75 2002 Sleeper - M20B32, ITB, LSD

[tinkwithanr]

Like I said earlier, one of the main reason's she's been decommissioned for the winter was the lack of a heater. This would let the window's fog up very quickly, which is never a good thing. So while the coolant system was drained I figured now was as good a time as ever to tear into that and get it fixed. So without further ado....

The ugly 'ol heater box after I wrestled it out from under the dash:

The mount for the heater valve once I unbolted it. Who knew plastic would get brittle after 35 years of head fluctuation....

The innards, not very pretty. Although I have heard leaves can increase airflow ~20%.

And here's the bastard that's been keeping me in the cold.

Next to his replacement:

And the fan blade swapped over, ready for it's new home.

I then finished disassembling the rest of the box and sorted all the parts. I just need to actually sit down and order the new seals and grommets to put her back together. I'll also fix all the cracks with some JB weld or the like and give her a fresh coat of paint.

Oh, and last but not least I might as well take out the alternator and brackets to give them a good cleaning. I doubt they like being covered in old oil. Also I cut out the stock battery tray since I'm moving it to the trunk. I bet I could fit a V10 in here with all this extra space! (well not even close, but I can dream).

[tinkwithanr]

So after much debate, it looks like she may be down and out for longer than I anticipated. But it's all for good causes.

First, more body panel inspection, so off with the fenders:

Both fenders must have been replaced right before she was resprayed before because they are both very clean (unlike the rest of her). I'll be able to fill in the reflector holes ala euro style and have some nice clean fenders.

Then I needed to get the windshield out and see how bad the rust under the seal was. In the pic you can see how the entire frame was starting to rust out. Luckily it seems that I got to it just in time, it's only surface rust and should clean up fine:

Then as I was taking off the front bumper I managed to drop one of the fog lights. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuu.....

Next thing on the list was to start unwiring.... Everything.... Thankfully electronics are at a minimum on her, so this was much simpler than say an e36 or even and e30. A couple of pointers, label EVERYTHING. You never know how long it will be until you are re-wiring and you'll pry forget what that little connector went to.

---------- Post added at 03:34 PM ---------- Previous post was at 03:26 PM ----------

Fuse Box:

A pic of the ignition switch so I can remember how it connects:

And Finally after about and hour and a half of wraslin' the two harnesses were free. On '02's there are two different harnesses. The engine harness which holds all of the stuff that makes the car go, and the Body Harness that does everything else (lights, gauges, dash etc). They connect together along the firewall underneath the dashboard.

Body Harness (you can see all my painters tape labels lol):

Engine Harness:

[tinkwithanr]

With the wiring out of the way, I was able to finish taking out the rest of the interior.

Carpet, Steering Wheel, Dashboard, Pedal Box and pretty much everything else gone:

Here's the stock e-brake set up. It is very prone to being wobbly and hard to operate. Sooo I picked up an e46 handle assembly from ebay and will be retrofitting it in place.

Stock:

Stock no longer:

I forgot to take a picture of the new handle in place, but it will fit very nicely with a little massaging.

Load leveler = God Send when removing the m10 and transmission combo.

Getting closer.....

And FREEDOM!!

That is one oily engine lol:

And it seems like there's all kinds of room in there....

Popped the head off, fairly clean but with lots of carbon build up. I'm thinking this was mainly due to her running pretty rich and worn out rings/valve guides (burning oil).

And the bottom end, sorry for the shitty resolution, I had terrible lighting.

Trying to clean up the block a little bit. All the covers and accessories will be getting soda blasted and cleaned.

[tinkwithanr]

Then I found this....

The Ups fairy brought me a lovely 5-speed transmission for the m10 from a lovely e21 in Cali.

Complete with some spares:

And then of course there is always the dirt cheap craigslist finds.... Even though I still had full intention of using the M10, it was so cheap I couldn't pass it up:

[tinkwithanr]

Stupid Craigslist.....

At first I was going to stick with the m10 and turn my dirt cheap 'eta' m20 into a coffee table or something. But then that little voice started to grow, and then I couldn't make up my mind. Many restless nights followed, tossing and turning in turmoil. Would removing the m10 be like removing the soul of my '02? Do I really want to build up an m10 only to have less horsepower than a stock m20? Then one morning I cleared my head and decided the m20 was the way to go.

