E39 Build: 6.0 LS. Coils. Burnouts.

[nsogiba]

Awesome build! loving it

Great work,one of the best threads i've read to date! Subbed

this is crazy i love it

Just read through the whole build and wow!! Great work for sure, I dream of putting a LSx in my car one day

Thanks ladies

I followed this on BimmerFest too...It was like christmas when you finished it. I love it, even though I'm more of a Ford guy

Thank you. It sure was a good feeling after all the issues I had with wiring.

Well this was a wonderful read.

Great job on the car man! Love it. Also love the clear, precise and organized thread.

Thanks, the only thing I regret is not taking higher quality pictures.

I sold my old M-Parallel reps that were sized for a 3 series

They are on an E46 now and look great

some crazy burnout dude

It was fun, but exposed the weakness of my cooling system design, so I will be adding dual fans and a nice shroud over the winter.

Man, I followed this thread on ls1tech and re-read it on bimmerfest. Great job, and awesome documentation on the process!

Thanks. By cross posting I hoped to have as many eyes as I could on my progress, which helped a ton when it came to sourcing parts and solving problems.

[fifty3bags]

Man, I followed this thread on ls1tech and re-read it on bimmerfest. Great job, and awesome documentation on the process!

[indigais]

some crazy burnout dude

[mankerlia]

I sold my old M-Parallel reps that were sized for a 3 series

[FunfGang]

Well this was a wonderful read.


Great job on the car man! Love it. Also love the clear, precise and organized thread.

[TheContra]

I followed this on BimmerFest too...It was like christmas when you finished it. I love it, even though I'm more of a Ford guy

[e39hamann]

Just read through the whole build and wow!! Great work for sure, I dream of putting a LSx in my car one day

[dubs&boost]

this is crazy i love it

[RealistP100]

Great work,one of the best threads i've read to date! Subbed

[LukeyBabes]

Awesome build! loving it

[nsogiba]

Old tires were shot, and I sold my old M-Parallel reps that were sized for a 3 series. Fuck yeah burnouts.



Perfect excuse to buy some real wheels, M-Par reps in M5 fitment. Staggered setup, 18x8 & 18x9.5.





Oh, and finally invested in the most important thing one can have in a garage.



Threw the wheels on.







Ok, time for a big update. I have been busy with a ton of crap, so I'll try to let the pictures do most of the talking.

Got my new M-Parallel reps on, and they fit/ride great. Wheel gap was pretty pronounced afterwards, especially in the rear.




I wrapped the interior trim with 3M Aluminum vinyl, but didn't like the way it came out. It was too bright and looked odd and discolored in the sun.


So I ordered up the stainless steel finish, and got to work.



Much better.


Made one of these for a friend


Buying this has been taking up the majority of my spare time. We hopefully close next week.



I finally gave the winter beater some much needed maintenance in the form of pads/rotors all around, as well as a general tune up and inspection. I also finished installing all the parts the the deer destroyed back in May.



My fiancee surprised me with a trip to Vegas for my 25th birthday.


So I had to ensure that this fat lard was well fed while we were gone.


Vacation was great. Returned back to work, and as I was driving to lunch one day, this happened:


Turns out crappy non-penetrating porous welds don't hold up well to aggressive shifts. Lesson learned: don't be a stubborn idiot and try to keep on welding after gas has run out.


Luckily my weld quality is also improving. I cut up a new block at work and welded it all up. I think it came out nice.



COILOVERS!

I came across a great deal on M5Board and had to jump on it.




While in there, I also replaced the rear pads, rotors, wear sensor, and rear sway bar end links, which were completely shot (.125" play).



I have yet to take pictures with my "good" camera, but I'm very happy with how they came out. I still need to add spacers in the rear and adjust the height side to side.


Took a trip down to Ellicottville this past weekend for our annual "fall drive". That's my friend Tim (technician117 over on M5Board) on the left, his girlfriend Danielle in the middle, and my fiancee Melissa on the right. LS 540 vs M5 on the way down was a fun time. We swapped cars as well for half the trip to compare differences...yes, it is a dramatically different driving experience in every way, despite being neck and neck from a roll. I have spanked him in the past on a smaller, lighter set of wheels, and because the trans was so expensive to build, I gently and slowly shift every single gear, whereas he's slamming them.



