RobZR

Pulled an all nighter last weekend but I got the car back on the road for the trip to Milwaukee. It was very nice to surprise Ben as he hadn't seen his car in 6 years. Deja vu for me driving a BMW to the Saint Kate hotel too to pick him up as I used to get customers there frequently working at the dealership.
The battery negative clamp had been cracked on this car for a while and I finally broke it taking the old dead battery out. Replaced with just a standard slightly longer cable as I never liked how tight the stock ones are. The chassis ground is the footwell side of the back seat. Also tired of traditional batteries failing even with trickle charging so I upgraded to Costco Item Number 1355853 Group Size H8 (49) Interstate AGM Battery. It won't show up in their system as a match though. 

I set myself back a little bit trying to start the car as I flooded the engine, which is super easy to do on M60's. There's a few posts on other forums form the same guy stating that he can get one started by just pulling the plugs on one bank and adding a little oil to seal the rings. I gave that a shot as it had been 7ish years probably since the last time I had done it. After not having success with that though I ended up pulling the plugs on both sides and airing it out for a couple hours while I recharged the battery and worked on the passenger door and fender. 
Door and fender swap was pretty straight forward but I did it in a hurry just to get it done. The side skirt doesn't fit right as the pinch rail must've been pulled out a little bit at the fender mounts when it was hit. I forgot to replace the door hinge sleeves too so both will come back off but I'm super happy with how these used parts matched up. Door stay reinforcement plates are a must, super simple install. I still have to replaced the drivers door as well as that one is actually ripped out. 


Very happy with how the car ran and drove though. Pulling the intake I destroyed the throttle cable bushings but glad I finally bought a pair of Billet Throttle Cable Bushings as it improved the drivability a lot getting rid of the throttle delay from the slack. 

Getting some big things off the checklist felt great and glad to be driving on of the cars again. Got a few items left on the punch list but this car will be pretty well sorted before winter storage and ready to rock next spring. 

Started working on things a month ago and have slowly been plugging away. Working on chasing the not revving past 3k issue along with coolant and oil leaks. Digging into the motor has shown its Texas roots though as I'm finding lots of dry rotted stuff. Water pump had a small leak at the bottom so that lasted 30-40k. Valley pan has never been done though so going through that whole ordeal. Also found the water pump pulley was missing a chunk 
Just like every other M60 intake though I've managed to strip 2 of those shallow T30's, even on my "bench vise". There is enough clearance around the throttle body to get an angle grinder in there to square off the head just a little bit to give the vise grips a place to hold onto. All will be replaced with standard hex heads like I've done in past. Got the intake completely disassembled and power washed and I've been working on the fuel rail today. Replaced the FPR and found all the injector O-Rings are dry rotted so pulling those and working on a jerry-rigged injector cleaner/tester as I saw at least a couple nozzles looked clogged.

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 $$$. 

Car has been pretty solid since the last update, I did end up making a (crude) mount for the  MS3 to get it out of the way in the glovebox 
Finally got the car out to an HPDE at USAIR.  So glad the new management is cool with these events. There was a morning and afternoon session, we only signed up for the morning. It was a total of 4, 15 minute sessions for $125 (afternoon would’ve been an additional $125) - autox out there is usually $55 for 8 runs-  Ended up being about 36 miles of laps.
Car exceeded expectations as it didn’t break lol. Temps stayed in check the entire day. Coolant temps maybe peaked around 210/215 and came down very quickly on a cool down lap. Oil temps were maybe around 230 or so at their peak
The chase bays power steering reservoir with their “spill proof baffled design” did just the opposite, had to wipe that up between sessions.
Had one weird issue with the expansion tank cap, seemed like the orings/gasket had the worlds smallest leak and it would mist the intake pipe during the session. New cap will be here soon & expansion tank just in case. This was the quick fix trackside

 
car used maybe 1/4 tank of fuel, GFs evo x went through like 15 gallons of e85 lol
Nankang CR-1 were also a casualty, this event finished them off after 2 years of service, no complaints there—might try their updated 200tw compound “CR-S”

i only ran the racebox gps on 2/4 sessions, borrowed it out to a few cars on the other sessions-still need to get those laps overlayed but here’s some footage from the day
this was one of the last sessions so tires were pretty smoked 
Next lapping day is in September. This one actually still had open spots, definitely recommend.  
 
next on the list is to order up some tires and change all the fluids

First autox event of the year (ignoring ice racing) & the car did great. 
probably needs an alignment after having everything out of the car for the swap but it was close enough 

Took fastest raw time of the day. 
Unfortunately was only able to run the 4 morning runs as the fan??(tbd) died. 
GF was supposed to co drive it but I couldn’t get the fan going which is necessary for the conga-line style this club had for grid. Tried everything short of directly powering the fan but gave up attempting to fix it. Quick ran the car home (local event) and grabbed the e36 so the GF could at least get her full 8 runs in. She did great and took second overall raw time
 
ive been messing with some cheap wireless mics for the GoPro, had this one too close to the exhaust though I think
IMG_7082.MOV

Financial suicide, yes . Addiction, suggests an involuntary action. We know what we are doing.  We just call them spare parts, summer cars, winter beaters etc...  I have 7 so, your good.

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.
 

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.
 

