e30 HMS 335i is now under full steam

[ross_jsy]

Ah right, no, always been that way round. It's how they are on their website. Thought about swapping them by tyres are unidirectional

[jslot]

I thought I was going nuts and maybe I am. Are all 4 wheels the same? Or are 2 twisted clockwise, and 2 twisted anticlockwise?

[ross_jsy]

I see what you mean now, and it's p1ssing me off! Hadn't noticed it before. The wheels aren't sided so they face different directions.

Right I need new rims!

[ross_jsy]

Last night I replaced all the fuel hoses as they are getting old and perished, along with removing the larger injectors that the PO had fitted to make more power (lolwut?) and replaced them with m20 items. Car feels loads quicker, and no hesitation/bogging like there was before

Today I had a go at repairing the rot in the footwell. I am no welder/fabricator but I am really pleased with how they turned out.

Started by cutting out the scabby bits and wire wheeling it back to fresh metal:



Followed by a good coat of weld through primer:



Then I formed a piece of steel into the correct shape:



And welded it into place:



I didn't get a photo, but I drilled it along where it meets the return and plug welded it as I don't have access to a spot welder. Here it is with the top weld after dressing the weld:



A coat of zinc primer:



And stone chip:



For the inside I have just zinc primed it for now. Need to pick up a can of lachsilver to finish it off.

I also received a couple of pictures from the body shop of the scuttle being done:

[ross_jsy]

So I bought a crank spacer off Dan a while back, and a 2.8 crank off Barry recently. Spent this evening building the bottom end with new shells and swapping the b20 rods onto the b25 pistons.





I need to pick up some new piston rings before I can go any further

[ross_jsy]

Some epic council action (and a haemorrhoid) later, I now have an m30 for the turd. Picked up some mounts off eBay this morning for £60. Should be going in in the next couple of weeks.

It would not have been my usual choice for an engine, but for how much it is costing me all in, I couldn't say no for a bit of cheap power.







Does anyone know if an m20 ICV works on the m30?

I am tempted to do a junkyard turbo build since a stock m30 can handle some silly power. All done as cheap as possible and use megasquirt. But I shall see how fast it is standard and go from there.

[jimbom30cab]

yes the M20 ICVs are the same part mate.

use a e30 325 gear linkage and 325i prop with the e30 gearbox output flange

[ross_jsy]

Cheers Jim. Have all the bits ready to go.

The car has chucked a spanner in the works and I've done a pony, shitting the diff mount and a drive shaft in a residential area this morning. Was driving normally and it let go without warning. I suspect it was damage done from a spirited drive last night with a few clutch kicks thrown in. Whoops

[ross_jsy]

The damage from yesterdays drama

[Rav335uk]

How many Fat girls were in the car Ross?

[ross_jsy]

You know how low it is. No chance of any chubbers

[ross_jsy]

So the m30 is now in! After selling the m20, the swap was completely free. But not without problems as you will see...

After the rear cover let go, it was obvious the rear beam bushes needed swapping as that is the usual reason the diff covers fail. I ordered a pair of rear bushes, along with trailing arm bushes, a purple power flex diff bush and new gearbox rubbers. In hindsight I wish I had used polly for the entire rear end, if only for ease of getting the bastards back in the beam. I was fortunate enough that we could use the ramp at my friends work. 7 and a half hours of swearing later and it was all done, driving much better than before:



The front of the car has had all the bushes replaced, with the usual offset lollipops and polly ARB bushes. With the chassis up to an acceptable level, it was time for the m30. Sorry for the lack of pictures, the phone I was using at the time died and these are the only two I have from the bodge-fest We removed the m20 in an hour and 40 minutes. Not bad going considering we were in a field. Despite being pitch black by the time we got it out, and only having 3 torches, we decided to stick the m30 in the bay that evening so we could have an entire day the following day bolting it together:



And it's in!



