'89 325 Restomod & S52 Swap - A father/son project

[M3Gonz]

I have a few updates and some pics of the work in progress. A few frustrations as well, and my research is not yielding any answers.

On the bright side, when I mentioned that my son's grandpa has been a huge help thus far, he came through big with a present for himself, a Bendpak lift!! Now we'll be able to really get into the underside of the car without hurting our backs or doing subpar work because we're cramped underneath the car on our backs.



We've just about finished up the interior/floorboard rust repair. We've painted on the Por15, a couple coats of it actually, then once that was dry I've redone the interior sound deadening both for comfort as well as the eventual audio build. The carpet is done getting dyed (pics soon) and we're about to try our hand at dying the door cards and rear side panels black. We've picked up some leather dye from the local farm supply store (for saddles) which is supposed to work great.



Sound deadening has been applied to the floor, some of the footwell sides, the rear sheet metal between the trunk and cabin, backseat sides, inside both doors, and will get applied to trunk once that's cleaned up.






Also on the list now that we have the car up is to start cleaning 30 years of crud, oil, grease, and who knows what else off of the underside of the engine back and subframe. Yuck.

[M3Gonz]

Here's my issues dealing with the wiring harness. The M50 harness that came with the car (not installed) was supposed to have been built just for the swap, and already has the e30 driver side connector wired in. But I've gone through the harness multiple times and cannot find the crankshaft position sensor plug, and the cam position sensor plug has the wrong connector (harness side should be female, mine's male). I've pulled back the boots and checked the wire color on every single plug. I went ahead and ordered another harness off ebay, just a straight up M50 w/vanos wiring harness, and it too appears to be missing the crankshaft position sensor plug, and the cam position sensor plug is backwards. I have gone through the Bentley manual and wiring charts and checked every single damn plug on both harnesses. Either I'm doing something dumb, or I just have shitty luck and have gotten screwed on two harnesses.

[tyeler18]

What wiring do you have at pin 48 and pin 83 of the PCM connector? Assuming i'm looking at a compatible diagram to your M50 (its not specified) pin 48 is a yellow CKP supply voltage and 83 is a black signal wire. If there's wiring at the DME then just trace them out.

[M3Gonz]

What wiring do you have at pin 48 and pin 83 of the PCM connector? Assuming i'm looking at a compatible diagram to your M50 (its not specified) pin 48 is a yellow CKP supply voltage and 83 is a black signal wire. If there's wiring at the DME then just trace them out.

I was finally able to figure the wiring harness mess, the only issue left over is the wrong plug (male) on the harness side for the cam sensor, and there's a parts car at a junkyard that we can grab the plugs we need from. I was hoping a while back to get the entire harness, but some savage had cut it up trying to get to something else so it's nearly worthless, other than having the plugs I need to splice in.

[M3Gonz]

Here's some fun progress today! Got the Vader seat brackets and the newly dyed carpet installed back in the car! Still have a few wires to run for the Vader seats that are powered, because there's no power there from the car's old manual seats, need to research how to do that. Anyone reading this have experience? Very happy the brackets fit under the carpet, it'll be a nice clean look for those seats. I think I'll call that carpet color "mocha", it's not quite the black we were hoping for, but my son really digs it and it's a million times better than the old nasty carpet.

Vader Seat Adapter Rails that we made in the shop.

[M3Gonz]

Been working at home down in the basement on dying the door cards, rear side pieces and footwell speaker covers black, they're turning out pretty good! Taking a few more coats than we realized would be necessary, pics below are after I think the first coat, you can obviously see the coverage isn't perfect yet. It's much better now after 3 coats, just working on getting it nice and even is the trick.

Before



After first coat

[Narsiyousif]

Been working at home down in the basement on dying the door cards, rear side pieces and footwell speaker covers black, they're turning out pretty good! Taking a few more coats than we realized would be necessary, pics below are after I think the first coat, you can obviously see the coverage isn't perfect yet. It's much better now after 3 coats, just working on getting it nice and even is the trick.

Before



After first coat

I would recommend using (Dupli-Color Vinyl and Fabric Spray Paint) you can buy it from Oreilly works really good because it is a dye in a spray can and will make your life easier
https://www.oreillyauto.com/detail/b...leather+&pos=7

here is my e30 interior example

[M3Gonz]

I would recommend using (Dupli-Color Vinyl and Fabric Spray Paint) you can buy it from Oreilly works really good because it is a dye in a spray can and will make your life easier
https://www.oreillyauto.com/detail/b...leather+&pos=7

here is my e30 interior example

I picked up the Duplicolor matte black spray and it finished off those door cards and other pieces really well, thanks for the tip! I'm picking up a ski pass rear seat in tan today (scored it for free) and am going to do both the wipe on dye with the sponge, then a few finish coats with the spray in matte black.

