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Robbies alpine sedan 5cyl swap

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    Robbies alpine sedan 5cyl swap

    Somewhat current shot(when i remember to update)




    Ill start by introducing my self, my name is robbie, im 23, i live in oregon and i have finally purchased an e30 after many years of wanting and wishing. My previous build was a 95 volvo 850 turbo wagon, i love the car to death but it will be getting parted out to fund part of this build, the fwd was just too much of a limiting factor for me. The car sat on coilovers, mbz alphards 18x9.5 & 18x8.5, and had a rebuilt frankenstien motor (01 2.4t head with mix matched internals in an 04 2.5t block), it ran on vems with full sequential fuel and coil on plug with a hrc td05/6 20g that helped put down 302whp and 405ft/lbs at 17psi on pump gas with a mediocre tune. It has a full v70r interior swap and a wire tucked engine bay. enough blabbering tho, heres a few pics and then onto the more interesting stuff ;)
    (ignore the crooked fmic, a bolt ran away earlier that day lol)





    build thread here for anyone that is interested.


    So now onto the current, it will be my daily driver all the time(as far as i can see) and it will get coilovers, wheels, vems, and a holset, the actual details are yet to be decided and thats what this build thread is for.
    I spent 3 years with the volvo, it was the first car that i heavily modified, and majority of the things i did to it was kind of no mans land for the fwd volvo comunity so i had to figure it out my self, like megasquirting the 5cyl eeek. Alot of the stuff i did was more or less ghetto, it functioned great but if i had the time and money i would redo alot of it, and towards the end of the build i started to redo things but then the e30 came along.
    So the plan with the e30 is for me to challenge my self and see how clean of fab work i can do and do everything the right way the first time, i have a tig welder at work and access to all sorts of machining.

    If you bothered to read all that bs you will be glad to know im done blabbering, heres some pics and explinations of what has been happening recently.

    I bought the car from Vollgas motorwerks of portland oregon, the car had a stroker m20 in it that was pulled and the car then sat for sometime, i bought it along with an m20b27 eta motor to drop in for the time being.
    It came with, e30 m3 front seats, ie poly motor mounts, bilstiein struts and lowering springs, uuc short shift kit, uuc header back exhaust, mtech II wheel and some other odds and ends, it is a clean white straight body with about 120k on it and only a few very minor dents, and since i told my self i would only buy a white e30 it was hard for me to refuse this.







    it was in need of a bath real bad, so i gave the engine bay a good degreasing and gave the car a quick soap.






    i hate tan, will be doing something about that....but it sure is sexy =]


    i want a factory shift knob also...



    Picked up the motor a week later....
    u know u love the kabota =p


    oh no, fram gtfo!





    much better






    Then today started dropping the motor in, my dog athena, you will see her quite a bit, she keeps me company.

    once the car is clean she wont be sitting there ever again! lol


    Last edited by mdlimy; 05-27-2013, 01:33 PM.

    #2
    So i ended up having a real bitch of a time getting the motor to seat up to the trans, the driver side of the motor and trans didnt want to go together, i fought it for a couple hours and then decided on calling it a day, it was hot and i have found in the past that the best thing to do is to just leave it and come back to it, so that i will do tommorow.
    My game plan is to put the car on the lift, drop the trans, pressure wash it since it is nasssty and then mate the motor and trans and drop it in from the top as one. Ill get started early so i can beat the heat.

    but here is a quick question for you guys, the car is a 1990 325i and it has the original engine harness in it still, am i going to run into any problems when hooking it up to the 86 eta m20b27 motor?

    Robbie

    Comment


      #3
      yes.

      and you're also going to have problems with the coolant system. you're going to have to convert it entirely to the early model cooling system. you're also going to run into a few problems with the fuel lines, iirc.

      why did you put an eta motor in it? that is such a fail. :/ if it came without a motor, you should have gone to an m50.
      AWD > RWD

      Comment


        #4
        dudee that 850 is sweet!!! how much would you sell the whole thing for?

        " WHY DO YOU NEED 300HP TO DO THE SPEED LIMIT?"

        Comment


          #5
          Originally posted by mdlimy View Post
          So i ended up having a real bitch of a time getting the motor to seat up to the trans, the driver side of the motor and trans didnt want to go together, i fought it for a couple hours and then decided on calling it a day, it was hot and i have found in the past that the best thing to do is to just leave it and come back to it, so that i will do tommorow.
          My game plan is to put the car on the lift, drop the trans, pressure wash it since it is nasssty and then mate the motor and trans and drop it in from the top as one. Ill get started early so i can beat the heat.

          but here is a quick question for you guys, the car is a 1990 325i and it has the original engine harness in it still, am i going to run into any problems when hooking it up to the 86 eta m20b27 motor?

          Robbie
          The oil cooler lines!! a 325i has a oil cooler a eta block doesn't you can get the adapter from the junk yard.

          You should just put a 885 head on it then you wont have to worry :)

          " WHY DO YOU NEED 300HP TO DO THE SPEED LIMIT?"

          Comment


            #6
            ugh, i just want to get the car on the road and driving, i didnt want to mess around with this bullshit.

            Kershaw, i got the m20 for just about nothing and i need the car to be drivable, i was told it would swap right in no problems. The long term plans are either turbo m20 or turbo m50 just havent decided yet, either way an m50 swap isnt in my budget yet nor do i have the time for it at the moment, and when i do swap it will be a rebuilt motor.

            ogbimmer, i am parting it out, i have most of it sold already and i am happy with what i am getting from the parts and it allows me to keep my vems which will go on the e30. If i had to put a price tag on the car to sell it, i wouldnt let it got for less than 5k, and its still a project(climate control needs work, lots of central locking wiring to be done etc..)

