It's under way, 91 318is m50

[e30325ic]

Well it is officially under way. I removed the m42 last week and sold it. Last night I made my wiring adapter. I hope to get the booster and throttle cable in tonight and Sat. morning start installing the engine. I have everything I need except a 3:25 gears set and AC lines. I will try to update with pics as I go, but sometimes I get into my work so much that I forget to take pictures.
Here are a couple from last nigts work.
Starting:


Finished:


I went to pull-a-part last weeked and scored the 2 ends for the adapter and they just let me have them. So all I have in them is some time, tape, solder, and Heat shrink tubing.

[318isbmw]

Glad to see another m42 guy leave the clan haha. Lucky they gave you those wiring adapters. Mine cost 10 each at the local place. Thankfully my m42 was toast so I just cut that end off of it.

[e30325ic]

Yea my garage is has 2 m42's. One is complete but idles rough, the other has a broken intake cam. I plan on putting one good one together out of the 2. I will have a complete set up with all acc. and trans for sale soon.

Well this afternoon I will got the new booster in and the throttle cable in. Tomorrow I plan on getting the trans and the engine bolted together with the new light weight flywheel and the new clutch. Sat. morning is the big day and I hope to be driving it by sat afternoon. We will see if this works out like I planed. Usually never does but we will see.

[318isbmw]

Y
Well this afternoon I will got the new booster in and the throttle cable in. Tomorrow I plan on getting the trans and the engine bolted together with the new light weight flywheel and the new clutch. Sat. morning is the big day and I hope to be driving it by sat afternoon. We will see if this works out like I planed. Usually never does but we will see.

Good luck w/ the plan. I planned on doing the same thing... Ended up 6 months for me, hope yours goes quicker.

[e30325ic]

Well my plan got a little sidelined this weekend. I am doing at a fiend of mines shop since he has a lift. I was just getting started putting things to gather, my dad shows up with new tires for his e39 so I had to stop and put tires on his car. I had to leave and go home twice to get some things that were missing from my parts pile at his shop. The most disturbing was the M3 shifter that I had acquired. We never did find it along with some other things like a box of relays, and a box of bolts that had all of my extra BMW torx bolts and and what not. I had to go back home and remove them from another engine. We thing we might know who the culprit is but we are not 100% sure. We had company today so today was out. I do have the engine in. I had to take another shifter and shorten the carrier and the shift rod since my m3 shifter is MIA. I seems to work fine. All I need now is to put the drive shaft in, radiator, hook up the ECM, then off to the muffler shop. I don,t have any pix since I left the camera at his shop. I will try to up date with some pix soon. Maybe I will be running tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

[318kid]

Glad to see another m42 guy leave the clan haha.

I'm NOT!!! Good luck though. Someone needs to make a video showing how much faster it is. -Preston

[e30325ic]

Man, 318kid, you sig looks just like my car.

The car cranked today. Yea! Fired right up. I still need to install the radiator and the driveshaft to get it on the road. The only problem that I have is that I lost power to my Windows, AC and Heater controls. The fuse box is dead to those fuses. I don't understand since I didn't disturb any of that unless it fed through the C101 connector. My original engine had more wires in that plug than all of the wiring diagrams that I have found. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[2002maniac]

where'd you get your wiring diagrams? I have not seen a good pinout/diagram for the 318is

[318isbmw]

where'd you get your wiring diagrams? I have not seen a good pinout/diagram for the 318is

Search under 318is wiring in the 24 valve section. Few threads on it. Found mine in there and works great.

[KangamangusDriver]

I did the same swap! You are going to love it!

[e30325ic]

I got to the bottom of the electrical issues. I ditched the wiring adapter that I made and cut the end from the m42 harness and the end from my e34 harness and wired it that way. I found a wiring digram for the 318is specific. It is completely different than all the rest. Once I wired it up with the new diagram everything works even the tach and the fuel consumption gauge. The colors on the diagram were a little different that my car so I just followed the pin numbers. I only had 2 wires left on the original plug on my car. I am not sure what they are for. I will put together a chart for the 318is and post it later. I know that pin #9 is the tach and the black with the green stripe is the starter wire that triggers the unloader relays K6 and K7. That was the one I was missing before. I had a heater hose bust so I decided to just bleed the slave cylinder on the clutch then go find a new heater hose then head to the Muffler shop. Well when we pushed the clutch pedal. the rod slipped off the slave and it dumped the guts to the slave into the bell housing. That was the point that I decided I had enough for one day and my buddy had to go to his little girls birthday party so I had to leave his shop. Looks like it will be another week before I can pull the trans out and fix the slave cylinder mess. Oh well, at least the electrical is fixed all I will need to do with it is just tidy up the wiring.

[e30325ic]

Finally got my camera back so here is a couple of Pix of the engine.

Ready to go in.



Sitting in the car.

[e30325ic]

Finally got my camera back so here is a couple of Pix of the engine.

Ready to go in.



Sitting in the car.

[e30325ic]

After a little break do to work, I finally got a chance to drive it. I heade to the muffler shop to have the exhaust work done and I got within 1/2 mile of the muffler shop and the car started running hot and the ABS had the brakes locked down. I barely got it into Dominos parking lot. I call a buddy of mine and he came to get me and take me to home to get my truck and trailer. The heater hose came off of the back of the head (where I cant reach) and the ABS had no power to them. I fix the ABS situation and I havent been able to put the hose back on since I had to help a friend put a transmission in his car. While the car was just sitting there it leaked out all of the power steering fluid. Now I have to fix that. I am begining to wonder if I will ever get this thing on the road. I dd find out that the 318 high pressure AC hose bolts right up to the compessor, but the end is bent the wron way and interfers with the low parssure side of the compressor. I guess I will just get the ends from an e36 and just have some hoses made up. I will be heading to Ft. Worth this weekend so now working on my car for me. I am hoping that the Grimlins will show up and have it all fixed when I get back. That would be just great.

[kenika65]

It is best to take your time and double check everything unless you want to do this over and over again until you figure out how to mess of everyway you can.

The only way to learn is to mess up.