Vass

Just bought myself a staggered set for my e46 off a fella that tried fitting them on his 130. Said the rears fit perfect but the fronts stuck out too much and were a hassle to try and make work.

Ohh that's gorgeous. I saw an identical coupe sitting on 193's down in Queenstown a few years ago that I instantly fell in love with. Don't suppose it would have been the same one?

Yeah it ain't great. It was also clogging the non-return valve and the pickup tube was full of it. Glad I'm ripping it all apart instead of just dropping the engine in.

Yeah, true. I'll see how I go with the 2.93 but might try that out for shits and giggles, probably after I've sorted the cert. Don't think there's much value or demand for the auto diffs so I suspect it'll be left laying around the garage anyway.

Yeah would probably been around $400 cheaper without the diff. I checked with BMWorld, Weitz and a few other places and none had 2.93's in stock so felt it was worth it. Probably nothing to worry about with the diff as it is but the rust is an eye sore, and a bit concerning with the rust all over the flanges as well. Would ideally like to address somehow but might just see how far a scrub would take me. Could be keen on the flywheel-clutch combo aye. I'm just having a mate price one up this coming week as well but haven't sorted anything yet. Shoot me a message with what sort of money you'd be after. Cheers Seller sorted the shipping but I believe it went through a few carriers along the way, DHL taking it the last step. From what I've gathered, it renders the first gear practically useless and shoots the cruising RPM's up way too high. Looking to have this car mainly as a weekend road trip cruiser rather than a drag racer 😄 Sticking with a stock gearbox-diff combo should also save me from having to recalibrate the speedo I'm hoping? I did consider it but reckon it would have demolished the budget completely. The higher cost of the box itself, likely difficulty sorting suitable gearbox cross member, likely having to modify the prop, that leading to needing driveshaft hoops, plus a myriad of other potential compatibility issues, figured it just wasn't worth it for what I'm going for. Took the missus out for a wee cruise to Arthur's Pass yesterday. Been a while since I'd wandered out onto the open road so definitely enjoyed the drive, even if it meant the engine light decided to wake up from its slumber... So lucky to have these awesome roads right on the doorstep. Also, picked up a set of relatively tidy style 193's the other day. Been meaning to get either these or style 135's for a while now as I'm not awfully keen on the current 194's. Absolutely love these wheels, fit them on earlier today and love how they sit. Exactly the same offset as the current ones so shouldn't have any fitment issues having rolled the rear guards already. The front tyres are near new (even if they are Vitora's) but the rears are absolutely shagged with wires poking out so will need new rubber before they can go on. Open to suggestions as to what to go with. Had Potenzas on my old coupe and was pretty happy with them but open to options. Will probably just get the rears at the moment but might do the whole set if I get a decent deal.

Nice one man, cool to see you digging into it. Love those 1-series coupes, absolute go karts those things.

Ohh mate, if that's your jam... I give you - Chromatic. Dude mostly does bimmers and damn, the production quality of this guy is insane. Have really enjoyed Frank Stephensons stuff out of all the suggestions so far, been binging all morning. Eye-opening to know the rationale behind some of the styling choices. And M539 is of course the absolute favourite.

