M30 into E30 M3

[Andyboy]

She wasn't white, she was...............sigh..............Gazelle..................a dreamy beige hue. Stunning.

Post Combe:

balncing 90 bhp against 175/14 Chancer 'Pot Luck' remoulds was, erm, interesting.

[Andyboy]

Look carefully at the first pic of the beige heap. See the red paint on the front arches? That was from clipping the apex markers in the chicane after Quarry!

[Theo]

Good work! You must have got some funny looks caining that thing round the track, I bet the organisers were mildly offended when they saw it! I really, really want to get on track now, but my plan of an m30 m3 is fast fading...

[m10man]

We are building a fully striped out track car with a worked Alpina Group A spec M30 engine in it, but unfortunately not being finished I cant advise you on how it goes on track, but if had an M3 with an S14 in it I dought whether I would be swapping it out for an M30 - different story replacing an M10, M40 or M20 but the S14 is a true legendary engine and is made for motorsport.

[Theo]

I was liking the idea of an m3 shell with the grunt of an m30, but as has been said by a few people who know alot more than me, it would be a wrong move. Financially it would be great, I could end up with an M30'd m3 for very little money, but there would always be the feeling that I had to a degree ruined an m3. Hopefully I can get an m3, get it sorted for track purposes, not sure what to do with the m30 now Would be nice in my 325i with lpg!

Got some thinking to do I suppose....

[jmc330i]

Financially it would be great, I could end up with an M30'd m3 for very little money

So whats stopping you??

If the M3 is in 100% original condition and is worth big money, then fair enough, keep it as it is - but then I doubt you would want to thrash it round a track.

You could always get the M3 and do a track day in it to see how it handles with the 4pot. Then beg, borrow or steel an M30'd E30 for a lap or two - or maybe just a drive to the local shops

Or bang the M30 into the M3 shell and go have some fun on a track. One thing with the M30 conversion, if the engine goes pop, a couple hundred quid will get another M30 complete with a 5 or 7 series attached to it.

As for ruining an M3 - nah, youre just building the car you want. Besides, Im sure with a little extra work the conversion could be done so that if you wanted to put the car back to original, it wouldnt be a problem. Thats how Ive done my S50 conversion.

As you said in your first post, you could eventually build it up to a very nice spec (B6 rep) and there wont be many of those about

[DRIFTBOY]

Phew!

What a dilema Theo!

I can see both sides of the argument making good sense here.

You're still welcome to have a ride in my 335i though, but my driving on the road won't be anything like track driving apart from in a straight line!

I love those cheap old bangers on the tracks!
I'm tempted to look through Ebay for a £50 track slaaaag myself now!

There isn't much that can beat the fun to be had in a car you don't mind crashing / throwing away / getting nicked / blowing up etc. !

I once saw a great picture in a magazine of a professional touring car driver in a Metro 1.4 overtaking an Impreza out of a corner and the Impreza driver giving him the 'V' sign. Classic!

I'm starting to think that this is a difficult choice myself!

[M5pilot]

Why not do this, buy the M3, sort out what needs sorting on it and go for a track day. Actually, no, you'll understand the minuite you get to grips with the dogleg box and LHD on the road that no M20 engined car is going to touch an M3 round the twisty bits.
Demlotcrew commented on how good your driving skills are and for someone who knows about making an M20 car handle, you'll definately understand the point behind the M3.

Ok, can you buy the M3 now please!

Sal

[Andyboy]

At the end of the day, BMW developed the S14 for a reason. They could have dragged lots of power from a straight siz but it wasn't right for the job. With the E36 racers they could have race tuned the M50 in the 320i but they used the S14 (and later the M42) instead. It's not all about power - that's why any one of the current BTCC cars would destroy a 500 bhp Sierra Cosworth with only half the power.
If all you want is a 250 bhp hammer with loads of torque, drop a 3.5 into your red car! Done right it's a nice conversion - the Alpina B6S 3.5 is okay but I can't say I was overly impressed. They are very tall geared, don't have as much low down grunt as you think but they do handle alright - well, on the road they do. When they were new a few journalists like LJK Setright (CAR Magazine scribe and a first class driver) thought the B6S was an abortion.

As for the 518 track weaponry, that was the old BMW Driver's Club day at Combe which was a pikey fest. I lent the beige car to an ex BTCC driver (Ray West) who pedalled it very quickly indeed. He wanted to buy the car off me for £20 so he could finish it off but I had to get home!

[M5pilot]

If people want to see what an S14 is actually capable of go to some BMW track days. Some very good drivers turn up in M3's. Even the average drivers go round exceptionally fast.

Get a passenger ride with them and all will become very clear.

I never rated M3's that highly until I went to Silverstone eariler this year with Bexley Motorworks. Jag's M3 (cammed and remapped) although not that quick in a straight line made mince meat of much more powerful cars.
Nigel's 290bhp monster really showed what an modified S14 is capable of in a straight line and round bends.

Dave Gamble's 270 bhp M3 is also an experience worth having with his very aggressive (but good) driving style.

