LS into 190e 16v
07-20-2011, 10:55 PM
#1
On The Tree
Thread Starter
iTrader: (2)
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Nashvegas
Posts: 136
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
LS into 190e 16v well after months of planning and saving my money, I have finally started my 16v swap. Here are a few pictures of what the car looks likes
I bought the car in Oct of 2010. The car was pretty well maintained, but still had the typical 16v issues. The voltage regulator went out, I had to rebuilt the fuel distributor, it had some weird cold start issue, etc. Nothing too major, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the 16v motor wasn't really going to fit my needs. I knew that it would just led to more bullshit than I would want to deal with. I wanted something that would make good power (~350 whp) and be very reliable. Something that I could beat the ever living **** out of (daily drive, track, drift, general hoonery) and not have to worry about it.
Seeing that I owned a 4th gen f-body before the 16v and I happened to have the LS1 from that car sitting in my backyard, I decided that doing an LS swap would be a perfectly logical choice for a swap. And seeing that a guy over on the 190 forum had already done the swap, well most of it at least, and the motor fit with out too much trouble, I figured I was good to go. I picked up a viper spec t56 with a LS7 clutch from a guy at work. Here it all is sitting in my basement.
I graduated from Georgia Tech in May of 2011 with a Mechanical Engineering and began working with AMS Performance (Amsperformance.com) outside of Chicago, IL. Luckily, the owners Arnie and Martin are extremely avid about us having our own project cars, so pretty much all the tools and resources in the shop will be at my disposal throughout the build. I will go into that a bit later on in the post.
Soon after I got to Chicago, I picked up a daily. I got a 97 saturn SW2.
Being a former GM employee, the saturn was a perfect daily. Hilariously unassuming, room to carry an entire drivetrain, and ~40mpg for $1300. Sounds good to me. Well now that the 190e was taken off DD duty, I could go to work on it. So last weekend, I pulled out the old 16v and started to get ready to replace it with a real 16v. Here are some pics.
draining the fluids
exhaust and driveshaft out
most of the wiring harness out. **** that wiring harness
That's about all I have right now. The car is sitting at AMS right now. Next step is to use the CMM arm at work to create a CAD model of the engine bay, motor and trans. Once I have all this information I will CAD up some motor and trans mounts, a rack and pinion swap kit, and headers. I will most likely use some of our suppliers at work to bend the mounts and r&p kit from sheet metal and I will do the final welding. I will design the headers to use Stainless steel bends that I can buy off the shelf. Then go through the wiring harness and make new lines for the powering steering, AC and radiator. Oh yeah, I am probably going to stick a new radiator in the car. Most likely I will use a custom Koyo rad. I plan on keeping the motor pretty stock except for the biggest cam that I can fit and a valvetrain built to handle it. I will also install an ls6 oil pump, ls2 timing chain, ARP head studs and rod bolts, etc. Basically I want the motor to make around 350 to the wheels, but almost bulletproof.
Should be a pretty fun build. It will probably take me about a year. I hope to finish before the big supra meet in Texas in May (Texas 2k12). It's pretty much the biggest street racing meet in America every year. I hope to be able to go down there with the car, drink my face off and drive the wheels off the car. I hope to keep this post updated fairly often but work will be slow going. Turns out I'm really bad with money, so I often don't have enough to buy parts as most of that money gets spent on booze. Hopefully, this won't prove to be too much of a problem.
Well that's it for now. Let me know if you have any questions.
I bought the car in Oct of 2010. The car was pretty well maintained, but still had the typical 16v issues. The voltage regulator went out, I had to rebuilt the fuel distributor, it had some weird cold start issue, etc. Nothing too major, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized that the 16v motor wasn't really going to fit my needs. I knew that it would just led to more bullshit than I would want to deal with. I wanted something that would make good power (~350 whp) and be very reliable. Something that I could beat the ever living **** out of (daily drive, track, drift, general hoonery) and not have to worry about it.
Seeing that I owned a 4th gen f-body before the 16v and I happened to have the LS1 from that car sitting in my backyard, I decided that doing an LS swap would be a perfectly logical choice for a swap. And seeing that a guy over on the 190 forum had already done the swap, well most of it at least, and the motor fit with out too much trouble, I figured I was good to go. I picked up a viper spec t56 with a LS7 clutch from a guy at work. Here it all is sitting in my basement.
