Build out of my M62B44 swapped 633 CSi

[luminus]

Well, I don't have a lot of e24 specific pictures yet, but I thought there might be enough interest to start a thread for my project in the works, replacing the M30B33 in my 1984 633CSi with a relatively newer M62B44. Got it out on one last fall road trip before starting this:

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First steps up were to get a bunch of maintenance done on the '97 M62B44 engine. The timing chain guides were falling apart and had to pick pieces out of the oil pickup tube:

engine.jpg

Of course, I wasn't careful enough with the timing chain when I pulled it apart and it skipped a tooth, so I've got a knockoff timing chain tool here to straighten it out. Also turns out the oil pump was really loose, apparently another common problem.

In the next week or two the M30B33 will be pulled and parted out. It's currently running on a Megasquirt, newer clutch, bigger injectors, and a few other things. I'll post that when it's ready for part out.

I'm not super great with on the fly fabrication (and don't want to waste a lot of mandrel bent tubes), so the motor mounts, headers, and other parts will be modeled first against 3d scans of the engine and engine bay to figure out how to get everything to fit:

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For the headers, it turns out 1 7/8" tubing squeezes nicely into the M62 head exhaust ports, though from what I gather, that sizing might be a bit big for a NA 4.4L motor. But I think I might do it anyway because the flanges and tubes would line up nice. Otherwise I'd probably have to try to taper the flanges to a smaller tube and doing that X 8 sounds like a lot of work.

[E24man]

I'm in to watch this thread.

I'm a long term E24 owner having had 4 over the last 300 years - I still have two, a 1982 635CSiA that I've had well over 25 years and an M635CSi that I've had nearly twenty years. The M62 should drop in quite easily/well as I have seen a couple of S62 E39 M5 engine transplants into an E24.

[luminus]

I've seen a few e28 and e24 chassis with this engine, but there aren't many parts available. I was surprised to see Supersprint had a header set for the swap but was pretty expensive. I'm aiming to make all the parts available as a conversion kit if others are interested.

Hopefully will pull the old engine and 3d scan the engine bay and 6 speed trans next weekend.

[Henn28]

Subscribed! Thanks for posting your progress. I’ve got an M62 looking for a home, and while an e30 track car is a leading contender, the 6 series is close behind. Seems like there should be enough room.

[luminus]

Sorry for the log delay in posting an update. I discovered bad compression on the donor motor, it went to the machine shop, only to find out a full rebuild of it would be outside the budget. A new donor m62b44 was found with lower miles and good compression, so this is finally back on and moving again.

It did end up being a m62tub44, which means vanos and electronic throttle body. I think instead of attempting to get the ECU to be happy (with things like 4 O2 sensors, and the EWS), a Link ECU will be used to run it. Should make it easy to support going back to a throttle cable (still undecided on that).

[Shipper]

I've seen an e30 with an M62B44 in it and it went like the clappers.

[luminus]

This isn't dead, it just has been taking a while to get tot this point. But I have the old engine out (anyone need a good running m30b32 for a few hundred in Portland, OR)? New(ish) engine is now ready to transplant after some engine bay cleanup work. First up is the motor and transmission mounts.

I'm going to take a serious look at figuring out a rack and pinion swap. I know there has been some attempts (on mye28 and bigcoupe). It would really help to get that sloppy box out of the way.

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[luminus]

Got the m62 sitting in it to figure out position and clearances. I was hoping to not have to modify the transmission tunnel, but there is a ridge in there that in most positions ends up hitting the transmission. The Getrag 6 speed is fairly big in the center compared to the older 5 speed unit. It does seem possible to get the engine low enough to not be a big deal, but then the steering linkage hits the starter (this is even with the subframe lowered 1/2 in). Currently, the only way I can think of getting it in there without modification to the transmission tunnel is to switch to a rack and pinion to remove the starter interference issue, then the engine can be lowered quite a bit.

Anyone else on here have experience with this transmission in the car? I'd be curious to see if I'm missing anything, or if everyone that does some sort of 6 speed swap just ends up hammering the ridge out of the tunnel that is interfering.


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[bmwboostnz]

Found it
Will add some images of mine once I work out the image uploading.

[luminus]

Awesome, looking forward to seeing them.

I realized in my first post I was talking about 1 7/8" headers, those are going to be too big for N/A here so I'll be making them out of 1 5/8" tubing instead.

