P_Roloff

I bit the bullet and had Partee Racing do the bottom end as well.  Shipped the heads back to Partee Racing for them to assemble the motor. High compression pistons, Arrow rods, all new everything.  Almost ready to throw it into the wagon!

It has been awhile since I gave an update.  Lots has been happening! Popped on an Active Autowerks supercharger, 4.10 gears with a drexler LSD, CSL King Pins and new bearings, CSL steering rack and all new power steering lines and reservoir, replaced the cam bolts and did a valve adjustment (2 were out of spec), valve cover gasket, manual swap with a JB Racing lightweight flywheel and HD Sach clutch, ZHP shift knob and a short shifter, and turned 200k miles on the car (motor probably has 130k-ish on it), and some 18" Apex wheels wrapped in PS4s 245 front, 275 rears.

The rest is here, this is going to look much more aggressive once it’s all on

Near spring update. 
Interior almost done: 



New wheels on after being circle jerked by a "racing shop" that fucked up the seals multiple while mounting them. Eventually took them to Big Bear Tire in Oconomowoc to have them dismounted. I did the seals myself, and now all is good. They're awesome BTW. The guy who did the tires has an e30 touring. 
The shop's attempt at fixing damaged seals and the seal that was about ready to start leaking. 

My job at cleaning all the sealant and resealing them. Pretty damn good if I say so myself. 


After removing the transmission to replace the input shaft seal, I was having issues the starting pinion gear not engaging the ring gear. It was hitting the side of the ring gear instead of engaging it. Dropped the engine and it ended up being the metal plate must have gotten slightly bent that it wasn't allowing the starter bolts to line up with the holes in the transmission. That's all fixed. Bench tested the starter on the engine before putting it back in. 


 
Revised my retrofit adapters and now have them for Morimoto's MLED 2.0 and the Micro D2S. 



 
That's all. Hopefully getting close to this winter's projects and I can get the car out and start driving it. 

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

P R O C R A S T I N A T I O N 
Yeah so I didn't really work on the harness. BUT! I have accomplished some other things. I had Tim come by and 3D scan my engine bay which was a pretty neat ordeal. I wanted to get a CAD file of my engine bay and hardtop for reference files to allow me to create models for reinforcing my firewall, filler panels to give the bay more symmetry, and the hardtop to build a jig for the Lexan. Tim also traded in his F90 M5 Comp for a G20 M340 and he wanted to swap grills right away. So for fun, this is what 7th gen 3series grills look like on a second gen 3series E30. 

Anyways I also got around to ordering and installing some more parts. I finally finished up relocating the fuel lines because of the steering shaft / starter interference. I unfortunately think I will end up redoing these lines because they are still factory 8mm -5/16 hardlines up until they get to the bottom of the firewall where I adapted them to braided -6AN that goes to the fuel rail and regulator. I think that once I get the car running again and start tuning I will add more fuel and boost, and the 8mm factory lines will limit my flowrate. But for now, its good till I cross that bridge.
(Sorry I have no pictures of this)^^
I also ordered everything needed for the remote oil cooler. I got a Chase Bays thermostatic oil cooler wedge plate, HKS filter, -10 fittings (x2 45's| x2 60's), way too much -10 braided line, and I had a cooler that Chubs made a few years ago. I was debating on the line routing, but after I made the lines, it seems like both options I was considering will work if I need to move the lines up in the future. 

Option 1

Option 2

The result


And I also painted the far edge of the oil cooler as I didn't want the offset of the cooler to throw off the factory look of the car through the kidneys.

Also not shown, I installed a new oil pan as the one I had was dented since I got it. With that, I also started to reroute my dipstick as it is one of the biggest sys sores in the engine bay IMO. I got about 90% done making a new dipstick, and wasn't sold on how it looked, so I ordered a Lokar locking flexible billet dipstick that I will mount down near the cooler oil filter and out of the way. Besides that, I feel pretty good and the oil system is all buttoned back up!
My next task is going to install the stereo and get that out of the way. I have everything besides drivers and I want to get all the chassis side of the wiring complete before( warning: procrastination excuse)  I move onto the engine harness.  
 