            Pick n pull has the 50% off thing going on till monday, i have this eta motor and i dont have the time or money to change course so it is definetly going to be the temperary heart of the car for a while. So what do i need to get from the yard to make this swap happen, i dont want to swap heads tho, im going to do some research to see what i need but any help and tips is definetly appreciated guys.

            so far my issues will be

            cooling system- what all do i need to make it work?

            fuel lines- just need old style fuel lines? or should i swap fuel rails?

            and oil cooler- if the eta motor doenst use an oil cooler cant i just leave the cooler disconected?

            Comment


              #7
              1. leave the oil cooler disconnected
              2. just run new rubber lines in the engine bay to the fuel rail
              3. swap t-stat housing with the one from an i motor and you can use your i cooling system
              4. make sure you have the wire harness for the eta motor and the ecu as the eta has two crank sensors
              5. you need a coding plug for your cluster for an eta.
              all in all you can go to the yard with $50 and come out with everything you need.

              There's also a few 885 (325i) heads on here for a few bucks. since you bought a used engine you need to cange the timing belt anyway so I would suggest grabbing a new i head and you will have a stroker motor. You didn't do too bad buying that motor but it sucks that you were misinformed

              sry man and good luck. If you need help PM me

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by Vtec?lol View Post
                1. leave the oil cooler disconnected
                2. just run new rubber lines in the engine bay to the fuel rail
                3. swap t-stat housing with the one from an i motor and you can use your i cooling system
                4. make sure you have the wire harness for the eta motor and the ecu as the eta has two crank sensors
                5. you need a coding plug for your cluster for an eta.
                all in all you can go to the yard with $50 and come out with everything you need.

                There's also a few 885 (325i) heads on here for a few bucks. since you bought a used engine you need to cange the timing belt anyway so I would suggest grabbing a new i head and you will have a stroker motor. You didn't do too bad buying that motor but it sucks that you were misinformed

                sry man and good luck. If you need help PM me
                Thanks a ton, very good info and makes me much more confident about tomorrow :p i will pm you with a couple other quick questions.
                edit: i have a new tbelt to go on the motor, not looking to do the i head swap yet since i just need this to drive asap but i will most likely do the i head/stroker conversion when i am ready to turbo and install the vems, kinda torn between an m20 stroker turbo, m5x turbo or m30 turbo.
                Last edited by mdlimy; 09-03-2011, 10:12 PM.

                Comment


                  #9
                  This man speaks the truth; Good luck OP!
                  Bronzit 4-door Swap Drifting somewhere
                  Cammed B25 Swap Daily Driver
                  Updated 10/1

                  Originally posted by StereoInstaller1
                  Maybe 300 CANADIAN HP, thats like 225 US HP.

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Originally posted by Vtec?lol View Post
                    1. leave the oil cooler disconnected
                    2. just run new rubber lines in the engine bay to the fuel rail
                    3. swap t-stat housing with the one from an i motor and you can use your i cooling system
                    4. make sure you have the wire harness for the eta motor and the ecu as the eta has two crank sensors
                    5. you need a coding plug for your cluster for an eta.
                    all in all you can go to the yard with $50 and come out with everything you need.

                    There's also a few 885 (325i) heads on here for a few bucks. since you bought a used engine you need to cange the timing belt anyway so I would suggest grabbing a new i head and you will have a stroker motor. You didn't do too bad buying that motor but it sucks that you were misinformed

                    sry man and good luck. If you need help PM me

                    good stuff!!!
                    side note if you want a noticable amount of extra power, and a another 1000rpm till redline you should really look into swapping heads.


                    Also I have a m20 stoker with less the 5k if you want to buy it!!

                    " WHY DO YOU NEED 300HP TO DO THE SPEED LIMIT?"

                    Comment


                      #11
                      dont need to buy a motor right now, especially one in nc haha, funny tho, jackson added me to that facebook group so people now think i live there haha.

                      You really notice some extra power when dropping the i head on the eta bottom end? i know it drops compression to about 8.3:1 but allows for revving, where is the extra power coming from if there is such a loss in static compression ratio? you make me want to do an i head swap sooner than expected, i figured it would be pointless to do without boost bc of the low compression...

                      Comment


                        #12
                        And I would say your 850 is well worth the 5k! Is it manual?

                        " WHY DO YOU NEED 300HP TO DO THE SPEED LIMIT?"

                        Comment


                          #13
                          of course =] and i have an m66 six speed box just waiting to go in =[

                          Comment


                            #14
                            also look to see if your engine is a eta or a super eta. even with the compression lower it will still be faster then a regular eta. heads are really cheap thats the only reason I brought it up :)

                            " WHY DO YOU NEED 300HP TO DO THE SPEED LIMIT?"

                            Comment


                              #15
                              Originally posted by mdlimy View Post
                              of course =] and i have an m66 six speed box just waiting to go in =[
                              dudee I would so buy your car. I need a wagon or a suv for my dd. I have been looking at a couple of x5s and I also looked at a e39 540it

                              but I have a soft spot for volvo wagons just because nobody ever mods them so its cool to see one moded :)

                              " WHY DO YOU NEED 300HP TO DO THE SPEED LIMIT?"

                              Comment

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