Attempting a SHO swap into an e30

[Hambler]

I appreciate the wealth of information you guys are all giving me, and I will definitely be taking some measurements of my engine bay soon- I'm more concerned about width then height, I don't mind running a cowl hood.

It's Monday morning for me, so when most people have to stop work on their project and go back to work, I start working on this project again. I'm on a club here at school where we designed and built a tube frame Baja car from scratch, and we race it at the end of this week, so free time is at a minimum right now as we are getting down to the wire.

I did find time over the weekend to look at a relatively inexpensive '94 ATX, which much to my excitement, the car was in horrible shape but to my dismay the engine would not rev past 4000 when driving it. It would shift at 4000 rpm in drive, and if I put it in first (the automatics "first"), it would rev to about 4000 and just kind of hit a wall there. Having only ridden in an MTX once about 7 years ago, I am not sure what kind of acceleration feel the car should have, but it felt like it accelerated okay until about the 4000 rpm wall, it may have started to fall of around 3k rpm, I'm not sure. I didn't want to beat on a car I realized I wasn't buying too badly. Any suggestions on this would be welcome, but in the meantime instead of messing with it, I am going to look for another donor car.

Harry

 

[rubydist]

sounds like it is hitting the neutral rev limiter. the atx cars are not allowed to rev past 4000 unless the pcm 'sees' that they are in gear. the switch on top of the trans where the shifter attaches is suspect in this case.

 

[Hambler]

I wondered this, as I did a brief 5 minute google search while I was at the guys house looking at the car. The only thing that made me question this was I believe the power locks cycled when it was put in gear/park. Were these different switches or are they linked in some way?

Thanks,
Harry

 

[Hambler]

Hey guys, a couple more questions I have come up with:

Does anybody know if the flywheel from a 3.0L will bolt onto a 3.2L?
Are these cars neutrally balanced components? and what do the SHO engines have for an engine balancer?

Harry

 

[sperold]

The flywheel will bolt onto either engine because the crank is the same in both engines. The displacement increase comes from an increase in bore exclusively.

The engines are internally balanced. There are no external weights on the flywheel or front pulley.

 

[luigisho]

Does anybody know if the flywheel from a 3.0L will bolt onto a 3.2L?
Are these cars neutrally balanced components? and what do the SHO engines have for an engine balancer?Harry

Sperold above is correct. Many have done 3.2 ATX motor swaps into 3.0 manual trans cars for quite some time. Often when going to a manual car we also swap the 3.0 heads over to the 3.2 block as well as the oil pan. There is more than one way to make it work, but that is the easiest way for us with fitment and accessory mounting in this config. Also there is a slight difference in 3.2 vs 3.0 cam profiles but not a huge difference.

If you can find that swap project I referenced before, I think the depth of the oil pan was as much or more of an issue than the height of the intake up top. Too bad there wasn't a junk motor or someone close had one in storage so you could get the fitment lined up. I also think there are physical measurements posted somewhere.

 

[Hambler]

What is the difference between the 3.0 heads and oil pan vs the 3.2?

I've considered in the back of my mind modifying the oil pan in some way, I am going to cross that bridge when I get there. For starters I'm going to work on developing a way to put a 6 speed transmission behind the engine.

 

[tompumped]

I'm on a club here at school where we designed and built a tube frame Baja car from scratch, and we race it at the end of this week, so free time is at a minimum right now as we are getting down to the wire.

Between this and them funding and paying you to work on this project it sounds like the best school ever created. How much does it cost and where do I have to go?

 

[luigisho]

The heads are functionally the same besides the cam profile. cams can be switched between either displacement engines. The physical difference is accessory mounting.

Here is the original write up from a long time ago. This was done without swapping 3.0 heads over and making the 3.2 heads work in a manual configured car. http://www.wikisho.com/wiki/Engine_Swaps?

In your case I'm not sure there is any difference and you should consider (if fitment is not any significant difference) just keeping the whole 3.2 longblock with accessories and brackets as is.

 

[rubydist]

you are much better off with the 3.2 accessories as it is a single belt with an automatic adjuster rather than two (difficult to adjust) manual adjusted belts on the 3.0. that means using the 3.2 heads.

the only difference in cams is the intake cams - the 3.0 have a higher lift and slightly different duration for a higher torque peak and higher rpm breathing, where the 3.2 cams provide more lower end torque to match to the original auto trans. I have had both sets of cams in a 3.2 mtx car, and for a daily driver the 3.2 cams are significantly better. for a track car, the 3.0 cams would be significantly better. where you strike the balance is up to you.

there is very little difference between pans. iirc, the 3.2 pan has a little more setback to the sump (from the crank pulley) so I found the 3.2 pan slightly more useful when I was trying to fit it in another vehicle, but that depends greatly on where (front to back) the crossmember is located in the chassis.

 

[Off Road SHO]

Well, I had the intake cam heights bass ackward as usual. I thought the 3.0 intake lobes were .5 mm taller.