Ohh goody, oh goody, Christmas is here! Was sipping my morning coffee at work when I got a text from DHL that my manual conversion was finally out for delivery, so I rushed straight home to greet it. The package came in looking all sorts of beat up but luckily everything in it seems to have remained in one piece. Looked a close call though after taking off the wrapping as the box was barely hanging onto the wee pallet it was perched on. A couple of scuffs here and there but overall nothing significant and all the bits seem to be there. Bit of rust here and there, which isn't surprising coming from the UK. Will be treating and refurbing everything regardless. The diff seems particularly bad so I'm thinking I might look into just swapping the 2.93 internals into my tidy 3.38 instead of using the current casing? Not sure if it's possible but will do some research on it. If anyone knows their way around diffs, some guidance on that would be very much welcome. The slave looks a bit tired and has the shaft missing, but at ~$40-60 for new ones, I was going to get a new one anyway. Same with clutch, flywheel, pressure plate etc. The one thing I forgot to make sure would be included is the reverse light harness, but I'm hoping it won't be hard to just wire together. Otherwise the kit looks to have everything I need. Will be doing all the bushes, rubbers, detents before it goes onto the car so will be a wee while before it's all together. The 3.0L engine is now at the machine shop and will take a while as well. At this point, I'm hoping to have everything up and running sometime this winter. So, all in all, the conversion cost £850. I also added the manual 2.93 diff on top of that and with shipping everything came out to £1,550. That would have included the front part of the driveshaft. I looked into how much balancing the driveshaft would have cost locally and after getting a quote of $300+GST, I transferred the guy an extra £80 to ship the rear part of the same driveshaft separately as well. It was too long to fit onto the same pallet because of the size restrictions. The purchase went through PayPal and I made sure to check prior whether Buyer Protection would cover this type of purchase, which gave me the assurance to go through with the deal. I used Wise to convert currency instead of just going with the bank rate, which saved me a good $150 on the conversion rate alone. If you're sending money overseas for whatever reason, it's definitely worth trying out. Not sure if I just lucked out but everything came through without any duties owing, so didn't have to pay anything on top of the purchase price. All in all, with the exchange rate at the time, the whole kit cost me $3,300 (or $3,303.15 to be precise). Looking at the $4k+ asking prices on TM and such, I'm well happy with that. Timing wise, I transferred the money on the 25th of January, the whole thing was on a pallet a week later, took another week for the shipment to go into transit and it was on my doorstep this morning, so exactly a month later. Well happy with that. If anyone's keen, I can pass on the details of the fella I dealt with. Great guy to deal with, communication was always prompt and on point and was happy to help out with and advice I was after. He's not a massive operation, just an enthusiast pulling cars apart and usually has 1-2 manual kits at the ready. There's a few folks importing boxes en masse now but I figured I'd cut out the middle man and go straight to the source. Would definitely go back to him again if I ever need to. In the meantime, I also pulled apart the whole rear end and borrowed a press and bearing plate kit to start pushing out old rubbers and dig into refurbing the subframe. Plenty going on. Just need to carve out more free time...

Wee progress update. The engine is now fully dismantled and dropped off at the machine shop to get some love from people that actually know what they're doing. Decided to go with Car Aid. Not the cheapest shop in town but have heard good things about them both from some mates as well as Eurocare recommending them. They've got a bit of a backlog so will only get to it in a few weeks, which is fine as I've got plenty of other bits needing tinkering to keep me occupied. From what I could see, all components seemed in fine nick and perfectly serviceable. Besides the heavy carbon buildup on the exhaust valves, all seemed straight and no visible scoring. After looking into the topic, I decided that valves were something I will leave to the professionals to refurb, test and seat properly. Apparently, it's best not to lap valves on these engines as that would increase the contact surface beyond what would be optimal. They come with 3 surfaces cut at different angles from factory so the shop will re-cut those if need be. Dropped off a new set of stem seals along with everything and will have them do a full valve job. Tested the clearances on a couple of journals taking off the crank, all fell at the 0.05mm mark, which is within tolerance (0.020-0.058mm). The journals seemed in decent shape overall, no visible scoring on any of them so was pretty happy with that. Left it at the machine shop just for looking over and a wee polish. Rod bearings look a bit worn so I'm definitely replacing those. The main bearings looked less bad but I thought I might as well replace those too, at just about $150 a set it seemed reasonable to do but interestingly, the shop guys said they'd just need a wee going over with a scotch brite and they'd be good to live on. Instead they recommended I spend the money on new valve springs, which was an interesting take. Naturally, brand new springs would have more compressive strength than ones with 160k km on them but I hadn't come across any info of that being a troublesome component on these engines. I considered it, but at $17 (USD) a piece, I'm not sure what the ROI should be to justify that. Think I'm going to stick with the current ones. Another thing of note whilst pulling it all apart, I kept on finding this black rubbery goo all over the place, likely RTV from somewhere. One bit was even stuck right inside one of the oil squirters, which couldn't have done much good. Doesn't pay going overboard on that sh*t, folks. But yeah, this is where it's currently at. Along with the block and head, I also dropped off the oil pan, rear main seal and timing chain cover to go for a nice acid bath to have everything equally fresh and shiny for when the time comes to put everything back together again. In the meantime, I'm ripping into redoing the subframe bushes and compiling a list of parts to order. Received a first small batch including the head and lower gasket sets, along with a few other bits earlier this week. First time ordering from RockAuto and must say, I'm mightily impressed. I usually swear by FCPEuro and whilst their inventory is more extensive, I found the prices for some of the identical OE items on RockAuto to be 1/2 - 2/3 of those on FCP. Having put the order in on Friday, the package was already at my door by Tuesday morning. Rapid.

