M50 swap-101

[EFreak]

LOL! Yes, i am a drifter and thank you. I hope to drift this season and after that "retire" my car from it. I think i might even put in a carpet once my car is retired!

We need videos, stat! What did you slide last season?

[hdriven]

We need videos, stat! What did you slide last season?

Well i started off with the e21, with the m10 on megasquirt. After a few events i decided to swap in the m50 so i havent really had a car of my own. I finished up the season borrowing other peoples cars. I had fun, but since i borrowed different cars i was not really doing well. I have a small of me practicing in the e21. I just have to find it...


So i recieved my muffler and i was so exited to try it out that i just stck it on the end of the pipe and turned on the car. I heard the idle and liked it, once i revved it i hated it! So far im dissapointed with the sound the muffler makes. I should not really complain though since it is only a turbo muffler Maybe when i get some funds ill put in a proper muffler.

[bflan2001]

You're a drifter aren't you... I know a drift mobile when i see one, and your E21 sir, looks like one. I like it

lol how could you tell that from the pictures??

looks good! i say weld it up and get to the races!!!

[hdriven]

i say weld it up and get to the races!!!

oh, it has been welded. I have been running welded diff for about 2 years.

[EFreak]

Well i started off with the e21, with the m10 on megasquirt. After a few events i decided to swap in the m50 so i havent really had a car of my own. I finished up the season borrowing other peoples cars. I had fun, but since i borrowed different cars i was not really doing well. I have a small of me practicing in the e21. I just have to find it...


So i recieved my muffler and i was so exited to try it out that i just stck it on the end of the pipe and turned on the car. I heard the idle and liked it, once i revved it i hated it! So far im dissapointed with the sound the muffler makes. I should not really complain though since it is only a turbo muffler Maybe when i get some funds ill put in a proper muffler.

Lovin the muffler placement

I'll assume since you slide you have seen those guys with the huge pipe shooting 6ft out the back and up at a 45* angle, I think you started a new drifting trend

Check out my slides man, it's always nice to see more BMW's out there

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f234hL0nhH0[/ame]

Make sure you click the HQ button!

[hdriven]

Dang that video is like McDonalds....Im lovin' it! Great looking e30 and some good driving too! You have excellent slide control

Hopefully i can get this car done soon so i can really start practicing and get some good videos.

[skitzone]

updates?

[hdriven]

Alright, well im finally out of school! Yay to me for graduating college and recieving my BA ! I also took the LSAT and now i have time to finish up this car.

So, i tried starting my car and it's misfiring like crazy! I pulled the spark plugs and i found something very weird. Plugs 1 and 2 look and smell wet, like raw fuel. 5 and 6 look like they are firing. 3 and 4 are somewhere in between. So, i am completely frustrated because i cannot figure out why this is happening.

I know its not the MS because i have it wired up in wasted spark, which means that 1 and 6 fire together, and 2 and 5 etc. As far as the injectors go, i have 1, 3, and 5 on one injector bank and the rest on another. So with the information provided it does not make sense. I also bench tested the MS and it's working well.

Im thinking it has to do with fuel pressure, but im not sure. I know its not the coils because i rotated them and got the same results. I think im going to check my fuel system pressure see where that puts me... oh yeah, when i start it up then rev it up a bit it clears up a bit.

Also, my wideband tells me im lean yet i can smell raw fuel. Im so stumped! Maybe i will wire in the stock DME and harness just until i can actually get it driving. Does any one have a stock DME and harness?

Any who any help on this little porblem would be fantastic!

[XJCASPER]

Alright, well im finally out of school! Yay to me for graduating college and recieving my BA ! I also took the LSAT and now i have time to finish up this car.

Off topic, but...


LSAT?

Congradulations!!!

So what are you gonna do when you grow up?
My boss asked me that question this afternoon. I told her, Retired.

But I start my BA in the Fall.

[jjgbmw323]

LSAT = Law SATs that test all sorts of crazy stuff like logical reasoning and arguments......

[XJCASPER]

Thank you.

I'm too opinionated and up front to be a lawyer.

[hdriven]

Yeah law school is next...

So, any ideas as to why its misfiring?

Maybe it could have low cylinder pressure? Hmmmm time for a compression test.

[derrith]

I can't help with the misfire, but I can help with the driveshaft. The driveshaft for the zf310 (m3/328i) transmission has m12 bolt holes while the earlier driveshafts have m10 bolt holes. If you have or make a thinwall 30mm socket you can remove the rear flange from the m3 transmission and swap on an earlier flange that will fit with the 3 bolt m10 hole driveshaft and guibo. Glad to see someone else doing an m50 swap in something other than an e30.

[hdriven]

The driveshaft for the zf310 (m3/328i) transmission has m12 bolt holes while the earlier driveshafts have m10 bolt holes. If you have or make a thinwall 30mm socket you can remove the rear flange from the m3 transmission and swap on an earlier flange that will fit with the 3 bolt m10 hole driveshaft and guibo. Glad to see someone else doing an m50 swap in something other than an e30.

Awesome!!! Thanks, this is exactly what I wanted to hear. You just helped fix 50% of my problems

Off to the junk yard...

