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Last year I started doing an engine conversion on a friends Defender. It had been on the cards for years, we were trying to figure out what we wanted to do: Merceded OM 606, Cummins from a lorry or a BMW M57 conversion. We finally decided on the M57 and started the swap. Since driving it I’ve decided I needed a m57 swap in my life. My daily is a 535d so I’m aware of what the engine is like to live with. In February I had arranged to go and look at a Volvo 240 that I had seen for sale. I borrowed a trailer, hooked it up to my Td5 swapped Range Rover Classic and waited for the next morning. The man selling it suddenly went quiet, wouldn’t reply to messages, wouldn’t answer the phone. Annoying. So I arranged to go and pick up a BMW e39 instead the next day. Refreshing eBay I saw a new 240 for sale that had just been listed. It was for sale not far from where I was getting the BMW from. I spoke to the seller and arranged to be there for 8am the next morning. By 0830 it was on the trailer and we were heading home. The rest of the day turned into a game on tennis on the m4 going back and forth to get the BMW and the Volvo on the same day; but by 9pm it was all done and both cars were back home. ...and that’s exactly where they stayed. I don’t have a lot of spare time as my wife and I run a couple of businesses and I still hadn’t finished the defender swap. So what did I buy? A 1989 Volvo 240 estate in a lovely blue color. It had no water in it (the radiator is knackered),no brakes, a couple of small patches of rust and the stereo doesn’t work. But that doesn’t matter does it.  A BMW e39 330d manual in a fetching black color (anyone need anything off it? Going to scrap soon!)   I spent an evening after work welding a patch on the sill but other than that it’s completely untouched. All my time was going into the engine swap on the defender with my mate.    Then corona virus happened. My mate had to go into lock down as his girlfriend works for a care company so I had some time free. So I had the weekend to spend on the Greta finally! I'll just write the next post. |
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First things first we need to make a bit of room in Greta.  The engine, gearbox, exhaust, prop shaft was removed and very carefully put aside. I took some measurements of the gear shifter position, the subframe, etc. I took the engine and the gearbox out the bmw too but I didn’t take any pictures of that. The 5 speed gearbox I’m using has a 14” long gear linkage off the back which would mean that I would have to put the engine in the grill to make everything line up, that obviously wasn’t going to work out. My plan was to just make a new linkage to put the gear lever back where I needed it. A mate of mine has been building an offroad buggy with an m57 in it and he’s got quite the collection of gearboxes lying around (don’t ask). He said he had the linkage off a 6 speed gearbox which was a lot shorter. He dropped that round and I modified it to fit. A few dimensions had to be modified and I had to turn up a bush on the lathe.  You can see how similar the two setups are here. Look at all the critical dimensions and see how they compare: Prop coupling (very similar). Prop coupling to gear level relative position. Gearbox mount location Engine mount location Exhaust location Clutch slave location Sump position Getting the engine in place was a bit of a faff. Because the m57 has all the plastic intake manifold and tall rocker on the top, it meant that you couldn’t get the angle to get the engine and the gearbox complete in the hole. I decided the drop the subframe off the front to get it in one go.  You can see that it’s not sat down all the way. What you can’t see is that the sump is sat on the subframe. So the subframe came out, took the measurements of the prop position and gear lever and set the gearbox and engine in roughly the right place. It was squared up and measurements taken for the gearbox mount. I modified the original Volvo mount to accept the bmw gearbox mounts. To do that I had to cut the mount to move it up a bit to get the prop central in the hole.     You can see how lined up the hole is with where the gear lever will be. This allowed me to set the height of the engine, seen here.  And that was the end of Saturday. I had a bit of running around to do this morning so didn’t get started until lunch time. |
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Ahhh, there is a good looking nice Greta after all!
