Another N52 swap attempt!

[Striker01]

This thread is very inspiring!
Any luck on the cold start idle hunting?

Thank You!!

I've changed the Vanos solenoids(no help) and PCV hose, the o-ring on the valve cover connection was pinched. It seems to be better but not sure if the hose fixed it because I reset all adaptations and did the valvetronic re-learn procedure shortly after changing the PCV hose. I also replaced all the coil packs, some were original.

[Disterber]

This thread is very inspiring!
Any luck on the cold start idle hunting?

[Striker01]

Made a shelf for it to sit and mounted it to the ibooster. Version 1 one was bolted straight to the booster and it was tricky to get installed.



Float switch works great!



Finished product.



Almost forgot. The piece that connects to the MC came from a company in the UK.

[Striker01]

The brake fluid reservoir sitting tilted forward and causing the fluid level light to flicker was irritating me so with my brother's welding help I finally came up with a solution.

Here is version 1. It leaked from the 1mm walled square tube we used for the hall switch and the top didn't look great due to trying to keep heat down to keep from melting the float. I also had to mount it higher than the fuse box due to the location I chose for the AN fittings on bottom.



Weird side track here. While installing this thing I found myself in about the most interesting predicament I've seen while working on this swap. I dropped a 10mm end wrench and it didn't hit the floor. Didn't think much of it until I went to put away my tools, just grabbed another one to finish up. Couldn't see it from up top so I lifted the car and searched around from the bottom side, still no luck. Finally after wedging my hand in the very crowded area of the frame rail I found it. I probably should've bought a lottery ticket after this, the odds of it dropping through this hole can't be very high. The picture doesn't due justice for how crowded this area is, to even get anything other than my finger tips on it I had to remove a bunch of stuff that was all installed prior to the engine!



After bumping it fully into the frame rail I made a trip to Ace for the smallest diameter magnet I could find and managed to snake it back out.



Back on track. Version 1 didn't work out so on to version 2. Re-designed so float could be installed after welding with sensor mounted to the outside. The switch will work with 1/8" aluminum between it and the magnet. Also put the clutch output on the bottom and moved all fittings outboard. Allowed this one to be mounted lower than the fuse box lid. It's baffled for each output so any one leak will only leak out to 1" above the bottom of the reservoir.

Bonus, my brother was much happier with his welds on this one! Thanks dude!!

[Striker01]

Congrats, the car looks great! Love your persistence. Any chance you could weigh the car?

Thank You!

Maybe at some point. The only scales I could use are the truck stop ones. lol

[Maxhouse97]

Congrats, the car looks great! Love your persistence. Any chance you could weigh the car?

[Striker01]

Made a new clevis for the clutch. It's not pretty but not bad for a couple hours with a bandsaw and belt sander. It's about 10mm longer than the Lantzfab one and hopefully aluminum threads will fare better. I made it 8mm wide and added 1mm nylon washers and a little silicon grease to prevent metal on metal rubbing. I can't test it until I get my brake reservoir re-installed but I don't foresee any issues.




I never noticed this clevis bolt has the clevis sleeve offset. Strange

[Striker01]

Wanted to give an update after a month or so of driving the car. It runs great and is still a hoot to drive. I replace the VANOS solenoids to try and solve an idle hunt that it does on cold starts sometimes, that didn't fix the issue, I guess its just a "feature" of this engine. The car starts every time hot or cold, just hunts for a few seconds before settling in. I had 22RPD bump my idle speed to 875 RPM, at stock 775 it rattled the car pretty good. That was a huge improvement, so much smoother now. I'm guessing the poly engine/trans mounts are the culprit.

EPAS is great, no complaints with it. Hoveringuy sent me the variable assist based on speed controller for the EPAS and its awesome, so much better than adjusting manually while driving.

The ibooster works great as well. I'm not quite happy with the reservoir setup but hopefully will have an over complicated solution after amazon makes a delivery today. The 2002 remote booster seeps where I tried to attach it to the master, I used some stupid expensive epoxy, for poly, but that didn't seem to fix the problem. Most of the reservoirs that come from other cars are tilted forward due to different firewall shapes. They work but my brake fluid light flickers under acceleration. You can't use the hall effect sensor built into them because they are normally closed as opposed to our e30s. The master cylinder mounted reservoirs also make intake removal more difficult than it needs to be.

I still need to mate the N52 AC hoses to the E30 ones, hopefully I can get that done soon.

