad to hear it. I truly hope that is all that happened when the PO did the water pump install and removed/reinstalled the dampener. I'll know more when I get back into town tomorrow.


                  Originally posted by CorvallisBMW View Post
                  The temp sensor goes in to the radiator, no on it.
                  Every aftermarket electric fan controller I've installed had a temp probe designed to go through the radiator fan core fins. Has worked for me for over 15 years, the fans turn on/off at spec temp

                  Here's what the entire temp switch looks like with the probe:



                  You are correct I could use a BMW thread in for the radiator. But, this was cheaper and the OE temp sensor interfered clearance wise with my intake tubing.

                  Originally posted by deutschman View Post
                  Nice work man. The fuel injectors and intake manifold looked about the same on my e34. Nasty
                  Yeah, I will be running an oil catch can on mine soon.
                  Last edited by Mykk540i/6; 11-20-2014, 08:15 AM.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Finally got an early intake with the velocity stacks. I've got some cleaning/de-carbing to do and then I'm going to paint it. This time with a gloss black base, Metalcast red again and high gloss clear. The previous intake was painted flat red base, Metalcast red and no clear. With the Black/Red/Clear it should really pop.

                    I'm thinking of doing away with the intermediate tube for the crankcase breather and instead attaching the hoses for the oil catch can at those points. Should make for an easier manifold install too.

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Finally a day back from being laid out by the flu, I wanted to start working on painting of the 2nd intake manifold.

                      My plan was gloss black base with Metalcast red topcoats, I hoping it would be a candy red in the direct light and black on the corners and shadows. Unfortunately I don't know enough about painting to pull that off, but my progress thus far:

                      1st: clean and prep with chlorinated brakleen



                      2nd: Adhesion promotor primer



                      3rd: Gloss black.



                      ..after two coats of the Metalcast red, the manifold had a very cool sheen but not any hint of the transparent red in the pigment. The sheen on my phone camera looks more chrome, in person it's a super gloss black.



                      Because the red I was shooting for wasn't coming through I gave it a push with a dust coat of highly metallic dark red and another coat of metalcast.



                      The metallic red had some gnarly orange peel, I was going to sand and clearcoat to help reduce it once cured. But, when not in the sunlight the current hue was too maroon for my taste. I decided to give the manifold a more opaque layer of metallic red to interact with the metalcast. That's when the metallic red reacted poorly and gave a crazy weird snake skin finish:



                      Time to brake fluid / paint stripper for plastic off all the paint and start over.

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Originally posted by Mykk540i/6 View Post
                        While awaiting the arrival of the harmonic dampener/crank tone ring I came up with a couple ideas for the exhaust side pipes I want to make.



                        Obviously pipe size and dimensions not to scale. I will likely go with the H-pipe design as it seems like it will make for better ground clearance as well as H-pipes make more power and torque below 4k rpm. Also, to my ears H-pipes sound better too. I just hope that with an H-pipe and using thunderbolt high flow cats as mufflers, with 2.5" pipe it just doesn't get too raspy. Otherwise I'll need to look into using auger style exhaust inserts and that can cost 5-10hp.
                        your going to run side pipes.. on your e34.. with no mufflers..
                        IG: haggardfab

                        Comment


                          #13
                          i like the wrinkle look on the manifold.
                          IG: @Baye30

                          FRONT VALENCE IS ZENDER!!! STOP FILLING MY PM BOX PPL!!!

                          Comment


                            #14
                            That thing looks pretty clean! Red little tid-bits in black bays always look good
                            WTB:m60b40 in PNW
                            Zachary Ripley

                            85 318i M50B25tu.
                            92 525it 5 speed.
                            80 244gl (m60 prepping).

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Originally posted by haggardfab View Post
                              your going to run side pipes.. on your e34.. with no mufflers..
                              My side pipe idea may not pan out. Although I think It would be aesthetically neat. I won't have room for mufflers before kicking the pipes out the side and would likely tire of the straight pipe noise after a week.

                              Comment

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