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Although everything was starting to fit quite well we had a bit of a problem. The position of the steering rack on the volvo was slap bang in the sump of the new engine. The old new and old engine mounts were a little way off. After a bit of standing around, drinking tea, facetiming the guy with the defender swap we decided on a plan to get everything back where it should be. The subframe holds the front suspension arm front mount, the steering rack and a few brackets for the brake lines. We needed the brake line brackets and obviously the suspension mounts to stay in the same place but ideally we needed more room to allow the steering rack to fit still. I think there’s enough spare room in the steering column to allow it to move down a bit so that’s where I started.  The standard subframe.  Take a cut on a flat bit and move it up about 17mm. Do the same on the other side and that should allow enough room to refit the steering rack.  (I reenforce this later don’t panic)  Right so engine mounts. I’d hoped to use the bmw “active” engine mounts so it would be nice and quiet but I just didn’t have the room. They’re provided with vacuum by the ecm to soften up as needed. Instead I had to use land rover 200tdi engine mounts which I’m not really that happy about as they’re quite hard. Maybe I’ll revisit it at a later date. I had to get on with it as the bar was starting to dent the wings. So this is the drivers side.  I had to make a new plate to go on the engine as the bmw one had a weird knob arrangement for that engine mount. I made a bracket that attaches to the subframe. It’s a bit messy, I’d like to say I’ll tidy it up but it’s bolted in now so the chances are slim. I made the mount to over the steering rack so it can be changed without removing the engine.  They look really wonky in this picture but it’s like that for a reason. The mounts on the engine brackets don’t sit level so naturally the subframe brackets can’t sit level. One is welded a bit further over on the mounting plate so you have enough room to undo the engine mounting plate with it in place.  Boxed in, reenforced (you can see the bracing plates on the step here too) and painted (badly).  ...and there it is in place without any straps holding it in. You can see the dent in the wing on the left if you look closely  .  It doesn’t hang too low which is nice.  There’s the engine just chillin’ It’s not all done at the front yet though. I need to add a bit of reenforcement to the subframe and move the anti roll back mounts down a bit. But there we are – up to date. |
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Bookmarked.
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Still learning...still spending...still breaking things!
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Rob
Part of things
Posts: 252
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i used the land rovr munts when i put the 1jz in my 240. works really well and mounts solid. i have heard of a few splitting, but there is poly ones off an 80s beemer that are exactly the same.
currently stuffing my 240 wagon with a ls1 and t5, your box looks a bit high?
and have you worked out steering angles now the racks down? it will increase bump steer a bit.
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i used the land rovr munts when i put the 1jz in my 240. works really well and mounts solid. i have heard of a few splitting, but there is poly ones off an 80s beemer that are exactly the same. currently stuffing my 240 wagon with a ls1 and t5, your box looks a bit high? and have you worked out steering angles now the racks down? it will increase bump steer a bit. Ooh that's good to know thank you. If you find out what vehicle they're from or a part number i'd be all over that. My box needs to be that high for the gear lever. The prop seems to line up well and it's within about 15mm of where it was so I think it'll be ok. Steering - yes good point i had been thinking about that. I intend to put some stiffer springs on which will probably involve a drop so my plan was to make some modified steering joints with heim joints if needed onc3 they're in and I know the final height of the knuckle. Got to see if the shaft fits yet! I had some customer work to do today so didn't get much time on it. I forgot that I did the radiator mounts the other day so I put the rad back in and all the hoses line up. Sweet!  I want to see how the prop lines up so I need to get the gear linkage sorted before I put a prop in the way. The volvo has a solid mount that comes off the back of the gearbox which the shifter sits in. The BMW uses a bush mounted on the chassis to locate a bracket. The volvo obviously doesn't have that mount so I needed to make one. I had a dig about in the metal pile and found a bit of pipe which looked good and cut a bit off.  I turned it on the lathe so the bush is a tight fit in the pipe. Next I made a bracket which will hold that in the tunnel. I intend to remove the carpet and weld some captive nuts on the tunnel at some point but a couple of rivets will do for now.    And that works... kind of. The engine is as far back as it can go as it's only about 15mm away from the firewall but the gear lever bangs into the dash in 1,3,5 so i'll need to modify the gear lever to put a bit of a bend in it. I might swap the volvo shaft in 'cos it's nice and shiny. And that was it for today. Other than I put the bonnet back on. It all fits!  |
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Very good  You are making it look easy.... Nick |
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1967 Triumph Vitesse convertible (old friend)
1996 Audi A6 2.5 TDI Avant (still durability testing)
1972 GT6 Mk3 (Restored after loong rest & getting the hang of being a car again)
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Use the active engine mounts mate, they are there for a reason. Also who is doing the wiring?