[DesktopDave]

I have no answers for you, just here to see how you get this done. Outstanding work so far!

I've been looking at BMWs for years to see if any had a rear steer rack and pinion that would suit our cars. IIRC the Golf Mk1 (Rabbit) used a quite narrow rear-steer rack with a convenient clamp mounting. I also felt that a flipped RHD E36 or E46 rack could do the trick, but I worried that those R&P were slightly too wide to have the proper suspension ackerman, bump steer, and inner tie rod points. I was also worried that the turning circle would end up being really wide. That's as far as I got.

[luminus]

Yesterday I pulled the transmission off the car (under the car) to get the engine back out to see about fixing the trans tunnel clearance on the 6 speed. The transmission was pretty difficult to remove for some reason, and I knew trying to get it back on there was going to be just as difficult given the tight clearances.

Close your ears for this part: I carefully cut out the top of the front sheet metal member directly above the radiator, full width of the radiator opening, and it helped immensely with room to remove and reinstall the engine with the transmission attached. I was trying to avoid doing anything like that, but I need to be able to get this thing in and out with relative ease during this process. The plan will be to make a new piece that is just as structural but bolts back in instead.

Anyway, at least on the e24, there is room in the cabin behind this ridge in the tunnel - no hvac in the way. So I took a hammer to it to massage it out and round. I'd say this is pretty much required to get the engine and 6 speed in the right position on these cars.

The tunnel before (that horizontal ridge below the two studs is the problem):

before.jpg

After:

after.jpg

[DesktopDave]

I'd think cutting the core support is the best way to do it. Every time I pull a motor, I want to do the exact same thing. Space is pretty tight in that long & narrow engine bay, especially for an M30. I'd guess it's only spot welded to cut down on alignment issues with the clamshell hood. It's traditional too. The E24 chassis is just an updated E9, tweaked & updated during a very long production run.

I'm definitely onboard for any retro or restomod project, they're a fun way to keep the hobby fresh & appealing. It's not like your car is going to end up 100% stock with numbers matching belt buckles or whatnot. Besides, if BMW had developed the M60 a few years earlier, they'd definitely have shoved them into an E24.

What are you going to name it after you're done? 644i? It has a nice sound, doesn't it?

[luminus]

Yeah, agreed on 100% stock. I originally bought this car a while ago because I could have a little bit more fun with it than the previous e30 m3 I owned. That car I didn't want to do anything crazy with at all. I sold it well before the prices got crazy on them unfortunately. I'm pretty tall, and another mod was to replace the seat rails in the car with very low ones, so I can finally see under the rear view mirror. That required removing the sheet metal ones in the floor pan and replacing with custom low profile versions.

It'll get part fixed up nicely. I don't think I'll reweld the support back in, but rather build a nice aluminum piece that fits over it and bolts down.

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I hadn't thought of a name yet. Right now it has no badges from the repaint last year. I like the 644 idea, I'll have to look into finding some chrome period correct numbers for that.

[luminus]

The motor mounts and trans mounts are designed and installed. However, this is a TU motor with the water cooled alternator, and the alternator housing is just touching the frame rail. So I'm going to have to adjust the motor mounts slightly to shift the engine over a few millimeters to clear. So it won't be quite perfectly centered, but I'd rather do that then cut or hammer into the frame rail.

motor_mount_1.jpg
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The other clearance issue is that the starter is hitting part of the steering. I was hoping to work on a rack conversion project, but that might have to wait a bit - I want to get this back on the road! It could be possible to raise the engine more, but the transmission starts to hit the top of the tunnel unless you tilt in back, and then the driveshaft angles aren't even any more.

I did find out that the M70 starter looks to be the same mounting points, but has the solenoid off to the side instead of straight down. So I'm going to test that out and see if it creates an exhaust interference problem. The whole area is really tight. More on that later after I check the M70 starter / exhaust header areas.

- - - Updated - - -

As many probably already know, the other clearance issue is getting a working power brake setup. I started down the path of using the e32/e34 remote brake booster like I've seen others do. None of the those parts really lent themselves to fitting well without some serious modifications to either the frame rails or the parts themselves. From my point of view, it was going to be more work to get those parts to work than it would be to design a new linkage for this setup specifically.

