05 E46 M3 Restoration / Build Thread

[attbimmer]

Had a little time today so I did the wiring for the manual conversion. I ended up just using the AMS harness. Makes it pretty easy. Pretty much everything mechanical is done now for the conversion. Just need to get everything back in the car and do the coding.

[attbimmer]

Pistons finally came in this week and I was able to pick up the block and head. I had it home for about an hour or so when I realized I forgot to have them alone hone the mains since I had a set of arp studs for them, so it will need to go back next week to get that done quickly. The parts themselves look great and there a few other things I can get started on before the mains are done and I can install the crank.

[attbimmer]

When I first saw the block I thought they had painted it. It looks nearly perfect with just a few small spots where the paint has just started to come off a bit.

[attbimmer]

Over the weekend I went through and ground down the pistons rings to the correct gaps. Pretty straightforward process, just go slow and make sure you only take off what is needed and the gap is even. I use one piston with a ring on it upside down to make sure the ring I'm going to grind down is perfectly level so you get an accurate reading. Even though all the cylinders just got perfectly bored I still checked each ring in the cylinder it was going to be installed in.





Block is back at the machine shop to get the mains align honed. Will be a week or so before I get it back.

[Arclitgold]

Great thread! Keep it up, this is fantastic work

[attbimmer]

Alright, finally got the block back and had a little time to start getting the bottom end together. Got the crank in as well as rods/pistons. Got a sleeve to help install the pistons. Wow is that an awesome tool. First time using one and was so nice to nearly effortlessly compress the rings and slide in. I made sure the rings were all aligned to have their gaps opposite each other for the top 2 rings and the. The 3rd was off by 90 degrees and then 180 again. Made sure all rods / pistons are aligned in the same orientation and match how it was originally.

After that did a few turns to make sure everything moves smoothly and then put on the freshly cleaned oil pump with new oring and tensioner. Used red loctite on the oil pump sprocket nut.

[attbimmer]

While waiting for parts, I also found a good set of F80 brakes that I stripped down the calipers and they were dropped off to get painted.

Also found a set of bad sound speakers that were nearly new near by so figured I'd give them a try. No plans for much of a stereo other then an android auto/car play capable head unit, but still these should be a nice easy improvement.

[attbimmer]

A little more progress tonight. Got new chain guides on as well as the front timing chain cover and front seal as well as the rear seal. Getting the rear seal on while on my engine stand was a little tricky. I thought about taking it off the stand, but ended up just tilting it to offload weight from one of the bottom mounts so that I could remove it. Then I got the bracket half way in place, put the mount back on, tilted the engine the other direction and then took off the other bottom mount. Then I had enough space to get the seal on and bolt up the bracket.

[attbimmer]

Got the oil pan on and then the head.

[RockyMtnM3]

High quality content, love seeing the engine work and this coming together, congrats! your rate of progress is impressive, have you done this before? I would need to budget at least 6-9 months for a full rebuild lol

[attbimmer]

High quality content, love seeing the engine work and this coming together, congrats! your rate of progress is impressive, have you done this before? I would need to budget at least 6-9 months for a full rebuild lol

Well to be fair I picked up this car last year, so it is actually going quite slow, but have not had much time and several months went by waiting on parts and machine work. Hopefully now can get things moving more quickly. Would love to have the car running in a couple months.

I have done quite a few car projects over the years.

[ejendow]

Out of curiosity, did you put any RTV where the block meets the timing cover?

[attbimmer]

Out of curiosity, did you put any RTV where the block meets the timing cover?

Yes definitely. Permatex Right Stuff. Also since the block and timing cover were skimmed at the machine shop, you also need to trim the top edge of the timing cover gaskets since they now stick up past the top at tiny bit.

[attbimmer]

Was away for a few days, but had a bit of time tonight. Started get more of the head together. Put in the finger followers as well as the cams. Rotated the engine back about 45 degrees or some from TDC, so that I could freely move the cams and check clearances with the shims now. The followers and shims all went back on the same location I took them out of. All but 3 of the exhaust valves were good. Those that were off were just 0.05mm too big or small. On the intake side 7 were off. Again mostly just by 0.05mm, but one was way off by 0.20mm.

The nice thing about AI is I just game it a picture of my hand written notes on the current gaps and the current shim size in all the positions that were out of spec and asked it to get me a list of Sims I needed to correct everything. I also told it to let me know which of my current shims I could reuse by swapping places and it gave me a full list of which to swap in where and out of the 10 out of spec I ended up only needing to order 3 shims. Pretty handy. There were a few other crush rings and orings I was missing as well so ordered them as well.