Back in black BMW e30

[dillon7]

How the little details make this so much better, great work so far.

Thanks man. Love your build. Hopefully bags are in the future for me because yours sits amazing

beautiful man! love the black on black trim.

thanks man!

[dillon7]

My steering rack is shot and I've been meaning to buy the parts to replace it. Since I have to replace it might as well upgrade it so I'm to the e36 rack swap.

ok so did a little research and went with this rebuilt rack

http://shop.rackdoctor.net/main.sc

Did this for two reasons.

1. they got excellent reviews (way better than ebay)

2. Right in the price range I was looking for

3. The shop is 4 hours away from me so shipping will be fast.

I also ordered the AKG kit for the swap so now I have everything good to go. I'm not replacing power steering hoses or reservoir yet, just going to see how this does first.

The transmission bracket arrived last week at my house and the engine wiring adapter is getting shipped out tomorrow so needless to say I'm pretty excited that it has all come together.

It's going to be quite a weekend with the rack and engine swap, pretty stoked though!

[meech]

LOVE the m52 engine, my favorite power plant I've ever driven. I honestly like it more than the M62 v8 in my 540. Idk the straight six is just magical. Car is looking great! can't wait to see the final product

[dillon7]

FINALLY GETTING SOME UPDATES

This week I have been dreaming of this weekend to come so I can finally work on the car. I was sitting in my dorm being a good college student looking at car parts when I got the greatest email of my life. I have one class on friday holding me back from coming home but at last my teacher emailed me and said class was cancelled enjoy your weekend! You know what that means right? Coming home Thursday night and starting my weekend early

Ok, on to the good stuff.

I got home and got to work immediately with my Dad (without him this would all be impossible or at least really slow so thanks Dad). Got all the stupid heat shields in front of the driveshaft off and then proceeded to pull and yank of the driveshaft and still not get it off
Took a break from that and got the shifter linkage undone and little random wires and sensors off to get to the point where the driveshaft was the only thing attached.
We decided to lift the engine a little to get the DS out and just make life easier until we tried to figure out where to hook up the engine hoist. The front was easy of course but getting to the mounting point on the rear of the block was a PITA so we wrapped a strap around the intake manifold instead. Worked like a charm, raised the engine a little and got the DS out. Engine came out smoothly after that and we were good to go.

Pushed the car outside so now it's ready to get all cleaned up and degreased.





Next was getting the flywheel out. Of course the transmission had those torque bolts instead of regular ones and there were two different sized bolts. We thought there was no way that out of the 3 torque sockets we had that we would have the right now. Well guess who's lucky day it was? Mine! Had the right two sizes and the transmission came off with a breeze. Got the clutch out and then the flywheel so we are smooth sailing from here.

random clutch pic



There is way too much good news so far in this update for a 27 year old car so time to hit you with the bad stuff.

Couple pieces on the DS are shot so those will need replacing.





Also the transmission had some oil in it so guessing I have a bad seal in there somewhere. I'm taking it to my Dad's shop to have it looked at a little more.

That's it for tonight. Tomorrow I have a lot more work to do and plenty of updates.

The current state of the garage is this.



And the mystery brown box surprise for tomorrow. (it's not exciting I just thought I would add some spice to the story)





Thanks for reading and STAY TUNED BECAUSE THINGS ARE ACTUALLY GETTING EXCITING!

[dillon7]

Woke up this morning and immedietly went to open my boxes, kind of like christmas haha.

First up is the "surprise". Rebuilt e36 rack. It's just so so clean.





Got the AKG kit so it will all fit.





Next up is the new Trans brace with condor mounts built by GunMetalGrey himself. Excellent quality, couldn't be happier.





Last but certainly not least is the most important the I bought, the engine wiring harness adapter. Andrew325is built it for me and he did an excellent job, I definitely recommend him to anybody here. He has everything labeled for me which is great because I absolutely suck at anything that has to do with wiring.







Ok time to stop being lazy and get off the computer and get to work.

[dillon7]

Time for more updates.

First I got the car outside and degreased the bay and undercarriage.






Cleaned up my headers, driveshaft, and motor arm a little.