I graduated from Georgia Tech in May of 2011 with a Mechanical Engineering and began working with AMS Performance (Amsperformance.com) outside of Chicago, IL. Luckily, the owners Arnie and Martin are extremely avid about us having our own project cars, so pretty much all the tools and resources in the shop will be at my disposal throughout the build. I will go into that a bit later on in the post.
Soon after I got to Chicago, I picked up a daily. I got a 97 saturn SW2.
Being a former GM employee, the saturn was a perfect daily. Hilariously unassuming, room to carry an entire drivetrain, and ~40mpg for $1300. Sounds good to me. Well now that the 190e was taken off DD duty, I could go to work on it. So last weekend, I pulled out the old 16v and started to get ready to replace it with a real 16v. Here are some pics.
draining the fluids
exhaust and driveshaft out
most of the wiring harness out. **** that wiring harness
That's about all I have right now. The car is sitting at AMS right now. Next step is to use the CMM arm at work to create a CAD model of the engine bay, motor and trans. Once I have all this information I will CAD up some motor and trans mounts, a rack and pinion swap kit, and headers. I will most likely use some of our suppliers at work to bend the mounts and r&p kit from sheet metal and I will do the final welding. I will design the headers to use Stainless steel bends that I can buy off the shelf. Then go through the wiring harness and make new lines for the powering steering, AC and radiator. Oh yeah, I am probably going to stick a new radiator in the car. Most likely I will use a custom Koyo rad. I plan on keeping the motor pretty stock except for the biggest cam that I can fit and a valvetrain built to handle it. I will also install an ls6 oil pump, ls2 timing chain, ARP head studs and rod bolts, etc. Basically I want the motor to make around 350 to the wheels, but almost bulletproof.
Should be a pretty fun build. It will probably take me about a year. I hope to finish before the big supra meet in Texas in May (Texas 2k12). It's pretty much the biggest street racing meet in America every year. I hope to be able to go down there with the car, drink my face off and drive the wheels off the car. I hope to keep this post updated fairly often but work will be slow going. Turns out I'm really bad with money, so I often don't have enough to buy parts as most of that money gets spent on booze. Hopefully, this won't prove to be too much of a problem.
Well that's it for now. Let me know if you have any questions.
Last edited by clainhart3; 07-29-2017 at 08:45 PM.
07-21-2011, 11:09 AM
#3
OOOOO I love the 190 cars. I know here in AZ there is someone that has already completed the same swap, He has a thread on here somewhere. Im sure you can get some parts cash from the old drivetrain.
Trending Topics
07-26-2011, 11:19 PM
#11
On The Tree
Thread Starter
iTrader: (2)
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Nashvegas
Posts: 136
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Time for my first update.
First off tonight the AMS GTR went 8.975@169.49 tonight. Pretty awesome stuff. The car is a full weight, street legal car. Big props to everyone who worked on the car.
On to my car. I stayed late tonight and cmmed most of the engine bay. The cmm arm basically allows you to digitize anything by using a arm with a pointer on the end of it. Here is a picture of the arm I will be using.
The little red ball at near the mouse is the pointer. It is a 6mm ball that you hold up to whatever you want to measure. The arm then basically uses it's base as an origin and records the pointers location in space based on it's distance from the base. Pretty simple. The arm sends that data to a CAD program (Solidworks).
For this measuring session, I placed the arm under the car. It turned out to not be the ideal place to place the arm. I had a hard time getting to a couple places on the car.
As you can see the table is steel. The base of the arm has three magnets on it so the arm sticks to the table. The table is on jack stands with big steel plates on each side. This keeps the table from moving as much as possible. I would have used another table, but it currently has a c6 vette drivetrain on it, so that wasn't going to happen.
There are several ways to Cad an engine bay. Since I had limited time to pull data off the car, I went for the fast approach. This basically calls for creating a point cloud of all the surfaces in the engine. bay. Here is what it looks like.
Looks kinda confusing doesn't it. When I was going through the engine bay, I basically went around and outlined each face of each panel in the engine bay. I will go back later and make a solid from this point cloud. It is a tedious process, but it is something that I can do away from the shop in the my free time.
The view in the picture above is from the passenger side front. You can see the trans tunnel in the back left, the crossmember in the middle and the rectangular looking feature in the front is actually the sway bar. You can also make out the drivers side rear lower control arm mount. Right above this feature you can see there is a hole in the point could. This is where the steering box is. I wanted to remove the steering box, but I couldn't leave the car at the shop as a non-roller. I also had a hard time getting to the passenger side lower control mount.
