1985 BMW 318 Stage Rally Build - 1988 Porsche 924S Street Build - Sequoia Build

got a few little parts in today and ordered up an early e36 325i airbox/filter that should be a good fit for this swap (the e34 one doesn't seem like it will fit, and the M42 one has the wrong shape of opening for the MAF assembly).

One thing I got in is an oil filter adaptor to let me run both the stock oil pressure warning switch and an aftermarket (VDO) sender, which will come off the M42 when I pull it. I find it kind of interesting that the M42 oil filter assembly has ports on both sides, allowing BOTH of these to be fitted with no modification, but the M50 doesn't. Oh well...

it fits pretty well, but I'll have to see what the clearances look like with the larger VDO sender on it, once it's off the M42

Also got in a new e30 coolant temp sensor, which replaces the 2nd sensor on the M50 (uses different impedence). Damn my hands are tore up from the sub-freezing weekend and lots of greasy engine scrubbing.....

Also, looks like the Dirty Industries boys are going to buy my parts shell, as their beat-up e30 is apparently "breaking in half" and this one is rust-free. I had gotten this car to have spare body panels, so part of teh deal is that they'll give me the hood and fenders and doors from their old car when they take this one (plus I'll keep the windshield). That way I should have spares, and not have a whole car taking up my single backyard garage bay.

Keeping updates coming, while I'm motivated :)

Today we got some snow, and the roads were a mess so my office was closed. So I had a day with no plans and nothing to do. So after a quick cleanup of the garage to make room to get the e30 in one bay next week, got back to the engine. 

First I had to take a quick drive to pick up a couple little things. It's odd being out at 10am and seeing nobody on the usually-crowded route that I commute on..

Since I'm deleting the throttle-body preheater and the charcoal canister system, had to plug up all the ports on the TB, and then cross-splice the hose from the head to the "spider hose" that normally would go to the TB. Home Depot provided some barbed elbows that were a good fit.

Also replaced the short fuel injection hoses from each end of the fuel rail, with new clamps, just to be safe. Leaky fuel is no fun and these are easy to get to with the engine on a stand.

Also got the e30 coolant temp sensor in from FCP and installed it to replace the M50 piece, which has the wrong impedence for the VDO gauge I'm using. 

off-topic - reminder I'm using the G240 from the M42 for this swap. As you can see from the bellhousing dust plates from my spare M42 and the M50, they are exactly the same pattern, other than a small cutout in the starter area (which I won't need)

Then went around and checked torques of stuff, including the big crank bolt. It takes around 300 ft-lbs, and without a torque wrench that goes that high, had to do a quick calculation using my weight on a cheater pipe to get it right.

And just like that, the front of the engine is pretty much done. 

Oh, also removed the A/C pulley since I have no need for it. Made sure to add a couple washers to the bolts to compensate for the missing pulley thickness.

Next up, thinkig about how I'm going to run the wiring in the e30. The M50 harness is larger and the firewall grommet/seal piece is much larger than an e30's opening. So made up a template that I can use to cut out the correct size hole for the harness.

After 2 weeks waiting for my VANOS sprocket tool to come in, it once again got delayed for some reason. Screw it, time to do this without it, by using some long, curved-tip needlenose pliars in its place.

So, VANOS assembly off the car, needing some cleanup.

here's the "plunger" in the cyinder. These have a double-seal ring on them - a rubber o-ring below a teflon ring seal. Cleaned stuff up, installed new items. The VANOS had good resistance so probably was working fine, but this is preventative since it's easy to do while I have everything taken apart anyhow. 

Once that was done and everything put back together, I could finally put the valve cover, new gaskets, etc etc back on the car. Also threw all the covers on, though I'm not totally done in there - I want to replace the coil boots before I button everything up. Set of 6 Denso boots on RockAuto for $35....on the way. 

As much as I like the idea of keeping my m20 for the sake of simplicity, seeing you and Downey swapping to m50's is making me seriously consider a swap.

artur1808 said:

As much as I like the idea of keeping my m20 for the sake of simplicity, seeing you and Downey swapping to m50's is making me seriously consider a swap.

