butters 318i project, S54door...

[butters]

Lowering the subframe wasn't that bad, I'm sure having the trans bolted in place helps. I did need to drop the bolts and put my studs back in order to get enough room to work. I wound up removing this "supporting bracket" from the rear of the cylinder head:



...I wasn't using it to support anything, so hopefully that's no biggie. I then had room to pull the harness up, and re-route the O2 harness through the E30 cover.

[butters]

The booster and master cylinder are in, the reservoir is just a placeholder until I receive the correct grommets to work with the tii hose barbs. At first glance it appears the stock E30 clevis fork will work, but I have misplaced my pin so I'll have to wait to confirm that until a replacement comes.

The custom hydraulic hose aspect of this is looming over me, I'm unsure where to even begin.

[kronus]

crimps are preferred by most auto wiring professionals over solder.

are you sure those two eyelets aren't grounds?

[bobaflesh]

Great project, awesome job on the S54.

[pandaboo911]

Buy the correct fittings and hose and have a shop with a hose crimping tool do it.
You should be able to get 90 degree fittings that already have the crimp end on them. Same style as power steering hoses.

[butters]

crimps are preferred by most auto wiring professionals over solder.

are you sure those two eyelets aren't grounds?

I have heard that, but I also have heard that wiring pros may refer to the process of crimping then soldering the crimp as crimping. Personally I am not equipped to do a robust crimp, I feel safer with solder.

I'm pretty sure - I looked it up and it appears they are the power wires for the fuse box.

Buy the correct fittings and hose and have a shop with a hose crimping tool do it.
You should be able to get 90 degree fittings that already have the crimp end on them. Same style as power steering hoses.

I'll look at how to identify the correct fittings, I don't know what to call them or search for. I've reached out to Bavarian Recycling to get my hands on whatever hoses they might have from an E23, which I may then be able to cut up and splice to my E46 pump and E36 rack.

[butters]

:(Work and daylight-losing time have slowed me down, but I did get the front axle rigged up in order to finally have the car towed over to my fabricator. I actually wound up loosely fitting the E36 rack in place just to keep the wheels pointed in the same direction, without connecting to the steering shaft, since the coupler isn't installed on the Z3 rack yet.

Here's how it looks under the engine now:



I already have touching up to do on the subframe paint :(

En route via flatbed:



Indoors at last:

[butters]

So after a nice 2-month hibernation, work will now pick back up again. The exhaust fabrication is complete, along with the VC oil drainback pipe adjustment and a mounting solution for the S14 expansion tank. I'll get some photos of the exhaust once I get the car home and get into installing the O2 and EGT sensors.

In the mean time I assembled my oil cooler with AN fittings and lines, and cleaned up and painted the E23 hydraulic fluid reservoir.

Here's the oil cooler:



And the reservoir before:



After:



The new fluid filter is on the left, old is on the right. The paint is rustoleum "hammered" black, though in this lighting it does look a bit on the gray side. Depending on how it looks in the bay I might go over it with some regular black.

I got pretty lucky with the timing of an E23 partout on bimmerforums, which saved me from breaking down and paying for brand new E23 hydraulic hoses. So now I only need to get the high pressure supply hose lengthened and I'll be ready to plumb the steering and brakes.


I still have several ancillary items that need to be installed/plumbed/connected, but even with my busy schedule I think I'm in good position to have it ready for springtime.

[sam_]

youre living the dream!

[butters]

I got in new crush washers to begin final assembly of the Z3 steering rack, and transferred the cooling loop over from my 328 rack along with the tie rods. I'm tempted to get new tie rods, but these feel very firm and tight, and waiting until they actually fail won't make the job much more difficult. I do need boot clamps though.



I needed to install the rack to be able to push the car into my garage, but it was really a pain to get the knuckle fully onto the rack splines. This is as far as I could get it:



The knuckle was also pushing right up against the firewall grommet, so I felt that there had to be a way to make this easier and fit better. I looked back at the rack swap thread, as well as my old photos, and had somewhat of a moment of enlightenment... the reason I struggled so hard with it initially is that I got the rack from someone who had it in their E30, and they included the "modded" knuckle. Being a relative noob, I figured that it must all work out so why bother trying to use my factory knuckle? Wrong.