Yesterday morning while I was at work I received a phone call from the detective that had been working on the case and he asked me "Hey, would you like to come pick up your car?" I was pretty quick to respond with a hard yes and was on my way. The vehicle had been found by the detective via text messages from the recent "owner" of the vehicles phone, and it was hidden behind a storage unit complex here in Eau Claire. This was what it looked like when I got there:

Pretty well snowed in but from what I could tell it didn't look too rough. Unfortunately keys were nowhere to be found so I ran home and grabbed my spare set as the city called a skidsteer over to dig it out. They left about 2 feet on either side of the car by the time I got back and my cousin came by to help me dig out the rest. After another 2 hours of shoveling we were finally able to dig out a spot!

Car wouldnt start via either a jump pack or jumper cables hooked up to my truck, battery was completely froze up. Ran to the local Oreillys and picked up a new battery to just get me by. Once I threw the battery in (using the handy dandy BMW trunk toolkit lmao) and got it started a local tow company came by and couldnt sneak back there to it so we just hooked their chains right up to the hitch of my pickup and pulled it right out of its spot. Honestly it ran pretty good and seemed mostly complete aside from the fact they ripped half the speakers out and broke the speaker covers on the doors. They also did me a great pleasure of smoking cigarettes inside of it and leaving it almost completely empty on gas! How kind!

I proceeded to drive the car back to my work and got it pulled inside. Aside from the fact the brakes were trashed, the tires and everything else seemed to be mostly the way I left it which is pretty crazy. Of course theres a few new scratches and dents here and there, but nothing too crazy.

Either way, I couldnt be happier to have the car back in my possession and overall could have been so much worse than it really was. Insurance claims will be submitted pretty soon. The odds of it being recovered at all, let alone almost complete is absolutely insane. I guess I've used up my luck for the year haha.

Appreciate all the kind words, hope everyone can look forward to updates on getting this thing sorted out and ready for the upcoming summer!

@Rekpoint stopped by and we got to work. Instead of just blasting away at the crank bolt with an impact I figured I’d pick up a torque wrench that went to 300ftlbs - still needed a way to hold the crank as I don’t have that tool. 
 
the Amish-Inspired crank hub holder was born. 
in case it isn’t obvious I don’t own a hole saw. Drilled out what I could with a step bit and went after the rest with a die grinder lol
 
Glen was the leverage and this stupid thing worked lol. Right around the last bit of torque, the end started to split but we made it to 300ft lbs lol

 

 
Once that was torqued we made pretty quick work of it, still a fan of lifting the engine/trans/y pipe into the car all together vs using a hoist 

 
all jacked up and bolted in

intake isn’t bolted up yet, just wanted to make sure the 45° bend pipe was going to work for the intake - won’t be running a maf with MS3 
next up is to make the car a roller again and get it down on the ground so I can get the harness in and connected as well as coolant hoses/radiator/etc etc

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

Popped the front main in, installed the damper (still need to torque that, which basically means set the impact to max and send it home) engine is on the subframe now, m20 FW on with arp hardware, new spec clutch/pressure plate,TOB/PB, clutch pivot pin with grease fitting, trans put on, new control arms, bushings, etc etc 
@Rekpointis stopping by to help toss this thing in 
 
side note, this hikfab plate has probably saved me from purchasing around 70 oil pans 
it did pick up a slight bend, but I’m going to toss it in the press to see if I can’t straighten it back out a bit 

 
also, say no to brass pivot pins lol. This maybe had like 4k miles on it - was previously running a south bend stg3 street clutch/pp

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!
 

Cell phone shot through the car window from 2 weeks ago. Been carrying the camera on my walks but have been largely uninspired. Eagerly awaiting spring...

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

"Billstrom wanted $2,500 for the stolen BMW. He told the owner he bought it and didn’t steal it. Billstrom told the man he would never see the car again if he got arrested.... Billstrom was subsequently arrested."
I literally chuckled, what an idiot.

 
So I assume he got his car back?

