another s50 the easy way round !
Posted: Wed Aug 12, 2009 12:18 am
hi all well where do i start ,
thanks to lots of people on the zone who have posted things that i have used or copied , and thanks to my dad he may be old but he still knows more than me sometimes ,
well it all started when i sold my m3 evo 2 after spending 2 years restoring it , i got bored and fancied a project , i bought a 320i shell with an m3 bodykit , and bought an old sport for £650 which the guys i bought it from had cut it up to make a drag car , the reason i bought it was the engine a 3.5 alpina b7s turbo lump , anyway within a month an e30 m3 came up on ebay which i gave 3k for here is the car and the engine
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as you can see the m3 is basically a shell, got it back from silverstone after 2 trips , once with my towing frame (didnt realise the car had no driveshafts and the hubs were not on properly ) it was all over the place so i turned round after 100 yards and went home to get a trailer , got it back had a look round , a bit of rust in the scuttle nothing unusual , the poor car had been taken from germany into norway then stripped for all it was worth they had taken the engine , gearbox , diff prop , driveshafts , interior calipers , rad , fan , cluster , obc , fuel pump , and along the way just cut everything out i.e c101 , fuel pipes the lot
i was thinking or restoring it but it just wasnt worth it so i sold the 320i with m3 kit and started fitting the alpina lump , after about a month of trying to get the engine to sit low enough , i realised it wasnt going to work without either having a massively modified bonnet , i tried lowering the subframe but i was not happy with it
just as luck would have it an s50 b30 lump came up on ebay , i managed to get for 2k , the bonus was it had already been fitted to an e30 but the guy had crashed the car , i believe he used the zone when he did the conversion , so i got the engine , 6 speed evo box , scorpion exhaust , rad , smashed oil cooler , pretty much all i needed , so i sold the alpina lump leaving the s50 only owing me a few hundred quid , fitting it in was the easy bit everything lined up ok ,
then came wiring it up , i had to rewire another c101 into the e30 loom as it had been hacked off , and i pretty much ended up rewiring the s50 loom as the e30 has an oil temp gauge , and some the wiring that had been done was not that great , after a week or so of wiring out in the cold ( knocked the garage down to bulid it bigger and was winter !) got another oil cooler bought an fuel pump high pressure one from ebay , put new fuel pipes to the pump , more rewiring from the internal tank pump through the car and to the cluster as nothing worked , connected the ecus turned the key , it turned over and over but wouldnt fire , checked fuel all ok after an hour or two noticed an earth by the diagnostic plug ( i bet everyone who has done an s50 conversion has forgot to bolt it up ) connected it to the body , turned it over and she fired !!!! yes made my year that did , i did have loads more photos of the conversion but i lost a load when my laptop decided to expire , next was to mount the radiator and oil cooler , chopped the original piece out where bottom of the radiator is and welded a bar section in slightly higher and thinner so the oil cooler could mount directly under the rad and get decent airflow to the oil cooler and rad , then i bought a pacet 14 inch front mounted electric fan , i wired it through the original e30 m3 loom as the m3 has the electric fan wiring , just used the single speed on one relay , took the blanking cap out of the s50 rad and got a temp switch from a 7 series ,
again trouble with electrics , no power to the fuse which powers the fan wiring had to move the wire in the fuse box to 25 i think it was , a spare ,that sorted it fan kicking in just after half way , next i moved onto renewing all the bushes 200 odd quid later the poly bushes turned up , fitted them and a set of brand new e30 m3 front struts with bilstein shocks that i bought from bmw about 10 years ago when you could actually still get bits for an e30 m3 ! , repainted the whole underneath of the car fitted the prop with new centre mount as the e30 m3 uses the older style and the prop i got with the engine had the later type , i used a 325i sport diff (untill i can get an e30 m3 one) fitted that all up and the exhaust , then had to take the manifold off for what i think was about the tenth time because it was hitting the anti roll bar , reshaped it slightly and shaved a very small bit off the anti roll bar sorted ,
got some front calipers from ebay £26 bargain , then got the rears from joe aversracers@hotmail.co.uk who i also got an original e30 m3 black leather interior from and is sending me an e30 m3 diff , hes got loads of stuff lying around and is reasonable on his prices
next the dreaded servo master cylinder combo !
