klodkrawler05 said:but I finally have enough progress that I thought it made sense to start a build thread
I thought the proper timeline was buildthread before acquiring vehicle?
docwyte said:In reply to klodkrawler05 :
Would've been kinda funny if you'd put the wagon drivetrain into the M3 convertible...
Agreed, and then post it on E46Fanatics and watch Mango and his legion go insane. I would have rocked that combo for sure!
bbbbRASS said:docwyte said:In reply to klodkrawler05 :
Would've been kinda funny if you'd put the wagon drivetrain into the M3 convertible...
Agreed, and then post it on E46Fanatics and watch Mango and his legion go insane. I would have rocked that combo for sure!
Oh man...that would have been awesome!!
Awesome swap, never gets old seeing M parts get stuffed into wagons.
What's the plan for the M3 once you're through with taking parts off it? You must have gotten a wild deal on it to be worth it to strip a clean title 6MT M3.
I did briefly consider dropping the wagon drivetrain in the m3 in a quick/dirty fashion just to have a car besides SWMBO's van, but decided it would be more work than I wanted.
I forgot about sharing this photo in my last post, prior to removing the S54 from the M3 I wanted to EWS delete the ECU to hopefully give me one less issue to deal with in the wagon. I don't own a laptop and the cord I bought isn't very long, so had to get creative:
The next week saw pretty minor progress as we took a family vacation to San Diego to celebrate surviving our first AZ summer.
Luckily SWMBO is pretty accustomed to my car antics after a dozen years together so she wasn't too surprised when I snuck out of the hotel early to run to a nearby junkyard that had a ton of BMW's in it. I found a car that had a pretty rough, but mostly in tact knockoff m3 bumper for standard width cars. This isn't the final bumper I'll run on the car, but it at least offers a temporary solution to get the car running and lines up with the added m3 oil cooler/brake ducts.
A fellow wagon I follow on social media uses this bumper and it can look acceptable when painted.
After returning home from vacation it was time to get the engine re-sealed. Unfortunately this was my first time getting this deep into an S54 and I did a few steps out of order.
After getting the oil pan off I saw evidence of the oil pump chain hitting on the oil pump. Some forum searching led me to believe this is fairly common. my front timing covers were leaking oil as well so next I dove into that figuring I could then further assess the timing chain guides and determine if I needed to order some additional parts.
And boy did I. Because it's German, you have to take the vanos off to remove the timing cover, taking the vanos off revealed that the exhaust cam hub was broke (kind of common on this motor) and that the timing chain guide for the exhaust cam was also broke (apparently also common)
I was dumbfounded by both of these discoveries because the car ran perfectly smoothly, no CEL, no weird ticks, nothing. So much so that I had been planning not to replace any of the vanos at this time because I could do that easy enough once installed in the car at a later date. Thankfully the broken tensioner and tab of cam gear were all sandwiched together in a corner of the head and hadn't caused any damage. So I ordered the full suite of new vanos unit, billet cam gear and solid chain tensioner from Beisan.
What I also discovered after this disassembly is that due to how the vanos works, after disassembling to this point, you can't roll the motor over. so I wasn't able to do rod bearings like I hoped until the top end was all back together.
those parts arrived about a week later and mid December I was able to begin putting the motor back together.
Beisan billet exhaust hub:
Solid exhaust timing chain tensioner next to old and busted:
New oil pump timing chain tensioner:
timing cover cleaned and re-sealed, new water pump, brand new Beisan vanos unit fully upgraded with viton seals and tighter drive holes to mate with the new exhaust hub:
At this point I cleaned up the garage, pushed the M3 into my work stall and we headed to MI for a month to visit family over the holidays.
nsogiba said:Awesome swap, never gets old seeing M parts get stuffed into wagons.
What's the plan for the M3 once you're through with taking parts off it? You must have gotten a wild deal on it to be worth it to strip a clean title 6MT M3.
The M3 roller is actually already sold to a fellow e46 fanatic locally down here whose been gracious (?) enough to let me continue storing the car at my house as I continue pillaging parts off it. After he purchased the roller my total investment in the M3 donor is $6500. which would be roughly the cost of just buying a motor/transmission from what I've seen these days.
I can't really fathom completing this swap (at least the way I am) without starting with a full car. There are so many dozens to hundreds of parts to swap outside of the engine itself if you're trying to make the swap be somewhat OEM. obviously the suspension/brakes/lsd, power steering rack, hoses, resevoirs, ABS, Grommets that the automatic doesn't have, different clips for the larger fuel lines, heat shields, underbody insulation, reverse light harness, interior switches, brackets etc. you'd easily spend thousands of dollars buying all of these items.
In hindsight with what I've spent on maintenance parts, vanos rebuild, rod bearings etc. I think you could probably even make an argument that buying one of the $15-20k m3's that already have the big 3 completed is an even smarter way to go because it would save so much cost + hours of labor that you'd finish the swap weeks/months faster.
Not sure what triggered this thought, but the last time I bought an e46 wagon was from a member on here, 11 years ago almost exactly!
In reply to docwyte :
Here it is!
https://bringatrailer.com/listing/2002-bmw-325i-touring-10/
This one didn't have the full body swap, and really high mileage on the shell. The E91 has the full body swap and my next E46 will be full body swap too.
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