Where I stand now

A few weeks back, before going into storage.



getting used to the new garage...



and away



Although knowing me it will spend more time on jackstands than it will under a cover :cheers:



Up next: M-Sport bumpers all the way around, dial in the coilovers exactly where I want them, do burnouts, install spacers in the rear to bring them back out, put a lumpy cam in it. More burnouts

[nsogiba]

July 2013

From here on out, I didn't really have any issues at all even though I beat the car like an unfaithful wife.

it was definitely a busy weekend. i drove up to Waterfest in NJ with a friend and had a great time. Entered the burnout contest completely on a whim, ended up blowing a radiator (laying it on the limiter a LOT wasn't helping), but it was something i'll remember for a long time to come. Despite the grueling heat and crappy traffic it was still an awesome experience.






someone in the crowd grabbed this for me.
Waterfest 19 - LS Swap E39 BMW Does Nice Burnout Then Blows Engine - YouTube

slapped in a new rad in 30 mins and made it home 6 hours with no issue. Drove it to work this morning. What a beast.

AND FINALLY, WHEELS!

Ordered a new set of reps (Style 37) to replace the current ones I'm running, they'll be 18x8 for the front and 18x9.5 in the rear. The M-Parallel style will always be my favorite, but the ones on the car had an offset designed for a 3 series and looked too sunken in even with spacers. Lots of E39ers run 18x9.5s all the way around but the lip on the wider wheels just didn't look right in the front after test fitting Drew's, so staggered it is. I have a set of tires I'll be using on the fronts but need something for the rear, may just end up buying a new set (GASP). Unfortunately it looks like the wheels are backordered so I won't see them for at least a few weeks.

Test fit of the wheels courtesy of a friend running the same ones on his '69 Camaro.


JD fabbed up a SS extension of my exhaust to dump out the back, which solved the drone I was sick of. Since my regular rear bumper doesn't have a cutout for an exhaust tip, I trimmed a bit away for a temporary solution. I have an M-Tech rear bumper that has a diffuser and a single exhaust cutout, just need to have it painted.





Took a ride out to a car show in Pendleton at a church event with a friend and my fiancee on Sunday, great day for it.



Where I found that one of my manifold bolts had backed out and was missing.

[/QUOTE]

BURNOUTS!
Waterfest 19 - LS Swap E39 BMW Does Nice Burnout Then Blows Engine - YouTube

slapped in a new rad in 30 mins and made it home 6 hours with no issue. Drove it to work this morning. What a beast.

[nsogiba]

i thought about the logic of my idle problem and looked at the pinout again. signal, low reference, and 5V reference. i swapped the 5V reference and low reference and the inverse problem was solved. now had 6% to 60% from no throttle to WOT, which was good, but the range was not big enough. even after recalibrating (reset) the TPS and making sure everything was connected correctly, still had 60% at WOT. turns out the Express Van TB has what seems like a thicker cast aluminum stop for WOT, so i machined down that stop little by little until we were getting better readings. final result was about 4% to 95%, and started tuning from there.

made 370whp/374tq :hump:

,

,

,
the ice didn't do shit on a nylon manifold but why not try.

June 2013

a bit over 1000 miles on the swap and had my first "troubles"...

on the way back from a Color me Rad 5k, a severe misfire started occuring with the smell of raw gas making its way into the cabin, even at speed. thought i had dropped a plug wire or a coil, but they were all firing as verified on the side of the road. limped the sucker home, really could have been worse, but the car got me home from 60 miles away, so I can't complain. turns out the injector signal wire for cyl. #7 was grounding out on the fuel rail, causing it to run WIDE OPEN, all the time. at one point i had liquid fuel dripping out of the exhaust. reinsulated the wire, unplugged battery to try to reset the fuel trims, and after an initially rough idle as the fuel cleared out of the exhaust, all was well.

while diagnosing the fuel issue, i also went through multiple startup/shutdown cycles. during one startup the starter began SCREAMING, literally gear on gear noise. i thought my flywheel was toast due to the teeth being chewed up, but it was fine. Pulled the starter (which I bought used over on LS1Tech with low miles) and found this. Yeah, that'll cause some noise due to tooth misalignment...


