BMW E3 (Bavaria) M62 Swap

Project update, the car has been running and driving for about 6 weeks now. Very fun to drive, I've missed it a lot. I haven't driven an old car since I took this off the road for the engine swap, it's been an adjustment for sure.

Still lots of little stuff to finish off, as is the norm for projects like this I assume.

Big ones are megasquirt tuning, exhaust, and air conditioning.

I need to get to a dyno and tune the timing tables. I know there is a lot more power to be had. It's running reliably and is very fast, but has some flat spots where it shouldn't. This is where I wish I had went the route of a stock ECU. It has been cool learning megasquirt, but it's a lot of work when there aren't any base tunes to be found.

The exhaust is too loud, I expected as much with only a single muffler and x-pipe. It sounds amazing when you are "on it" driving, but has too much drone. I need to find some resonators that don't kill my ground clearance. Here is a terrible video of me rev'ing it in the garage.

https://onedrive.live.com/redir?resid=D011FAC9E1FAC35F!3049&authkey=!AAFvKslBUe7z-uA&ithint=video%2cmp4

I need to design a Frankenstein air conditioning system to work with the newer pump and some sort of evaporator in the cabin. I'll tackle that over the winter, it's cooling down a bit here now, so it should be tolerable soon.

Way to go on the conversion! Don't know how much room you do (or don't) have for mufflers - been chasing V8 drone on my 'hybrid' for 14 years. Finally made my own single, transverse muffler out of 2 OEM 2012 5.0L Mustang mufflers. Turned the outlets 90 degrees out the side of the case and welded them together to make a single to go in the stock, rear/transverse mount location. Center exit, "tailpipes" about 6" long, nice and quiet at idle, cruise but quite noticeable at bigger throttle openings. No drone anywhere (because of a built in Helmholtz chamber) and plenty of flow without hurting performance. They support 420HP with little restriction - they'll handle my 340 (or so) HP without a problem.

I finally gave up on the aftermarket - everything was just too loud or too drony. Decided the only way to go was with OEM mufflers that were supporting a higher HP engine.

[URL=http://s937.photobucket.com/user/MichaelYount/media/Exhaust%20system%20Change/2013-08-22101748_zpsabb08db5.jpg.html][/URL]

[URL=http://s937.photobucket.com/user/MichaelYount/media/Exhaust%20system%20Change/2013-08-30101348_zpsc5dc60cb.jpg.html][/URL]

Wow, thank you for the tips. Love that design! I don't have much room in the rear, the muffler sits between the gas tank and spare tire well. Both of which sit right behind the rear "apron". I didn't do a great job getting the exhaust up into the trans tunnel at all, so there is some room there.

bmwbav

nice work. i see you have done away with std console and looking for new air con solution. i'm chasing a bot of ductwork from behind the dash, above the blower. if yiu have it and not needing, willing to pay good bucks. cheers, mark, mark@nordichomes.com.au

I've been driving the car for a few months now, most everything is working great. The only real change I made was to remount the throttle cable on the pedal, I was only getting around 80% of full throttle with the original mounting. Either my calculations were off on the 80%, or that last 20% is exponential, but it's is now incredibly fast. Wow.

Took a better picture of the engine bay with the hood off. Still some hackish wiring to clean up.

I bought some wheels from an E39, 17x8 and added BF Goodrich comp sport 2 tires, 225/45/17.

Old and new

New mounted on the car

I think they look great, they also give me a bit more tire width that has improved traction a lot on acceleration, haven't done too much spirited driving yet. They are also a larger diameter which helps with my short gearing and ride height. They seem to have raised it over an inch, very useful with my low exhaust over speedbumps.

Next up is adding some bullet style resonators to the exhaust to quiet this thing down a bit.

Took the car to a HPDE at Thunder Hill about a month ago. Was a popular car due to it's age and it sounds pretty awesome. It performed great, had a blast. Still chasing a misfire at high RPM, doesn't show up on the street too much, but was annoying at the track.

Any updates to this beautiful car?

RossD wrote: Any updates to this beautiful car?

I just searched and found this thread again, as someone in Sweden is working on a similar swap and contacted me.

No real updates honestly. The car is essentially the same, it's been running for quite a while now, just an entertaining semi-daily driver here in the bay area. I did upgrade the front calipers and disks with E9 parts, they are vented disks compared to the solid E3 units. I've yet to get it on a dyno and actually have the megasquirt tuned fully, one of these days.

In reply to RossD: I do have a list of uninteresting items to correct, the throttle pedal design has never been "right" I hacked together a solution to use a cable. (Originally, it was a shaft to the carbs) I need to re-engineer something that feels better and has more return force on the pedal.

I also have a small oil leak from the timing cover that I'm sure is going to be a pain to fix. I've never gotten the tach to work either, but that's the third priority.

It's a continuous work in progress I would say, but very fun to drive.

In reply to bmwbav :

Hey, I recently bought a 1974 Bavaria, and I plan to do the same swap you did to your Bavaria.  Just yesterday I bought a 1998 540i with 6 speed manual gearbox. My plan is to swap the M62 engine to the Bavaria. I was reading through all the things you've stated and I kind of understand it, but for some reason the pictures you've posted on this forum do not show up. Maybe you can send me pictures of how your engine and tranny are set up in the engine bay so I know what are the things that I will need to do. I know the driver side exhaust manifold would be hard to deal with. Hopefully you can help me with this regard, and you response would be greatly appreciated, thanks.