So that's done, and the first revision of parts is being sent off for fabrication. Here is the linkage with and without the 3d scan. The support bars at the top are not yet modeled exactly to the right lengths, that'll be determined later.


Attachment 718303

Attachment 718304

More adjustments will be necessary, but I'll need to get everything in the car now to see how it goes.

[luminus]

Well, the M70 start would fix the current steering rack clearance issue. For future reference, they can bolt up, but they don't have threaded mounting holes, so you would need to add nuts. The main body is bigger, but the solenoid is off to the side.

starters.jpg

But, the steering is also interfering on the driver side. The low pressure return line from steering box basically touches the exhaust port stud.

exhaust_clearance_steering.jpg

I could move the engine up (it's pretty low in the engine bay now), but it would add at least a degree or two to my trans to pinion angle. Right now it's around half a degree (I'm thinking close enough to zero?), so I don't think I like that idea any.

Might have to go back to trying to figure out how to get a steering rack in there instead, it would help with so much.

[Bert Poliakoff]

Could you cut the fitting and weld it at a 45 degree angle rather than the present 90? From the picture, it looks like that might give you clearance

[luminus]

Could you cut the fitting and weld it at a 45 degree angle rather than the present 90? From the picture, it looks like that might give you clearance

Interesting idea, I've no problem doing something like that if it makes it clear. I looked at another steering box I have here and it had a banjo fitting on the low pressure return instead of that hose barb, I'll definitely look into that since I haven't settled on a plan yet. I might even pull this extra one apart to see if the low pressure return can just be relocated to a whole different spot. I'll post some pictures if I do.

I did however, buy a right hand drive E46 rack, there are reports of them being used upside down. Unfortunately there isn't enough information (or any pics I can find) to see if it might work without just buying one. My steering box is pretty sloppy on-center, and the lash adjustment won't fix it any more (ends up binding off center). I'm curious to see how the input shaft on it sits in that space and likely doesn't align right with the column.

But I need to learn how to make sure the geometry stays intact, both Ackermann and bump steer. Bump steer seems easy enough to measure, not sure on Ackermann yet though - this morning's research project.

[Henn28]

Great project, thank you. I was worried that the alternator cooling housing would interfere, but hopeful that there would be enough clearance on the E24. Guess not. Did you end up solving this by massaging the motor mounts, and did that negatively impact the rest of the drivetrain in any way? Who designs a water cooled alternator….BMW, that’s who. More places to leak is their engineering mantra. The crazy thing is that the outlet port on the back of the alternator housing on my E53 series (2002) was plugged from the factory. No way for the coolant to circulate. Nuts.

Since I have to convert my 4.4 to RWD during my rebuild i was thinking about dry sumping it to minimize clearance issues in whatever body car I put it in. I do need AC and power steering though so that may be a show stopper for this thought. I contact Alpina to see if they would sell their oil pan and pump set up from this motor when they used it and they told me to pack.

Those supersprint headers seem like the easy button, despite the expense, but they won’t work either with that return line in the way, right?

[luminus]

Yeah, it's currently just touching the frame rail. I decided to use a motor mount adjustment to shift it over, new parts are on their way but I'll be out for a week before I can try them. On a related note: given how inexpensive and fast SendCutSend is, it's totally worth just changing them in cad, ordering a new set of metal plates, and welding them together.

I don't think it's going to negatively impact the drivetrain. I'll have to measure again when I get them installed, but I think the engine will be slightly off center to the passenger side, but only by a few millimeters.

I think I didn't fully account for the compression on the motor mounts, because the engine sits about 1/4" - 1/2" lower than I initially planned to, but if I can make it work, I'll keep it that way for center of gravity reasons. The current difference in angle between the output shaft on the transmission and the differential input flange is about half a degree. I've read that anything above zero can cause vibration, but this amount seems inconsequential - especially when I look at my lifted Jeep and it's definitely not aligned like that and it does 70 just fine.

I thought about replacing the front timing cover to remove the water cooled alternator, but I really don't want to open this engine up given how much mucking about I did with the last one.

The headers really would be the easy button for sure, I'd probably have to change the motor mounts again just to make them work, but it would be easier. I checked the cost in USD after the exchange rate and it was pretty close to $5K, just don't have that in the budget for this right now - still have to buy a Link ECU and dual wideband setup (probably $3K in itself). I will admit I've been closely looking at the pictures of it for inspiration.

