Dan's original owner '01 dual duty M3

[01M3Fan]

I’ll have to go back and turn these & crop - sorry for the sea sickness

[01M3Fan]

I spent a lot of time carefully manipulating the oil dipstick tube without kinking it. I used a hockey puck to rebend the line - I think it helped with creating a big radius and I only made little changes and re-fit. I re-routed the line behind the power loom and next to aux water pump and then removed the plastic clip that secured the wiring harness for the aux pump and used that as bolting point.



I used one of the rubber mounts from old airbox to give it some compliance. Hopefully it’ll be enough - dipstick draws out and goes back in about the same effort as before.

[01M3Fan]

Today I pulled off the valve cover in prep for valve adjustment and Vanos rebuild - very pleased with what I see, everything is clean as a whistle.

[01M3Fan]

I also used a hairdryer to help me remove the TMS sticker from my intake, carefully cleaned it with some rubbing alcohol & then applied the new M Power sticker - I’m sure that’s good for another 5 or 10 HP all by itself. 😉

[01M3Fan]

I decided to pull the fan shroud on this job to get more room for the Vanos rebuild, so I took the opportunity to shorten the LH shroud to make more room for the CSL intake. Here's my cut line - about an inch.



And while I was at it, I decided to cut a slot into the shroud so I can get it on & off without having to pull the radiator hose.

[01M3Fan]

Lastly I had to modify the bracket at the bottom of the airbox to make enough clearance to slip on the solenoid rubber housing over the bracket tab.



Maybe what was there would have worked, but I tried to replicate the gap on the OEM airbox mount. We’ll see…

[01M3Fan]

Only thing I could get accomplished today was wiring the MAP sensor. Followed COVID-19's instructions and used his kit. Great price and a clean install. Tomorrow my Schwaben toolset from TMS shows up and I can get started with adjusting valves and then dive into the VANOS rebuild. I'll need to go to Horrible Freight or Lowes and pick up a super magnet to toggle the solenoids when I clean the VANOS valve body (and another couple of cans of brake cleaner).

[repoman89]

I remember there were a lot of cutting tools involved and a lot of swearing - in retrospect, I would recommend not doing this unless you need the clearance or are running force fed cooling to the rotors. I haven't had any issues with this setup on the street in cold or wet weather.

Curious why you’d recommend not doing it. I was about to rip mine out based on the Essex article that suggests doing so before trying brake ducts.

[01M3Fan]

If you are at the point of going to brake cooling ducts, then I would agree you should take them off. My comment was more to the casual HPDE driver that isn’t pushing it that hard.

When I removed my splash shields I also put some thermal shields around my outer tie rod ends so I wouldn’t cook them.

[01M3Fan]

Had some time to work on the car today, so adjusted the valves. My 1st time doing it, I was a little nervous about this, but IMO, this is a pretty simple job as long as you are careful and work though your thought process. I used the Schwaben crank tool to work through each set of valves and I picked up a decent set of bent feeler gages on Amazon (a couple of years ago) that had 0.001" increments and then I just used them as "go - no go" gages with 0.007 - 0.009" and 0.011 - 0.013" for the inlet and exhaust clearances per the manual. I did buy a set of Wiseco shims for the S54, but the only ones I used were 2.24mm (I needed 4) and one 2.20mm. The kit comes with 3 of a bunch of sizes and fortunately one of the shims I pulled was the size I needed for one of the valves - so I was able to finish the job. I'm going to pick up 4 of the 2.24mm size to restock the kit.

Next job is to go after the Vanos rebuild - hope to start that on Tuesday.

[01M3Fan]

Got to start on the Vanos rebuild today - first job was to pull the solenoid pack.




Happy how clean everything was after 50K miles - o-rings starting to get a little stiff, so glad I did this now before I pressed this into DD duties while the touring goes under the kinfe.

Seal plate all cleaned up



Next job was to set TDC and the retard the cams and get them in time with the schwaben tools. You can see some of my check marks as I worked through the valve adjustments. :-)



Then it was pull the Vanos unit off - happily, the exhaust hubs were intact, some signs of wear, but nothing concerning.



Then the fun of rebuilding the oil pump with the Beisan systems pump disk - hopefully next time I do this I'll have a better first time yield. I think it took me 4 or 5 tries to corral all of the oil buckets into the pump disk with my big mitts.



Did a trial fit as they suggest and no issues and certainly a lot tighter than OEM setup. I replaced all the seals and o-rings in the Vanos, cleaned the valve body and then installed the rebuilt solenoid pack - now everything is ready for reassembly. Was ready to start on rattle fix on the exhaust and intake hubs but only "fresh" loctite I could find in inventory was the medium, so called it a night and will run out in AM to pickup some high strength thread locker (tossed all my ancient stuff in the trash) and will get back at it tomorrow.

Decided to have a post wrenching treat.

[01M3Fan]

I realized I didn't post anything about the RTAB changes that I've made over the years - the stock ones lasted about 45K miles and then I replaced with stock RTABs and then added TMS travel limiters. Found that was better than stock, but I wanted more predictability out of the back of the car and then changed to Bimmerworld sphericlal RTABs which were a huge improvement! Then when I was chasing noises in the back of the car when I had the MCS 2 ways on, I decided to change to Syncro Design Works RTAB which I thought was a bit more robust design.




Here the install



And the finished product.



I didn't feel any looseness on the BW RTAB's that I pulled, but after the change to Flatride, these RTABs and the D/A Koni's - the clunking noises are gone. I suspect Flatride and the D/A Koni's where the big contributors, but really happy with the finished product.

[01M3Fan]

And a couple of my favorite track pics - first couple from Lime Rock





And Palmer Motorsports Park

[heinzboehmer]

Man, the inside of that head looks awesome. Has it ever been off for hot tanking? Or just kept it looking good with regular oil changes?

Also, I can't resist buying a beer when the label is car related lol. If you can find their beers (they're pretty small), Alvarado Street Brewery puts out beers with car inspired labels from time to time. I've seen F40, DeLorean, Countach, Aerostar, Iroc-Z and probably some more that I'm forgetting.

[01M3Fan]

Yeah - I was super pleased with how clean the inside of the engine is. Car has 125K miles, but BMW replaced the engine under warranty at 75K miles after original engine grenaded soon after warranty rod bearing replacement. This one has about 50K miles on it and a bunch of track days.

Head has never been off - just 5K mile oil changes (more often when tracking) using Castrol and careful warm up and cool down.