Kobra

Hi Guys, After reading many reviews, I acquired a set of BC gold (BR type) coilovers for my E30. I know the front struts need to cut off around 50mm above the spindle, then the new coilovers sleeve over the remaining 50mm, and are then welded to the spindle. I did some reading up on the LVV Cert rules for this modification (http://www.lvvta.org.nz/documents/standards/LVVTA_STD_Suspension_Systems.pdf, section 2.2(28)) It appears a change was made in August 2016 which states: Obviously this has me quite worried as I believe welding to the cast spindle is required. I thought welding to cast components can be done safely as long as the cast component is heated up to prevent cracking. Does anyone have an extra info or experience with this certification process?

I'm using the kit engineered by a R3v user - http://www.r3vlimited.com/board/showthread.php?t=306268 The wheels - I found some Style 61 16x7.5 ET20 rims: Hoping to paint them the same bronze colour as this M3's wheels: Going onto my M52 swapped delphin coupe.

Looks like such a nice car, Brent. I almost considered it myself. My 5 lug kit for my E30 project just arrived from Lithuania. Also purchased some nice 5 lug 16" wheels. Excited to see how it will look.

A pull from the first drive. It was quite dark and raining, so sorry about the quality. https://youtu.be/SdCb3e91p7Y

Just tidied things up enough to get the car ready for a first test drive. We worked out the ICV was actually still stuck, but the spare one we swapped in was also stuck. A friend loaned me one from his parts stash. and she started right up and idled nicely. Sorted the steering out with a Holden Astra linkage. Conditions for the first drive weren't great... No vacuum to the booster yet. I'm waiting on parts. No brake lights as my manual brake pedal doesn't actually contact the brake switch for some reason. Alignment is way out. (from the steering rack swap) Many critical items are just temporarily zip tied out of the way. But she was ready enough. FIrst drive went fantastically. The 4.11 diff paired with the ZF box makes for some extremely short gearing. I learned the ECU is in limp mode, limiting the engine revs to 5200rpm or so (This is probably just due to the complete lack of both O2 sensors, so not worried.). 5th gear was at about 5200rpm at 145kph. In the rain we were doing one-wheeler-pealers all the way to 4th. Don't even get me started on the noise....one of the most horrific, yet magical sounds I've ever heard.

First start video! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxD8lW_wjNo Excuse my enthusiasm, I was just extremely excited to finally see everything come together after months of work. But all is not perfect, the engine wont idle by itself. It runs great when we manually give it a bit of throttle. We swapped out both the ICV and MAF from other vehicles, but still no idle. I'm thinking the TPS may be water damaged. But we ran out of time, and had to head back to Christchurch for work the next day. At this stage I've got a few problems to solve before the first drive. The steering column doesn't clear the already chopped rear exhaust manifold. I'll probably just get a Holden Astra or similar steering U-joint setup from pick-a-part. The intake manifold appears to be just resting on the brake booster ever so slightly. I think I'll just add some washers on the engine mounts to lift the engine a few millimetres. I need to make a bracket to support the clutch fluid reservoir. The audi brake fluid reservoir clears the throttle body and intake manifold, but doesn't leave any room for a vacuum line to run down to the booster. I'm going to order a smaller reservoir from a Mk2/Mk3 golf which should solve the problem. I need to grab a throttle cable that will work. (probably from an E36) Fingers crossed, I'm hoping to take the car for a drive next weekend.

Sorry about the crappy photos from here. (My phone's custom rom is still a bit buggy) After another 3 week break, I finally got back to the garage. Also had an extra mate helping out. The plan is to hopefully get the engine started. First up I installed my brake ducts, lip spoiler, and front bumper trim. At the same time, the power steering pump, alternator, starter motor, and engine belts were going in. Time for the driveshaft to go in with it's new CSB. Time to start the wiring. I've been researching this for a few weeks, so it should go well. First up, lets remove the old/broken/hack job stereo radio power antenna, and also delete the automatic transmission harness. Starting on the engine loom. Coils in. New radiator in. Not 100% on what expansion tank I'll use. The E36 "side tank" doesn't appear to fit. After a few hours of sorting through the loom, the only thing left is to adapt it to the the C101 connector. Thanks to the help of Christian (Autobahn), we were able to match up the required wires. After this, we just assembled the rest of the engine. Intake manifold went in, exhaust manifolds chopped, and a battery was rigged up. Sorry, but didn't remember to take any more photos of this process. Time for a first start!

