the one and only e30 s52 engine swap
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These are not the updates I like here -
Bummer. On the plus side it sounds like an opportunity to make more power....
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Pain.
What actually causes the valves to contact the piston? When it over rev's, it exceeds the limits on the springs and the valve extends further than it should contacting the piston?
Ya I imagine the valves stretched a bit at the higher rpm and the cam spun faster than the valves could reciprocate, causing the valve stem to separate from the cam during the close cycle.
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Ya I imagine the valves stretched a bit at the higher rpm and the cam spun faster than the valves could reciprocate, causing the valve stem to separate from the cam during the close cycle.
Is that kind of the same principal why they offer HD springs for higher horsepower and higher revving builds?
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Is that kind of the same principal why they offer HD springs for higher horsepower and higher revving builds?
Correct
You want the lowest amount of spring force required to match the speed of the cam, as anything above is just added friction and wear.
When you over rev the spring force is not great enough to accelerate the valve fast enough to follow the cam and you get valve float, which can in turn cause the valve to contact the piston if the discrepancy is high enough.I did supertech springs in my S52 head and the spring force change becomes VERY noticeable when you try to get the cams back in...
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Correct
You want the lowest amount of spring force required to match the speed of the cam, as anything above is just added friction and wear.
When you over rev the spring force is not great enough to accelerate the valve fast enough to follow the cam and you get valve float, which can in turn cause the valve to contact the piston if the discrepancy is high enough.I did supertech springs in my S52 head and the spring force change becomes VERY noticeable when you try to get the cams back in...
Correct. Only thing that I would add is that the actual contact between valve and piston occurs due the valve bouncing off the seat. The cam profile is designed to decelerate the valve so that it gets placed "gently" onto the seat. When the valves "float", by the time the valve comes into contact with the seat, the cam has already rotated past the gentle decel part of the profile, and the valve slams hard into the seat and bounces back off, potentially multiple times, before the piston comes up and hits it.
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And as always, bad with keeping up with the updates on here.
Well not to long after I determined the motor was gonna need a full rebuild I got to ripping it out and getting things disassembled and ready for rebuild.
Other then the bent valves and scored tops of pistons/cylinder walls, the rest of the rotating assembly looked pretty good. Everything was torn down and boxed up for storage. As for cylinder walls and other bare metal surfaces I sprayed a layer of wd-40 over everything for surface rust prevention.
Originally I had intentions of diving into this and begin ordering parts/getting stuff machined to maybe have it up and going this year still but for financial reasons and being that I have a few other more important priorities right now I decided I'm gonna hold off for now.
In the mean time, I had some new door seals for the car that had come in a while back and decided to swap the old ones out. I didn't get any pics of them but the original ones were in rough shape and had holes all along the bottom portion. Water would leak in from time to time when I washed the car or it rained. It was also pretty easy to hear the outside wind and cars passing when on the highway which was getting pretty annoying so this was well overdue.
After finishing that up I gave er a good wash and topped off the gas tank. Also added another bottle of ethanol stabil treatment, seems to be doing a good job at keeping the e85 in somewhat good shape so far. Afterwards the car was parked back in storage.
I had a shelf on the other side of the shop where I was storing all the boxes with the motor parts. As for the crankshaft I had it wrapped up with plastic wrap and stood upright on the shelf cornered in by three other boxes. It was done that way in case it became unbalanced and fell it would only fall onto the cardboard. Unfortunately I hadn't made my grandpa aware of this right away and the following day he started moving the boxes of parts around that I had placed around the crank. This also caused the crank to become unbalanced and fall over and drop five feet to the concrete where it snapped in two. I am thankful that it fell on the ground and not him but I am now on the hunt for another crank.
And up tell about two weeks ago that's all that had been going on with this car.
For a period of time I had the idea of finding an m52 for cheap and throwing it in the car to still enjoy it for the summer. Unfortunately prices seemed to have go up quite a bit for those now so I kind of tossed the idea out.
