The complete repair, rebuild, repaint, and v8 swap of my early model sedan

[LoneWolf]

Today I drove directly over a large chunk of metal. No idea what it was, but it wasn't soft. It was dark, and I was doing about 35 mph in heavy traffic. Didn't see it until it was too late.

Took out my custom oil pan (upper and lower), steering rack, part of my exhaust, an O2 sensor, and I'm sure some other stuff as well. I had already 'parked' it for the winter, but today was nice so I figured I'd drive it one last time. Bad idea.

Oh crap that sucks! Did you pull right over?

What the hell could you have hit?

[Dj Buttchug]

fck!

[E30NJ]

What the hell could you have hit?[/QUOTE]

Probably something off a truck. I nailed a 2x4 going down the highway at 55mph. It only nailed my fuel filter, thank god :bow: but it sent to across the highway at on coming traffic, don't know what happened from there, hope it didn't hit anyone else. Sorry to hear about what happened, you put too much time and effort into this car. :(

[Schnitzer318is]

Sad day. Here's hoping you get it back on the road quickly.

On a lighter note... she just wanted you to do some more work to her over the winter. :)

[JGood]

It'll get fixed up, no worries. My only concern is possible oil pump damage... or, worse possible scenario, damage to where the oil pump mounts to the block. I haven't torn it apart yet to check anything.

The reason I'm not too upset is that I was planning on parking it for the winter to replace the oil pan and steering rack, among other things. The rack is leaking and the pan is leaking a bit at the welds as well. However, I didn't want those parts destroyed! Guess I'll be getting started on that project sooner now. I'm also swapping in a 50k mile 420g trans, as mine has over 200k. Still shifts fine, so I'll keep it as a spare.

[LJ851]

I think you should re-title this thread to "perseverance".

[JGood]

I think you should re-title this thread to "perseverance".

LOL.



Last night I decided to pull the oil pan off and inspect the damage. The pan definitely smashed into the pump pretty hard. The pump pickup is a bit tweaked, and the pan is sort of bent around the shape of the pump.













The good news is that none of that should matter. I took apart a spare pump I had, and there is nothing important in that area where it's bent. It's just a cast housing with a thin steel cover that is crimped onto the bottom. The steel cover is all that's bent, and it doesn't appear that the cast housing is cracked, so I should be fine.









I also have a spare lower pan from an m62, which is a slightly different design. It has some ribs that run down the middle and a center drain plug, instead of side. But I think it should work just the same.


m60:







m62:

[slammin.e28]

Gasket is the same PN M60 to M62.

[JGood]

Yeah, from what I'm reading now, the early pan (11131733273) was actually superseded to the later pan (11131702891). The changeover date was 4/94, so the switch was done on the m60, prior to the m62. That's good, one less thing I have to buy!

[The Dark Side of Will]

Same pump pickup? Potential problems with pickup clearance?

[JGood]

The pumps are the same, and the pickup is built into it, it's all one piece. I think it's all completely interchangeable.

[The Dark Side of Will]

Cool. Rock and roll.

[JGood]

Got the lower pan swapped, new o2 sensor installed, and drove the car a bit to ensure there were no issues from when I nailed the piece of metal in the road. Everything has been good. So, I tore it back apart last night, for annual winter rebuild #3.

On the agenda this time:
New engine mount arms and trans brace (alignment is currently off a bit)
New steering rack (current e36 M3 rack has play in the center)
New oil pan (current one is leaking)
New upper timing cover gaskets
New e36 M3 or Z3 shifter (z4 shifter sucks, way too notchy)
New trans (swapping out my 200k mile 6 speed for the 50k mile 6 speed that I picked up)


Threw a level on the old and new lower pans, to show just how smashed that thing got. Crazy.




I had mattdk318i modify my spare oil pan, he just finished it the other day and sent me this pic. Looks like he did a hell of a job!





Here's how it's sitting now, almost ready to pull the engine.

[e30sky]

damn!!!! i love this build man. you really inspire me

[JGood]

Had off work today, so I went to town on this car. Engine is out, and the top end is resealed.

Here was the problem. The m60b44 requires home-made upper timing cover gaskets, and after about 8k miles, mine started leaking pretty bad. It happened very quickly, one day it was fine, the next it was dumping oil. I cut off the ends of the old m60 head gaskets and reused them, but cut them a bit short. I figured RTV would seal it up fine.

You can see the problem area:





And my fix below. As you can see, I made my own gaskets out of 1/16" gasket material (1.58mm) vs. the stock headgasket material (1.74mm), and also made them a bit on the long side (you can see the gasket bulging up because it's bottomed out against the head). In addition, I used Permatex "The Right Stuff Grey" sealant, as I've heard great things about it, vs. RTV. I put the valve covers back on, and there is definitely a difference in the timing cover height vs cylinder head height (1.74mm head gasket vs 1.58mm timing cover gasket). Hopefully it won't cause a leak. I used sealant at the joint of the valve cover/timing cover/cylinder head junction.






I then started messing with the trans. My old 200k mile Getrag 420g is working fine, but I picked up a 50k mile 420g a few months back, and figured I'd swap it in as 'preventive maintenance'. I bolted up my shifter to the trans to row through the gears, and immediately noticed an issue. The shifter would not spring back to the center position, after being moved to the 5th/6th gate. It just flopped around. I removed the 5th/6th detent cover and detent spring, and found the problem. The pin was seized. I pulled it out (with a lot of force), cleaned both the pin and sleeve, lubed it up with Synchomax, and worked it back and fourth a bit, but it's still very difficult to move. I reassembled it, and the spring barely provides enough pressure to push the pin back in and pull the shifter over to the normal neutral position.

My problem is, I don't know if replacing the pin will fix it. My pin looks fine. No scoring or anything. So I assume the sleeve is shot, although nothing is really apparent to me while looking at it. After doing some research, it appears that the 420g shares the 18mm pin sleeve with the ZF tranny's, which BMW sells sleeves for. But doing this without the proper tool seems like it could be a major chore, apparently it's hard to get the old sleeve out without damaging the bore, and hard to get the new sleeve in without bending the edge.

Then I have to ask, how/why did this happen in the first place? Why did the clearance close in to the point where it's too much friction to slide? Is there another problem, that caused this?









I also spent some time with an e36 325 and e36 95 m3 rack side by side. Not the results I was expecting, considering info I've read recently. The e36 325 rack is linear, the 95 M3 rack is progressive. The 95 M3 rack is *slightly* slower on center, but noticeably quicker after about a 1/2 turn of the wheel in either direction.

I measured my e36 rack as 44mm/rev the whole way through. The 95 M3 rack was about 42mm/rev for the first half rev, but after that jumped up to 50mm.

Both racks had 160mm of travel. The M3 rack does it with 3.2 turns, the e36 325i rack does it with 3.5

Proof of linear vs progressive:

95 M3:


e36 325i:



The only thing I still want to do, when I have time, is take measurements near center at small increments on both racks, maybe 1/8 rev's.