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 absolutely love this car!  Factory mint paint AND it's a euro spec s50b32!  It's so 90's and I love it.  I think they fucked up by putting out a "coming soon..." craigslist ad advertising it for $96k though.  The auction has a reserve and I won't be surprised if it doesn't hit that reserve.  The story they're telling is neat about finding the car, storing it, etc.
https://www.pcarmarket.com/auction/euro-spec-1996-bmw-m3-mint-green/

ACS mirrors successfully installed, painted, and PPF'd on the ZHP.
These have been on my list of parts I have been searching for for this car for probably 2 years now, finally found a LHD set, as all of the other sets I find are RHD. With my car being a 05, I have the ribbon style cables, so I had to modify them a ton to make them functional. I completely took the motor and harness out of my OEM mirrors and made a bracket so it fit in these. I parrallel park downtown almost daily, so I really did not want to lose the reverse mirror function.
I also recently black PPF'd the door trim, as it was severely faded and buffing did nothing. This has bothered me since I bought the car, and new shadow line trim is like $6000, so this was the best option. It honestly looks better than new, and will withstand all scratches with the nice self healing that PPF has. 
I think the mirrors completely changed the look of the car! This is how the car should have came from the factory. 

The upholstery project has been going better than I anticipated and is a lot of fun. The rear bench is almost done. 
 
 

Nice work on the channel.  Looks like you found the 1st failure mode(internal) on the N54.  Now slap in some H-beam rods in the next one and find out where is the next failure mode.😁 
I'd say the N54 is living up to the hype of "the German 2JZ".  800+whp on a stock motor that was 250ish stock. 

Thanks! It's crazy what this thing handled. I'm going to keep this engine to build over time, and get a stock, unopened N54 from a junkyard or something to get it back on the road for spring.

Nice work on the channel.  Looks like you found the 1st failure mode(internal) on the N54.  Now slap in some H-beam rods in the next one and find out where is the next failure mode.😁 
I'd say the N54 is living up to the hype of "the German 2JZ".  800+whp on a stock motor that was 250ish stock. 

Thanks for the recommendation. I had two people that I started talking to about this project, very reputable places that I know do fantastic work, and then they ghosted me. 
I went to my typical state of mind of "If no one will do it for me then I'll do it my fucking self". Soooo I'm going to learn upholstery. 

Whelp, sold the Volvo bought a Volvo. Drove her back from D.C. this weekend - lets hope she's as reliable as the wagon!
2012 XC90 3.2 R-Design, Ice White w/Black interior
Most of my drive was at night, but here's the dealer pic.
Its a big honkin thing, but will keep the fam safe. 

Sold!
To a car enthusiast who loves AWD/Manuals and wanted to get something bigger/faster than their suzuki sx4

We'll, this is definitely going to be a yearly event for us! The drive isn't bad and certainly part of the adventure.
The people and cars were amazing.... Even participated installing a turbo in a 2002 I the hotel parking lot the night before the show. 
 

We are still going!  Gonna make it an annual trip... Gonna take my E30 this year, my wife's E30 Cabrio next year, and hopefully by the third year, I'll have the E21 ready to go, lol.
Looking forward to it!!!! It would be awesome to get a WiBimmers group going ever year!

World is kind of geared for a family of 4. Finding a car to fit a 3rd car seat starts to become a challenge. The 3rd row seat requires a contortionist to get a kid strapped in the 20point harness these days.  So, you go out and get the "swagger wagon" for the whole family, and you windup having the wrong car half the time when you go get them from the sitter. just get the "Hoovie Van" and you'll be all set.
As far as family dynamic the more the better.  once you get past 4-5 the older ones help out with the younger ones. but, when it's just the 2 of you, the biggest change is from 2 to 3. it's a whole different ball game. you go from playing "man to man" defense to "Zone". You go from controlling the situation to just containing the explosion.
good luck with getting that boy. You have a 50/50 shot.  My grandfather was a farmer and wanted sons to help on the farm. He wound up with 5 girls (youngest is 2 years older then I) and 14 of 19 grandsons.  I got 3 boys because my wife wanted that girl.  Now that they are teenagers, she is glad 'cause she says she couldn't handle today's girls.
  so, god give you what you can handle.
 
 

World is kind of geared for a family of 4. Finding a car to fit a 3rd car seat starts to become a challenge. The 3rd row seat requires a contortionist to get a kid strapped in the 20point harness these days.  So, you go out and get the "swagger wagon" for the whole family, and you windup having the wrong car half the time when you go get them from the sitter. just get the "Hoovie Van" and you'll be all set.
As far as family dynamic the more the better.  once you get past 4-5 the older ones help out with the younger ones. but, when it's just the 2 of you, the biggest change is from 2 to 3. it's a whole different ball game. you go from playing "man to man" defense to "Zone". You go from controlling the situation to just containing the explosion.
good luck with getting that boy. You have a 50/50 shot.  My grandfather was a farmer and wanted sons to help on the farm. He wound up with 5 girls (youngest is 2 years older then I) and 14 of 19 grandsons.  I got 3 boys because my wife wanted that girl.  Now that they are teenagers, she is glad 'cause she says she couldn't handle today's girls.
  so, god give you what you can handle.
 
 

1st one? you got plenty of time.  We walked the halls for 18hrs with our first. by the third one,... he was practically giving me directions for the hospital.    As long as they are healthy, everything else will work itself out.
The whole nesting phase is more to calm and prepare the wife then the baby. Our boys spent their first month in a bassinet by our bed.
good luck
p.s. don't tell a women in labor "It's OK"

For our first kid I built the crib about 12 hours before my wife woke me up to tell me we needed to go to the hospital.