Well a friend of mine messaged me saying he had an m52 he was gonna use for his car but ending up going with something else and said he would sell to me for cheap so I went and took a look at it.
I ended up bringing it home with me.
The motor was pulled apart because of a valve keeper popping out of place and dropping the valve in to the cylinder. At first I was hesitant about it since I figured the walls would be scored and would also need a rebuild which I was not looking to do with this. After looking it over I noticed no scoring on the walls of that cylinder (ran my finger nail around it) and the rest of the five cylinders looked fine. He also had it looked over by a few people who have built quite a few racing engines and said he would be fine running it.
Everything to turn this into a long block was included as well as some new gaskets. There was also a fresh cylinder head done for it that was hot tanked and decked, ready to be installed. On top of that he threw in the cylinder head that was originally from this motor which was missing the one valve and a few cam studs but the rest of the valves were in good shape and would be a good parts head for the s52.
Rotating assembly spins freely and smoothly by hand and just to be safe I pulled the piston out and inspect it. From what I can see it appears to be fine and I saw no major damage besides the scoring on the face.
So far this was my plan with this. Pop the piston back in and leave the bottom end as is. Check the block surface for any warpage and if there is any (I'm guessing there most likely will be), re deck the block using the wet honing stone method. Re seal the motor running a stock headgasket, and some arp head studs and see if I can't run high 300's on e85. This would only be a temporary motor to get the car back up and going tell I can start rebuilding the s52.
Sort of a budget build you could say.
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And the start of a new chapter begins...
After further consideration of my plans for putting back together the M52 I had picked up and throwing that in, I decided against it, rolled the car back into storage and let everything rest for the remainder of the year. Although the bottom end seemed alright to run as is, I felt foolish doing it and didn't want to go through all the time and effort of putting it back together just to possibly run into issues right away.
As things sat I slowly began acquiring parts needed for a full engine rebuild. I brought the old s52 block into a local machine shop to figure out what my options would be for piston size. After doing an inspection of the cylinder walls they said I would need to bore the cylinders 20 thousandths over which left me with going to an 87 mm piston. Initially I was good with this but after seeing possible issues with others having cylinder walls crack on them as well as not having any wiggle room with the cut rings on the HG and running into valve and piston head interference's I threw that block back up on the shelf and re-considered my options. Thankfully I had an M52 laying around now which gave me the option to run the piston size I wanted to so I landed on using that block for the rebuild.
Fast forward a few months and the block, pistons and rods were dropped off at the machine shop as well as an s52 crank that I purchased a few months prior. Unfortunately the crank main and rod journals were in rough shape and required a .010 grind and polish. I also had the machine shop do a re-balance of the entire rotating assembly. As for the block, it was bored out to 86.5 mm and honed with a torque plate installed afterwards. block was also decked with the timing cover attached and line honed for the upgraded arp main studs.
As for the cylinder head, I brought in the head that I got with the m52 and had the shop check the deck for straightness as well as vacuum testing it and pressure testing to see if it would need a valve job. Thankfully everything checked out good there. Had them run that through the hot tank to clean everything up.
Other machine work I had done included having the rod clearances checked and sized for the wrist pins and the cam shafts being polished up as they were a little scored up on the journals.
Everything when I got it back from the machine shop a few weeks later...
After spraying the entire block down with mineral spirits to remove all oils used for flash rush prevention it was time to paint the block
coat of primer first
Was pretty happy with how that turned out.
Assembly time rolled around and I ran into a small road barrier right away. First thing on the list was installing the oil squirters. I went through the six squirters I had from the blown s52 and used a small pick to test the spring pressure on each one. All of them had very weak or no spring pressure. So I dug up the six that came with the m52 and tested those. I found four of them that seemed to have fairly good pressure while the other two were very weak. Instead of just replacing the two bad ones I just ordered a whole new set of six.
With the squirters on the way I went ahead and got the main bearings installed so I could get the clearances checked.