Update, I have been driving this on and off through winter.
I started to notice that I have a SZL code a few months ago that comes and goes which is related to the stalks/steering wheel. Apparently the harness or clock spring fails and throws this code. This would explain my hit or miss heated steering wheel. I will have to order a new SZL once I determine the part number on mine as it looks there are quite a few options depending on the options/ packages that are factory (20+ some options in RealOEM). 
I scanned all the codes again this morning and found a laundry list awaiting (30 some odd codes). 😑
My Comfort access stopped working, which was why I scanned the car again. I have a fault for a bad ground in the REM (Rear Electronic Module) which I suspect is the culprit. I cleared the codes and now the trip function on my gauge cluster display disappeared lol. Ah yes, the future is here. I will update this again when I actually start to dig into the ground issue in hopes to resolve this. For now, I just wanted to document this to remind myself of why I like older cars. LOL
...
After more research on the CA issue, it looks like it might be a weak battery. I will have to test this theory. What I didn't expect to see, was multiple threads about people replacing LED drivers in the trunk/tail lights/interior with non-OEM, causing interference with comfort access, in turn disabling it.  Seems like the cheaper ones from Amazon or eBay lack shielding. Insane to think that's enough to cause an issue. Looking at the wiring on this car, I will say its obvious that the wires are a very small (optimal?) gauge and the sheathing jacket is quite thin too. I assume this is to save cost and weight, but in turn causes a lot of wiring issues, yay.
 

That is awesome. I figured this post would be about the headers and I was pleasantly surprised! We’re down on FI e30s right now so this should reset the balance quite nicely

Things I've done to the car since my last update... nothing!
 
While I've enjoyed having a running car that I can drive any time I want, there's been some issues needing addressing and I've started to plan to improve a number of things. One thing I've noticed is that the pressures in the intake manifold were constantly negative and I don't have time for all that negativity. In a random late night marketplace search I came across this lovely chunk of positivity for a pretty good deal... 
 
 
It'll be a while until I dig in and start fitting this as I want to finish my garage improvements first but it should make for a pretty fun project later this year(s). 

Congrats! Looks like an awesome car, I’ve always loved the e91’s!

119,390
First parts ordered. Taking care of the oil change, serpentine belt, and rear shocks (including the mount kit) with this batch of parts. Damping when the car is loaded is… not quite what I want to keep things from going flying, so I’m going to take care of the rear shocks sooner than I initially planned and then doing front struts this spring/summer when it’s warmer. Ordered the Continental kit for the serpentine and OE M Sport Sachs dampers for the rear. 
 
I’m going to need to pick up a good E-Torx set for maintenance on this car, any recommendations?

Plates arrived!


Im already getting itchy on changing to the Ice Age Trail ones in March when they release, but we’ll see.

The black looks spectacular I think so it’ll be really hard to beat. Maybe I’ll get a set for the e28 to take off after I sell it and keep for decoration?

Plates arrived!


Im already getting itchy on changing to the Ice Age Trail ones in March when they release, but we’ll see.

The black looks spectacular I think so it’ll be really hard to beat. Maybe I’ll get a set for the e28 to take off after I sell it and keep for decoration?

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.

Swapped out rear shocks and mounts tonight with OE Lemforder sport shocks (white label). Much improved ride in the rear, rebound damping is much better and it doesn’t huck stuff into the air anymore. I could handle a little more stiffness though, so I may experiment with Bilstein HD’s if I get antsy. Should be more than OK for now, front struts and control arms are definitely a higher priority. 
 
Very impressed with the ease of this job, the hardest part was removing the plastic caps by where the parcel cover attaches. Otherwise, really intuitive and simple. Everything goes back into place with minimal effort and fits nicely. 
 
Replaced serpentine belt, idler, and tensioner as well on Sunday using the FCP Euro kit, continental belt and INA (?) idler and tensioner? Went in easy other than getting the belt back on the harmonic balancer, there’s a tight spot near the bottom that the belt doesn’t like to thread through. Took about 20 minutes total to get the belt back on, and checked with mirrors to make sure it was fully seated. It was, and it made the trip back to MKE tonight so I think we’re all good. 

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!