[ucsbwsr]

Fired the beast up! The engine was primed with oil and she started on the first crank. It was ran through 2 cycles where it got to operating temp and then fully cooled, after the 3rd run the oil was drained while warm for examination. All looked good, no coolant or excessive chunks or metal.

Here are some videos.

1st start, DPs installed, no exhaust.

3rd start, exhaust installed:

On the 3rd run I pulled some logs:
Oil @97F and Oil @208F
datazap.me | ucsbwsr | Rebuilt N54 3rd Start


I refilled it the same Mobile 1 0w-40 and I will run this for the first 500 miles or so while I shake down the wagon and break in my new clutch. After that I will switch to Motul 5w-40.

With the engine up to temp I noticed the the coolant wasn't floating through the heat exchanger, likely due to the internal thermostat in the unit. I think I could have removed the t-stat and allowed flow but since the unit is far from ideal I figured I would remove it so simplicity sake and down the road if my wagon needs more cooling, either coolant or oil I can add what I need. With the heat exchanger out I now have a nice place for a 10x10 or so radiator core.

Before


After


3/4" Vibrant hose squeezed on to the metric sized BMW fitting

[seanblee]

Congratulations! This has been a great thread to follow - thanks for spending so much time writing up what you're doing. Looking forward to seeing the transmission go back in and the car back on the road

[stashtrey]

Frigging awesome, bro. Really, really stoked for you. Makes me wish I had gone your route vs swapping and paying a premium for a low mileage engine when I blew a piston.

Can't wait to see the rest of the car come together and some vids of that thing ripping it up! One of a kind.

[_ink]

I'm happy that she's fired up first go and with no issues!

Selfishly sad that we won't see as many pics of the DIY process though!

[ucsbwsr]

Finally got around to replacing a leaking rear main seal.

M5 driveshaft should be back soon after being lengthened and rebuilt.

M5 DSC hardlines have been ordered but they will come from Germany so it may be a week or three before the arrive.

Evan


After the first initial runs and intervals of bringing the engine to temp it became obvious the rear main seal was leaking.


My seal also looked to be installed very deep, essentially bottomed out.


There was also some rust since this motor sat in a junkyard for a bit.


Before removing the old seal I took a dremel and wire wheel to the crank.


The Bentley manual and Workshop-manuals only covered the process for the older 8-bolt hubs and seals. Mine was a 6-bolt from 2011 and had a different seal design, for better I would say.


Seal was removed by drilling a small hole with a drill and then installing a screw with was then pulled out with a hammer, worked like a charm and no $300 BMW Special Tool needed.


Pic with seal removed.


There was a small ledge on the lip, I decided this was a good location to press the seal to.


New seal installed.


New seal does not leak!





Delrin bushings for my shift arm.

[ucsbwsr]

My wagon in its natural habitat....


I got some cold feet on the delrin shift arm bushings and ordered some oem rubber ones, to my surprise they were much harder than I was expecting.


When examining the oem shift arm support there was a lot of air and not a lot of rubber to support the arm.

Front


Rear


After striking out with metal washers and spacers I decided to get some 1/2" PVC plugs, their sizing was close to what I needed but being PVC I could use a dremel to make the exact shapes needed. The plug on the left was trimmed, bored out, and tapered so that it fit snugly both deep in the bushings and at the outer edge.


Plug modded and installed on the front side


Dremel work inside and out


Spacer cut


Installed, not pretty but effective


Coding/Flashing muscle Schumacher INC-700A


Pulled up UIF and flashed my VIN to the modules which didn't already have it.


Removed $205 and $203 from VO in CAS and LMA and defaulted some other major modules, then removed Auto trans from the MSD80 adaptations. I no longer have a gear cog show up in my dash so that is good but more testing later will confirm the AT-MT coding was successful.


My DSC module was not showing up in the UIF in INPA and I couldn't communicate with it in INPA or flash DSC60 in WinKFP. I have some wiring I need to check as when I cut the loom to extend and relocate my ABS/DSC pump to the oem M5 location I overlooked that a 2 pairs (twisted) and 2 single wires were identical so I have a few pins that I need to swap around in hopes that they were incorrectly soldered. Thankfully there are only 8 possible combinations the pins can be configured so if it is wiring related I can get to the bottom of it.


I am waiting for a small terminal release tool so that I can pop the pins out of the 47pin connector on the DSC pump.
Release ports are the little ports next to the terminals



Trimmed my engine cover since this section near the back looked odd without the oem airbox.