When I went to set the crank in the motor I noticed it did not want to slide into place and was getting hung up on the thrust bearing washers. Pulled the crank out to see if I was missing something but after pulling the bearing out and attempting to place it on the journal I found there was no way it was going in and was larger then the width of the journal surfaces by a good amount.
Gave the machine shop a call and found that they had not ground down the thrust washer surfaces as they were unaware that the thrust bearing was a one piece design instead of the more common multi piece style. The oem .25 mm undersized bearings I ordered also make the thrust washer area undersized instead of keeping it oem size. After some extensive researching I was unable to find a thrust bearing on the market that came undersized but held the oem thrust washer thickness. So the crank needs to go back into the shop so they can grind that up correctly.
With me unable to do anything with the crank I switched gears and began the tedious process of gaping all my rings. Went with a slightly wider gap then oem spec for boost reasons.
I did have a hard time with my newly purchased ring gaping tool and on my first go around I messed up a top ring for cylinder #1 leaving me with too wide of a gap requiring me to order another set for that piston. Thankfully another ring set was fairly inexpensive. After that one I got a feel for how fast it took off material and the rest of the rings went pretty well.
Afterwards I switched gears and worked on getting the oil pump ready to go. Original plan was to reuse the oil pump from the blown s52 but after pulling the rotor out I found there to be quite a bit of scoring on both surfaces making the pump unusable.
Dug out the oil pump from the m52 block and found everything to be in much better shape and score free!
Purchased the Achilles upgraded oil pump shaft kit to go along with it. Went ahead and got the old shaft pressed out and the new shaft installed and set at the correct distance.
Also took the time to clean up the pump housing a bit and remove all the oil staining. Decided while I was in there I might as well do a full rebuild of the pump with an all new control valve, spring and rubber washer.
Once everything was lubed up and installed I got the pump primed and ready to go.
As for now that's all the progress I've managed to get done. Hoping to get the crank back to the machinist by Wednesday and maybe see it back by the end of the week or early next week so I can really get the ball rolling.
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Nice work! It'll be nice to see the car on the road again, all this work going into it is gonna make it so much better.
Every time I see your car, I get the forced induction bug for my S52! Lol
Thanks! I am very excited about this one. Going into this for the second time realizing all the mistakes I made on the first rebuild on top of all the knowledge I've accumulated on these engines over the years is hopefully gonna make for a much more solid power plant.
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Got the crankshaft back from the machine shop. They got .010 removed from the thrust services and the thrust bearings fit much better now! With that figured out I got to measuring all my main bearing clearances.
All seven mains came in at .002 clearance which was right within spec so I was good to get things lubed up and installed permanently.
So something that I did with the last rebuild which I decided to change up this time was involving the arp main studs. Straight from arp when you receive their set of main studs they end up being too short and the nut only engages about halfway. On the first rebuild I dropped small 1/4" ball bearings in the holes to raise the studs and be able to bottom them out. I wanted to look into this a little further then I had and see what arp actually recommends to solve this issue. Two options... Back the stud out tell you get full thread engagement or ditch the washers. After reading through what a lot of others have done it seemed the option used with the most success was just ditching the washers. So I did just that. Torqued them all down and followed the proper torque procedure and checked my crank end play with a dial indicator which came in right at .003, right within spec.
With that complete I moved on to assembling the connecting rods and pistons. For this setup I chose JE for my pistons and got them in a lowered 9:1 compression ratio. I plan to run this on a flex fuel setup so I wanted the extra room for pump gas. As for the connecting rods I chose a set of H beam rods from Molnar technologies. The fit and finish on these are very nice and will fit my power goals nicely.
Time to start dropping them in the block. In the past I've used an adjustable piston ring compressor for piston installs. There is a lot of headaches that come with using one of those and I wanted this to go nice and smoothly so I purchased a ring compressor specific to the bore spec. It was well worth the extra money spent as they made this part of the install a breeze! I also wiped all the cylinders, piston skirts and rings down with some marvel mystery oil prior to install as recommended from JE.
