E30 M62B44 OBDI swap

I'm just getting caught up on GRM reading and David's column inspired me to come back to the forums here and start a build thread. It's been a long since I've been active here but I figured my current project is a good reason to come back. This will largely be crossposted from r3vlimited. I call this build Project Overly Ambitious because I've never done a motor swap and E30 32v swaps are at this point in time much more involved than 24v swaps.

I've had my '91 318i since 2004 when my dad and I left a note on it and got a call from the original owner 6 months later while we were eating dinner. Long story short, the car was ordered here in CA and picked up at the factory in Germany where the original owner lived for a year. She shipped the car back and put another 200k on it before she sold it to me. Since then the car has gone through a few suspension setups, finally landing on BC Racing BR coilovers back in 2010 when they first hit the market.

The M42, I've always thought, was a fun motor but always left me wanting for more power. When a buddy pulled his S52 from his E36M I purchased it from him and stuffed it in a corner of my dad's garage. Two years later, another friend wrecked his '97 540i/6 so naturally I sold the 24v stuff and bought the car from him Nov' 2015. Oof, here we go!

Here's my wife cleaning the V8:

Following, we refreshed the motor with lots of new parts- Pelican must have loved seeing orders come in from me:

Here is what we changed: Intake manifold gaskets, Spark plug boots, Coolant transfer pipes, Upper timing case gaskets, Exhaust manifold gaskets, Cam positioning sensor o-ring, Crank sensor, Thermostat housing, Thermostat, BMWstone cleaned/rebuilt injectors, Coolant crossover gaskets, New coolant crossover bolts, X5 oil block o-rings, Knock sensors, Valve cover gaskets, Valley pan, M60 mechanical waterpump (for the OBDI conversion). We also cleaned and painted the valve covers prior to refreshing the engine. Here's how she looked after the refresh:

I had decided that there was no way I wanted to tip that engine and tranny up and over the radiator support, so it got cut out and I fabbed brackets to make it bolt in:

Strengthening plate and rivet nuts on the other side of that sheet metal:

Since I've had the car for so long, there is TONS of stuff I've been wanting to do over the years. For some reason, I chose being right in the middle of a swap to do a lot of it.

Here's the rear suspension with 80A poly bushings from Garagistic, subframe reinforcements, a medium case 2.93 LSD, new half shafts, new wheel bearings, stainless braided brake lines, rebuilt calipers, new OEM brake pads and sensor, and new rotors.

After that, I tore into the front suspension. I reinforced the swaybar mounts and motor mount tabs with weld in plates from Garagistic. I also cut off the upper rack mounts and fabbed my own for more oil pan clearance- this negated the need for rack spacers needed for the E46 rack swap:

After that I put in new control arms, brake lines, swaybar end links, rebuilt calipers, new OEM pads and sensor, stainless braided brake lines, new rotors, and the aforementioned E46 330i rack and put the car back on the ground for the first time in 6 months:

I got the first opportunity to see the 32v lump in the car when we dropped it in to be able to move the car from my dad's garage to my new place:

Now that it's here at my new house, the dash came out:

This is necessary because I am going to run the Garagistic boosterless Wilwood pedal system as I didn't want to fab up the remote booster setup from an E34. Since my car is an airbag car with the big bulky steering column, I am having to swap in a non-airbag column which clears the Garagistic setup. Here's a picture of the two columns next to each other after I swapped the steering lock mechanism over to the new (old) column:

And that's caught us up! This week I'm hoping to get the column in and bolted down so that I can fab up the steering linkage out of two E46 units.

very nice. will be watching with interest. Makes me laugh that I swapped an M42 INTO my e30 haha....and everyone else swaps them out!

You make it look easy!

This is moderately pornographic. Don't stop...

irish44j wrote: very nice. will be watching with interest. Makes me laugh that I swapped an M42 INTO my e30 haha....and everyone else swaps them out!

The M42 is a great engine, I don't think it deserves the reputation that it has. In an offroad car, I think you made the best decision. Might just have to add a JakeB turbo manifold if you get bored!

VWguyBruce wrote: You make it look easy!

Thanks! I've tried to curb my pure rage when something doesn't work immediately- I'm glad I never attempted to do a swap as a teenager!

Acme Lab Rat wrote: This is moderately pornographic. Don't stop...

Thanks! My new garage is pretty well lit so I plan to work throughout the winter.

Keep the updates coming!

Column installed! It wasn't as straightforward as I thought it was going to be.

Apparently BMW changed the column opening on the firewall sometime in '85, they opened it up quite a bit. The column I bought is from an '84 so when I went to bolt it up, it was no where near correctly lined up. Long story short, I cut up the stock firewall mounting plate that came on my car and welded it to the '84 plate to get it all to line up. It ended up working out perfectly!

Here's the firewall hole in the later cars, I think that the hole on the earlier cars were much smaller and circular:

This is a bad picture but it's the only one of the welding process I got. You can see the shape of the early mounting plate on the left side:

Here's the finished product:

Bolted up, seen from the other side of the firewall:

Installed!

Yesterday I worked some on building a steering linkage out of two E46 shafts. The advantage to this is that the linkage it's way skinnier which should make it (slightly) easier to do the exhaust later on. This is a tiny picture but it shows the stock linkage on top with a fabbed E46 based linkage below:

Garagistic is making these now if you want better pictures: https://store.garagistic.com/E30-Competition-Steering-Shaft-Assembly

Well, I was able to get the steering linkage done!

Now I am working on removing superfluous brackets in the engine bay, then the bay will get cleaned and painted to try and get rid of some of this cosmoline!

JP?! Long time no see, this build is awesome!

