3MPowered's Euro S50 E30

[Eric]

I am running the boosterless setup that eric is mentioning,I've already done over 1000miles with the system and it is something you can easily get to after having modded the pedal ratio,so easy that I'm still running the stock MC and pads lol

Good to know! I'm thinking of running it too. My booster (944 I think) has a bit of "squish" before the brakes engage. I think manual brakes with a 21mm master could be a good combo.

[Aguedae30]

I am running the boosterless setup that eric is mentioning,I've already done over 1000miles with the system and it is something you can easily get to after having modded the pedal ratio,so easy that I'm still running the stock MC and pads lol

[3MPowered]

What I'm saying is you have to modify either the exhaust or the subframe. The exhaust is a work of art to optimize power, I would rather modify a chunk of metal than the nice exhaust manifolds.

A small notch in the subframe doesn't mess with the strength of the subframe. My M3 has been a track/hpde car for almost a decade without a problem.


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Well I wish is thought of notching it before the engine got bolted in. BMW actually uses crush bends on the these headers, so I'm not doing anything to it that hasn't already been done from the factory. I've purchased some mandrel bent piping that I may use to reroute the header altogether and eliminate any crush-bends.

[Eric]

What I'm saying is you have to modify either the exhaust or the subframe. The exhaust is a work of art to optimize power, I would rather modify a chunk of metal than the nice exhaust manifolds.

A small notch in the subframe doesn't mess with the strength of the subframe. My M3 has been a track/hpde car for almost a decade without a problem.


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[3MPowered]

Good progress!

Just a few questions, kinda related though. If you must hack up something to make it fit, why hack up the part that can effect power instead of a part that doesn't change the flow of power?

Same goes for the intake, why not run a boostersless system and not mess with the intake? You could probably sell the 944 setup to regular M50 swappers for 75% the cost of the adapter massive brakes sells.

Also, the swayer will be in a different spot when the wheels are on the ground, be sure to check the free travel movement of the swaybar before welding everything back up again!!!

Those are good thoughts Eric, I had thought the sway bar would shift with the chassis loaded so I'll be sure to check my clearances with the car on the ground as well.

To be honest, I don't think I would mind a booster less brake setup. I occasionally coast down hills with the engine off to get a feel for booster-less braking and it seems like something you would get used too.

I don't really understand your first question though. The header has to be modified at that junction to make it fit and I'm not really comfortable notching my subframe.

[Eric]

Good progress!

Just a few questions, kinda related though. If you must hack up something to make it fit, why hack up the part that can effect power instead of a part that doesn't change the flow of power?

Same goes for the intake, why not run a boostersless system and not mess with the intake? You could probably sell the 944 setup to regular M50 swappers for 75% the cost of the adapter massive brakes sells.

Also, the swayer will be in a different spot when the wheels are on the ground, be sure to check the free travel movement of the swaybar before welding everything back up again!!!

[3MPowered]

Update: May 31st, 2015

More header progress as of late, I ended up cutting pie sections out of the bank 1 header and bending them upwards to clear the subframe and anti-roll bar. I think I may have had success, but the tolerances are tight:

Making the first cuts. Things just got permanent:


Here you can see I left a bit of the header uncut, to allow the tip to bend and judge how much more cutting would be necessary to achieve enough clearance.



Looks ok from this angle...



Unbent:



Bent:



I doubt this is enough clearance to avoid smacking the header on the subframe every time I accelerate. I can always cut more.

It's been a long time since I held a TIG torch, and to reacquaint myself with the process I went about modifying the oil dip stick. On Euro engines the oil separator drains into the sump via a nipple. Of course, the M50 oil pan doesn't have an accommodation for this nipple, so I unscrewed the one from the S50 and came up with this contraption:





I then tried out new new TIG welder on the M50's old dipstick, which I had cut up into pieces to practice with:











My first attempt was satisfactory enough so I went for it:







Painted, drying, and ready to try:



I've also ordered the parts for what will comprise my exhaust system. Hopefully by then I'm proficient enough with the TIG welder to not make any mistakes :)

[3MPowered]

^ That is awesome! Jealous to see one all put together like that haha! And thanks for the heads up regarding the heater pipes. The plenum seems to be the cause of a lot of headaches for people doing this swap. Perhaps down the road I'll do an Alpha N setup and forgo the plenum altogether...

[Aguedae30]

Props on the build! I'm finishing mine right now,almost an identical build to yours with the same baffle clearance problems and like always,sways and subframe.

I decided to run a boosterless system due to booster headaches,as I am in the car racing atmosphere and have tested many of boosterless cars and don't think is that bad.

The driveshaft I'm using is the one of a 324td,bolts right in place ;)

You must take account of the heater pipes,they touch in the plenum,I got it sorted making the hoses a little longer and squeezed them from below

feel free to leave a message if any help is needed!


PD: this is more or less how mine is looking

[CorvallisBMW]

Wow, this is one hell of a project. Fantastic work!

[3MPowered]

Cheers lads!

Nice update.

Tip - In order to ease the motor on to the mounts I had a friend get under the car with a rubber mallet and prybar and used those to push the trans in the direction needed to get the motor up and onto the mounts. It was a breeze once we were moving it by the tail.

Yes, for some reason once the trans is on the motor it does not want to be friendly in the bay.

Thanks for the tip! We will give that a try this weekend.

[GDA]

Nice update.

