Author Topic: Engine Swap Project & Checklist (Read 26305 times)

bmwman91 · « **Reply #30 on:** June 15, 2012, 01:55:49 PM »

More progress...

I am done fabbing up the air box-MAF adapter plate. As of now it looks a little rough. Hopefully I will have a chance to drop it off for some bead blasting and powder coating at lunch today!

I used a bunch of tack welds to hold the tube to avoid warping things too much. The MIG welder was set to 75A, which gets very good penetration on 16ga steel. It almost burned through in a couple places where I wasn't working fast enough! So it is sound, structurally. I will just use some silicone RTV to seal everything up after this gets powder coated. The bead blasting should give a nice matte finish on the outside, hopefully similar to that of the plastic air box. The inside isn't visible, but I want it pretty too lol...and that will ensure that all blobs of slag are removed so that they can't fall off and get into the motor. I spent a lot of time with a grinding wheel, Dremel, hand files and wire brushes/wheels getting the welds cleaned up. Some welds were just too hard to get at, so I let them be. God, why am I so anal retentive about the inside looking good lol...so silly.

bmwman91 · « **Reply #31 on:** June 24, 2012, 06:41:33 AM »

I got the adapter back from the powder coating place. They bead blasted, acid dipped and painted it. I went with a matte/flat black + texture coating, and it looks AWESOME! Now I need to figure out how to get the cosmoline off of the plastic air box top so that it looks as good as the adapter, without damaging it. Any tips for that?

I would post photos, but I am sitting a good 6400 miles away from it right now (business trip). I'll post up some pics when I get back in 2 weeks. The motor is also scheduled for delivery on 7/13 and I will probably take the following monday/tuesday off of work to take care of the big ugly list in the original post!

Gerta318is · « **Reply #32 on:** June 29, 2012, 03:13:35 PM »

Pure awesome!

bmwman91 · « **Reply #33 on:** July 09, 2012, 05:06:11 PM »

Alrighty, I am now done with the top of the air box and the MAF adapter! It doesn't quite qualify as "stock" but it is pretty clean for a DIY air intake mod. The metal adapter is powder coated with a flat textured black, and the air box plastic was cleaned and painted with some satin black epoxy paint.

Not too bad...

The seams/gaps are sealed with black silicone RTV. That should be perfectly fine for this application.

wazzu70 · « **Reply #34 on:** July 09, 2012, 06:42:34 PM »

Looks really nice!

bmwman91 · « **Reply #35 on:** July 19, 2012, 12:54:45 PM »

Alrighty, I am basically done with the retrofit now. All I need to do is paint the bottom housing & little socket thingy.

I was pulling the pictures off of my camera and came across some from my last business trip to China that I had forgotten about. My last day there was spent in Hong Kong and it was the last weekend of the Dragon Boat Festival.

My hotel room had a pretty sweet view of HK Harbor. HK is easily my favorite city in the world (NYC'ers forgive me!). I rarely go there for business, aside from passing-through, but I have been there for vacation a couple of times. My fiancee speaks Cantonese, so it's nice when we go since I have my own personal "tour guide" lol. Her dad lives & runs a business there, so we basically get to stay for free.

Anyway, time for more car-nerd stuff.

I wanted to use the three stock mounting points (two screw slots on the fender, rubber nub thingy down on the frame rail). The screws were already taken care of, so I went to work getting things working with the rubber nub.

I had some 1.25" black nylon rod stock laying around, so I stuck it in the lathe and did my best to duplicate the cup geometry found in the stock air box. I put the thing into a vise and eyeballed an angle, and then used the mill to cut one end at an angle so that it would sit tangent to the box bottom.

It is held in place by two screws, from the inside of the box. The nylon part had M6 thread inserts installed because...well, plastic threads...you know.

How does it fit? Well, not too bad really. With everything just sitting there, the MAF is only 5mm off, which is not an issue at all since the rubber boot has probably 20mm of flex in it before I would start worrying about stressing it.

I stuffed on an ugly old rubber coupling and everything is great!

Here's my little creation, happily sitting on the nub.

I wanted to get a better fit between the curved housing and the flat face on the cup. So I wrapped the housing in saran wrap, gooped a bunch of plastic-weld epoxy onto the cup and then screwed it all together for a few hours.

After it had a couple of days to cure, I started cleaning it up on the lathe.

The epoxy actually cuts pretty well, if you are using a low enough feed rate. I had the lathe set to 0.0011" per revolution which worked perfectly. No chipping! A super sharp tool also helps.

So here it is, all cleaned up.

Assembled...just needs a little paint.

bmwman91 · « **Reply #36 on:** July 27, 2012, 04:55:30 PM »

Teddy from MM just gave me a call to update me on the motor's status. It looks like I am getting an upgrade to a 240mm M30 clutch/flywheel arrangement due to a shortage of M20 flywheels and the impending deadline where I need the motor. The whole clutch/flywheel assembly will probably come in ~2.5lbs heavier than the lightened M20 setup I had ordered, but that's fine since this clutch will basically be indestructible on an M42.