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Use the active engine mounts mate, they are there for a reason. Also who is doing the wiring? I wish I could but there just isn't the room. I've got to leave some room around the turbo for future plans. I'm doing the wiring. I've done 2 recently and they're easy enough. I think i'm going to move the battery to the boot too. Luckily the bmw has a sexy bit of battery cable running the whole length of the thing. |
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What are you gonna do with the rear axle? Volvo ratios are mostly like 3.67:1 while a manual 530d has 2.35:1
With the volvo axle you end up with very short gears.
5 speed manual gearbox is 1:1 in fifth gear, that doesn't help either.
My mate is building a 265 volvo with an Om606. He's using a 6 speed bmw gearbox and bought some longer ratio ring&pignon to fit in his axle.
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What are you gonna do with the rear axle? Volvo ratios are mostly like 3.67:1 while a manual 530d has 2.35:1 With the volvo axle you end up with very short gears. 5 speed manual gearbox is 1:1 in fifth gear, that doesn't help either. My mate is building a 265 volvo with an Om606. He's using a 6 speed bmw gearbox and bought some longer ratio ring&pignon to fit in his axle. To be honest I've got no idea I'd not even considered it. I'll have to look into options. Thank you very much for pointing that out. Could you ask your mate where he got the different diff bits from please? Well time for a little bit of an update. I've been busy with customer cars for the past couple of days so i've only managed to steal a few hours on it after work. First off I had better sort out the shifter, hitting the dash isn't ideal. I took the standard 6 speed shifter out and it's dead straight. I was going to bend it but I had a look at the other shifters I had lying around and one of them has a bend in it already, so I used that and cut a welded it a bit further up so I it'll clear everything.    With all that finally done I could get the prop bolted up. I'm not entirely happy with this and i'll have to see how well it lasts. I might have to make a donut in the future with different spacing but i'll have to see how it goes.  My very eBay intercooler turned up today so I thought i'd better see how far off my measurements are. Turns out not that far which was nice.  I had to put the grille back on to see how it looks. Pretty silly. I think i'll paint it black. Any thoughts?  I popped the radiator back in to make sure it still fitted (it does) and had a quick fiddle with the boost hoses. I don't think it's a million miles off using most of the standard BMW hoses. I got some 90's for the intercooler so that's sorted.  When I took the front subframe off I tried (briefly admittedly) to get the brake hoses off but they were having none of it so I just cut the bloody things. New ones were about 75 quid or a whole set of braided HEL hoses were 130 quid.... so i bought those. Nearly every fitting was a curse word and had to be cut off so it took bloody ages to swap them out.  I'll have to get the hoses figured out, make the clutch line then it's on to wiring and driving. |
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Last Edit: Apr 8, 2020 19:19:30 GMT by Xenocide
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Apr 12, 2020 21:14:03 GMT
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Right where did we leave off? I've had 3 days on it since I updated the thread I think. I didn't take many pictures as I was just getting on with it. Firstly my tig welder went pop. Off to a curse word start.  I spent the morning stripping the last few things off the BMW. I had the front to rear battery cable, the throttle pedal and a few other little bits. lh3.googleusercontent.com/tqfqfyKAHzwARRV44w5HdJQUoJisj9thHmfIVO6fJmOSJL6O1jTilHcG6NaxblWVrveJDK6hw7Okt1Vwa5H3yomaZTPm2dR-TP77_M7pBlGoAUWCxEQNSC6rf7UXY5b4aGdNzDheSQ=w2400I thought i'd start by mounting the throttle pedal. The BMW has a plastic pedal that is mounted to the floor. It clips into a bracket that clips and bolt into a bracket on the floor. The angle of the floor is different in the two cars so i'll need to make a bracket to adapt between the two. I made this one by making some little pegs that attach to existing holes in the bottom of the pedal bracket and a bolt hole at the top which I welded a nut on the back of to make it captive. I just drilled some holes through the carpet and floor and bolted it in. I ran out of black paint but found some random blue which actually matches the carpet quite well (you'll have to take my word for it, in person it does match).  