Bending the heater pipes - avoiding breakage

[Drew325is]

Hi all. A friend of mine is about to mount his M50 into his E30 (mine's soon to follow). He's at the stage of bending the heater pipes down. Orca in it's wisdom suggests inserting a steel rod as far into the pipes as possible, and then gently bending them down. That seems kinda crap...is there a safer way of doing it to minimise the chances of breaking those pipes? Or, is it very rare that they break?

I've done a search on the forum for this topic, but couldn't find much about the trials and tribulations of this part of the conversion.

Cheers,

Andrew.

[86325e]

Use a bar.. go slow, be careful, be gentle and try some heat.

[Addissimo]

Re: Bending the heater pipes - avoiding breakage

I've done a search on the forum for this topic, but couldn't find much about the trials and tribulations of this part of the conversion.

Because its not that big of a deal- I re-bent my pipes numerous times, and was pretty rough with them with out a problem at all.

-Addis

[george graves]

I remember seeing someone bend some soft copper pipe with a heavy spring that fit insid the pipe (from a hardware store) - it kept the pipe from colapsing. The tightly wound spring coil then is yanked/twisted out carefully.

Just a idea.

[Drew325is]

Well...the pipe broke :evil:



We suspect a few contributing factors...1. an over-enthusiastic workshop owner not removing the grommet before attempting to bend the pipes. 2. some sharp points on the metal rod used, possibly creating pressure points in the aluminium.

The solution has been to fit a rubber hose over the pipe and fit a hose clamp on the heater core side of the crack. Fingers crossed it'll be a reliable enough solution.

I'm actually thinking about modifying the M50 intake manifold instead of trying to bend the pipes. I think it'd be possible to remove a corner of the plenum and then fibregalss it without affecting performance too much. It may even be possible to maker enough room to fit a standard 325i E30 break booster.

[i3uller]

Wow...that sucks.

I seriously didn't have to bend mine at all...they actually just fit fine...really tight but they fit. If you need to though you can shave off some of the plsatic fins on the intake manifold to give it some more room.

[Drew325is]

That's interesting to hear you didn't have to touch the pipes. I'm tempted now to mount up my M52 without the intake manifold, then work out exactly what I need to move for my application.

[325Projectz]

I didn't touch mine at all. Everything fit fine.

[Drew325is]

Hmmm...poor Mick...he probably doesn't want to hear about all these people getting away with not bending the pipes, after he's cracked his attempting to bend them! C'est la vie!

[Drew325is]

Just to confirm...for you guys that didn't have to bend your pipes, were you swapping to M50s and were you using an spacers under the engine mounts like Orca suggests?

[325Projectz]

M50 swap, no spacers, e28 motor mounts (green ones).

[Drew325is]

Cool...thanks for that.

Despite the problems, the motor's finally in! This is probably the first twin cam E30 in Queensland, Australia. There's only a handful of others in the country. I'm veru much looking foward to seeing how this car performs...because I know my M52B28 alloy block will only go better! :D

[DEV0 E30]

Hells yes.

[KangamangusDriver]

I used a 1/4" extension and slid some fuel line over it. Worked well