My Budget S51.5 Swap. w000t

[mpowerful]

Got the headers in yesterday. As per the usual line item the stud holes were all jacked up. Still need to take em off a clearance a couple of more, but otherwise they look great.

Also got the euro diesel fan in. I think for the price (66 bucks) this with the stock aux fan is the way to go. I doubt a regular shroud will fit but I am thinking I can cut one down to size to get in there. Anyway I love the way this fan looks and it is damn thin. I am gonna add a pic comparing to stock m52 fan blades and an m52 cam cap to give you an idea of the size of this thing.

[mpowerful]

I have also decided that i am gonna put the torque wrench back on that tensioner bolt now that the loctite has had time to set up. If it doesnt hold atleast 6.5lbs im gonna overtap it a size.

[mpowerful]

Generally speaking its true. Just making sure there isnt something abnormal or that i didnt think about. Thanks!

[agent]

Question. Has anybody done this swap by raising the car off the subframe on a lift? I have done some other bmw swaps that way, but never swapped an e30 motor. Easier than through the top?

RobertK and I did mine that way. With my admittedly limited experience helping friends do various engine swaps with a picker, I think it's much easier to detach the subframe and lift the car off it. I'm sure Robert would agree.

[mpowerful]

Installed the cooling system components last night. Sat on the intake mani. The m52 beauty cover was gonna hve to be chopped down to fit then I saw an m52tub cover sitting near the trash can. A stratetgic notch at the back to clear the rail and voila. This is the best looking cover I have seen yet. Remember you saw it here first hahahahha.

Anyway also got my headers in last night. Gonna put those on later today.

Question. Has anybody done this swap by raising the car off the subframe on a lift? I have done some other bmw swaps that way, but never swapped an e30 motor. Easier than through the top?




Shitty cell phone pic but you get the idea. SS knockoffs.

[mpowerful]

I have been busy on project. Monday night I put the s50 cams in. Cant lie. Had a bitch of a time getting them timed. For some reason i am glutton for punishment and start these projects to late at night which always ends up with me exhausted and making mistakes. The problem is that if I do it while the shop is open then I will be too distracted/busy working on other stuff to do stuff like this. Anyway got the cams in either way.

I timed these things all possible ways to make sure that I wasnt crazy but the fact is that the intake came has an RCH of retard in relation to exhaust cam. I tried timing it fowards and backwards of where it is now and its just farther out. In my frustration at 1am I wasnt paying attention and pulled the threads on one of the tensioner bolts because I forgot to set the torque wrench back to 7ft/lbs instead of 11. Yeah that much difference pulled the threads. I chased it with a tap and loctited the hell out of it using a newer bolt out of an m52tub. I think itll be ok. Anyway pics. You can see how very close I got with intake cam. One tap of the palm and the locking block would seat. That was against the vanos actuation direction with the vanos gear all the way in already so it wasnt due to that. Maybe there is just that much slack in the chains that the tensioner doesnt account for?

New cams in. These came out of a motor with 20k miles on it so the cams/trays were already super clean and not gold tarnished any yet.



This is after a full revolution to bring it back to TDC. Pin locked. One tiny tap and it would sit down flush with nothing else moving. Slack ass chain?



Oh and some more love came in yesterday. Tonight I am gonna put in new water pump and thermostat. Some other minor things. Drop the flywheel off at the machine shop. Almost there!

[mpowerful]

Finished up the swap harness. Lessons learned:

1. Get a manual harness

2. Pinning is probably much easier than soldering

3. If you have to put a new boot on the c101 (the one on the x20 was ripped), it makes pushing those last 10 wires through difficult and soldering space gets very slim.

4. The more flux the better.

5. Check and recheck wires. Check and recheck that you put shrink wrap on each one. Tape wrap the shrink wrap as both wire and solder are sharp and will go right through the wrap.

All done though. Finished it up with a bit of factory rubber loom of the m52 harness so itll look good in the bay. (oh and I probably should have slipped that on first so I didnt have to slice it down the middle. Oh well.)

[mpowerful]

Ok its been a bit since an update and I just got to the shop this morning so time to collect thoughts and update. This may be part philosophical, part business, and then maybe some actual progress stuff hahaha.

First I am still in budget but tracking the money is getting more difficult. Some might argue, as has been brought up in an earlier post, that it is hard to say I got something free if I traded something I paid for. The same can be said of work I trade too I suppose. Take it how you like, I think the bottom line is that my overall cash expenditure is going to be relatively low for this project and that was the point. I am fairly certain that this swap could still be done for less than 500 just to get a running driving car. With enough time and parts scrounging a person could put it together for cheap enough and get it into an e30. I have chose to do a lot of extra work to mine to modify (cams, 3.5HFM, tune) and refresh/reseal. If I choose to ignore a lot of this I could cut cost significantly.