You don't muck about ey 😄 Good stuff, she's a lucky girl alright

Popped by one place today to get a quote - $400... For literally a matchbox sized area. DIY it is I guess.

Yeah, true. Just rewatched 50skid's videos on it and seems simple enough. Will pick some up today, $12 for a pack at Repco. Interestingly as well, 50skid reused all of his old main bearing bolts. Apparently still going strong 3+ years later. Might just do that, clean them up properly and box on. Also, unsurprisingly, you were spot on with the piston rings. Snagged a few photos before running off for work this morning and sure enough, the bottom ring is well gunked up. Very happy I'm changing those now.

Yeah good shout, that's probably what I'll end up doing. There's a whole heap of panel beaters next to where I work so will pop around and see what they reckon. Would be well happy if it's something like $100-200. Anything to avoid messing with paint myself. Water just seems to get stuck under that ledge of the plastic every time it rains, the rear sills especially. Can see a wee line of rust running the whole length of it. Must have been in a salty environment this car in general, a whole lot of surface rust all over the underside, drivetrain etc. Nothing too serious but does catch the eye.

Pistons are out yeah, will take some pics tomorrow Yeah I read about the bearing coloring. What's with the whole plastigauge though? Is that absolutely necessary or enough to just order the same color as the current ones?

Took off the cam tray studs today to be able to flip the head over and have a better look at the valves. Quite a lot of carbon caked on. Don't have much experience to gauge how bad it is. Doesn't look like anything that won't clean up but what does this generally indicate? Lean mixture? 91 fuel? Car did have a lot of oil leaks, CCV was clogged up and also split, valve cover wasn't sealing properly being cracked and I assume had a bunch of vacuum leaks as well, so a bunch of things wrong that would all have contributed? Will borrow a valve keeper tool off a mate and see what the valves are doing beneath the surface. Will also remove the crank and then pretty much set for the machine shop.

Thanks mate, pretty glad to see there ain't anything catastrophically wrong in there. Bit of encouragement to soldier on. OE rod bearings look to be just $49 USD from FCP so not a big shell out to switch them out. The main bearings are $106 USD so won't be too terrible either if they'll need replacing. Will take the crank out in the coming days. Good stuff! I'm probably in a similar boat as you were with your first build - doing most of it more out of interest rather than necessity. Not really chasing any serious power so will be keeping most things stock, just wanting to recondition and have a reliable engine to power the daily driver/weekend cruiser for the next 10+ years. Power output wise I was actually reasonably happy with the 2.5L, it just made more sense to rebuild a 3.0L. With the oil pump, do you mean you upgraded the shaft & sprocket or just changed out the whole thing? I was going to just give it a good clean and fit a slotted nut with a safety wire. Didn't think it was a problem area unless it's a race build?

Just a few minor things to report on. Have mostly been busy with dismantling the donor engine, which I've been documenting in a separate thread here, so the bulk of the progress was made on that front. With the car itself, all I've done is clean up and swap over the rear door cards as well. The new ones do have a few marks and dings themselves but do look tidier with the leather inserts instead of the sagging fabric. The leather rear seats are still sitting around, biding their time to go it. Still hoping to find some tidy Msport black leather front seats to match them up with. If anyone's got any leads, shoot them my way. Not looking beyond the South Island at the moment as shipping would take it beyond what I'm reasonably willing to pay. Annoyingly, whilst I was at it, I discovered a patch of rust peeking out from beneath the rear right door sill. Not really sure how to deal with it as I'm always hesitant to mess with paintwork but probably worth cleaning up and addressing somehow. Just don't trust myself to do a tidy enough job with it. Product recommendations very welcome. Also, the window tints are really starting to annoy me now. I do like having tints, but the current ones have way too many defects that let the car down. Will probably ponder an action plan for those for after the new engine and transmission is all up and running. Otherwise yeah, she's still kicking on, seen here pretending to be a grasshopper.