Checked my rod bearing clearances as I went a long and all six came in at .002 which was right in spec.
With that complete I moved on to installing the windage tray and oil pump. I got a new oil pump chain and crank sprocket which paired with the Achilles sprocket really tightened up the chain slack.
New guides and timing chain installed as well.
I got the timing cover installed as well as the rear main seal and all hardware for those torqued to spec.
On the previous motor I had my fair share of oil leaks, especially around the pan gasket area. Unfortunately when I had the baffle and turbo oil drain bung welded on it slightly warped the pan gasket service. I figured this will most likely continue if I used an oem gasket again. Instead I decided to ditch the gasket all together and run a small bead of the right stuff gasket maker. I have used this stuff in the past and it works really really well and should help fill in areas where the services may not sit completely flat.
Next on the list. Start getting the head prepped and ready to be installed!
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New crank sprocket and chain takes up a lot of the slack, did the same thing instead of installing a tensioner
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New crank sprocket and chain takes up a lot of the slack, did the same thing instead of installing a tensioner
I see a lot of people still running a tensioner even with new sprockets and a chain but I thought it was unnecessary when I felt how much chain slack there was.
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I see a lot of people still running a tensioner even with new sprockets and a chain but I thought it was unnecessary when I felt how much chain slack there was.
The tensioner I had was from SLG (think it was a PRD one they just resell) the shitty URO part wouldn’t have even worked with their included diagram/instructions for where to drill - @Rekpoint is my witness for that garbage
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The tensioner I had was from SLG (think it was a PRD one they just resell) the shitty URO part wouldn’t have even worked with their included diagram/instructions for where to drill - @Rekpoint is my witness for that garbage
Can confirm was a shitty URO part, Wasn't going to work unless modified either URO is never the answer anyways.
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So as far the head I decided on leaving it fairly stock. As for right now I don't have plans of revving past 7k so it should be safe just running the stock valve train. The head I'm using was originally from a M50 vanos. The only difference between the head from a s52 and a M50 non vanos were the springs and retainers. I kept the springs matched with the cams I was running which was from the s52 so I needed to swap those over. I went ahead and installed all new valve stem seals at the same time.
Made myself a little tool for spring removal and installation. Not quite as nice as some of the ones you can buy out there but it did the job well.
Once that was complete I began reinstalling the intake and exhaust studs. For the exhaust side I reused the N54 studs from the previous motor for ease of installation. After inspecting all the holes I noticed one of them was missing half the threads in it, wonderful. So out came the Heli-coil kit.
Springs and new valve stem seals were in. Studs were all installed. Time to go on the motor.
For the head gasket I went with a stock thickness 87 mm Athena cut ring headgasket. I tapped in some new dowels and then test fitted the gasket first to make sure everything cleared and all the cut rings fitted properly.
Everything checked out good on the HG so before installing the head I popped it back off and ran a small bead of the right stuff gasket maker around the entire timing cover area. Most say it is only necessary to dab a little where the cover meets with the block but I feared since there was only M6 bolts compressing the head down in this area there was still a chance it could possibly still leak. I should also note that before installing the head I made sure all the pistons were all shifted to as close to the center of the bore as I could to avoid any valves coming into contact when the cams are installed.
Once the head was on I threaded in the rest of the arp studs using the moly lube provided and torqued them in three equal steps to 75 ft lbs.
Trays and lifters were about ready to go in and then I noticed this in some of the bores on the exhaust tray
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Some light scoring in these areas is typically normal but this was far beyond that which pretty much made them scrap metal now. Unfortunately the cam trays that I got with the M52 were different. One of them was for a M52 but the other was from a M50 non vanos head so that wasn't gonna work out either. Thankfully after some research I found that M52 and S52's actually use identical cam trays so I took a trip out to the local junk yard and luckily found an untouched M52 from a 98 528i with trays and caps that ended up being in great shape!
Since they were pretty heavily varnished I dropped them off at a local machine shop to run through a hot tank.