I think Downey is doing an M54. His will be much more work than mine, I think ;)

If I had an M20 in my car already, not sure i would have bothered to do the swap, to be honest. The effort is much more worth the gains coming from an M42 vs. coming from an M20. 

And on and on we go. I hadn't planned to, but today's weather was amazing after the snow yesterday. By the time I got home all the snow had melted and the cars were dry, so I pulled the Porsche out of the way (It will get some miles this weekend) and took the rally car around the neighborhood once for its final drive as a 4-cylinder. Came back, stuck it in one of the garage bays, and got started....

First order of business was to drain the coolant, oil, power steering fluid, and unhook the fuel lines. Needless to say, my garage reeked after that. Somehow managed to do it all without too much spillage..

Minor note on this pic: I'm going to have to cut my skidplate brace bar out, since it's too close to the M50 pan. I will try to cut it flush and just move it forward 3-4". We'll see when the time comes.

Then just started taking things apart. I sprayed out the engine the other day so while it's kind of dirty, it's not muddy or anything. So far have the whole cooling system out, harness unhooked from the car, power steering pump unhooked, etc. 

Of note, now I am finding all of the half-assed things I did over the past 8-9 years of adding to this car - in particular my haphazard wiring for things like lights, gauges/senders, electric fan override, etc etc. Wires all over the place with not much rhyme or reason. As this engine goes in I will clean up that stuff quite a bit. 

Since I run all VDO gauges and no stock cluster, the M42 is full of VDO senders for oil pressure, oil temp, water temp, etc. These all have to go over to the M50 so my gauges still work. Here's the oil temp sensor + dual oil pressure (with dummy light hookup) mounted on the filter housing adaptor. 

After some messing around with different positioning, I ended up mounting it like this, which has the best clearance and access for everything. Photo is from the front of the engine looking over the oil filter assembly

While at it, I spliced in the stock dummy light wire to the second VDO port so that will still work (saved our ass at NEFR). And ran a wire for the coolant temp sensor (which I can't get off the M42 until it's out of thee car and/or I pull the IM off). I'm wrapping them all up in their own mini-loom that will have a 4-wire hookup plug at the back fo the engine to link into the car.

So at this point pretty much everything forward of the firewall is unhooked. Just have to do all the stuff under the car now (exhaust, driveshaft, shift linkage) plus the heater hoses and the engine will be ready to be pulled out. 

Once out, the plan is to take a week and clean everything up, cut off some old/useless brackets (like the mount for the M42 coil pack), reinforce the subframe mount areas further, and do more wiring cleanup. Still trying to find a good Porsche 944 brake booster after my mission to get one last weekend didn't succeed. Looks like I have a line on a M20 driveshaft that should work, so mostly just need shifter linkage stuff and eventually exhaust. 

I'm impressed with how fast you've gone from donor car to prepped engine to swap in progress.

irish44j said:

[...]Looks like I have a line on a M20 driveshaft that should work, so mostly just need shifter linkage stuff and eventually exhaust. 

I thought that if you were keeping the g240 you could keep it in place and it would allow you to retain your existing driveshaft? Maybe I haven't done enough research, but I was under the impression that you only needed to change out driveshafts if you were swapping to a ZF (or other) transmission. 

I'm surprised you didn't yank the hood as Step 1.  That is one thing I like about front hinge hoods - the ease of R&R for easier access without alignment concerns.

actually you have it backwards. With the M50 the G240 will actually move backwards a couple inches (too far for the splined 318 DS section to accommodate). So you need a shorter 6-cylinder DS, from everything I've ever read. I will definitely measure to double-check but all the guys who have used the G240 in this swap say they're using e30 or e36 6-cylinder driveshafts.

As to the hood...yeah, that'll come off soon ;)

In reply to irish44j :

I see, I think I mistakenly assumed the g240 and g260 were the same length. All of the searching I had been doing was usually m20-to-m5x swaps so the e30 trans and driveshaft could be retained.

irish44j said:

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

In reply to artur1808 :

You've got to be especially careful since he's got friends at the Pentagon.  Can probably disappear you with a phone call.

In fact, a lot of the 2wd rally people seem like some sort of action movie waiting to happen- G-men, mysterious Turkish expats, NASA contractors, people with work they can't freely speak about, shady shop owners, minor celebrities...

