I thought those were only 6 pt? I was starting to get irritated, I couldn't find a 12 pt kit, where did you get it?

 

I believe I got the kit from Jegs. ARP only offers 1 main stud kit for the LS1 Gen III motor, so unless they change the design it should always be 12 pt. Take product descriptions and pictures from vendors with a grain of salt, sometimes they are wrong.

http://www.jegs.com/i/ARP/070/234-5608/10002/-1

For head studs you have a choice between hex and 12-pt. The 12-pt head stud kit is ARP PN# 234-4316, for reference.

Hope that helps.

 

Any new updates bro?

 

Oh by the way.. go here for your main stud kits. Super cheap guys & free shipping

http://www.ws6project.com/user_stor/...main-stud-kit/

Bought most of my parts for my build there. Usually they are cheaper than any other vendor & they are fast with shipping. Just a heads up

 

Not really any updates on the engine lately. Just been amassing parts for the rest of the build. I need to machine my manifold block for the steam vent setup to really make more progress. I'll be getting a membership at a local machine shop called Tech Shop -- http://techshop.ws/index.html. It's a really cool place, kind of like a gym in that you pay a membership fee and you have access to all kinds of tools - lathes, mills, welding equipment, powdercoating/sandblasting, waterjet, sheet metal forming tools, tubing benders. Not really much they don't have. I intend to do this all myself, and was waiting to accumulate a few other projects so I can do it all at once and make the most of my membership time. I hope to join up this week.

Steam vent work is pretty much waiting on the manifold. I also intend to have a bunch of stuff powdercoated, and there's a few small pieces I need to fabricate for other areas of the project.

I abandoned the shaved valve cover / remote coil mount thing and bought another set of valve covers on ebay. I need to cut the baffles out and take a carbide burr to them for extra rocker arm clearance. I have thicker gaskets to use but it's a little too close to comfort for me.

I also tore my alternator apart in order to powdercoat the housing and replace the bearings while I'm at it.



Oil cooler setup is in from Improved Racing. Setrab 925 cooler, -10 AN raceflux fittings. I plan on doing some autox and HPDE stuff with the car so figured this would help keep it cool on hotter days. All really nice pieces



Along those lines, also opted to get the power steering pump from Turn One to help keep my power steering pump from crapping itself with high input / high rpm events.



I also tore my engine harness apart. Given that I'll be integrating this into a non-gm vehicle, I wanted to understand the pinouts and what each sensor was doing. This will help me figure out how the two systems need to talk to each other - which will hopefully make for little to no troubleshooting when I get it together. The harness will be rerouted / loomed / adjusted for length on the engine stand.



I've been attacking the project on all fronts to make the spring as productive as possible. Not much else to do at the moment with 0 degree temperatures and no heating in the garage lol.

I'll keep this thread updated with engine progress as I make it, just not much to report at the moment.

 

I wish there was a Tech Shop near Philadelphia. I'd totally join. At $125/month, I'd get a LOT done in a couple of months.

 

Nice man, glad you posted all this up. Lets people know what else you're going through and upgrading for the ENTIRE build. Awesome stuff man.

 

I'm trying to keep this thread on topic, but yes the engine build is really just one part of whats going on.

In addition to the engine, I need to:

-Regear / rebuild the differential
-rebuild half shafts
-drop front and rear subframes and components, sandblast, reinforce where necessary, and powder coat everything
-replace all bushings / ball joints
-upgrade brakes
-weld in reinforcements / seam weld at various locations
-install new radiator / cooling system
-plumb for power steering, fuel, new clutch hydraulics, abs relocation and run new brake hard lines
-setup driveline angles and fabricate motor and transmission mounts
-fabricate headers and full exhaust
-graft on fender flares to the body to be able to fit 275's in all 4 corners
-make the LS PCM communicate with the BMW electronics
-make it OBD II compliant / legal per my state regulations

I also need to learn to tune an engine and tig weld throughout all of this. It's going to be a challenge but I'm looking forward to it.

I will link up to a build thread in the conversion section once spring comes and it stops being miserable outside. In the mean time, stay tuned for engine progress.

 

Got your hands full for sure, but it will be real nice when finished. Cant wait to see more!