Here is the top view. You can see the sway bar at the bottom, the cross member in the middle and the trans tunnel at the top. You can also see the inside of the frame rails and the bulkhead outline.
Finally here is an almost straight on front view. It is raised up a little. so that you can make out the major features.
Alright that is it for now. Time to go drink some beer to celebrate the GTR going 8s.
Let me know if yall have any questions.
First off tonight the AMS GTR went 8.975@169.49 tonight. Pretty awesome stuff. The car is a full weight, street legal car. Big props to everyone who worked on the car.
On to my car. I stayed late tonight and cmmed most of the engine bay. The cmm arm basically allows you to digitize anything by using a arm with a pointer on the end of it. Here is a picture of the arm I will be using.
The little red ball at near the mouse is the pointer. It is a 6mm ball that you hold up to whatever you want to measure. The arm then basically uses it's base as an origin and records the pointers location in space based on it's distance from the base. Pretty simple. The arm sends that data to a CAD program (Solidworks).
For this measuring session, I placed the arm under the car. It turned out to not be the ideal place to place the arm. I had a hard time getting to a couple places on the car.
As you can see the table is steel. The base of the arm has three magnets on it so the arm sticks to the table. The table is on jack stands with big steel plates on each side. This keeps the table from moving as much as possible. I would have used another table, but it currently has a c6 vette drivetrain on it, so that wasn't going to happen.
There are several ways to Cad an engine bay. Since I had limited time to pull data off the car, I went for the fast approach. This basically calls for creating a point cloud of all the surfaces in the engine. bay. Here is what it looks like.
Looks kinda confusing doesn't it. When I was going through the engine bay, I basically went around and outlined each face of each panel in the engine bay. I will go back later and make a solid from this point cloud. It is a tedious process, but it is something that I can do away from the shop in the my free time.
The view in the picture above is from the passenger side front. You can see the trans tunnel in the back left, the crossmember in the middle and the rectangular looking feature in the front is actually the sway bar. You can also make out the drivers side rear lower control arm mount. Right above this feature you can see there is a hole in the point could. This is where the steering box is. I wanted to remove the steering box, but I couldn't leave the car at the shop as a non-roller. I also had a hard time getting to the passenger side lower control mount.
Here is the top view. You can see the sway bar at the bottom, the cross member in the middle and the trans tunnel at the top. You can also see the inside of the frame rails and the bulkhead outline.
Finally here is an almost straight on front view. It is raised up a little. so that you can make out the major features.
Alright that is it for now. Time to go drink some beer to celebrate the GTR going 8s.
Let me know if yall have any questions. Last edited by clainhart3; 07-29-2017 at 08:50 PM.
07-27-2011, 01:39 PM
#13
Very useful to have a CMM. I do think that it is easier to do what we did:
remove old engine
buy foam mock-up engine block
attach oil pan to T56 by lower two bolts in pan common to tranny
attach foam block to oil pan (GTO in our case)
set the above "drivetrain" into you swap car; move around to get in right location and angle
bolt 1/4" engine mount plates to sides of foam block
mount vibration isolator on engine bay cross-member
make the other steel parts that go between 1/4" plates & isolator
position & tack-weld while in car
remove and finish weld.
Designing beforehand is admirable, but getting you drivetrain into the right location is too difficult unless you have more complete CAD data. Good luck!
See our swap at:
http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum....php?t=1348710
remove old engine
buy foam mock-up engine block
attach oil pan to T56 by lower two bolts in pan common to tranny
attach foam block to oil pan (GTO in our case)
set the above "drivetrain" into you swap car; move around to get in right location and angle
bolt 1/4" engine mount plates to sides of foam block
mount vibration isolator on engine bay cross-member
make the other steel parts that go between 1/4" plates & isolator
position & tack-weld while in car
remove and finish weld.
Designing beforehand is admirable, but getting you drivetrain into the right location is too difficult unless you have more complete CAD data. Good luck!
See our swap at:
http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum....php?t=1348710
08-02-2011, 02:00 PM
#16
On The Tree
Thread Starter
iTrader: (2)
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Nashvegas
Posts: 136
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
Sorry I haven't updated in a while. Been pretty busy at work and around the house.
