Alpine e30 progress/build thread
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Exciting!!!! What year/ how many miles?
Should be well worth it
Definitely exciting! I'm so pumped to start getting into it. It's from a 2002 330xi auto (ms43, didn't want to mess with converting an ms45 engine), the car had 120k on it before it was hit in the driver's front corner. I'm going to do some minor work on it like vanos seals, disa rebuild, rear main seal, secure the oil pump nut, and clean everything up really well before I put it in the car.
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What oil pan do you end up using with this swap? I can't imagine using the xi pan.
The standard E34 M50 oil pan bolts right up and uses the same gasket. For the oil pickup, most people modify the rear-sump m54 pickup, as the m50 part will not bolt up to the oil pump. I have heard that the pickup for the E38 728i works with the front sump, but have not gotten a 100% confirmation that it is compatible with the e34 pan, still investigating this.
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Was out of town for two weeks and then didn't have any time to work on the car, but I finally got to my garage this past weekend and started tearing down the engine and got it on a stand:
Got a bunch of unnecessary stuff stripped off like the AC and SAP, and pulled off all the accessories to start cleaning things up and get access to the oil filter housing. The donor car was hit in the driver's front corner and it caused the power steering reservoir to crack and dump all it's fluid onto the alternator, hopefully it didn't damage anything and I can just flush it out with some brake cleaner.
I also did a test fit on the shorty headers, might have a problem as the rear manifold contacts the block slightly. There must be a slift angle difference between m52 and m54 exhaust manifold mounting surface, so I'll have to do some massaging. It might be easier to just get some M54 specific long-tubes.
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This is the thread ive been wanting to see updates for!
Once finished, A dragster race between your car and Dan's car would be quite interesting.I'm definitely interested to see how they compare! That and I'd love to make a 1/4 mile pass or two, just for fun!
Progress has been slower than I want at the moment, but once I'm past the new year I can start really getting into it
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E38 M52tu oil pickup tube on it's way from Europe, hopefully I'll have that soon to test it with the E34 oil pan. Fingers crossed it fits!
I also finally have everything I need to properly order the adapter harness. This will integrate the drive-by-wire/OBD2/Fuel pump relays/Tach/etc into the E30 chassis and save me TONS of time as opposed to modifying an entire e39 body harness or messing around with making my own harness. My goal is to have this swap running as seamlessly as possible, but because I don't have a check panel, I'm going to skip the CAN integration, as all it would gain me is a working check engine light on the cluster.
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An E38 M52tu, nice investigative work!
Where is the adapter harness to come from?
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An E38 M52tu, nice investigative work!
Where is the adapter harness to come from?
Yup! It's the only front sump option that uses a similar oil pump to the M54. I've found info online that says it will work for this swap (and photos proving it will bold up to the pump), but they're usually in Europe and also have the E38 oil pan. Nobody could confirm if it works with the e34 pan, so I figured I'd take a chance and find out.
I'm going to be ordering a harness from this guy: https://www.r3vlimited.com/board/showthread.php?t=275468&t=275468
I've been back and forth with him over the last few months and he is very knowledgeable, and has made quite a few of these. The cost is a bit steep, but more than worth it compared to the time saved.
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So the E34 M50 pickup tube has a different flange then? What setup do most e30 guys do? Just convert to rear sump??
As far as the CEL. Take a look at the ecu pinout. If its like the OBD1/413 DME then its just a single wire for the CEL signal.
The CEL is communicated to the dash over canbus on the m52tu and later cars if I am not mistaken. There is an aftermarket canbus box that can be used to read the CEL over canbus and output to the light on the older cars dashboard.
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So the E34 M50 pickup tube has a different flange then? What setup do most e30 guys do? Just convert to rear sump??
As far as the CEL. Take a look at the ecu pinout. If its like the OBD1/413 DME then its just a single wire for the CEL signal.
Yeah, unfortunately they don't interchange. Most people with an M54 swap cut and weld the existing rear sump pickup to work with a front sump like this:
The CEL is communicated to the dash over canbus on the m52tu and later cars if I am not mistaken. There is an aftermarket canbus box that can be used to read the CEL over canbus and output to the light on the older cars dashboard.
^Yup, things like the CEL, oil level light, AC compressor/idle raise, cruise control, etc, are communicated via canbus in the newer cars, so a canbus conversion module is needed to convert those signals to a usable output for the e30. Since I don't have the check panel, cruse, or AC, the only thing I gain by having this $250+ module is a working check engine light. I'll have a working OBD2 port so I can pull that info from the DME that way, maybe with one of those bluetooth readers connected to my phone or something
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I have a cheap ebay bluetooth OBD2 reader to talk to the Torque app on my phone or android headunit in the saabaru. Havent tried datalogging with it, but for just reading codes and seeing live data it works perfectly fine.
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Worked on this today now that the weather warmed up a bit.
Against my better judgement, I bought some roll-center spacers from Garagistic since they were the only ones who still sell a 1/2" spacer (anything larger requires 17" wheels), and after fighting with them for over an hour, I realized that the hole pattern doesn't match up with the pattern on the struts. Not only that, but the ridge on one of them is too tall for the groove on the strut housing. I can probably enlarge the holes and shave down the ridge to make them fit...
After I gave up on that, I went back to working on tearing down the engine. I am swapping the e46 engine harness to an e39 harness that will allow me to run the DME in the stock location, so I went through and labeled everything as I removed it to hopefully get it right on re-assembly. I also pulled out everything related to the CCV as I'll be converting it to a catch-can/pcv setup. Did a bunch of other random stuff as well, here's how it sits:
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Do you plan on painting/ cleaning up the longblock before installing it?
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Do you plan on painting/ cleaning up the longblock before installing it?
Yup! That's whats taking me forever since I have no good way to clean parts. The current method is to bring them home and scrub them in the bathtub haha. Can't do that with the block obviously... so I'll have to figure out something else there. I was thinking that since everything is aluminum I was just going to clean it well/leave it bare, and just paint the various steel brackets.
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