timmer

I have a really hard time walking by a nice classic BMW in need of resurrection.
Here is "Emery". She's a 1974 Bavaria 3.0s that has been parked as part of a collection since 1984.  We've have been wanting a 2002, but finding nice ones without taking out a second mortgage is near impossible. 
Cruising FB marketplace, we found this Bavaria and decided take a peek at it.  The first time I saw a Bavaria was at the Vintage in 2022, and there only was 3 of them. 
So, here she is!!  I'm working though getting her running again after sleeping for the better part of 40 years. I've been going through everything; drained the fluids, and inspected the cylinder bores.
I have some wiring issues to clean up, and have replaced the starter so far, but she will be ready to start up soon!  New tires are on order for a set of basketweaves that will be going on her to replace the '80s Keystone wheels.  
I Make poor financial decisions, lol.  The Shop is officially full!

Come on over to the Waupaca Airport on May 11, 2024 for some wings and wheels at this year's Badger Bimmers Spring Picnic!!!
We will have use of the hangar, and food will be available for purchase. (Or you can bring your own)
Parking will be on the grass, we'll be sure it's mowed and level before you come. Any questions, let me know!!
Hope to catch you there!!
 
https://facebook.com/events/s/badger-bimmers-spring-picnic/1507363836828817/
 

Thanks!  The only differences are this one has heated rear seats, and it doesn't have ventilated seats or a HUD like the 2011 does.  It has all the good stuff that comes with the premium and cold weather packages though.
Gonna start on paint correction and detail today... 
 
 

A couple of years ago, I was at a friend's party when I saw this X5d roll up. Intrigued, I found out the owner was the mother of my buddies wife.  I got to chatting and found out she bought it new, and had it meticulously serviced at a local BMW dealer. 
I asked that she was ever to sell it, to let me know.  She firmly said she doesn't plan on selling anytime soon because she loves it so much.
Well, in December she called and said she is finally getting a new vehicle in the springtime.  We worked out a deal to purchase and I brought it home a week ago.  It had a CEL for the  glow plug module when we picked it up, and knocked some money off.for us 😁
It is emissions in tact, with a recent DPF replacement.  I immediately checked the coolant temp and found it to be at 158. 🤷🏼‍♂️. You would think a dealer would check this.....  Otherwise it needed absolutely nothing.... This lady brought it to the dealer for every little thing, with over $14k in service work in the last two years, with a total of all repair receipts since new of $38,844.42! 😳
Off to Cascade German Parts and FCP Euro I went and filled up my shopping cart with a thermostat, glow plugs and module, gaskets,  swirl flap delete, coolant flange, and a pcv hose. 
I went to work this week and got it all fixed up.  I don't plan on hitting a pothole until a problem comes about since everything is new.  CBU was surprisingly not bad considering the 145k miles.    
This will become the new garage queen, with the potholed 2011 becoming the daily. 
  
Sometimes we get lucky!!

A couple of years ago, I was at a friend's party when I saw this X5d roll up. Intrigued, I found out the owner was the mother of my buddies wife.  I got to chatting and found out she bought it new, and had it meticulously serviced at a local BMW dealer. 
I asked that she was ever to sell it, to let me know.  She firmly said she doesn't plan on selling anytime soon because she loves it so much.
Well, in December she called and said she is finally getting a new vehicle in the springtime.  We worked out a deal to purchase and I brought it home a week ago.  It had a CEL for the  glow plug module when we picked it up, and knocked some money off.for us 😁
It is emissions in tact, with a recent DPF replacement.  I immediately checked the coolant temp and found it to be at 158. 🤷🏼‍♂️. You would think a dealer would check this.....  Otherwise it needed absolutely nothing.... This lady brought it to the dealer for every little thing, with over $14k in service work in the last two years, with a total of all repair receipts since new of $38,844.42! 😳
Off to Cascade German Parts and FCP Euro I went and filled up my shopping cart with a thermostat, glow plugs and module, gaskets,  swirl flap delete, coolant flange, and a pcv hose. 
I went to work this week and got it all fixed up.  I don't plan on hitting a pothole until a problem comes about since everything is new.  CBU was surprisingly not bad considering the 145k miles.    
This will become the new garage queen, with the potholed 2011 becoming the daily. 
  
