Ahhh hah! I KNEW you were but a mere mortal like the rest of us! I just could not prove it, until now. I still have not come up with any good solution to my headers. If I spend $300 on shortys, then $150 on steering linkage to go around it, I am at LT's price range, but, cant say if they will clear my 4l80e and no one knows. I am really having a hard time giving up that 20hp low end grunt across the board. Only thing I can think of is to have them weld up everything but the 3" collector and that way I can swivel it around to my liking. Other than that, I would not imagine me spending 50+ hours trying to do a mockup. I would kill myself spending that much time with myself, lol.

Nothing left to powder coat is a good thing, though, if you get REALLY antsy, let me know, lol.

Still need to chat with you about something later anyways. Keep up the great work.

Edit: I just took a look at those collectors. Are they not going to be impossible to seal all 4 pipes? You might be able to weld all 3, but, the 4th one you will never get all the way around? Seems it would be just as easy to do the collector end yourself. That seems like the easy part??

 

Haha yeah, sorry to disappoint. It's already been a year since I've built the motor so I'm trying to get my act together and get the car running. Building the merges would be sweet but when it's all said and done, I'd be a month into it and wouldn't really be saving myself any money.

Wish I could help with your headers, shorty's seem to be out of the question from my research on our cars unless you get into moving the steering shaft, etc. I've personally never seen a 4l80e in a car to even know what clearances would look like at the frame rail.

As for securing the collectors.....I'm going to make that decision when I have them in my hands to look at clearances, etc. Not really sure how far the tubes will be gapped apart. I have a big cup for my tig torch that lets me stick out the tungsten super far to reach into places like that, so I might be able to do it. If not, leakage is relatively low if not negligible at the slip connection (especially n/a) and it's pretty common for guys to weld on tabs that secure the collector rather than weld the seams as pictured below. If nothing else, it'd make modification a lot easier down the road if I need to hack them apart for whatever reason - or get bored and want to build my own collectors lol.



The outlet side is no problem - just butt welds there.

 

I dont know how much chomping at the bit you would be doing, but, exhaust would be the last thing I did. Now that you have the mounts fabbed, I would drop the motor in, wire it all up, get the drive train all hooked up, cooling etc and then work on the headers. Your gonna spend a good 3(?) weeks getting all the little stuff done. But hey, that's just me talking, not telling you what to do .

I figured the same thing about the leakage. As I write this, I didn't notice. Are the individual inlets on the collector flanged themselves like some PVC and threaded pipe? Equal length tube and a couple whacks of the hammer on wood on the 3" collector side should take care of that.

Yea, all the headers I have seen tuck close to the T56 bell housing and then inwards to the transmission body. It would be okay if it was below the 4l80e oil pan or to the side, but, from the way it looks, its going to be right there in front of the pan. I was thinking, and still am, about shorty's. I don't mind moving the steering shaft around if it is not too much, but, like I said, price gets close to LT's. So, move the steering shaft or move the collectors, same amount of work. With the steering shaft moved, I butcher the car and lose 20hp at least, BUT, the car moves. With the LT's, no "car" butchering but no idea how many headaches I am in for. I need to call some places to see what they say, I just have to find the time.

 

Building headers is one of the last major fabrication efforts to get through, so if I can get through that I'll start to feel much better about things. Everything else left to do is much less difficult and time intensive in comparison.

Except maybe adding fender flares - that will probably be difficult too. I want to run 18x10s with 285s on all 4 corners. Regardless, I've got a lot more than 3 weeks worth of work left. Still need to finish putting a trunk floor back in, epoxy prime everything and re-undercoat the underside of the car from all that I removed from seam welding, replace the tail panel and rear quarter on one side that have rust coming through the seams of a repair done under a previous owner that didn't go so well...etc. Then once all that's done, the car will be prepped for paint and painted. From there, I have to bend up and run new brake and fuel lines, do the rest of the integration for the various systems, then take care of the wiring. Will be a small undertaking there as I'm going to rebuild the engine harness pin to pin with new conductors.

Still plenty of work to do, but I'm inclined to say that I'm enjoying the process. Sometimes I wish the light at the end of the tunnel was closer, but there's only one way to get there.

 

Holey crap dude, lol!! I thought you were done with the most of that? I thought you had the rear pan back in etc. When I say 3 weeks, I mean a good solid 120 hours. 2 days to put all the wiring back in, 2 days to get the interior back in, 2 days for adding the under coating, 4 days for the engine wiring, 2-3 days for scratching yourself and just tinkering with the cooling system, 1 day for the brake setup.... I could have gotten you there man, but, now, you go and pull all of THIS on me? I may be able to catch up to you after all?

The reason I mention headers later is because, if your finding like me, with all the options, your gonna be scratching your head for a while. I pick a route and keep finding myself backing up and taking another look at it. If "I" stopped everything just for that, I would be a bit further behind. I was to get the mock up engine in this weekend but my truck took a dump on me and now takes up space in the driveway. I cant get my engine in because I cant move anything. The lift doesn't roll in the mud, where the front of the car is .

Okay, we need to get you back on track! Go finish the trunk, give yourself 1 hour hands on a day (maybe 2 or 3 on the weekends) for the exhaust. Undercoat the car up to the area that needs repair. Get your lines run/ran and dump the engine in. By then, you will have your header routing figured out. Will only take you a few hours to weld up. Paint should be your last thing!!

Oh, wait, never mind, don't listen to me. I don't even have my "mockup" engine in my car yet, let alone advise you how to go about doing it .