Are these a straight fit for an e46 or is there a difference in bore size or something? Staggered set is it?

Right, so I phoned around a few machine shops on Friday to get a gauge on an approximate budget for machine work. For the head, I've currently settled on a hardness & pressure test + getting it surfaced; for the block I'm getting a hardness test and a cylinder deglaze/hone, and have both the block and the head acid dipped & cleaned. With some variations in scope between different shops, I'm looking at around $600-1000, which I guess is fine. Also asked about timeserting/helicoiling the head bolt threads in the block and was strongly recommended to not take it on as a purely preventative measure as it's likely to be a waste of money for potentially a poorer outcome. The recommendation was that a hardness test would give a good indication whether the original threads are likely to strip out or not, and if the test indicated that the block has gone soft, then there are bigger problems to worry about. That seemed to make sense and, having read through a few more engine build threads on e46 fanatics where the standard head bolts have re-torqued just fine, I decided to box on. Quite a bit of gunk stuck all over the cam tray studs. Lifters were also quite gunked up. Unfortunately it doesn't look like the car had been blessed with regular servicing. The exhaust cam bearings looked mostly fine, but two of the exhaust ones had a wee bit of a munch at some point. Does look pretty bad but hopefully nothing a bit of fine sand paper can't fix. The oil pickup tube spit out a whole bunch of RTV worms as well as tiny plastic particles, likely chunks off the cam cover. The pistons had quite a bit of carbon buildup. Those will take some scrubbing. The cylinders looked in pretty good shape. Bit of varnish but the factory hone marks are still clearly visible so I'm hoping to get away with just a minor hone/deglaze. Only visible defect was a mark on cylinder 6 which I'm not sure what to make of. Hoping the hone will sort it out. The rod bearings looked worse than I'd hoped for. Did read that they'd supposed to be pretty solid on the M54 but these looked well shot. Another item added to the shopping list. At this point, all that's left on the block is the crankshaft. Made the mistake of checking how much replacement cap bolts cost and got cold feet. Yikes! Read a few threads of people using just regular M10x90mm 10.9 bolts (instead of 92mm factory) from a hardware store for years without issues. Also of people reusing the old bolts similarly trouble-free. So... one to think about. Anyway, long weekend well spent. Will get onto a further teardown and cleaning duties next.

Most affordable e30 on the market right now. Drivetrain might need some work but otherwise seems nice and tidy with some tasteful mods. https://www.trademe.co.nz/3456420351

Feel free to go first so I can learn from your mistakes instead hahah 😄

Aye cool! Would be keen to hear more about your experience, how deep you went into it, what you'd do differently if you were to do it again etc. Cheers Yeah will check it out. I've kinda started having second thoughts about lifting the head now, not for the first time. Had a chat with a few more people and they're all telling me it's real likely the bolts would strip the threads out of the block the second time round and you'd need timeserts. Really not keen on having to do that. Will do some more digging around..

Sorry to be that guy but I'm not particularly clued up on the VAG inside joke. What's the deal? 😄 Yeah good call, probably worth going that route too. Thanks for that!

Thanks for that. Couldn't find the part number you specified but these seem to be what you're referring to? https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/273104514430

You know it, good old Japanese expat. Can't remember if I cleared them or not but the car's in bits and gone to scrap now anyway. Did keep the ECU off of it but don't know if I'll bother hooking it up just to check old codes. Planning to reflash the current one in the wagon. The one that came off the donor was an MS43. I suspect the wagon will have the same? Really need to start getting to grips with the software side of things. Did get my K+DCAN cable in the mail a couple weeks ago but haven't gotten round to installing standard tools yet. True, good points, thanks for that. Are O2 sensors something that you can just clean up the tips on to prolong their life a bit or that's not how they work at all? The injectors yeah, was definitely meaning to clean and put new seals on. Is that something you reckon that's DIY-able or best have someone that knows what they're doing look over it? I was looking at this video on it and guy had some sort of special tool that seated the seal a certain depth within the housing, 22 minutes in. Can probably make due without somehow but... meh. https://youtu.be/5S7-gNEgJoM?list=PL691E5829632F8FF7&t=1329 Thanks for the reply. Keep 'em coming