Sometimes we get lucky!!

Come on over to the Waupaca Airport on May 11, 2024 for some wings and wheels at this year's Badger Bimmers Spring Picnic!!!
We will have use of the hangar, and food will be available for purchase. (Or you can bring your own)
Parking will be on the grass, we'll be sure it's mowed and level before you come. Any questions, let me know!!
Hope to catch you there!!
 
https://facebook.com/events/s/badger-bimmers-spring-picnic/1507363836828817/
 

Calendar marked!

Thanks!  The only differences are this one has heated rear seats, and it doesn't have ventilated seats or a HUD like the 2011 does.  It has all the good stuff that comes with the premium and cold weather packages though.
Gonna start on paint correction and detail today... 
 
 

A couple of years ago, I was at a friend's party when I saw this X5d roll up. Intrigued, I found out the owner was the mother of my buddies wife.  I got to chatting and found out she bought it new, and had it meticulously serviced at a local BMW dealer. 
I asked that she was ever to sell it, to let me know.  She firmly said she doesn't plan on selling anytime soon because she loves it so much.
Well, in December she called and said she is finally getting a new vehicle in the springtime.  We worked out a deal to purchase and I brought it home a week ago.  It had a CEL for the  glow plug module when we picked it up, and knocked some money off.for us 😁
It is emissions in tact, with a recent DPF replacement.  I immediately checked the coolant temp and found it to be at 158. 🤷🏼‍♂️. You would think a dealer would check this.....  Otherwise it needed absolutely nothing.... This lady brought it to the dealer for every little thing, with over $14k in service work in the last two years, with a total of all repair receipts since new of $38,844.42! 😳
Off to Cascade German Parts and FCP Euro I went and filled up my shopping cart with a thermostat, glow plugs and module, gaskets,  swirl flap delete, coolant flange, and a pcv hose. 
I went to work this week and got it all fixed up.  I don't plan on hitting a pothole until a problem comes about since everything is new.  CBU was surprisingly not bad considering the 145k miles.    
This will become the new garage queen, with the potholed 2011 becoming the daily. 
  
Sometimes we get lucky!!

Come on over to the Waupaca Airport on May 11, 2024 for some wings and wheels at this year's Badger Bimmers Spring Picnic!!!
We will have use of the hangar, and food will be available for purchase. (Or you can bring your own)
Parking will be on the grass, we'll be sure it's mowed and level before you come. Any questions, let me know!!
Hope to catch you there!!
 
https://facebook.com/events/s/badger-bimmers-spring-picnic/1507363836828817/
 

A couple of years ago, I was at a friend's party when I saw this X5d roll up. Intrigued, I found out the owner was the mother of my buddies wife.  I got to chatting and found out she bought it new, and had it meticulously serviced at a local BMW dealer. 
I asked that she was ever to sell it, to let me know.  She firmly said she doesn't plan on selling anytime soon because she loves it so much.
Well, in December she called and said she is finally getting a new vehicle in the springtime.  We worked out a deal to purchase and I brought it home a week ago.  It had a CEL for the  glow plug module when we picked it up, and knocked some money off.for us 😁
It is emissions in tact, with a recent DPF replacement.  I immediately checked the coolant temp and found it to be at 158. 🤷🏼‍♂️. You would think a dealer would check this.....  Otherwise it needed absolutely nothing.... This lady brought it to the dealer for every little thing, with over $14k in service work in the last two years, with a total of all repair receipts since new of $38,844.42! 😳
Off to Cascade German Parts and FCP Euro I went and filled up my shopping cart with a thermostat, glow plugs and module, gaskets,  swirl flap delete, coolant flange, and a pcv hose. 
I went to work this week and got it all fixed up.  I don't plan on hitting a pothole until a problem comes about since everything is new.  CBU was surprisingly not bad considering the 145k miles.    
This will become the new garage queen, with the potholed 2011 becoming the daily. 
  
Sometimes we get lucky!!

A couple of years ago, I was at a friend's party when I saw this X5d roll up. Intrigued, I found out the owner was the mother of my buddies wife.  I got to chatting and found out she bought it new, and had it meticulously serviced at a local BMW dealer. 
I asked that she was ever to sell it, to let me know.  She firmly said she doesn't plan on selling anytime soon because she loves it so much.
Well, in December she called and said she is finally getting a new vehicle in the springtime.  We worked out a deal to purchase and I brought it home a week ago.  It had a CEL for the  glow plug module when we picked it up, and knocked some money off.for us 😁
It is emissions in tact, with a recent DPF replacement.  I immediately checked the coolant temp and found it to be at 158. 🤷🏼‍♂️. You would think a dealer would check this.....  Otherwise it needed absolutely nothing.... This lady brought it to the dealer for every little thing, with over $14k in service work in the last two years, with a total of all repair receipts since new of $38,844.42! 😳
Off to Cascade German Parts and FCP Euro I went and filled up my shopping cart with a thermostat, glow plugs and module, gaskets,  swirl flap delete, coolant flange, and a pcv hose. 
I went to work this week and got it all fixed up.  I don't plan on hitting a pothole until a problem comes about since everything is new.  CBU was surprisingly not bad considering the 145k miles.    
This will become the new garage queen, with the potholed 2011 becoming the daily. 
  
Sometimes we get lucky!!

A couple of years ago, I was at a friend's party when I saw this X5d roll up. Intrigued, I found out the owner was the mother of my buddies wife.  I got to chatting and found out she bought it new, and had it meticulously serviced at a local BMW dealer. 
I asked that she was ever to sell it, to let me know.  She firmly said she doesn't plan on selling anytime soon because she loves it so much.
Well, in December she called and said she is finally getting a new vehicle in the springtime.  We worked out a deal to purchase and I brought it home a week ago.  It had a CEL for the  glow plug module when we picked it up, and knocked some money off.for us 😁
It is emissions in tact, with a recent DPF replacement.  I immediately checked the coolant temp and found it to be at 158. 🤷🏼‍♂️. You would think a dealer would check this.....  Otherwise it needed absolutely nothing.... This lady brought it to the dealer for every little thing, with over $14k in service work in the last two years, with a total of all repair receipts since new of $38,844.42! 😳
Off to Cascade German Parts and FCP Euro I went and filled up my shopping cart with a thermostat, glow plugs and module, gaskets,  swirl flap delete, coolant flange, and a pcv hose. 
I went to work this week and got it all fixed up.  I don't plan on hitting a pothole until a problem comes about since everything is new.  CBU was surprisingly not bad considering the 145k miles.    
This will become the new garage queen, with the potholed 2011 becoming the daily. 
  
Sometimes we get lucky!!

Got a call from the shop this afternoon with some updates. They figured out what was causing the misfire issue and it was not the coils. After rewiring the original m50 coils back in they tested it out and the issue once again presented itself. They then pulled the injectors and ran them on a test station to find that supposedly a couple of them were staying stuck open. Threw a different set of injectors in it, did a pull and the issue appears to be gone. I do feel a bit frustrated as we went down this rabbit hole of diagnosing these coils, ecu and wiring just to find out the main cause of the issue was not related to any of that and was just a few bad injectors. I am glad to hear the issue was resolved though. They did ask if I wanted to wire the b58 coils back in but I told em to just leave the m50 ones in. They had it on the dyno this afternoon so if all goes well I should be hearing from them early next week!

This aged well

Did the full transmission service a few weekends ago now and got about 2500 trouble free miles on it since. I haven't floored it yet but very happy with the improvement on the 2-3 shift. Overall the job looks more intimidating than it was but it certainly was a full weekend project. This is pretty well covered in these videos but I'll share my tips. 
I did end up pulling the transfer case cross member. People buy or fabricate a shallow Torx wrench to get at the rear pan bolts blocked by the cross member that takes 10min to remove. I unbolted the exhaust as well to get additional clearance for the passenger side center bolt, no issues with that leaking afterwards and my flange nuts were in good shape. 

 
6HP26/28 how to video. I followed this along with the TIS instructions. I would highly recommend marking the mechatronic sealing sleeve with a paint pen as I had a hell of a time getting that lined back up properly and that would've saved me the headache like the TIS suggests. 
This is a E53 mechatronic rebuild but similar enough procedure with good assembly tips. 
Mechatronic unit after removal and splitting. Split the plate this side up so the accumulator pistons and check valves don't fall out, those are reused along with the filter. 

I let the transmission drain overnight too with the mechatronic unit out and I ended up needing the full 9.5l capacity, luckily NAPA does stock the Liquid Moly Top Tec 1800 so I was able to get what I needed to finish the job. 

Just to reiterate, my E-Shift 6HP28X with with main parts list 1068-050-045 did indeed use the ZF 1068298047 mechatronic service kit as confirmed by California Transmission Supply and Automatic Choice. I even wrote to FCP Euro Support asking them about their product listing comparing to these sources and wrote back to me after a month stating that their BMW Catalog team confirmed this was not for my vehicle and to check with my local BMW Service Center. The dealers only sell the complete mechatronic unit so guessing thats why this "doesn't match my vin". Again not sure why FCP and ECS don't have as complete main parts list compatibility as those transmission sites do but I would reference those. I didn't have any luck getting into ZF's official catalog. 
Also if you are going to do the Sonnax Zip-Kit, remember that the valve body separator plate needs to be replaced as well which in my case was the A065 plate also available through Sonnax. I just ended up doing all the end plugs, pressure regulator sleeves and Clutch A & E control boost valves since I had this out and given the mileage instead of diagnosing what it might just need. Only issue I did have was having to redo 1 or 2 o-rings during assembly as they got cut on the valve bores that were still tight tolerances. Just takes time and make sure everything is well lubricated. Again it's just a tedious job but glad I did it and saved a bunch of $$$. 

If @Boris3 doesn't take it, I'll probably grab it. Always like making livery wall art out of BMW hoods when I can. 

Chassis harness is done and 99% functioning. There are small things to correct, like fogs and low beams control wiring is wrong and I need to move some pins around in the bulkhead connectors. 
Fuel lines, flex sensor etc is done i just need to mount the fuel filter.
 
ECU is mounted and one of the bulkheads is terminated.
Will finish second bulkhead and engine harness sometime this and next week. The goal is to start the engine this month. 
 
I cleaned the motor, slapped new gaskets including a headgasket and it should be ready to go. This thing sat for 4 years behind my shed. Damn chipmunk lived in the motor and stored bunch of chipmunk food in the head port. 
 
Hopefully everything cleaned fairly ok. I will pull this motor anyway and drop some forged goodies over the winter. 
 
I welded drain plug and turbo drain  and oil pan is now ready to go.
My arp flywheel bolts from bmw m10 are a bit too short. I will need to replace with 28mm bolts.
Also the tilton hydraulic throw out is 2mm too long and I will need to swap the TO piston for the shorter one. 
 
 
 
I got the steering shaft mocked up with some woodward u-joints. Will finish it once i get the e36 column in final position.
 
I decided to not run the motor NA and go for boost. I got the intercooler setup and i have a log manifold from my friends Volvo. The cylinder spacing is spot on i just need to redrill the flange for m42 bolt pattern.  I got some green top injectors that should support 200-250whp which should be more than enough to test the chassis. 
 
I also pondered the idea of running e90 cluster in  my car. I got the arduino setup with can shield and was able to control most of the cluster. Cluster talks at 100kbs and maxxecu supports 500kbs i will need to setup arduino with dual can to translate the messages from maxx to BMW but that should not be a big issue. 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 


 

 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

Very cool! I have a family reunion that weekend though sadly. 

Summer Picnic is July 8 at Waupaca Municipal Airport! 11a-3p
Bring your own lunch, or get something from Aftershock Smokers food truck.  
See you all there!!

