Blacktop beams in 83 320i

[kilian22]

Hello ALL

My name is wade, live in central il. i've been lingering on here for a year or so and i'm addicted now, check it at least once a day. So i wanted to share. I like to buy sell trade stuff and here is my story.

started with this


a 1982 xj 550 yamaha i hard tailed and bobbered out on the super cheap, it was a rocket and a blast. dirt bike handle bars l.e.d. lights off ebay. drilled front rotor, had wife make seat etc. it was cool. got done building it and i swear not 3 months later i traded for this.



a 97 bagged body dropped ranger, had 20's that came with it and a WHOLE bunch of other crap i thought was going to be a sweet project that turned out to be a never ending nightmare of work with little fun giveback. to much work for just a cosmetic "look" if you ask me. but for some reason i just had to have it. when i did a whole bunch of work and got bored i traded for this.



this was a upgrade for sure, got my low riding fever i had out of me, but just wasn't doing it for me, so i ended up finding a guy who was willing to trade straight up for this.



This... this was it. i never even drove the stupid thing a couple times but i was hooked, it doesn't help that my neighbor across the road is in charge of a local autocross chapter. never autocrossed in my life yet, but i've got family into drag racing and i wanted a car to go left and right and i want to autocross dang it! so i stared scouring and here is what i found.
My 1983 lover , lol

[kilian22]

I traded a couple old motorcycles i had laying around and like 800 bucks for it. some younger guy across town had it for 7-8 years and had started to do some stuff to it. Had lowered springs and bilsteins all the way around. BBS 15" wheels, some cheap racing seats. but the engine had seen better days. The fuel pump went out years ago apparently and the guys uncle is a welder so they custom welded injection ports and put webber carb on it. After i got it i cleaned up what i could and tried to drive but head gasket is blown so it'll run to move around but that's about it. I put rear brakes on and re greased all the bearings, and some other stuff but once i realized it wouldn't go up and down the road i put it out back and started to plan.........



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I wanted more power if i was going to swap, so i honestly started looking at 4.3 chevys because i thought i could get one out of a old blazer or s10 dirt cheap and it would be easy to get parts for. After calling around to local junk yards and pricing it and a 5 speed i decided to go a different route ( weren't near as cheap as i thought it was going to be.) look to ebay i did. started reading about all kinds of engines and didn't really want a turbo for reliability reasons. I really wanted a screaming daily driver/ wannabe track car. so i found a thread on like rv3 or something where a guy put a blacktop beams 3sge in a e30 and just thought it was the greatest thing ever. and on ebay 1200 bucks to my door with 6 speed, ecm, manifolds and alternator and more. cheaper than my 4.3 idea IT'S ON!

[kilian22]

Blacktop beams 3sge,should google it. rated round 210hp. N/A screamer 03 japan engine in 83 German car? why not, to me this is hod rodding. doing what i want, when i want. haha beautifully balanced car with sweet engine. so i ordered it, then stayed busy with this for a while.



not bad for a 100 dollar garage sale buy, oh man what a blast on the water. found that it fits in the back of a mini van just perfect.

[kilian22]

here we go, started sept. 1 or so.


funny shot my wife got of me, such a urban hillybilly i am.

[kilian22]

empty bay at last,


first fit


last time out, to go back in. ended up having to make engine mounts after debating many different ways of modifying orginals.

[kilian22]

engine mount fab, just a fyi i'm a simple guy doing all of this completely by myself with hand tools a 110v welder, and all by myself while drinking to many beers. lol wish i had taken more pictures. its so cold here i really haven't gotten to share this car with anyone that cares at all about cars. i'm sure you all out there know what i mean.


i got engine mounts for a 03 is300 from my local advanced auto (online ordering coupons are the best!) then made the metal brackets to fit engine where i wanted. which was as far back and as low as possible.

[dups]

God I can't wait to sell this condo, graduate college, and get a garage.

[kilian22]

the lexus engine mounts worked perfect to get the engine just high enough to clear the rack and give the pan clearance. still had to trim just a little bit.


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just a side note, here is the car i sold to get serious about the build. sweet old beetle i bought for 400 bucks with solid floors, sad to this day its gone, but had to concentrate on my beamer.




no kids, no school, just a regular old sucker job. doing things on the cheap- just lucky to have a garage.