Replaced it with a reman'd unit that actually turned out to be defective as well (bad solenoid), but starter #3 did the trick and the car is up and running again.

The replacement is OEM for a 2003 Express Van, and is the "later style", with a much thicker mounting boss for the inboard bolt (the area where my thumb is in the picture is where the added material is located).

Late June 2012



Over the past few weeks I had been getting a slight belt squeal during cold starts and during the first 10 minutes of driving. Once the engine warmed up it went away, but when cold it was present. The sound is clearly coming from the driver's side of the accessory system. While increasing revs in the garage I could tell it sounded like:
-idler pulley (which came on a bracket I bought used)
-alternator (which came with the drivetrain a year ago, and the bearings were grinding back then).
Made sense to replace the cheaper one so I threw in an OEM idler, and the noise did not change. Replaced the alternator with an Autozone unit, and suddenly the noise is severely worse. At hot idle it's not there, but as soon as I go above 1200 RPM we have a loud squeal.

Water pump is a low mileage used unit
Belt tensioner is a new rockauto unit
Power steering pump is a low mileage used unit

I'm assuming it's one of the following:
-Alternator is bad. It charges fine and the bearings made zero noise before putting it in, so I doubt this.
-Alternator pulley is now SLIGHTLY misaligned with the rest of the system due to manufacturing tolerances, causing causing enough belt misalignment to make noise.
-Belt is bad
-One of the other accessories suddenly went bad and is making noise internally (doubt it)

I plan on running it tonight and spraying the belt with water to see if it quiets it down. Will run it without the belt as well to rule out an accessory being bad internally.

I also diagnosed a severe clunk I was getting from the driveshaft under hard launches. Thought it was one of the diff bushings causing that pig to move around, but it turned out it was the CSB (which is original to the car). It's a shame because I bought a new CSB months ago and asked Fleet Pride to install it for me when they welded on the slip yoke. They "couldn't get the nut off" on the center section, but I think it was more of a case of it being late on a Friday and them being too lazy to get it done. So now I have to try to find that new CSB somewhere in my pile of parts and do it myself, hopefully it's not too much of a pain.

On the brighter side of things while I was underneath the car I measured up the diff bushing dimensions to make a removal and reinstallation tool for the front and rear bushings. I bought a handful of E39 M5 diff parts last year while rebuilding mine and I got 2 new rear bushings as part of the deal. I'll snag a new front one with ECS as I have store credit with them and need a few other things anyhow, and will be making those tools at work this week.

For the pic whores: pulled off my M-Parallels to put on a spare set of wheels. The rears are getting there but still have lots of fun left in them.


a new name brand belt (Goodyear Gatorback) has solved the belt noise for now. I suspect it's still a power steering pulley misalignment issue, but not a big deal.

Finally got around to taking care of my driveline noise; pulled the exhaust and driveshaft to replace the center bearing. Symptom was severe banging noise under the car on hard launches, obviously the driveshaft hitting the body somewhere. I initially thought it was my diff bushings (which I will be replacing in the future anyways as I got them as part of a package deal when rebuilding the LSD), but they turned out to be ok.

Center bolt inside the u-joint was a pain to get out since Fleet Pride spray bombed the whole driveshaft with 8 coats of paint after welding it up, so I ended up using an 11/16th to remove it. I still have to buy a replacement bolt, and the center bearing arrives this afternoon, so I'll assemble it all later and report back. A new bearing MIGHT be an improvement over this:



For all the BMW reliability nutjobs out there, it was another case of degraded rubber/plastic. The bearing itself spun just fine, but the rubber had hardened and separated, allowing the edges of the center u-joint to kiss the underbody on hard launches. I'll see if I can snap a few pics of the contact later tonight.

[MommysLittleMonster]

Looking forward to the rest of the story! Glad to see another nice upstate NY build.