Getting it back enough to sit on the mounts was a nightmare. It just didn't wan't to go back a final inch, touching everything. After lots of persuasion, it eventually went in (but not before snapping an exhaust manifold luckily we had spares). We got it all bolted together, did the wiring mods, bled the rad up and tried to start it. Now keep in mind we didn't even know if it ran at this point as the car it came from was missing a lot and had been sat 10 years. Before installing I did the usual, replacing hoses, water pump etc. The clutch was like new so didn't replace it. Now I removed the plugs, and they were like new. I've seen plugs with 100 miles looking worse than them. So I decided to gap them and put the back in.

That turned out to be a massive error. We cranked it and it fired and ran poorly, before spluttering and dying. Kept on doing this before eventually not starting at all and stinking of fuel. Removed the plugs and they were all piss wet through. Swapped the temp sensor out for a known good one and nothing, tried a good AFM, nothing. At this point we assumed the injectors were stuck open as it had been sat so long. Anyway, cut a long story short, chucked some old plugs in from an m20 that was nearby and it fired right up. Serves me right for cheaping out. The plugs have since been replaced with new ones.

So I drove it away that evening, total time for swap including removing the m20 was about 13 hours. Now I had heard the m30 boys prattling on about how quick m30's were so was expecting some decent shove from the thing. It was bloody awful! It wouldn't rev at all and my m20 felt quicker. I was pretty disappointed and was getting ready to put the m20 back in, or an m52 that is kicking around.

Before I had put the engine in, I had adjusted the valve clearances. All the cam lobes were like new, except number 1 inlet had about 2mm of wear on the tip

Anyway, had driven it around for 2 weeks, and it was getting quicker until cruising along at 30 there was a weird pop and plumes of smoke started coming out the back and massively down on power. Fearing the worse, I got it home and did a comp test. All cylinders were 170-180 cold, except 1, which was 50 - 80. Pulled the cam cover off and found this:





I was actually pretty relieved as I couldn't be arsed to pull the lump out for a broken ring or similar.

As luck would have it, when my friend picked up the 3 e34's, one was a 530i with a brand new freshly rebuilt head. The b30 head would have reduced power a lot, but RealOEM revealed that the cam was the same. So that was dropped round, along with a Elring head gasket set to be pilfered for its new febi cam and rockers:



I stripped it down:





And removed the head:





And got to stripping it. Then things got interesting. I went to remove inlet valve no 1 and it would not budge. It was in so firm that I ended up having to hammer it out. Not only was the cam severely worn, the pad on the rocker had had a semi circle carved out. Interestingly the rockers were date stamped 96 on an 88 engine and the valve seals were aftermarket. My theory is some monkey bastarded the seals out with grips and bent the valve guide.

Now in an ideal world I would have replaced the valve guides. But I needed the car up and running. So I donned my best cow boy hat, wrapped a drill bit in 600 grit and slowly worked the valve guide till the valve fit properly. There is no play in the valve and it worked very well.

The valves were then all cleaned up, lapped in and tested for how well they sealed with some thinners:



The good news in all this is how fresh the bores are. The mileage was unknown as the clocks in the e34 were dead, so seeing fresh bores like this was a welcome sight:



While the inlet was off and the head stripped, I took the opportunity to gasket match the ports. No after pictures but you can see how much meat there was:



The mating surfaces were cleaned up and checked for straightness with a straight edge. A skim would have been nice, but A) it's a boat anchor, and B) there is only one guy who does it over here now and works out of a shed and he doesn't do urgent.

The new head gasket was installed:



And everything bolted back together. I need to get more pics, but I am lazy when it comes to taking them.

Anyway all bled up, it fired up instantly. Idle was perfect, before it was constantly missing, despite new plugs and leads. Took it for a rip and the difference is night and day. I have to admit, these boat anchors are pretty damn rapid!

Overall I am now very happy. It ended up being a bit of a pain in the arse, but the top end is like new now and the car drives great. Next plans are to tidy up the bay a bit, paint the rocker cover and inlet etc, replace the duct taped rubber to the air filter and make a better exhaust as it is blowing (used the method mentioned on the wiki of sliding m20 pipes into the m30 downpipes which I am sure is restrictive).

[bss325i]

Ahoy there!

Epic Anchor fettling!

[Gert_8]

Good work Ross!

[jimbom30cab]

Nice job.