This was of course to make sure you could see cylinder 5 and 6 runners of my shiny new manifold.


Evolution of Speed Port Injection Manifold to be exact.


Business in the front, party in the back


I had them add a 1/2" NPT port in addition to the two 1/8" ports


Some people like big wings, chrome rims, crazy vinyl wraps.... this is my kind of bling: brushed aluminum


Much better


Intake manifold matches my oil cap


One more

[tan_rich]

Hey man, pretty sure it was you in the white e90 single turbo.

Great build man, definitely subscribing.

[ucsbwsr]

Originally Posted by tan_rich

Hey man, pretty sure it was you in the white e90 single turbo.

Great build man, definitely subscribing.

You found me! Nice work. I hope to have my wagon on the road at the end of the month.

Clean 335is!


Here is the build thread for the car I was driving,
http://www.n54tech.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35056

Evan

[tan_rich]

Originally Posted by ucsbwsr

You found me! Nice work. I hope to have my wagon on the road at the end of the month.

Clean 335is!


Here is the build thread for the car I was driving,
http://www.n54tech.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35056

Evan

Thanks! Haha, Thats awesome, I hope i have the pleasure of seeing your wagon in person again once its complete. I don't believe you are from socal due to plates, your username and tags tell me otherwise.

The "is" was far from clean!, havent had time to clean it since school is back and what not.

Man that is a nice build! I will definitely be following both. The e90 build is basically what I hope to do with the "is" minus the big single haha. I'll definitely be bothering you about it!

[ucsbwsr]

I test fit my shift arm and found out that the rear support is actually compressed while installed which meant I couldn't install the bushing with my PVC inserts, I needed to take the front insert out and trim it down more. The upside is now the PVC insert is a size where the bushing snaps into place but also the smaller diameter of the installed bushing holds the insert firmly in place.

Pic of the adjust front insert


Mounted front insert


Mounted rear insert, held in place by the metal carrier


My AC condenser core had a bunch of bent fins from the 105k miles of service, there was also a bunch of rocks and debris stuck in there. There are intercooler fin tools which you can use to straighten these but if you have ever tried to use once before you know they suck and the process sucks. I opted jut to get a new core.
Old core


Clearly the damage is isolated around the kidney grill area. BMWs with their kidney grills really restrict the amount of direct airflow getting to the radiator


Core removed


But why AC condenser? On the E6X there are 3 cores stacked in the radiator as seen below and if the front core (AC) is bent, blocked with gunk, it will limit airflow to the following core which on my car are the radiator and then the oil cooler.


The E6X actually has a nice large oil cooler core, it is actually impressive how large it is compared to the E9X cars.


Picture showing the oil cooler, it is about 18"x24"


New AC core installed


My M5 ABS/DSC hardlines finally arrived from Germany



The "nightmare" DSC hard line which runs from the pump behind the driverside wheel liner, up by the master cylinder, over a partition, along the firewall, around the block, over to the front passenger brake line. It wasn't fun putting this in. Had to drain the coolant remove coolant lines on the firewall, remove AC lines, bend, finagle, sweat, and swear.


Wasn't fun at all.


My shift knob came in but thanks to Shifteck giving me the wrong info on their own shifter it doesn't fit. They said it was M10x1.25 and it looks to be M12x1.25, I guess I should have done my own research but I would hope a company would know their product better.
Stainless steel, 2" diameter, 5XXgrams

[Donutz]

I had a knob exactly like that on another car. It was a TWM A6 Leopard I believe.

[TrollToll]

That is really interesting about the oil cooler size. That explains why the E6X don't have oil temperature gauges.

[ucsbwsr]

Originally Posted by Donutz

I had a knob exactly like that on another car. It was a TWM A6 Leopard I believe.

Yes, very similar but mine was $100 cheaper!

Originally Posted by Yournamehere90

That is really interesting about the oil cooler size. That explains why the E6X don't have oil temperature gauges.

Considering the temps the N54 runs at, regardless of oil cooler size, I find it inappropriate that there is no dedicated oil temp gauge from the factory. Thankfully that is easily remedied with my live data via JB4.

Evan

[ucsbwsr]

Previously my vacuum tanks were held together with zip ties and then zip tied to the ABS hard lines which ran along the firewall. It was a simple and easy solution but was looking for something a little more "legit."


I came up with this setup. After trimming one of the tanks with a dremel and finding the appropriate sized hardware I was able to mount the tanks on the firewall partition which doubles as HVAC ducting.


