'87 e30 - the American Conquest

[jalopi]

Hey guys

I'm not really new here, but I've been mainly lurking for the past year or so. Now that I'm finally going through with building my car, I thought I'd make a build thread.

So here's my car:



can't forget the wheels (xxr 513's)


And here's what's going in it :)



A Ford 302 out of a '91 stang (this is actually a pic from FunfGan's thread, but since I bought the engine that's literally in the picture I figured he wouldn't mind). Right now the block is at work and I'm waiting on some parts to be delivered from summit racing. Pics will be had once I start the assembly process.

So obviously the first step is to get the thing in my garage and up in the air.



The daunting task awaits...




Ok so after this I did make some progress... buuutt I made the mistake of going 1 on 1 with a friend who brought over a case of bud light. Needless to say, I got way too hammered to remember to take pics of disconnecting some stuff and removing the driveshaft. Oh well. Skip a day (too hung over) and I'm ready to remove the tranny.



It was after I got all the bolts out that I found out that it's a major pain to separate the two while they're in the car. I guess that would explain why I had to do this:



Well in any case, after some "gentle" care, the tranny's out!



And yes... it was a huge PITA, but it was quite satisfying to pull it out from underneath the car after all that fighting. Time for that wheezy 2.7l to come out!



Almost there...




And BOOM



I have to say, I've never pulled an engine by myself before and DAMN it was not easy - but seeing this made the wasted weekend seem all worth it.




Of course, some credit IS due to Mr. SnapOn and his overpriced but nice tools. Couldn't have done it without this bad boy.



And now, she sits outside and waits for the transplant to be prepared...




Updates by Friday!

[pr0craztinazn]

I'm going to be really sad if my swap takes as long as yours, considering how simple of a job I have ahead of me. It was good to chill again today! I'll assist as much as I can from afar.

[jalopi]

Long distance emotional support? Heh :)

On a side note, I had some parts delivered today. Pics will be up by tomorrow night.

[eurotrash]

As one of the few that has done this swap let me gove u a few pointers.
1: do not use cheap shortcuts from the begining. U dont want to get used to a part "working for now". Namely fuel pressure regulator, fuel pump, radiator, fan, clutch.
2: do your research on the 5.0 side. There were a ton of diferences between sbf's its not like a sbc where everything swaps from year to year. Youve got early 3 bolt 28oz vs later 4 bolt 28oz vs later 50oz 4 bolt. Water pumps can turn clockwise or counter. Accesories can come in pretty much any configuration. You have to know how all of this works together.
3: learn to weld. Your gonna want to get long tubes and reweld/reroute one of the primaries to deal with the steering on the driverside. Ive got around 600 into exhaust right now and i dont have a muffler or anything past the axel. Its rediculous getting the exhaust around the front and tying it together and getting 3" manderal out the back side of the pass side. Itll save u a ton of headache and money to reroute the 1 primary.
4. Be ready to turn heads and explain whats going on. I cant get put of the car without spmeone asking me whats in the car.

[jalopi]

Your gonna want to get long tubes and reweld/reroute one of the primaries to deal with the steering on the driverside.

Thanks for the heads up man - I'll definitely keep that in mind. Not really too sure what I'm doing with the exhaust yet -but- I do have a pipe bender at work and plenty of pipe that we haven't used in years... so hopefully all it will really cost me is time.

[jalopi]

Finally uploaded some of the pics:

Edelbrock heads - 175cc or something intake, 1.9" intake valves


Knockoff Edelbrock intake, apparently good for 6-6.5k rpm


Comp cams full roller rockers, 1.6 ratio


Summit Racing HEI distributor


New Trick Flow hydro roller lifters


Ford Racing cam - I didn't want something too extreme, just something that would breathe in a decent fashion and sound good too.

[jalopi]

Milodon high flow / high pressure oil pump - because it's not worth playing games with your oiling system


ARP hardened oil pump driveshaft - required/recommended for a high flow/pressure pump


Comp cams timing set, double roller


ARP rod bolts


ARP head bolts


Mahle pre-fit piston rings


Speaking of piston rings...


This is one of the best ring compressors money can buy. Granted, it is 100% non-adjustable, but wow is it easy to put pistons in with this thing.

Edelbrock 600cfm carb, "mechanical" secondaries


The block after I pulled everything off of it. Put a couple things back on hand tight just so I wouldn't lose them.

It's still pretty grimy though. All I have to do is get the cam bearings out, put it in our parts washer at work, clean the head surface off, then wash it again.

Pretty satisfied on how the cylinder walls came out


Same goes for the crank journals. Polished them up with some WD-40 and 2000 grit sandpaper


The pistons came out pretty good too. They almost look new compared to before.