Time to install the transmission, but first I need to fix the manual transmission cross member I was given. Looks like it had taken a hard hit at some point, and it quite badly bent. Nothing so bad that I can't fix it in a vice... Time for the transmission to go in. Tidied up the clutch fork, and a new throwout bearing. Went in without any trouble. The shifter is offset to the right a bit, I didn't know this was a thing, but it doesn't seem too bad. Rolling out of the shop, starting to look like a car again.

Sorry about the delay, I haven't had much of a chance to update the thread lately. Here is what happened since the last update: Painted the brake ducts I located an Audi brake booster which should work Started modifing it to fit. The 2 raised rings around the bolt holes needed to go. Side by side with the original booster. Modifying the E30 clevis, the Audi push rod is M12x1.5 All done, looking good. Test fitting, so far so good. I'll need to adapted the brake lines. First time I've done hydraulic fittings, so I did lots of research and practice creating decent flares. This is the result. Testing fitment with the intake manifold and brake fluid reservoir. I will replace the reservoir with something a bit smaller. And the Intake manifold clearance is tight, but I think it'll work. I'm happy with the result.

I'm looking for a set of E30 51mm front struts. No brakes, shocks, or springs needed.

Went to the local pick-a-part, and found some E30 goodies that my car was missing. Started repainting them. I'm quite happy with how this blanking panel came out. Now lets get back to the brake booster situation. I did initially intend on slotting the holes in the firewall and moving the booster over, but that doesn't appear to be very easy to do on our RHD cars. The pivot mechanism on the passenger side is fairly well mounted, and I don't really want to cut and weld it. At this stage I'm thinking about doing an Audi B5 A4 1.8T (dual diaphragm) brake booster. I haven't managed to find one for decent price yet, and there is very little info on this option. Any help on this one would be greatly appreciated.

The project E30s lurking out back. Time to push the car back into the shop and drop an engine into it. We did have some issue getting the engine mounts to sit correctly, but got there in the end. Checking for clearance. It looks like the E36 power steering lines will work with some slight tweaks and a custom bracket to support the high pressure line. Installed the shifter support bracket while I had the car up on the lift. Popped the M52 intake manifold on to check for clearance.

I found a good deal on a brand new e36 aluminium radiator for sale locally. I also got my bench flashing rig setup and working. I managed to successfully do a read of the 24k partial from the MS41.0 DME. Opened the bin file in RomRaider and everything looks good. Deleting EWS appears to be extremely easy once you know where to look. Still not 100% on deleting the rear O2 sensors, I'm not even sure if my donor car had them. Got the car back in the shop to do the E36 steering rack swap. Pulled the brake booster to figure out how I'm going to clear the intake manifold.

The box of parts did finally arrive after many delays. Now I could finish up the engine. Oil baffle modified. Bolted back one, along with the e34 m50 oil pickup, and sump. Installed the cam sprockets and timed the engine. All buttoned up.

Some of the exhaust lifters had a bit of rust on the side of them (sorry, forgot to get a photo). But thanks to Autobahn, I had access to a parts motor. So I pulled the spare lifters, and proceeded to install the camshafts into my engine. At this point I had to wait for a big box of parts to arrive from the US (it took more than 3 weeks, ridiculous). We started getting to work preparing the car. The first step was to remove the 4 banger with it's autotragic. The M40 was missing it's front engine lifting point, so we used the intake manifold. Of course this meant we ran out of leveller travel, and proceeded to struggle for an hour or two manoeuvring this mess. We did mange it in the end, just in time to close up the shop.

I've pretty bad about posting updates to this thread, but it's time for another update. Here's what has happened over the last couple of months. E34 M50 sump parts arrived. Hmmm, 2 different oil baffles... I'll end up sticking with the M52 one. The head's back... ..lets bolt it back on. While attempting to torque the headbolts, a couple of them didn't feel right. One was binding up as I was making the first 90deg stage. I pulled the bolts back our to find this on the binding bolt. sh*t. This isn't looking good. I hope the threads in the block can be saved. I got out the tap and die set, and carefully cleaned up the threads in the head. The new headbolts had some minor thread damage, so I ran each of the bolts through a die just in-case. I then made another attempt to torque the head back down. Success, no issues at all this time.