As it all stands now, they are putting the cams in the head and everything should be good to ship on Monday. MM is going to send the motor as a "high priority" shipment and I'll have it on my doorstep on Thursday. They were very apologetic about the delays & a mix-up about when the motor was shipping, but I don't mind too much since they are really nice and are super patient in talking through all of the finer points of the motor over the phone. As long as I get it by next thursday, I am good since I am on call for mandatory jury selection. The good County of Santa Clara sent me a nice random letter saying that I failed to show in May and that I get one more chance to serve before I have a warrant with my name on it, despite not having proof of summoning me in the first place.

I am also hoping to test out my MAF converter on my sister's E36 318iS this weekend to make sure that everything is golden there. Bench testing it indicates that it is good to go, but I want to make sure.

The M30 air box is also complete. The bottom & cup thingy were all painted with satin black epoxy paint to match the top, and it looks really slick. I will get the pictures posted soon.

Nick_318is · « **Reply #37 on:** July 31, 2012, 09:20:50 AM »

Excellent news on the motor. Can't wait to see pics/video of it in the car.

Nice pics of Hong Kong, looks like you were there on one of the few days where it's clear and not filled with smog.

bmwman91 · « **Reply #38 on:** July 31, 2012, 10:45:45 AM »

Quote from: Nick_318is;114021

Excellent news on the motor. Can't wait to see pics/video of it in the car.

Nice pics of Hong Kong, looks like you were there on one of the few days where it's clear and not filled with smog.

HK is sort of hit-or-miss with the smog from the mainland. Whenever I have been there in the summer (the rainy season), the air has been clear & nice despite the ridiculous heat and humidity. It is the winter time when the air gets gross and smoggy, although the temperatures are almost pleasant. You just can't win lol!

tfrain · « **Reply #39 on:** July 31, 2012, 11:14:41 AM »

that airbox work is a thing of beauty. You should be immensely proud of it!

wazzu70 · « **Reply #40 on:** August 01, 2012, 12:12:28 PM »

Make sure the M30 flywheel/clutch assembly will fit in the getrag 240 bellhousing. I bought a M50 lightweight flywheel and clutch setup which did not fit as the pressure plate diameter was too big.

I compared the M20 pressure plate to the M50 and the M20 is about 20mm smaller in diameter from an eyeball measurement.

My solution is to switch to a ZF320 since I wanted to go that route eventually anyway.

Just a heads up! The 240 bellhousing is small!

Freak · « **Reply #41 on:** August 02, 2012, 01:33:46 PM »

Quote from: bmwman91;113647

:confused:

One word....

bmwman91 · « **Reply #42 on:** August 02, 2012, 02:38:15 PM »

Quote from: wazzu70;114037

Make sure the M30 flywheel/clutch assembly will fit in the getrag 240 bellhousing. I bought a M50 lightweight flywheel and clutch setup which did not fit as the pressure plate diameter was too big.

I compared the M20 pressure plate to the M50 and the M20 is about 20mm smaller in diameter from an eyeball measurement.

My solution is to switch to a ZF320 since I wanted to go that route eventually anyway.

Just a heads up! The 240 bellhousing is small!

Hmmm, this thing had better fit. I asked MM over the phone if they had done this on an M42 before and they said that they do it all the time. The M42 flywheel is 215mm in diameter, the M20 is 228mm and the M30 is 240mm. I will be mightily PISSED if this doesn't fit!

wazzu70 · « **Reply #43 on:** August 03, 2012, 11:36:10 AM »

Just make sure they realize the e30 transmission has much less room than the e36 unit!

There is room for the flywheel, the diameter of the pressure plate is the issue.

bmwman91 · « **Reply #44 on:** August 04, 2012, 12:07:26 AM »

Well, I will keep my fingers crossed. The clutch parts will arrive early tomorrow morning. MM indicated that they use M30 flywheels/clutches with M42's and Getrag 240's all the time.

I made some progress today. The old motor is out and I am swapping some things onto the new motor. I will be using the tranny from the 318iS I wrecked in 2005 since it has a lot less miles on it and I remember it shifting better in cold weather. Most of today was spent getting things cleaned up and replacing all of the clutch hydraulics.

I didn't get as much done today as I wanted, but I was taking frequent breaks and running a couple of errands. Renting a canopy thing to work under was a good call since the sun really starts to beat on you! I also had to bike 6 miles to pick up some special BMW input shaft grease and then 17 miles to get from my place to my parents' place where my car is, with a ~30lb backpack full of car goodies, laptop stuff, and some changes of clothes since I am spending the night here.

I will be taking my time over the next two days since MM got behind and will be mailing me my chip and injectors on Monday, arriving Tuesday. They say I can run the thing with a stock tune & injectors if I don't floor it, but I don't want to swap fuel rails so I will wait to do final assembly until the injectors come. Being that I am on call for jury duty on Monday, I will just rent the cheapest car I possibly can for two days so that I don't get into trouble.