 

I was able to get down to tech shop this past Saturday. I took the class and stayed after to do some work. Sandblasted a bunch of parts and coated a few. Gonna take me a a little while to work through them all but I'll get it done. Might not get a whole lot done this week as I need to pull the engine/trans from the M3 and put it on a pallet. Makin room for the Ls1

 

Looking good man, keep up the good work. And good luck on the removal of the engine/trans from the M3!

 

Hey guys

Given that all current and future updates are kind of OT for this forum with the engine pretty much built, I created a build thread for the car over in the conversion forum in case you have any interest.

Link: 99 E36 M3 LSx Build

 

Wow, I thought I knew a thing or two about engine, but this thread has taught me I have a lot to learn . I may have actually lost hair from all of the things flying over my head . Thanks for taking the time to post everything you're doing, I'm going to bookmark this thread and thoroughly re-read it if I'm ever building an engine.

 

Any updates Chuck?

 

We've all got a lot to learn my man, myself included. There are much more experienced and knowledgeable people behind the scenes that helped me through what you see here - people like Tony Mamo, Martin Smallwood, and other DIY builders like Rezin above who have contributed. (sorry if I forgot anyone!) I know barely enough to be dangerous lol. Glad you find the thread helpful and if you have any questions I'd be happy to try and answer them. If I don't know I can surely point you to someone who can.

I've been primarily working on getting the chassis ready for the engine - seam welded pretty much the whole thing, powdercoated all my suspension components, rebuilt my differential, etc. Still a lot of work to do before it's ready but I have that all pretty well documented in the M3 build thread (see my sig). I have a mock up block and my transmission, and I'm about ready to start building my mounts.

As far as the engine goes - no I have not started it yet . It's patiently waiting on the engine stand for that glorious day to come. It's pretty much finished aside from a few very small things - I'm going to be rebuilding the wiring harness for it over the winter here and will need to figure out what to do about getting it tuned. I'd really like to throw it on an engine dyno so it's broken in before it's in the car but there's no one local to me (that I know of) that has the equipment and/or competence level - so it'll have to wait. I've also thought of getting hp tuners and a wideband seeing everything Jake is going through to get his tune right - it'd be nice to have the ability to log data and see what's going on.

Most recent work as of late was finishing things I've been putting off for a pretty long time. I put together a steam vent system that fits around the 102 manifold, got my pcv system together, made a throttle cable bracket, and a few other details. I have this all in my other thread in more detail but I'll post a few pics here of my recent work while I'm at it

One thing I did after some review was order some .045" headgaskets instead of the .040" I was going to run. Looking more closely at piston rock at TDC, I was left with only ~.010" between the edge of the piston and the head. So I wanted to buy myself a little additional clearance. I ordered all my pushrods on the long side so this small increase shouldn't hurt my lifter preload at all.

--

Throttle bracket

I'm using a lokar throttle cable bracket and cable, and it didn't align with the fast throttle body. The cable clamping ferrule also didn't fit the blade, so I machined a couple simple spacers to line things up and a new ferrule to clamp the cable.





I later tapped this for an m5 set screw to clamp the cable. I'm also going to crimp a bicycle cable end cap on the end of the cable as a secondary retainer in case the ferrule fails / slips.



PCV/Steam vent

I'll let some pictures do the talking

























Here she is as she sits currently



Sorry for the long post, and thanks for looking.

-Chuck

 

Damn...

That is one sexy engine! Best of luck on finishing the chassis, I'll be watching for more updates

 

Nice build, I love the attention to detail. I just read through the whole thread. Thanks for sharing..subscribed.

 

Are you done yet? lol

 

You know, I'm starting to really hate myself because I can't say yes

Still working on the chassis side of things. Engine mounts and the transmission mount are built.....starting to build long tube headers and exhaust now. 1-7/8" primaries into 4-1 2.75" merge collectors, expansion cone out to 3.5", anti-reversion cone back to 3" and v-banded.







From there, I plan on doing dual 3"s into a 12.0L harmonics termination box, then dual 2.5"s all the way back into two Borla stinger mufflers

 

Some intense R&D man! Love the meticulousness of your build. I couldn't do such a thing because I wouldn't want to get it dirty! Anyway, it's awesome this is going into an E36. Do you plan on tracking it by chance? Your car is the complete opposite of mine lol, would be a cool side by side.