The pedal then clips over this.  I'm normally wearing work boots so I left a fair bit of room around it. I'll probably move the brake pedal over a bit in the future. Next I wanted to move the battery to the boot. The original one was under the bonnet but there's not alot of room there now because the engine is much wider. Luckily the BMW had a lovely bit of cable running from the front to the back. I even managed to reuse the stud to pass it through the firewall. I made a bracket that sits the battery on a ridge that was already there. The bracket i made sits at the same height on the other side. It just bolts through the spare wheel well. The keen eyed amongst you will probably notice that the spare wheel won't fit any more. I'm going to get some different wheels in a bit which won't fit anyway so it's no big loss. Atleast i've got some spare room to put things. The Volvo estate is famously lacking room.   I did all the wiring annnnnd.... Got it bloody running. So the intercooler mount just bolts through the slam panel but one side has this ridge that goes right through where the bolt for the intercooler need to be so I had to modify it a bit. I cut the end of the ridge off and moved it up a bit so the intercooler mount misses it. I made another section to go in the space. (i'm not sure if that makes any sense)  I wanted to re enforce the top panel so that it won't fracture. I had some sexy thick washers which I welded on.   Next I had to make the lower IC mount. Made some little brackets and a bar which will weld into the radiator support.  I made the remaining few hoses and bled the coolant and power steering fluid.  Then took it for a drive I still have some bits to finish off, I have the put the interior back together and replace a t piece in the diesel system that's leaking (I made one as I didn't have one on hand, it doesn't work). Next is the exhaust which I might leave for a week or so. I hate making exhausts. \o/ |
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Apr 12, 2020 22:43:25 GMT
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Are these a live axle? is there room to fit the e39 rear subframe in there?
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Apr 12, 2020 22:47:17 GMT
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Are these a live axle? is there room to fit the e39 rear subframe in there? Yes they are live axles. I'm not sure to be honest i've had them both up on ramps pondering the same thing but it's probably more messing around then I can be bothered with at the moment. I'd have to make strut towers etc. I'm on the lookout for some 2.72 rear axle gears which I *think* i can get out of 80's jeeps. I think that'll be good enough. |
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Apr 12, 2020 23:00:45 GMT
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after a quick Google it looks like the jeeps are Dana 44s which is also what you can find in Jag rear ends and I think v12 XJS HE came with a 2.88 which does come in an LSD form... didn't spend long on the search so please check before spending ££  |
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Apr 12, 2020 23:09:12 GMT
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As I understand it, under the volvo is a dana 30 which was also used in some jeeps (but not that many). There are a few different variants so i'd be guessing at what one i'd need mind.
I can't find any after market gear sets for such a high ratio so i'm looking for a used diff more or less complete. Being on the correct side of the pond doesn't help with that. I've emailed pretty much every jeep breaker I can find in the states lol!
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Apr 12, 2020 23:10:44 GMT
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oh, my Google Fu was weak
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Apr 12, 2020 23:14:56 GMT
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hmm, looks like the Jeep guys convert 30s to 44s, maybe a message to Summit Racing in the states might get you going, if 44 parts fit then the Jag ratios might be a goer
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This kind of work goes miles over my head but I love what you have done or are doing!!
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Last Edit: Apr 13, 2020 2:24:43 GMT by rblote
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