Though I'm still interested in a rack and pinion conversion, I think the quickest option right now might be to use a e32 or e34 steering box. It seems the in/out ports are on the top side of the box, and not out the corner like the current one I have. Probably just have to buy one to see.

Great project, thank you. I was worried that the alternator cooling housing would interfere, but hopeful that there would be enough clearance on the E24. Guess not. Did you end up solving this by massaging the motor mounts, and did that negatively impact the rest of the drivetrain in any way? Who designs a water cooled alternator….BMW, that’s who. More places to leak is their engineering mantra. The crazy thing is that the outlet port on the back of the alternator housing on my E53 series (2002) was plugged from the factory. No way for the coolant to circulate. Nuts.

Since I have to convert my 4.4 to RWD during my rebuild i was thinking about dry sumping it to minimize clearance issues in whatever body car I put it in. I do need AC and power steering though so that may be a show stopper for this thought. I contact Alpina to see if they would sell their oil pan and pump set up from this motor when they used it and they told me to pack.

Those supersprint headers seem like the easy button, despite the expense, but they won’t work either with that return line in the way, right?

[Bert Poliakoff]

A lot of the Hot Rod guys are using the R&P from a Ford Pinto

[luminus]

Going to hold off on the rack and pinion for now, I was able to confirm that a e32/e34 steering box that has the ports on the top instead of out the side will work to get enough room for headers. It's still a tight area on both sides, and the header design will be more a 'make it fit' than a 'tuned for performance' sort of deal.

Here is the area I'm working with now. This is the old box shown - you can see where the low pressure return line that exits out the corner is in the way of that exhaust port. I've been looking closely at SuperSprints M62 headers for the E24, I'm pretty sure I've no idea how they would fit at all, but they basically have to dump one port into another within only a few inches. If you look at the pictures in that link, the headers exit and go straight down into where the steering box is.


PXL_20230910_010949859.jpg

On the other side, the M70 starter with the solenoid on the side also will work well to clear the steering drag link. For future reference, those starters have clearance holes in them instead of tapped holes. You can use a nut on the bolts that hold it in, but it turns out the clearance holes are 10.5mm, just the right size to be tapped for a M10 x 1.5 helicoil, so no nuts needed!

Also tack welded the newly designed parts for the brake booster remote linkage. I have a wider pivot bushing on the main pivot arm that fills the width so they won't move around (misordered the length):

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Installation on this is waiting on the radiator to see how far forward/back it needs to be. The people over at Zionsville are making a custom radiator + expansion tank + fan setup for this, it'll have the e24/e28 mounts and dimensions, but with M62 connections. Looking forward to see that!

- - - Updated - - -

So the motor mount update did shift the engine just over enough to clear the water cooled alternator, so no problem there.

[GazM3]

What A great upgrade to the E24. Don't recall any other RHD e24 using the M60/M62 based engine. They are a great engine and would suit and e24 nicely. Headers will be interesting. These engines respond well to supercharging. I've run a supercharged m60 in and e34 for nearly 10 years now. Cant wait to hear more upgrades

[luminus]

Thanks! Yeah, I think it'll be well suited for it.

I ran across another guy doing the same swap on bigcoupe.com from NZ, but yeah, not a lot of resources out there. I do plan on making available for others the motor mounts, subframe spacer trans mount, redesigned brake linkage system, the radiator (made by Zionsville). It also looks like a spacer will be needed to mount the sway bar slightly lower to clear the transmission, and I don't think the lower cross brace current fits (waiting on installing revised motor mounts). These should fit the e28 as well.

Yeah, the headers are tricky. Just yesterday I realized I had to move the engine back even further, to it's limit, to get the supply/return lines for the steering box to line up between two exhaust ports instead of in the middle of one. Here is where they are now, and this should be workable unlike the last picture:

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That is the e34 steering box shown. It is a drop in fit, but it's actually slightly larger in a few areas and generally has a beefier case than the e24 one. But this now doesn't seem necessary with the current engine position, as the e24 one has only the low pressure return line up in the corner, and would also clear.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh, and of course I'll put a heat shield over the pump, and wrap the headers. I'd like the heatshield to be capable of also preventing any power steering fluid from hitting the headers in the event of a leak from the high pressure hose.

[tunermt]

looking great can't wait to see her in action!