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God I can't wait to sell this condo, graduate college, and get a garage.

it'll be worth it to your own well being..... haha

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couple more fitment pics, couldn't have fit any better at all.

[kilian22]

here is a couple of fitment. i think i must have had a higher power telling me to use this engine because absolutely couldn't have been any closer.

head to firewall


intake to passenger side strut



brake to manifold.


i do worry about heat on that resivour, but i have driven it a couple times with no problem at all. we'll see what the summer brings.

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couple extra pics i found on my phone, there was a mouse mega city living in the back seat. i bet there was an entire school book torn up in there.
the mess after i vacuumed it out

and wire connectors? i bet those u bolts are dot approved. lol

crazy what you find in used cars.

[HipMF]

Nice. Thanks for posting, I was curious about the swap. I did my first autocross last year with the m10. Hoping to to do more this summer with the m42 (1991+ 318i engine). It's a good time. Even with the m10 I had trouble getting traction on the inside rear tire when coming out of corners, so you should have a lot of fun.

[vtbimmer]

Welcome to the e21 Legion Wade. Looks awesome. I do know what you mean about sharing your car with anyone who actually cares about cars. Most people (girlfriend included) think I'm crazy.........and they are right!

[Scopy176]

awesome! thanks putting up thread man, glad you did, i really want to check this thing out in person, looks like it'd be a blast. if i could find a solid stock 3sge id try this swap in a heart beat lol.

great swap!

[Damatheus]

Living in Japan at the moment I have regular access to a Toyota Altezza with that same engine, as well as daily driving a 92 MR2 turbo with the turbo version (3SGTE). That engine is a great little engine, which loves to rev high. The only real downside is the Yamaha tuned black top really needs to rev high to get that power, but man it sure sounds nice doing it.

I am really really interested in seeing how you accomplish this swap, as I have always thought that a 3rd gen (or any gen) 3SGTE would be an amazing swap into an E21. 240ish horsepower, turbo spool under 2k rpm, and huge power potential in that engine.

Good luck, I will be following!

[kilian22]

after getting trans mounted, i got lucky and the flange on the altezza drive shaft and the flange on the beamer diff are the same. so the only work i farmed out was having the drive shaft cut down. i was a little paranoid about drive line problems so i just had a local hot rod shop cut it down three inches. only cost me 90 bucks so it wasn't bad. i'm really starting to wish i had taken more pictures.

one of the hardest things to find when i was doing the build was finding two of the connectors i needed for the ecm. Its funny how when you do these projects and end up finding some random business off of a post how quick you are to trust them if they have what you need. the engine i bought came with the harness and ecm but two of the connectors that plugged into the ecm were japan only products, but luckily through a forum i found a e-mail to a guy in south Carolina and sent pictures of what i needed. then after weeks of nagging them i finally got my connectors.

Another thing i had to order for this engine was a variable valve timing solenoid and a vacuum fitting i broke off the intake manifold. after FINALLY getting the correct part numbers for the thing i found a abu dhabi website that i could order the parts from the middle east. That blew me away cause after ordering on Tuesday, the parts showed up on Friday! From the middle east! i was blown away.

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Living in Japan at the moment I have regular access to a Toyota Altezza with that same engine, as well as daily driving a 92 MR2 turbo with the turbo version (3SGTE). That engine is a great little engine, which loves to rev high. The only real downside is the Yamaha tuned black top really needs to rev high to get that power, but man it sure sounds nice doing it.

I am really really interested in seeing how you accomplish this swap, as I have always thought that a 3rd gen (or any gen) 3SGTE would be an amazing swap into an E21. 240ish horsepower, turbo spool under 2k rpm, and huge power potential in that engine.

Good luck, I will be following!

it is a hell of a screamer, i tell everyone the thing is now like a crotch rocket cause the engine doesn't really do anything untill its at like 5 grand. then it gets scary quick!.

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so the engine is mounted, on to the tedius stuff like wiring......... really wasn't that bad now that its over but i definitely spent a lot of time stareing at diagrams


like my 95 bonneville computer box? it was cheapest thing i could find on ebay


best radiator i could find was for a turbo civic or something, all aluminum fits perfectly. hopefully it'll cool enough to work. and overflow tank both cheap ebay items.

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onto the exhaust.............. where am i gonna go from here?! this had me more worried than just about everything else on the project.

[kilian22]

cant just sit and wait for it to do itself......... after a lot of thinking and trying to come up with different ways of doing it cheap i just bought a couple generic 90 degree elbows and started cutting.

from this to


this

and finally to this




and i got excited and started welding before cleaning the pipes like i should have (YES!!!!! I KNOW THE WELDS SUCK!!!) oh well it works lol



not back for cutting the flange out of scrap then the rest out of cheap elbows.

[kilian22]

that was definitely a challenge to get the pipe to go around the steer shaft like that. to get it back in i had to cut the rivets out of the rubber piece on the shaft and take the rack down, then put the exhaust on, then put the rack back in and put the steer shaft back together all at once at the same time. it was a pain to say the least. but i have full steering range and i'm pretty proud of how it came out.

[kilian22]

its funny even looking back on my pictures, because it doesn't seem like much now but every one of them is a couple nights worth of work and research. i wish i had taken some when i was mocking this up. like the exhaust i had it propped up on all kinds of crap under the car to get it all lined up right. just makes me laugh to myself. lol

2.5 all the way back




wish i had gone up and over, starting to regret now when the exhaust bottoms out. live and learn.




thrush power!

[kilian22]

with the exhaust done, on to other things. rear deck recovering out of material had laying around for different project.

so ugly its cool.



after having my share of project vehicles, i still think its cool when you find original stuff. rear speakers



bumper was just way to fat lipped for me, diving board had to go. drilling front shocks was interesting, broke a couple drill bits in process from the pressure!
drilled out, then cut down couple inches to make flush.




much better!


the sides are still little goofy because my rubbers on each side were trashed so i just took them off.

[kilian22]

using the original instrument cluster was a problem for me, just becuase of electric speedo and tach signals. since i'm not terribly worried about originality of the car i decided best to make my own.

ebay gauges, super cheap jdm hot rod tach (like 50 bucks cheap, and 7 colors! ohhh awww) cheapest possible water temp and oil pressure. with a volt meter for a golf cart that looks like "kit" from night rider when the car is running. and i did splurge a little and bought digital speedo off summit. can do a lot of cool stuff i haven't gotten to play with. but it had the easiest programming instructions so i went with it.

the aluminum back is cut out of old street sign then wire wheeled for effect.





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upper left of speedo is my shift light made out of led licence plate bullet light.

[Scopy176]

damn that exahaust looks like one hell of a PITA... with my luck the shaft would melt or warp from some freak incident with temps lol. how did you wire up the gauges cluster, i'd like to do mine, im still using the stock wires and clips, just want to do a set up like the Mclaren gr.5 320i thats hobbs drove back in the day.

[kilian22]

how did you wire up the gauges cluster?


honestly couldnt tell ya exactly just studied diagram and played with test light to find power when i needed it and re ran new signal wires, and found orginal dash light power to wire into for lights. i cut the igntion switch out and run a toggle and push button for power.

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blue roll of leds of ebay? like 13 bucks this strip is awesome!


new interior lights



i traded a old set of wheels i had for vynle replica of valve cover and cash, guy did a good job.



retro reflective, to grabby?



pretty cool either way if you ask me.

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custom throttle pedal? didn't get any pictures of throttle cable but i had to order a custom kit off ebay a solder a end on, work out pretty good for cheap. at least with this pedal i can feather it pretty good if needed. smooth action. haha

[Damatheus]

What transmission are you using?

[Scopy176]

What transmission are you using?

yea good question, is it the stock 6spd trans from the altezza?

[kilian22]

Yes it is the altezza6 spd, I believe j160 is the model

[kilian22]

some shots of the interior, i was orginaly going to save the carpet but it smelled like mice so bad it made my eyes water. stripped down a/c parts and center console, cheap floor mats from local farm store.






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custom drink holder, its gonna be a daily gotta have some luxerys, cup holder and phone charger thats about all i get.

cheap ebay handbrake turned out to be one of the dumbest ideas i've had in a while. ended up being a total pain in the butt. had weird thread pitches and had to buy super special adaptors to make everything work.

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drove for little while till weather got real bad here, decided to freshen a couple things up with plasti dip.