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Well I guess its about time im post up about my swap. It’s a 98’ 328i sedan with a sbf 302/t5 swap.
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Current engine in it is from a 96’ f150.
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every thing that had to come off the f150 engine
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But the first engine I had built, It was sweet and sounded great. Tfs 1 cam and twisted wedge heads but after a bit it started losing oil pressure and had some bearing material in the oil. Its sitting in the corner on a stand and I don’t want to talk about it. So I bought a $300 running engine and swapped it out just to get it going and enjoy the car.
Intake is gt40 from an explorer
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Fuel rail is from a mountaineer. (Return type, this was only from a couple year span) I used this as it relocates the supply and return connections to behind the engine opposed to the foxbodys being on the passenger side. Cleans it up and imo is a little easier routing wise.
24# injectors from a Lincoln Mark VII, pro m maf and trick flow 70mm throttle body. The throttle body is modified and has the pull cam off the e36 tb and then I made my own throttle stop. Works well.
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I ran the stock ford power steering pump for a short bit. It was…annoying. It was a reman, bled all the air from the system. Still groaned all the time and the steering feel was bleh.
Sooo I removed it and converted over to a Volvo S40 electric power steering pump. I like is so far, not a ton of miles on it but so far so good.
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to do this I had to change the water pump rotation for serpentine routing reasons. Stock is CCW. The only pump I came across that had the correct pulley offset with clockwise rotation was from a Lincoln town car, the pulley fits on the pump but the bolt pattern spacing is off so I just clocked it and drilled the pulley so that it mounts to both patterns.. The only issue with this, and I don’t have an issue with it is that the pump is now driven on the ribbed side of the belt but this is a smooth pulley. I cant find a reasonably priced ribbed pulley to use, March performance has one that may work but oh well. Its been doing fine, hasn’t thrown the belt, hasn’t slipped and is cooling fine at 90+*F outside. I also bought a low mount alternator bracket from speed doctor racing components (bonus: this made my upper hose not look like dr. Seuss made it) and it allows me to tension the serpentine belt vi[IMG]file:///C:/Users/tlserini/AppData/Local/Temp/msohtmlclip1/01/clip_image016.jpg[/IMG]a heim joints. Quality parts.
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Wildwood clutch master and miata slave on the t5.
For brakes ive swapped front and rears out. Fronts to e46 330i calipers and rotors. Rears to e46 328i calipers and rotors. There seemed to not be enough clearance on my stock brake booster/abs pump so I installed the chase bays brake lines, booster delete and proportioning valve. I came across a smaller booster that could possibly work from an older Mercedes.. e class I think it was. but couldn’t find much on ebay or salvage yards and were fairly expensive when I did come across the one I did find to take a chance on. The manual brakes are exactly that, not great, not terrible. They stop and this isn’t a daily so I can deal.
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Last edited by seriniboy; 07-11-2021 at 05:49 AM.
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Cooling. I made this way harder than it should have been. But I ended up with a, I think it was a becool brand universal radiator. It cools very well, stock stat. fabricated rad mounts.
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BC coilovers, rear shock reinforcement, front sub frame reinforcement and front tower plates.
I need to make a strut brace. I know, I dont ‘need’ one but its neat, looks good and I like fabricating.
Mounted A9L ecu in stock e36 location with homemade mount. Fabricated a cover out of sheet alum. Then attached FMS relay box to it. (I used fms universal sbf efi harness by the way. I wasn’t going to because im cheap, but I did and I do not what so ever regret this. Spend the money if your thinking about it. I had a couple old fox harness’s. they’re old, brittle and have at least 4 broken clips. It was worth it.)
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I had an aux blade fuse bank and relay under the hood for a couple circuits. Didn’t like it there relocated that to the glove box. I still have a 3 way mini anl fuse holder in the bay for fan, ecu power and my electric power steering pump. I also made a mount to mount a breaker above that holder for my mini starter. With no fender mount solenoid having a constant voltage cable running next to my headers was concerning to me. Im using a 250A breaker. I did an amp draw test on the starter and max draw on it was 225A cold. Im not sure after heat soak but its not tripped on me yet. It makes me feel better.
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Last edited by seriniboy; 07-11-2021 at 05:50 AM.
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Aesthetics –
fitment lab over fenders.