the plenum had already been cut thank you , first i tried a mk1 polo servo with a renault clio master cylinder , that just kept the fronts locked so you couldnt turn the wheels and the rears didnt work , so joe advised me to use a plastic winged clio servo and an audi master cylinder anything from 94-99 i used one from a 96 audi a4 2.6 and it works a treat just as good as the original set up if not better ,and used a mk3 golf resovoir it fits nicely and takes the bmw cap with sensor
moved on to the fitting a braided clutch hose and bleeding the clutch , fitted the hose bled the clutch with an easy bleed kit using low pressure , nothing ! ,treied the old way , roped in some help to pump while i close the nipple , still nothing , took the master cylinder out and half of it was missing and lots of fluid in the bell housing , ( thought there wasnt much fluid coming through the nipple ) anyway this meant taking the gearbox off and that means taking the engine out as some off the bolts are not accessable , so i ended up dropping the whole front subframe and lifting the body up , cleaned it all up put it all back together , new master cylinder fitted bled it twice and it was fine , then the brakes started playing up when i moved back abs pump failed lucky i had spare one i got from the scrapyard , most things sorted so its off to the welders to have the new scuttle welded in thanks to cotswold bmw for that and zimmerbimmer1 , got it back after a couple of days thanks to dws in hedge end southampton , then off to the paint shop after another 2 weeks waiting for the painter to fit me in , heres a couple of pics on the way and in the paint shop
that bonnets not going on the car by the way just thought i would see how it looks with vents it was a spare i had , i will add some more in the next couple of days (the car is finished now ) but my fingers hurt from writing , sorry about the long post still got plenty to tell though
thanks to lots of people on the zone who have posted things that i have used or copied , and thanks to my dad he may be old but he still knows more than me sometimes ,
well it all started when i sold my m3 evo 2 after spending 2 years restoring it , i got bored and fancied a project , i bought a 320i shell with an m3 bodykit , and bought an old sport for £650 which the guys i bought it from had cut it up to make a drag car , the reason i bought it was the engine a 3.5 alpina b7s turbo lump , anyway within a month an e30 m3 came up on ebay which i gave 3k for here is the car and the engine
[/img]as you can see the m3 is basically a shell, got it back from silverstone after 2 trips , once with my towing frame (didnt realise the car had no driveshafts and the hubs were not on properly ) it was all over the place so i turned round after 100 yards and went home to get a trailer , got it back had a look round , a bit of rust in the scuttle nothing unusual , the poor car had been taken from germany into norway then stripped for all it was worth they had taken the engine , gearbox , diff prop , driveshafts , interior calipers , rad , fan , cluster , obc , fuel pump , and along the way just cut everything out i.e c101 , fuel pipes the lot
i was thinking or restoring it but it just wasnt worth it so i sold the 320i with m3 kit and started fitting the alpina lump , after about a month of trying to get the engine to sit low enough , i realised it wasnt going to work without either having a massively modified bonnet , i tried lowering the subframe but i was not happy with it
just as luck would have it an s50 b30 lump came up on ebay , i managed to get for 2k , the bonus was it had already been fitted to an e30 but the guy had crashed the car , i believe he used the zone when he did the conversion , so i got the engine , 6 speed evo box , scorpion exhaust , rad , smashed oil cooler , pretty much all i needed , so i sold the alpina lump leaving the s50 only owing me a few hundred quid , fitting it in was the easy bit everything lined up ok ,
then came wiring it up , i had to rewire another c101 into the e30 loom as it had been hacked off , and i pretty much ended up rewiring the s50 loom as the e30 has an oil temp gauge , and some the wiring that had been done was not that great , after a week or so of wiring out in the cold ( knocked the garage down to bulid it bigger and was winter !) got another oil cooler bought an fuel pump high pressure one from ebay , put new fuel pipes to the pump , more rewiring from the internal tank pump through the car and to the cluster as nothing worked , connected the ecus turned the key , it turned over and over but wouldnt fire , checked fuel all ok after an hour or two noticed an earth by the diagnostic plug ( i bet everyone who has done an s50 conversion has forgot to bolt it up ) connected it to the body , turned it over and she fired !!!! yes made my year that did , i did have loads more photos of the conversion but i lost a load when my laptop decided to expire
