Euro BMW E28 - M50 Turbo swap

[clew]

Hello from Sweden!


I've been hanging around here for a while, but never got around to posting my project here.
Got a BMW E28 518i a couple of years ago, love the style of this car, but with a M10 engine it is lacking a bit of power...
This is almost a finished project by now (well it's never going to be completely finished I guess) but I'm going to put up all the images in the order in which the project progressed.


Specifications as of now:
1985 518i
BBS RS 16x9/16x10
M535 E28/E34 540i rear axle swap
E34 540i brake swap
Homemade coilovers front and rear

M50B25 (non-vanos engine from the beginning)
Non-vanos intake cam on the exhaust side
M54B30 intake cam on the intake side (with Vanos active)
Custom turbo manifold with a Mitsubishi TD06 turbo
Watercooled IC
ZF 5-speed gearbox
Megasquirt MS3X ECU


This is the car when it still had the M10 engine (I aim to keep the stockish appearance)










Here I had begun to get the correct placement of the engine and building engine mounts (could not find any stock mounts that fitted)
Used a broken aluminium m52 block as a mockup, made things a lot easier!


Some pics:





The mounts got some reinforcements after these pics were taken.
E28 535 driveshaft fits perfectly with this placement of engine/gearbox.
Shifter console will have to be shortened and the brake booster will have to be replaced with a booster with smaller diameter.




While waiting for parts to arrive I took care of some rust issues around the area where the front fender is mounted.
A little brown spot turned out to be a bit more when removing the fender:



After some cutting and welding:



Grinding it down:





Over to the fun bits! I began fabricating a exhaust manifold:


Collector:



Some test-fitting:



Made a jig and began work on the first head flange:



Halfway done:



Test-fitting again, some slight modifications to the frame was necessary:



The whole manifold is ready, but just spotwelded toghether, will have a welder TIG it for me:



Test-fitting for the last time:





My goal was to build the manifold so that I wouldn't need to modify the chassis and to try and keep the pipe lengths as equal as possible.
Quite happy with how it turned out, but I had to make some small adjustments on the chassis:



Need to sort all the pictures I have from the build (about 2000 pics...) before I continue posting, but I will update soon!

[clew]

Finishing the manifold and mounting the engine:


Exhaust manifold done:



Manifold wrapped:



Modified flywheel from a M20 engine:



Sinter clutch disk with Sachs 618 pressure plate:



On the way into the engine bay, ZF gearbox from E39 528i mounted:



Test-fitting the turbo again to see if it still is in the right place:

[wilsonchristian]

Sweet build! Did you ever finish?