Which brings us to this past weekend, which consisted of a LOT of running around. Which basically means that I didn't get nearly as much done as I was hoping. However there is still some progress to report.

As I mentioned earlier, last weekend I went and picked up a 'craigslist special' m20b27 'eta' motor for dirt cheap. That catch being that it needed to be rebuilt. Luckily enough for me I was planning on an engine rebuild anyway, so the price was great. For those of you that don't know, the m20 basically came in 3 versions in he e30, the b25 (the 'i' variant), the b27 (the 'e' varient) and finally the Super ETA, which is a combination of the two. The 'i' variant is the one we all know and love with roughly 170 hp and torque. The 'e' varient (eta) was an economy version, producing a whopping 180 torque but only 120 hp. The one thing the eta did have going for it was a larger displacement of 2.7L. The super eta was just the eta block and rods with special pistons and the 'i' head (distinguishable by the casting number 885). It bumped the power output slightly to ~ 127 hp.

Just to use the eta engine by itself in a stock configuration would be silly, since it is only slightly more powerful than the M10 in stock form. So I then began looking for some other options and settled on a stroked 2.7 hybrid. This will involve the eta block (for extra clearance around the rods), the eta rods and the eta crank matted with a set of 'i' pistons and an 'i' head. Now, if it was just assembled like that, the difference in rod length and piston height between the two versions would result in a compression ration of ~8.0 which is less than ideal for a NA build. The solution to this problem is to deck the block 2mm, which will bring the compression ratio back up to where it was with the regular m20b25 while adding .2L displacement.

So now that I had an 'eta' block, rods and crank, I went on the hunt for the 'i' parts I would need. After some wtb threads I was able to find an entire 'i' engine that had bent some valves (Thanks Bill) and another 885 head with a broken rocker (Thanks Ed). I then proceeded to tear into them and see what I had to work with.

Here's one of the 'i' heads, torn apart all except the valves. I still need to pick up a valve spring compressor to get those out of there.

The other 885 head. Both of them had roughly the same camshaft wear, which was slightly more than I was hoping for. I'll have to see what the machine shop says as far as what is acceptable for cam bearing surfaces. So long as the bearing surface on one of the heads is alright I'll be fine since I'm picking up either the 284/272 or the 288/288 schrick later this month.

And to keep me honest, it seems like this is how everything is going to shape up, at least mechanically:

M20 engine

- stroked to 2.7L

- Schrick 288/288 cam

- Uprated valve Springs

- ~10.0 C.R.

- ITB (from s54)

- Megasquirt III w/ injection and timing control

E30 Rear Subframe assembly

- 3.73 lsd

- stock disc brakes

5-speed Getrag 260

- SSK w/ 'gated' shorud

- lightened flywheel

- M5 Clutch

I have a line on most of the parts already, and I should be picking up things like the itb and cams next week. I'm a little sad to be ditching the bike carbs, but the idea lives on with some other '02ers. I just can't say no to this setup. Plus I've always wanted to try tuning and EFI system.

Hopefully if I don't mess with my plan to much it should end up something like this:

[tinkwithanr]

So Thursday night I needed to finish tearing apart the engines to see what condition the insides in. First thing was to finish stripping the 'i' block and get the crank shaft out.

The empty block ready to go to the machine shop:

The 2.5L crank:

The 'i' pistons, rods and main bearing caps all together so I don't loose em.

All the pieces parts taken off the block. Mounts, oil filter housing, pulleys etc:

---------- Post added at 12:54 PM ---------- Previous post was at 12:38 PM ----------

Next on the chopping block is the 'eta' engine. It has no idea what's coming:

Popped the head off. Here you can see what the eta pistons look like. They would be perfect for boost (giving a CR of ~8.0 with the 'i' head), so I'll hold on to them for now in case I decide to go down that route in a year or two.

The eta pistons and rods. These rods are 130mm where the 'i' rods are 135mm. This will help to compensate for the longer stroke of the crank.

The eta crank. Looks a lot like the 'i' crank lol.

Over all the eta crank was in great condtion. The only bad spots were two places I could catch my fingernail on the bearing surfaces. Hopefully it can be polished out and reused.

[tinkwithanr]

The last thing to do before heading to the machine shop was to get the valve springs out of the head.