Tip - In order to ease the motor on to the mounts I had a friend get under the car with a rubber mallet and prybar and used those to push the trans in the direction needed to get the motor up and onto the mounts. It was a breeze once we were moving it by the tail.

Yes, for some reason once the trans is on the motor it does not want to be friendly in the bay.

[stanhayward]

Wow epic update man looking great

[3MPowered]

Update: May 12th, 2015

So here goes:

Brakes:

I started with the brake lines, which I had sheared in the process of removing the factory brakes. At first I tried flaring the factory lines in an attempt to avoid having to re-bend an entire line (the brake line to the passenger side is about 6 ft in length, or so it felt). This didn't go too well and was sapping a lot of my already slow progress, so I resorted to bending both lines from the ABS controller backward to the wheels. This was my method:



It worked well enough, and aside from having bright silver lines in contrast to the dark green OEM lines, it doesn't look too bad.

Body:

The rotten battery tray was never going to last long.





Mocking up the sheet metal to patch up the hole. This involved a lot of gaffing about with angle grinders, hammers, and magnets. From above:





From below:



After the hole was welded shut and cleaned with a wire wheel, silicone sealant was fingered around the fresh welds, which is what the factory does in other places in the bay.

I then took the chance to grind down the sticky, oily, flaky undercoating inside the arches. I never want to do this again:







Re-coating the arches with undercoat:





I then painted over the new undercoat with POR-15. Time will tell how this all holds up, but for now I'm satisfied.

The engine bay was done shortly after with a paint code-matched spray can. The colour is close enough for an engine bay, but I'm not sure I'd do, say, an iS lip with it:







Suspension:

All of this took a few weekends to get done, but when it was, it was hardware time. Starting with the rear:







Then the shiny new front:







The new brakes lines are visible in this one, they're pretty hard to miss.



Brakes:

With the extra power I'll be putting down, I thought it would be wise to invest in a BBK in the form of a Wilwood kit. First I cleaned up the brake dust shields. Many people ditch these shields when they fit BBKs, but I wanted to retain them because dust sucks. I opted to cut them:





These adaptors are why the shields must be modified:



I then painted and POR-15d them:



Then I combined it all with these:



To make this:



At this point, I really needed to give the car and engine bay a wash in preparation for the engine.









In this light, the pain match looks pretty decent:





I test fit the RMs from the Golf onto the car and, much to my surprise, my 15" BBK didn't fit the 15" wheels! I guess being a 2 piece wheel, I should have assumed that. 16" wheels are in my future, but I can't shall the whole project while I search for the ideal set of wheels, so I dismounted the BBK and figured I'd see how long the OEM brakes can handle the heat. At least I was able to see how the RMs looked on the car though:





After seeing the fitment, I went and picked up a set of new tires in 205/50/15:



Brake Booster:

This was always going to be a compromise. I've heard of people going with Geo metro boosters to decent effect, but modification to the plenum would still be necessary. I went with a 944 booster instead, since the factory master cylinder could be retained and the brake assistance would be very livable. The size difference was substantial:



Cleaned up, and covered in a layer of my favourite rust preventative measure:





First Fitment:

This was less painful than I'd thought, but then again, no exhaust and no transmission were attached tot he block at this point:



Clearance between the new E36 rack and the oil pan was... tight:





Same with the plenum, which most certainly has to be modified:





... And the headers:



The headers foul both the subframe and sway bars, and with me being lazy, I figured I could simply bang in the headers to get them to fit. The problem spots marked in black:



Still no good:





I've since dented them a little more, and will likely notch the subframe as well. If they still don't fit, I will cut and reweld the one header that's causing the headaches.

Next - and prematurely, I fear - we fitted the transmission to the engine and began the ball-aching task of shoehorning it in to the bay. It was a disaster. Suddenly, the engine that had been so accommodatingly easy to place when we were test fitting the exhaust became an uncooperative bitch. We pushed, pulled, jiggled, and jived the damn thing but couldn't get it to sit on both engine mounts. Only the header that didn't collide with the chassis was fitted, so that couldn't be the issue. At this point, we were beginning to lose our momentum and daylight, so left the engine resting on the mounts as opposed to being bolted to them.

Some pictures to illustrate the butt-clenching ordeal:









What you need when the frustration mounts, is beer. We've done that a lot over the past few months. We've saved every beer cap since the project began. I'll be making an art project out of this when the car is done:





The Little Things:

Some days, it's all you can do to squeeze in 20 minutes here, an hour there. These are the jobs that keep the project alive during the busy times:

Polishing the VANOS:



Installing the E36 fuel filter in place of the E30's beer can:





Washing the spare, because it makes me happy. It was so filthy, I couldn't be bothered to take a before picture:



So that's the story so far. The more progress we make, the further the project feels from being done. I think it's because the closer the finishing line is, the clearer you see how much further there is to go. Consequently, you begin to see all of the places where things could potentially go wrong.

Still to come are the following tasks:

- Finish the headers and possibly get them ceramic coated
- Order the rest of the exhaust components and get them fab'ed together.
- Measure how long the driveshaft needs to be and find a local shop to mate the E36 and E30 shafts together. This seems less wasteful than buying a driveshaft that supposedly works out of the box, and probably costs the same too.
- Splicing and rewiring the engine harness to match it with the E30 body harness. This is looking like an easier task than I'd originally thought, but I've learned to assume nothing.
- Piecing together the oil cooler, which I've already purchased and should be the next step.

Onwards.

[TroyShark]

Awesome build. In for more updates