bmwe21.net forums

Hi all

wow... I haven't posted for ages - I hope all is well with everyone. Having 2 kids really changes the amount of time I have for forums (and my car) these days

Anyway - about a year ago now, I bought my '88 320i auto, and have been happily cruising (slowly!! but very smoothly!!) around in it. I really like the smoothness of the 2.0L M20 vs. the larger capacities, although it is worse on fuel around the city than the 323i ever was, even when it was a 3 speed auto! Sure it's slow, but it's been an exceptional daily driver and the 4 doors make it very practical.

The only mods I have done to it so far are a conversion to a 3.7 medium case diff (geared down from the small case 4.10, which made it even slowwer!) and a set of the optional BBS basketweaves. This is all about to change, so I thought I'd ask for opinions.

I have managed to pick up a complete set of new urethane bushes cheaply with the works... it has adjustable strut tops, offset M3 front bushes, eccentric rear control arm bushes, sway bar bushings, subframe bushings, gearbox mounts, engine mounts etc.... and a set of new eibach springs. Basically a guy abandoned ship on his project car and was offloading un-required parts.

Just wondering what the best option might be for me with shocks. Bilstein Sports cost a bomb down here, and even with the high Aussie dollar at the moment will be a stretch for me. If they are truly are the be all and end all, then I could save up for a while and stretch

The other problem I have is I already have a new pair of rear Bilstein Tourings, so buying a pair of fronts is obviously a much cheaper option. Can the Tourings work with lowering springs - the Eibachs aren't super low, or crazily more stiff than stock? The car is unlikely to be going near a track ever, and will continue to be my daily driver. I had intended just to refurbish the stock suspension (hence the tourings purchase), but the eibachs were a bit too cheap to pass up.

Are there other options from Boge or somewhere else that might work well with the eibachs on a daily driver? (I think adjustable Konis are probably a bit overkill on a car that doesn't go near a track)

I am also going to convert my auto over to manual to speed things up a bit + hopefully build my 2.7L stroker up finally to speed things up a bit more! Suspension and brakes come first though.

Thanks in advance for your opinions Sorry for the loooong first post back

Luke

Hi all

guess I'll answer my own question

I bit the bullet, dusted off the credit card and ordered a set of Bilstein Sport (sprint / B8 depending on market) from the US.

Should arrive in a couple of weeks

I'm looking forward to installing all the bits in my summer break from work!

Cheers
Luke

Hi luke, i haven't been on here much lately either because my wife and i have started a family, our babies arrived May 09 and Dec 10.

needless to say my me-time has taken a hit.

how have the bilsteins worked out?

I have a set of bilsteins on my e30 323i stroker, no idea what type but they do an excellent job.

varden wrote:...our babies arrived May 09 and Dec 10.

With my cars being my babies I can do that, but when you're talking of kids that makes me wonder, is everything faster down under?

Hope you guys are all good, that includes Luke as well!

Hi Jeroen / hi all

good to see the forum is still going strong! Hope you are still well and enjoying your e21s & e30s.

Just thought I'd let you know where my 320i ended up. I tend to post mostly on an Australian Forum these days, but for e21 info (and excellent advice) this is certainly the only place to go, and I will always be grateful to many members on here for helping me out with my e21s in the past.

Anyway... I did manage to fit up the majority of my poly bush kit and adjustable strut tops to my e30 with my Eibach & Bilstein suspension and drove it round with the 2.0L automatic for around 12 months or so before recently getting the opportunity for some car R&R. After driving a '731' headed 2.7L in friend's e30, I decided that the upgrade wasn't really enough vs. the old 2.3L from the e21 - which I still have and could have bolted in to the e30, so I went for an M30B35 swap using e30.de mounts.

I'm running a stock e34 M30B35 with an e21 M20 flywheel and starter, and e30 M3 clutch kit mated to a Getrag 240 box. The diff ratio is 3.73. The conversion took about 6 weeks, and is running fine now. I have read bad things on various forums about running the M20 flywheel on the M30, but it seems ok at this stage, I guess time will tell whether it holds together. The M3 clutch is holding up to the torque of the M30 just fine.

The car is now a blast to drive, and surprisingly uses less fuel than it did with the 2.0L automatic! I removed the bulkhead insulation, relocated the battery to the boot and removed the air conditioning. The handling feels for the most part unchanged from when the M20 was up front. From the outside, asides from the ride height, it looks completely stock.



The wiring is a bit tidier than in the photo here now as I added a late 318i wiring cover to the bulk head to neaten it all up - it was substantially easier to wire up than the e21 L-Jet conversion I did a few years ago!



Recent trip to my parent's farm.

Best wishes
Luke

Hi Luke!

Nice to see a sign of life after quite some time indeed! Nice project with the E30, must be great fun and quite a leap forward compared to the original setup. And what bout the E21, any plans?

Stick around man!

Thanks Jeroen.

The transplant has really transformed the car, and it's certainly a lot more fun to drive. I really think that asides from the S14, this was the hot motor BMW should have used from the factory in the late 'is' cars... A 335is with factory M-Tech 2 kit would have been lovely... although had BMW stamped the firewall a bit differently so you could get the engine a little further back (say 15mm or so) the M20 might have been a bit redundant in the e30 chassis. I know there was the 333i in South Africa & the Alpina cars of course.

