Korman m30 stuff

[Jean]

Anybody use any of this stuff here?

From http://www.kormanautoworks.com/e34.htm

535i M30 "Big Six" Engine

Stock Rebuild
Our stock rebuilds are assembled to BMW specifications by our experienced and dedicated technicians rather than off a mass production assembly line. Korman engines are assembled with meticulous craftsmanship, precise machining, and detailed blueprinting. All of our boring is done with a torque plate for exceptional bore roundness and long engine life. These hand built engines are available at prices comparable to a factory reman units which offer only 12 month/12,000 mile warranties.
3.5 liter fuel injected late (89-93 E34 535) P/N 11056020

Korman Stage 1 3.5L Fuel Injected Engine-Late (89-93 535)
Stage 1 porting and polishing, balanced connecting rods, light weight piston pins, increased valve spring pressure, and a performance computer chip increase horsepower from 208 to 222, and torque goes from 223 lb/ft to 237 lb/ft.
P/N 11056120

Korman Stage 2 3.5L Fuel Injected Engine-Late (89-93 535)
Our Stage 2 for the late 3.5L includes our Stage 2 cylinder head porting and polishing, dual valve springs with chrome alloy retainers, lightened Stage 2 connecting rods, Korman Rocker Arms, and a special computer chip. Horsepower is increased from 208 to 230, and torque climbs from 223 lb/ft to 244 lb/ft.This engine is emissions legal.
P/N 11057220

Strokers/Conversions

Another way of gaining horsepower and torque without affecting emissions is to increase the displacement of the M30 engine. This option is available with all of our rebuilds, please call us with your needs.


Required main components:

• 3.5 to 3.8-crankshaft and conversion parts

Performance Computer Chip

BMW
ECU#
HP GAIN
REV LIMIT
P/N
535i M30 89-93
0.261.200.179
25
6800
124M30400

Adjustable Fuel Pressure Regulator
This modified Bosch fuel pressure regulator allows you to adjust the fuel pressure on your 533 or 535. Increased fuel pressures can help compensate for performance modifications (chips, cams, exhaust, intake, etc.) as well as addressing some rough idle and "flat spot" problems. Improves spray patterns on older injectors.
P/N 13106020

Camshafts and Valvetrain Components

Schrick's street performance cams all give a strong increase in power across the full rev range while retaining a smooth idle. They do not require cutting for additional piston/valve clearance. They are designed to perform with the BMW original fuel injection systems.

M30 Schrick Camshafts
Schrick 284-284º duration, 10.9 mm lift. Smooth idle, no internal engine modifications necessary. Dual valve springs, chrome alloy retainers required. Performance chip strongly suggested.
>9/83 P/N 11386282
9/83> P/N 1138628201

Korman K-300 Camshafts
These popular reground camshafts feature 300º duration, 9.4 mm of lift. Due to variations in distributor drives, we must have your core in advance for machining.
P/N 11316300

Offset Adjustable Cam Gear
Resurfacing the cylinder head retards the camshaft timing. Use this gear to advance it back to specification. Machined for 1,3,5 and 7 degrees of offset. Can also be used to fine tune the power band of the engine.
M30 11/78> P/N 11318606

Camshaft Installation Kit
M30 6 Cyl. Stage 1 includes cast alloy rocker arms, dual valve springs, and chrome alloy retainers. P/N 11396430

Korman Rocker Arms
Lightened cast alloy rocker arms, contoured, peened and polished. Radiused to clear valve spring retainers with high lift cams. Sold each.
M30 6 Cyl. P/N 1133K256229

Korman Racing Rocker Arms
Similar to above, fully polished arm, pads micropolished.
M30 6 Cyl. P/N 1133R256229

Steel Racing Rocker Arms
If you need to turn high revs these steel rocker arms will give the reliability that aluminum can't provide. Proven durable on-track with consistent revs to 9000 and above with no failures. P/N 1133S256229

Aluminum Rocker Arm Locks
Designed to eliminate both the early style high tension and late style low tension rockershaft springs. Locks rocker arm into place with less friction loss than the OEM rockershaft springs. Minimizes the chance of broken rocker arms from rockershaft spring deflection. Weight is 20.8 grams each. Sold each.
P/N 11341M10M30

[Jean]

High Performance Dual Valve Springs
Includes center damper spring sleeve. Long life with revs to 7600 RPM. No cylinder head machining required. Fits all M30 engines.
P/N 11341204