I have one major issue that is preventing driving it now. The Lantzfab clutch kit. I DO NOT RECOMMEND BUYING THEIR KIT!!! It fits and really improved the clutch feel and pedal engagement location but their 3D printed clevis is junk or they cut the threaded rod from the willwood too short. Mine failed after about a month and another member's failed after a day. I was in contact with them and they offered to send another clevis but that won't fix the issue. I would believe I possibly did something wrong if 2 of their kits didn't fail in the exact same way.


Here is my clevis.



Another member here.



Here is how little thread engagement mine had, barely more the width of the jam nut. This is with the clutch pedal on a lower plane that the brake pedal, with the pedals even I didn't even want to try and run it.

[Striker01]

Car is running well and I have a couple hundred miles on the swap now. Few small items to still workout but overall extremely pleased with it. I'm getting a brake switch implausible code a lot, need to chase that down and see if I switched the wires at the ECU or something, hoping if I fix that the cruise will magically start working. On some cold starts it will stumble and almost die but runs fine once it recovers, doesn't throw any codes. I replaced the PCV hose but it still does it so I have new VANOS solenoids on the way.

It's amazing how hard this car pulls now, I'm still impressed every time I drive it!!!

Finally got my front panel and plastic bumper back from the body shop, that was a 10 week fiasco. She's still not super pretty but looks way better than the 88 metal bumpers did.



I'm happy with the engine bay, with the exception of the intake. Now that it's driving I'll come up with something better. Also need to figure out AC lines at some point.

[Striker01]

hoveringuy has been having some overcooling issues with his car so I decided to go ahead and add the Radiator Outlet Temp sensor to mine, turns out the ROT only controls the fan but we didn't know that at the time. The Z4 sensor is a clip in type so I did some testing with resistance and temp readings in INPA to try and find a threaded sensor solution. The N52 threaded coolant temp sensor, in the oil filter housing, appears to have the same resistance to temperature values as the clip in one. The same resistance displayed the same temperature for both Coolant temp and Outlet temp. So I had my brother weld in an M12 x 1.5 bung into the radiator, ordered a sensor and wired it using the old AUX fan wiring.

The AUX fan wiring went to one of the relays in the fuse box so I removed it from there and ran it through 2 open pins on the C101 (3 & 19) to get the signal to the ECU.

This addition isn't necessary for the swap because it seems that when the sensor isn't present the ROT always shows 7.5C less than the Coolant Temp. Still nice to have the actual temp though.



I also realized that a 350mm steering wheel blocks the top of the gauges so I went with a 370mm one, matches the interior better than the other one as well.

[Striker01]

Long overdue for an update. Still waiting on bumper and front panel to be painted, body shops suck!! 1 week quoted job is 5 weeks in and still not done.

I do have some great news, for me, about the clutch. With the stock E30 master cylinder it took way too much of a clutch press to disengage the clutch. I ordered a willwood 7/8 to E30 kit from Lantzfab, hoping to shorten the length. 100 times better now, clutch is fully disengaged within 1/4 press of the pedal, feels about like I remember the M20-G260 stock combo. Pedal is also slightly stiffer which feels better to me.

The Lantzfab kit requires cutting off or bending one of the original tabs that I think was for the throttle pedal and I used their 3/8-24 to AN3 adapter. It also doesn't extend out into the engine bay like the stock master did. DO NOT BUY THIS KIT UNLESS YOU HAVE A BETTER SOLUTION FOR THE CLEVIS!!!!! Mine lasted about a month before the 3D printed piece stripped out another member's only made it a day. Lantzfab was not helpful at all when I emailed them about the problem, he offered to send the plastic version instead of the printed one but it will fail as well if it is the same length. The thread engagement from the master is barely further than the width of the locking nut. Either they need to make the clevis piece longer or leave more thread on the willwood master when they cut it down.



I ordered a clutch line from HEL performance, it does away with the stock hardline and is long enough to get the slave cylinder out while hose is attached, I couldn't with the stock setup. Here are the specs I ordered, you could maybe get away with a 1" shorter line.



The first rubber grommet I used to fill the gap between the line and E30 firewall grommet and the second one I cut one of the ribbed ends off and ran the line through the stock firewall tab.




Huge improvement and luckily the line length I guesstimated worked out!!

[Striker01]

I wish I could say that I've been too busy driving and enjoying it to update but unfortunately that's not the case. Front end parts are still at the paint shop, they were supposed to be ready by last Friday.