My purdy new valve spring compressor. Worked flawlessly and got it for under $20 from sears:

Also picked up a real set of feeler gauges. Wasn't expecting it to come in a nice roll-up pouch but no complaints here:

With the valves out I could do a preliminary check of flatness on the head. Looks like it's right around 0.0025" max, so it should be easy to get it smoothed out again.

All the parts wrapped up and ready to go to the machine shop. Who says the e46 can't haul parts.

Also, saturday morning I went over and picked up an e30 rear subframe (thanks again Bill). Included was the 3.73 lsd diff and rear disc brake setup. This mounts in the same basic way that the 2002 rear subframe mounts, except that I'm pretty certain the track width is wider. This means that I will most likely end up modifying the the 2002 and e30 subframes to make 1 hybrid, using the e30 diff and trailing arms/brakes with the 2002 mounting points.

[tinkwithanr]

Update!

The past weekend I was finally able to find some time to work on the '02. The 2.7l block and 885 head are still at the machine shop, but luckily for me I ended up with 2 complete m20's and so I was able to use the spare engine as a 'dummy' to get the engine and transmission mounts made up. At first I was planning on fabricating my own mounts for everything, but considering how much free time I've had to spend on this in the past month I made the decision to purchase some premade mount from Manimal (a member on 2002faq.com). They turned out very nice, the only thing I might change is to cut the tabs and re-weld them so the engine sits slightly lower in the bay. As is there is well over 1" of clearance between the oil pan and the subframe, and one of the upper mounting bolts for the transmission is blocked by part of the firewall. No biggy, but it would make removing the transmission without taking out the engine more challenging. Oh, and I also had to drill out the locating hole on the passenger side mount so the rubber pin on the stock mount would fit through it.

Here you can see the one hole I had to enlarge:

And here you can see the pin fitting nicely inside the hole:

For the driver side mount, you have to notch the stock rubber piece so it will fit at the correct angle. Here's how much I took off with a cut-off wheel:

And here you can tell the my angle was a bit to large. I took off material @ a 45 degree cut, in hindsight a 30 degree probably would have done the job:

With those modifications done I was able to drop the engine in without much trouble. For some reason my driver side engine mount was a little to far in, so I took my trusty BFH and persuaded it to get into it's proper position. Once everything else is mounted and in place I'm going to drop the from subframe and refurbish it, at which point I will also weld in some re-enforcement on the driver side engine mount. For now it fits/works just fine though.

With the engine mounted in place next was the transmission. For those that don't know, the stock '02 trans is a 4-speed, which allows it to be very small. This means that the transmission tunnel is also very narrow. The transmission I decided to use is the getrag 260, which came on all the 6 cylinder e30's. It's much tougher and reliable, but that comes at the price of being much larger. So because of this the tunnel needed a lot of massaging. But after about 5 minutes of minimal results the massaging gave way to cutting and cursing lol.

Here's a picture of the stock transmission tunnel:

And after the cutting and cursing, this is what was left:

In order to help gain more clearance, I also took off a majority of the random tabs on the side of the transmission case:

It doesn't look like much, but removing the tabs probably gained me another 1/2" of clearance along the top edge, which was were the most interfering was happening.

[tinkwithanr]

With more clearance made, it was time to lift the transmission in place. Normally I have my friend at the shop to give me a hand, but he had to work this weekend so I was on my own. After wrestling with the trans I welded up a jack adapter to hold it up better. This let me lift it into place until I could get it bolted to the engine.

You can see my handy jack adapter in this pic:

With the trans lifted into place I needed to make sure the entire assembly was in line with the differential. In order to do this I took the e30 driveshaft I picked up earlier and mounted it straight to the output shaft on the transmission with some solid couplers machined to the same thickness as the guibo. This would allow me to use the driveshaft as a 'straight edge' and eliminate any slop in the middle. At this point I also figured out that the stock e30 driveshaft was the correct length and bolt pattern to bolt up to the '02 diff (and obviously the e30 lsd I'm going to install in the near future). This was very good news since I'll no longer need to pay to get a custom length driveshaft made up.

Once the driveshaft was bolted in place and everything was lined up perfectly I fabbed up my transmission mount. You can see the top of it in this picture. It's help to the body with 2 8mm bolts that thread into a reinforcement plate on the underside of the body as well as a nut welded on the inside of the car.

With this in place the entire engine/transmission assembly is VERY solid. I may upgrade to poly mounts down the road, but we'll see how the rubber ones feel.

