M52 Swapped E30 Build - SPANNER RASH

[jsta1109]

Congrats on getting the engine in.

I'm sure they'll be fine but if you find the condor mounts too harsh I personally run E46 M3 mounts upside down with the locating tabs removed. I've found them much less prone to sag and much stiffer than the usual E28 combination without adding any noticeable NVH.

Wiring is quite simple really, I would highly recommend buying the correct c101 pins and an appropriate de-pin (FalkMFG) and crimp tool and wire in a C101 properly.

You can disassemble the ECU connector which makes slipping it through the firewall a breeze and Haltech stock a firewall grommet that fits the e30 really well if your stock one is damaged.

Remove all the plastics from the E36 harness (if it was an auto harness you can strip all the auto wires out) and with some careful placement it should all fit inside the E30 318i harness cover, add an M3 firewall trim panel.

Hopefully you are using an MS41 ECU, removing EWS is very simple and everything you could possibly need to do it is documented here https://sites.google.com/site/openms41/home.

[SPANNER RASH]

I wasnt sure how far ahead of your videos you were... I've been able to raise the rear up enough to not be somebody who scrapes the frame rails along the ground while playing terrible music... But the fronts are REALLY low...
I'll get back into the gargae so I can stare at it for a bit longer today.

(yes, exactly the same setup as you. Tyres are a bit more stretched than I would normally like, but wanted to stay as narrow as I could until I had seen how it sat. Glad i did now...)

Sounds like I might run into some trouble when I've got the car back together then! Maybe a little roll of the arches might make all the difference. Most people run 205's for this set-up, but they just look too stretched to me.

[SPANNER RASH]

Congrats on getting the engine in.

I'm sure they'll be fine but if you find the condor mounts too harsh I personally run E46 M3 mounts upside down with the locating tabs removed. I've found them much less prone to sag and much stiffer than the usual E28 combination without adding any noticeable NVH.

Wiring is quite simple really, I would highly recommend buying the correct c101 pins and an appropriate de-pin (FalkMFG) and crimp tool and wire in a C101 properly.

You can disassemble the ECU connector which makes slipping it through the firewall a breeze and Haltech stock a firewall grommet that fits the e30 really well if your stock one is damaged.

Remove all the plastics from the E36 harness (if it was an auto harness you can strip all the auto wires out) and with some careful placement it should all fit inside the E30 318i harness cover, add an M3 firewall trim panel.

Hopefully you are using an MS41 ECU, removing EWS is very simple and everything you could possibly need to do it is documented here https://sites.google.com/site/openms41/home.

Now that is interesting, I hadn't heard of anyone using E46 M3 mounts before, I had no idea it was possible or Might have tried to go that way. The Condor mounts seem quality, but very stiff. Hopefully it doesn't rattle my teeth too much. Only time will tell.

I've just done the wiring job, I was considering doing the whole repin route, but ended up splicing in, which seems to have worked well so far, and avoiding the bulk of an adapter. Pretty sure mine is an auto harness so I will certainly spend some time tidying it all up and removing that stuff. I really want it to look neat and OE under the bonnet.

Ahh that looks like an amazing resource re the MS41 ECU, haven't seen that before! I've got two MS41 ECU's currently. One which is non-index which I believe to be uneditable but original to my M52 engine, and another which is index that someone has already removed EWS and loaded a map onto which closely matches my setup. No doubt I will want to play with it in the future so thanks for sharing that.

[SPANNER RASH]

I finally bit the bullet and got stuck into wiring my M52 swapped E30. I was really intimidated by this job, wiring is something I'm rather inexperienced with, and it always seems very daunting.

However, I got busy with it, did plenty of research and I think a first start is beginning to look very likely!

My first problem was finding a reliable pinout table for both the E30 and the E36 M52 so I could map the wires together knowing what each one does. Irritatingly I couldn't find a table which perfectly agreed with what I physically had before me.
I've concluded that the wiring can vary quite a bit depending on model, market, year, and spec of each car. I ended up bringing together as many tables as I could and cross-referencing them to make my own table, based on what I had. I've included the table in the video if anyone wants to pause it and use it for themselves.

Once I'd reached a point of confidence on this, I opted to use the chop and splice method as opposed to making my own adapter (bulky) or doing a proper repin job on a C101 plug with the right tools (fiddly). I was planning to do old-school soldering, however the old man's solder sleeve connectors, which he now swears by, made my life much easier and appear to be just as strong.

I set about chopping the X20 plug from the E36 harness, and chopping the C101 plug from the engine side of the E30 harness, and splicing it onto the M52 loom. It took a bit of time, but generally went quite smoothly, apart from the fiasco with the two green wires (you'll have to let me know if you have any ideas on that!).

When all was said and done, the car surprised me by turning on the key, which I was genuinely not expecting it to do. It's looking very promising that the car will start up when the time comes!

