the one and only e30 s52 engine swap
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Speaking from experience?
pulled the intake mani thrice last year. 3rd time was a breeze but its annoying doing all that just to get to a pair of hose clamps.
Dan
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About time for another update...
E brake dust plates are fixed. Originally my plan was to pull the wheel bearings and hub in order to replace with new until a friend a mine came up with an idea for just reinforcing the holes in order to save myself a lot of work of pressing in new bearings and what not. Simply just cut out 4 pieces with 14 gauge stainless to the shape of the inner con-caved area and cut a new shape for the holes where the pins come through. Welded them in and re-painted the area with por-15.
Before re-attaching the trailing arms I went ahead and pulled the RTAB's and re lubed them all.
Keep them nice and quite.
New modified sub-frame bushings lubed and pressed in as well as spacers for the differential.
With a couple extra helping hands we got er popped back in.
Super excited to see how she feels now that the eccentric hardware hopefully won't be walking all over the place and that I finally get my e-brake back.
Yup, that's about it.
O and one more thing... She's gettin a turbo
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I'm excited to see my old stuff going to good use!
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Diagram from The Book of E30 Ownership
someone said:
before e30 turbo announcement:
perpetually non-running e30s ---------------------you-----running e30s
after e30 turbo announcement:
perpetually non-running e30s -------------you-------------running e30s
after e30 turbo installation:
perpetually non-running e30s -you-----------------------running e30s
Dan
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More updates!
For the last week I have been enjoying the nice warm weather of Arizona. I got back Saturday and on Sunday I headed on over to the shop and got a couple more things accomplished.
As for the rear end, I still had to re-install the brakes and got my e brake installed and dialed in, feels great!
After going through and torquing everything in the rear end I moved on to the next big thing I needed to get out of the way, fixing the exhaust. After some cutting of the y-pipe my buddy stopped by and fab'd up some small pie cuts to raise it and then tacked them in place.
Once that was secured I got the fluids drained and everything disconnected on the motor to be pulled.
raised the motor enough to get the headers pulled with ease. Threw em on the bench and welded em back up.
With the exhaust finished up and soon off to its new owner I can now turn my attention to getting the motor pulled and prepped.
After I got out of class today, I spent a couple hours over at the shop getting the motor pulled completely out of the car. Ya, that's all I got done.
A few things on the to do list before she goes back in...
- Pull the valve cover and re-torque all the head studs
- Pull the oil pan off to weld in the fitting for the oil drain line as well as a baffle for the pick up
- Replace the s52 oil filter with s54 housing
- Pull the trans to replace the input shaft seal as well as inspect the clutch
- Mount the turbo manifold and turbo
Also will need to do a bit of trimming to the battery tray in the engine bay to make room for the down pipe.
Progress is on hold tell this weekend where my goal is to hopefully get a few of these things done.
Stay tuned!
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Stay tuned!
This is something that should be in your research!
Getting after it I see! Good work!
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I yearn for a large garage that I could work on things year round.
Ya, I am pretty spoiled. I continue to remind my grandfather every chance I get how grateful I am to be able to use some of his shop space for my projects, I literally wouldn't be able to do this without it.
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Mike when he starts to realize what he got himself into for tuning and wiring.
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^beautiful shot!
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More updates!
Thankfully with this weather being so shit forcing class to be cancelled it's given me more time to get things done at the shop.
With the motor out of the car I went ahead and popped off the valve cover and re-torqued all the head studs. Luckily I did this as I got a 1/4 turn out of a few of them.
Cams look good as well as everything else visually.
After this I went ahead and popped on a new valve cover gasket and torqued her down. Time to pull the trans.
Overall clutch looks fine. Also took a look at the input shaft seal and surprisingly saw no dampness or leaks. Unscrewed the fill ports while the trans was sitting on the bench and the level was right up to the top. Started taking a look at the oil pan gasket and I believe the leak was coming from that area which is great cause pan is coming off anyways.
