From Dad's DD to my new toy... M62B44 swap time!!!

[wspellmann]

hmm...i don't know if i would be jumping up and down about the fabrication work but as long as they are solid, i guess thats the important thing.

The reinforcements were made by Garagistic, they did not fit very well. The shop that did the welding had to grind them down to make them fit.

[flyboyx]

They did a great job on the welds and even painted them. It looks damn solid now.

hmm...i don't know if i would be jumping up and down about the fabrication work but as long as they are solid, i guess thats the important thing.

[wspellmann]

Got a local hot rod shop (Bob McCall Co) to weld up my garagistic front subframe reinforcements for the motor mounts and for the sway bar mounts. They did a great job on the welds and even painted them. It looks damn solid now. I'm thinking of painting the whole subframe in white to match the car.

[jpod999]

My DME showed up on Dima's doorstep and was programmed today for catless tune and EWS delete. It still kinda irks me that I paid someone $525 for ten minutes of work. Such is the BMW life.

You're paying for the skillset. Working with BMW DMEs is not an easy skill to learn. I think it's Nando on this board who has been learning to do it himself and it's been a long process.

Your reseal looks great, that should bring some peace of mind!

[wspellmann]

Many happenings today.

Lightweight flywheel showed up today along with my short block gasket kit. Holy cow, the flywheel is SO LIGHT compared to the OEM dual mass. It looks gorgeous also, it's too bad nobody else will see it once it's installed and in use.





My DME showed up on Dima's doorstep and was programmed today for catless tune and EWS delete. It still kinda irks me that I paid someone $525 for ten minutes of work. Such is the BMW life.


I also got to work on tearing down the motor for the new gaskets. There was oil in the spark plug well on the right cylinder bank but not too much.



The cams look to be in pretty damn good condition considering the 230k+ miles on this engine. I think the only places I'm leaking oil are the inner valve cover gasket and the rear main seal. The seal on the back side of the crank could be a culprit also. I'm pretty happy with how she looks so far.

[wspellmann]

Today was a good day. Drive up to Austin and got myself a set of style 5's in 17x8 with some Continental DWS with 85-90% tread left on them for a really good price. I really, really wanted style 32 but the 5's were on the short list anyway.



I also got my flywheel tool in the mail, which means I finally got that damn flywheel off and remembered to get a before shot of working with this degreaser.

Before...



Let sit for ten minutes, scrub the trouble areas with a brush, then rinse. Total time was 20 minutes.

After...



Got the old girl up on the stand thanks to some homemade bolts. It's very nice living less than a mile from a Fastenal. The guys there are beginning to recognize me.



I just need to get the rear calipers off of the E39 for my 5lug/big brake kit mods and the big old girl can finally be interred to her final resting place in a scrapyard. Tomorrow I will get the garage cleaned up and organized to prepare for breaking down the motor for new gaskets that are on the way.

Getting really excited to tear into the motor to see if the previous owner was lying about the chain guides and tensioners being done "less than 10,000 miles ago.". Fingers crossed

[wspellmann]

Waiting for the flywheel removal tool and a whole gasket set for the motor so I spent the day cleaning the transmission of 20 years of grease. Unfortunately, I do not have any before photos. I didn't think of it until I was almost done. But she sure cleaned up nicely.



If you are looking to get grease off of a motor or whatever else, this shit right here is AWESOME! It needs to be the heavy duty gel, though.

[wspellmann]

I can't believe I got the motor and trans out without any real problems other than my load leveler handle breaking off.

And I did it all WITH NO HELP.

It took nearly two hours to get it all out in one piece. The hobbled leveler definitely added time to the removal, but no big deal. I figured out that my cordless impact driver does a great job of operating the leveler much faster than hand cranking. Gotta love those 4.0 amp-hour battery packs.

Transmission is off and strapped to a little dolly in the garage. I started to try to get the clutch off but the bolts were non-compliant and I was running out of daylight. Sprayed all of them liberally with some PB Blaster to soak overnight. Hopefully they loosen up.

Ordered a JB Racing lightweight flywheel from Turner Motorsports and an OEM clutch from rock auto.

Waiting on subframe reinforcements from garagistic (mistakenly only got the ones for rear trailing arms) and then will find a welder to get that and the transmission bracket welded up.

I also shipped my DME to DUDMD after some email exchanges with Dmitri. Performance tune, cat delete, and EWS delete (will make wiring much easier).

I really wanted to learn how to flash the DME and tune myself, but the people who do know how aren't and/or haven't been willing to teach anyone. It's really sad that the BMW community hasn't cracked this nut for the masses yet. I feel like we're missing out on a lot of potential talent (tuners) just because the basic knowledge and software is kept secret so they can keep charging people hundreds of dollars to do a few hours of "work."

Oh well... ya know what they say about BMWs... "gotta pay to play."

[wspellmann]

One V8 and transmission. Out

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[wspellmann]

Assembling the engine stand right now.

The only thing still pinned down right now is the gear shift pivot arm which I'm assuming will slide out with the trans. Am I wrong about that?

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[wspellmann]

are you talking about ergen motorsport for the dme? everything from them is about 2x as expensive as it should be. there are people here in the usa that will do v8 dme flashes. do some research in the commercial classifieds. check bimmerforums too. if you can't find anything, look at the guys that do s54 tunes. call the most reputable ones first. unless you really know code, i would say there is nothing in the dme that you will be able to change without f'ing it to hell.

Thank you! Direction is what I was looking for. Yeah, Ergen is way overpriced. I may buy their headers one day though.

[wspellmann]

The frame on the E39 is bent pretty bad on the drivers side just in front of the alternator.





The angle grinder said that it won't be a problem and delivered. There won't be any obstructions anymore.

[flyboyx]

are you talking about ergen motorsport for the dme? everything from them is about 2x as expensive as it should be. there are people here in the usa that will do v8 dme flashes. do some research in the commercial classifieds. check bimmerforums too. if you can't find anything, look at the guys that do s54 tunes. call the most reputable ones first. unless you really know code, i would say there is nothing in the dme that you will be able to change without f'ing it to hell.

[wspellmann]

There was a nice surprise while trying to disconnect the ground strap... BROKEN MOTOR MOUNT!

[wspellmann]

And here we are now! Just need to get the battery cable disconnected from the oil pan. I'm actually keeping the starter and trans connected to pull it all out as one unit, get the trans on dollys and then get the motor on an engine stand that I picked up today.