Here's a picture showing how much clearance there is between the steering linkage and the bell housing of the transmission. It's not very much at all, probably 1.5mm tops. I'll probably have to either notch or bend the linkage to gain some more clearance, but I'm going to wait and see if the transmission moves that much under spirited driving. It may be another reason to get the poly mounts.

Now for the money shots. I put the S54 throttle bodies in there to get an idea for what kind of clearance I would have between the brake booster. I'll need to fab up some kind of airbox for the tb's, so depending on clearance I may also go with a straight boosterless system.

Next on the list is probably going to be making the manifold to interface between the throttle bodies and the head. I'm probably going to end up casting a custom piece, much like what I was planning to do with the bike carbs earlier. This one will be a little trickier though because of the oil passage between the 3rd and 4th intake runner. I'm going to draw it up in CAD this week and see what we can come up with.

The ports on the head:

The ports on the tb's:

The huge benefit of casting is the transition between the two ports can be very smooth and clean. I'm thinking the overall length of the manifold will probably be ~ 10 cm or so. This should leave enough room for an airbox.

Also, the head should be back from the machine shop the beginning of this week. It got new exhaust valve guides, a 3-angle valve job, shaved 0.025" (not desired but necessary to flatten it out) and cleaned. The block is still waiting on me to make up my mind. The cylinder walls have some wear, and so if I reuse the stock 'i' pistons like I was planning it will probably have some piston slap when cold. So I'm taking the pistons in this week when I pick up the head and they will let me know what would work. I really don't want to buy new pistons if it can be avoided.

Oh, and I picked up a m52btub28 crank so now it will be a square (84mm stroke x 84 mm bore) 2.8l at the least. This saves me from having to shave the deck of the block down as well as bumps up the displacement. Win-Win

[potentialm20]

Looks great. I'm glad the mounts are working well for you. Also very happy to hear that the stock e30 drive shaft will work without modification. Keep the updates coming.

[tinkwithanr]

Well it seems school has taken over my life this quarter. Little progress has been made on the actual car. The good news is the quarter is over next week AND a lot of the details have been figured out/planned for.

A lot of parts have been rolling in the past few weeks:

New Hydraulic tubing flare tool. This can do all sizes of metric and american brake lines, as well as fuel lines and quick-disconnect for hydraulic applications. This will come in handy when it comes time to run the new brake and fuel lines.

Hmmmm... what could these be..

Eagle H-Beam connecting rods. 100g lighter than stock m20 rods and good for 600+ HP. That'll do donkey, that'll do.

AKG Motorsports Stage II Shifter Assembly. This will let me mount the shifter directly to the chassis. This will save some space as opposed to having to figure out a way to get the g260's shifter carrier and bushing in between the seats. And best of all, the stock old-school shifter still fits!

Next some VDO (they did they original factory gauges for the 2002 for those of you that don't know) series 1 gauges. Right now I just have water temp, oil temp and voltage. In the end I'll also have oil pressure, boost/vacuum and an a/f ratio gauge. (the a/f will most likely be an innovative WB analog gauge).

And finally, on the electrical side of things I got some deutsch pieces. I still need to get the crimper for the terminals, but my initial impression is very good.

[tinkwithanr]

Quick list of parts that have come in but are not pictured:

Ford F-150 Lightning MAF Sensor (90mm:troll:)

LS2 Coils for sequential/programmable Ignition

m20b25 single mass flywheel

m20b25 front pulley/harmonic damper

86mm Cometic MLS Type Headgasket

ARP Head Studs

ARP Main Studs

I'm sure there's a lot more, but I can't remember everything right now. Also, some of the molding material for casting the intake manifold has been ordered, so that should be underway in the next week or two.

And Finally, this past Memorial day weekend I found some time to get out to the shop and get a few things done. First order or business was to tear out the old ratty headliner and fab up some mounting points for my Wink Mirror.

circa 1970's:

My friend and I took some 1/8 steel bar and welded it to the inner roof sheet metal. This reenforced it enough so that we could just tap straight into the roof without needing any extra clips or tabs.

Next was to start on the pedal box. The stock set up is a rube goldberg-esk contraption that looses any connection your foot may have felt to your braking system. I'm hoping to be able to remove the booster and just run a manual set-up, but keeping the dual circuit bits. We'll see how that goes as the packaging will be very tight.

