E39 Touring 2JZ Build

[bahooki]

A couple years ago, I bought a 1989 Mk3 Supra with no title, but a 2JZ and some good parts for a screaming deal. It also had a W58 which I wanted to get as a back up for our Lemons car (85 Celica GTS). I pulled the motor, parted out the rest of the Supra, and waited for the right car for the transplant. I wanted an E34 Touring, but when this E39 touring in Biarritz Blue came up, I decided to just go for it. Here's the car when I got it home. 1999 528iT Automatic with 248,000 miles, and an overheating motor.



I immediately pulled the motor, transmission, exhaust, and driveshaft. I had lent my engine hoist to a friend and didn't want to drive an hour to get it, so I made do with a fork lift.






I then started my summer internship, and then school in the fall, so progress was delayed a bit. I was mostly just doing research, planning, and purchasing parts. I bought a GS6-53BZ with 60,000 miles from a local junkyard for $600, as well as the PMC adapter plate for mock up. I also tore apart the 2JZ in preparation for the machine shop. I'll be doing 8.5:1 compression with a Garret G35 1050 on pump gas. Here's the transmission mated to the motor. The motor just has the head and pan bolted on.



I first mocked up the motor with the turbo and intake manifold that came with the car that came with the Supra, to get an idea of my side-to-side space. I'll even be able to keep the factory heat shielding on the passenger side, which I'm glad about. I have a rear sump pan, so it fits between the subframe and sway bar nicely. I had about 1/2" of clearance between the pan and subframe, so I massaged the oil pan a bit. I had trouble getting the nose of the engine down (picture below is immediately when I mocked up motor, front to back engine angle was about 7 degrees, so way higher up front), but figured it out later.



The GS6-53BZ fit very nicely. There were two small nubs on the rear of the casing that I cut off. They were catching on the original transmission crossmember mount points on the transmission tunnel. I believe I'll be able to reuse these points, so I just cut 1" off the nubs. The selector rod from the transmission is also about 1" too short, so I'll make a longer rod.



After a few hours of precarious poking and bottle jack maneuvering, I got the engine sitting how I wanted. I then began making the motor mounts. These are the first engine mounts I've made, and I haven't welded in a few years, so they're not beautiful, but they should do the job. I used 3/16" (if I were doing again, I probably would have done 1/8") and kept the factory bushing that attaches to the body. Both manifolds fit, and the giant Holset turbo also had about 1/2" of room. The G35 should be much smaller. I'm not sure how much I trust this intake manifold, but I'm not sure what route I want to take yet. The motor is originally a GE, so I'm limited on intake manifold options. I would prefer to run a stock GTE manifold, but the spacing between the runners is different. I'm also not willing to spend thousands on a billet piece. There's an $800 eBay option that comes with a throttle body, but I have no idea if it would even work well, or any better than the heap I currently have on the car. I'll be trimming the mounts down and cleaning them up when I paint them in the future.



I was pretty happy with this weld, it was the first non-stich weld I tried.



While purchasing parts, I also picked up a manual pedal box (brake and clutch) for $20 shipped. Unfortunately there were no pictures, so I didn't know that it's slightly different than mine. The brake booster has two threads that come into the cabin, and then two dowel pins. The pedal box in my car had two open holes for the threads to come through, then you put a nut on inside. The two dowel pin holes do not show through on the front of the pedal box mount, they're just recessed holes on firewall side. This pedal box had 4 holes, and it almost seems like it is meant for four threaded rods from the booster. Because the pedal box was so cheap, I'm just cutting it up to see if I can make it fit. The problem is that my pedal box mount sat flat against the firewall, while the new one had 1" bosses that touched the firewall, spacing the mount back. I cut off the bosses and am going to see if I can make it work. If not, I'll just buy a pedal box that has pictures. The first photo is my original pedal box from the front. There are only two holes, and then two recessed areas for the dowel pins to go in the back. The next picture is the new pedal box after my modifications, from the rear (firewall side). As you can see, the holes go all the way through. I'll report back how it works.




An eBay goody just arrived yesterday, and I just started pulling out the old one. I'll have updates as it goes in. The E28 M5 output flanges and PMC E92 shifter are also en route. I'll be interested to see how the E92 shifter will bolt up, but pictures look promising so far.

[White94RX]

Your pictures aren't showing up for me. It could be the work firewall though. I'll have to look on my phone. Sounds like a cool project.

[motorV8ed]

No pix for me either, and I am at home.

[White94RX]

Pics work from my phone!

Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

[bahooki]

Got the pictures sorted, didn't realize imgur no longer support forum linking. Thanks for letting me know.

[motorV8ed]

Now I can see them!

[pbonsalb]

Looks like a great project! Turbo S52 would have been simpler but if you want over 1000 rwhp the 2JZ is the better choice.

[bahooki]

Looks like a great project! Turbo S52 would have been simpler but if you want over 1000 rwhp the 2JZ is the better choice.

Thanks, I’m excited! Yeah, staying BMW definitely would have been simpler. If I was planning a build from the ground up, I likely would have gone a different route, but this is just how the cookie crumbled.

Honestly, the 2JZ is going to be much simpler than I thought. I’m going stand-alone, so the wiring should be pretty straight forward. There’s a decent amount of people who put 2JZs in E36/E46s, so I’m able to adapt a lot of their information.

