Some nutjob actually did it

[M42Power]

Feast your eyes on an N54 Swapped e30.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWxXp2MTsHA

[Fusion]

Cool. I wonder if the engine has to be that far back or he had a different engine in there before (drift car).
Couldn't find any nore info/pics unfortunately, except he's ukranian.

[Vtec?lol]

Yes!

[Dj Buttchug]

Yes!

[nrubenstein]

I'd be more impressed if it didn't look like he had to do a full harness transplant.

[Pantless Spency]

dayum mami.

[Hooffenstein HD]

[lambo]

Now someone do an N20. Go!

[HarukoE30]

Shit is major, but since it's a drift car a lot has been modified within the engine bay. So many questions about the engine layout / transplant alone.

[F34R]

This is pretty much the best engine to have in an e30. Anyone have a link to the build? someone mentioned being a fan of the 'project'. I hope there is a build on some euro forum.

[Dj Buttchug]

would gladly remove my turbo m42 for this engine any day. pls link to build

[E30_Pare]

an e30 with a new kid 3 series heart I approve.

[Ray Smoodiver]

Aside from the space concerns, why is everyone jumping up and down?

All an engine needs is air fuel and spark. Always has, always will. You could run an S70/2 in an E30 if you had deep enough pockets.

[Madhatter]

you mean, aside from the logistics of fitting a direct injected, twin turbo 6 cylinder in there? Firstly you have the vastly different way newer models send and receive data. There are still models around where you can't get an EWS delete, so that meant you had to transplant pretty much the entire loom, right through to the ignition, locks, barrels and receivers, or go aftermarket ECU. Well now you have all that, so the engine loom + DME, locks, etc, but now you also have to transplant the junction box, CAS module and loom too, along with the high pressure fuel system they use. And that's not accounting for the probably dozen other weird little things you'll have to do before even thinking about being able to get it running. It's like saying what's the big deal in getting skyrim or GTA5 to run on an old 386. Pretty much nothing from the original donor is of any use, all the technology designed to be plug and play now has to be transplanted into something with all the technical capabilities of a house brick.

So, yeah, transplanting a current generation direct injection engine into an E30 without simply hacking all the wiring up and running an aftermarket ECU is a pretty big deal.

[Ray Smoodiver]

Sorry mate should have fleshed it out more:

We're seeing an N54 with some "intriguing" wiring coming off the coil packs, what looks like an aftermarket dash with a shit load of aftermarket gauges, so it's fairly safe to assume it's not the "plug and play" that we all want and love on r3v ;-)

I know MoTeC can now run direct injection on the M1x ECU's (especially the M13x and M18x models), so if running an aftermarket ECU; the higher fuel pressure system has been dealt with - way back when people were putting the S50B32 with its 5 bar system into E30's, so that's neither here nor there, so the only issue I can see arising is the valvetronic (lock the cams? - I don't know enough about the innards of the N54 to know if that's possible).

I am well aware of how the newer models run their electronics, I spent plenty of time working for BMW. But there are a shitload of engines that were in CANBUS cars that have found themselves into E30's, and there are some regular posters on here that that have been there, done that, got the t-shirt, so to say it's beyond the realms of possibility (which you're not) isn't quite true.

We only need to look at the amount of work MiT E30 did to his car to get the S54 going, which I believe was the world's first S54E30 compared to someone like Ryan G, to see how as these swaps become more common, the easier they get.

Hell, I remember following Ian Haynes in my first year of Electronic Engineering at University when he swapped out his M20 2.7 for his S50B32 way back in 2002, and I still remember how he had to loop the EWS II antenna around the steering column so the key would be recognised, and still had to get the whole car towed to a dealer so they could reflash the MSS 1.4 (? correct? It's been a while) so the car would actually start in the first place.


I totally agree that running an N54E30 without resorting to aftermarket shenanigans would be bloody awesome, but I'm not sure that's what we're seeing here. More than happy to eat my words if we see a build thread though! I guess what I'm trying to say is TL;DR that there are many ways to skin a cat, and we're seeing an easier way.

Edit:

Here's his FB: https://www.facebook.com/vladimir.palariev/photos

He says he's running Z4 gauges, so I guess it's a total swap so everything talks to each other. Looks like he swapped out an S38 too. Top man!