Eric's Mtech2 Vert

[IRON-E]

Subscribed Eric, keep up the hard work budd. :D

[CorvallisBMW]

Great work! Reminds me of my car when I first got it.

[TimKninja]

Doing same exact thing with my ETA, 5 Speed swap. Pulled the motor and tranny at the same time. I was dumb and didnt drain my tranny fluid and leaked the whole capacity of it over my floor. My head gasket was leaking oil too.

Just got my head rebuillt and now its all gonna go back together.

For the fan clutch, put a 10mm wrench on the waterpump bolt and make sure your turning it the right way. I had the same problem.

[Cabriolet]

shoot thx was gonna pull it w/o draining now im gonna think twice.

Doing same exact thing with my ETA, 5 Speed swap. Pulled the motor and tranny at the same time. I was dumb and didnt drain my tranny fluid and leaked the whole capacity of it over my floor. My head gasket was leaking oil too.

Just got my head rebuillt and now its all gonna go back together.

For the fan clutch, put a 10mm wrench on the waterpump bolt and make sure your turning it the right way. I had the same problem.

[Cabriolet]

Today was profitable. Got everything disconnect and the engine pulled out. Made a homemade took to get the fan loose. Then disconnected the motor mounts, tided webbing to them and lifted the motor out. Needed to disconnect the sway bar to get the transmission past it. I got under the car and held the transmission down so we could pull the engine easily, as my dad raised it out.


Here the transmission is hanging free so I can pull it down to angle it out with the engine.

The engine has to go almost strait vertical to get it out.



Once we got the engine out and disconnected the auto trans. The ½ gallon left in the torque converter spills out of where the spine is. *note pop the torque converter off with the trans and don’t leave it attached to the engine.

Huge mess.

Engine is out!

trying to take her out for a spin, 1 human power just aint enough…


shes out.


There is a ton of carbon on the piston heads. Anyone have any ideas why?

[CorvallisBMW]

May i missed it but, what are your plans for the motor? Rebuild? just a nice cleaning? motor swap? The m30 is pretty fun, and cheap ;)

[Cabriolet]

Now that the engine is out it was time to finish cleaning up the 1/8 inch of carbon build up on the pistons. Anyone know why I have so much build up????

Thx to mike, Chris and my dad for all there help today. We put in 29 man hours of cleaning and painting.
Polished up all the rust off the manifolds before the guys got to my house. They look much better but the painting made it for sure.

Then we washed and prepped the block for painting.

Mike and I did most of the painting but Chris got to do a little of the Vanna White action and hold the card board.



After the block was painted we painted the manifolds steel grey.

It was getting so cold the paint stopped sticking so we used a heat gun to warm the parts. To almost no avail the paint really would not stick.

Found some hats in my dad’s garage…

I’ll need to touch up the block but it is looking great.



Piston rings from pelican parts
They are in but look nothing like the original rings…

Dad is lapping the valves because of all the pitting.

Valves are in and we called it a day. Put in a full 11 hour day myself.

Supposed to rain tomorrow, so ill push the bimmer into the garage and work on the power steering rack conversion. I got a 1995 M3 power rack and ill need to do some retrofitting to get her to work. And ill rewire the auto to manual deal. Gonna put in a switch in the clutch pedal so that when it is depressed I am able to start the car, but then able to use my cruise when I’m not on the clutch.

[bmwstephen]

Eric, was the transmission ever leaking? Can you take a picture of the Tranny pan gasket area? Mine is leaking after replacing the seal for the 2nd time. I'm wondering if I did anything wrong

[CabrioPunk]

Great work. Looks like a ton of fun. I'd take a few weeks of work off to do something like this. Enjoy it man. Continue the good work. Take some pictures of the steering rack swap please. Mine leaks badly. i figured while there may just get the upgraded rack.

[BlkE30v]

nice vert keep us up to date with the info and pics i also have a vert so taking this opportunity to learn more from your upgrades, especially with the steering rack what has to be done to make it work..

[IronmanE30]

Looks like you are really having some fun. I will keep checking in to see your progress. Nice work!

Cheers,

Jim

[Ceeker]

carbon build up is nothing unusual with a m20 motor; also depending on mileage. running the car on low grade fuel is one possibility. However, in my experience tearing down these motors all have had carbon. Ellectrosonically can be removed or wire wheel - not recommended but I have done this myself and never damaged anything.

[Cha Ching]

^^Ceeker, is that your block? Cleaned with a wire wheel? I am doing a head gasket on my M-Tech vert & need to clean the block as well. What did you use to plug the oil & water passages prior to cleaning the block?

[Cabriolet]

Eric, was the transmission ever leaking? Can you take a picture of the Tranny pan gasket area? Mine is leaking after replacing the seal for the 2nd time. I'm wondering if I did anything wrong

ill take a pic today. something was leaking from my auto transmission but im not sure what.

[Cabriolet]

Got pistons in and oil pan on.

Motor mounts on

And all front and back covers on.

Getting the power steering rack out



The racks aren’t much different. The e36 one has the inlets on the opposite sides.


Just found out that I also need to switch the inner control arms because they are different on the e36.

All my bump steer was coming from the bad ball joints in the inner control arms.

Head is fully back together and ready to go in tomorrow.