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Different Take on a V8 Swap - Duder's 4.6L Twin Turbo 245

Battery tray removal looks great. I ended up removing mine as well.

Sweet. Got your message too. I need to plan my next move on the 245 - likely involving crossmember ideas (bad ideas) and some test fitting before I finally get the motor mounts fabbed up.

May I rewind for a moment? Just catching up; I know plans have changed since way back when, but... Scanning the engine bay is killer! My hat's off to ya. Gosh, if I had that capability at my disposal… :)

Well, maybe it's better that I don't. I already document more than I need to. Haven't yet moved into a dwelling without building a scale drawing first -- in the old days it was engineering graph paper and little pieces of construction paper cut out for various furniture pieces, now it's multiple layers in Photoshop. Sure, there are more appropriate tools, but it's easier to use what ya know. And come to think of it, I mapped kitchen roof contours with a water level when trying to decide how bad the wood damage was. And the back of a 240 wagon to predict how many guitars and duffle bags I could pick up on an airport run. So, yes, I'd probably measure just about everything.


Awesome pic. I love that you're training them so young. :) The burning question, though: has Fred moved to the green car?

OK, now back to your regularly scheduled program...

It's been great to have the engine bay scan - Alex helped out a ton with this, not least in owning the handy Romer arm that we used, and finishing up the surface modeling. We took a bunch of points at various key spots around the bay and at regular intervals on that tape grid and then had to build the surfaces from the point cloud. It's a fairly rough model still but works great for packaging big stuff like engines or airboxes.

Fred the Monster lives in the garage attic now, last I heard!

If you just give it to me you wont have to worry about it anymore.

In all seriousness, we have a 3rd '67 Kadett Kiemencoupe - a Rallye that is in very rough shape and is acting as the parts car. I posted some photos in the GRM thread. Any interest in the shell of that? I'm not sure exactly how much we're going to remove from it yet...

Is it odd I’m more excited about this than the Volvo?

No. It's way less familiar and therefore more interesting :-P

I'm excited about them both in completely different ways! But have been bogged down with regular maintenance jobs for a few weeks on other vehicles. I've got 11 cars total right now not counting either Lemons racer or my mother-in-law's CRV which I maintain as well...so there's always some sort of pressing job that takes me away from the purely fun stuff. :run:
 
Fun stuff this weekend. Alex came over and helped me heave the rear axle out of the 245. It was incredibly dirty, but all the fastener threads look brand new upon removal. No issues. Everything looks very original and heavily patinated except for the brake pads which I replaced a few years ago.



The axle assembly will go to our workshop this week for measurement of all the pierce points, brackets, and flange locations. Then subsequent construction of an axle fab fixture which will benefit both Alex's white 242 and this car. He's spearheading the effort and will probably post details in his thread. It will allow us to throw a bare rear axle in and weld up all the necessary brackets in the correct locations for installation into a 240.

Once the rear axle was out, I pulled the right front strut, hub, and brake assembly complete. This allowed me to embark on the first fit-up of the 3-piece AC Schnitzer Type 2 wheels that I kept when my E34 M5 sold last year. These are 17x8.5 front, 17x9.5 rear with 255s, as a reminder. This will be tight but the suspension and rear axle will be assembled around these wheels, so no adapters, and I can place them exactly where I want. 5x120 of course. Once everything is built with these wheels it opens up a ton of alternative BMW wheels for future shenanigans as well.












Daytime lighting:

 
This is all very exciting. I want more!


Also those wheels look fantastic on there.

Thanks dude. I want more too! I'll post up as much as I can during the ongoing process. This elephant will require many many small bites before I can declare it eaten however.

Gawd that color and those wheels

I had my doubts at first honestly, when I was just imagining how it would look, but now that they are mocked up I'm 100% on board.

v8 swap when

It's literally happening right now. It's like a tree growing though - so slow as to be imperceptible if you sit and watch.

There are several puzzle pieces that I'm fitting into place that have to be finalized before I lock the engine position down, but I'm getting close.
 
Wow, the wheels look absolutely perfect on this! Definitely did not expect that. Keep up the good work, I'm loving the detail and thought going on here!
 
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It's literally happening right now. It's like a tree growing though - so slow as to be imperceptible if you sit and watch.

There are several puzzle pieces that I'm fitting into place that have to be finalized before I lock the engine position down, but I'm getting close.

Excuses, excuses. ;-);-)

Really excited to see how this comes together.
 
Catching back up on what's happened with this car, which is random progress. I'm using my at-home desk time to finish the spec-out phase and get some major decisions made and re-start momentum.

In November I bought Alex Buchka's C30 front seats from his white 242 after he upgraded to some very nice black Recaro LS seats. The C30 seats are much firmer than 240 stockers but still quite comfy, and they do have a bit of bolstering to them. This material has some grip to it as well, it's nice. They are 100% manual which is fine with me. They have the C30 slider mechanism and are bolted to the floor with a version of Doug's brackets. The tilt forward feature is redundant in this car but doesn't hurt anything.

I'm pretty happy with the way they look in the early 240 interior. The door cards and carpet are brown, so the gray doesn't match, but doesn't clash either. If I keep these long term I'm sure I'll want to re-cover them along with the back seat in some kind of coordinating fashion.



Engine & trans fit-up and mounts are on hold for a bit as I figure out my front suspension and crossmember, since that's all interrelated. After talking with Eric O (Poik) and Dave Coleman about a particular unorthodox idea, I'm pursuing it full speed ahead now. That is converting the entire front end to an E36 setup. Crossmember, lower control arms, spindles, hubs, brakes, struts, steering rack will all be E36 M3 spec.