I'm doing a manual conversion on my E30, and I need a clutch line to suit. I have a clutch line from a donor E36, but the master cylinder takes a threaded hydraulic fitting rather than the E36's clip style. Factory used or a new custom made item would be fine. Cheers.

Interesting project. Keep the videos coming!

Quick update - Just got the head back. A few of the valve seats were slightly rusted, which means they required a bit of machining. This bought the price up a bit. But I guess $450 isn't too bad.

That's a non-vanos head, so it's an M50

I was given an estimate of $300. That includes dropping the valves and acid washing the head. I'm supplying my own valve stems seals with came with my headgasket kit (about $300 NZD shipped from ECS Tuning in the US).

I've found a few decent resources describing how to get started: OpenMS41 - https://sites.google.com/site/openms41/romraider/how-to-get-started-tuning-your-m52-s52-with-romraider E30 Garage post - http://e30garage.tech/topic/37-ms41-tuningflashing-basics/ digital-kaos immo off thread - http://www.digital-kaos.co.uk/forums/showthread.php/205111-Bmw-Dme-Ms41-0-immo-off Pins required Connecting +12V to Pin 60 enables write access (you can read the 24K without this) I've ordered a VAGCOM cable with the RT232RL chip. Once that arrives, I'll be able to test my rig.

Project update conclusion In the last few months, I've managed to get my hands on most of the parts I need to rebuild the engine and swap it into the e30. E28 535i Engine mounts Headgasket + seal kit Replacement MS41 Siemens DME + matching EWS bits (Thanks to Brent at BM World) E34 sump + dipstick tube + oil pickup (Thanks to Ray at Hell BM) Oil catch can Currently, I'm waiting while the head is getting professionally cleaned, and rebuilt with new valve stem seals. I'll have a decent amount of free time over the new year, so I'm planning to have the M52 enigne sitting in the car by the end of December. On a side note, I've spent some of my downtime researching how to flash the Siemens MS41 DME. I'm currently building a bench flashing rig. This will hopefully allow me to tinker with the tuning, and even do my own EWS delete.

Project update continued! Just for fun, I decided to open the water damaged DME. Yep, she's rooted. I'm planning to delete the factory PCV system, and just run a catch can instead. I found this cheapy billet aluminium on ebay for $30. My E30 has had a fairly rusty exhaust. So much so, that the muffler at the end wasn't even mechanically connected to the rest of the system. Since the car was about to have the engine pulled out, we decided it would be fun to chop most of the exhaust off, and take the car for ride down to the beach. An M40 with a straight pipe exiting under the driver sounds like a struggling tractor...until you hit 5k, above that, the sound is pure race car!

I ended up just getting another factory DME with matching EWS box and chip, so for now, I'll just use that. Project update! (Warning! lots of pictures) Admittedly, my progress has been pretty slow over the past few months. But I have been collecting parts as funds allow. I drained a lovely strawberry milkshake like oil mix from the transmission. Luckily, the gears inside don't show any signs of corrosion. I then started the tearing down the engine to inspect the damage. The camshafts looking good... Pulled the camshafts and stored them away safely wrapped in newspaper. This shot shows just how much silt was left on the engine. At this point I started debating whether or not I should pull the head. In the end, I was convinced it needed to happen. Head off! Inspecting the cylinders and piston crowns. Plenty of crud build-up. At this point, I'm very glad I pulled the head. The valves have a bit of surface rust and crud on them, but I think they'll clean up nicely. I started cleaning up the bores and tops of the pistons with some old gasoline. I forgot to take pictures of the head when I was cleaning it, but came out equally as well as the short-block. I then proceeded to flip the engine over, and pull the oil pan off. Still a great deal of milky oil left coating the bottom-end. I spent the next few weekends cleaning all of the nooks and crannies of the engine with old gas and a toothbrush. This took far more hours than I'm willing to admit, but the end result was certainly worth it. The engine then sat like this for a couple of months...