While You're In There... CA BAR Certified S52 OBD2 Swap

[kevvve]

i love builds like this. great progress.

[arch4ngel]

Took a closer look at the bottom end and noticed one of the pistons had made contact with something hard:



There's goes my plan of rebuilding the head only!

Block on the way to the shop.


Presto chango, good as new.


Purty decked block and deck plate honed bores.


Rebuilt head.



Had the shop weld up the ccv tube to my e34 dipstick tube.



And install my VAC pan baffle to keep the oil in its place.


According to the shop the piston was fine (no damaged ring lands or anything else vital) and the bores were all in spec.
Block was disassembled, hot tanked, resurfaced .003" and deck plate honed. Pistons/rods cleaned, dissasembled and checked. The shop reassembled the block with NPR rings, glyco main bearings and KS rod bearings and painted it black.

The previous owner had timeserted some spark plug threads when they lost a spark plug. Based on advice from the shop I found another used head as apparently 24v heads can crack around the spark plug when material is removed.
Found an m52 head with the extra coolant sensor hole and had it sent to the shop.
They rebuilt it using the lightest supertech springs with steel retainers and Reinz valve seals. Three angle valve job and a bit of bowl work to hopefully add a few hp. Everything else was good and in spec, so I reused the valves and lifters. Eventually going to be camming this beast and the springs give me enough lift to let me run sunbelts in the future.

At 127k everything was within spec but still nice to know everything's been rebuilt from the ground up.

Now I'm just waiting for Achilles motorsport to send me back my rebuilt oil pump and iwis racing chains plus a few small parts.

[arch4ngel]

Jeez time flies.
Got crazy with work and next thing I know months have gone by without any updates!

Just now getting back into the the project.
Got the motor torn down last weekend so I could finally get a good look at the cylinder walls.

Luckily they all look fine!


This cylinder contained a bunch of shavings from a timesert installation done after the motor was pulled. One of the 2 reasons for pulling the head.

Should I be concerned that the piston and valves in that cylinder look a bit steam cleaned? There doesn't seem to be any evidence of a cylinder head gasket failure. Oil looked clean when I drained it as did the coolant passages.

With the relatively low mileage and good condition of all the bores I'm going to draw the line at rebuilding the head. Was seriously considering going all out and replacing all the bearings etc. but the project is already way over budget (aren't they all!) and I'm getting anxious to get the car back on the road.

Here's a pic of the combustion chamber where the spark plug broke. It's hard to see but you can tell where the metal bit bounced around a bit. No idea how it managed to not scratch the bore!


Also grabbed a couple of the last pieces needed to start putting all together, namely the clutch and e34 oil pan. The clutch looks in great condition, was considering replacing the disk but may just run it as is.


And lastly a pic of the torn down motor. Just about ready for cleaning masking and paint.


Next up is taking the head to rebello racing for a head check and three angle valve job.

[arch4ngel]

It is! I'm like a mile away from there.

Do you guys go to any bay area meets?
Might be going to the 02 swap next month (I don't own an 02 but would love to one day).
I'd love to see some other swap cars for ideas and inspiration.

[deutschman]

I thought Pixar was East bay right behind Ikea? My sister worked there for a few years.
My buddy (mr2peak) and I are both North Bay guys. He has a m50 swapped early model black car, and I have a raty old '84 325e I want to do an m50 swap in some time soon.
Youl love the s52. So much fun!

[arch4ngel]

It's been a couple weeks since updating as I've been busy working on the e34 and whats left of my parts budget has been going to various bits as I find them.

Came across this gem on craigslist and had to snatch it up:




Schrick manifold with the logo still attached!
I have an m50 manifold I was going to run but this will allow me to keep everything obd2 without a conversion kit and make it easy to swap over to stock when going in for smog.
Also I can get it extrude honed so it flows a lot better than the m50 manifold
It came with a conforti tune for the manifold, 24 lb injectors and 3.5 maf. Not sure if I'll run it or not yet as I'm not sure what mods I'll be running by the time I get her running.

Also managed to track down a zf trans with only 40k on it! You can practically eat off the thing, it's spotless.

Had a little time to make some headway tearing down the motor:


From the looks of the head I started getting my hopes up that I might be able to run the motor as is without rebuilding the top or bottom end.

Much to my chagrine I found this while removing the spark plugs:




Two electrodes broken off, and the insulating plug thingy on the top of the plug nearly melted off. Supposedly the motor was compression checked before I bought it, can't imagine they didn't look at the plugs then. Wish I had a way to run my own compression check, though I've no idea how to do that on the stand. Lovely.

Next I'll be pulling the head and checking for damaged internals.

[arch4ngel]

Didn't do much to the car this weekend but scored a booster/mc at the junkyard.
The 735i it came from was in pretty good shape, should clean up nice.



Also found a late model e30 engine-side harness so I can start making my adapter.

[arch4ngel]

Thanks Link!
Pretty excited myself, this project has been several years in the making!

I'm not too worried about the usual obd2 stuff, that seems to have all been documented here.
My concern is with the extra emissions parts that people usually just flash out of the dme, notably the fuel tank pressure sensor and the gigantic carbon canister.
I believe I'll need that stuff to pass CA bar and haven't seen anyone try to plumb either.
Or pass bar as obd2 for the matter.

[Link]

Excited to follow this from the beginning. Good luck sir.

[E30stan]

Thanks guys!

The car came stock with an s3.73 but I'm going with a zf trans so I picked up a 3.15 torsen diff from a z3.

E30stan, do you have a build thread? Would like to see how you're going about keeping things obd2.

EDIT: forgot to mention, no plans for wheels as of yet. I'll either be getting a set of super sticky tires for the rz378s, or possibly go big brakes and 17" kopis. Will have to see how the car does after the swap!

No build thread on this project, rushing through it like crazy on spring break, but staying obd2 isnt too hard if you can get ahold of the entire car to pull the motor, harness, ecu, sap, running losses valve/fuel pressure regulator. Then get the ews module, transmitter, and antenna ring with the transponder from the key and wire it all up. I had the entire car to get parts from, so was a no brainer as opposed to getting older obd1, less costly too. Theres plenty info if you search obd2 s52

[arch4ngel]

Walking distance to Pixar.
Straight line south west from solano county.

[Danny]

Where in the Bay are you?

[arch4ngel]

Samuel Taylor state park, north bay.

[Vivek]

Where was the last pic (the forest one) taken?

[arch4ngel]

Thanks guys!

The car came stock with an s3.73 but I'm going with a zf trans so I picked up a 3.15 torsen diff from a z3.

E30stan, do you have a build thread? Would like to see how you're going about keeping things obd2.

EDIT: forgot to mention, no plans for wheels as of yet. I'll either be getting a set of super sticky tires for the rz378s, or possibly go big brakes and 17" kopis. Will have to see how the car does after the swap!