Ranger's motorswap thread

#1

Never swapped a motor by myself.

Had intended to pull out tranny with motor but I had problems separating drive shaft from tranny. So I separated motor from tranny. Really wasn’t that hard. The only tricky part was removing the torx bolt at the top of the transmission. In order to get it I lowered the transmission by an inch or so by unfastening the bracket that holds the mount. Then I used 2X 6" extensions and 2 UJoints to get to the torx bolt.

Torx|UJoint|6"|UJoint|6"

My neighbor, working from the engine bay, put the torx socket/extensions on the bolt and then pushed the end down to me underneath the car. He held the socket in place while I turned it. Easy.

I didn’t realize that the starter has to come out before the motor can come out. The starter bolts also hold tranny to motor.

Then you just have to lift the motor off of the mounts and jiggle it around a bit until it separates from the tranny.

I left my manual at the shop that is building the bottom end, so that didn’t help.

My only screw up was with the starter. When I removed the power cable the plastic housing of the solenoid came apart. Who can put a used starter in the mail to me Monday?

#2

Ranger wrote:

“I love the smell of napalm in the morning…”

#3

“I love the smell of napalm in the morning…”

“It smells like, smells like, victory”.

#4

http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum/showthread.php?p=16485890#post16485890

More photos in message 10 in the above thread.

Put in a transmission breather hose, plugged the firewall hole where the heater hoses used to go, and put in a hole w/grommet for the Accusump hose.

Also set up oil pressure manifold with sensor and 2 adjustable switches. Amber switch at 30psi and red switch at 25psi. I want to see in what turns our oil pump pickup sucks air.

#5

Personal request: Can we limit the talk about the shirtless dude in the jungle going anal while muttering something about oil? :ohmy: :stuck_out_tongue:

Steve D.

PS - Congrats on another great installment in your quest to find that line between “adventurous” and “way over your head.” :laugh:

#6

Can someone tell me the inner diameter and outer diameter of the trans breater tube. I got what I thought was right based on another thread and it did not work.

Thanks,
Jason

#7

So you’re subjecting yourself to all this misadventure because new bearings w/crank scraper plus 1 quart of oil are wearing out in 9 months. I’m concerned because I have planned on the same setup and don’t want to get into building/swapping engines frequently.

How did you determine how much oil you need? Are you running an oil cooler, remote filter? Does the amount of oil you put in the engine account for all of the oil circuit? (remote filter, cooler, lines) I have a supercharged Miata with a remotely located big ass oil filter, oil lines and an oil cooler. To determine how much I needed, I would measure the dipstick right after cutting off the engine, before oil from the external systems could drain back into the block. I plan on trying the same thing with the E30 and seeing how it compares to what “they say”. :slight_smile:

Have you disassembled/inspected the oil pump to see if it was worn? How would failure of the pump manifest other than just no pressure?

What main bearings did you have in the caps, solid or grooved?

My new ones are grooved both top and bottom. The ones I took out were solid on the bottom

I think to properly resolve the problem, you need to first understand it.

This is a pretty in-depth article on main and rod bearings. It used up my short attention span pretty quickly. :slight_smile:

http://www.epi-eng.com/piston_engine_technology/engine_bearings.htm

#8

You make good points.

I entirely agree that a problem needs to be understood before attacked. No one is more oriented on “understanding” as opposed to “conjecture and common wisdom” then I am.

We disassembled the oil pump on my spare last week. This is last season’s motor and the one that will soon go back into the car. The oil pump screen had some crap in it, some of which was small metal shards and a couple long metal “thread” looking things.

The oil pump in the motor that failed last month has not been looked at.

Changes to oil capacity when you make significant changes to your oiling system. Understood. The Accusump and hoses are all easy enough to account for. The Accusump’s valve is closed so it doesn’t drain when the engine is off, and the hoses can be accounted for with a little match. I’ll have to figure out the delta between OEM and aftermarket oil cooler tho. I’d estimate that we’re talking 3- 3 1/2 additional qts of oil total.

Both new and old main bearings are grooved. Both new and old rod bearings are solid. The article you linked clearly likes solid bearings. I didn’t know that a different type of OEM bearing existed. Interesting.

#9

So what oil weight have you been running? At what frequency do you change your oil?

Did you ever do any leak down or pressure checks?

Do you have Traqmate? With the pressure transducers you’re installing, I’d data log and see what is really going on.

It’s my strong suspicion that you’re probably experiencing enough cavitation at higher rpms to cause your short bearing life.

