'88 325is M30 street car-->S54 -->S50 -->M54 Enduro Race car

[Jb325is]

2.5mm

I think it's worth spending the extra money on BMW clutches at this point... I'm just doing stuff.

[ngampleh]

I see...
My diff is torsen, so idk much about it

[ian e30 318is]

JB, I want you to know that your build/e30 has been the inspiration to most of the upgrades that I have done to my e30. I love your car and the progress you have made. Always look forward to seeing what's next. Keep up the solid work.

[Jb325is]

JB, I want you to know that your build/e30 has been the inspiration to most of the upgrades that I have done to my e30. I love your car and the progress you have made. Always look forward to seeing what's next. Keep up the solid work.

Thanks man, that's cool to hear. I do wish I'd been using the car over the last few years more than building/re-building, but that's not how it's worked out. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel though

Lots to update here. I guess last update was the diff, which is finished now and installed. After that the car went for exhaust @ a local shop that's pretty popular with the BMW crowd in Atlanta. They welded a V-band onto the stock e36 m3 downpipe, and we went with 3" all the way back from there with a couple resonator/mufflers and a turn down.

At that point, the car was running, kind of. Alex has been on top of the MS43 flash stuff, and I think we've got that pretty much sorted out to start with. However, we had a ticking noise from the bottom end. At first I thought it was an exhaust leak, but we ruled that out. Then I thought it was the flywheel touching the bellhousing shield thing, wasn't that. We pulled the trans, lifted the motor a bit and dropped the oil pan to find that a rod bolt was clipping the windage tray. The M54 windage tray has a bracket that attached to the stock oil pick up tube, when it was removed (spot welds drilled out), one of the windage tray tabs was pushed in just enough to be an issue. Problem solved, kind of. We still didn't have a cooling system.

My plan for the cooling system was to use a Turner OBD1 to OBD2 water neck adapter. I've been running the coolant reservoir in the battery tray, and I like in there for various reasons. I also wanted to get rid of the shitty M54 plastic coolant hard line... Turns out the OBD2 water neck doesn't work with the M54, so that didn't work. My next idea was to draw up an aluminum sleeve to weld into the rear of the timing cover, then run AN fittings/lines to an aftermarket reservoir in the battery tray. I wasn't crazy about the stock rubber hose running behind the head and somewhat close to the headers, for longevity. This went pretty well, got the aluminum plug welded into timing cover, tapped it for 3/8NPT then bought a bunch of fittings. Everything was going pretty smooth with this, until I noticed a broken timing chain guide while re-installing the timing cover. At that point we went ahead and pulled the motor back out of the car, and here we are today-

While the motor is out, we're going to do head gaskets, timing chain/guides, and timesert the block because M54. I got started on it today

We just installed a waterjet @ work, made a couple parts today. Coolant res mount and camshaft locking tool

DSC_0311 by Jonathan braswell, on Flickr


Coolant tank mocked up. Pretty happy with it, not sure what to do for coolant cap though, 30 PSI seems like a ton!

DSC_0316 by Jonathan braswell, on Flickr

Yay M54

DSC_0319 by Jonathan braswell, on Flickr

Ready to get this thing back together for sure. Tired of seeing it on stands

DSC_0331 by Jonathan braswell, on Flickr

Cylinder walls look good, I had to make another slight adjustment to the windage tray at this point but all good now.

DSC_0335 by Jonathan braswell, on Flickr

Had the camera out because I was taking detailed photos of VANOS disassembly, so I took one of the M5 too

DSC_0337 by Jonathan braswell, on Flickr

Yay M54

[Jb325is]

Some decent work has been done since last update. Went ahead and installed thread inserts in the M54 block, it was not fun, but definitely happy to not worry pulling threads out later.

I put the motor back in last night and wanted to post an update to my coolant pipe solution. Finished making the line and installed it today, pretty happy with it overall and I think it'll be a pretty robust alternative to the stock pipe... We'll see how it works out!

DSC_0363 by Jonathan braswell, on Flickr

DSC_0364 by Jonathan braswell, on Flickr

Hopefully getting this thing running again soon, there is an autocross June 4th that I'd like to use as a shakedown for the M54, but that means we really need to have the car running this weekend.

[2mAn]

I hated doing the time serts on my aluminum block.

[Dj Buttchug]

those AN fittings look real nice in those pics. M54 is a great engine.