Daily trivia.... You might already know, but, there are a lot of threads on using M3 E46 panels (cutting out the flairs and grafting them onto our panels) in the bimmerforums. One thing I am NOT, and that is a body man, but, looks sooooooo tempting. The ones that took the time, like you do, have done an AWESOME job. I have read through a few of them and it looks very simple also. On our scale of 1-10<--"hard" (I say "our" because I fab things no one else in my area even thinks of) it really is a 2. All it is is just time. If your good with blending bondo, your home free!

 

Once you get everything in the engine bay and have a look - there's not very many options of where headers can go. You'll see what I'm talking about when you get there. Of course I'll share what I come across the best I can.

As for fenders - even the non-m E46 sedan fenders are fine - they're $30 a piece on rockauto and guys can fit 315's under those provided you have the right offset and the insides rolled flat. Aside from being a lot more expensive, the M3 ones are a bit more exaggerated and may be more difficult to blend into the body lines to get it to look like it belongs there. More research to be done, but I agree - maybe not difficult, just time consuming. Eyeball it 2,000 times, cut once.

 

Yea, thats why I just want to buy a pre-made set from cxr or jags, but, if the collectors are going to be turned in so hard towards the trans, I am back to square one. Well, that's actually square "none", lol.

Ahhh, so you have read the articles, cool. I am not gonna track so I would just need a set for the back and straight line traction, for the most. Would be a good summertime project, lol.

 

this is still the only thread i look for when im on ls1tech. enjoying the updates.

 

That trans crossmember is a piece of art! Well, so is everything else. All of the attention to detail on this build will add up to quite a car on a road course and everywhere else. This e36 is THE definition of a "purist" car. Keep up the good work, man!

 

thanks guys, I appreciate the kind words. trying to do the best I can

Not a whole lot going on since the last update - I've just been waiting on material for the exhaust to show up. I ordered a bunch of mandrel bends in mild steel to start building headers out of. Mild steel is pretty cheap so I ordered enough bends to allow me to get the headers routed as tight and neatly as I can. Hopefully this will result in very little if any waste in the more expensive stainless.



Collectors and flanges are supposed to be showing up on Monday, so hopefully I'll be able to get a start on everything next week.

 

Parts for the headers showed up so I'll be starting work on the primaries soon. All of this stuff is 304 stainless and will be used on the final headers.



The merge collectors came out pretty nice. I ordered them from Columbia River along with the rest of this haul. Still kind of expensive but not nearly as bad as buying from other manufacturers.



Welded inside and out. Internals are blended smooth



I tacked on the expansion cones last night. With the anti-reversion cones and v-bands the collectors should be about 12" long. Packaging will be interesting but it looks like I'll be able to do it.

 

Wow. Feel free to come re do my entire build.

 

Any new progress?

 

Not really, unfortunately.

A bunch of cold crappy weather rolled in the past few weeks so I've been working on my shop primarily - installing a new garage door and opener, sheathing and insulating, etc. It's an older building that's in need of some TLC....not rocket science but definitely time consuming. It's about ready to move into though - hopefully soon I'll be moving the car up there so I can work on it indoors for once.

 

The mad scientist side can't work without a lab. I'm sort of dealing with the same situation at the moment... Post up when you get to another milestone. More or less this build is nearing the home stretch. Driveline and chassis are basically done. You have what, the body, interior, electrical, accessories, suspension, exhaust and trim left? None of which are too bad (electrical, chassis/PCM tuning, body could be a job). Great work though man. This sets the quality bar for what I think all builds should be. I gotta admit I missed the front suspension, rear axle, engine bay painting, and underbody painting on mine... This build makes me want to go back and finish the job, lol. Worst part is I bought the materials to do the painting and ended up with project burnout.

 

Just spent the last hour looking at your entire build. Looks pretty sweet, also your welding skills have definatly improved since the first pages. Good luck on your headers it will be interesting to see how they turn out.

 

Man it doesn't feel like I'm on the home stretch, but it could just seem that way because I've been working on this thing forever. Who knows...maybe the ball will start rolling with a shop to work out of. The suspension is pretty well sorted, but the rest of those things are still on the list along with probably 100 other small things I haven't thought about yet. Thanks for the compliment though, I'll do my best to get some worthwhile updates here soon.

And I feel you on project burnout - at some point though having a running car that you can take out and enjoy is more important than obsessing over details that maybe 5% of the population would notice. I'm getting close to being at that point.

Thanks man. The welding is definitely a work in progress

 

Over the past couple weeks I've been busy installing a new garage door and opener at the shop, then getting the car and all my tools together and hauled up there. Finally at a point where I can start working on it again.



Last night I worked on setting the collectors in position under the car and managed to get the driver's side done. Took a while to find the sweet spot but I think I found something that will work while retaining decent ground clearance.

Using some existing threaded holes in the frame rails to build a positioning fixture from, some 3" exhaust clamps to hold the collector, then a couple pieces of square tubing welded together.





And under the car it looks like this:









A look from the side at ground clearance. For the most part I'm tucked up flush with the frame rail. Protrudes a little at the front but it is roughly flush with the bottom of the bell housing. I don't think I'll have any problems.



Hope to get the other side positioned this weekend and FINALLY start on the primaries. Thanks for looking

 

Dang it, dang it, dang it........ I was hoping you were snowed in, had depression and just didnt want to work on it until it got warm so I could catch up to you. Now you have it in your covered garage? Im throwing a yellow flag on the play!!

Okay, I am just jealous, what can I say? Glad at least one of us is getting the job finished. Keep rockin it out!

 

Amazing work again man. I agree with dirtbag. this build sets the bar, your attention to detail and the actual work you've done yourself is awesome. I really hope to do this one day myself when kids are grown and are interested in it as well.

Keep plugging away, I know you're ready to drive it but that 5% of us appreciate the time and effort you've put and are still putting into the entire project.

Looking forward to the next update. Take care brother 👍