Don't forget our two 944 rally drivers - one is literally a big-time medical surgeon, whose last name is "Pepper" (get it?) and the other one has a dozen piercings on his head and face :)

I feel downright normal compared to most of the RWD people.....

never really thought about it but yeah our 2wd rally folks are an odd bunch. My friend has sold his subuaru open light car and is doing a 5.3 aluminum LS in an E30 with a 4l80

Congrats on WMWR!  And yeah, you're progressing way too quickly with the motor swap!

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

I'm impressed with how fast you've gone from donor car to prepped engine to swap in progress.

You have like 15 projects ongoing and plans for a dozen more. I just have this one project car, with the Porsche more or less done now lol. I also have no social life to speak of in the evenings, so that helps too. But I'm pretty quick once I finally get motivated and get going. I've been rounding up parts for about a month (and still have some to get), so once I had all the stuff I needed, it was time to do it. 

So, on that note, let's keep going. I have total automotive OCD (plus no other projects and apparently no social life in the winter). So got home from work around 4pm today and by 7pm, this happened:

Ok, let's back up a little bit. Actually before that happened, I got home and had a package waiting for me.....the "eBay China Special" headers. I mocked them up real quick and looks like I will have to bore out a couple of the holes a little bit - I had heard that these often have the bolt holes a little bit. I don't foresee it being a big issue, will get around to it. Otherwise, the welds look a lot cleaner and better than the pics on ebay showed, so that's a plus. But hey, for the $65 shipped I paid for them, they're pretty nice lol

Ok, before pulling the engine had to do all the "underneath" work - unbolt the driveshaft and CSB (not a problem other than lots of dirt falling in my face the whole time.....because rally car). Since I had the exhaust off last summer the bolts came off easily, which was nice, for  a change. Then got to the trans. The bitch clip turned out to be a major bitch, as usual. MFer...

Aside from that, the one thing I was worried about was getting the trans brace unbolted. I reinforced it a couple years ago and added extensions for a second bolt on each side. Those came off fine since they are accessible from inside the car. But the OEM bolts (the little carriage-style square-head bolts that slide in the inset rails) weren't having it. Rusty, muddy, they were not interested in coming off. After cleaning, PB plaster, and heat managed to get them a bit loose but the channel on this car was already banged up and the notch on the bolts just wouldn't bite, even when prying them down. Well damn. Unbolted the trans  mounts and figured I'd just yank the engine forward to clear (benefits of a little M42). 

much dirtiness

After doing that and detaching the heater hoses, and doing a quick check for any forgotten ground straps or other crap, I pulled it. Not too bad, though one person and inside a fairly crowded garage makes for some interesting maneuvering. Incidentally, two of the bolts holding the hood to the hinges snapped. guess water is getting inside the hood and getting them rusty. Will have to correct that issue when i put it back on.

And, out it came with no major issues...

Since I'm re-using the G240 and the M20 clutch stuff, I took that off the engine before putting it out of the way

Notably, the throwout bearing was pretty gritty. Clearly a lot of dust gets in there in rally. I may look into putting some dust shields on the transmission "hole" at the bottom. 

The M20 clutch, which I put in like 6-7 years ago, looks damn near new. Something to be said for a low-power engine and I'm pretty clutch-friendly on my cars it seems. Will put in a new shaft bearing, and I have a new 320i TOB to go in. You may notice the FW is not milled. On the M42 I just ground down the two bolt surrounds on the back of the oil pan so it would clear. I'll probably do the same on the M50 since it looks exactly the same.

What else, what else...

With the M42 out I could finally get a hand down behind the IM to get my VDO coolant temp sender out (it's tighter than it looks in this pic). So that will go into the M50 as well. Not sure why I ordered a stock e30 one for that, since I obviously don't use the stock gauge cluster. Doh.

The urethane transmission bushings I put on the car like 8 years ago were still holding up but starting to split a bit. Doesn't matter either way, I have new stuff from my friends at Condor Speed Shop for that...

In case you care for some reason, here's how I reinforced the trans crossmember years ago..

Then did some cleaning up since it was starting to get hard to find tools and/or walk around in the mess...

