M3Philipp

[M3Philipp]

Hello M42 friends.

I have been on M42Club before.
I lost the name of my old account. I made a new one, and will keep this one.
R3vlimited is the other E30 fansite where I'am reading and writing.
Last summer I did rebuild my M42 engine.
I decided that on M42Club, I could explain and show how I did rebuild my engine.

First I start with background about the car.
I do own an 318is E30 built in april 1990.
The car was only registered on women since 1991, till I bought the car around four years ago.
In its first year 1990, it was not registered to an actual person.
Maybe it was a showcar in a BMW carshop for potential buyers, but this is just a guess of mine, because I could not explain it in another way.
When I was new to the E30 scene, all the engine swaps that people did impressed me, and I liked the idea of replacing the M42 by a newer and more powerful BMW engine.
As time passed, I started to love the M42 just the way it is.
I changed my mind, and I wanted to keep this engine and rebuild it.

I simply wanted a brand new M42, no matter if other people told me it is not worth the money.
Drive it until it explodes, get another engine, and so on...

The day I drove to work with my 318is was special.
I knew when I shut down the engine, next time it will fire up, it will be brand new. You guys sure understand that feeling.

I started in early morning on the first day, removing the tubes, let out the coolingwater and motoroil, removing the bonnet of the car.
Almost all the things that keep the engine connected with the car.



The top of the engine was clean because I had cleaned it longer ago, when I didnt know I was gonna rebuild anyway.



A workbuddy of mine helped me to pull the engine out of the car



In the beginning we used a jack to support the gearbox, and prevent it from falling down as we removed the engine.



After around one and a half hour, the engine was out of the car, and the fun part could begin.

[DesktopDave]

Welcome back! I remember your earlier posts, especially the wheels!

[M3Philipp]

Hi Dave, thanks for fixing it...


My car as it would rest for the next three weeks.



The engine bay after the engine was just removed.
It was not possible yet to remove the exhaust manifold, so we left it in the car. The bolts were destroyed because of the rust, there were actually no bolts of it left, it was simply rusted together wit the exhaust pipe under the car.
We would fix that later.



We put down the engine on a metaltable and started to take it apart.
Inside you could see the engine did not get much oil changes, and probably bad oil was driven over a long distance.
As I made my first oil swap on the car as I bought it long ago, the oil filter looked like a mess, you never saw such a dirty filter.
Watch the black background in the head.







I did not expect that timing gears would be in this condition, I thought the teeth would be sharp, so gears would have been replaced, but that was not the case, so I will use the gears again.

[M3Philipp]

More photos.


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Now the head was off and we could take a first look at the cylinders, dont look to bad?





Now I went to preclean the parts with a pressurewasher in a washroom.
Just to remove the dirt and oil, so later we could inspect the clean parts, what could be used again, what had to be thrown away and replaced by new parts.








Collected basic parts of the motor in a big box after washing and drying.

[M3Philipp]

I prepared the engineblock. Used different kind of sand paper and a scraper before, to remove the old seals, and then make the surface clean and even.




The same goes for the bridges, piston rods.
A before and after photo.



Here we have the old clutch, it will be replaced by a new one.



Later that day, I started to sandblast parts of the engine.
After parts are beeing sandblasted, I had the option to paint them, but I did not want to do that, as I wanted to keep the original look more or less.
Because sandblasted parts have no protection against dirt and grease, you have to polish them after you did blast them.
It is a hard job and takes alot of time, but the surface will become very smooth and will look clean for a much longer time.

Some parts before the blasting.




And some parts after blasting.

[M3Philipp]

Before the polishing and after photos, to see the difference.







I also blasted, and painted pullies, dont know if this is the correct word.



The cylinderhead had to be taken apart. Remove the valves, the two sensors...
The valves were all fine, so I had to buy no new ones.






Now I could blast, polish and, and seat in the valves.

[M3Philipp]

The cylinderhead recived a first wash in a washbox with chemicalcleaner.
Later I did throw the head in a bath of another chemical cleaner over the weekend, so it will be become clean.
I could not blast the head because of the oilpaths in it.



The surface of the cylinderhead was then removed down around 5/10
Down until the rings.




Because the cylinders in the engine block were worn out in top, the block needed to be bored and new honed, and for sure, I needed four new broader pistons aswell.

The new and old piston, old original one is from Mahle, the new one KS.


Some new parts arrived.
The new clutch, new starter, new generator.
I wanted it all new instead of waiting for it to fail sooner or later.




But back to the engine block, honing and boring.







Step to other parts of the engine.
Here we did polish the crankshaft.



There were few little scratches in the camshaft mounts, so I polished these by hands.
After polishing, I did throw them into the chemical cleaning bath for twenty minutes.




Made the flywheel a bit lighter, minus 2.5 kg, or 5.5 lbs.
I could feel the difference as the car was running again.
It revs faster, and the engine brake was not as heavy as before, really liked the result of this.

[M3Philipp]

Came to the point where I could build the engine together again.
Painted the engine block simply black.







Installed the new oil pressurevalve.



This is the place where I did build the engine together.



Installing the head, front covers and so on.





Cleaned and polished the camshafts before installing.





Replaced the two watertemperaturesensors by new ones.



Putting on flywheel and clutch.




Front cover, waterpump, thermostat.

[DirtyD]

All I can say is... WOW!!!!

[M3Philipp]

Tubes and stuff, fix the mess under the intake before it appears...



Injectors were cleaned and reviced new o-rings.



Pumping oil into the engine, and coming back together.



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Now we got the exhaust manifold out of the car, bored out the old screws and replaced them by new ones.

[M3Philipp]

Renewed.






The moment where my 318is got his heart back.


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Put in water and oil.




As the car was ready for the summer.


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I did break in the engine for the first 3000 kilometers.
First oil change was done at 1000 kilometers, and it runs and sounds so much better compared to before.


M3Philipp

[keflaman]

Thanks for taking the time to post pictures and narratives. It helps me visualize the process as a whole...and makes me extremely envious!

[M3Philipp]

Thanks.

[deansweet]

Now that's some serious dedication to your auto. Car is gorgeous. Personally, I don't like the wheel color but I'm old so that might have something to do with it?
I am amazed that you polished all of those bits with hand wire brushes and a drill?! That's crazy.

Kudos to you.
How many hours do you estimate it took?
-Dean

[M3Philipp]

Took me around eight hours.