[Jb325is]

We got the car running and drove it around a good bit yesterday. Still working on figuring out some coding stuff, but no real issues surprisingly. We need to get it dyno tuned for sure, but it feels nice. I'd say it feels about as fast as the S50, just does it in a much different way, feels really similar to the M30 swap I had a long time ago. Couple things to clean up, but shakedown autocross on the 4th and DE @ Barber a week later

[2mAn]

I'd say it feels about as fast as the S50, just does it in a much different way, feels really similar to the M30 swap I had a long time ago.

Thats that low end torque! Im curious to see what it dynos. Hopefully you'll notice the difference in the weight reduction over the front wheels. Its just 50lbs, but it IS 50lbs over the front thats gone now

[LJ851]

We got the car running and drove it around a good bit yesterday. Still working on figuring out some coding stuff, but no real issues surprisingly. We need to get it dyno tuned for sure, but it feels nice. I'd say it feels about as fast as the S50, just does it in a much different way, feels really similar to the M30 swap I had a long time ago. Couple things to clean up, but shakedown autocross on the 4th and DE @ Barber a week later

Im going to need to check that out in person, congrats on getting it running again.

[ak-]

Nice and congrats - thanks for the pictures.

[stonea]

Are you doing anything to the oil pump nut?

[MX339]

Are you doing anything to the oil pump nut?

I welded it on, but didn't take pictures because the first couple of "welds" were pretty embarrassing. It wasn't until I made a few useless bubbles that I realized I need to turn up the heat due to the thin wire I was using.

We had a little bit of an issue with the Vanos as well to begin with. The first test drive was a bit disappointing as it didn't really feel like it had that typical M54 bottom end grunt and it was definitely way flatter up top than the S50. I was messing around with the Vanos maps at idle due to unrelated reasons when I found the the EWS delete flash that I used had blank tables for Vanos mapping for a warm engine. The cold tables were all good, but for whatever reason the warm tables were missing. I found a .bin file that had the factory Vanos tables filled out so I transferred those over to our flash. We went out for another test drive with the fixed Vanos maps and it felt like a fairly substantial improvement.

Maybe we'll put it on the dyno at some point. Healthy Spec E46's seem to make about 220/220 on a Dynojet. I've also heard that junkyard M54's tend to get stronger the more they're beat on. Apparently it has something to do with the bore to ring seal. I guess we'll see.

[stonea]

I know the M54 uses different piston rings than the typical ring, but I've heard its the reason than the M54 suffers from oil consumption. You can use M52tu bottom rings though to fix it.

[Jb325is]

Thats that low end torque! Im curious to see what it dynos. Hopefully you'll notice the difference in the weight reduction over the front wheels. Its just 50lbs, but it IS 50lbs over the front thats gone now

Yeah, I'm not crazy about the feel of the motor so far, but I'm pretty nerdy with scale/align/setup stuff so I'm definitely all about cleaning up the front/rear split.

Im going to need to check that out in person, congrats on getting it running again.

Anytime man. We're taking it to a PCA autocross next weekend, then Barber the weekend after that if all goes well. I do still have insurance on it for test driving purposes if you're ever over this way.

Nice and congrats - thanks for the pictures.

Thanks man!

Started working on a checklist to finish up the car today in preparation for next weekend. Gave it a good wash and took it around the block to verify I had fixed a small oil leak that I found- seems good! Definitely need to tidy up some wiring and secure some stuff in the engine bay, but overall no big issues. I'm slightly worried about our bin file after Alex found that bank VANOS table, doubt that's the only thing wrong with the file we have, but we'll see how that goes. I'll definitely get a wideband on it before it goes to Barber to make sure we're not going to blow anything up. Took a couple post wash pictures today

Lotsa camber
DSC_0378 by Jonathan braswell, on Flickr

DSC_0379 by Jonathan braswell, on Flickr

DSC_0381 by Jonathan braswell, on Flickr

DSC_0385 by Jonathan braswell, on Flickr

DSC_0387 by Jonathan braswell, on Flickr

Also forgot to add this the other day. Didn't see a ton of different ideas for modding the dipstick tube to accept the M54 oil separator thingy, so here's what I did-

DSC_0370 by Jonathan braswell, on Flickr

Just drilled a hole on the elbow of dipstick tube, and welded on (my friend who can TIG did) a 1/2" OD (1/8" wall) tube with a step turned down to ~.45" or so to fit inner ID of stock m54 return hose. Works great.