Sal

[Theo]

Right....I'm not going for the m3 I was looking at before, too much welding needed, it was rotten! But I have another one to check out, hopefully tomorrow, supposedly with a mint shell, but engine needs sorting. So perhaps I could put the 3.5 setup in there while I sort out the S14, can't imagine that putting the engine and box in would take long at all.

Just to add an extra element of confusion over what to do with the car, today a guy who collected a turd I commited to the scrapyard was chatting to me saying that he is getting an e36 m3 in next week, previously I had rejected any suggestion of the S50 out of hand, due to costs, but this engine is going very cheap....

I really am starting to sound like stevetigger or twiggy - I do apologise!

[Andy335Touring]

time for some head scratching dude

[Demlotcrew]

S50!

[Ant]

S50 for £Â£, sell on for £Â£Ã‚£, fund the whole M30 project without using your own funds

[Theo]

Definately an idea Ant, but would always have the feeling that I had the perfect engine for a conversion and let it slip through my fingers.

Out of interest what would you value an S50 at? With box, loom, ecu and rad?

[buster]

Out of interest what would you value an S50 at? With box, loom, ecu and rad?

depends if its an s50b30 or s50b32 and what gearbox

[Theo]

Hi Buster, think it's an s50b30 with 5spd manual, can't confirm this until i've seen it of course. Not accident damaged. What would you say would be a fair valuation?

As for the M3 - had bad news this morning, one I was all set to go for was bought a couple of shours before I could go up and view it, really gutted about that, and now not sure what to do, at his rate I may end up with two engines to play with and no car to put either of them into. Well gutted.

[buster]

Hi Buster, think it's an s50b30 with 5spd manual, can't confirm this until i've seen it of course. Not accident damaged. What would you say would be a fair valuation?

As for the M3 - had bad news this morning, one I was all set to go for was bought a couple of shours before I could go up and view it, really gutted about that, and now not sure what to do, at his rate I may end up with two engines to play with and no car to put either of them into. Well gutted.

i think if you can get that for £1500 it'll be a good buy.I payed £2500 for my 3.2 with 6 speed.
Shame about the m3,i think it looks a bit rough,and imo not worth £3000.
I do wish i had put my s50 into an m3 shell though !

[Theo]

Thanks for the advice, the figure he mentioned was alot less than that, so I may well just buy it, and use it at a later date.

The m3 i missed out on was not that nasty thing in the for sale section, it was this -

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll? ... &rd=1&rd=1

Would have been perfect!!

[Andyboy]

Don't even think about dropping an old M30 into that. It's probably just the rings which have gone - if the bores are okay and the head undamaged you can refresh the S14 much cheaper than messing around with an old M30. Don't do it! It might even have been the chain jumping a couple of teeth.

S50 is nice but it's also very, very heavy (around same weight as a V12 5.0 M70!)

You'll have that S14 out on the floor, gearbox and sump off in 2 hours so forget about an old M30 coach engine! £4000 is not a bad price for that at all and if you can repair the engine for £500............

No, do it properly and keep it S14.

[Theo]

I wish I could say that it was me that bought that car on ebay, but it wasn't, I was beaten to it by a couple of hours!! Well and truly gutted, would have been perfect for what I wanted.

[buster]

that looked like a really nice m3,and for a sensible price,gutted for ya mate

Andy,
Is the s50 really that heavy ? I thought it was only 40kgs more than the m20 i took out.I suppose the 6 speed maybe heavy also.I must say the whole car is sat a bit lower than it was before.

cheers
andy

[Demlotcrew]

Don't even think about dropping an old M30 into that. It's probably just the rings which have gone - if the bores are okay and the head undamaged you can refresh the S14 much cheaper than messing around with an old M30. Don't do it! It might even have been the chain jumping a couple of teeth.

S50 is nice but it's also very, very heavy (around same weight as a V12 5.0 M70!)

You'll have that S14 out on the floor, gearbox and sump off in 2 hours so forget about an old M30 coach engine! £4000 is not a bad price for that at all and if you can repair the engine for £500............

No, do it properly and keep it S14.

andy its not that simple, if the chain even skips one tooth its bent valves galore! And at £60 for a valve it soon starts to add up. Well lets just say if it had jumped a tooth he would not have been able to do a compression check as the engine would have just locked.

If it was rings then it would have had positive crank pressure and a whole host of hoses would have popped off. I think it could be a head gasket or chipped valves. In any case a S14 is not cheap to rebuild.

I dont even want to start to calculate what i spent when doing mines.

Andrew

[Andyboy]

Even one tooth out? Bloody hell, didn't know they were that close.
Some time ago someone I worked for had an A reg 520i and they let some clown do the cambelt. They had it on TWO TEETH advanced (how???) and as a result it had about 90 psi compression on all six. Putting it back boosted that up to 150 psi. Even without valves and pistons touching the exhaust valve was still open when the piston was on its way back up again. Those poor valves must have shit themselves when they saw those slugs on the way up.

FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK!!

No noises so must have been very close. A similar thing happened when a well known Alfa Romeo bodger LES DUFTY FROM BRISTOL* did a £1200(!) top end rebuild on an Alfasud Sprint and fucked up the cam timing on one bank

*Looks a bit like John Wayne too.