Nice! I remember your car on R3v from back before I had mine, I'm pretty sure...and probably on M42club, too. Can't believe that's been something like 9 years ago now. Mine still has an M42 - I ended up going the turbo route.

I'll be following along as well. The blue makes it really easy to tell what you've worked on, too.

Welcome back and thanks for sharing the build. Looks awesome.

Wow that's impressive.

How did you decide what to replace when refreshing the engine? Did you just swap out anything that was easily accessible or were there some things you decided to keep?

Tom Suddard wrote: JP?! Long time no see, this build is awesome!

Hey Tommy! Thanks, I'm trying! I've been excited following the bits and pieces of your V8 BMW build!

gearheadE30 wrote: Nice! I remember your car on R3v from back before I had mine, I'm pretty sure...and probably on M42club, too. Can't believe that's been something like 9 years ago now. Mine still has an M42 - I ended up going the turbo route. I'll be following along as well. The blue makes it really easy to tell what you've worked on, too.

I was active on M42club back in those days, it really is crazy that it has been that long!

David S. Wallens wrote: Welcome back and thanks for sharing the build. Looks awesome.

Thanks!!

Durty wrote: Wow that's impressive. How did you decide what to replace when refreshing the engine? Did you just swap out anything that was easily accessible or were there some things you decided to keep?

I largely went with what was easily accessible and what needed to be done for the OBDI conversion. The motor had the chain guides done before the car was wrecked, so that was something I didn't have to address.

Engine bay prep finished up with spraying Alpine White II from a rattle can I had made at a local auto body supply. Although now I've decided to get rid of the ABS, so I have to cut those off and respray that area now.

After the respray the motor went back in and I started in on the wiring. I am going to try and fire the OBDI 404 ECU off of the E39 crank position sensor in the transmission that works with the flywheel instead of the stock damper wheel sensor. The E39 alternator has the signal wire and 12v switched power delivered to the voltage regulator whereas the E34 alternator (where the harness came from) only has the signal wire- I just wired in a two pin connector to the signal wire and 12v switched power to mate the two.

This weekend I went to Pick N Pull and got the power crossover cable that runs from the positive terminal on the firewall to the starter and the alternator in a T configuration. I'm hoping that I can finish getting this thing wired up and try turning the key next weekend!

My wife and I found out last weekend that she is about one month pregnant, so now I have a hard deadline to get this thing on the road!

Yaya! Congrats!

It took one week longer than expected, but it works! It fired up and idled perfectly! Here's video proof: YouTube proof

One thing I did differently than most people who convert their M62B44 to OBDI is that I am firing the crank sensor off of the flywheel instead of the damper wheel up front. This is how the E39 works so I figured I would give this a shot before welding a sensor mount to the timing cover, it only required a little bit of wiring modification. This is my first engine swap ever, that really is a great feeling when it fires up for the first time!

Now this thing has to come back out sigh so that I can finish up the brakes. This entails buying the Wilwood pedals and prop valve, and running new lines since I am deleting the ABS pump.

It's been a while since I updated this thread over here at GRM, so here goes. Since my last update the interior has gone back in, the motor starts up and runs like a champ. This past weekend I fabbed a mount for the reservoir mount and mocked up my oil filter canister mount. I also ordered my Behr S54 Z3M coupe radiator and E34 throttle cable.

Big items still left to do are plumb the cooling system, mount and wire the electric fan, get a driveshaft fabbed, shorten shifter parts, get exhaust done. I'm very anxious to drive this thing after almost 18 months.

And I was just wondering where this was progresswise . How's momma doin'?

759NRNG wrote: And I was just wondering where this was progresswise . How's momma doin'?

It's been an eventful pregnancy, thanks for asking. We found out the little thing beating her up inside is a boy- we are both very excited!

7-8 weeks ago she jumped in our Honda Fit to come pick me up at the BART station (Bay Area commuter train) and as she exited our driveway a neighbor in a lifted 2006ish F250 wasn't paying attention and slammed into her front end pushing her about six feet sideways into our brick mailbox. Our car ended up being totaled, but thankfully she and the baby were fine.

We replaced it a few weeks ago with a FWD HR-V with a 6spd manual. It's our first lease- we couldn't pass it up because it's basically a larger Fit (she loved her Fit) and it was marked down $2k because it had been sitting on the lot for a few months as apparently no one else in the Bay Area wanted three pedals. We ended up getting it for $127/month- it's extremely likely that we buy it out at the end of the lease.

Interesting little sidestory (to GRM) - when we were at the dealer I asked if they had sold any of the new Civic Type Rs. The salesman said that they had sold the first one that they received and that the purchaser spent $20k over MSRP. $55k for a Civic?!?! I hope he likes it...

Not to make things too easy, a few weeks ago she woke me up at 1:30am with severe abdominal pain. We were at the hospital 30 minutes later- 12 hours after that she had her appendix out. It was an endoscopy procedure, so the recovery process wasn't too bad. Honestly, never a dull moment around here.

Ugh, wow. Sounds like things are getting handled one by one, though!

Tom- I told her she doesn't get any more hospital visits until our little dude is coming out! ;)

Prayers to you both....er all three of yas...

Well, the little guy has arrived.

His mother and I are doing well, albeit a little tired.  I only got two weeks off of work, so that sucked, but it's going better than I expected.  My employer is very flexible in regards to me working from home which helps a lot.

In car news, it moves under its own power now!  I don't have the coolant system fully plumbed, so I haven't been able to drive far.  I got the driveshaft fabricated and installed a few weekends ago- this past weekend I fired it up again and let the clutch out for the first time since 2/21/2016.  I still have lots of little things to do like wiring the fan and getting a brake return spring setup, but I'm so close to driving it again now!