E30 Zone

i've been working on my project for a few months now, and decided to give the garage a little tidy up and so while i had the car out of the garage, i thought i'd take a couple of pics........

it's about 85% complete











a big thanks to ian haynes

What engine is that matey, looks beefy

Hmmm, S54.

How hard is it then?

ooooooooooh the E46 M3 engine! bet thats gonna go like stink!

There was a thread on here not long ago with the S38. An electric whizkid tried it and it appeared to be a nightmare. Hasnt finished it completely yet.

What sort of performance figures you looking at?

nice conversion
are you using standalone management with that?

Looks fooking awesome

This is what i have been waiting to see if works

baptie0 wrote:nice conversion
are you using standalone management with that?

no, standard bmw .

madaboute30 wrote:What sort of performance figures you looking at?

dont know, i expect it will pop along quite nicely

maxfield wrote:How hard is it then?

it's not finished yet, fairly simular to the s50 swap, simular but different, if that makes sense.

Compared to an S50, S54s look really boring (aesthetically). I'm sure the performance wont be though. it's gonna be a true starship.

How did you get on with all that Kan bus and ews3 stuff glenn ,it looks sweet and I bet it goes even better , what exhaust manifold did you use, also does the intake plenum take up as much room as a s50 one ?
well done Sir , more inspiration for us .

Epic

Bad man Glenn! How are you overcoming the fly by wire throttle? - must be the worst but no?

Hi,

Glenn- looking good, did you retain the stepper
motor, or go with a throttle cable, ala Vac ?

I see you have kept the Vanos/ECU be interested
in knowing your views when done ?

I went Vanos delete and Motec M800, which seems
to work quite well for the Track, given the rev range
that the car is geared to work in, but would retain the
Vanos for a road car engine, as the low down torque, sub
4500 rpm suffers with it deleted.

Seems you missed the S50 B32 after all.

Regards,

The Gorilla.

Simon13 wrote:Bad man Glenn! How are you overcoming the fly by wire throttle? - must be the worst but no?

hello si,
if you look on top of the plenum, you'll see i've converted it to cable throttle

germangorilla wrote:I see you have kept the Vanos/ECU be interested
in knowing your views when done ?

hello dan,
yes, i've kept both vanos units. it's not quite ready to fire up yet,
but once it does, i'll go into more detail of how i've done it

Hi,

Glenn- yes I would be keen to know
your views.

After doing both engines into E30 M3's
the gains of the S54 are not as large
as you might think on paper, but its
a stronger overall package, which
seems to handle the higher rev band
just that tad better.

The S54 Vanos although it can also be
troublesome, is of a better overall working design
than the S50's.

I used the Vac Throttle linkage, but it looks like
you used a refabricated S50 Set up.

My next chapter maybe to de-tune the Car
as its to Track Focused, which limits the amount
of fun.

Hope all goes well for you.

Regards,

The Gorilla.

your a god! did you do the conversion yourself or get a garage to do it for you? any mods for the block for the near future?

Nice work Glenn

very nice ,bin the stupid plenum and get a supercharger kit on there.Its got to help the conversion as it uses a smaller plenum , oh and the added performance also

Awesome work as ever Glenn. I'm with Buster on the plenum fix

DieselMeister wrote:Awesome work as ever Glenn. I'm with Buster on the plenum fix

maybe one day, if they come down to a more reasonable price.

i've already sorted this plenum out now. it's back on, bolted & plumbed up.

Cool !

boy do i feel like a dog with two dicks tonight !!
got the engine running this afternoon.

i came up with an idea a few months ago of how to run the s54,
i ran the idea past ian (ian332isport) to see if any of the sensors were the same as the s50 and ian said 'most' of them look 'similar'.
so i went to fabs and bought an s54 and a s50b32 evo engine loom and ecu.
and so after endless phone calls to ian(i'm sure he's sick of the sound of me, lol), i've managed to get the s54 to run on s50 management, and so having both vanos units working.

thanks for your help ian

So is it straight up S50B32 ecu and loom with S50 software

Nice one Glenn

I knew we'd get there in the end.

good work guys. I am impressed.
Are you going to be remapping the ecu to get the most out of the s54?

Gunni wrote:So is it straight up S50B32 ecu and loom with S50 software

yep, e36 evo engine loom and ecu (and a couple of e36 sensors)

possibly a worlds first ?

ian332isport wrote:I knew we'd get there in the end.

i was starting to have my doubts ian

Bob_S wrote:good work guys. I am impressed.
Are you going to be remapping the ecu to get the most out of the s54?

yes,
also the s50's 7500rpm limit will need raising to 8000rpm

glenn wrote:possibly a worlds first ?

Quite possibly for using standard management and actually getting it working.

Massive respect to you (and Ian of course) for pushing the boundaries yet again.

Any sound clips would much appreciated right now

Great conversion Glenn, I hope to see if in the flesh sometime!

Well done Glenn, I can tell you for sure your not the first to run one of these on S50 management

Possibly the first in an E30 though

S54´s have been run in E30´s before.
For sure the first in UK.

On S50 management I meant

Hi Glenn,

Good to hear you got it running.

I am sure Ian could have written a best seller
on conversions using the S50 B32 Components.

I am very intrigued by how you have managed
to deal with the Vanos timing as the S54 is
not the same at full lift as the B32 engine ?

The Vanos angles, and more so the exhaust are not
identical, so uping the rev limiter, will not allow
more dwell or compensate for the duration
on the Exhaust cam, only more revs ?

Have you checked for valve blow by at near
or on full lift ?

I think it is a very clever approach to this engine
conversion, even though there are now ways around
the S54 EWS/Dash Pod detection/ Loom interlinks,
issues with the S54 ECU.

Be very interested to learn more.

Congrats to Ian and your self on this.

I am just glad I am not picking up your phone bill
this month !

Regards,

The Gorilla.