[M3Gonz]

What's the saying? Two steps forward one step back? I think that has to be the motto of these kinds of projects. Got to work on the car yesterday, the ebay exhaust manifold came in, it's a Manzo, which is a brand I've seen referred to and is certainly budget friendly! It's great that we have the exhaust manifold, but it's also the first time we took a good look and realized we're missing 20 out of the 24 manifold studs! Oh well, there were enough there to get them fitted in place and around the engine mount arms etc. We had to heat up and massage one of the pipes a bit, similar to what I've seen in multiple online videos of exhaust manifolds and M50 engine swaps. Luckily we have access to an acetylene torch that heats up that pipe in literally 5 seconds, it was a piece of cake!



The other project of the day was getting the engine cranked manually, just to avoid any other surprises. Well guess what? Surprise, the guy we got the car from who mounted up the transmission never machined the flywheel, so the engine wouldn't turn at all. It took us a bit of time to figure that one out, so our next trip down will be removing the transmission and getting that flywheel machined down. I've found some threads here discussing it, looks like we'll be taking off about 1/8" of an inch or so which will save us a few pounds!

Finally, I worked on moving the power steering pump over from the M3, and while I've seen mention of it not being interchangeable and the belt won't line up, it's near perfect. All I need now is a new pressure line from the pump to the steering rack, which is a different size/length than the one from the E36.

I ordered a crapload of parts last night to help get a bunch done, including:
Power steering pump lines
heater core hoses
new heat shield material for under car
more sound deadening for interior/trunk
exhaust manifold studs/nuts
missing door sill trim clips
M20 guage coolant sensor

[2mAn]

Let’s see an “After” pic of the interior!

[M3Gonz]

Let’s see an “After” pic of the interior!

Working on that, but there's a bunch of steps we have to finish up first including running speaker wire and fabricating a door panel speaker mount, cleaning and dyeing a ski pass back seat that we just picked up, and a few other odds and ends. The carpet is installed, there's pics a few posts up, but the door panels will really bring it together! I just sent my son to the store to pick up more dye for the new backseat.

[M3Gonz]

Looks like it's been a while since I've updated this! There's been progress for sure, but we're only getting one day/week to work on it since my son really ought to be in school (pesky high school...) and apparently I need to work and continue building my business in order to fund these things!

Here's the first update, the rest of the hardware for hooking up the exhaust headers showed up. That's all set and in place. I also picked up some new heat shield for under the car and the header, that's in place and looking good. Super easy stuff that simply sticks into place with a high heat resistance. For now it looks clean too! Then a big win a few weeks ago was getting all the coolant lines under the intake manifold set up. I purchased a new coolant pipe set up but had to rig it a bit as seen in the photos. The metal coolant pipe looks like it would normally fit right into the engine block, like it does on our E36 M3, however this M50 block already had some type of adapter for rubber that I could not get out of the block. Next is figuring out the rest of the vacuum lines and other assorted hoses and getting this thing fired up!

Coolant Pipe installed, pardon the mess of plugs etc.



Coolant pipe adapter, just a short piece of hose.



New manifold with studs!


And new heat shield:

[M3Gonz]

Now here the new dilemma, we got the car started, it sounds great (for no muffler), but it won't run without a primer fired into the air intake, as seen in the videos.

https://youtu.be/900HBG_BEU0

https://youtu.be/2mYWRDMYLvM

Here's what we've got, I'm going to continue to research as well as start a new thread in the M50 swap forum:

Fuel pump works, there's plenty of fuel pressure. I know this because we ended up with a big leak in one of the lines that we had to fix. It just appears that the injectors are not firing. It's an M50 fuel rail with the FPR integrated into it, and the vacuum line running off the back of the intake manifold next to the intake air temp gauge.

I believe we're running the correct ECU, someone asked me if it had EWS, but if it did would the car do as much as it does (like fuel pump running and engine running on brake cleaner?!)?

Other thoughts welcome, I'll take this over the 24v swap section of the board.

[BUDNUNTA]

put a test light on the fuel pump relay and see if it triggers after the engine is cranking,

it will only prime from the key turning on and needs the see the crank sensor to keep the relay triggered

[M3Gonz]

Thanks for the idea, we'll for sure check that. I think the problem may have simply been the fuel lines on the rail needed to be switched. My father-in-law didn't think it mattered as long as fuel was flowing through the fuel rail, however he went ahead and switched them this morning and the car started right up and runs like a champ. Or at least it idles well, we'll see what happens under load once we start driving it!