Ended up pulling the transmission off, clutch releasing so low is bothering me. I switched the throwout bearing to the taller ears, maybe it was supposed to go that way to begin with. I don't remember that far back and the instructions got trashed after I put the new clutch in. The taller ears got it 5mm closer to the pressure plate. Measured all the clearances while it was off, with slave cylinder fully compressed there's about 3mm of "space" before the bearing engages on the pressure plate. Got it all back together and it helped but not enough. I think this pressure plate must be stiffer than the M20 260 combo and it just takes a long press to move enough fluid. I have a 7/8" master, just waiting on a new clutch line to test it out. I'll report back if it helps. I loved how short of a clutch press it took when the M20 was in it.



Because I can't leave well enough alone I decided to get rid of the hydraulic power steering. The intake tube was way too close to the reservoir and the amount of crap on that side of the engine is insane. So much more room for activities with all this crap gone. If anyone is looking for a cheap chase bays E30 with E36 rack steering kit I know where you can get one cheap.



Here is the belt size without power steering but with AC, mainly for future reference for me.



Big thanks to hoveringuy. He sent his alternator light gizmo and it works like a charm! I also ordered his E30 swap fuel corrector, got both of those installed and buttoned up the wiring.



Couldn't resist putting on the beauty covers to see how it's going to look when its all back together! Also added a support for the intake tube. Brake reservoir bracket had to be re-done since I got rid of the power steering. Just waiting on the paint to dry to put it back on.

[Striker01]

Finally got to drive it today! Car pulls hard and sounds good! I'm sure it'll be even better when I get the hood on.

Put about 10 miles on it. Few slow laps of the neighborhood to test everything and check for leaks then some good rips on back roads. Just a few drips of coolant from the radiator outlet. I adjusted the hose and clamp and it seems good now, will keep an eye on it. Clutch grabs just off the floor so probably needs another round of bleeding. Ibooster seems to work fine, brakes feel about how they did before; from what I can remember. Not an on and off switch like I've read somewhere. Poly mounts added significantly more NVH, might need to bump up the idle a bit, shakes the whole car when coming to a stop and dropping to idle. 3.73 dif is too short for the car now, will get something longer at some point.

Unfortunately my cruise experiment didn't work out, doesn't work at all. I don't know if the ECU needs a bus signal from one of the other missing modules or what, pretty disappointed but knew it was a long shot.

Pretty weird seeing the coolant temp needle go from midpont, or just above, to the mark below when I started driving it a little harder.

Drove it to my brothers house and left it, need his TIG skills for the intake. Got the filter in a better position just need to figure out some kind of support for it.

Overall, super happy with it. Almost to the finish line!

[Striker01]

Finally have heat. Like most people were probably thinking, I had the hoses switched. Why the valve is on the output side of the core doesn't make sense but whatever, it's fixed.

I took the heater valve out and apart. I have the URO version. It had a little gunk from sitting for over a year and one of the connector screws for the solenoid plug was a little loose but other than that looked fine. Cleaned it up, re-installed and it works now. Maybe trying to force coolant backwards through it had some affect, who knows.

22RPD's updated tune keeps the water pump running at all times like I requested and the heat works great. I tried to test my fan but the warmest I could get the coolant was 105C, guess that's not hot enough to turn on the fan, just cranks the water pump higher. I can activate it so I'm sure it's good. I'm thinking of adding a resistor to the coolant gauge line like Garagaholic did for his N54 build. At 100ish C the guage is in the middle or just past, never got that high before the swap.

Interior is cleaned up and installed, ready for the first drive tomorrow!! Wanted to go tonight but without headlights it's probably not a good idea.

Got some aluminum tubing, intake tube is the next project on the list, I want it moved near the ABS module. Need to order a few small things that vanished in my garage over the last year but other than that I'm running out of stuff to do. paint work on the front parts is what I'm waiting on to finish getting it back together.

Wiring tied up and ready to drive!



I missed this driver's seat!! Also wanted a ZHP shift knob since I got my first E30, I figure my car is worthy now.

[Striker01]

You have the patience of a saint. I couldn't wait to drive mine around the parking lot. Just to have it move under its own power. I was working the throttle in my hand while steering and shifting. 😂


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

That’s awesome! I’m getting antsy myself now that the exhaust is done.

I’m pretty patient but this thing is trying me.

Figure it’s easier to sort the heater without seats. I’m sure everyone here can guess what I did wrong. 🙄. Still not sure why the solenoid isn’t opening. Going to mess with that after work.