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Flocked headliner. Tried covering the first one with suede material. Did not go well. So I flocked it, looked ok but backer was not the in the best shape from prior efforts. Came across a liner in a salvage yard that was in good shape. Flocked it. hell yeah.
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Last edited by seriniboy; 07-11-2021 at 06:00 AM.
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Carbon fiber intake tube. Wanted a black one, this wasn’t expensive. 2k clear over it and no wet sanding.
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Swapped all interior to black if I could source parts, resorted to dying A and C pillars and parcel shelf. Turned out ok.
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Grip royal steering wheel/nrg quick release. Does not have a horn button…. But I wanted a horn and didn’t want to have a momentary toggle or anything for it so I repurposed the push switch on the blinker stalk to sound the horn. Push in, beep beep. Haven’t had any issue with honking while signaling lol.
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Depos with yellow highs.
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HM roof wing. Not pictured.
Last edited by seriniboy; 07-11-2021 at 06:01 AM.
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Mkah door cards.
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Cut out skipass and custom made a box at the same angle as the rear seat and mounted it, have a massive brand 10’’ sub in it, sounds great. Infinity kappa components up front. The cross overs had a 3 way option so I installed some massive brand drivers in the cut outs in the door cards to take advantage of this and then 6x9’s in the back powered by a 5ch infinity amp.
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Last edited by seriniboy; 07-11-2021 at 05:59 AM.
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Made my own shift and ebrake boots. I like paisley patterns, its not manly and I don’t care.
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Removed OBC and cut the cubby out of a spare trim piece I had, made a delete plate from a 1/4 ‘’ sheet of textured a.b.s. Found rocker switches that weren’t hideous and snapped into the OE switch openings (these took so long to source, took opening measurements and spent a lot of time googling and looking at technical prints to see if switches may work) the switches are for a fan over ride in case of temp probe failure on flexalite controller. Another is a fuel pump cut switch and the third is open for now, wanting exhaust cutouts eventually.
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Speaking of exhaust, I ….. again made this much harder than it could have been. Ended up buying cheap tri y sbf headers off ebay and cut one side up and made it to where it wrapped the steering column, its not pretty but works. Actually if I remove the intermediate shaft I can pull the tri y long tube header from the top, done it several times. It’s awkward but possible. (I do not have the stock intermediate shaft. I used another from and e46, its thinner.) Those connect into a y pipe and then into a obx 3’’ exhaust.
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im not a body man but there was some pitting under the tail light. wasnt near as bad as i thought so i wire wheeled it clean, made sure it was all out and cleaned and resprayed it.
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Last edited by seriniboy; 07-11-2021 at 05:58 AM.
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I know the engine bay is filthy and needs detailed. Should have painted it.
Shout out to Laminar, thanks dude. He answered an email from me long ago asking for a couple details on how he attached his afr gauge in the stock cluster and he delivered! Even with pics. Legendary. I don’t have the email anymore, I think I had accidentally deleted it. but I did the exact same as him, looks great. Ive been quietly stalking his build for, well years now and its been helpful.
Ive owned this car since 2008 when I was 17 bought it from a buy here, pay here lot. It had 204k on it when I pulled the drive train long long ago. The chassis is in really good shape actually. Money became an issue so it sat for a LONG time under a car port until I finished some courses and started an actual career where I had enough income to tinker with it.
2009 potato phone photo:
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as it sits now without roof wing:
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I washed it shortly after. my shop accumulates so much dust and pollen, ridiculous.
Future plans: Right now I’m just shaking it down and enjoying the car. Messing with the details and aesthetics. Ive been eyeing some turbo kits…but that’s a good ways off from now. Id like to have a more capable transmission first and lsd (open 3.91 right now). Tremec came out with the TKX trans late last year that appears to be packaged to fit my needs and fit in the tunnel. Id also like to swap my steering rack out for the quicker z3 rack, as mine is leaking. I need to lower the rear a tad and swap out my rtab’s. then reinforce the rear subframe. Stupid fuxking ds door window. Have had that apart numerous times, greased it, new reg. still wants to nose in when it goes up. Need to get to the bottom of that. Probably not.
These photos are in no particular chronological order. as you can tell i am indecisive and changed/re did ALOT of things throughout this build.
Ive added 8mm spacers to the rear and studded the hubs. this are not installed in photos.