I was pretty happy how it came out as the bolt was held in place by the partition and acted as a stud.


Mounted


After some more research and some data offered by Doug @Frankenturbo I decided to simplify the setup and run a single tank.


Much more stealth


Also rerouted my ABS/DSC wiring harness along the firewall to keep it away from the engine and heat, prior it was configured in a way that had about 6" exposed in close proximity to the hot-side of the engine and rear manifold.


Oddly enough all of the ABS/DSC lines I ordered from BMW (Germany) cam pre-bent except for the rear 2.


So I had to bent them, a large socket I bought to remove by transmission output flange did the trick.


Not perfect but good enough, much respect to the guys who bend air system hard lines by hand.


Fuel-It upgraded fuel lines, ethanol sensor, and JB4 integration.


I realized there was an oversight on my end with running M5 ABS/DSC hard lines with a non-M5 DSC unit, all but 1 port are in different locations and 2 have different diameters, ~3AN-4AN and ~4AN-3AN. Weeeeeeeeee


Looking into flexible lines with bubble fittings, if I can't find any then I may just build my own hardlines.


On my ABS/DSC connector there were some identical wires which may need to be switched. I pulled up the diagrams in the Bentley manual and made a comprehensive pin-out. My DSC isn't showing up in any coding software so I may have some pics swapped; there are 2 pairs of twisted wires and 1 pair of single wires which are identical so there are 8 potential configurations.

Black boxes designate pins which are not used. Solid lines designate pairs of wires and yellow highlighted pins with dotted lines designate possible swaps.

[ucsbwsr]

First of all big thanks to Levanime as he was instrumental in getting my PT-CAN system up and running so my DSC module could be recognized, we synced up on Teamviewer and I let him work his magic. Since I have an E61 and am running a DSC module from a RWD E60, since there was never a RWD wagon produced, removing replacing PT73 (wagon) with NW13 (sedan) in the VO gave the DSC the info it wanted to see, VO was not saved in CAS or LMA.

Levan even added some files so that I could control the module via INPA, previously INPA only recognized DSC60 not DSCPP which is what I have. The DSC controls in INPA are in German but that is A-ok with me, I am just happy to have the software at my disposal for diagnostic future diagnostic work.

Thanks Levan!


If you recall on my chicken scratch pin-out: pin #25 and #40 went to X10554 and X10555, after poking around ELE and ELC in the Bentley manual I couldn't find where these points were but I knew X designated them splices or connections.


Here you can see how the DSC and 6AT are connected in PT-CAN


This meant I needed my 6AT wiring harness which I had previously disconnected and hacked up to make my custom wiring harness for the DSC unit, lol. Thankfully I saved the connector and the wires which were not needed, you never know when you might need them!



AT connector in the DME box


Harness plugged in and PT-CAN wires looped (SW/BL and GE)


DSC shows up in UIF! Free LSD!


Coding Setup


Schumacher power supply has a "flash" mode which holds 14.2V stable so I can code for days.


Made the wiring harness into a smaller "key" to keep the DME box tidy.





Realized I never coded my injectors are reinstalling them in the new engine.


Pedals calling my name

[Levanime]

Im glad I had a chance to participate minimally in my favorite project!

But, I'll be satisfied when the car will be running without a problem

[ucsbwsr]

So I blew my motor mid March 2016, let's see if I can get this thing done before the 1 year anniversary.
My M5 drivetrain retrofit is not complete. With the exception of the front suspension my wagon had M5 brakes, drivetrain, and rear suspension. M5 purists uncomfortably reposition themselves.

Picked up my lengthened and rebuilt M5 driveshaft. It was done by a local shop in Westminster, CA called Driveshaft Pros (Powertrain Industries). It was pricey but they did a great job.


Trans support is held in place by 1 bolt on the passenger side and resituated the tie down so that it securely holds the support but out of the way of the driveshaft and guibo so I can drive my car to a local shop to have a custom trans support fabricated.


When installing the shaft I noticed my LSD input flange had a small flat spot from being mishandled, the lip of the flange was inward about .8mm so not much but enough that the CV wouldn't seat. A couple whacks of the hammer took care of that, hopefully there are no vibrations.


Finding the right torque specs for the M5 driveshaft hardware was unnecessarily difficult to track down but I did it.


Driveshaft in!


Unfortunately one of the spacers supplied with the UUC SSK was deformed or incorrectly machined so I will need to see if UUC can send me a replacement.