I think there’s a lot of merit to this article:

http://www.titanspeed.com/content/pump/pump_techtalk01.html

I’ve got a “good running ~160k” salvage motor I’m preparing. After I started going through it, I found it had 3 bent exhaust valves, 5 bad rockers, main bearings shot and burnt, caked up oil coating the oil pan. Seeing how abused this motor was, I can’t help but expect the pump to be in pretty bad shape also. I think I’m probably going to spring for a new pump and the peace of mind it buys. Hell, I’ve replaced pratically every thing else on the motor, so why stop now? :slight_smile:

I’ve popped two motors on my SC’d track Miata this year. I have no desire to make a 2nd career out of building/preparing and swapping motors in cars.

#10

Re. Oil. I did a lot of research on oil last summer. After collecting lots of data on 100deg visc, High Temp Shear, ZDDP, etc. I switched from Mobil1 10W-30 to Redline 20W. I’d also recommend AMSOIL 5W30.

Last year I was trying to do 6 track days per month. Filter change every 2 months, add a qt of oil every track weekend, complete oil change 2X/yr.

Leakdown and compression tests. I spent long nights doing this in Feb and Mar trying to confirm what was going on with my heads. There’s a couple threads around here that go into the advantures ad nauseum. It took me a while to understand what the heck I was doing. Ultimately, I wrote a DIY. http://www.gress.org/Home/Cars/TrackTales/DIY/Leakdown%20DIY.htm

I read your doc on cavitation. Interesting. We’d need to see more confirmation on the issue, especially since the doc was written by an outfit that sells oil pumps, but still it’s a darn interesting idea. It would surprise me tho that a car designed for the Autobahn would have an oil pump incapable of reliablly pumping oil at high rpms.

Re. your good running motor that turned out to be a POS. Soulbrother!

I do have a Traqmate. Maybe down the road I will work out how to connect an oil pressure sensor to an analog input. Right now tho I’m about one more project from divorce court.

I finished the bottom end today so over the next couple of nights I’ll finish the engine build.

Installing the new crankscraper turned out to be a little challenging. I’d have to say that I’d recommend Chuck’s teflon I-J crankscraper, even if I haven’t actually laid eyes on one. The steel one is no precision instrument. The trap doors don’t pivot freely so you have to bend and tweak them until they do. We also had to grind on 4 surfaces to clear the crank counterweights, and then we needed to grind a lot out to clear the oil pump. Thank god we had the motor on a stand to do this. If we had been trying to do it from underneath an installed motor, it would have been a serious pita.

But in the end it was a good install. The crankscraper clears the crank by 1-3mm all around.

#11

Ranger

those oils that you are using are too light…Does Amsoil make a 15w50?

Al

#12

FARTBREF wrote:

[quote]Ranger

those oils that you are using are too light…Does Amsoil make a 15w50?

Al[/quote]

Amsoil makes a 20W50.

Al, I love ya man, and I recognize that you’ve been doing this one whole helova lot longer then I have. But we may have to agree to disagree on this one.

#13

I agree with Al, 20w50 is the lightest oil I’d consider running in an M20B25 (and just happens to be what BMW recommends). In the temperatures that we see in the Southeast from June through August, I’ll add one or two bottles of STP (a viscosity improver) to bump up the effective viscosity of the oil.

#14

jlevie wrote:

Who says BMW recommends 20W50 for the M20? And since when did engineers have all the seats at the OEM recommendation meeting?

OEM alignment specs call for neutral front camber and lots of rear neg camber because that’s “best”, right?

I’d bet that there’s two accountants and lawyers for every engineer at the “recommendations” table.

Our local BMW dealer stocks Mobil1 5W30 for all BMW’s, and Mobil1 says 5W30 is “BMW approved”.

#15

Ranger wrote:

[quote]jlevie wrote:

[quote]

Our local BMW dealer stocks Mobil1 5W30 for all BMW’s, and Mobil1 says 5W30 is “BMW approved”.[/quote]

