Another BMW/LS1 swap to add to the mix!

The swap candidate is my long time project car now turned race car, a 1987 BMW 325. I had a full season of racing last year with a pretty high strung S52 motor as the power plant, winning the GT2 class in my local race series in the process. While that combo made for a quick race car, I really wanted to go play with the GT1 guys and try out the ST1 class in NASA - so this year the LS1 I've been tripping over in storage got a new home.

For anyone interested in following the original build of the car I have a pretty detailed thread on another site: http://www.e30tech.com/forum/showthread.php?t=40020

What the car currently looks like:


Anyway, onto the good stuff!

Say goodbye to ol' faithful.


The tear down commences.





I'll never forget all the good times we had together:


My memory is fading:



A couple mock-up pics to start making motor/trans mounts:


Surprisingly the transmission tunnel didn't require much persuasion from the BFH to fit where I wanted.

 

Motor Mounts!


Transmission mount about 90% done:



Exhaust is done!

 

Header progress:

Passenger side almost done:


Bullets:


Drivers side ready to weld


Shiny!

 

Nice work. I plan on doing the same thing to my 88 325is, but mine will be a street car so it will have to keep all the smog and emissions crap.

Definitely gonna be following this, though.

Matt

 

Looks good

 

Looking great! Nice Fab work!

 

Nice work, those headers look great.

 

awesome race car.

 

Awesome build. This seems to be a popular swap, I like!

 

A Couple pics of the exhaust we fabbed up last week. I say we because I need to give a lot of thanks and credit to my buddy Craig who has helped a ton with the fabrication and welding on this project. We recycled some of the old exhaust so there is a mix of stainless and mild steel but the entire exhaust back to the mufflers will get coated so that's fine.

On to the sub-par mobile phone pictures!




Headers are 1 3/4" to a 3" collector. I ran 3" back through an "X-Pipe" to two Borla Xr1 race mufflers. The passenger side tucked up real nice where the floor was raised for the OEM exhaust but the drivers side unfortunately hangs down a little since I didn't have enough room to run it in the tunnel. At it's lowest point (where the header dumps) there is 3.5" of ground clearance and it quickly slopes up to 4" clearance. Shouldn't be an issue on the track but I'll have to be careful getting in and out of the driveway and trailer.

 

With luck, I'll be bolting these onto the bottom end this weekend!

 

Any chance you'd through another set of those motor mounts together?

Chris

 

Those motor mounts will only work with the mods we made to my subframe. We are talking about designing another motor mount that would bolt directly to an unmodified subframe but it might be a couple months before we can really tackle that. If you are really interested in ones like this, we could always knock out another subframe to mate with them. Shoot me a PM and we can talk about it.

 

With some luck I hope to be firing up this weekend! Despite some setbacks we are really starting to make progress now. Finally got the motor built, bolted up to the T-56 and stabbed into the car last night. Felt good to FINALLY get the real motor in the car vs. the foamy block since we were a little concerned about the accuracy of the foam block. To our relief, the foam block was very accurate and everything held the same clearance with the real deal.

Don't have any good pics of the installed motor yet but here are a couple of the modified oil pan (one of the setbacks) in it's assembled stage. The "improved racing" baffle with trap doors too quite a bit of "finesse" but ultimately we got it to work.

 

Wow, Your oil pan and kickout look really good.

So youre gonna get it started this weekend?

I may have asked you this already, but what cam are you gonna be running and why?

Cheers man, your build is an inspiration!

 

Thanks! We should be starting this weekend!

I'm running a TR 230/224 .575/.563 111 LSA cam. I waffled on the reverse split cam but after talking with a few people I think it will work good for my application.

 

wow awesome project and SICK e30 WOWIEeeeeeeeeeeeee!

cant wait to see it done and your expression from the 1st time on track with it... !!!

 

I cant wait to see this completed. Amazing fab work

 

Thanks guys!

Got a little time in the shop tonight for more progress.

Decided to spring for some new rocker arms. Picked up these Harland Sharp stock ratio self adjusting arms for a pretty good deal so I couldn't refuse. Did have to do a little grinding on the back side to ensure good head clearance but otherwise they were a direct bolt on.


Starting to look more like a car now!

 

very nice man, looks great all around