In airbag cars like mine, the rack swap is done by cutting some extra material from the firewall opening and then using the adjustable steering column length to mate the factory knuckle to the swapped rack. It's much shorter than this early style knuckle. Maybe I was afraid the splines wouldn't match, even though my research these days tells me that they should. In any case, the rack I got came with a non-airbag modded knuckle, which is pretty darn long, but I made it work anyway. These past years I ran it like so, without the shortening spacers:



So to make life a little easier, I reassembled the knuckle with a few washers in order to shrink it a bit:



I cleaned up the splines and then was able to fully install the rack. Only thing left is to torque the tie rod ends to the strut housing, which I'll get to later.

[jeenyus]

I love those moments when you access memories deep in your brain. Good work.

[butters]

I picked up a brass hose barb union to adapt the coolant output hose from the S54 to a hose with a right angle on it for installation onto the bottom heater core pipe. It looks possible to just loop the S54 hose around and onto the pipe, but I cut mine too short for that and I think this is cleaner anyway. I'll get some BMW clamps for the final installation.



Here's what my "battery" tray looks like now, my fab guy welded these posts for mounting the S14 tank on an angle and elevated so that the inlet hose clears the lip on the tray. The one on the left has a nut-sert, and the one on the right (with a touch of his style) is a pass-through to a nut-sert on the tank.



You can see I still have to feed much of the harness into the glove box area, but I'm not yet totally comfortable with the wiring. I need a step-by-step, unless I'm overthinking it and those blue connectors don't need to be touched.

Here's how it looks with the tank in, I haven't yet checked but my 318 cover should leave enough room that it still fits fine over the firewall opening and terminal block.

[butters]

The brakes are moving along, slowly.

I have the 2002 reservoir hooked up and it will work in the location I had it... but I am contemplating moving it to the other side of the strut tower and putting the big E23 steering fluid reservoir in that location (which is where it was for the stock E30 too). I might see if I can be slick with it and put the 2002 reservoir in the now-empty opening where the diagnostic connector used to be, right next to the C101.



It turns out I was a little premature in my thinking that the E30 fork on the E23 booster would work out easily. I came across an E46fanatics thread on an E30/S54 from almost 10 years ago, sadly there are no photos working but there is mention of the E23 booster being 3/8" too long at its shortest setting with the E30 fork, and that's what I'm experiencing on my car (excuse the blurry photo):



The fork is just drooping a little there, but there's no way to get the pin in without severely pulling on the brake pedal, so that's not going to work.

I can't see what the E46fanatics author came up with, but I see a couple options here.

1. Remove the jam nut on the booster rod, so that I can thread the fork on further. Is this risky in terms of movement of the fork's position? Will it rattle? I don't really know

2. Remove material from the back of the fork, so that I can thread it on further against the jam nut. Will this compromise the strength of the threaded connection? Seems a little risky..

3. Space the booster further into the firewall to make up for this gap. Will the hardlines allow it without much work? Is there a firewall gasket that I'm missing? I suppose a gasket would be needed if I create an opening around the booster.

Thinking in terms of safety, I'm leaning towards #3. I picked up a pack of washers and will probably install 2 on each bolt between the booster and the firewall inside the engine bay. But maybe removing the jam nut on the booster rod would be a better solution?


The other item on my mind now is mounting the FPR somewhere. Keeping the E30 rubber lines seems wrong, since they are very long and would create a big loop. The S54 fuel supply line is a hard pipe that terminates at the corner of the block, oil pan and bellhousing. I've been inspired by Sh3rpak!ng's incredible Bronzit build, and might look at bending the body-side fuel pipes towards the block, and keeping the rubber hoses very short and under the steering knuckle.

You can see the engine supply pipe pointing down in the left side of this photo:

[butters]

I love those moments when you access memories deep in your brain. Good work.

Thanks! Yea it was nice to have this thread too, for quick reference to previous configurations.

It might be nice some day to get the proper airbag knuckle, but I don't think that'll be anytime soon. At least with the Arc Asylum subframe and pan, it's super easy to pull the rack.

[spiDmang]

great work so far man. keep at it!