Lacey, the Lachssilber 325iS - oem+ 5spd. swap daily driver build

[jeenyus]

I put Mercury Contour injectors in my BMW. Matters less which car they came from, because they are still Bosch, 4 pintle, 3.0 bar and more new. Great work. Those head bolts are pretty cool.

[TFJR]

Nice work! I bet it's great to have it basically back on the road. Hope to see you this Spring out at a Dicks' Burget meet.

[vtechnik]

Will do holmes and thank you lol

[bruner]

No shout-out? I’m bummed. So you’re putting Ford parts on Lacey now eh? I knew you’d come around ;) you better road trip her up here soon breh

[vtechnik]

So I found a little coolant in my oil and my engine burned oil anyway annnd I money shifted my other daily drivers transmission so what better time to rebuild my head?

Bought head, tore apart said head. Decked and had new guides pressed in.




Then I reassembled the head. I used a new oem cam, and hd rockers. The rest I had laying around and the eccentrics on my old head had maybe 5k miles on them. I got the head hot tanked and I "polished" the valves, all the bearing surfaces and cam.







Then assembled the rest, and for those of you who are tired of seeing Jordan's immaculate work, here's my ping pong table work area



On to the surgery recipient

pulled


Inspected cylinders, not bad


cleaned / sanded flat


Install new head (with bruner, thank you). I used ARP head studs cause boosting is now seeming like a fun idea



Admire my work with crappy cell pics (I installed the eccentrics later on)



Buttoned everything back up :)


I also swapped out for 5.0 injectors. I should be getting my miller maf kit any day now


And from there the last thing to do was haul around town without my full exhaust and no hood... to umm break in the new motor... for science... ok i did it for fun lol. I broke quite a few necks at our local safeway Side note, I want an exhaust now hah.



Hopefully I'll get to the hood and exhaust tomorrow. Possibly Thursday. It's a stock motor essentially just beefed up so I cant say I feel all that much of a difference other than the peace of mind that I wont break a rocker or lift the head when I boost. I guess the injectors feel better. I also have a new o2 sensor I'm going to install when I put the exhaust on so that should net some overall performance gains. Next on the list is oil pan gasket and maf kit. Then I'm on to the subframe bushings when I have time before the picnic.

Here's a list of parts for documentation purposes (most likely forgetting some stuff)
- all new gaskets throughout head
- new valve seals
- new oe guides
- hd rockers
- arp studs
- new stock cam
- 19lb injectors
- oil change
- tbelt, tensioner, waterpump
- o2 sensor
- nissen manual radiator
- spark plugs
- rotor / cap

[vtechnik]

Hey! It's been a long time since an update with Lacey. Is your car back on the road? I hope so.

Ehhhhhhh.. not so much lol. I took her apart last week and have the head all rebuilt. I'm just looking for the time to put it all back together. I think next week it should be all back together hopefully, I'll post the full update then. Thanks for checking in though lol.

[TFJR]

Hey! It's been a long time since an update with Lacey. Is your car back on the road? I hope so.

[vtechnik]

A couple weeks ago I felt adventurous so the girl and I took the e30 to Leavenworth to get the full Bavarian experience. Overall the trip was great. I broke a few necks and had one guy ask me about my car. I no longer feel embarrassed now that it's manual.



I also went back to the iS weaves now that I found another center cap (FINALLY). I replaced all the bmw logos and wrapped some newish tires around them. Definitely cleaned the car up quite a bit.

I also got a restored plate too. The year is spot on and it has 3 three's so it was perfect



I also got my interior back together. Looks like factory :). I replaced the little m stripe on the steering wheel to match the new shift knob, it really brings the room together.

Now as usual with any of my updates (or so it seems like) I have bad news. An unfortunate series of events occurred.

So the first week of driving around the car smoked heavily. I figured it was just the rain water in the exhaust cause I left the exhaust outside while working on the car. I also noticed my valvetrain was pretty loud but I chalked it up to the fact that I hadn't heard what my m20 sounded like in a while. The next week the smoking continued. This is where I was confused because I figured the rain water had steamed out by then.

At this time I took the car up to Leavenworth. On the way back the check oil light came on. I checked the dipstick and it was nearly bone dry (this was only after a couple weeks of replacing the oil) :( Luckily I had some 10w-40 in my trunk. After pouring the oil in my engine sounded muuuuch quieter and performance felt a lot better.

I got home and immediately did a compression test the next day. While cold she ran 160ish across the board, but nearly all the spark plugs were covered in oil. As a last attempt before admitting defeat I replaced the pcv breather hose today because with further inspection I realized mine was almost completely clogged.

After cleaning off and replacing the plugs I let her warm up. I r3v'd out the engine to 3k in neutral and the car is still smoking like a train :(

I looked around but couldn't find the old oil container I used when I did the swap. My theory is this; I used a fairly thin oil, plus some mmo and the combination of the plugged breather setup caused all the oil to squeeze through the valve seals / damaging them???

Time for a head rebuild? I assume so. Input is welcome

[vtechnik]

Eh, you'll survive :)


By the way, replace your head bolts with the updated torx ones, the hex you have are prone to failure:


Keep up the work!

