Kato Kids BMW M3 powered 71' 240Z

[garvice]

Remember you talking to me about this when Ron first started his. Good to see you kept to your guns.

 

Peter, I have been doing the same thing as you with the laser pointers (actually they even look like the same cheap laser pointers).

What I have found is that the lasers are not very well aligned, I.E. you put it on a flat surface and it will not point true perpendicular to the surface. So I found I would turn my output shaft and the pointer would draw a circle with a radius of about 30mm a metre away on the diff. Once you understand the error in the tools you can correct for it, just be mindfull that they never point straight.

[peter mc]

this will be one mad zed  boy these motors sound grate

[PeterAllen]

...Once you understand the error in the tools you can correct for it, just be mindfull that they never point straight...

Yes, agreed… the same way you need to rotate the flange the target is on to ensure it is concentric. As well as affixing the pointer and target the plasticine also facilitates the adjustment. Also, it is important to remember that before you shut the shed for the night to remove the tape you wrapped around the pointer to keep the 'on' button pressed - don't ask how I know this!

[garvice]

Ha, I did the same thing, good thing is it doesn't drain the battery because the laser just gets too hot to work, leave it for a couple of hours and it is good again. Sorry mate, will leave your thread alone.

[KatoKid]

Thanks Peter A and garvice.

 

RT used the same method for his driveline alignment so its good to hear others have experience with this method and the same type of joints.

 

I managed to get some spare time this arvo and already had a laser pointer in preparation and confirmed that the laser intersects the centre of the diff flange to low. The trans is already sitting as high as possible (hits the roof of the tunnel if you go any higher) so I need to lower the nose of the engine relative to the diff, I cant lower the engine any closer to the rack so the only alternative is to lower the nose of the engine by lowering the crossmember using spacers between the crossmember and the chassis rail. This will also buy me some clearance between the tunnel and the top of the trans as well as the accelerator lever for the throttle bodies and the bonnet. Top of the rocker cover is close too so a bit more room wont hurt.

 

David

[RB30X]

Can you lower the front of the engine any more to lift the rear of the gearbox without raising it too much?

[PeterAllen]

David - In case you haven't already done so, it would be advisable to also mount the laser on the diff and point it at the gearbox. While it is most unlikely that the diff is pointing too high (though it could be with the bigger gearbox casing) it could save you work if that is the situation.

[garvice]

Dave,

 

What about lowering the nose of the diff?

I have found that my diff points up 5 deg and my engine/trans I will have pointing down 3deg, so I still have to lower my diff nose quite a bit to get equal angles on my driveshaft. I am using uni-joints though so as long as my joints are within 0.5deg of each other they should be fine. My drive shaft will not be straight like yours (angle on each uni joint but both will be equal and opposite).

[KatoKid]

Pete and garvice.

 

The nose of the diff is as low as it can go, its an R200 and its sitting on the control arm crossmember with no rubber at all (If was using an R180 the smaller pinion nose bearing would allow it to be lower). I still need to fabricate an RT mount for but irrespective its sitting as low as it can go so I have to lower the crank nose.

 

The engine is currently at 4 deg nose up and the diff is the same so when I lower the nose of the crank I will have to raise the rear of the diff by massaging the moustache bar bushes, apparently you can get nearly half inch higher with this mod. The rear drive shaft joint is a CV so it can tollerate a fair bit of angle so Im nolt too fussed if there is misalignment at the diff end as long as the guibo at the trans end is close to straight,

 

Tim, the trans mount is directly inline vertically with the output shaft (there is no traditional extension housing like most trans) so it doesnt have any real effect.

 

 

[PeterAllen]

David - is the CV mounted to the floorpan/transmission tunnel and a further shaft then attached to the diff?

[KatoKid]

Pete.

 

In the standard BMW application its a 2 piece with a centre bearing, guibo at the front, centre bearing, uni joint (cardan) and then CV.

 

Attached pics of STD BMW vs RT's finished single shaft with the CV - R200 flange adapter he machined up.