Sehnsucht (German pronunciation: [ˈzeːnˌzʊxt]) is a German noun translated as "longing", "desire", "yearning", or "craving".[1] Some psychologists use the word to represent thoughts and feelings about all facets of life that are unfinished or imperfect, paired with a yearning for ideal alternative experiences.[2]
If anyone has any questions or wants part numbers/details ask away and ill try to answer them or dig up the part number or where sourced the item. Thanks.
Last edited by seriniboy; 07-11-2021 at 08:54 AM.
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I really relate to the "making it more complicated than it needs to be," as that's the story of my entire E30 SBF swap so far. I've started calling it "The Complication."
Nice work on the build. Doesn't matter how long it takes if you're doing it right.
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Thanks Adam, appreciate it. I'm by no means a perfectionist, but I can be particular about how I want things to be.
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That install looks great to me. I love all of your brackets!
Diving in at the shallow end!
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Well done! The Volvo electric pump has me intrigued. Do you have any more info on that? That thing with a 3.91 has to be a hoot!
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thanks motor!
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Laminar,Originally Posted by Laminar
The pump is off a late 2000's Volvo S40. its a contained system and in this application only takes 3 wires to operate. the positive an negative 8 gauge connections (fuse this). Then theres the other three wire connector that you will only use 1 wire from. that wire will go to a RUN only switched source. this is so when you have it in accessory its not needlessly running your pump and in cranking position its not drawing any extra load while your starter is engaged. when its switched to run it will wait approx 3 seconds then starts to wind up till its at speed.
the high pressure side of these pumps come in either a 14mm or 16mm port. mine was 16mm, i bought a 6 AN to 16mm x 1.5 o ring adapter (part number 648060, russell brand). the return line is low pressure and connects to a plastic barb molded into the reservoir.
Running it this way is actually in limp mode which is about 80% of its max output. it feels fine to me, fairly linear as far as ive noticed.
To make this run in not in limp mode to my knowledge hasnt been done yet. this pump is a can bus unit (the other 2 wires on that plug) and ive found no resources on anyone cracking the can bus code to make it operate in the 'correct' manner, if you were able to do this it would give you the ability to utilize the dynamic power steering which would vary the pump speed/output dependent on the vehicle speed making it take more input at higher speeds.
the pump reportedly varies between a 10A to 80A draw when dead head at lock. i checked it and thats correct. i had 15A no load and at full lock i had 79.3A. im running a 40A mini ANL fuse and havnt had an issue yet. ive had it at lock a couple of times driving but that was not long enough to blow a fuse. ive been considering holding it at lock to see how long it takes to blow it and if im comfortable with the time or up size the fuse.
im not entirely sure what the pressure output is or what the stock e36 is either and its been so long since i drove it in stock for to give an honest comparison. but for my needs its perfect. for quick steering input like auto x and such im not sure how it would far, could be ok but idk.
i bought mine from a salvage yard for $45. i also took the factory plugs as pig tails. the power leads i took all the way back to the fuse box and those leads were around 10ft long. plenty. also when i removed it i left it in its mount and unbolted the mount from the chassis. which is perfect because the mount actually has rubber isolators that attache the pump to the mount. so i modified the mount to how i needed it to retain the stock isolators.
Hope this helps you or some one else in the future.
EDIT: the 3.91 is a beast. 1st gear is basically pointless. just wish it were lsd. i refuse to weld it...
Last edited by seriniboy; 07-13-2021 at 03:54 AM.
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That's fascinating, great info. I just picked up an Arduino CAN-bus combo board with the intent of CAN-hacking my RX-8. I bet the same device could be used on a functional Volvo to try and find the right signals for full power steering control.
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yeah for sure. I guess you'd have to pull a wheel speed signal from some where. I think the e36 speedometer signal comes from the diff, not quiet sure if that signal would be usable for can bus use but I'd imagine it would be seeing as the e36 is can bus. it would be neat for sure. I'm not very familiar with can bus operation and havnt don anything with adruino so this is a bit outside my wheelhouse. have been wanting to get a raspberry pie and mess with that though.
