Story of my m30 swap - 1/4 mile times 6/28/2005

[rs4pro3]

Ya only with the 260/5 I purchased my mounts from E30.de Even with the engine in position 3 you litterly have to pull the radiator to remove the dist cap. So I recomend pounding :twisted: I knew I was adding more weight so I added thicker front and rear sway bars when I did the swap and tightened up the rear end bushings so I never noticed anything. Except for the Front brakes not wanting to slow the beast down :?

[TimmyBigHands]

Whats the deal with your old m20? FS? Running?

[rs4pro3]

Parted out, engine has around 300k miles on it. I still have the block, crank, rods, pistons and variose bolt on items left.

[uflnuceng]

I traded my m20 in at the salvage yard... overall good deal.

Man is this whole project becoming a pain in the ass. I have almost got the suspension swap done, except that the CVJs are not volunteering themselves to make the swap easy. I'll have to convince them to get in line tomorrow night as I am exhuasted after about 20+ hrs of working on this thing this weekend.

I put new swaybars in and now the front control arms are making contact with them... gonna have to fix that.

However, Im very pleased with how everything is going so far. I should put the engine in next weekend, which would give me about 1.5 weeks to trouble shoot.

[uflnuceng]

Weekend status...

Ah, the joys of surprises...

The suspension is almost finished. Had an interesting deal with the drive axles. The ones I got didn't match up to the diff and I had to get someone to swap the old ones for me. However, the new 5-lug e36 compact trailing arms are now hooked up. I took some pictures and will try and get them up as soon as possible. The rear subframe is going in tonight, then I just need the struts, springs, and shocks... and then the rear brake rotors. That is the surprise... When you really need something to show up in the mail, things will go screwy.

I took the transmission off while the engine is out of the car so I can swap the clutch/flywheel/etc. Notiched oil in the tranny so I have to replace the crankshaft seal as well. Surprise! Had to order it from A&L BMW, along with a couple of other misc nuts and bolts and bearings and gaskets. That should be here by Thursday.

Im going a different route than most for the motor mount brackets. Instead of making custom motor mount brackets to attach the block to the stock front subframe, I am making a couple of brackets out of steel angle arms. I am then going to have them welded to the body. The reason why I am doing this is because a lot of it can be done without the engine in the car (bonus!) and because supporting such a heavy engine so far back will cause the problem many people seem to have with the engine smacking the radiator under hard breaking. Even if it doesn't hit the radiator, you are seriously cutting down the life of your motor mount bushings that way. And because I know the right people, this mounting position will cost me nothing. Even so, making brackets out of angle arms would only cost about $20 plus some welding as opposed to $300 for the e30.de mounts.

Next thing I am going to do is take a tip from the domestic dragster market. I am not having A/C in this car and removing all of those components leaves plenty of room for a two core radiator with an electric fan. Might cost me a couple hundred bucks as opposed to $85 for an e28 radiator, but it will give me more room in the engine bay. Additionally I got an e28 radiator (supposedly) and it doesn't fit at all. Im thinking the salvage yard got their radiators mixed up, but Im going to take this custom radiator path instead.

Anyway... I'll let you all know how it is going later this week. The engine is going in either this saturday or sunday, then I get to play around hooking up the radiator tubing, expansion tank, measureing for a custom driveshaft, and modifying the shift linkage, etc. Joy!

Peace
Jared

[george graves]

Wow! you are really doing alot to that baby....lets see some progress pics!

[uflnuceng]

I'll try and post some pictures asap, but most of my time is spent working on the car. Wrestled the rear subframe into the car tonight. Even put a rear tire on so I can get an idea of what its going to look like. I need the rest of the suspension parts from Treehouse like NOW so I can get this done.

Tomorrow night Im going to splice the ABS sensors from the e36 onto the e30 wires, hook up the parking brake, hook up the front brake calipers and bleed the brakes.

Anything else I can do? I got a bunch of maintenance stuff today from Bav Auto (spark plugs, distributor, etc.) so I'll probably do that as well.

Im exhausted...

Peace
Jared

[uflnuceng]

Ah.. only a week has gone by and yet it feels like a month. Im typing away in my cube and my hands are still black from grease and brake dust that no amount of scrubbing with lava seems to work. Still having issues putting the engine in, but things should work. The most important thing I have learned on this project is this:

"Do not start ANYTHING until you have all the parts, atleast the major ones."

Other things that I have learned:
* If you get the transmission from the e34 535i you do not have to modify the shift linkage. The linkage will be slightly off center but you can still hit the bottom gears (2nd and 4th) without any problems. That is a bonus as it is one less thing to have to modify. Other trannies seem to have a plate style shifter arm which is probably easier to weld, but definitely not ideal.