 

[Wayne G]

WOW!!! This is an awesome engine. There is one in an FB Holden up here, street registered and driven.

 

My misspent youth was with BMWs as was my apprenticeship. I seem to recall the old gertrag box and ZF auto had interchangeable output flanges and were secured by a nut on the output shaft of the box. It was a fairly easy mod to get rid of the lobro joint because when the car was driven hard the joint would not last very long and replace the entire shaft with a custom unit with strong uni joints. If you considered this option you would alleviate the issue of engine position etc. as uni joints can run larger angles. I am not sure about the newer ZF boxes however if you were to speak with your local drive line shop or transmission wrecker you may find a ZF box from another vehicle has the appropriate flanges. Just my two cents worth because I hated spending my apprentice wages on lobro joints in my e12 528i.

 

Very impressive. I will keep an eye on the thread. PS. a mate of mine runs an e36 in improved production with one of these engines so if you get stuck for tech advice or odd parts he may have something in his huge shed.

[PeterAllen]

David - the driveshaft from my Holden donor car was the same as the BMW's two-piece except it had a second jurid (guibo) in lieu of the CV. Because a shaft has to operate perpendicular to the flange if a rubber coupling is used you will have to ensure the centreline of the shaft passed through the CV itself, not the diff flange, i.e. you will need to calculate the thickness of the RT coupling, etc. If you haven't made your shaft as yet I would be thinking seriously of following Wayne's suggestion.

[KatoKid]

Thanks for the heads up Wayne, may come in handy yet if it all gets too hard.

 

Pete,  good catch on ensuring the centreline passes through the CV joint, you've obviously really thought this through.

 

RT makes a big deal about the benefits of this kind of drive compared to uni joints, he has experience with lots of high power V8 conversions and always experiences drive line vibration under acceleration and believes this set up will fix it. Ive read plenty from others on the same subject so I'm going to persever with the guibo/CV shaft and the need to get it perfectly aligned. The good thing is that with an RT style diff mount you can elongate the mount holes to get side ways adjustment and also shim for up and down so I'm confident it can be fine tuned if required.

[peter mc]

it funny i just removed this setup from our supra because it can not hold up. got sick and tired of changing the thing as it would rip between the bolts after each race weekend .and they fail regularly in commoders with mild upgrades. but they are good for looking after the rest of the drivetrain

[KatoKid]

They seem to stand up pretty well in the E36 and E46 applications as road cars and even cars that get occasionally tracked. My car when finished will be a weekender and do a few club days so it wont log many k's also given the light weight I don't think it will punish the guibo too much.

[KatoKid]

Time for a bit more detail on how I got to this point.......its a long read but hoping others will learn from my experience.

 

Through work, I was fortunate enough to do a BMW advanced driver training course at PI quite a few years ago and got to thrash their E46 M3's around for the day. Was super impressed by the S54 engine  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_S54B32 .Your grandmother could drive it to the shops as it was smooth and quiet with excellent torque but then had this manic performance when you mashed the throttle, very addictive! Since then I harboured thoughts of doing a conversion of some kind one day. Ive done quite a few old school V8 conversions in the past and I like really different stuff so as time went on I started looking at candidates for a retro conversion (modern high perf, EFI/turbo engine) into an older car. Pre 1975 means you dint have to worry about emissions and this is what led me to the Zeds. I was tempted to go the turbo Nissan RB or Toyota JZ route but the more I got into Zeds the more I appreciated the history and wanted to stay true to the spirit of the car with a NA in-line 6. I looked seriously at doing a NA RB25/30 with throttle bodies but the cost to do it properly really started to add up so I started looking at BMW alternatives. Ive really only seen the S54B32's (E46 M3's) swapped into older BMW's (mainly E30) but they need too many inputs from the chassis (DSC and fly by wire throttle) to run them properly with the factory ECU and the cost side and finding someone who had after market ECU experience turned me off so this settled the deal and I started looking for a S50B32.

 

As I expected S50B32's are like rocking horse s*#t to find in Australia and then I saw a post from Mike (NZeder) about crewing on an M3 Targa car and thought they might be more available in NZ, turns out they weren't but Mike put me onto Ron Tyler's Hybriz thread. This was in February of 2010 and it confirmed that the similar M50 based US spec engine would fit in the LHD S30 and gave me some reassurance that I could make the S50B32 fit into our cars.

 

I saw an Ebay ad for an S50B30 (earlier 3.0 litre, single vanos version) "conversion kit" from a wrecker in the UK and it was reasonably priced, I spoke with them and while it wasn't the S50B32 I really wanted it was still a pretty good deal and even in the UK the S50B32's sell very quickly. They arranged to have me share a container with a guy that runs a prestige panel shop in Sydney who buys all his bits from them so I agreed to buy the S50B30. About two weeks latter the wrecker rang to say they had just had a S50B32 come in and asked if I wanted it.....freight costs for two engines was going to be the same as one so I bit the bullet and took it as well with the plan being to sell the S50B30 to recoup some of the costs.

 

This was back in March last year mind you. I had paid up front for the engines but there were issues with the guy in Sydney waiting for parts and a car to fill his container so I just had to wait, meanwhile the missus is giving me grief thinking I had lost my (our) money with all the delays and to be honest I lost a fair bit of sleep over the whole deal. To cut a long story short, the container arrived in Sydney in mid December and I arranged my stuff to be freighted to Melbourne and finally got everything home on the Wednesday before Christmas.

 

Now comes the bitter pill...... the wrecker in the UK sends a lot of stuff to this guy in Sydney and they agreed that a nominal value of 200 pounds each should be put on the customs paperwork for "damaged engines" so I dint get hit with duty and GST. Well customs didn't think the value was realistic and revalued everything I bought in and I ended up paying a heap of duty and GST. It was always a gamble and in this case it didn't work out and it hurt when I had to sign the much bigger cheque than I was hoping to clear customs.

 

Another lesson as well, something I knew about but wasn't really prepared for the scope of the costs......Customs stings you for all sorts of fees like port entry, various quarantine fees for attendance and inspections, fuel levy surcharges, processing fees, the list just goes on and on and get this.....$875 for "steam cleaning" (cleaning my ass, nothing had been cleaned). Still, I was happy to finally be able to touch and feel something I had paid for 9 months earlier!

 

So what did I end up getting.......essentially 2 complete conversion "kits". One from a 95 M3 (3.0 litre) and one from a 98 Evo M3 (3.2 litre). Kits each included, engine, gearbox, matching ECU, EWS (anti theft)and keys, wiring harnesses, front crossmember, driveshaft and complete rear subframe with diff, axles and brakes all assembled. I also received all the extras I asked for like throttle cables, shifter, dash, power steering, front section of exhaust, clutch MC and slave...all the bits I would need for my swap.

 

The plan was always to sell the S50B30 kit and probably the Evo axle assembly to offset the cost of the bits I will keep. If I get the $ I want for these then the S50B32 will be a reasonably affordable engine but given the capital outlay and the heartache associated I wouldn't do it again!

 

Pics of my early Christmas present arriving at home:

 

 

[KatoKid]

I was pretty keen to get my drive line alignment sorted. I already knew I had to lower the nose of the crank so quickly made up two half inch timber crossmember spacers and fitted some longer bolts which effectively gave me the ability to wind the crossmember up and down if I needed to play with levels further.

 

I found that mounting the lasers at the centre of the output or diff flange just wasn't practical as the lasers don't shoot straight and its difficult to get a good small circle to work with so I made some brackets out of the 1mm sheet I have been using for my bodywork, rolled a section to mount the Lasers with a hose clamp and bolted to the flanges some distances off the centre. The sheetmetal makes a good bracket as its Strong enough to hold the lasers rigidly but bends easily enough for adjustment. Only took a minute or so of adjustment to get a very small circle of 2-3mm at the target.

 

With both lasers on at the same time it was a 5 minute job to get the output centred on the diff and visa - versa. The half inch crossmember spacer makes a big difference as it allowed me to also raise the rear of the trans a bit and still keep enough room between the top of the trans and the tunnel.

