What's going on in my shop currently...

[George Hill]

As usual the shop has been jamming away on really cool projects.

We had an E46 M3 come in so we could address some RACP issues. The car had previously been fitted with plates, but they were not welded and prepped after the fact as we would like and there were some popped spot welds and cracked seams that were not repaired.








We started by stripping all of the old undercoating off, identified what need to be done and finished the welding for the plates. Then we stitch welded the wheelwell seams, trailing arm pockets and upper spring perches. Then seam sealed and painted.




Next moved up top and added bracing from CMP auto engineering.








Then reinstalled the subframe with some upgrades including a very cool 4.10 gear diff from diffsonline.






And lastly added new wheel bearings with Core4 Motorsports press-in studs.




We left off with Eileen on the dyno, the reason for that is she is getting a new heart. I loved that little M54 and it was a seriously good engine that gave me 0 issues but it just didn't make enough beans for these long straight tracks. Now that I've been tracking a bit more I usually run in the advanced or so groups and I just can't keep up with corner speeds alone. Now it's not a race but at CoTA I will get 116/117mph on the back straight but other cars in my group will do 140+. SO, there is only one choice ... S54.

Out with the M54. It's incredible the exhaust didn't fall off, literally half the manifold studs/nuts were loose or missing.








I prepped one of the S54s I had on a stand. Vanos rebuild and a set of rod bearings later its ready to go in.












So I kind of lied a bit, there were other engine choices that made sense for this build, but I have a set of these Kromer Kraft headers I pulled off a customers E36. We installed them on his S54/E36 build but found they just were to hard to work around in the heat of the moment at the track (the car is an endurance racer), so we traded labor and I kept the headers. This car had the most incredible sound and I fell in love with them. So because I had these headers sitting on the shelf that is really the primary reason for this build, that's really it just to run this exhaust. Lol








Next, I've found that with our swaps often times unless someone is a S54 fan they don't realize the car isn't stock so I wanted to do something fun to highlight the swap. Liam provided a file to 3d print an adapter to mount the stock plenum velocity stacks to the ITBs and I decided to give it a try. I know that everyone is going to say the heat soak is real, but I want to play with some different ideas and see what we can come up with. If it truely kills a ton of power we'll swap to a Karbonius V1 plenum I have here.








SMG harness thinned of excess wiring.








Normally I wouldn't pull the front end to swap the engine but I knew the headers were going to be a bit of work so I did it to help facilitate that.








The headers were designed to use the E36 support arms which would work on this setup, but it would also move the engine back. Which normally wouldn't be an issue but I wanted to keep the engine in the stock location to try out a GS6-53 (E9x 6MT) swap kit we are working on. So we had our fab guy make an engine support arm with the E46 pickup points but the E36 form factory and that got it all where it needed to be.










Custom driveshaft for the GS6-53 conversion.




And running albeit with some details left, but at least she moves under her own power again.




While I liked the Harlequin theme it sure made the car stick out, but it was time to be all one color again.






Also, swapped doors with a street car project. The street car had a crunch door and while I don't like Eileen having a beat up door, I'd prefer that car to have the nice one of the two. I should have just painted another door when I was doing the paintwork, but it didn't occur to me until later, lol.




Getting there...




This post is getting pretty long, so I'll wrap it up and continue on at a later date.

[George Hill]

Pt3

I needed to change the oil level sensor on one of my own wagons. It had recently had an oil change so I didn't want to drain and refill so I used this trick that I was taught a long time ago. First, you have to make sure there are no vacuum leaks, if you so you are about to have a mess. You insert the suction line of a shop vac into the oil fill hole and seal it tightly. Next turn on the vacuum and you can unbolt AND remove the oil level sensor without draining the oil.







This is a video....




I've been hoarding M3 donor cars, but ended up finding two of them a forever home. I pulled the parts I needed and sent them on their way to a new life.

Car#1, 10yrs ago vs when I got it vs now. It is getting a Ford Coyote engine and going to become a dedicated track car.


















Car#2 is getting a LS and will be a street car.








And to wrap up this update, I got Eileen over to the dyno to see what her little 2.5L makes. I was pleasantly surprised at 171whp.








This is a video...

[George Hill]

Pt2
We've also started on a ZHP/S54 conversion, we've just been disassembling, assessing and cleaning parts so far. This is going to be a really extensive build. New everything in the suspension, all the maintenance, euro exhaust, CAI, tune, etc. It should be a real nice driving hot rod.