So there we go, for now.

Nice work!  I didn't think the "bitch clip" was too bad once I got the $5 H-F tool for it.

Those headers look like an awesome deal!  I wish there were $65 Chinese eBay options for my cars.

It was a nice day today, so I rolled the car out, hit the entire engine bay with Simple Green, and washed it out as well as possible. Not that I'm looking to make this a car-show engine bay or anything, but I may do a quick repaint since right now it's a mix of whatever spray paint colors I had around at any given time...

Also pulled off the rear part of the exhaust. Looks like it's been through World War 3.....this is the original exhaust from the car, or at least what's left of it. I've mended, plated, fixed it over the years of beating it's taken. And the Magnaflow muffler finally rusted through and got punched out at WMWR (no wonder the car was so loud, lol).

Got in some new coil boots to replace the oily ones that came out of the e34. While installing them, I decided to add some ground wires daisy-chained between the coils. They have two ground straps to the valve cover but more grounds is never a bad thing for something like coils. Especially since these are likely the original coils and probably need all the help they can get. 

did a few other largely uninteresting things, and talked to Jim on the phone, who managed to find an M20 shift rod and carrier in his basement stash-o-parts. So, that's one less thing I need to find. At the point I'm down to needing:

- M20 driveshaft
- some kind of exhaust setup
- electric pusher fan for the radiator. I know I can get my Spal puller in there, but it's gonna be awfully close to the front of the engine and I'd just as well have a bit of cushion up there. 

Cleaned up, came in to watch some TV and prep the e34's chassis-side X20 connector to be spliced into my original M10 C101 (the old square-style one), which was already spliced into the M42 C101. Should be pretty easy, just another thing. 

irish44j said:

[...]

This picture demonstrates the exact part of the m50 swap that make me nervous every time I consider it. 

Great progress so far! I'm really looking forward to hearing your impressions of the car once you get the new engine in.

artur1808 said:

irish44j said:

[...]

This picture demonstrates the exact part of the m50 swap that make me nervous every time I consider it. 

Great progress so far! I'm really looking forward to hearing your impressions of the car once you get the new engine in.

15 years ago, I can see that. But there are so many wiring diagrams for any and all e30 swaps out there on the web now that it's pretty easy. I'm not much of an electrical guru, but e30s really only have about 8-9 total c101 wires you actually need to use, and they almost all match the M50 (or M42) wires in color and size. What I was doing there is just cutting out the wires I didn't need (just to keep the loom smaller). I was actually thinking that it's amazing people will pay $150-200 for a pre-made harness adaptor, because this is really quite easy. The only key thing to remember is if the car doesn't have ABS, you MUST cut the ground wire that goes into the chassis-side plug where the ABS wire is on an ABS harness. Else you'll have a lot of things going "poof" lol.

things accomplished this evening:
- driveshaft fully removed (much dirt all over me)
- finished building the new wiring connector from the original c101 to the M50's x20.
- cleaned up and repainted the transmission brace
- unbolted the brake m/c from the booster in the hopes that I wouldn't have to crack open the brake lines to get the booster out. Looks like i'm going to have to :/ Side note: the outer (i.e. to the driver's side) bolt on the master cylinder is a pain in the ass to get to. Thank goodness for crow-foot wrenches :)
- reamed out the old rear shifter carrier bushing (which apparently is "bulit-in" to the bushing bracket and takes some effort) and pressed in the new Condor Speed Shop bushing. 

stripped off all the insulation from the heater blower cover (which I could almost just leave off since there's just a blockoff plate behind it where the OEM heater used to be). This is to give a bit more space at the back of the bay with the M50 in there, and also to make it easier to build brackets on it to hang the M50 wiring loom. 

aaand.....got out the Sawzall and cut the skidplate brace off. The M50 won't fit with it where it was mounted, so I'll re-mount it a bit farther forward once the engine is in there and I figure out exactly where I want it. Shouldn't be a big deal. Man, this thing has taken a beating (and remember, this is the 2nd build!)