 

The pics show that the trans is quite offset on the rear crossmember and this is required given that the engine is offset in the chassis by the same amount and the diff is offset by something similar. Remember the guibo joint needs to have as little angular deflection as possible. The BMW rear tans mounts are just rubber donuts that sit under the ears each side of the trans case where I currently have some MDF "shims" sitting. The photo is taken in the position the trans needs to sit so I think I will just make a new crossmember from scratch rather than make the Datsun one fit.

 

Ive got issues with the RT diff mount not fitting my R200 and will probably need to make one from scratch as the plans floating around the interweb don't work in my car....maybe cos its an earlyish 240? Will post another thread for opinions on this.

 

David

[KatoKid]

Haven't got much done lately as we had a family holiday down the coast and then work was frantic when I got back. Finally got out into the shed last night and knocked over the RT mount in a few hours.

 

I ended up making one from scratch as the designs on the interweb don't fit my car, it only has two mounting holes and also with the R200 in place the mount was about an inch too far forward, not sure whats different about my car but it is an earlyish 240 and I'm constantly surprised by the subtle differences. In the end I was glad I made one from scratch as its fits my car well compared to the one I borrowed from mossy which would have required a bit of a rework to fit nicely into the tunnel. I made mine in situ which took a bit longer but it revealed that the Energy Suspension isolator Part number 3-1108 doesn't actually sit horizontal in the car, as expected its inclined because the diff it bolts to is inclined (5 deg nose up in mine) the side view in the photos shows how much, no big deal but it means the isolator wont be twisted to start with. Ive also fitted the strengthening gusset on the front side as theres no room for it at the rear like on most installations Ive seen.

 

Next up is to make a transmission crossmember. I could modify the original Z one but would prefer to keep it unmolested (its different to later Z's) and it will be quicker to make one from scratch anyway.

 

Cheers.

 

[bluerat]

Magic!

[RTz]

I ended up making one from scratch as the designs on the interweb don't fit my car, it only has two mounting holes and also with the R200 in place the mount was about an inch too far forward, not sure whats different about my car but it is an earlyish 240 and I'm constantly surprised by the subtle differences.

 

Hi David,

 

The original mount (and plans) were based on a '72. The early cars had a different restraining strap pattern. As you discovered, an adjustment needs to be made. The RT mount that Roostmonkey sells has both patterns built in.

 

As for the fore/aft location, the R200 mustache bar, when used with the R200, should run behind the rear suspension uprights (instead of ahead like your car came). This should land the holes in the correct location.

 

All this is just a tad late, though 

 

 

[KatoKid]

Thanks Ron.

 

I thought the moustache bar may have been the issue but I double checked and deffinitely had it the right way. Either way Im happy I built one specific to my car.

[RB30X]

You've seen the Beemer engine install thread on hybrid zed haven't you?

[KatoKid]

Thanks Tim.

 

Hi David,

 

The original mount (and plans) were based on a '72. The early cars had a different restraining strap pattern. As you discovered, an adjustment needs to be made. The RT mount that Roostmonkey sells has both patterns built in.

 

As for the fore/aft location, the R200 mustache bar, when used with the R200, should run behind the rear suspension uprights (instead of ahead like your car came). This should land the holes in the correct location.

 

All this is just a tad late, though 

 

 

 

Ron...RTz is the man you refer to.

 

 

 

 

[KatoKid]

More good progress last night.....got the trans crossmember pretty well finished, just need to gusset for strength and add a spacer on the right hand side where it bolts up to the floor. Made a template from 1mm sheet and then transferred that to 5mm plate. I don't have metal folding brake so used the drawbar of the horse float and a sledge hammer...got the job done surprisingly well, just don't tell the missus I took some paint off her beloved float in the process! Crossmember only took a bit over an hour to get to this point, was surprisingly easy, in fact the whole conversion from a mechanical standpoint will be pretty well bolt in and very easy.

Picture shows the trans in its final position to achieve the driveline alignment required.