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confession: I love salvage yards. I could walk around all day just looking. I frequent a couple salvage yard inventory lists online that are located in st louis (closest major city) and one of them ended up getting 2 e36s in 3 days before I checked.
one a vert and one a sedan. I scored a glove box light since I broke a tab on mine, a white oem glove box flash light.
an x brace for, wait for it.. $15.00. he heckin yeah! explained to the cashier what it was and he just looked at me and said ok, I'll charge you for a large bracket. need to get some good riv nuts and install it.
for a while now I've been displeased with my a pillars. they're brittle, so brittle. I broke tabs on one, repaired it, covered it in faux suede. it ended up snapping in two. got new ones, clips already broken and cracks like potato chips. I fabric dyed the from dove grey to black. looked ok, but haven't been happy with them.
I noticed online that verts had black textured a pillar trim. could not for the life of me find anything online on the differences between sedan and convertible a pillars other than "they're different. they are, but I wanted to know.... how different.
well now I know, they will slip into place at the base and blends pretty well. the major differences is that none of the clips line up and they are about an inch shorter. even with this, I prefer these pillars. I snipped the clips, drilled small holes through them and into the pillar and installed them with plastic push rivets. the autometer pod did not fit the new apillars profile so I heated it up with a heat gun until plyable and pressed it against the new pillar to get the new shape and installed. I think it cleans the pillars up well enough. I may see if I can shape shape very thin textured a.b.s. sheet into transition peices between the pillar and headliner, possibly flock it to match the headliner just so that the transition isn't just metal.
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I also managed to find a late 80's mercedes benz 190E. I've seen a bit online about these boosters bolting up in place of outs and it being smaller in dia. I thought about doing this early on but could never find the booster for a reasonable price. found one and snagged it. the possibility of power brakes was to tempting to resist. if I do go ahead with it eventually I'll probably pull everything and paint the engine bay though.
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also scored a beige c pillar. mine, again broke off most of the tabs and kept falling town with the windows down. managed to get this one out with only 1 broken clip. fabric dyed it black and installed.
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also found a new sunroof switch panel, guess what's wrong with mine. yeah it's the clips. mine stays in place but couldn't pass on an extra. the cars at this yard stay 60 to 90 days and then are crushed so I usually buy what I don't want to see crushed and may need. weird thing is, it's in great shape and has some kind of red material behind the clip posts. it doesn't look like they've been broken and repaired. my original 98's wasn't like this, anyone else seen this?
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new glove box light. it's been bugging me that i broke it.
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I was able to get outside this morning after work and mess around with trying to make the a pillar to headliner transition look Alitalia better.
made a template
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cut it out of texture a.b.s.
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heated and formed it
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installed
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better, bit I think I'll eventually flock it with the same fibers I did my healiner. but I not doing that until I strip and flock that beige sunroof switch panel.
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its gotten very warm in Missouri. the car has started breaking up above 3,500. But only when its under load, and only when its above 160*f. had one plug boot, cylinder #5 that was suspect since ive burnt it before. how ever it was fine. swapped out my msd coil with the spare OEM motorcraft that came with the truck engine. this did not solve the issue, but did actually run better than the msd. So this leads me to believe its the TFI module. turns out there was a lawsuit against ford for this issue in the mid 90's. if the module temp exceeds 260ish defred F they start to fail like mine, will not hot start or completely dead on the road. to fix this the relocated the module to a fender well or core support and mounted to a head sink with thermal paste, so i guess im doing a tfi relocation. went to the salvage yard near me and every f150, e150 and the one v8 s95 all had the tfi heat sinks pulled already. so ive ordered a Fatfoxx relocation kit with the longer runs of shielded cable, should be in soon and hopefully solve these issues.
fyi the best price for an oem motorcraft module was fromAZ. $80.
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On the menu today. RTAB and Shims.
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home made rtab tool
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removed
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Snapchat-1803964080.jpgeasiest way I've found to clean the bore is using a brass brush like this in a drill. put the brush chuck through the back of the bore and then chuck it in the drill and pull back while engaging the drill. once it pulls into the bore it'll try to pull all the way through. it might take a couple goes but cleans it nicely and quickly.
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I have the mkah door card panels on my sedan and they do not cover the clips that hold the window gasket with the felt on the back. they would normally be hidden as they help clip the oem panel in place. but with my panels they are visible and the clips are hideous.
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I thought about trimming the clips down but decided to just rivet them on using some black rivets, stainless washers and a little touch up paint.
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