Getting rid of the S52...

[JoeyBones]

brakes...pssshhhh! who needs to stop?! You could go with one of the newer 4lug brake kits that are on the market for slightly under $1k... You'd have larger rotors and 4 piston calipers. I've used and know plenty of people with the fastbrakes kits in the past.

[rThor432]

You should just notch the subframe to fit the oil pan. ;)

Well, the problem is that the front of the oil pan sits right where the front of the subframe is. You could, of course, re-route the subframe metal, but then how do you mount the steering rack? It seems like it would become a lot of work very quickly.

I'm starting to think it might not be worth it to go 5-lug, and spend that extra money on an s54+trans instead of a s52+trans.

Are you gonna be using the e46 m3 6spd, or the e36 m3 trans?

While you don't necessarily need the 5-lug, you will likely want bigger brakes. My 4-lug stock brakes with mild track pads and good Brembo blank rotors had to fight to slow my S52 car down in any near relation to how fast I could accelerate. With an S54 I don't think my stock E30 M3 brakes will even be up to the task.

As for the trans, I'm not sure. I really want to run the E30 M3 Euro dogleg gearbox. Unfortunately, I had one in my living room for 6-8 months doing nothing and finally sold it about 4 months ago. Now that I have a need for it, it isn't here.. Great! Ha. I'll probably run either an E36 M3/328i ZF 5-speed for a while, but I'm also considering the Getrag 260 that came in my car. That's a beefy box, and has a better feel than the ZF in my opinion. I've driven both behind the same engine and my 300k Getrag was more secure than my 35k ZF. And that ZF felt better than what I'm used to feeling in customer cars.

[jutny]

I'm starting to think it might not be worth it to go 5-lug, and spend that extra money on an s54+trans instead of a s52+trans.

Are you gonna be using the e46 m3 6spd, or the e36 m3 trans?

[87e30]

You should just notch the subframe to fit the oil pan. ;)

Sick. Excited to see the s54 e30s start popping up.

[JoeyBones]

i'd say that if you think you'll be better than 53/47 then you're doing the right thing. I'd rather be able to service the engine, or make repairs while at the track than be stuck and have to do serious surgery to get at anything...

also, i'm counting on you to find the easiest and best route to do this so when the time comes for me to buy a swap you can come help! :) thanks in advance! haha

[rThor432]

^^Depends on what route you want to go; there are several options.

-Initially I was thinking of doing something similar to Jason89i's build and pushing the engine back to retain the stock pan and get a better F/R balance in the process. Having the dual-sump setup seemed like a great thing to me. I decided against it only because I think that servicing the engine could be considerably harder if I go that route. Getting at anything towards the rear of the engine (like the constant pressure valve comes to mind..) could be very difficult. That said, not having the engine in the car like that I can't say that for sure.

-I thought of using dry-sump. There are nothing but benefits going this route and I almost pulled the trigger, but then talked to Mike Akard at a driving event and was reminded that he is running a stock pan E34 M50 oil pan with his S50B28..

-So after all of that thought and research, I came full circle and will just be using the E34 oil pan. I was concerned about it not preventing oil starvation as well as the other options, but if Akard can run the E34 pan, I don't think it will be a problem at all for me. I saw that car run flawlessly lap after lap at Daytona and if it didn't have problems there, I'll be fine. I will be adding an additional baffle to the pan though.

Long story short, I wanted to do something different with this engine, but it isn't necessary unless you are looking to achieve the best possible F/R balance. I should still be able to achieve better than the 53/47 that I weighed in at last time as now I've removed a good bit more weight from the front end. We'll see.

[jutny]

what oil pan for an s54 in an e30?

[rThor432]

jeeze...how many cars do you have!?!

Just the '85 and '87 etas plus the '97 M3 sedan. I have an '87 325is that I haven't messed with in years that I don't think about much. I bought it without an engine and prepped the whole thing for paint. I painted the engine bay Macaublau and installed an M20 and 5-speed combo. Then I found that the t-fitting for the rear brake circuit was rusted up and kind of lost interest in it. Not a big deal, but I had a lot of bigger things going on at the time and driving 1.5 hours to that location to work on it wasn't working so well for me.

[JoeyBones]

At any rate, it was a fairly exciting day for me. Thought I would share. For what it's worth, I will say that this setup will be relatively temporary. I want to run the engine on the DTA standalone that Alex (ABL) set up. This popped up and I just have to try it. When Alex gets the PnP setup finished I'll be looking to pick that up and I'll put another Euro S50B32 or S54 in my E36 M3 (or my other E30) using this harness and software.

jeeze...how many cars do you have!?!

[Iain]

Those throttle bodies - I want them.

Looking forward to this car coming together.

[rThor432]

Well, I have another update. Not many pictures, but you can get the idea. I picked up an S50B32 today complete with the engine harness, Treehouse S50B32-to-'87 E30 adapter (conveniently, it is perfect for my car..), DME, EWS, throttles, plenum, yada yada. The was a problem with the number 3 rod at roughly 7k rpm on the track, which left a lot of loose metal in the engine.

"Why is he adding this to an S54 thread?", you might ask? Thanks to the fact that the S54 is essentially a very close evolution to the S50B32, I can use the S50B32 harness and DME to run the S54 engine. I will have to change a couple of sensors and I might have to do a tiny bit of re-routing to the wiring, but it isn't rocket science (if it goes according to plan..). I'm hoping to have it running in time for Vintage at the Vineyards, but we'll see how much free time I have in my schedule to fit this in..

Anyway, here are the pictures of my new [old] engine--





At any rate, it was a fairly exciting day for me. Thought I would share. For what it's worth, I will say that this setup will be relatively temporary. I want to run the engine on the DTA standalone that Alex (ABL) set up. This popped up and I just have to try it. When Alex gets the PnP setup finished I'll be looking to pick that up and I'll put another Euro S50B32 or S54 in my E36 M3 (or my other E30) using this harness and software.

[JoeyBones]

dude...when you get this running, i'm coming up there to check it out! Holy crap! Talk about a dream car! I'm stuck trying to get mine road worthy :(...

[rThor432]

If you don't mind me asking how much did you spend on the s54?

The longblock plus the throttles/plenum, engine harness, and flywheel/clutch assembly set me back $4,200. Just $700 more than I paid for my S52 a couple years ago.. The starter, alternator, DME, EWS box, and key/antenna ring were $300 more. Shipping was $400-- and if I wasn't busy with a lot of other stuff I'd be getting that back. But stuff happens, so no worries.

The seller was good on his end. He's local (or semi-local to you) in CA. Can't remember the exact city he works out of, but he's got a wrecking yard that deals exclusively in E46 and E39 M cars. He asked me what I thought about the market for E9x M3 engines/parts because apparently he's come across a few of those now :nice:. Oh, thought I should mention that when I talked to him he had 1 or 2 S62's complete with transmission for $6-$6,500. Could be real fun..

I'm going to sell the plenum and flywheel/clutch/pp assembly at some point. I'm going to run the CSL airbox and I need to pick up some headers. I want to go with FabSpeed's headers since I know their quality is top-notch, but I'm tempted to try the $90 shipped Ebay headers.. It's so cheap that I almost couldn't go wrong.. ha. I got the headers for my S52 from Ebay for something like $120 shipped and they fit pretty good..

[e30s52]

If you don't mind me asking how much did you spend on the s54?

[agile30]

Wait....wait.....waaaait.....Yup I popped a boner