Blackknight530i’s 530i6 6-speed swap build thread

[gmak]

The things we do for BMW. Unbelievable guys. Just amazing what you're doing. I especially like the descriptions of the issues encountered and how they were dealt with. Much more interesting to read that the old "tripped over a wrench and the transmission popped out onto the cart" threads.

[blackknight530i]

The things we do for BMW. Unbelievable guys. Just amazing what you're doing. I especially like the descriptions of the issues encountered and how they were dealt with. Much more interesting to read that the old "tripped over a wrench and the transmission popped out onto the cart" threads.

Yeah, we always hit some kind of snag that nobody else would have hit, but we get it done

[philly98540]

Great right up! Read like I was there.. In awe of your guys seemingly effortless progress here. Making quick work of it even with that buggered bolt. At least it's a lower one that you could access. Good luck today.

[auaq]

Nice work guys. Sorry, I couldn't come over to help you all out. Keep up the good work.

[TerraPhantm]

Nice work so far. Sucks about the cross threaded hole. Maybe it can be helicoiled or time-serted at some point? Though I think the nut will work just fine too

[BMW540san]

Great work guys. There is nothing like rowing your own gears. It shouldn't be too long now.

[blackknight530i]

Hey guys, I have an update for you that I wasn't really looking forward to posting.

So, today was a pretty unfortunate day. It all started out with getting the shifter arm set up with the UUC Evo3 and new ECS teflon bushings. We then decided it was time for getting the transmission prepped for installation. We took a wire brush to the input shaft splines and put some grease on the contact points of the throwout bearing and clutch release fork and started to get it installed in the car.

That's where things turned negative. We had a terrible time getting the transmission installed as it would get about 3/4" away from being fully seated, but wouldn't budge more than that. We decided to try putting in bolts all around the bellhousing and use them to pull it onto the engine, but at first, we found a gap at the top of the transmission, even though the bottom bolts were nearly fully tightened. Something was still not letting it fully seat. We noticed that there was one of the wiring harnesses from the automatic that was getting in between the bellhousing and the engine, so we got that out of the way, but it didn't really help much. We could tell that the input shaft was going into the clutch disk by trying to turn the output flange with it in gear and not being able to. We backed the bolts out and decided to try another attempt, and this time we did it a bit more evenly tightening the bolts, but it was still quite tough. We did get it fully seated all the way around and we loosened and torqued the bolts to spec. We figured we were good and went on to work on other things.

The next thing was to install the shifter arm, Evo3 and DSSR. Our first issue came up when we tried to insert the pin through the shifter arm bushings on the back of the transmission. It would not fit through the holes on the transmission. We tested the same pin on my 540i transmission and it fit just fine. We ended up taking a drill bit and running it through the two holes a couple times and it seemed to allow it to fit, so I'm guessing there was something in the holes or they were just never "worn in". Next was hooking up the slave cylinder and prepping the driveshaft. I had intended to replace the CSB with a M5 version, but the one on the driveshaft still seemed in good condition and we didn't have a bearing press, nor the time to replace it, so we decided to just install it as-is. We did the M5 Giubo on though, and that would have been pretty uneventful, but we ran into an issue where the bolts that I got from Morristown BMW for the Giubo ended up being for a M3 and were too small. I must have had the wrong RealOEM page open when I sent the part numbers to them, so I was 3 bolts/nuts short. We started trying to come up with different ideas on how to make it work, but ultimately, it was Brian that suggested we jack up his M5 and take them off his car and order him some new ones, since he's not driving it right now. I figured, this would at least get me home today, so I said ok. I got the bolts out and put on my car and then we discovered that the nuts from the diff end of the driveshaft weren't the same size either, so Brian scoured his bolt drawers and found 6 nuts that would work, so we weren't totally hosed yet. We packed the diff input flange with new Redline CV2 grease and installed the driveshaft and moved on to the exhaust. Surprisingly, the exhaust installation went smoothly, go figure

Next it was time to wire up the reverse switch. I hadn't yet received the connector for the switch, so we temporarily decided to use a couple spade connectors wired to 2 now unused auto transmission wires. That is the main wiring that needs to be done for a MS43 based manual swap. We still need to take the two wires we used and wire them to ground and pin 25 of x10114 on the IKE, but that's easy to do later.

Now we were ready to bleed the clutch system. This was a very time-consuming and tedious process for some reason. We used a pressure adapter that goes on the air hose and set the regulator pressure to 20 psi or so, then opened the bleed screw for about 5-6 seconds or so at a time and kept checking the fluid level and topping up when low. I kept noticing that the clutch pedal feel was still somewhat inconsistent and very light feeling, so we kept on bleeding it and finding a few bubbles every so often. I then considered taking the slave cylinder out and manually pressing the plunger in while opening the bleed screw (no pressure on the system from the air hose though) and we found quite a few more bubbles were trapped in the slave cylinder. We did that a few times and noticed no more bubbles, so we reinstalled it and went back to pressure bleeding the whole system, but we made the mistake of not realizing how much fluid we bled with the "slave out" procedure, and ended up running the reservoir dry. Ugh Back to step 1 again. Went through the whole process again and decided we had got all the air bubbles out.