Give me a heads up the next time you're out towards Rochester and we'll go do burnouts.

[nsogiba]

Life has been keeping me busy...someone hit my Subaru while it was parked and then ran, but i got the plate, so i've been on the phone with insurance and police trying to get it all squared away. also finally set up 3 interviews for next week, so it's been hectic to say the least.

i had a local ship set up my M5 diff and as far as i can tell it turned out well. I still have to slap the cover on and install it into the car. then, measure for driveshaft...

oh, and this happened today

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iL6jluYU-18&feature=youtu.be

i swapped the truck throttle body back onto it and started it, idle still surged. unplugging the IAC made no difference. unplugging the MAF made it idle nice. I don't know whether I have a bad MAF, or it's just a rough tune. Leaning towards MAF.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgEzP...ature=youtu.be

well, i think i may have found a new issue/solution....

borrowed a scan tool and ghetto rigged an OBD2 plug. i swapped all the coils on the passenger side and kept the MAF plugged in, and it didn't throw codes for those, so i'm assuming they're good. however, i did get 2 codes:

P0343: Camshaft position sensor high input
P0650: MIL Circuit

Not worried about the 650 code since I don't have the CEL control wire hooked up to anything yet.

The 0343 code is interesting. This was a known good motor pulled out of a wrecked van, so rather than just throw a new sensor at it, I thought about what I had done to the motor to change it from "stock". Back when rebuilding it, I installed a used cam out of a 2005 LS2 Vette. Apparently the LS2 uses a cam that provides a position signal on the FRONT of the cam, to a sensor mounted on the front cover. My LQ4 is the same as all LS1s as the cam provides the signal to the sensor in the rear. Therefore, my cam is incompatible with my motor.....this could also explain why my tach is not reading correctly. Another symptom is the car not firing on the first try (extended crank period). It will only start if you open the throttle about a quarter.

http://ls1tech.com/forums/generation-iii-internal-engine/632720-p0343-after-cam-swap-ls2-cam-ls1-motor.html

Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the 05 Vette cam that I installed, so I can't compare it to the LQ4 cam I have in the living room.

Anyone have a stock LS1 or LS6 cam laying around?

Been caught up with little crap lately, no time to work on my own damn car. Between interviews, a job offer (happy about that), and doing brake/suspension work on my mom's and sister's car, no free time...

Luckily I did have the opportunity to drop off some stuff at various places and get it worked on.

Diff is all set up, sealed, filled with fluid, and installed



I also sealed up the shifter assembly, and this is the final height. If I decide it's too high for my comfort the rod comes off with 2 bolts, chop to desired length, recut threads for knob, done. I could also just cut a section out and reweld the halves, but it's easier to cut threads since my welder sucks.




Tackled my misfire/rough idle issue last week, grabbed a coil pack set and a few other misc items off this Tahoe.




Removed the LS2 cam in about 3 hours, here it is, missing the timing reluctor that is causing my issues. No mishaps other than dropping 2 cam gear bolts into the pan...luckily, the pan is able to be dropped a few inches before it hits the subframe, so fishing them out wasn't tough. I took this as a sign that I had to change the oil anyhow....




Fleet Pride took care of the driveshaft. Front BMW 3-bolt guibo style end cut off, shortened to correct length, and 1330 U-joint/slip joke welded on. Runout was indicated as .005" or less.




Throw that sucker in, fits like a glove. It's really interesting how much BMW offsets the nose of the diff off to the driver's side (probably to keep an even load on the u-joints and reduce wear, and so that it centers up under load).





My garage is so filthy that it's almost not able to be worked in...time for a cleanup.

May 2013

Well, it’s been a busy rollercoaster of a week.

Went out and did some rolling shots of my winter beater with friends.




Then, on the way to Pennsylvania (2 hour drive one way) for work at 5am, this happened:














I was able to limp it home for an hour driving like this:



The car has already been deemed a total loss, but 100% of the damage is cosmetic, and the car runs great. I will be buying it back and fixing it. Not sure if I’ll sell it for a nicer beater yet.

But, on the bright side, this happened: