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has anyone managed to fit one of these yet?
if so was it alot harder than an m52?

One guy did it in Europe. You are limited a bit on those engines though only 231hp and not much in the way of stuff to up it. .

Aside from the double vanos the blocks are near enough the same but there a number of differences though so you might be on your own.

There's the drive by wire as your first hurdle. Conversion to make the ecu run properly without canbus. There's a difference in the cooling system which I believe has an electronic thermostat.

probably some other stuff. That's why I'm going to fit the 3.0 internals in the m52 block instead.

I can see why people want the later engine though. Not as if there arent plenty. And they are fairly. cheap too.

Is the vanos and double vanos on m52 and m54 engines actually worth any power? Or is it more to reduce emissions and increase torque lower down? It seems like an M54 bottom end with an M50 none vanos head and intake would be a light weight, 3.0 with relatively simple electronics and no variable intake bollocks (VIB). Stick some cams in it, and get it remapped and I bet it'd make more than a stock M53b30 and any decrease in low down torque would be more than made up for with the reduction in weight of the vehicle it's sat in! Look at it as poor mans traction control!

vanos is variable valve timing. it does makes a big difference to the driveability. when I had a non vanos the engine didn't really do anything till after 4k but with vanos I have bags of lowdown torque and it burns along right through the rev range rather then having to wind it up to 4k as I did before.

if you wack an m50 intake on an m52 you make the same power as the m54. you can use the intake cam from the m54b30 on the m52 and its less but near enough the us spec cam duration. but I don't know of any tuning goodies for the m54b30?

Its up to you really, im not advocating one way or the other, but the first post was using the words "is it harder then an m52 swap" - no way you would know that unless one has already done an m52 swap and then undertaken an m54 swap too?

also id like to say - when you read the threads in the modified section, it does come across as "easy" or "not too bad" - however you are not seeing all the crappy small stuff that accumulate into hours that need to be done in order to make a very nice reliable and very neat and tidy swap - it takes nearly a month and a half to do if you have a full time job.

Trust me, when the cam sensor on your single vanos M52B28 packs in you know about it! Your low-end power is just gone & Kia Picantos will eat you for breakfast.

The M50 manifold swap only works on the single vanos M52's. You also need to get an adaptor to fit the later (bigger) throttle body. Alpina327 (?) on the E36Coupe forum was selling kits with modified (enlarged bore) throttle bodies. I believe the price was around the £400+ mark but that was some time ago.

A good modified M52B28 was reputed to make around 220 - 230 hp. The M54B30 has 231 as standard but as Nas says you have the electronic throttle to deal with.

Remember also that alloy blocked M52/M54's do not like to be rebuilt. Early Nikasil blocks were considered scrap (why couldn't they have liners fitted?) & the later steel linered blocks tended to sink around the deck face. Head bolts have a habit of pulling the threads out (helicoiling doesn't always work) so the whole exercise becomes a pain.

Putting the M52B28 crank into an M20B25 block with a spacer for the crank nose & some choice additions will achieve similar power. This is straightforward plug 'n' play in comparison. Don't sweat the 'Ah but the M52/4 has another 10hp'. So what, that's at peak power & how long do you spend at that? More to the point is drive-ability & that means torque which is mainly a product of capacity. Remember power is a product of torque x revs so the higher the engine can rev the more hp it makes BUT it also moves the torque peak up the rev range. Consider a articulated tractor unit - a Detroit Diesel DD15 14.8-litre makes only 560 hp (just under 38hp/litre) but 1850 lb-ft of torque (at around 1500rpm). Contrast that with a Suzuki Hayabusa 1300 which makes 162hp (about 125hp/litre) but only 97 lb·ft (at 7,000 rpm). Horses for course etc.

Consider what it is you want from the car before you start the project.

I'm waiting for someone to put a chipped M47 or M57 into an E21. That would be a real tyre shredders

Yea that's the thing I like about m52s single vanos easy repair, cam sensor easy, engine needs a rebuild its a few hundred for another they are disposable.

Totally agree though what you want to be talking about are the new twin turbo 3.0 that Bmw make (diesel or petrol). One of them in an e21 would be epic