Gotcha, I'll replace those soon. I'll probably do it when i readjust my valves, they're still ticking pretty loud? M20 problems I guess.

I haven't updated in a while but I finally fixed the tranny for good. The 5 spd. swap is finally done and I've been dailying her for the past couple days.

Pics ahead

I got so tired of laying in the gravel, dealing with jack stands, working in the dark, etc. I called in a favor to use my friend's lift. It made the job feel like an oil change at this point lol.

Up.


Pulled.


Down.


I timed myself for kicks and giggles and from start to finish I got everything done in a little under 4 hours with a lunch break in there, not too shabby ;)

I'm soooo happy with how everything turned out. It's definitely a different animal now, it takes me back to high school cause my red 325is was manual and had these race H&R springs too. Sooner or later I'll get around to that project. I want to say I'm going to enjoy it as is for a while but I just ordered a lot more goodies to install lol. Whilst I wait for packages to arrive I'm going to start the wiring and putting the interior back together, here's how she sits now.

Before:

[Julien]

So I got lacey all back together! I drove her down the road and she didn't leak a drip!

Pretty cool right?

Well... Apparently the 323i TOB was too much. Now the clutch doesn't fully engage when the clutch pedal is released. With any amount of significant load on the drive train, the clutch begins to slip badly. I realize now that I must've put the OG 325i TOB in improperly the first time. Bottom-line the tranny is coming back out. This is the 4th time I've pulled an e30 tranny in the past couple months. Gettin pretty tired of this crap but at least I'm getting pretty quick at it lol.

Eh, you'll survive :)


By the way, replace your head bolts with the updated torx ones, the hex you have are prone to failure:


Keep up the work!

[vtechnik]

So I got lacey all back together! I drove her down the road and she didn't leak a drip!

Pretty cool right?

Well... Apparently the 323i TOB was too much. Now the clutch doesn't fully engage when the clutch pedal is released. With any amount of significant load on the drive train, the clutch begins to slip badly. I realize now that I must've put the OG 325i TOB in improperly the first time. Bottom-line the tranny is coming back out. This is the 4th time I've pulled an e30 tranny in the past couple months. Gettin pretty tired of this crap but at least I'm getting pretty quick at it lol.

[vtechnik]

HOLY COW, thats a clean NA. I was actually looking for an NA before my current E30, but could not find an unmolested one

My lachssilber is just about the same point as you for my 5 speed swap, I just got my clutch and flywheel in. School's slowing me down on it too, I'm constantly debating between study time and wrenching, it kills lol.

Looking forward to more posts!

Yeah I got pretty lucky, I bought it off an old guy who owned for a lonnng time. She's a 3 owner car including me and she only has 112k miles. The plans are very similar to Lacey, nothing but oem/oem+ for this car. The only mod I want to do is to make the headlights wink lol. I'll have to start watching your build :D

Small update:

I got off work and knocked off a few things off the to do list

I removed the harmonic balancer, thanks iwantspeed for mentioning that, I pressed the stud bolts back in cause they looked like they'd still work.


Then I compared my new 323i TOB (left) to the 325i TOB (right).


Then I resealed the flange properly this time and marked on the TOB channel the difference between the 325i and 323i TOB's. It's quite a big difference.


After that I put all the accessories back together so I can finish putting her back in tomorrow. I'm super excited to finally daily drive a manual e30 again

[ScottSneed]

HOLY COW, thats a clean NA. I was actually looking for an NA before my current E30, but could not find an unmolested one

My lachssilber is just about the same point as you for my 5 speed swap, I just got my clutch and flywheel in. School's slowing me down on it too, I'm constantly debating between study time and wrenching, it kills lol.

Looking forward to more posts!

[vtechnik]

Oops lol

Pulled the tranny in more or less 4 hours this time, so I guess practice and my new m18 are helping. As you can see I put the flange on the wrong orientation and forgot a bolt? I guess I was pretty tired. I'm ordering the 323i TOB tonight and another bolt cause I lost the other one. Hopefully everything will be back together on the road by next week. I also got a box of interior goodies from fcp tonight which I'll be installing once the cars on the ground next week too.

[vtechnik]

Looks like I'm definitely pulling the transmission again.

First, some good news;

I got some new wheels for Stacy

old on the right, new on the left



They're 1999 NB Miata wheels. The guy said he pulled them off his miata in '99 with 10k miles on it because he got different rims. Basically they're NOS miata wheels in my eyes. Much better than the rice that was on her before.

Pic of '99 clean inner barrel





Idk yet if I'm gonna make a separate build thread for Stacy, especially since I don't want to join another forum to post, so I think I'll just throw a few updates here and there into this thread.

On to E30 stuff

I went ahead and bought a m18 3/8 impact to make my life easier and it sure does. It had no problem pulling the wheels off Stacy and it definitely made quick work of my loctited tranny bolts.

I pulled the inspection plate to make sure it was tranny fluid and this is what I found



Oil pan and flywheel are nearly bone dry. To absolutely make sure though, I started the car up on jack stands and ran it till the car warmed up. No fluid leaked at all which leads me to believe all the fluid was sitting at the back of the transmission, since the car was on jack stands.

Oh well, such is life. I have to do a pile of hw tomorrow, but if I finish early I'll start pulling everything apart again.