College kid M60 E30 (ongoing build)

[MJCRO]

It was a beautiful day today so work had to be done. Removed the E30 harness and did some light body work (sanding and priming). I'm gonna get some bondo this week and patch some small holes in the transmission tunnel and firewall. I'm planning on painting the whole engine bay flat black for a clean even look. My stuff from Garagistic arrives tomorrow so the motor will most likely be going in for a test fit this week.



Stock E30 master cylinder and brake booster removed.



Some rust holes I'll be closing up and painting.





Sanded and primed for a temporary fix to stop it from rusting anymore. Still need to bondo, prime and paint again this week.



Removed my hood support shock and latch (it was already broken when I got the car).



Polyurethane mounts I received from FrankM installed.



Still need to figure out this steering shaft linkage issue so I can fit my exhaust headers.

[Jean]

What's your plan with steering coupler?

[MT325is]

Very nice, im liking what you are doing with the car! Keep it up man and all of this on a college kid budget it amazing!

[MattAvino]

B30...dirty bay...eta...diving boards.
Ghetto V8 swap
I like it.

[noid]

Keep us updated on how the manual brakes work out for you.

[MJCRO]

Update: May 30th

Recieved my mounts today after having to go to the post office to actually get them. They marked the package as delivered yesterday for some stupid reason. Idiots. Also a shoutout to Gagaristic for the hardware but try to use more tape. The box was literally falling apart when I got it...







For those of you who are wondering what needs to be modded on the stock mounts to fit the Garagistic mounts.











Still need to do a full overhaul on this motor after a test fit. Also need to figure out my steering setup.

Slowly but surely...

[george graves]

Just bought Frank's M60 writeup. Very useful and full of great tips, highly recommend it to anyone planning on doing the same swap.

For real -- the detail that he goes into on his write up is AMAZING....I guarantee that your jaw will hit the floor when you open up the PDF and see all the detail he goes into.

[MJCRO]

I also have my booster brake setup ready to go. I'll be running the reservoirs remotely in the engine bay somewhere.





This bracket is by Garagistic to mount the E30 brake switch. This brake setup can only work on non-airbag E30's. Doing so would require you to the swap an non-airbag E30 steering column to fit there boosterless brake bracket for the Wilwood pedal assembly.

[MJCRO]

What's your plan with steering coupler?

I'll most likely be swapping an E36 M3 steering rack like Frank and Justin have so I can fit these exhaust manifolds on the motor but I'll be looking at other options to try and save some money hopefully.

[golde30]

that dyno chart looks promising. Having owned an e34 540i with 6spd, let me say that drivetrain in an e30 would be a rocket ship.

[noid]

I also have my booster brake setup ready to go. I'll be running the reservoirs remotely in the engine bay somewhere.





This bracket is by Garagistic to mount the E30 brake switch. This brake setup can only work on non-airbag E30's. Doing so would require you to the swap an non-airbag E30 steering column to fit there boosterless brake bracket for the Wilwood pedal assembly.

Awesome photography man, make sure to take pictures when your fitting the manual brakes/res/doing throttle cable!

[MJCRO]

Update: June 2

Got to mocking up and fitting my Wilwood pedal assembly tonight. Below I have some pictures of how I have it setup in my E30. The steering column needed to be removed and the harness moved aside to have room to fit Garagistic's boosterless brake bracket.

The mounting holes by which Gargistic brake bracket bolts up to.



Garagistic recommends you dremel 20mm on the inner part of the top brace holding the pedals to allow clearance to fit the E30 throttle linkage. They also recommend to dremel 35mm on the inner part of the bracket but it was useless since it didn't have room to move no matter how much you dremeled. I decided to completely cut it off to minimize any chance of obstruction during driving.



These are the three holes which are recommended by Garagistic to be drilled to hold the back part of the pedal assembly up securely.





Sandwich plate and hardware mounted. This plate is used to reinforce the firewall when applying force on the pedals. This part of the firewall is quite thin and will most likely fracture if not combined with the sandwich plate.



Zoom out shot to show a perspective where it will go when mounted.



I also got to do some body work in the engine bay and patch up some tiny rust holes.



Cut away the E30 mounting bracket for the stock airbox.



Also deleted my hood bracket and strut since it was already mangled when I got the car.



I'll be sanding down the rest of the engine bay this week and prepping it for prime and paint. I'll be spraying the whole bay matte black.





More shots of the finished pedal assembly mounted.





As you can see where the throttle linkage is, it JUST fits.



The removed streeing column. My E30 is an early model, non-airbag car.



ALSO, I found my solution to my steering linkage problem! In Garey's original M60 swap thread, he used a Vorshlag BMW 17mm-54spline x 3/4 or 1" DD Competition Steering U-Joint. I will be adapting this to my swap so I can fit my exhaust manifold I got my FrankM AND keep my stock steering rack and save a ton of money instead of going with an E36 M3 rack like I had planned to. B)

Here's the link and some pics of what it looks like.

http://www.vorshlag.com/product_info.php?cPath=1_17_159&products_id=169

[MJCRO]

Update: June 5

Painted the engine bay today and brought my flywheel to a machine shop to get it resurfaced but the dude was flaky about doing it since it's twin mass. I'm gonna try another shop tomorrow. Still waiting on my spindle to (hopefully) come this week.

Anyways, the bay turned out really awesome and it's looks even nicer in person.

[Jean]

Bay looks trippy with everything in that color!

Most shops won't touch dual mass flywheels, problem isn't so much with resurfacing the clutch area but the part where the two parts of the flywheel are put together, that's the main failure point.

[MJCRO]

Bay looks trippy with everything in that color!

Most shops won't touch dual mass flywheels, problem isn't so much with resurfacing the clutch area but the part where the two parts of the flywheel are put together, that's the main failure point.

Yup, he told me he could do it but he'd have to rig something up to make it work. But I wasn't gonna bother anyway since he was already asking too much money.