With those back and cleaned up I went through my two sets of lifters from the M52 and S52. The lifters from the S52 worked well for me in the last motor but they were also pretty scored up similar to the cam trays they were in and I was unsure about the ones from the M52 and how many miles were on them. So, instead of trying to clean those up and risking some of them still causing issues I resorted to just purchasing all new ones.
Sprayed all the new lifters down with some break cleaner and compressed air to remove the protective oil that they came covered in.
Before Sliding them in to the trays I dunked each lifter in some break in oil and compressed the inner piston a few times with my fingers tell the piston felt a little softer to compress. This was done to prime them with a little oil so they weren't dry on first start. After rubbing a little assembly oil in each bore of the trays I popped them all in.
I didn't snap any pics of the next part but the install of the trays and cams went smoothly. I dropped some assembly lube on all of the lifter tops as well as on the cam caps and bearing locations on the trays.
I then began installing all the upper timing components. When I was torquing down the four bolts that held the upper timing chain guide into place I was finishing up torquing down the last bolt on the back side to 10 NM when I felt that wonderful feeling of it come back lose again when I was just about torqued. Backed the bolt back out of the hole with broken pieces of threads attached to it. Out came the Heli-coil kit, again.
Covered and taped off all areas of the motor leaving only the hole exposed. While drilling and tapping the hole I had help with holding a vacuum right next to the hole to suck up any metal shavings.
New insert was installed and I got back to installing the timing components. This time everything was torqued down to the proper spec with no issue.
When installing the front cam sprockets a new upper timing chain was used. With everything timed correctly I got the vanos unit installed with a fresh oem gasket. Once that was all completed and all bolts were torqued down to spec I spun the motor around 720 degrees to make sure everything spun smoothly and nothing was interfering with each other.
Onto installing the valve cover and getting this thing closed up.
After the timing was complete I did start installing a lot of the outer parts and accessories as well.
Two things I added from the old setup included an upgrade to my crankcase breathing setup. The single oem port I was using on the old setup I felt was just not gonna be adequate enough so I purchased the catch can kit offered by SLG. The kit is pretty slick and comes with all the drill bits and taps needed for modifying the cover and plugging the factory hole as well as all the necessary AN fittings to install for the new catch can lines.
The other addition was the ignition coils. On the old setup I ran the original 20 year old obd1 coil packs. For the most part they worked just fine but they started showing their age when during an auto-x event they got heat soaked and caused the engine to misfire. Of course I didn't wanna run into that issue again so I either had to get a new set of oem ones or try something else. New set of coils would set me back close to $600 so I looked around to see what else was out there. Well sure enough I noticed quite a few other boosted e36 guys running coils out of a b58. I then came across a company called Tunertech that actually designed a full swap kit with custom brackets to fit the coils in the e36 valve covers and the necessary pigtails to splice into the harness to run em. The main advantages of running these coils were that they produce stronger spark energy over stock, allow you to run a looser spark plug gap resulting in smoother idle and the cost of the coils come in at around half the cost of the stock ones. Because of these advantages I figured it was worth the try. One other thing I really liked was the fact that these brackets position the coils away from the down pipe so I don't have to worry about any wires burning over time.
Up next:
Clean and prepare clutch, flywheel, and trans
Wiring for ignition coils
Re fabrication to the down pipe for new turbo
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Well I reached the point where I figured it was time to roll the car into the shop. As any car that's been sitting in storage for a year it was quite dusty/dirty so I gave it a good spray down with the pressure washer before rolling it in.
I dug into the re wiring required for the new coils. The pigtails sent with the swap brackets come with matching colored wires with the old connectors for the original coils so splicing them in was pretty straight forward.
Before cutting the old pigtails off I got that part of the harness laid out on the valve cover to see what I would need for lengths.
New pigtails soldered and heat shrank on
Ordered some 1/4 inch wire wrap with an assortment of shrink tube to clean everything up.
Only thing left is to adjust the dwell timing for the new coils in tuner-studio.