Unfortunately the e21 has gone to the great wrecking yard in the sky (or in our part of the world, the scrap metal boat to China for recycling!) as it was unsalvagable from a big crash I had in it. Despite our good climate, e21s are becoming incredibly rare down here. I haven't seen one on the road in ages, although a student of mine did recently email me saying he'd bought an M10 e21 automatic that he wanted advice on, so they still pop up occasionally. The main reason I ended up with an e30 was after quite a long search I couldn't find any reasonable examples.

I can imagine that, at some point you decide that you've done enough searching and you have a sweet replacement now. Only we can't see any photos if we're no forum members, perhaps you can post them on a more public place? We'd love to see lots of photos!

Sorry - I didn't realise the other photos were restricted. They're up on Flickr now, so hopefully they work ok.

Here's the build shots from the conversion. It was pretty straight forward but did require plenty of bits and pieces to finally get the car up and running, hopefully they can help anyone attempting this on a RHD car. If I had a LHD it would have been really straight forward.

The parts list was:

M30B35 from an '89 535is with ECU
e30.de type 2 engine mounts with new rubber mounts
e30 M3 clutch kit
e21 323i starter and flywheel
Getrag 240 O/D 5 speed with urethane mounts to restrict fore / aft movement of the motor.
3.73 medium case diff
e28 535i radiator
e32 top radiator hose, e28 535i bottom
e32 electric fan
e32 throttle cable
e32 washer bottle
Modified exhaust manifold with flange turned 90 degrees. e34 down pipes into standard twin 1.75 inch M20 exhaust.



Engine waiting patiently to be dropped in - note - no 3.5L on the inlet in meeting my ultimate sleeper aims



M20 Flywheel and Starter on M30. I have read I will have problems with this setup - it's been fine so far, but I will have to wait and see. I've just run into problems with the slave cylinder over-extending for the e30 M3 clutch, so will have to lengthen the rod on the slave by 5mm or so. The M3 clutch kit has no problem holding the M30 torque, and the pedal feel is pretty close to stock. An e21 thrust bearing would likely solve the slave cylinder issue, but I'm going to attempt getting round it without pulling the gearbox back out in the first instance.



Here's the engine being dropped in to position 3 on the e30.de mounts - it went in quite easily, the RHD steering linkage being the only real hurdle.



Firewall clearance was tight - I did pry the firewall back a few mm after this photo with a bar to help with clearance. With the sound deadening removed, the engine ended up with roughly the same firewall clearance as the M20 had previously. The engine doesn't hit at all in any direction under heavy load, but it is reasonably tight.



Engine wiring - I only had to solder 3 wires - for the rest I just unwrapped the M20 loom, routed the wires where they needed to go and then re-wrapped the loom. The 3 wires to solder were two injector wires were too short in the injector loom, and as I was running an old style starter, I had to splice the power for the unloader relay (green black) into the Black/Yellow wire for the starter. This relay makes everything turn off while the engine is turning over. Had I used a late style motronic starter it would have wired straight up. The M30B35 ECU plugs straight in where the M20 ECU was into the original wiring.



Radiator clearance - actually pretty good compared to some other conversions I've seen. I can fit my fingers between the distributor cap and the radiator. I'm running an e32 electric fan to keep things cool. It moves heaps of air, and is very quiet vs. the older style fans. For our hot summers down here, I might need to add some more shrouding to it, but so far it's been fine.



Exhaust - I rotated the flange 90 degrees to increase the steering linkage clearance. This has worked fine, but clearance is still fairly tight.

Overall, the conversion took about 6 weeks - working on it a bit at a time - and has been more than worthwhile. Strangely, in many respects the M30 fits in the engine bay better than the M20, and is easier to work on as far as servicing etc. goes due to the inlet crossing over to the exhaust side of the engine, and the oil filter being easily accessable on the inlet side. Front / rear clearance is obviously tight, but then again - with the late M20 having the radiator hose crossing over in front of the engine, it isn't actually much worse on this front either!

Anyway - if anyone is thinking of a RHD conversion hopefully this helps. I know this conversion is documented a bazzillion times on the web, so these were just my experiences.

Best
Luke

Nice work.

If you can stretch to a six branch manifold it was a) give you more clearance and b) transform the old M30's potential for making good power. I think they're available off the shelf.

thanks e21-Mark.

Yeah - in the future I'd love a set of tubular headers and a dual 2 inch exhaust (probably a supersprint or something). You can get the headers down here for about $900AUD, so they're quite expensive - to put the price into perspective, my whole conversion, including swapping from an automatic to manual cost me about $1700AUD.

I'll also probably go for a Miller MAF conversion and chip down the track, but I'm a bit wary of breaking the M10 gearbox!

Really happy with the torque of the 3.5L at the moment.

Cheaper MAF conversion is to use e36/328 parts I think? Plus piggy-back ECU.

Thanks for sharing Luke, nice work!

thats gonna be one fast car! Nice work indeed!

Thanks guys.

I have just broken the ring gear on my flywheel this week, so the M20 flywheel is not a great option with the M30 (as other forums have suggested!)

The gearbox is back out, and I am swapping an M10 flywheel with an uprated custom 215mm clutch. It's a pity, because I really liked the feel and bite of the e30 M3 clutch. Ah well - I have a buyer for my M3 clutch kit (which has under 1000km on it) so hopefully the uprated M10 clutch isn't too different.

Looking forward to getting it running (and reliable) again.