I tried dunking these things in some parts washer solvent from work for a week. I then took them out and scrubbed them with a toothbrush. This, surprisingly, did not work. A co-worker suggested using Spray9, something we use to get grease off the lifts/walls. It worked REALLY good. The carbon pretty much immediately dissolved into nothing.


As far as the accessories go, it's a late model block, so I can do one of two things with this: (just to get the ball rolling I'll only be using the alternator and the WP)

http://www.summitracing.com/parts/MCH-1465-09/

A. Use the stock reverse rotation style WP and route the belt from the alternator under the pump and around the crank (mustang guys on their forums have said this works)
-or-
B. Get a Lincoln Mark 7 or 8 (whichever it is) non-reverse rotation style WP and route the belt over the WP and around the crank.

Not too sure what I'm gonna go with yet.

[FunfGan]

Holy cow man! Minus my engine being bored over slightly and you having aftermarket heads, were going to have almost identical engines. Same intake, same carb, same cam, same distributor, head bolts, etc etc. No wonder you're spending so much, but you're right, at least it's the proper stuff and not cheap stuff that will come back to bite you in the ass. I'd also recomend the same FRP I got(can send you a link). But keep it up man, I'll be watching this while I'm at college, dreaming of my car hahah. And when I'm on break, I'd be more than willing to come help out.

[FunfGan]

Also, have you seen my belt setup? It's not the best but it does the job as well as anything else.

[jalopi]

Hahah thanks for the offer bro ~but~ I'm hoping to get this done before December 1st so I can attend the 100 drifters of December at Summit. Not sure how your school works, but I think that's about the time that most schools let off for winter break :(

However, that link for the FPR would be nice :). All I need now is that, headers, the alternator bracket, alternator, belt, tranny, clutch kit, driveshaft, thermostat/housing, hoses, spark plugs/wires, clutch pedal/hydraulics, brake master setup, driveshaft, fuel filter, fan... ok that's actually alot and now, thinking about it, my wallet hurts :(.

[jalopi]

Although once you get back, all I need to do is paint my car red and pick up a similar set of wheels... then we can roll around town a minute apart and give people wtf deja vu moments.

[jalopi]

Well when I saw your car I really wasn't paying attention to the belt setup, I was more like "mother of god it's real" and gawking at the engine

[eurotrash]

So if your planning on drifting this the edelbrock will not and cannot work. You'll need to get a centerhung holley based carb with wedged/notched(nascar style) floats and jet extensions. The carter/edelbrock style carbs cant handle the g's and fuel slosh caused by the g's produced in drifting. I ran an edelbrock 600 my first even and going 1 way it was great but it killed it on transition everytime due to fuel completely sloshing out of the bowls so bad that i had to wait for the bowls to refill in order to restart the car.

Im running a holley double pumper because the vacume secondaries dont work as well with a light manual car due to lack of load to help produce vacume. This is the same reason that boosted brake setups dont work real well for track cars. Buddy of mine has problems stopping his 355 swapped 240 due to this.

Im alittle jealous of ur heads. Thats gonna shave a ton of weight off the top of that engine and you should be running around 320-360whp with that setup. Im planning on heads and bumping up compression/beefing up the bottom end this winter in mine. Also be aware that these engines dont like seeing over 425hp without cracking the block.

I did find a standard wp/serp belt setup that you can run the alt high on the driverside vs the pass side. It also relocates it so u can run a supercharger if u wanted. Of course i didnt find it til after i bought all the ford motorsport vbelt stuff.

[FunfGan]

I've gotta ask, how extreme of getting sideways are you talking about? I have no doubt about fuel slosh, but I've had my car sideways at 20-40mph with no problems.





And here's the FPR link!

FPR: http://www.summitracing.com/parts/HLY-12-803BP/

Fuel connectors: http://www.summitracing.com/parts/SUM-G3116/

[eurotrash]

If your just giving it a flick one way it'll be fine. Its on transition that it doesnt like. I havent starved it on the street a single time but when u get out on the track and your throwing it both directions @35+ you start having big starvation problems. I thought it wouldnt make a dif either when my buddy said the same thing to me but it makes a big dif. Plus its really no fun to pay your entry fees, tire mount, and gas to only be able to slide 1 corner at a time. The edelbrock worked great for a street/occasional drag car but theres a reason holley has been used in roadrace and nascar for so long.

Plus after pulling both apart it is 100x easier to tune/rejet/rebuild the holley. You can get thumb screws for the bowls and rejet in a matter of a min with the holley.