Now it was time to do some coding. I hooked up my laptop and using NCSExpert and NCSdummy, I got the ZCS changed to reflect the switch to a manual, coded the IKE, DSC and changed the EWS to "Euro" mode (no start-interlock for the clutch switch) since we hadn't wired the clutch switch yet. I cleared adaptations on the DME and figured we were ready to fire the car up.

Well, this is where our day went from annoying, to downright deplorable. The car would turn over, but it really sounded like it was struggling. The car had about 1/4 tank of gas, but had been sitting for a couple days, so that sometimes means that it might actually be out of gas (this has happened to me 3 times in this car). The second start made a loud noise and then the starter sounded like it was spinning freely. O...M...G... Asim was looking at the starter, and he noticed that it was actually sitting crooked. It turns out that the dowel pin on the starter wasn't actually in the starter, but rather made it not mate up on the top correctly. The auto transmission didn't actually have a dowel pin in the starter location, but the manual did. After a very rough time of trying vise grips, filing, etc., we got the dowel small enough so that the starter slid on it and we were able to bolt i up properly. Phew! This only took about an hour or so to do though

Ok, so we decided to try to start the car again. Still struggled, but would occasionally sound like it was going to start. We let it sit for a bit and I came to the conclusion that simply clearing adaptations might not be enough for the MS43 to determine that it was no longer an auto and was now a manual car. This was also verified when I kept getting a DME error code saying communication with EGS timeout. I decided to load up WinKFP and program a manual tune for the DME. About 30 minutes later, we had it loaded up and ready to start again. I cleared codes and adaptations again and started her up. This time, it really felt more like it was going to start, but it was still struggling. I decided to give it some gas while starting and eventually, along with a cloud of smoke, it fired up. It ran a bit rough, but not too horribly bad, until we started hearing a horrible squealing sound. I immediately shut it down until we could focus on where it was coming from. Asim listened in the engine bay and Brian listened from under the car and Brian confirmed what I thought, that it was coming from the bellhousing area.

This was not a good sign.

We started it again a few times and while it now seemed to start every time and idle ok, so long as the clutch pedal was depressed, it would squeal very loudly any time I would let the clutch pedal out. So, this is where we were at the end of the night (around 11:00 PM). We were completely exhausted and very dejected. I looked up a few forum threads of people having what appeared to be a similar problem, and some suggested taking the slave cylinder out and spraying the throwout bearing area quite liberally, which made me think about something. We never put grease on the splines of the input shaft. This is something we've always done when doing clutch jobs, but for some reason we didn't this time. I think it was because I was reading the ISTA instructions and it never said to apply any grease to the splines. It turns out, when we were looking in the box the clutch kit came in, we noticed a little tube of "spline lubricating grease" in it. Ugh, why didn't we decide to do that? So, we didn't have any white lithium grease, but we were hungry and looking to go out for dinner anyways, so I figured we would stop at Walmart and pick some up on our way back. It was just another excuse for Brian to show us what an awesome BeastWagon he has

So that's where we're at. I'm taking a day off work tomorrow and hopefully we're going to be able to just spray some grease in through the slave cylinder hole and it will all work perfectly from there, but considering our luck on this car, we'll probably have to pull the transmission again and properly grease the splines and see if anything has been damaged. I'm usually an optimist, but my patience is wearing thin with this car. I even considered just towing it to a nearby shop and letting them do this last bit, but that would not be appreciated by my wallet, nor my boss.

Sorry for the lack of pictures, but with the amount of problems we had today, we just didn't feel like taking the time to take any pictures. If we have to take the transmission out again, maybe we'll try to get a few more for you guys.

Wish us luck guys!

[AquilaBMW]

Your undertakings are always inspirational and impressive to say the least. Shame about what happened today, however it's a good thing you have a beehive of knowledgeable minds there as I'm sure it could have been worse. Bad days come and go, tomorrow will be good.

[TerraPhantm]

Paul, in INPA there should be a button that says "clear learned variants" or something to that effect, I would try hitting that. *Should* put the tranny in manual mode unless the e39 is different for some reason. I guess the flash worked though so nbd.

Hopefully there wasn't any damage - good luck! So far it sounds like something with the throw out bearing.

[JimLev]

Wow, just about everything that could go wrong went wrong. Do you really think the squeal is from the pilot shaft splines not being greased? Usually that comes from something that rotates, like the pilot shaft bearing or the throw out bearing.
I think you said you replaced the input bearing on the tranny, or was that the shaft seal? Might be best to pull the tranny and take another look. When you swapped bell housings I assume you measured both to make sure they were the same length so the pilot shaft wouldn't be binding on the pilot bearing in the back of the crank.
Good luck today, hope you find it.

Let me ask a stupid question.......you did fill the tranny, right?

[BMW540san]

As Jim said, time to backtrack. At least, it's 2 of you which makes things easier. I have lift but don't have single car guy in my area to help me when needed. Hopefully you guys will resolve this without permanent damage. Good Luck!

