Meet the 1995 BMW 540i/6 named Project Ares. It's a factory v8 & 6spd manual with 252k miles on the clock. Purchased 4 years ago non-running, it's been my daily driver ever since. It's rough but I still love it. The paint is tossed, there is a dent on every body panel. The interior was in bad shape. I've now taken this project way overboard from where I intended it to be, a comfy and fun cruiser to something in between street car and race car that's not really good at either of those things.
It currently has the original M60B40 4.0L v8, custom cam timing, lightweight flywheel, deleted accessories (No A.C, no P.S.) Original 6spd trans, E60 short shifter, 3.62:1 limited slip rear. Sitting on 18" E38 style 37 reproduction wheels that I just recently bent a rear wheel so a spare set of chromie 16"s will be mounted soon.
Gutted interior, single drivers seat. As much weight reduction as I could get away with.
It's running on a standlone do-it-yourself EFI called Speeduino, an Arduino based system.
Other than that it's got typical bolt on's; E-fans, underdrive pulley, single 3" exhaust with a Vibrant Ultra Quiet resonator and a Borla ProXS muffler. Ford 19lb yellow (Bosch GenIII) injectors.
I've started putting together a supercharged M62 4.4L V8, similar platform as what's in the car but more displacment. M60 heads and cams, head studs & MLS head gasket, Eaton M112 blower from a jaguar on an adapter to bolt down to the BMW heads.
Piston's sit .025" above deck and have a slight dish to them, roughly 4cc. Machined and rebuilt cyclinder heads displaced 52cc in the chambers. The HG is 1.74mm (.068") compressed thickness. By my calcs static compression will land around 9.5:1, but I live at 5400ft elevation with a generailzed baro around 12.2psi which makes compression act like an 8.3-8.5:1 at sea level. I'm aiming for 8psi with the Eaton M112.
...I haven't convinced myself quite yet to drop the S/C'd engine into this old E34. But, likely it will end up in there for a while to get some track days in. Thanks for checking out my project, I'll update as things progress.