Schrick Racing Valve Springs
Made to sustain very high spring pressures, very high cam lift, and extended high RPM use. Will maintain original tension four or five times longer than any other spring that we tested for BMW engines. Use with titanium retainers, sold each.
P/N 11341028 (inner and outer set, each)

Titanium Valve Spring Retainers
About half the weight and twice as strong as steel. Used in all our Stage 3, 4, and race engines. Weight is 12.5 grams each.
For Korman Dual Valve Springs-M30 P/N 11342002
For Schrick Racing Valve Springs-M30 P/N 11341029

Chrome Alloy Steel Valve Spring Retainers
Stronger than stock, used in all our Stage 2 engines. Weight is 21.5 grams each.
P/N 11342001

Korman BMW Valves
Swirl polished, profiled, and radiused for improved flow.46 mm intake P/N 1134K257592 38 mm exhaust P/N 1134K250129

M30 6 cyl.

46 mm intake P/N 1134K257592
38 mm exhaust P/N 1134K250129


Special BIG Racing Valves-M30
Special 47 mm alloy intake valve (stock is 46 mm). Fits stock valve seat, features dished design with polished surface.
P/N 11344140

Lightweight Piston Pins
Similar to those used in our racing pistons. Nice addition to any engine job. Ten to twenty percent lighter than stock pins, suitable for full race or street applications.
M30 6 Cyl. P/N 1125K712198

Korman Modified Connecting Rods
Lightened, balanced, peened, sized, rebushed, and alignment checked. About 8% lighter than stock rods. Shipped complete with new rod bolts and nuts. Sold on an exchange basis.
M30 All (each) P/N LAB11241201

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[LowR3V'in]

I love how they list prices. :/

[Jb325is]

Their prices are usually ridiculously high.. But they definitely make and carry some really nice stuff

[nmlss2006]

I shall preface my post by saying that I have not tried their stuff specifically. However, in my experience, anything that coaxes performance out of a N/A engine is going to be *very* expensive and generally not worth it unless your car is mated to that specific engine. Especially stateside, where prices for this sort of work are downright offensive (you can get people who are famous for getting great results on Ferrari engines to work for singificantly less than what it would cost here to rebuild an S52. I still can't get my head around this fact, but 'whatever the market will bear' is something that you can never escape).
Because we're talking M30-in-E30, we of course have no such requirement. At that point, from a price-per-HP point of view, an S52 with Shrick camshaft and supercharger will, at ~$7000 for the whole package, clean the floor with any other N/A 6 cylinder that you could build in an E30 and do it with a better torque curve and less driveabilty problems.
An M30 is, like an M20, a difficult engine to get results in: 2 valves per cylinder, no camshaft control, no modern electronics means you can choose WHERE you have torque but it's effectively impossible to broaden the torque band very much.
In other words, in order to get meaningful horsepower you will have to spend a very material amount of money - several thousand $ - and then you'll have an engine that will probably only be good from 4000 to 6500-6800. That's 2800 RPM on 5800 on a good day (usable range/1000-redline range) - 41%.
If I were looking to make an M30 breathe, I'd try the Schrick 284, then I'd do three things: 1) put on a good exaust with an 6-to-2 to a constant-section X-crossflow and two 200 cell cats (no sense using the expensive 100 cell, there's plenty of room to use the 200s) to a decent catback. I'd keep the primary tubes LONG to try to fill the engine at lower RPM.
I would then have a custom intake manifold created, something with six equal-length runners with trumpets at the end in an oval-section plenum, with a 3.5" throttle body at the end of it, straight to the largest airbox I could fit by going to a radiator with built in overflow tank. Then add a custom plate to get modern coil-on-plug electronics with knock sensors on the engine, no MAF and wideband O2 sensors.
All this should be 'relatively inexpensive' and should give you an engine that is probably happy to 7000RPM or so - and good for 70-75? HP/litre close to the 6500-7000 mark. If you then wanted to get funny - and it's probably a good idea - you could replace the pistons with Mahle 11:1s and have the head worked on somewhat, but I would be surprised if even then you broke 80 HP/litre, assuming you had intake and exhaust headers LONG to try to fill in the low RPM as much as possible. That gives you 280ish HP for the cost of an S52, probably.