, next was to mount the radiator and oil cooler , chopped the original piece out where bottom of the radiator is and welded a bar section in slightly higher and thinner so the oil cooler could mount directly under the rad and get decent airflow to the oil cooler and rad , then i bought a pacet 14 inch front mounted electric fan , i wired it through the original e30 m3 loom as the m3 has the electric fan wiring , just used the single speed on one relay , took the blanking cap out of the s50 rad and got a temp switch from a 7 series , again trouble with electrics , no power to the fuse which powers the fan wiring had to move the wire in the fuse box to 25 i think it was , a spare ,that sorted it fan kicking in just after half way , next i moved onto renewing all the bushes 200 odd quid later the poly bushes turned up , fitted them and a set of brand new e30 m3 front struts with bilstein shocks that i bought from bmw about 10 years ago when you could actually still get bits for an e30 m3 ! , repainted the whole underneath of the car fitted the prop with new centre mount as the e30 m3 uses the older style and the prop i got with the engine had the later type , i used a 325i sport diff (untill i can get an e30 m3 one) fitted that all up and the exhaust , then had to take the manifold off for what i think was about the tenth time because it was hitting the anti roll bar , reshaped it slightly and shaved a very small bit off the anti roll bar sorted ,
got some front calipers from ebay £26 bargain , then got the rears from joe aversracers@hotmail.co.uk who i also got an original e30 m3 black leather interior from and is sending me an e30 m3 diff , hes got loads of stuff lying around and is reasonable on his prices
next the dreaded servo master cylinder combo !
the plenum had already been cut thank you , first i tried a mk1 polo servo with a renault clio master cylinder , that just kept the fronts locked so you couldnt turn the wheels and the rears didnt work , so joe advised me to use a plastic winged clio servo and an audi master cylinder anything from 94-99 i used one from a 96 audi a4 2.6 and it works a treat just as good as the original set up if not better ,and used a mk3 golf resovoir it fits nicely and takes the bmw cap with sensor
moved on to the fitting a braided clutch hose and bleeding the clutch , fitted the hose bled the clutch with an easy bleed kit using low pressure , nothing ! ,treied the old way , roped in some help to pump while i close the nipple , still nothing , took the master cylinder out and half of it was missing and lots of fluid in the bell housing , ( thought there wasnt much fluid coming through the nipple ) anyway this meant taking the gearbox off and that means taking the engine out as some off the bolts are not accessable , so i ended up dropping the whole front subframe and lifting the body up , cleaned it all up put it all back together , new master cylinder fitted bled it twice and it was fine , then the brakes started playing up when i moved back abs pump failed lucky i had spare one i got from the scrapyard , most things sorted so its off to the welders to have the new scuttle welded in thanks to cotswold bmw for that and zimmerbimmer1 , got it back after a couple of days thanks to dws in hedge end southampton , then off to the paint shop after another 2 weeks waiting for the painter to fit me in , heres a couple of pics on the way and in the paint shop
that bonnets not going on the car by the way just thought i would see how it looks with vents it was a spare i had , i will add some more in the next couple of days (the car is finished now ) but my fingers hurt from writing , sorry about the long post still got plenty to tell though
had a week off work so thought i would get loads done as the other half was working , 4 days of working from 730am to midnight on it the electrics all worked , had to use looms from a rhd 320i and convert them to work the mirrors on the right side , trying to wire it all in and get everything working correctly was an absolute nightmare and the hardest part of the project 
, with that solved fitted the wheels , evo 2 front spoiler and air ducts , dyed the carpets black to match the seats , re fitted the dash and cluster , then the heater panel , seats and centre counsols ,
, anyway all looks good ,
Fantastic