Disassembly of the M3 donor, you'll note almost everything under the car is removed as there are a bunch of small items that are M3 specific that often get overlooked with these swaps.






And the donor car was a SMG that had some intermittent gear position sensor faults so the preivous owner had bypassed the all the failsafes and was directly hotwiring the starter to get it started. LOL, but it worked.






I met up with some guys who a starting a company to offer some more products for the E46 platform. One of these is a new take on replacement shifters, I can't go into any more detail than that, but it looks like it could be a very cool product. During our conversations I found out they were wanting to 3d scan a S6-53 6MT transmission (what would come behind a E9x N54) and I had one loose for another project so I offered to let them scan mine. I've never seen the process in person and it is so cool to see this technology in work. They used a Faro ARM and it was so precise you could read all of the casting information in the model, very cool tech!






This is a video....




I bought a new (used) trailer for the shop. We had been borrowing a buddies, but I was borrowing it more and more and then I stumbled upon this one and I jumped on it.




My truck with the trailer. This is "Ron Burgundy," he was purchsed by my GrandPa new in '95 and was passed down to me when he stopped driving about 9-10 years ago now. It's funny to see how things have changed and all of these new 1/2 ton+ trucks (and even the ranger/s10/etc) trucks blow this thing out of the water on paper. But it's such a good truck and pulls well as long as you are mindful of the load, it just can't be replaced.




Then new tires for RB and the trailer (along with some for a buddys SBF swapped Volvo wagon).




Along with mobile mounting and balancing.




Machined another batch of SMG conversion bell housings.




A friend of the shop happened to be at the junkyard and posted a pic of a ZHP, I saw it still had a shifter and... the complete transmission. It was to late in the day, but we were there first thing in the morning the next day and scored big. Almost everything was there that made it a ZHP. It was a bit precarious as the car had been pillaged a bit already, but we made it happen without incident.

[George Hill]

Ok, been a little while. We've had a bunch of big projects come into the shop and quite a few little jobs that aren't that "interesting" so this is the reason for the extended update as you all know I usually don't like to present a car until it's done, we just have a few of those going now.

The V10 wagon is "done." It got delivered back around the beginning of December. Last I recall we had changed up the oil cooling system and think we have a handle on that. The next step was getting the AC operating. We wanted to have an OE look inside the cabin and as it is the AC system is a bit of a standalone in that it doesn't interact with the DME or IHKA at all. We had been controlling it with an external on/off switch but it was just out of place. So I had seen where the E39 LS guys were using the LED from the AC button to control the compressor relay. We attempted to mimic that setup, but I don't know if the E39 system is different or they just get lucky because it was much much more complicated to make it work. Believe it or not but the LED for the snowflake button is actually pulse width modulated over a small voltage window and is even influenced by the photocell for the instrument cluster auto dimming. Luckily I have a buddy who is a retired electrical engineer and he came over and helped us build a circuit off the LED to control the compressor relay.




With that sorted out I spent a bit of time driving it around and shaking it down and it was fabulous. So the "last" item before giving it back to Ryan was to address some cosmetics. We had fitted a "ZHP" bumper to the car but needed to address the fog light/brake duct openings. The wagon is originally a no fog light car and with the oil filter housing on the RH side and the oil cooler on the LH side there was no space for brake ducts. I wanted something OE so we took another center grille and chopped it up to fill out the brake duct openings. BUT with the OFH on the RH side it was a bit unsightly so we add a solid panel behind the grill and it gave us the exact look I was after and hid all the unsightly items.








And then we added a grill to the backside of the porkchop to exhaust the air from the oil cooler.




Ryan has been driving it now daily and enjoying the car a ton, I think I might have to build one of these for myself some day....


Marc sent us his 3.0 swapped and ESS TS supercharged touring all the way from West Virginia because it was having some drivability issues and we were thinking about swapping the auto trans to a DCT. After arriving we drove the car a ton and made a to do list for it which we started chipping away at.




A bunch of warning lights were on due to aftermarket lights and components installed, those were all corrected with coding.






The DCT project was shelved because the aftermarket software to control it is just not where it should be at this point so the decision was made to swap a S6-37 6MT
from a ZHP in it. Marc got a complete kit shipped in and we replaced a bunch of wear items and converted his wagon to 3 pedals.