The stock pedal box:

I cut off the entire upper portion that the booster bolted to. Then the two pointless holes were welded up so that the pedal box would actually be waterproof. Then the whole things was disassembled, sandblasted, and partially re-assembled for test fitting.

In the car:

The last bit of work I got done this weekend was fitting the shifter into place. For now it's held up with 4 pieces or bar stock, but it will be completely boxed in with 1/8" steel when it's all said and done, which should be plenty strong. I also got very aggravated at the transmission tunnel not wanting to cooperate since the 'enlargement' process. This lead to me cutting out pretty much the whole tunnel and starting to fab up a new one that will fit everything cleanly.

I really do love the look of the classic knob. Really pulls the interior together lol.

Patiently waiting for more tender loving care...

[tinkwithanr]

So after 3 months of waiting, They finally arrived!

Specs:

86mm Bore

10.5 CR

Intake valve relief 4.7mm

Exhaust valve relief 1.9mm

289 grams

Total Displacement will be a hair under 3.2 L

[tinkwithanr]

School has started back up and so that's been taking up a decent amount of my time. I do have some updates to report though. Since my last post I dropped the rest of the engine parts off at the machine shop. This past week they called me to let me know their done, so as soon as I get the chance to go pick them up I can start the assembly process on the engine.

The next very exciting thing is that I've moved where I've been working on the car. I used to be sharing a space with the manufacturing company I work for, but it was a bit of a hassle due to getting in each others way and having to work after hours etc. That recently changed when some of the other building tenants moved out (the manufacturing company also owns the whole building, but they rented parts out that they weren't using). Long story short I was able to take over one of the 'smaller' rooms with huge bay door that opens up to the rest of the building (I can still get forklifts in and out no problem) AND an overhead door on ground level so I can also drive my e46 in when it needs maintenance done. I still need to get new bulbs for some of the light fixtures and upgrade them from 250 to 400W, but it's come a long way.

Two wide angle shots of the space:

It looks dim in the pictures because I had to take the shots handheld, so I needed a short shutter speed.

Some of the cool old tools I've adopted...

A nice radial arm drill press:

Floor Standing Bench Grinder:

Cast Iron Leg Workbench with a 1/4" metal top (great for welding smaller things)

General desk space and storage:

Then I finally picked up welder of my own. An old 80's Beta-tig, lays down a great bead:

And my new baby, a Lincoln Square-Wave 175.

Planning to use that for the intake plenum to go on the itb's as well as a full custom exhaust with tubular headers. And then maybe a small rollcage, depending on how I could fit it around the seats.

[tinkwithanr]

I was also able to get back into the shop over the past weekend and work on welding up the transmission tunnel.

When I left her last time I got the shifter mocked in place with some rod stock and an old shifter linkage. While it held it in place, I figured I should probably box the darn thing in.

What I started with:

It was necessary to rip out the tunnel due to the G260 (e30 5-speed) being so much larger than the old G240 (2002 4-speed). Some people have been able to just beat the crap out of their tunnels with a BFH and get it to wedge in there, but due to my engine placement (as far back as possible) I just didn't see it happening. That and this way I knew I would have clean, rust free metal going in there.

I started off by boxing in the shifter itself:

Then I started to frame in the tunnel. I used some rod stock again to frame it out so I could make sure everything would clear the transmission, even under full engine load/shift). Here you can see the rod frame with the right and top metal pieces tacked in place:

For the drivers side I wanted to add a little something extra to help with bleeding the clutch. So I cut a frame out of 1/8" (the rest of the tunnel is 18g) steel and welded some acorn nuts on the back to help keep the water out. Then I framed around my window with the 18 gauge and this is what I ended up with:

Overall I'm very happy with how it turned out. I should be able to handle bleeding out the system as a one person job now. I'm also contemplating adding a second window right in from of the shifter on the top of the tunnel. Pretty much where the pliers are in the picture below. This would let me reach the shifter assembly and adjust/replace things as needed without getting under the car. It would also normally be covered by the center console I'm going to fab up, so it wouldn't be an eyesore.

The tunnel from behind:

Next on the list is to get into the engine bay and mount the radiator and other engine accessories. Once all of those are in and finalized I can take the mock engine out and finish welding/sealing the underside of the car. I will also clean up the front subframe and then work on modifying the e30 rear one to fit.

:thumbup: