YoungCR

Having records of glow plug issues but no records of replacement I figured might as well get her done while the intake is off. I'm more or less just going with what you've done given how much you've enjoyed it without issues. I contemplated other down pipe and exhausts but seems like the consensus on the Facebook group its the Buzzken fits the best as well. I'll be doing the install myself so just want things to be straight forward given all these parts going on. Trans tune is on the future list, suspension refresh comes first. I ordered new struts as well as they've failed and will tackle the rest of the suspension next fall after the tires are shot and ready for replacement. 

Crawled under the X5 for the first time to get the the main parts list off the transmission. Also installed the K&N VF3019 cabin air filters. 

Below is a cross reference for the Tune My Euro E70 100k restoration/maintenance list to FCP OE or OEM parts for better prices/warranty. Certainly needed at 150k now and many are while you're in there with the intake manifold off and added power from the tune. 
FCP EURO M57 Sleeve kit for 6HP transmission 31.4mm Automatic Transmission Valve Body Sealing Sleeve ZFS-0734317371 40.7mm Automatic Transmission Valve Body Sealing Sleeve - ZF 24107520715 25.9mm Mechatronic Sealing Sleeve ZFS-0734317370 x2 Mechatronics Sealing Sleeve ZFS-0501216272 Automatic Transmission Adapter Plug ZFS-0501215718 GA6HP26Z Automatic Transmission Service Kit - 24117571227KT3 Mechatronic Solenoid Kit (6HP21 6HP28) - ZF 1068298047 My parts list 1068-050-045 is not listed on FCP's product page but these pages have more complete references. https://www.thectsc.com/products/solenoid-kit-6hp21/28-e-shift-39-130.html https://www.automaticchoice.com/en/6hp19-sol05 Valve Cover Gasket - Elring 11127796378 Water Pump - Graf 1151780106 Blue Silicone Vacuum Hose (5 Meters) - CRP 11731259996 Thermostat Assembly - Mahle 11517805811 Comprehensive Glow Plug Service Kit - 12237807277KT1 Turbocharger Oil Line - Genuine BMW 11427795971 Turbocharger Oil Line Gasket - Genuine BMW 07119905041 x4 Pipe Exhaust-Gas Pressure - Genuine BMW 13627812806 Gasket Ring (A12X15,5) - Elring 13627811934 x2 Mass Air Flow Sensor - Bosch 0281006147 Throttle Body Gasket - Genuine BMW 13547792098 Preformed Seal - Genuine BMW 13718596850 Intake Pipe Pipe Seal - Genuine BMW 11617790547 Turbocharger Gasket - Genuine BMW 11617796622 Preformed Seal - Genuine BMW 11617796621 Serpentine Belt Kit - Continental 6PK1893 A/C Accessory Drive Belt - Continental 64557809801 Harmonic Balancer - Corteco 11238511371 Engine Coolant Pipe O-Ring - Genuine BMW 11517788984 Engine Coolant Outlet Flange - Genuine BMW 11127806196 Gasket - Genuine BMW 13717799839 Additional Purchases Automatic Transmission Oil Cooler Thermostat (E70 E71 E72) MAH-TO693 DOT 4 LV Brake Fluid (1 Liter) PEN-1224116 x2 Tune My Euro CCV Hose and O-Ring for BMW Diesel 3.0L Engine - M57 - X5 35D, 535D and 335D (AAR2238) Vacuum Hose Splice (10 pack) (AAR2486) Sonnax ZF6 GEN2 Zip Kit TuneZilla FlashZilla v3 Malone 2.5 Tune ECS/Turner VRSF M57 Downpipe & Midpipe Combo Upgrade - Part#: 10702041 Genuine BMW EGR Valve Gasket - E70 X5 #11717809775

This is what stopped me 😂

Car is on the ground after like 14 months on jackstands lol - slapped the driveshaft/exhaust/heat shields back in, got the front suspension in and torqued. Bled the brakes/clutch and thankfully had no leaks after I remade all the lines when I ditched the abs. Shouldnt reeeeaally need to get back under the car anymore other than to hook up the wideband 
 
the press was able to straighten out the bend in the skid plate pretty easily 


Tomorrow going to start on the wiring in the engine bay/wideband/possibly IAT sensor.
 

It is stainless steel, that is a grease zerk
 
https://leogranderacing.com/products/greasable-stainless-steel-clutch-fork-pivot-pin

Oh yeah, its gonna get fully detailed at my work, document/photograph everything, and submit the cost to insurance.

Looks fantastic, nice work!

This is what stopped me 😂

I was watching this video and all the sudden a very recognizable e36 made an appearance at ~20 seconds in!
 

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!
 

Well that’s pretty wild and unfortunate 🙄 

https://stanceworks.com/forums/showthread.php?34029-Touring-International/page42
 

Yeah we’ve talked at the e30 picnic a few times over the years. That would be awesome! Does the AEC still do a yearly car show as well? I used to put that one the calendar here. My in-laws live in mineral point, I get down there a few times a year.

I lol’d that the price went from $500 for anyone to $2500 for the person who actually holds the title 😂 I would hope between the info of these two they’d have figured out the whereabouts of the car.

What a small world!! My son (David_R04) is at Platteville with the the AEC.  And of course, once they saw his E34, got drafted into working on "the euro".
Anytime your in the area get with David. He would be glad show you around.
 

Hadn’t checked in on “the euro” in a while, first videos I’ve seen of it running and driving but it’s been back together for a few years now with the M30B35 swap I sold with it. Car sounds great, I’d love to see it in person. 

Hadn’t checked in on “the euro” in a while, first videos I’ve seen of it running and driving but it’s been back together for a few years now with the M30B35 swap I sold with it. Car sounds great, I’d love to see it in person. 

Nice score!

I'm going to see both in April.  My wife has injected them into my Spotify recommendations so I'll have a nice bluegrass mix going then Spotify hits me with those two and I'll blind skip every time.  I'm sure they're gonna put on a great concert but the music does nothing for me.

Bought a Otofix BT1-Lite, same as a Autel MaxiBAS BT506 for 1/2 the price, to help with some charging system issues on other vehicles but I tested everything in the driveway for fun. Failed the first test but I didn't know the rating on the battery and the terminals in the engine bay could use a cleaning. Pulled the trunk cover to find a OEM battery and tested again from there directly. I don't have any records of it being replaced. Its state of charge is still 100% if it is a 570 cca like I think it should be so thats cool but certainly will keep a close eye on its heath. Starter & Alternator passed 
20230210X5BatteryTest.pdf
 

The thought of a V12 Z8 made me so happy.  It makes me want an Alpina even more after hearing so much about them.

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.

I’ve driven a few. The first gen R53 is the only generation you should buy from what I’ve heard and they aren’t perfect either but others are plagued with more problems than they are worth.

"You were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!"

I’m such a slacker and forgot to post this, but Santa got me an awesome print of the Madison lakefront and some awesome stickers, thanks again! Favorite gift of the season!