157045 Miles Checked a few things off the punch list. Changed the oil with the handy screw in oil funnel kit when it was on sale. Also installed a mishimoto magnetic drain plug. https://www.harborfreight.com/master-oil-funnel-filling-kit-56892.html

Attempted to start the front shocks, ball joint bolt had different plans. Very seized and had to cut/punch out. Replaced with a 10.9 bolt and haven't gone back to that project yet. 

Discovered during the rear shocks replacement that the drivers rear spring had broke and wrapped itself around under the mount. Didn't notice any noise or handling issues so this was quite the surprise but apparently a common issue by 150k. 

OEM spring compressor is short but extremely expensive. Not enough room to use standard ones so just ended up using a small bottle jack and got plenty of room to pull them out. Make sure the brake line is removed from the shock mount location. 

Replaced both sides with LESJÖFORS 4208476 from Rock Auto as they were $20 cheaper each than FCP and didn't care about warranty. Top is the unbroken stock, LESJÖFOR below. Little thicker than the OEM. Replaced rear upper and lower spring pads as well. 

Finally pony up'd the $25 for the Motive bleeder bottles and was happy to toss away my gheto gatorade setup. The seal on my Motive 1100 power bleeder cap had swollen as well, FCP and Amazon don't offer the replacement. I ended up trimming a 3/8 x 2 1/4 with 1/8 center rubber washer from Menards down to 1 3/4 diameter tracing a hole saw bit. Brakes bleed with Pentosin DOT4-LV

Got all the other parts on hand, just need to purchase the tune yet and then I can dig into the major refresh items.

Well, got the break in oil dropped in and did a thorough look over of everything. I ended up using the old tune from the last setup for start up. Other then lower compression and different turbo this new setup wasn't much different from the old setup tuning wise. I figured it would probably run a little rich but still ok for idling and light throttle. Pulled the coils and plugs for ease of priming the motor and got a solid 15 psi of pressure shown on the gauge before re hooking up the fuel pump relay. Did another check over everything and then hopped in and started cranking... 
Video was cut short as we noticed a coolant leak and shut it back off to correct that before letting it get up to temp. Once it was up to temp, I got the front valance re-installed and the car lowered on the ground. Being that the engine was running well and the afr's were looking good I wanted to get it out on the road and get some more load on the rings to break em in better. The tune obviously wasn't dialed in enough for this setup to see any kind of boost but some light to medium acceleration would be fine. Went down a few country roads near the shop and besides some trouble to stay idling at a few stops, the car ran really well!
Drove it around about 15 miles before returning to the shop and draining the oil right away and changing the filter.

Also went ahead and popped the valve cover back off to re-torque the head studs. I did notice that the gasket had some coolant seeping out which was not ideal to see. I originally torqued the studs in three steps to 75 ft lbs as per arp's recommendations. I did some searching around and found that others had similar issues and followed ces motorsports recommendations of upping the final torque to 85 ft lbs to correct the issue. Re-torqued the head to 85 ft lbs and also checked the torque on all the cam caps before re-installing the valve cover.

So not to much left besides wrapping the wires up and getting things buttoned up. Got my tuning date scheduled but unfortunately that's not gonna be tell June 30th. Wish it could have been sooner but by the sounds of it everyone is booked out atleast a month for dyno tuning. Gives me plenty of extra time to really go through things so it can be fully ready to go.

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!
 

PXL_20230313_213620433_TS.mp4
Fun stuff!!! I also accumulated some parts this winter for a maintenance rally this spring! Lol. 
Most notably is the glow plug module that failed on me about a month ago... Makes for a smoky/sweet sounding cold start!
The Malone 2.5 is a safe and fun tune, I've been running for 4 years now without a hiccup.
Consider a trans tune from https://sutphintuning.com/ also!  It made a huge difference and Rod will customize it for your needs. He also has all the parts for the 6hp.  He's is a genius with these transmissions, he's even fitted an 8 speed in his E90.

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 .

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