What's up guys, I'm finally starting my swap so I figured now is a good time to post up progress and ask some questions.

My car is a 1991 BMW 318is. It started life as a 1.8l 4 cylinder, but I put a 3.5l I6 in after a while, then a 4.0l V8 after I blew the I6 up. I blew the V8 as well, so now it's LS1 time. Both engine failures were due to oiling issues (I6 burnt it at an extremely fast rate, V8 got it's oil pan so smashed that it blocked off the pickup), so I'll be doing a couple modifications to help out in that area.

Here's the car, the BMW V8 (m60) had about 300hp at the crank, so it was a pretty quick little 2600lb car.







There were a few things with the swap I was never happy with, things like the size of the engine, the brake setup, and the lack of aftermarket. I've wanted to do an LS swap for quite a while (hence the 2009 join date), and I finally came across a 2001 Camaro SS LS1 with 60k for only a few hundred more than a replacement m60, so it's on



Plans include:
-LS1/T56 swap
-Big cam/custom headers/tune, hoping to get around 400 at the wheels
-Modifying the car so I can run a rear sump oil pan
-custom oil pan since I doubt I'll find one that fits my size restraints
-convert the car to manual brakes
-possibly a dual-eared diff mount. It's been fine in the past but I like to be safe

I'm good at fab work and mechanical things, but there are a few things I'll be doing with this swap that I haven't touched on before. This is the main reason for this thread, I'm hoping for a few pointers along the way and experienced eyes to look at my pictures and spot somethings I do wrong.

I autocross my car quite a bit and would like to do some track days, but I've heard of LS engines having some oil starvation issues on the track. I'd rather not blow a 3rd engine, so I want to design my pan in order to hold the most oil/keep the most oil at the pickup.

I like my cars really low, but I had it a bit too low last time (1/4" off the ground) and my oil pan payed for it. I'm going to modify my front subframe so it sits about an inch higher than before, and swap the sway bar to in front of the steering rack to allow room for the rear sump pan.

I want to make my own pan, but where the oil filter mounts on these engines is making that difficult. I've searched all over this forum for people that have made custom oil pans or even just relocated their oil filters but I can't find anything that answers my questions. I'm just going to list my questions to make it easier to read.

-The oil filter is incorporated into the pan, how do I make a flange that incorporates that? I'm thinking of just having 2 fittings on the flange and running a remote filter
-Keeping oil around the pickup, I'm thinking about running a trap door setup like this around the pickup to help on the track. Are there any downsides to this?
-Oil pump, is the stock one up to the task with the baffling, or should I look into a high flow one?



That should be good on the questions for now, and I apologize for the amount of text in this post, I promise I'll include more pictures in the future.

 

Try an LS2 vette pan. They redesigned it with better internal baffles to address the oil starvation issue. Suppose to work better than the earlier pans and especially the old bat wing pan.

 

My size restraints prevent me from using any factory oil pan, I've already checked the oil pan sticky. Preliminary measurements give me 5.5" from the subframe to the bellhousing and 5" of depth. I can go as wide as I want to though, so I'm planning on doing some kick-outs to make it about 14" wide to keep the capacity above 6qts.

 

You could try to cut the pan rail off the pan and fab from there, or there are several aftermarket steel pans with remote filters. Probably easier to mod a steel pan than a cast pan. And the aftermarket ones have some baffling inside.

 

Whats a pan rail? The flange? I thought about that but it's aluminum and I prefer steel pans. I also thought about modifying an aftermarket steel pan but if I'm going to go through that trouble I might as well start from scratch and save the purchase price of the aftermarket one. My plan is to make one similar to the Sikky 350z pan but reversed. They did what I was saying about the filter too and just put 2 fittings so you can run a remote filter.



Thanks Edafe for the pic

 

Not sure if you've seen it, but there have been other E30 LSx swaps performed, some well documented on here/Bimmerforums. I believe the first well documented one was by a father and son combo, Garret and Steve? They were actually selling a cd/dvd that contained all the documentation and some CAD diagrams of mounts, etc. Looking over their thread on BF.c (search for e30 LS1 here or there) they just modified a stock GTO front-sump pan to fit over the crossmember.


Check it: http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum...d.php?t=699289

 

I was watching Garret and Steve's swap as they were doing it. They did a great job, but none of what they did on theirs really helps me, as we are going completely different ways. For instance, they don't care about ground clearance, they kept the AC/PS/boosted brakes/etc and are using a pretty much stock engine. They did a very good job of replicating what BMW or Chevy would do, but pretty much the only thing their swap CD would help me with is the motor mounts and the wiring.

There's been a few other e30/LS's as well (up to 5-6 that I know of) but they're all pretty much the same.

 

Old engine about to come out, just need to pick up a load leveler



I'm still looking for a transmission, so I'm going to work at cleaning up the engine bay until I find one. How far I get depends on how long it takes to find a transmission.

 

Why don't you contact Sikky and see if you can buy their pan as an unwelded kit? Looks like it would be easy to swap it around and extend the pickup. Any decent fab shop should be able to handle that for you if you don't weld aluminum.

 

But I want to build my own oil pan, that's the point. The build itself is half the fun of having the finished product.


The old engine is out



Found a guy that wants to buy the broken m60 to use as a core charge, so that saves me from having to scrap it. Till them it's just taking up floor space



I'm in the planning process with the bay shave. I think i'm going to cut off the radiator support again and put a new one on since I'm not happy that I cut this one. If I do that I'll probably make new panels for on top of the frame rails so I can get rid of all the useless holes. I'd like to make some strut tower reinforcement plates like the convertibles have too, but if I do that I might want to raise the inner fenders for clearance while I'm in there...and on it goes.

 

any updates? great so far!