On to the next big task. So I decided it was time to move on from the holset and get something that would give me a bit more flow and better response. After spending a lot of time researching options and what would fit my setup best I landed on going with a PSR5855G from pulsar. It is essentially a clone of a Garrett G30-770. Now typically for this motor, this size turbo would be a bit on the small side but being that I don't plan to surpass 500 whp with this car I figured it would be perfect. I also had them do the t51r mod to the compressor housing right away. Looking forward to the added turbo sounds that will bring.
Next thing was to address another issue I was having on my old setup. Boost creep. Although these rapidspool manifolds fit pretty nice and make for a clean look in the engine bay, their design with the wastegate location was sub par. On the original setup I wasn't seeing it to bad, maybe 2 or 3 psi of creep at the worst but that was on low boost (8 psi). I feared with the new setup and plans of turning it up quite a bit more that it would get worse. Instead of spending more money on a different manifold I chose to reuse this manifold and run the wastegate right of the turbine housing as there is no better location for boost control.
(pic of the old setup and waste gate location)
So without further a do I had my buddy swing by with his much better tig welding skills and lend me a hand. Started on getting the down pipe adapted to the v band flange for the new turbine housing. Used one of the old cylinder heads I had laying around as a spot for supporting the manifold.
Waste gate pipe was cut back to the flange and capped off.
While he was working on that I switched over and worked on getting the freshly cleaned flywheel, clutch and trans installed.
Before I dropped the engine in the car I wanted to get the Jesus bolt torqued down. Found some scrap steel laying around that I was able to drill out to fit the harmonic balancer hub. With my buddy there welding on the manifold I had him quick weld it to some rebar for a handle and voila! We did end up sliding a cheater bar over the rebar to add extra leverage. For a quick thrown together tool it worked awesome for holding the hub to get to that 300 ft lbs.
With that in we got the manifold bolted up and figured out our new placement of the wastegate.
Cast iron drills much easier then I expected.
Although it drills easy, it is not so easy to weld. In order to avoid cracking the housing from the stress of the weld we first needed to heat up the entire housing with an acetylene torch to roughly 600 degrees.
After the welding was complete we wrapped the housing in a turbo blanket as an insulating barrier and monitored it with a temp gun to make sure it was cooling down slowly as letting it cool down too quick can also potentially cause stress cracks.
It was now time to pipe the waste gate. I personally really liked the much more mellow sound of the wastegate recirc'd back into the exhaust pipe for a street car vs just dumping it out the bottom somewhere. Luckily enough we were able to reuse most of the old wastegate pipe to route it back into the exhaust. Overall, I was pretty happy with the results and look forward to many boost creep free pulls in the future!
I also went ahead and had a elbow welded on to the compressor housing. My original plan was to run a silicone elbow there but with the smaller frame on this turbo, the elbow was touching the manifold and I feared it would melt it.
To keep engine bay temps down I got a new turbo blanket that better fits this housing and drilled a 2 inch hole in it to accommodate for the wastegate flange. Rest of the down pipe I wrapped with some heat wrap.
After wrapping this up I got all my an lines made up for the oil drain and cooling lines and installed them right away. Being that this turbo was ball bearing it meant I now had to run water to keep it cool. Ran the water inlet off the third port on the cylinder head next to the Coolant temp sensor. I chose to run the water outlet down into the block drain port.
Moved on to the intake side of things. Got the harness back into the car and hooked all up. As for the intake manifold I chose to use some plastic epoxy on the IAC port underneath so I didn't have to worry about that causing a leak.
Manifold is in and everything hooked up underneath. Also got the shifter linkage, driveshaft reinstalled and clutch pedal bled.
Fuel stuff showing up early this week. Lots of other little things to run and tighty up but the to do list is getting shorter!
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nice progress!
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nice progress!
Rally road has something similar to that I had considered getting. I decided against it though after seeing the amount of success guys were having with just epoxying in a new oem one. I personally haven't found anybody mention anything about the epoxied in oem ones failing.
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