e46 325i engine in e30 325i convertible

[LLcoolK]

is it possible? i can get the engine for 850. would it cost over 1500 to fit?

[jaistanley]

You have to make sure you get ALL of the wiring for the dash, ecu, security and engine, possibly the fuse box too.

Wiring these in is a nightmare without the above. Apart from that I dont know enough about the install to help but on E46 fanatics there is a guy that fitted the M3 engine to an E30. Swapped all of the wiring to get it to run.

It's a very nice engine though, worth the effort but likely to cost more than the £1500 to install if you are paying other people to do the work.

Jai

[jkarran]

Might it be simpler to use standalone ECU than swap all the E46 wiring and imobiliser/dials etc into E30 or are there a couple of VANOS units to control?

jk

[gcorky]

if its the one on ebay there is a 17000 miler for less than half that price...

[jaistanley]

Emerald are supposedly bringing out an ecu that can controll double vanos this year. £700 plus mapping is the estimate. There are others but they are quite expensive. There is a way of using the E46 stuff, its just a little 'inellegant'.

I wish someone would develop a megasquirt that could do dbl VANOS. Its cos yank tanks are all single cam v8's i reccon.

Jai

[stuartgallafant]

it would be absolute grief. with stand-alone management, you wouldnt be able to control the VANOS.

you would need pretty much the whole wiring loom from that vehicle, i should imagine, as well as the DME, DSC, alarm control units (i cant remember the abbreviation), basically, if you're not up to scratch on how modern BMW technology works, you havnt got a hope in hell of it working

sorry to p1ss on your fire....

[JazzMan]

Also fly by wiring throttle on M54's to add to the list of things that would need to be converted.

[Jhonno]

ask brianmooore he is/was gonna do this iirc

standalone will make it easier

wats this bout emerald?!

[jkarran]

Does anyone have wiring diagrams for the VANOS ECU interface?

Megasquirt has spare pwm channels on the board IIRC, using those as input to a custom made VANOS controller might not be too hard depending on what the VANOS requires (pulses to solenoids controling hydralic fluid I'd guess) and what it outputs (I'd be guessing wildly but maybe a reference pulse followed by a positioning pulse per revolution)

Producing a map for the VANOS might not be so easy but you could possibly just do a simple rpm/cam-angle output ramp/curve or perhaps a few different curves using MAP or TPS signals? Maybe even something crude like a VTEC style switch over at fixed rpm? Maybe capture the data from a stock car?

If anyone has the wiring/electronic/mechanical data let me know, I'd be interested in having a look.

jk

[stuartgallafant]

Also fly by wiring throttle on M54's to add to the list of things that would need to be converted.

that would remain part of the engine wiring harness > DME setup

VANOS is more complex than people realise. twin VANOS has seperate controls for each camshaft, meaning that the VANOS units can move the camshaft indpendantly of the timing chain, and also, independantly to each other, according to a reading from various different sensors.

the DME sends signals to the solenoids to raise, hold or withdraw pressure to advance, maintain or retard the timing, to best suit the engines state.

replicating a VANOS control map would be nye on impossible, let alone a time consuming, brain crunching, ball ache

VANOS is far more in depth than VTEC (well, the earlier VTEC cysytems anyway) although not quite as good (opinion based) and therefore it takes greatet control

if this were to be attempted, you wouldbe best off using the complete engine wiring harness and all associated control units

[jkarran]

Replicating the VANOS map should be no harder than replicating a factory ignition map, just a case of measuring and logging the relevant parameters not easy but not hard either. I'm looking at it from the perspective of an electronic engineer. Of course you're right that the simplest solution for most folk would be to drop in the factory loom and controllers.