[zoona]

Sounds like I might run into some trouble when I've got the car back together then! Maybe a little roll of the arches might make all the difference. Most people run 205's for this set-up, but they just look too stretched to me.

Drifworks have said I can reduce the thread overlap from 60mm to 20mm, so going to see how that goes.
I'll let you know what happens...

[SPANNER RASH]

Drifworks have said I can reduce the thread overlap from 60mm to 20mm, so going to see how that goes.
I'll let you know what happens...

Aha, I guess that will give a lot more room to play, thanks for letting me know about that, I'd have been too nervous to try it with such short thread engagement. But if they've said that to you it must be safe enough, they're not daft!

Keep me posted on that, hope it sorts it out for you.

[SPANNER RASH]

Since doing the wiring recently, my focus is on working towards a first start for the M52B28. In theory, I'm only intake and exhaust away from being able to do that, so this week I tackled the most daunting of the two; the exhaust.

As previously mentioned, mine is a right-hand drive E30 as I'm in the UK, which leads to a real issue with the exhaust side of things. The normal M52 headers collide directly with the steering linkage and there's no way around that other than to chop and weld.

I picked up an E30 325i Scorpion exhaust system a while back with a view to connecting up the M52 headers to that somehow. However, when it came to it, I ended up concluding that the work required to make it fit and look half sensible is above my current skill level.

Instead, I reached out to BMConversions, also goes by the name of Danthe on the forums to talk about one of his custom manifold kits which are regularly recommended. After a chat with him, I decided to take the plunge and purchase his solution, and boy am I glad I did.

They're a perfect fit and very well finished, I can't imagine how many hours of frustration I've saved myself by going this route. I opted to Cerakote the exhaust to add some protection and also help keep engine bay temps down in the future. There's a segment in the video on how I did that too, it went pretty well considering I was using a small domestic oven!

Following making this video, I added stainless clamps to all the exhaust slip joints, and also modified the Scorpion backbox hanger to no longer contact the wheel well. As it stands, the exhaust appears to be a perfect fit, I couldn't have hoped for better!

To top it off, Dan is kindly offering 10% off custom headers to Spanner Rash subscribers on his website. Check out the video description for details, or head onto his site via this direct link to get the discount. Cheers!

[jsta1109]

Looks like you've saved a heap of time with BMConversions kit and seems like quite a sensible choice with those modified headers given you are RHD. You may have gotten away with standard headers given you're on stiffer mounts but it would have been tight.

The cerakote was interesting, I wasn't keen on trying to DIY it myself and stuck with a spray can solution which turned out okay just very prone to scratches. I may look into that for anything else I need coating.

Re the muffler I would highly recommend 18211707807 and welding some tabs onto the muffler (or possibly working with the straps). I've tried all sorts of different exhaust setups with a 24v E30 and I've had the best results with running the largest straight through rear muffler I can find.

[SPANNER RASH]

Cheers Josh, really happy with how it came out in the end. If you've done a bit of painting with a compressor then you'll have no trouble applying the Cerakote, hardest part is the oven curing really. Considering I was right on the limit with the oven size, it worked nice. I wouldn't recommend using an oven you cook food in though.

That's interesting, I have a couple of rusty mounts like those from the original exhaust that I might be able to blast and refinish. Although now I've messed around with the stainless hangers and put slip joint clamps on all the joins, it seems to be sound, has some wiggle room and doesn't clash with anything which was my main problem.

Does your setup not drone with the straight through muffler? Some people have warned me that the Scorpion backbox might be a bit droney which I won't like. I guess we'll find out soon enough!

[jsta1109]

No drone at all with my current setup. I've run smaller sized mufflers and it never quite worked for me, 18 year old me would have been chuffed with a straight pipe but I certainly appreciate a more mellow tone now. I recently did a 2000km (1200 mile) round trip which was an absolute breeze with cruise, AC and a drone free exhaust.

[zoona]

Sounds like I might run into some trouble when I've got the car back together then! Maybe a little roll of the arches might make all the difference. Most people run 205's for this set-up, but they just look too stretched to me.

FWIW the nice people at driftworks said I could reduce the 60mm thread overlap to 20mm and still be ok. I think this has sorted it, but will need to drive it properly to tell - and i have other things to sort out first...

[SPANNER RASH]

It's been a little while, but I'm back with another E30 M52 project update. This time I took on the shift linkage and gear lever.

Sadly the gear linkage and shift arm aren't as straightforward as you'd like when using an M52 engine paired with a Getrag G240 gearbox. This is thanks to the fact the gearbox is pushed backwards under the transmission tunnel to account for the long M52B28 engine.
Due to this, the original shift linkage that came as standard on my E30 316i was a no-go, it was simply too long to work and the shift lever would not have poked through the hole in the tunnel.