And started cleaning up and repainting the engine bay, section-by-section

ah, one last thing. The e30 firewall has a little plastic "snorkus" drain for the HVAC intake box to drain rain water out. I think I've lost at least 3 of these and broken another couple. But, without it water pours right onto the engine valve cover, which I don't want. So this time I crammed a curved coolant hose into the hole with a generous amount of black silicone. Let's see how long this holds up. 

So yeah, nothing super exciting today. Getting down to the dirty work of little detail. 

Also we've decided to put the engine in without the transmission attached and just attach it from underneath. One of the nice things about the G240 is it's pretty small and not unbearably heavy. Seems like it'll be less hassle than the extreme angles needed to put the engine in with transmission attached. Guess we'll see in a week or two.

ya had to use black paint?  light colors, man! 

bluej said:

ya had to use black paint?  light colors, man! 

That was the intent....... but then there was just a black rattle can sitting there lol...but what is done can be re-done ;)

Me = too compulsive when paint is around. 

Ironically, you can see the remnants of 7-8 years ago when I thought painting everything beige was a good way to hide all the dirt and dust. Only problem is, it just meant the engine bay always looked dirty :)

irish44j said:

bluej said:

ya had to use black paint?  light colors, man! 

That was the intent....... but then there was just a black rattle can sitting there lol...but what is done can be re-done ;)

Me = too compulsive when paint is around. 

Ironically, you can see the remnants of 7-8 years ago when I thought painting everything beige was a good way to hide all the dirt and dust. Only problem is, it just meant the engine bay always looked dirty :)

Oh I know about the beige... or as I like to call it, rallyx camo..

bluej said:

irish44j said:

bluej said:

ya had to use black paint?  light colors, man! 

That was the intent....... but then there was just a black rattle can sitting there lol...but what is done can be re-done ;)

Me = too compulsive when paint is around. 

Ironically, you can see the remnants of 7-8 years ago when I thought painting everything beige was a good way to hide all the dirt and dust. Only problem is, it just meant the engine bay always looked dirty :)

Oh I know about the beige... or as I like to call it, rallyx camo..

unfortunately, it didn't hold up very well. Apparently it likes pickup truck body panels better than hot engine bays...

Just going to keep charging through this, even though it's not that exciting at this point. So, tonight..

cleaned up and painted most of the engine bay. I had started using black, but Josh S reminded me that black sucks in engine bays. So I had half a can of automotive aluminum and a brush, so I did a half-assed paint job. This isn't a show car ;)

Then I pulled the original 1985 brake booster, after unhooking the MC hard lines. The Porsche 944 booster should be here in the next day or two, so will have to do one minor modification to it and then it should go right in

even found some of the original firewall insulation back there. The only part of the car I don't think I've ever seen directly...that corner between the booster and fuse box.

While in there, I rerouted all my gauge wires (the VDO stuff, which I made a pigtail for on the M50 engine side), shortened and repositioned by gas tank breather tube, and opened up the fuse box to re-set both the bottom and side wire grommets, which had both somehow come off.

I also got out the dremel and cut the hole in the firewall where the DME plug and relay panel will go through. Same place as the OEM hole, just had to make it bigger and square-ish. Forgot to take a pic, but hopefully it will all be good. And I messed around with some of the e34 brackets that I took off the car - specifically the one that has the remote positive jumper nub and also mounts the x20 plug and OBD diagnostic port. I think I can make this work with a bit of modification, which will make for a cleaner overall install I think.

And finally got the last couple things on the M50 finished up. Amazon sent me a big box 'o copper washers to replace all the old ones on the senders and on the VANOS oil feed line. Gotta love Amazon....At my local autozone they charge $5.99 for like 4 of these. This box was like $14 and free shipping, or something like that.

There's where the stupid water temp sender is...requires a couple u-joints to get to with a 19mm socket....

Mineral spirits are way better than dawn. A gallon from your local gettin spot and a siphon feed blow gun are magic for cleaning up engines and engine bays. 

Gaunt596 said:

Mineral spirits are way better than dawn. A gallon from your local gettin spot and a siphon feed blow gun are magic for cleaning up engines and engine bays. 

Yeah, i use mineral spirits for certain things, but I really dislike the smell and my garage is part of the house (and my wife likes the smells even less). The limitations of a small home garage :/ So many cool things I'd be able to do if it was a standalone garage!