Some factors that help this out. 1) I work for part time, and am best friends with the owner of a shop that has specialized in BMW repair for nearly 30 years. As such I have access to a massive amount of old used and NOS parts and probably a couple hundred thousand dollars in tools and equipment. We have storage full of BMW stuff so I pretty much can find a lot of what I need without having to pay for it. I also trade work for parts here if I need to order which also means I get parts at cost. Is trading work cheating? I dont know but if it means I can get stuff without coming out of pocket that is nice. 2) I have a very open schedule. I am a graduate student in my 6th year which means I have to teach and do research. Unfortunately I work with genetically engineered mice and it just so happens that they are in a breeding slump which gives me a lot of flexibility and extra time. This allows me to go scour the junkyards.

So for updates on the project. Mostly everything has been addressed as far as things I wanted to order. I made a massive list and ordered everything on it for final reseal/refresh for both the tranny and the motor. I traded for this a rebuild of central locking in an 88 325is and column lock assembly rebuild on an e36. All in all the list cost 120 but was offset for the work.

Drive & A/C belts
Intake mani gaskets
intake boot
e34 engine mount (only needed 1)
Rear main seal
Pilot bearing
Input and output shaft seals
shift selector seal
pivot pin
shifter bushings
selector rod bushing
lower radiator hose
o-rings for hardline
thermostat and seal for it


Having all that ready to go makes me feel better for sure. I also ordered up the supersprint knockoff headers from ebay. I found the seller with the cheapest shipped ones (104) and ordered. I paid for this using money from swap parts I either had at shop already or got from junkyard while looking for my swap parts.

I think right now my biggest thing is getting a flywheel over to machine shop to be shaved. Hopefully I can work a good deal on that. Ideally id like to keep that at or under 100 dollars.

Also I need to get the e30 a/c lines crimped onto the e36 compressor fittings. Ideally I would like to keep that under a 100 too and fact is that it isnt necessary to do this before gettign the motor in but it would be nice just to do it while motors out.

Another thing I am concerned about is cooling. My original plan was to just run the stock aux fan setup to run on low all time and high for hot with a m42 fan switch. Anyway as I read in one of markerts post the system with a/c will need a little more air moving. I think I may install a slim line puller fan of some sort on radiator for additional flow rather than going with one spal in front. Not sure yet. I think I will be ok for time being running with aux fan just to get everything going.

Also worked out a deal with a friend get a tune. Basically he needs a harness and doesnt have time to get and modify one. So in exchange for a swap harness he is gonna get me a TRM tune which is awesome.

Ok updates for what I have done in last week. Some of you have seen my other thread on oil pan. I got the pan installed. I ended up cutting about 2mm off each of the baffle tray fins as well as notched the middle one just to get extra clearance for it. Everything is buttoned up now and went smoothly. I degreased the motor as well and stripped down some of the stuff I didnt need. I also throughly cleaned teh intake and exhaust ports in the head just to decarbonize them basically.

As far as the oil pump nut I red loctited it, torque it to 18ft/lbs, then staked it with a punch.


pics







Ok I am done babbling for now. I am at the shop all day today. Plan is to splice in the c101 to x20.

[mpowerful]

Well today I made an early morning trip to pull a part. Its my favorite home away from home after all. Anyway scored some little stuff. What looks like a good CPS. An e30 harness body grommet. IACV that I forgot to grab when I pulled the motor.

CPS - 5.50
Grommet - Free

Question: How do you get the e30 grommet onto the e36 harness? Do you take the connector apart or do you cut the middle out of the grommet to allow the ecu plug to pass through it?

Then I went and picked up the cams. They had a bit of surface rust in a couple of spots so I polished em up, lubed em up, the put em away till I can install em next week.

I also finished degreasing the motor as much as I am gonna degrease it. While I was waiting for it to dry I found a 540i MAF in the shop. We have tons of MAFs it was just a matter of unearthing it.

540i MAF = Free

Then I set about doing something I had been dreading. Taking the auto wires out of the auto harness. After doing some looking I just dove into it. Basically I cut off both plugs (round and trans ECU) one wire at a time and pulled out all the corresponding wires. Where there was a splice I just cut it off at the splice and covered it back up with the splice cover. This took a solid 2 hours just being methodical and trying to get rid of as many wires as possible. I would recommend if you do this to just wait for a manual harness hahaha.










This puts my running total up to 149.36. I also ordered new VC gasket set, Oil pan gasket set, dipstick seal And something else I cant remember for another 44.

Grand total 193.36

Still room for a set of headers and a BBTB w00t.

[mpowerful]

So far add two more parts to the list.

Coolant temp sensor - 4.86$
Vanos unit seal ~ 7.00$

[328ijunkie]

It was part of a recall done many moons ago along with a new cps that required a 5v and 12v signal. That adapter harness simply steals 12v from the vanos solenoid for the crank sensor. It is needed if you're running obd2 unless you have a late model harness that has it integrated

[mpowerful]

Yeah i may go back and add some thread sealent or teflon or pipe dope hahaha. Yeah if ibhad the extra cash id buy one. Last thing i wanna do is get the motor in the car then have to take the manifold off because this damn thing is leaking.