Tom

 

[Hambler]

I've been absent the last couple days because I've been in upstate New York presenting and racing the tube frame baja car I had mentioned earlier that I was involved in building. This was the first year in a long time my school has built a car, and we were operating on a 1/10th of the budget of the bigger teams, so we're very happy that we were able to hold our own. Finished 22/100 in suspension and traction, 44/100 in maneuverability, and 31/100 in the hill climb. We went through three steering column u-joints in the endurance race that cost us a lot of time off the track, and then our gearbox locked up on the last lap, but we still managed to get 51/100. I've attached some pictures of our car before and after the race.

I can't thank all of you enough for your input, you guys have the wealth of information I need to make this project easier for me. It looks like I'm probably just going to buy a 3.0L and a 3.2L so I can pull parts off of either engine to help it fit, and use the 3.2L block.

 

[Hambler]

Well I picked up a '94 MTX last night for $300, the dash says 235k miles but the engine block has been painted along with a few other things in the engine bay, so I'm not sure if it is actually a 235K mile engine or not, but either way $300 is ok with me for a prototyping engine. I also have three 6-speed manual transmissions sitting here waiting to be mocked up onto the engine.

I know that this is all the easy part of the swap, but I'm incredibly excited to get going on this project. I'm trying to come up with a name for the car/project, and have two in mind right now : project melting *** (since its a Japanese designed American engine in a German car) or project rats (cuz the bmw is in pretty ratty shape, especially the interior. Thoughts?

 

[luigisho]

Bavarian SHOtor Works

 

[TimboSHO]

Nice Donor car! If it runs, that's a great find for $300

 

[Hambler]

I only got to hear it pop a couple times, the gentleman I bought it from had cut the fuel tank out so we just squirted some gas in the intake and got it to run. He is a reputable person though, so I have faith in him when he says it ran fine and he drove it around. The fact that I had to have it hauled here brought the price down a lot, and the body is in pretty rough shape.

I finally got the engine out, and it took me the better part of two days as I'm working with very limited hand tools (no air tools), and I've never done anything like this before. That being said, it was actually a pretty easy job... a lot easier than putting long tube headers on my LT1 camaro.

I'm super lucky, because its Friday afternoon, and instead of coming home to this project, I'm leaving it til Monday next week. Here's a picture of where I got to today.

 

[Hambler]

Hello all,
despite the fact that I am working on this as a full time job, at the end of the day I don't have a shop and I've never done anything like this before- so progress is very slow. The s2000 6 speed manual transmission looks the most promising out of the 3 transmissions I have, but I haven't gone into depth with it yet. Looks like I'll be making an engine to trans adapter, as well as a flywheel spacer/adapter. I think I am going to try to run the s2000 clutch and flywheel, as it would all be off the shelf parts then.

I have started looking quickly at the cooling, and I began to wonder if anybody has run a different waterpump on these engines that doesn't plump the coolant to the back of the engine, and then to the front again. The other option I considered is a U right were it comes out of the water pump, sneak it between the timing belt and to a radiator.

Thanks for the help

 

[rubydist]

the S2000 engine, while it is rated at 200hp, only puts out about 150 lb-ft of torque, so your SHO motor may tear up that clutch and trans in short order.

I found a thermostat housing from another Ford that is basically a 90* turn, that could be adapted to the SHO thermostat mounting surface. This was a couple years ago now, and I've forgotten what it was from, but it was a common Ford sedan with possibly a Duratec engine.

 

[Hambler]

I plan on using an upgraded s2000 clutch if I go that route which I'm not super happy with, as from my experience upgraded clutch's aren't as nice to drive. As far as the transmission goes, I understand that it depends how you drive the car, if you launch, if you run sticky tires, etc. but from reading around on the internet s2000 owners give these transmissions a pretty good thrashing on modified cars and they hold up decently.

So with this thermostat housing that makes a 90* turn, the coolant came out of the water pump, down the pipe in the V of the engine to the back of the engine, then made a 90* turn? I was wondering about a different waterpump all together that didn't send the water towards the back of the engine, but looking at it more I guess it needs to feed the heads back there so you cant do that?

Harry

 

[Hambler]

I'm not really sure how many people are following this thread, and if this thread is in the right category on this forum. Should I be starting a new thread somewhere on this forum for this project?

I have some prototype adapter plates for the s2000 6 speed transmission being waterjetted out of plywood tomorrow morning, and it looks like the dimensions workout that I can still use the SHO flywheel bolted directly to the crank as it was from the factory. This is great news for me, as it means I can avoid having to make a spacer that spins at 8000 rpm for the flywheel. I am just going to redrill the SHO flywheel in the machine shop for the s2000 pressure plate, and the clutch disk falls at the correct spot on the input shaft with a 1/2" engine/transmission adapter plate.

I was planning on making my own pilot bushing, but the s2000 input shaft is only .045" smaller than the hole in the SHO crank. I haven't yet figured out how I am going to solve this problem, so if anybody has any ideas I'd love to hear them!