Aside from the incorrect spacer the shifter assembly is installed.



I will be running the silver BMW nob temporarily until I get the shifter height dialed in, after that I plan to modify the UUC SSK and fabricate a machines gated shifter plate. I guess there are some hurdles which I might have to face with externally gating an internally gated shifter. We shall see.


Some eBay Specials which I will be using for my gated shifter, both are stainless steel and heavy, 1lb 7oz to be exact.


The threads needed to be cut down and the rod was too shiny for my preference.


Threads cut and rod brushed. Left=Temp Right=Final


There are some nice Ferrari gates and I also like the R8 design but the Lamborghini Gallardo gated plate is my main inspiration, I have to replicate the clean design with recessed hardware.


Notice a theme?



Up next will be finalizing the ABS/DSC M5 relocation...

Evan

[ucsbwsr]

Sorting through the rants nest that is M5 spec ABS/DSC hardlines which are pre bent (except the 2 rear lines which oddly came from Germany straight) but unfortunately every single port is different between the 535i RWD DSC and M5 DSC, big oversight on my part. #RetrofittingProblems

With my bare hands and a socket I was able to get the 2 rear lines and 1 line from the master cylinder bent and connected to the pump, they are not pretty but should work just fine. The other 3 lines had mismatching fitting diameters so Mesa Hose in Costa Mesa, CA is cutting my M5 hardlines and welding on some AN fitting which will be connected to a couple 8" SS soft lines so I can connect everything.

Once this is done I can reinstall the M5 brakes (Rotoras will wait) and bleed the brakes + clutch.

Bending hardlines


Label twice


Removing the front right hard line was a real peach (sarcasm) as I needed to remove the coolant lines and AC lines which run through the firewall amongst other things. I hate taking 1 step back to take 2 steps forward.


Hard lines bent and connected for master cylinder feed and R+L rear brakes lines. Fittings installed for the remaining ports in anticipation for the flexible lines.


My tips which were some cheapo black powdercoated slash cut tips were showing signs of wear from the heat.


So I sanded them down and hit them with a fresh coat of some ceramic engine enamel, we will see how it holds up.


Some details of the Y-pipe on my exhaust system. Welding is cool.

[SilverStreak18]

Great work man. Seriously I love reading through this thread. The final product will be well worth the wait and all the hard work.

[rbsileighty]

Man, I was coming on the forum to possibly list my '09 Space Gray 535ixT, but thought I'd take a look around to figure out what was going on in the community... but now I might be second guessing. Very inspiring thread! Mine is already a manual and had KW V3's and MTech from new when my uncle bought it in '09, but I haven't put to many miles on it in the last year and was on the edge of selling it... maybe not now, haha

[speedychuck2]

what inlet is that you have? looks really neat and tidy. Does it still have issues staying on the rear turbo like other inlets do?

[ucsbwsr]

Originally Posted by SilverStreak18

Great work man. Seriously I love reading through this thread. The final product will be well worth the wait and all the hard work.

That is the plan!

Originally Posted by rbsileighty

Man, I was coming on the forum to possibly list my '09 Space Gray 535ixT, but thought I'd take a look around to figure out what was going on in the community... but now I might be second guessing. Very inspiring thread! Mine is already a manual and had KW V3's and MTech from new when my uncle bought it in '09, but I haven't put to many miles on it in the last year and was on the edge of selling it... maybe not now, haha

Not sure what other vehicles you have in your fleet but it is hard to beat the do-it-all capability of the E61, especially when some mods are thrown at it. Performance (N54), comfort (hopefully you have comfort seats), enjoyment (6mt), poor weather capability (AWD), function (wagon), exclusivity (NOT a crossover or SUV). With bolt-ons you can do all that and run with most cars on the street, with groceries, bikes, a dog, and other stuff!

Wagon looks sick by the way.

Keep the wagon.

Mod the wagon.

Love the wagon.

Originally Posted by speedychuck2

what inlet is that you have? looks really neat and tidy. Does it still have issues staying on the rear turbo like other inlets do?

I built the inlet system myself, actually went through to variants and the second one you currently see is my revised system. You can see them here but the build of the current setup starts on post #83
http://www.n54tech.com/forums/showth...t=30535&page=4

The rear 2" dia pipe is such a snug fit against the firewall that the inlet on the rear turbo can't pop off. Try getting a silicone elbow which has a longer straight section off the turbo this will help sandwich it between the firewall and keep it in place.

Evan