I thought the B30 cam is slightly better than the B35 cam.

[ross_jsy]

Cheers guys.

I had heard that from a couple of sources Jim. However I found a site where someone had mapped the profiles out against each other and its not true. One of the cams had a mm or so more lift and more duration, but I can't remember what it was from. The final confirmation was the matching part numbers on RealOEM.

I have the 3 litre head (if anyone needs one, let me know) and a couple of spare manifolds kicking around. I am going to try and flip them and weld together a turbo manifold for mucho-cheapness using the 3 litre head as a jig

[jimbom30cab]

Arh fair enough

Top work by the way.

[ross_jsy]

Bit of an update. It started pissing oil out of the lower timing chain cover, near the chain tensioner. Decided to do the chain guides while I was at it due to the unknown mileage.





All stripped down



Old v new. Still plenty of meat left on it but pleased I changed them. The gasket on the exhaust side of the block was pretty much non existent where it was leaking.



While doing it, I noticed the CPS wasn't looking great, with the wire going in starting to fray. It's also been really down on power lately so a new one has been ordered.

Car is now off the road for winter. It will be getting a new front subframe and purple tag rack to replace the horrid impreza rack/modded sub frame, along with power steering. Also will be changing to BC coilovers, fitting a 750i M/C, rebuilding the front 4 pots, sorting some rust on the underside and fitting a new bumper with some fresh paint on it (probably a replica Alpina unless anyone has any suggestions)

[Cypriotgeeza]

Just sat and read through this whole thread!

When you wrote that the M30 was slow I instantly knew you had a problem mate as these are nice lumps in the Small E30 body!

Looking forward to more updates

[bab-91]

I get live updates on this sorry turd but I suppose it would be rude not to give you a free bump.



You're sick.

[Gert_8]

I get live updates on this sorry turd..

You're sick.

The "you're sick" being a reference to the accompanying dick-picks!

[steve_k]

I get live updates on this sorry turd..

You're sick.

The "you're sick" being a reference to the accompanying dick-picks!

don't you mean pic's of a capri sun "straw"??

[magpie]

The damage from yesterdays drama

f00kin hoonigan lol , did you replace the rear beam bushes recently ?

[pianist]

When you stripped your head and then put back them rods that hold the rockers, do you find that the rods are a little lose like forward and back motion and spinning in there places? Only asking cause I rebuilt my m30 head and that's how they are, the head is not fitted yet so I hope that they will clamp up while tightening the head or am I missing something?

[ross_jsy]

Mick - couple of posts after that before the engine swap. Replaced all the rear bushes.

Pianist - no the rods were very firmly held in place

[magpie]

ahh rights , just that i done this same thing to the diff hanger with the m50 , only at santa pod on the lauch pad .... the f00kin diff banged into the strip 3 times on launch and i had tarmac in the cooling fins when i took the diff out





oh the joys

[ross_jsy]

Proper effort! I was quite lucky, I had spent an evening clutch kicking and being a general hooligan hanging the arse out. Next day I was driving to work, pulled away from the lights and it went bang.

Doing beam bushes on the car without the proper tool was grim

[magpie]

Proper effort! I was quite lucky, I had spent an evening clutch kicking and being a general hooligan hanging the arse out. Next day I was driving to work, pulled away from the lights and it went bang.

Doing beam bushes on the car without the proper tool was grim

the only job i wanted to do once , looks like i need camber adjustment running ehiback - 40mm springs looking at the tyre wear

[ross_jsy]

I'm on Eibach -40's on the rear. Rear camber is -3.03 and -3.09 looking at the print out from when I had the tracking done

[mani]

Those seats are seriously cool what are they out of ?

[ross_jsy]

E34 Sport seats. Probably my favourite thing I've done to the car.

Sub frame is coming off next week to replace the grim Impreza rack with a purple tag

[ross_jsy]

Finally found time to replace the subframe. Had it painted in 2k and fitted a purple tag rack. Forgot to take pics prior to taking the car off the stands



Was intending on doing the sump gasket at the same time but decided I'll wait till it's on a ramp.

There is an issue though:



Need to buy some stainless wire for the welder and do some chopping