Then I decided to go ahead and pull the old seats out. A lot of you have been asking how they mounted and well, they are mounted pretty bad. The PO just drilled through the floorboard and stuck a bolt and nut on and called it quits...:hitler:




Anyways after gawking at the stupidity I got the seats out to reveal my extremely filthy carpet that will need cleaning soon. I didn't even bother with the awful wiring and just cut the wires, guess I'll have to go trace those all the way back soon but for now it will do.




Next up was to paint the seat belt clicks or whatever you call them.

I had some toyota TRD red paint laying around so I just used that. It came out pretty good.

Before:



After:




Then my Dad got home with the transmission and flywheel.

He fixed the bad seal and machined down the flywheel for me and also cleaned up the transmission.

All clean



Lovely flywheel



Inside of the transmission




Next up was to put the other motor arm on and get the engine attached to the hoist.






Last but not least was the e36 steering rack.

Got the old rack out with no problems.




Grinded off the perch and got the steering knuckle apart.






Went to go install the AKG kit and holes in the knuckle were too small so I had to drill those out to fit.




Then the a little ridge got in the way so I had to grind that off as well but after that I got the knuckle back together and assembled.




Next, I put the rack back in and tested to see if anything hit. I had a small place where I was rubbing on the knuckle so I grinded that down as well. After that everything felt good so I was good to go.






Then I went to go install the tie rod ends and well.....they wouldn't work.

The tie rod on the rack is male threaded along with the e30 tie rod ends so I have to figure something out. I'm kind of confused because everything I read just said put the old TRE on the new rack but never really posted pictures so I never thought anything of it. Any help here? Here are some pics.






That's it for now. More work to be done tomorrow. If somebody could comment on my tie rod situation that would be lovely. Thanks!

[dillon7]

I didn't get as much done as I was hoping to but oh well better than nothing.

Relocating the break booster took a lot longer than I expected. Looking online people were just saying drill 4 new holes, cut out the bigger hole and you're done. Yaaaa didn't exactly go that way.

Got the Brake booster out without a problem. Next I cut some of the rubber on the firewall and marked my new drill holes.





Next I drilled the four new holes.



Then I realized that one of the holes goes through the bracket that holds the pedals and you cant really get a nut on the bolt where the new hole is so that bracket had to come out.

I cut one of the welds and hammered down around the area where the nut wouldn't fit so it would.

My homemade vice 1:



cut the weld



Bent it enough for the nut to fit then tac welded it back on



Rough marking of the new hole size



Got it cut out to where I needed it.



Cut out the firewall to match



Then I painted my brake booster.




That's about where I'm at now. I put the bracket back in and the pedals back on so now the break booster just needs to be bolted back in place.

I need to get an output shaft so I can line up my clutch and put it back in. Getting one this week so next time I'm home the motor will be going in and I'll be close to finishing.

I need to order e36 TRE and either a CAI system or just a stock intake boot. Any recommendations on that?

Hopefully I can get home here sometime soon so I can finish her up and go enjoy her.

[Rob&co]

I like the seat belt attention I should do that! Very good so far.... Not my swap of choice but good work plus nice pics=good thread!

[dillon7]

I like the seat belt attention I should do that! Very good so far.... Not my swap of choice but good work plus nice pics=good thread!

Thanks man. Wasn't my first swap choice but couldn't pass it up for the price.

[l3xxd]

Just finding this build now but I gotta say it's coming along nicely, can't wait to see more of it!

[dillon7]

Just finding this build now but I gotta say it's coming along nicely, can't wait to see more of it!

Thanks man! unfortunately college is slowing me down quite a bit but oh well

[skiierman]

Really cool build! my friend has the same swap, its a beast.

[ldl180i]

Love the little details. Keep it up.

[dillon7]

Really cool build! my friend has the same swap, its a beast.

Love the little details. Keep it up.

Thanks guys!

[dillon7]

Finally home for fall break which means e30 time. Family time comes first though of course so I didn't get much done tonight.

First was open up all boxes I had laying around full of parts.

MAF and intake boot



Header gaskets and intake gasket



Guibo and CSB



M42 Radiator that I got from Clay on my way home.



m3 wire cover




Next up was to paint and clean all of the parts.

All cleaned up.



Painted




No need for AC anymore soooo it's gone.



Bolted in the new motor mounts. Ignore the green, the guy I bought them from painted them.





That's all for now. Tomorrow will be the day the engine finally finds its new home. Still have to bolt up the transmission and intall the brake booster and then it's drop in time! Stay tuned!