for what car? I’d consider bearing tolerances a much more important indicator as to what weight oil to use (that’s not even taking into consideration that a dealer wants repeat business, what better way to keep you buying a new car then say suggesting 15k+ oil drain intervals :stuck_out_tongue: ), I’m sure for street use its fine (like a bunch of things) but I think we can all argee that you’ll never find the weakest link in your car faster than you will at the track; plus modern cars are built to a much tigher tolerance so they can use, or are designed to use a thinner oil so I’m not suprised to see lighter weights (plus fuel milage is another concern for this a friend is a engineer at ford and he said that the switch to 5-20 oils in most new cars was purely a fuel milage decision) in a newer car but an old M20 with a bunch of miles on it is asking for trouble (not to be a dick but aren’t you rebuilding a motor because of spun bearings? :wink: ) for the little reduction in rotational friction you gain with it. You could probably make it work with some funky custom oil pump (that moves a ton more volume to keep the pressure up/ bearings fed) or custom fit bearings (I’m sure you can find some other spec bearing out there that you can cut the crank/crank journals to make fit if you were motivated) to get the tolerance to where you need it. If I was going that route I’d rather short fill the diff and trans those are way less expensive to replace vs the motor (or even short fill the crank case and run an accusump).

#16

BMW’s recommendations vary by engine and specific adverse consequence situations. For example for the e46 M3 the recommended oil is Castrol TWS Motorsport SAE 10W-60 Synthetic Oil. You can read the blogs on what lead to this recommendation.

Although we ought to seek the advice of someone like Ray Kormann on this issue, the combined wisdom of long term racers/BMW consumers like Al is invaluable to all of us. The potential horsepower gains of lower W value oils seems imprudent.
Ed

#17

Ranger wrote:

Page 52 of the E30 Users Manual linked on this site shows an oil spec chart based on ambient temperature ranges.

http://jon.bimmerfest.com/bulletins/e30_manual.pdf

Based on the chart 20W50 would be the desired weight.

Page 51 Highly Recommends API SF oil grades over API SE. Honestly, I have no idea what that SF/SE is.

Personally, I’ve played with cars on track enough to respect the recommendations of Engineers in such areas. :stuck_out_tongue:

Jim, does adding the STP run your oil temps up?

#18

Re. BMW’s oil recommendation for the M20. I’ve not read of BMW (engineers, accountants or lawyers) making any recent recommendation on oils for the M20. And even if we did find it, it would be suspect unless the science behind the recommendation was presented in detail and evaluated by nonpartisen experts.

It is a mistake to ignore the wisdom experienced peers. I understand that. But it’s also a mistake to blithely accept unsupported opinions. Trust, but verify, so to speak.

Thicker oil is not a slam dunk. I agree that bearing design plans for specific oil characteristics, but all we have is conjecture on what the desired oil characteristics are. Oil can be out of spec because it’s too thick just as easily as it can be out of spec for being too thin.

I hung around asking questions of the tribiologists at www.BobIsTheOilGuy.com for a couple months last summer. Those guys live bearing design. I didn’t come away with all the answers, but those discussions did lead to my choices for oil and it’s not 50W.

Calling Redline 20W a “thin oil” without looking up it’s High Temp Shear #'s is criticizing without knowledge. The viscosity # that some marketing dept puts on an oil isn’t nearly as indicative of the oil’s characteristics as it’s High Temp Shear and 4 ball tests.

I agree that BMW’s recommendations vary by motor and usage. I haven’t seen the charts, but it makes perfect sense. Someone have a link?

Re. modern cars are built to tighter tolerances. Maybe. Support the assertion. I read the other month that German WW2 aviation engines were built to such tight tolerances that to this day we have trouble duplicating it. BMW was fully capable of building tight engines in the late '80’s. But
I’ve no idea if the chose to or not.

I am not in pursuit of hp via low viscosity oil. I’m choosing oils based on manufacturers specs and research at BobIsTheOilGuy.

#19

rrroadster wrote:

[quote]Ranger wrote:

Page 52 of the E30 Users Manual linked on this site shows an oil spec chart based on ambient temperature ranges.

http://jon.bimmerfest.com/bulletins/e30_manual.pdf

Based on the chart 20W50 would be the desired weight.

Page 51 Highly Recommends API SF oil grades over API SE. Honestly, I have no idea what that SF/SE is.

Personally, I’ve played with cars on track enough to respect the recommendations of Engineers in such areas. :stuck_out_tongue:

[quote]

WTG on finding a good source for info. It remains to be seen, however, if the recommendations came from engineers. Now we need to get the oil engineers (tribiologists) at BobIsTheOilGuy to wade in and tell us why BMW spec’d such a thick oil 30yrs ago.

Re. SE and SF. They are obsolete oil standards.

#20

Ranger, instead of trying to change the rules (some of your other threads) to accommodate for a few motors going south on you… why not just run thicker oil like the rest of us?

What data has led you to your lower viscosity decision? Instead of telling the rest of the world that the tried and true doesn’t work, why not tell us why your new data does?