I'd read a few accounts of how to solve this, many people choose to work with what they have and set about chopping the shifter linkage and the gear selector arm. By my measurements, I'd have needed to chop 6cm out of it to get the shifter centralised. This didn't sound too daunting until I realised that the shift linkage is actually made of cast aluminium, so I wasn't gonna be able to weld it back up. The shift arm is steel so not such an issue with that one as long as you can jig it straight in a vice to tack it.

Some people have solved this by making a bracket to re-connect the cast aluminium shift linkage, drilling some holes through it and using rivets. However, I was very keen not to make a mess and build in slop into my gear shift. After all, this is set to be a driver's car - I want a positive shift feel!

After some research, I discovered that the E30 320i came with a shorter shift linkage from factory, due to it using a g240 paired with the 6-pot M20 motor. I imagine this is a super rare part, from only one model, a manual 320i. However, I got lucky and spotted one on eBay.

The only issue I had was the price, it was more than I was willing to pay, and I'm already vastly over budget on this project. Having spent some time looking at the listing and negotiating with myself, I noticed that the gear lever which was included didn't look like your basic E30 item. In fact, it looked just like the Z3 1.9 shifter I was planning to upgrade to as an OE+ mod down the line. A hard-to-find part in itself. I don't think the seller had any idea about it, as it wasn't mentioned whatsoever.

I guess this was one of the rare occasions that my detailed BMW E30 knowledge paid off, because with that shifter factored in, the price of the gear linkage became pretty reasonable and I pulled the trigger.

The best part is, it turned out my research was correct and the 320i shift linkage turned out to be a perfect fit with an M52 swapped E30 using Getrag g240 transmission. A very fiddly thing tot fit, but nowhere near as bad as when I changed the shifter on my E46. It helped an awful lot not to have the E30's drive shaft in the way too. Very happy with the result on this!

[Panici]

Glad you got the shifter sorted.
Any reason you didn't just go with a chassis-mount and custom (steel) selector rod?

That's what I did on my car, so I could modify it to sit and work exactly how I wanted.

Pics:

https://flic.kr/p/2npJfNv

https://flic.kr/p/2oi65Qs

https://flic.kr/p/2ohXEub

https://flic.kr/p/2oi3Rrs

[SPANNER RASH]

Glad you got the shifter sorted.
Any reason you didn't just go with a chassis-mount and custom (steel) selector rod?

That's what I did on my car, so I could modify it to sit and work exactly how I wanted.

Pics:

https://flic.kr/p/2npJfNv

https://flic.kr/p/2oi65Qs

https://flic.kr/p/2ohXEub

https://flic.kr/p/2oi3Rrs

Oh wow, that looks awesome! I like the way you can still have a leather boot on it.

I guess I can always come back and add something fancy like that. But I'm going for a fun OEM+ road car spec so didn't feel the need to do something quite as focused as a chassis mounted shifter. A large part as well is the look, but if there are options like you've shown maybe I will revisit it at some point and make it look relatively OE.

Is it worth the cost and the effort though? What was the impact on shift-feel for you?

[SPANNER RASH]

Here's the latest update on the E30 M52 project - I've now fitted a drive shaft (commonly referred to as "prop shaft" in the UK, we call the smaller ones between the diff and the wheel drive shafts).

I put together this video outlining the options I had available to me in fitting a driveshaft between the diff and the Getrag g240 transmission I opted to go with. Hopefully, it includes some useful info for other BMW builders.

From the off I'd planned to use the transmission that came mounted originally on my manual E30 316i facelift 1990 coupe. To do this I'd researched and found a couple of sources indicating that I should be able to use a manual 320i prop shaft, much like I'd used a manual 320i shifter linkage.
This makes sense because the 320i is 6-pot M20 equipped, but also Getrag g240 equipped.

The problem with that however is there are limited sources confirming it, and a manual 320i driveshaft is a hard thing to come by being such a specific model. Despite that, a driveshaft that was purportedly from a 320i manual did come up and I purchased it with uncertainty.

As time went on, I found many sources saying a 318is Getrag g240 transmission, which has a longer output shaft flange, would pair perfectly with an e30 325i manual driveshaft, which are much more available and could be purchased straight away. When a 318is gearbox became available to me locally at a great price, I snapped it up knowing it would be guaranteed to fit.

I then sent it off for UJ replacement as they felt a bit notchy. The good news is, I can now fully confirm that a 318is Getrag g240 transmission paired with a manual 325i driveshaft fits perfectly and I share the measurements in the video - explaining why the center support bearing is key to this in measuring.

The only thing I'm unsure about is the preloading of the center support bearing, so I fitted it up in line with the witness marks from the original CSB. If anyone on here has any expertise to share on preloading E30 CSBs, please do share it with us!