[eugeman]

I have been eyeing up some Stahl headers, and they list different m30 primary i.d.'s everything from 1-1/4" to 1-5/8". With a Miller MAF + stock or Schrick 284 cam as the only modifications, what would be ideal = 1-3/8"?

[kylekrueger]

Really in reality, building a fully 'built' naturally aspirated set up is basically pointless for street use. The m30 in my opinion is the best engine to put into an e30. The first reason is that it is extremely torquey on the bottom end which is where most people drive on the street. The second is lost cost maintenance especially because of the natural "bullet-proof-ness" of the m30 and timing chain. The third is that it is a rocker arm engine which in my opinion is more comfortable in a car that came with a rocker arm engine in the first place.

Now if you want to get a little extra "oomph" so to speak for your street car there are two options. In brief the first on is turbo, also a bad idea because if you don't already have an m106 or m102 then eventually you are going to destroy your engine by putting on an aftermarket turbo.

So, the second option is a N/A set up, respectively. For an n/a set up you could throw double or triple what you would to get to where you are for a turbo. In my opinion however, for a street car all you need is usable power, that is the important part. This is what I would do for a cheap usable street engine:

1. Make sure you have a b35 1989 or later head if you don't already have it (because these heads have the biggest valves, double valve springs, best flowing head and manifold, and most aggressive cam) est. $100

2. Next get rid of the AFM, swap to an MAF est. $300

3. Make sure you have motronic 1.3 if you don't already because it is adaptive engine management est. $70

4. Get a performance tuning chip est. $50-200

If you do these thing you get a very nice engine with around 230 bhp while still retaining all of the bottom end torque for around $800.

If you are still looking for more power or you are tracking your street car and feel the need for a bit more power for you street/track engine one possible combination could be as follows:

1. Same as above

2. more aggressive cam, usually a longer duration cam will give you more top end power which is good for the track but bad for the street and so for this I might choose a 284 grind. Cams can range from $200-500 depending if you are going with a regrind or a schrick.

3. higher compression pistions, I would say that 11:1 is the maximum for pump gas and some even say that you will need an anti-knock additive if you run 11:1 on pump. I might choose to go with a 10.8:1 compression pistons. CP pistons in my opinion are the best and these will run you about $1000 you can get cheaper ones for around $700 if you look around.

4. Some kind of exhaust but not necessarily a full race header and race exhaust system but something that is more free flowing. est. $200

These three additions to the build will probably boost power to around 270 bhp
which is excellent for any street/track car especially for an e30 which is only around 2900 pounds.

In total with the 800 that you put in for the first portion now it is around $2200 which is still half of what a turbo will cost you and you still have an engine which you can safely drive to its fullest extent on the street and track.

If you want to go full race/street engine but don't really care how it feels on the street but you still want to drive it on the street any way you can continue with the build:

1. do first two builds first

2. add a full race header. This can give you significantly better flow out of the head an therefore make it easier for the engine to rev. These can be expensive the cheapest way to do it is build your own header for around $100which is really just the cost of materials or you can get a ready made one new or used for $150-600.

This is really all you can do with this engine before going into re-doing the bottom end of the engine. So, this next part is a continuation of the above but now you engine will definitely be a serious race engine and if you do drive it on the street will never see its full power extent.

3. Bore out the block, the limit of the block according to BMW is 94mm however it is still possible to go wider than that because the s38 has 94.5mm pistons as does the m90 engine. I really don't know what this will cost as I have never looked into it so a price will come from your local engine machinist.

4. Stroke your engine. Stroke is what give the engine its torque. The easiest and cheapest way to stroke your engine is to by an m5 crank. I believe these run around $400-500 but will give you an extended stroke and therefore more displacement and more power. Another way to stroke is buy longer connecting rods, IE sells longer 144mm connecting rods however these require custom pistons but since you are getting new pistons anyway for the above build then you might as well go ahead and get these. The con rods are around $900 for a set.

5. Move to a lightened single mass fly wheel and stiffer clutch. These two things will run you around another $1000.

6. To get even more flow out of your head move to a individual throttle body system. There are a couple of options for ITBs. The first I have seen on m20's is modifying some suzuki gsxr ITBs to fit onto the head. Another way is to modify some s38 ITBs to fit onto the head. Both of those solutions require massive amounts of custom fabrication. Those two options will run around $400-600 depeding on what the initial investment costs plus R and D. The third option is to buy premade ITBs for the m30 from a company like Extrudabody or also I am lead to believe that you can buy weber manifolds for m30 and make an adapter plate to fit ITBs. The best bet and cheapest if it goes south is to modify gsxr itbs.