Next, a long time customer sent a S54 for us to go through and have ready for a back-up to his endurance race car M3. It had been sitting awhile and generally what we do for him is tear it down to a long block. Go through all of the Vanos, replace the rod bearings and address any other minor things that need to be done so he can just throw it in the car and go when the time comes.

As we started taking it apart we found a little creature had been living in the coolant passages of the engine. I didn't get a pic of everything we removed but it filled a plastic solo cup up about 2". We ended up pulling the head off to clean everything out.






Someone had already been into this engine before as there were head studs installed, which made pulling the head a much quicker option. But they had also left behind some shoddy work. Instead of replacing this coolant pipe o-ring they just slathered on a bunch of black rtv which severely restricted the coolant flow.






And then they had re-drilled the vanos pump disc, but it was still much to large. The stock holes were in excellent shape and the redrilled were starting to wear ironically. The customer had a turbo toy hub in his pile of parts so we installed that and re-used the original tab holes.

[George Hill]

Great work George, imagine getting a car on bat and then finding out how much additional you have to fix and charge out 😓😓 she's in good hands it looks like.

I'd be stressed having you look my car over 😂

Lol, I just was this. I try to take everything with a grain of salt. He was looking for a quality swap and thought that was what he was buying, but it was far from it, we went over it with a fine tooth comb at his request. There are lots of swaps out there that "work" but just aren't how we would do it, but since you did it for yourself, it doesn't really matter what I think as long as you are happy.

[nextelbuddy]

I wasn't trying to underplay the build at all. I'll be sure to say it's a 4-door M3 next time just for you.

you do that lol.

i was mainly getting at the fact that I have a chip on my shoulder in regards to the M3 Sedan nomenclature. I also have an imola ZHP sedan converted to M3 sedan and to this day so many m3 enthusiasts still refer to it as an S54 sedan

[ejendow]

It's a little more than just s54 swapped zhp lol. It's a full m3 conversion drivetrain and body. 🧐

Funny how people still miss that.

I wasn't trying to underplay the build at all. I'll be sure to say it's a 4-door M3 next time just for you.

[nextelbuddy]

such good content. really can’t go wrong with an s54 swapped zhp. On a side note, how did you source that m3 clutch switch?


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It's a little more than just s54 swapped zhp lol. It's a full m3 conversion drivetrain and body. 🧐

Funny how people still miss that.


Great work George, imagine getting a car on bat and then finding out how much additional you have to fix and charge out 😓😓 she's in good hands it looks like.

I'd be stressed having you look my car over 😂

That seat belt issue really knocked me on her floor wtf.

[George Hill]

Question for you: since you’ve done both the Rogue Engineering and AutoSolutions SSK. Do you have a preference for one over the other?

That's a tough one. I really like Ronald with AS and he puts out a great product, I've run his shifters in a bunch of different BMW chassis and they are all superb (I am working on a transmission swap that is going to require a customer shifter and I will most likely reach out to him for that). But I do like the RE shifters as well. I really haven't driven enough to say one is better than the other. Off the top of my head I would say the RE is a better "get in and drive" shifter and by that I mean anyone can get in it and drive it and it's a great experience even if you are just being lazy with the shifts. The AS seems to like to be shifted with some thought, if you just lazily shift it is a bit cumbersome, but if you are on it and really rowing gears it just soooo good.

[S3diment]

Question for you: since you’ve done both the Rogue Engineering and AutoSolutions SSK. Do you have a preference for one over the other?

[ejendow]

Thanks!

You just need to make sure your parts person orders the 700 pn#, if they just type it into the BMW system it will supercede to the 898 number which is the wrong one.

good to know, thanks! I guess I’ll just have to be more assertive next time that I’m certain I need the 700 pn only 😂


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[r4dr]

Wow, really sorted that car out. I'd totally send my car over if I was remotely close by, lol.

Are you a big fan of the PSS10 system for almost all street driving?

[George Hill]

This car turned out really nice, here are a couple more pics of the underside.

[George Hill]

such good content. really can’t go wrong with an s54 swapped zhp. On a side note, how did you source that m3 clutch switch?

Thanks!

You just need to make sure your parts person orders the 700 pn#, if they just type it into the BMW system it will supercede to the 898 number which is the wrong one.

[ejendow]

such good content. really can’t go wrong with an s54 swapped zhp. On a side note, how did you source that m3 clutch switch?


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