[hdriven]

So it turns out that it is indeed possible to swap out the flanges. I "grabbed" a flange from a 97 323 from the junk yard and brought it home a few days ago. It was easy to remove you just need a 30mm THIN SOCKET, it must be thin! Then a little pull and it was off. To take the flange off the M3 trans i used a 36mm socket, an axle socket worked great. Pulling it off was a different story. I used a huge puller, a lot of strength, and some swear words to get it off. So, finally swapped flanges and now i have cut the driveshaft and it is ready to be welded.

Im going to be making my own driveshaft using some technique an old timer told me about... don't worry i will post pics. Besides this i am pretty much done with the "hardware" now its time to figure out the darn misfire...

[hdriven]

Sorry for the crappy pics.

Alrighty, I have made my driveshaft!!!

All i can say is... it was pretty easy. So here is how i did it.

First I got my self a caliper (sorry can't think of what the darn thing is called) from harbor freight. It was only like 7 bucks. Then i bought a magnet and put the two together to get this...


So with this bad boy i was able to place it on the transmission tunnel so that i could measure my driveshaft like so....


This part of the driveshaft making, comes after cutting the pieces to the correct length. At this point I had tack welded the two pieces together and I corrected the roundness by hitting it with a hammer until it was perfectly centered. (the green paint is the area were i welded the two pieces together)

After i had it all nice and round i welded one small section at a time. I welded one small part then rotated it 180 degrees then did a small chunk until it was all welded up. That it! Making a driveshaft, the home made way.


In this picture you can see the different size of the flanges, the one on the bottom is M3 the top one is getrag 325i.


So, my driveshaft came together well, i bolted it up and while i was down there (and while my exhaust was off) i decided to paint it with high heat black paint.



The exhaust looks super stealth mode, that way the cops wont mess with me too much.

Here is a little "side" project i have been doing too... do you know what this is?



Yup, the front valence all welded shut and cleaned up nicely and repainted by me of course . Im pretty happy with the way it came out.

And here is my hood getting ready to get color matched also...



So thats it guys, my car can actually move on its own power! Im so proud, it's like watching my car take its first steps .

Oh, and the misfire is almost fixed, it turns out i had the sensor on the toothed wheel wiried in backwards. I will try to get some video of my car actually driving so that my swap can be officially done!

[jjgbmw323]

congrads

[Pyrodon]

sweet nice work keep it up

[derrith]

Glad I was able to help, great work.

[hdriven]

Thanks guys!

Im kinda gettin the itch to do another swap

I have a ka24de with 5 speed trans and ecu sitting in my back yard, just need a donor car.

[DEZIAC]

awesome stuff, can't wait to see the end product.

[aschroeder92]

Fantashtic.

[e21speed]

hdriven, any updates?

[hdriven]

hdriven, any updates?

Actually... YES!!!

So, i decided to use the stock dme because of Cali living and what not; plus megasquirt was making my life hell!

I went to the junk yard and pulled the dme, wiring harness maf and other tid bits needed. I went to work today and well it runs F*in AWESOME!!!!!

OMG!!!! YOU GUYS NEED TO DO THIS SWAP!!!!!!!!!

I also took pictures of the wirining and how to do it so that anyone can swap this engine into their e21.

Lets begin, here is the harness. Its really easy to get the harness you need because bmw used some sweet connectors. Make sure you grab the connector that goes into the chassis harness. It can be seen on the top right hand corner (the cut side). Yes, you do need to cut the harness, thats where you splice the e21 harness.

 

So this is what my engine bay looked like before...




This is me just test fitting the harness just to see how it would lay out...




Ok looking good, so just connect all of the connectors to the appropriate sensors. If your smart you do not separate the harness from the engine, i had to figure out which connector was which because i was swapping harnesses.

Here is the e21 harness, it only has a few wires on it. What i did was remove one wire at a time and label each one. I label it with masking tape. Once your e21 harness is cut and removed and labeled you are ready for the magic...



Here is how my wires matched up... take note...

E21----------e34

brown/white--brown/puple pin 12 (coolant)

brown/green--brown/green pin 23 (oil light)

blue--blue pin 25 (alt wire)

green--green pin 21 (ign switch)

thick black--black/yellow pin 18 (starter)

skinny black--black pin 20 (tach)

Thats it!

Here is the "diagram" i used. It helped alot even though it's not perfect.
 


Ok so now you have your wires all hooked up and done time to finish the install.

Here is the other side of the harness. Theres a ground and two power cables on this side. So i just grounded it to this little bolt. The two power lines i pulled them into the little space you see there to connect it to my main power line.



another look...



Time to plug into the dme and to find a place for it. Hmmmm well i cut the firewall a bit to fit the big rubber grommet on the wall. Once i did that i put the dme inside of the little cubby hole and plugged it in.




So now i am almost done! This is what it looks like all installed. Including the maf.






I ran into a problem though. The hood would not close because of the harness so i just cut off a piece of the hood... look...



Thats it, the hood closes it runs the tach works. Its a thing of beauty really. Here is my car all done, kind of dirty.



All the pics are courtesy of my iphone, i hope they look good. I also took a little vid with my phone but it came out bad, so im going to take a vid with a real cam and post here. I have to do a burn out so that everyone can see the difference between then and now.

[jjgbmw323]

Looks good. Lets see some videos. I am swaping a VR6 into my MK2, right now.
Then later the 323i gets swapped with the 2.9 m20.

I bet your car must fly right now with the proper wiring.


And what color blue is that? I am looking to repaint my old MK2 Golf a blue color.