With the oil drained I got the stock oil filter housing removed. Took a thorough inspection of the bottom end and was quite pleased with the way everything is looking. Threw the oil pan on the bench and scrubbed er clean as well as drilling out the rivet holding in the stock e34 baffle.
Following day my buddy stopped by and welded in the new Achilles baffle.
Once done with that we mounted the pan back on the engine with a couple bolts. Mounted the manifold and turbo and got a location for the oil drain line -12 an fitting. Pulled the pan, drilled a hole and welded er in.
With that done I got to work on removing all the old rtv, always a good time
Now, initially I ran a oil pan gasket with rtv on both sides. But, this time I decided to just run rtv with no gasket and I think it's gonna seal just as good if not better then with the gasket, we shall see.
Also got the s54 housing cleaned up and mounted with a fresh gasket.
After re-mounting the trans and getting the manifold and turbo all torqued down on the motor it was about ready to be put back in the car. Unfortunately a good chunk of the battery tray has to be cut out for clearance of the down pipe so with the engine out of the car I went at it with a dremel and cutting wheel.
I didn't cut it all the way back as I wanted to keep the holes where the plastic cover sits so that should do.
Ah and one more thing! when I initially was pulling the drive shaft out two little screws fell on the ground. After closer inspection I found that they were part of the shifter assembly.
Seeing this, I went ahead and pulled each screw and threw a dab of red loctite on each one and tightened em down good. Hopefully won't be having this issue no more, I am still trying to figure how the hell I didn't lose them in the first place.
With that all said and done it was time to drop er back in the car.
Let me just say If I'm gonna be pulling this out a lot in the future for reasons we will not talk about I will be looking into doing a removable core support as this was about the biggest bitch to get in with the turbo and manifold already on. With it all bolted back up in the car everything does fit pretty well though.
Next couple things on the list to get done include:
- Building a intercooler bracket
- Running some water through the heater core to figure out whats going on there
- Hopefully have some heat tape showing up in the mail here soon and then I can go ahead and get the exhaust installed to see if their are any fitment issues there.
- re-install radiator. With the intercooler I will no longer have room for a pusher fan so I have decided to order up a puller fan and were gonna see if we can make that fit otherwise I'm fucked.
- What I'm gonna be doing for wiring and tuning is still be determined...
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Ben did a removable core support on his car.
This thing is gonna fuck though.
Dan
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Man this brings back memories.
Putting motor in or removing, turbo on or not.
Option Number A: Leave turbo off, attach turbo in car, make custom wrenches and use crows foot wrenches to tighten it down as best as you can before your knuckles are at the bone.
Option Number B: Leave turbo on, torque bolts well while out of car, hate yourself for leaving it on while lowering it into the engine bay.
Option Letter 3: Take sawzall to that damn core support that is always getting in the way...I'm glad to see the clock marks were still visible on the cold side of the turbo, did you throw that snap ring in there?
I see you already trimmed your alternator cooling duct, good work. Those lines will wrap quite snugly over the alternator, but it looks dope as hell once it's in there.
- Put the front hose on first, then the one towards the rear of the engine. Fully tighten the first one before going to the second.I look forward to hearing this thing absolutely roasting the stock wheels wrapped in old snow tires
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I'm glad to see the clock marks were still visible on the cold side of the turbo, did you throw that snap ring in there?
I have not, I need to get the beauty cover trimmed and in place first. I have although tested out the installation process of this snap ring and it now haunts me in my sleep.
I see you already trimmed your alternator cooling duct, good work. Those lines will wrap quite snugly over the alternator, but it looks dope as hell once it's in there.
- Put the front hose on first, then the one towards the rear of the engine. Fully tighten the first one before going to the second.Thank you for this. Oil cooler lines will be hooked up as soon as I have it mounted with the intercooler on the front. I do like how you made it so it mounts right on the bottom of the intercooler, makes it quite easy.
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