Question....can you identify that small independent harness i modified to make the vanos wire extension?

[328ijunkie]

Because side by side they do not feel close to the same.

iX Booster / 735iL Booster has a MUCH better / more natural feel than the Porsche booster. I have multiple swap cars in my lot with different booster setups (Porsche / E21 / 540i). Anyone is welcome to come by and prove me wrong.

I have driven swap cars with all kinds of different boosters. The E32 735iL / 740iL / E34 540i booster and master is hands down the best setup for someone looking for a natural power assist feeling in the pedal. The E21 and Porsche boosters provide less assist and a much stiffer pedal feel.

I find that most of the people that knock this setup are the ones that have never even had one or driven a car with that setup.

We let customers test drive the different swap cars here at the shop so they can decide what brake setup they want beforehand. All I can say is we have never had a single customer request a Porsche or E21 booster.

Its not to say that neither are a good choice, it really depends on how much brake assist you prefer.

QFT!

(quoted for truth, ive seen this misconstrued as quit fucking talking which is not the case in this situation) ;)

Anyway got some more done today. Still waiting on the guy to give me the cams so I can swap those. So in the meantime...... I worked on two other little things.

1. Coolant temp sensor for the cluster. The m52 only has one coolant temp sensor hole. The e30 and the obd1 e36 use two; one for the cluster and one for the ecu. The difference is that on obd1 one sensor can provide the signal to the cluster and the ecu because they use the same signal. On the e36 the signal is different from the brown 1 pin connector for the cluster therefore it cant use the blue top sensor or itll read wrong. Atleast thats all the info I could amass about it.

So the options were to....not have a coolant temp sensor to the gauge. F-that.

Tap the head where the additional coolant sensor would go on the m50 head. It just isnt pretapped on the m52 version even though heads the same.

Or thread the coolant temp sensor for the bung in the water jacket where the throttle body hose comes out.

The choice was clear. 5 dollar sensor or head. I chose sensor. Markert sells these is someone doesnt want screw it up or whatever but I will elaborate on how I did it because I am to cheap haha.

Before i started selling these large scale, although slightly more 'gentle' this is basically what i did for customer cars in house. Now they are turned on a lathe to make sure they dont leak and are threaded perfectly. :P

[mpowerful]

Next I went about extending the vanos plug. Apparently the vanos plug on m52 vanos unit is to short to mate up to the obd1 harness. I think most people make an extension or buy one from somewhere. Anyway when I was taking the obd2 stuff off of mine I found a small harness that was separate from everything else....and for the life of me I cant remember what it was hooked too.

Here is what four plugs are on it. The two three prong plugs have one wire that is spliced into them from the two wire plugs. The two wire plugs are otherwise direct pin to pin from each other male to female.



It didnt have a bmw part number. It had kkr and sachs numbers. Not sure if this little harness was an afterthought or provision for something but anyway the 2 prong plugs are perfect for the vanos extension.

I basically cut the extra wire going into the three prong plug Then used 1/2 inch shrink wrap to bundle/loom the wires back. Cutting that one wire basically isolates the 3 prong plugs out of the harness leaving you with the two 2 prong plugs. Perfect, free, and looks good.

[mpowerful]

Anyway got some more done today. Still waiting on the guy to give me the cams so I can swap those. So in the meantime...... I worked on two other little things.

1. Coolant temp sensor for the cluster. The m52 only has one coolant temp sensor hole. The e30 and the obd1 e36 use two; one for the cluster and one for the ecu. The difference is that on obd1 one sensor can provide the signal to the cluster and the ecu because they use the same signal. On the e36 the signal is different from the brown 1 pin connector for the cluster therefore it cant use the blue top sensor or itll read wrong. Atleast thats all the info I could amass about it.

So the options were to....not have a coolant temp sensor to the gauge. F-that.

Tap the head where the additional coolant sensor would go on the m50 head. It just isnt pretapped on the m52 version even though heads the same.

Or thread the coolant temp sensor for the bung in the water jacket where the throttle body hose comes out.

The choice was clear. 5 dollar sensor or head. I chose sensor. Markert sells these is someone doesnt want screw it up or whatever but I will elaborate on how I did it because I am to cheap haha.

The threads on the coolant temp sensor are much larger than the coolant pipe fitting so firstly i turned the threads down in size using a bench grinder. I also gave the leading edge of the threads a taper so it would start easier in the die. I had to do this a few times until enough material was removed to send it through the die.



I used a 12 x 1.5 die clamped into a bench vise.



Then I just threaded it down. You have to go all the way to the base of the sensor. The sensor has a bit of a taper down on that end. You have to force cut through it. If not the sensor wont seat all the way.



Also you have to use the size of crush washer that comes with the sensor. The one for the water pipe size it to small from what I could tell. Especially if you did like I did and did not get the sensor 100% straight in the die. This causes the sensor to have some wobbles. The slack is taken up by the crush washer and this is the reason for threading it as far down as possible.