Here's the other project that I've been picking away at for a while. This has been going on for some time so this will be something of a photo dump.
It's an '88 528e, Alpine over Cardinal red with a straight, rust free body. It was sitting in a field just up the road from me. I had been collecting various things over the years that were intended to end up in my E24, but that project was sold because I knew I'd never get it done. Since this car had been robbed of it's drivetrain I figured it would be a fun way to put my collection of parts to good use, and ultimately sell it all as a package rather than piece by piece.
It lived in Arizona for some time so the interior was pretty well cooked, but I've had worse. The paint is in great condition considering the 200,000+ miles showing on the odometer.
First thing to do was clean up the engine bay and pull the ugly US spec impact bumpers off and replace them with the pretty little Euro bumpers. There are some holes that need to be filled on the rear valence and some holes that need to be created in the front. We'll get to that later.
Then it was time to build an engine. Actually two.
The engine I wanted to use was an M30 B35 out of a late E24. These are desirable as far as B35s go since they have the right mounting bosses on both sides of the block to bolt right into an E28, in addition to the other things that make the B35 good. Unfortunately this block must have suffered some trauma at some point because the threads in three of the fourteen head bolt holes pulled out while I was bolting the head down.
Luckily M30s of different generations are mostly interchangeable, and I had another block gathering dust in the corner. This one was from a Euro 635CSi. 10:1 compression, so better than the B35 in that way, but the cylinder head is not as good. The reason I hadn't gone with this block from the beginning is that it's a factory plus size, meaning that piston rings can only be sourced through BMW and they are hideously expensive. But since it was my only choice, I sucked it up and combined the high compression bottom end and the late cylinder head.
The wiring for this swap is very simple. Since I still had the engine harness from the car that the B35 came from I used that. Built a little adapter to go from the round plug to the rectangular plug on the fusebox, but since there's nowhere to neatly mount the round plug in the same area as the coolant expansion tank and power steering reservoir, and because it seems fairly redundant, I think I'm going to redo this to clean things up.
Some wiring and plumbing later and it was ready to start. Plugged the computer in and connected the battery and it fired right up. Still need some air filtration solution that doesn't look silly. Speaking of looking silly, the black throttle body was not planned. I have another that was vapor honed but I am still looking for new needle bearings so that it can be reassembled.
Got a couple of heat cycles on the engine and then let it cool down overnight before doing the final head torque. Nothing broke this time so I think we're doing alright.
To celebrate this milestone I sat alone with the cars like the antisocial creature that I am and had a (some) beer(s).
It's an '88 528e, Alpine over Cardinal red with a straight, rust free body. It was sitting in a field just up the road from me. I had been collecting various things over the years that were intended to end up in my E24, but that project was sold because I knew I'd never get it done. Since this car had been robbed of it's drivetrain I figured it would be a fun way to put my collection of parts to good use, and ultimately sell it all as a package rather than piece by piece.
It lived in Arizona for some time so the interior was pretty well cooked, but I've had worse. The paint is in great condition considering the 200,000+ miles showing on the odometer.
First thing to do was clean up the engine bay and pull the ugly US spec impact bumpers off and replace them with the pretty little Euro bumpers. There are some holes that need to be filled on the rear valence and some holes that need to be created in the front. We'll get to that later.
I went over the paintwork with a light polish and it shined up really nicely. It should end up looking great with a little more work.
Then it was time to build an engine. Actually two.
The engine I wanted to use was an M30 B35 out of a late E24. These are desirable as far as B35s go since they have the right mounting bosses on both sides of the block to bolt right into an E28, in addition to the other things that make the B35 good. Unfortunately this block must have suffered some trauma at some point because the threads in three of the fourteen head bolt holes pulled out while I was bolting the head down.
Luckily M30s of different generations are mostly interchangeable, and I had another block gathering dust in the corner. This one was from a Euro 635CSi. 10:1 compression, so better than the B35 in that way, but the cylinder head is not as good. The reason I hadn't gone with this block from the beginning is that it's a factory plus size, meaning that piston rings can only be sourced through BMW and they are hideously expensive. But since it was my only choice, I sucked it up and combined the high compression bottom end and the late cylinder head.
I had a factory lightweight flywheel and an extra M5 clutch so that was an easy choice.
The wiring for this swap is very simple. Since I still had the engine harness from the car that the B35 came from I used that. Built a little adapter to go from the round plug to the rectangular plug on the fusebox, but since there's nowhere to neatly mount the round plug in the same area as the coolant expansion tank and power steering reservoir, and because it seems fairly redundant, I think I'm going to redo this to clean things up.
Some wiring and plumbing later and it was ready to start. Plugged the computer in and connected the battery and it fired right up. Still need some air filtration solution that doesn't look silly. Speaking of looking silly, the black throttle body was not planned. I have another that was vapor honed but I am still looking for new needle bearings so that it can be reassembled.
Got a couple of heat cycles on the engine and then let it cool down overnight before doing the final head torque. Nothing broke this time so I think we're doing alright.
To celebrate this milestone I sat alone with the cars like the antisocial creature that I am and had a (some) beer(s).