I also don’t think I’ll be quite at 1000whp. I don’t want to go for the PMC triple disk, as the drivability isn’t great, and this is going to be my daily. I also don’t have access to E85. The twin disk holds up to about 700ftlbs, so I’m thinking 700whp is a good balance. From what I’ve gathered, I should be able to make that on around 26-30psi and be safe on 92o. If I ever want to get crazy and do half mile events or something, I’ll probably add meth or get tuned on C16.

[bahooki]

Today definitely felt satisfying... finally putting parts on! My PMC chassis mounted shifter for an E92 arrived today. I purchased it planning to just make new bolt holes in my trans tunnel. I looked at some pictures online, and it actually looked pretty similar to the holes the car already had. Sure enough, the E92 shifter bolts right into the E39.



BMW uses little metal clips to thread the shifter bolts into.. The rear bolt's clip was a hacked up, and it stripped the bolt when I tried to thread it in. I used a small punch and slightly expanded the hole, as well as making it circular again. I wasn't really expecting it to work, and I figured I'd just have to order one, but sure enough the same size M6 bolt then thread in perfectly. Didn't grab any pictures of this hodgepodge.

Here is how the shifter looks from underneath. The trans selector rod is too short, but it will still barely fit with the shifter moved to it's forward-most mounting position position. The shifter in the car is pointed 45 degrees backwards, so I wouldn't be able to use 1st, 3rd, or 5th. No biggie, but I think I'll make the rod a little longer.



I think I also managed to get the different pedal box to work. First, I cleaned up the areas of the box that I cut off with an angle grinder.



I then went to mock it up to see if I would need to cut away the padding for the bolts to be able to reach through the holes. The padding looked okay, and all of the mounting points lined up. I just have the gas pedal mocked up. I'll need to drill a small hole in the back of the pedal box for the gas pedal spring to clip into. It's currently grabbing on to the back of the housing, but I'm not going to trust that for a gas pedal.



Can't really see, but in this image it's all bolted down.



My girlfriend was also helping out today. She was grinding down the corners and such and painting them. I just went for a flat black high temp spray paint.



Enjoyed being able to see this all 'together' at the end of the day. Trans and shifter are not connected, so shifter is able to be straight. I don't really like the length of the shifter, but I'm waiting to see what it looks like with the center console in. I may shorten it an inch or two. Good progress for today though! Next week I'm hoping to get the new M5 differential in. I already have the axles moved out of the way and am ready to drop the current diff. I just need to wait for the E28 M5 flanges, but should be pretty easy once that all arrives.

[mrallande5020]

Coming along quick. A different and cool combo you chose.

[bahooki]

I started work on the back of the car last week. I began with removing the axles, which turned out to be less than fun when the OReilly's special E12 torx bit decided to mushroom wide open the second I torqued on it. Rounded off two of the bolts before I noticed. Luckily I already had the air hooked up and a cutting wheel, so I was able to make pretty quick work of them. I attempted to just remove the axles initially, as I figured I could clean the hubs up and possibly replace wheel bearings. That's when I realized that A) my car has air bags in the rear and 2) the air bags in the back of my car are massive. To get the axles out, I'm pretty sure I'd have to drop the lower control arm, so I just plopped them back into the hubs and called it good. I felt the wheel bearings and they seemed okay enough.

I was holding off on making major progress on the differential until some parts arrived: the E28 M5 output flanges and Einhorn aluminum front differential bushings mainly. When these all arrived yesterday, I tore out the differential and got ready to put in the new one.

First I needed to swap over the output flanges from the 102mm M5 flanges to 94mm flanges. They go in and out unbelievably easy. I just put the slightest amount of pressure on them with a pry bar and they slid right out. To install the new ones you just center them up and push them straight in. The clip gives some resistance at first, but then it gets centered and falls into place.



You can see the metal ring here about 1/2" into where the spline goes. At first I tried to remove it, then I realized that you just line up the output flange and push it in.



Here are the differentials next to each other.




My plan was for my stock axles to bolt up to these 94mm output flanges. Once I got my current differential next to the M5 differential with E28 output flanges, I knew something was wrong. My stock axles actually have 86mm output flanges, which I didn't realize. I imagine I saw that 540i's had 94mm output flanges and just assumed my car would follow suit (whoops).

On the right is the M5 output flange (102mm), and on the left is the E28 output flange (94mm).


In the left here is the M5 differential with the 94mm output flanges, and on the right is my stock 86mm output flange with the bolts I cut off still sticking out. Definitely a size difference.



From what I've gathered on the interwebs, the hub-end of the axles are all the same for E39s. M5 axles have some small difference, but apparently they'll still work. I think I'm going to look for 540i sedan axles. 94mm output flange and they should slide into the hubs.

To get the front differential bushing out, I tried to go all MacGyver and make a quick tool using some pipe and a C clamp. It was an absolute failure and I will be renting a bushing removal tool tomorrow.

No pictures of the tool in use, but trust me. It sucked.



I could have skipped this whole head ache if I had just taken out my differential and measured before ordering these output flanges, but I don't like to get started on specific projects until I can finish them. Looks like that bit me in the ass.

Quick question: does anyone know if the lower control arms or air bags must be removed to get the axles out? There is not much room in there, and I can't find much on the internet about it. The perch for the air bag is just right in the way. I removed the air from the bags to try and compress them out of the way, but this got me maybe 1" of the 4" of clearance I need. Any help is greatly appreciated. Happy quarantining!

[BlkD12agon]

So how did this ever turn out?