* If you are willing to cut out the a/c, which I have, an aftermarket radiator can totally fit in the space between the fender. Something along the lines of a 13x20. Im going to talk to a radiator guy who can make me just about anything I want for a few hundred dollars, but for now Im going to use an e28 535i radiator.

* Radiator plumbing is now my biggest concern. Mostly the length of the tubes and being able to get them in time. I might raid Lowes for metal plumbing fittings and the like which might work well enough as a temp fix.

* Replace the clutch disc, pressure plate, flywheel and throw out bearing while the engine is still out of the car. Getting the tranny out after the fact will be a major pain in the ass. Read the clutch disk to make sure it facing the right direction... don't ask... just do it and save yourself about 6hrs of "WTF is this not going in!?!" I also replaced the crank gasket seal and inspected the pilot bearing.

* Number the bolts that you take off of the tranny bell housing as they are all different lengths. There are 10 of them. Use a sharpie. Best idea my brother-in-law had that night!

* Replace other things like distributor caps/rotors, spark plugs, oil pan gasket, do a valve adjustment outside as well.

* Always use silicone valve gasket sealer, but don't over use it.

* The engine goes in tonight so that I can measure the driveshaft. If you are in a rush like I am call the place who is going to do your driveshaft in advance so that you don't loose time explaining what you need done. Calling my guy means I can drop the shaft off either tomorrow or saturday and it will start to get worked on immediately.

* Have friends who can help you unless you are superman. Sometimes it is not good to have too many hands in the pot, but other times it is the only way to get things done or just makes things a lot easier. Try tightening the flywheel bolts to 77 ft-lbs and having the crank moving all over the place. I had to rig up a wrench and socket with straps to get me some leverage. It sucked.

* The e30 tranny cross member should match up fairly well with this transmission. The tranny mount holes match up exactly and the unibody mount holes, from what I hear, are only off by a little bit for this transmission combination. Your mileage may vary.

Trust me... I have TONS of pictures but I have been working on this car every night from about 6pm to 11:30pm and about 12-14hrs saturday and sunday. If all goes well there should be a link to a video of this car moving around and doing a quarter mile by Memorial Day.

Peace
Jared

[rs4pro3]

Good advise. I'd go for as large as a radiator as you can. Now that sumertime has come I've having to run my aux fan on high speed most of the time when in traffic to keep the guage at 1/2 during the winter it ran around 1/4. I'm going to look into getting some Redline water wetter.

[Dominick]

haha, i just came from the junk yard and saw a m30 and thought about swapping it, way tooo much work for me.

[uflnuceng]

Any motor swap is labor intensive, its just that the m30, in my opinion, is less intensive than the m50. It would be much less intensive if there was a better resource on the conversion since I find e30.de to be seriously lacking.

Main update is that everything is in the car now. Motor, tranny, driveline, etc. I just have to hook up a couple things and fix the shift linkage.

Im exhausted though... I'll update later.

[BS87]

Try tightening the flywheel bolts to 77 ft-lbs and having the crank moving all over the place. I had to rig up a wrench and socket with straps to get me some leverage. It sucked.

All i did was buy a door hinge plate from lowes, drilled holes to line up, put one trans bolt through 1 hole, into the block, and a pressure plate bolt into the flywheel in the other hole. Held the flywheel fine.

[Dominick]

what are m30 specs? how much hp/trq you looking at with your setup?

[uflnuceng]

All i did was buy a door hinge plate from lowes...

That's some ingenious shit right there... I was trying to get something to stick in the teeth of the flywheel but couldn't get it to work. I didn't have a door hinge handy, but had a 30mm socket with a 1" rachet and a big ass rope.

what are m30 specs? how much hp/trq you looking at with your setup?

m30 specs vary as there are a couple versions that us swapers look at. M30 engines out of the e34 5-series that I got this engine out of have 218hp/229ft-lbs stock, and with a Conforti chip it becomes 261hp/250ft-lbs. Im not running a catalytic converter and have a 3.73 LSD so this thing is gonna be quick.

The reason why I didn't go the m50 route is that the m50 is only 16lbs lighter than the m30. To get the m50 up to similar power specs would take considerably more money. Also, I got the entire m30 and drivetrain for only $1300. That would hardly buy a bare m50 engine depending where you go.

Im looking to get a bit more out of the m30 with a schrick cam, headers and some other stuff. I think its the better way to go.

[Brew]

Any motor swap is labor intensive, its just that the m30, in my opinion, is less intensive than the m50. It would be much less intensive if there was a better resource on the conversion since I find e30.de to be seriously lacking.

I disagree. The M50 is practically a direct bolt-in. The only custom work necessary is the brake booster and the exhaust.

It is also a much better fit in the engine bay, at least from the few pictures I've seen of m30 swaps. I would imagine that changing belts, water pumps, etc., would be a pain in the ass with the M30 as compared to the M20/M50. In fact, my M50 is much easier to work on than the M20 it replaced.