OMG's Personal S54 Build :)

[dude8383]

awesome to see the engine getting rebuilt and going into your car

:)

Cool!

Which brake booster do you have planned?

Did they deck the block?

well i've been eyeballing the E90 stuff. i'm not there yet in the build process (as you can see) so i'm going to wait for any new developments to arise. i will purchase one if push comes to shove for fitment. i just know it'll be a month or two before i'll be ready to drop it in.

Yup, deck was blocked super super lightly.

[jeenyus]

The dream engine for me. I would love it and they look so freakin' good in the engine bay.

[moatilliatta]

Cool!

Which brake booster do you have planned?

Did they deck the block?

[Mike36]

:popcorn:

[iwantspeed]

awesome to see the engine getting rebuilt and going into your car

[dude8383]

Short back story...

There's a shop that we work with that does wheel alignments and inspections for us. I came in with my E30 and they got all excited because its like a regular brake/oil change/timing belts kinda shop. Simple stuff but in any case they liked the car and I mentioned it had an M3 motor in it.

The owner was like oh we have an M3 motor that we just pulled out... That got me interested haha. He mentioned that it was making a "knocking" noise and I was already running through the possibilites... S52 vanos rattle... S54 rod bearings... or something stupid. So I ask him to take a look at the motor.

We walk over to the back and he opens the storage unit up and the first thing that I see is the S54 valve cover vanity... cover. Bam. We negotiate a bit here and there and I score the motor for a pretty good deal.

Fast forward a year and I'm ready to start building this thing. This is the 3rd motor for my E30 so its been a super fun journey to see this thing go from an M52... to an S52 and now an S54.

I'm doing a completely stock rebuild on this. These motors are already at their limit and damn expensive to build. So reliability is key to say the least!

Only managed to take one pic of the tear down:



Head sent off to the machine shop:






My car under the knife:



Valve Cover Prepped for powdercoat:





Being silly, but got the valve cover powdercoated wrinkle red:























Got SUPER lucky with this... Arc Asylum as you know makes custom subframes and oil pans for these swaps. I have done this with my next door neigbhor that fabs up stuff all the time but he's not the most reliable. This was my biggest worry with this build because running a shop and doing personal projects just don't go hand in hand. I posted a few days ago about Tyler not responding to me and seeking contact info. Luckily enough a fellow r3v member reached out and told me he had a complete setup that he wasn't going to end using. SCORE.










VANOS Rebuild:













Currently waiting on new chains to arrive so that I can start buttoning up the bottom end!