[blackknight530i]

Wow, just about everything that could go wrong went wrong. Do you really think the squeal is from the pilot shaft splines not being greased? Usually that comes from something that rotates, like the pilot shaft bearing or the throw out bearing.
I think you said you replaced the input bearing on the tranny, or was that the shaft seal? Might be best to pull the tranny and take another look. When you swapped bell housings I assume you measured both to make sure they were the same length so the pilot shaft wouldn't be binding on the pilot bearing in the back of the crank.
Good luck today, hope you find it.

Let me ask a stupid question.......you did fill the tranny, right?

So, it is not uncommon for people to swap 6MT bellhousings onto SMG transmissions on M3s, so there shouldn't be any differences in the length of the input shaft. There was some discussion a while back on people trying to swap the m3 bellhousing onto the 540i transmission, but those did say the input shaft itself was a different length between the two. I'm not doing that though. We did not replace the input shaft bearing, just the seal. The transmission made no noise while it was out of the car when turning the shaft or output flange in gear, so I don't think anything in the transmission is binding up.

Also, all clutch and flywheel parts are brand new, including the OE BMW throwout bearing (didn't like the loose LuK bearing that came with the kit).

Yes, we did fill the transmission with fluid

[blackknight530i]

Paul, in INPA there should be a button that says "clear learned variants" or something to that effect, I would try hitting that. *Should* put the tranny in manual mode unless the e39 is different for some reason. I guess the flash worked though so nbd.

Hopefully there wasn't any damage - good luck! So far it sounds like something with the throw out bearing.

So, I went to the DME and on the error codes screen, there is a button to clear adaptations in which you can then clear about 8 different adaptations, so maybe this was the wrong place.

I hope we didn't damage anything either.

[philly98540]

Dang! So close....
Pull the tranny is my vote. Take a breath, regroup, and then hit it again. The tranny should not bind as your slide it on the motor. Double check all measurements on input ant bellhousing. Check clutch disc centering. Spin the output shaft a bit while tranny is in gear as you slide it on the motor to assure splines are going in clean. I don't think spraying lube in there now will get you home free.

I know you guys will get this and all will be well.

[jdjg]

when I did my automatic to manual swap I did this:
- put the IKE in manual transmission (no more PRND12345)
- put EWS in manual transmission (like you, do not need to press the clutch pedal to start the car)
- finally need to do the EWS-DME "alignment" or sync the EWS with the DME

[blackknight530i]

when I did my automatic to manual swap I did this:
- put the IKE in manual transmission (no more PRND12345)
- put EWS in manual transmission (like you, do not need to press the clutch pedal to start the car)
- finally need to do the EWS-DME "alignment" or sync the EWS with the DME

Yeah, the car starts just fine without syncing the dme-ews, so not worried about that. The other stuff is the same, but the dsc also needs to be set to manual.

[jdjg]

Yeah, the car starts just fine without syncing the dme-ews, so not worried about that. The other stuff is the same, but the dsc also needs to be set to manual.

well my car has ASC not DSC, so no need to put the ASC in manual....
good luck with the swap!!

[blackknight530i]

well my car has ASC not DSC, so no need to put the ASC in manual....
good luck with the swap!!

It's possible it still has a setting for manual though, since I think it applies to the engine torque cut or something. I'm not sure though.

Thanks, hopefully we get it worked out.

[dk500]

Sounds like a bad pilot bearing. Is it difficult to shift when the clutch is in but easy when it is out (car off)?

[TerraPhantm]

You know what, I misread the update. If the noise is there only when the clutch is engaged, that suggests input shaft bearing or pilot bearing.

[auaq]

That's what I was thinking as it sounded like the input shaft bearing is making that squealing noise. Correct me if I'm wrong here Paul, but I think as soon as Paul lets out the clutch pedal (partial clutch engagement) that's when it starts to squeal loud. I think we had initially thought of the pilot bearing making that noise but it doesn't seem so when the clutch pedal is all the way to the floor (clutch disengaged).

- - - Updated - - -

We should mention though despite of the current situation we decided to put the wheels back on the car, lowered it to the ground, and tried to drive the car in forward and in reverse gear which it did by the way.

[TerraPhantm]

I'd pull the bell housing and take a look then. Maybe something got misaligned when you guys forced the transmission on by the bolts.

I'd probably throw some assembly grease on the bearing and put it back together at least.

[blackknight530i]

So, you guys can stop guessing. We got the trans off in record time (1h15m) and found our issue:



Turns out I must have ordered a 540i/M5 guide tube and it is slightly longer than the M3 one, by about 1/2" or so. It had galled itself in the clutch disc I think, but all the other parts look perfect, so we're going to see if we can get a new one or at least reuse the smg one.

Will update when we have more information.

[auaq]

It's possible that something may have got misaligned during the installation phase.

- - - Updated - - -

Great news!!!!

[dk500]

Was anything scoured by the guide shaft when the clutch was engaged?

- - - Updated - - -

Nvm just saw that it caused some major clutch slip