In all the last build ontop of the 2200 you already spend is around $4000. Expectations for horse power at that point is around 350bhp. Now that is a lot for any street car and more than likely will never be useful on the street an only see its full extent on the track. There is still so much more that one can do to make even more power out of an m30, some ideas to make your investment last longer is improving the valve train and associating components like the rocker arms, titanium valve keepers stiffer springs etc. etc. but for that expect to put another $2000 into the engine.

Here are a few things to think about that I have heard about what not to do. The first being port and polish, It has been said that polishing the head ports actually decreases engine performance, however I am not an expert on this. Another thing to keep in mind for your N/A build is that the stock BMW crank and connecting rods are in fact forged so if you are thinking of getting forged con rods and crank that are to stock specifications think again, they already are. Another thing not to do is deck the head/block/thinner head gasket to gain more compression. These are cheap ways of getting around new pistons and can damage your engine.

[Jean]

Thanks Kyle! I have a b35 91, currently just a chip and 533 flywheel. My car with the b35 swap and full interior is exactly 2500lbs with half a tank of gas. I have to agree, it makes the lighter car so much more fun.

To run MAF I would need another engine management, and this bring the price of the full convertion to about $800 with no proven hp/tq increase...it seems that this would be a good upgrade for better throttle response though vs hp/tq gain.

So, I am looking at either getting a hotter cam and get the extra late model b35 head polished/ported and possibly get some of the upgraded hardware like stiffer springs/upgraded rockers from korman. How exactly doing a good valve job+port/polish head will decrease performance though? It should only increase cfm and help it make more power? Then also switch to MS and ditch AFM. I really don't want to deal with bottom end as it brings the price of the build up rapidly, and will just push me more towards going FI route instead.

[Brian D]

I just scanned this, but 2 things jump out at me:

In brief the first on is turbo, also a bad idea because if you don't already have an m106 or m102 then eventually you are going to destroy your engine by putting on an aftermarket turbo.

I know quite a few M30 guys that would disagree strongly with this. Do you have experience with turbocharged engines?

Another way to stroke is buy longer connecting rods,

This is just flat wrong. Do you know why?

[LowR3V'in]

It feels like I just read a eurotuner article.:rofl:

[nmlss2006]

I love r3v. Maybe I should have suggested longer rods as well. But we all know that the trick is to get square pistons.

[kylekrueger]

I wrote that not as an end all to your engine build, you do not need to get all pissed off because I mis-spoke if you do not agree you do not have to and if I am wrong that is fine with me too. If I am wrong then feel free to correct me because I am not all knowing, please correct me if I am wrong we are on this forum to learn.

It was not my intention to give incorrect information if you think that it should be deleted let me know and I will request that the post be removed. No need for anger or mockery.

~and i realize now why that longer rods would not work I do remember reading that somewhere (not on here) but the person that said that was obviously wrong and I realize that now.

And about the turbo thing that is my opinion. I said that because I do know that the m106 and m102 were built for turbos. They have factory installed crank and piston oilers as well an oil return into the block, oil coolers, factory oil lines to the turbos to deliver proper lubrication as well the manifolds were cast with cooling fins in them and on the 745 they had air cooling ducts to the turbo. That is why that is my opinion.

[Brian D]

Relax, no one is pissed, unless it's you. When you give out advice you should try to be as accurate as possible, because people will take your advice to heart. There were just a couple things that I saw that made me think you were shooting from the hip, and maybe people shouldn't take your word as gospel.

As with all forum advice, caveat emptor.

[Thingtwö]

Another thing not to do is deck the head/block/thinner head gasket to gain more compression. These are cheap ways of getting around new pistons and can damage your engine.

so if one were to deck their head for whatever reason, they would be able to use a thicker head gasket in order to get back closer to stock compression?

[Brian D]

BMW has a thicker head gasket to compensate for a milled head, can't remember offhand the dimensions.

Edit: 11121730224 CYLINDER HEAD GASKET ASBESTOS-FREE - 2,07MM(+0,3)

I think some aftermarket gaskets can be ordered thicker also. Bottom line is don't have the head milled too much.