Steve - I actually almost bought an e30 instead of the 190 and read your entire build thread. I almost bought your swap guide too. Two of my good friends have e30s so I have a bit of background working on them. In the end though, it seemed like swapping an e36 made a lot sense if I wanted to get an bmw. Shortly after deciding against the e30, my 190 came up for sale and I never looked back.
I was mainly pulling cmm data to get a general idea for where everything is going to fit in the car. I am fairly new to working with the cmm, so I also wanted an excuse to learn and get some experience with the arm. I have a bare block at home which I will be using to gather a lot of data for the motor mounts and what not. I appreciate all the advice.
Larry - You can't let them know all my secrets. haha
Big shoot out to Larry for helping me find a trans.
Next on the list for the car, is to cmm the engine and trans. Hopefully this will happen tomorrow night. It might have to wait til the weekend though. I also plan to start going through the 190's wiring harness this week and figuring out what everything is and what I can keep and what I can get rid of. Wiring is my weak suit, so this will be a good opportunity to learn a thing or two. I have plans to go drinking on Friday night, and to the shooting range on Saturday morning, so in all reality I might get nothing done this week, but we shall see. Also, after Thursday I will have paid back the loan I got from my folks for the trans, so I can finally start buying stuff for the car again. First on the list is a wiring harness and ecu. Then an LS6 intake.
Hopefully I will have more picture after tomorrow night.
Steve - I actually almost bought an e30 instead of the 190 and read your entire build thread. I almost bought your swap guide too. Two of my good friends have e30s so I have a bit of background working on them. In the end though, it seemed like swapping an e36 made a lot sense if I wanted to get an bmw. Shortly after deciding against the e30, my 190 came up for sale and I never looked back.
I was mainly pulling cmm data to get a general idea for where everything is going to fit in the car. I am fairly new to working with the cmm, so I also wanted an excuse to learn and get some experience with the arm. I have a bare block at home which I will be using to gather a lot of data for the motor mounts and what not. I appreciate all the advice.
Larry - You can't let them know all my secrets. haha
Big shoot out to Larry for helping me find a trans.
Next on the list for the car, is to cmm the engine and trans. Hopefully this will happen tomorrow night. It might have to wait til the weekend though. I also plan to start going through the 190's wiring harness this week and figuring out what everything is and what I can keep and what I can get rid of. Wiring is my weak suit, so this will be a good opportunity to learn a thing or two. I have plans to go drinking on Friday night, and to the shooting range on Saturday morning, so in all reality I might get nothing done this week, but we shall see. Also, after Thursday I will have paid back the loan I got from my folks for the trans, so I can finally start buying stuff for the car again. First on the list is a wiring harness and ecu. Then an LS6 intake.
Hopefully I will have more picture after tomorrow night.
08-24-2011, 11:19 PM
#20
On The Tree
Thread Starter
iTrader: (2)
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Nashvegas
Posts: 136
Likes: 0
Received 0 Likes
on
0 Posts
gofast. a nice arm is around $30k with the software.
I got the ls and t56 into the engine bay last night. I didn't get any pics b/c my stupid phone died last night. Anyways, looks like the gto pan will work without having to cut into the subframe. Also looks like the trans will line up pretty close to the shifter hole without having to cut into the trans tunnel at all. I wasn't able to push the trans and engine back as far as I wanted b/c I haven't taken out the steering box and the side of the engine hits it.
I also was able to cmm the ls block tonight. I will post pics tomorrow. I will need to take the car back into the shop and cmm the engine again, bc I fucked up a few things last time.
I still need a wiring harness, gto oil pan, ls6 intake and fuel rails and some decent injectors. I'm planning on big cam only, maybe ls6 heads. Anyone got any of these items for sale?
I got the ls and t56 into the engine bay last night. I didn't get any pics b/c my stupid phone died last night. Anyways, looks like the gto pan will work without having to cut into the subframe. Also looks like the trans will line up pretty close to the shifter hole without having to cut into the trans tunnel at all. I wasn't able to push the trans and engine back as far as I wanted b/c I haven't taken out the steering box and the side of the engine hits it.
I also was able to cmm the ls block tonight. I will post pics tomorrow. I will need to take the car back into the shop and cmm the engine again, bc I fucked up a few things last time.
I still need a wiring harness, gto oil pan, ls6 intake and fuel rails and some decent injectors. I'm planning on big cam only, maybe ls6 heads. Anyone got any of these items for sale?