Racing a V8-swapped E36 in Lemons for the past 4 years has gotten me super familiar with these parts, their shortcomings, and how to set everything up for longevity and great performance. The lower control arm has a balljoint mount to the subframe where the 240 stock design has a bushing - this helps tremendously with steering feel as all of your lateral cornering loads are translated through metal all the way to the steering column. From the tire the load path is through the wheel, bearings, spindle, outer balljoint, inner ball joint, subframe, and steering rack. No rubber bushings anywhere in that stackup.

The wheel bearings are quite a bit bigger than 240 spec as are the brake rotors. Any E36 M3 brake upgrade, strut insert, or coilover should now be a candidate. I may stick with the stock M3 single piston calipers. By mounting them on bronze instead of rubber bushings, brake wear is incredible on our Lemons car. The caliper and pads stay straight and true vs the rotor and endurance spec pads last for 4 or 5 races on our car...that's like at least 4,000 to 5,000 miles of hard use, braking at the limit most of the time. Rotors last almost indefinitely now.

I started out with a test fit of the E36 front crossmember, strut, lower control arm, hub, etc. on one side. I think it's going to work. The crossmember width is within about 1/4" of the 240 crossmember, and the vertical height is about the same too. It attaches with 4 bolts into the frame rail members just like the 240, but the bolt holes are closer together and the crossmember sits at an angle in the E36. I think all of this is solvable though, but I may need to drop the back of the subframe down to correct geometry. I need to get the engine back in so I can finalize the position of everything.

Then I have a bunch of mounts / brackets to design & build.

  • Engine mounts to frame rails
  • E36 crossmember adaptation mods so it bolts into the body
  • E36 strut top adapter to 240 towers
  • E36 lower control arm rear bushing adapter / mount to the 3 bolt holes in the 240 where the bushing carrier bolts in
  • Trans crossmember



Here's the E36 crossmember in place




Strut and spindle mocked up






The strut and spring I'm using for mockup is from a 325i, not M3. Comparison back to the stock '75 240 parts:







If you look at the relative positions of different points, the E36 spindle is up higher and further forward vs outer balljoint position. That effectively will act as a drop spindle and it builds in some caster. The spindle bolts onto the strut in a way that allows shimming between the two parts for static negative camber. I will see if I can get away with stock style upper strut mounts using BMW bearings and rubber, for a nice quiet ride. I'll avoid solid camber plates if possible for this car.

For now I'm working on making the final brake component decisions including master cylinder and booster, after which I'll finalize the crossmember position, then move on to the lower control arm rear mount adapter and upper strut adapter.
 
Culberro and I talked about it several times. All of them happened after heavily investing in 240 parts. Keen to see how the setup develops.
 
I am very excited to see this e36ification occur. Good luck!

Radness. I hope I don't disappoint.

Oh look I'm already done!

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Culberro and I talked about it several times. All of them happened after heavily investing in 240 parts. Keen to see how the setup develops.

When I started mocking up parts it seemed almost too good to be true. I don't have exact positions for everything figured out yet, but I think the 240 strut towers are taller and thus leave room for spacers to a typical E36 strut. The rear lower control arm mounts are almost in the exact same spot. Even the rear crossmember bolts almost drop in (but they don't).

It would be awesome if stock E36 parts installed in a 240 body resulted in a respectably low 240 with good travel and a nice ride, which I suspect will be the case.
 
:wave: I didn't touch this project very much at all last year, spending most of my free time on Karl's 245, then on my Opel Kadett engine build and a bit on the 242. But in the past few weeks I have dusted the wagon off and started picking up some steam again.

The 4.6L engine assembled with the T45 trans had been sitting on my garage floor far too long, and I had grown tired of it getting in the way and generally taking up space. I thought it would be much more efficient if I could "install" it in the empty engine bay of the car it was sitting next to. This is how project motivation starts for me sometimes.








This engine & trans hadn't technically found themselves in this particular shell before now. It's a good thing that the engine bay and trans tunnel sheetmetal didn't change much (if at all) between 1975 and 1984, so no real surprises. The flat hood does have some effect though, vs. the coffin hood on the previous '84 wagon shell, in that the top edge of the throttle body assembly (where those two bolts are above the blue tape oval) touches the flat hood whereas it had just enough clearance to the coffin hood, with the engine and trans in the same position. So the engine has to come down a bit, which means the bottom of the Mustang pan will be lower than the stock 240 crossmember bottom plane. That's OK; I can cut the bottom of the steel pan off and make a new shallower, wider "winged" lower section.



You can see what I'm talking about best from the side view. The wheeled cart is my ghetto take on the Project Binky rolling engine cradle idea. The engine and trans are fully supported by this cart now, so as I'm mocking stuff up with the drivetrain and E36 suspension I can move the engine easily in any x-y direction before finalizing anything. I jacked up the car body to the appropriate height and leveled it using shims between the jacking points and jackstands. I will set the engine/trans angle and then make the mounts when I'm happy with everything.




Still planning to run more-or-less horizontal engine mounts over to the crossmember mounting holes in the unibody frame rails. Plenty of clearance on both sides to do this.






As before, the only super tight spot is going to be the steering column to driver's side cylinder head clearance. The stock 240 rag joint won't even fit here. I will need to creatively scootch things around to make room here.




Simultaneously I'm still figuring out the best way to adapt the E36 front suspension & steering parts, and pretty much decided that I need to make a new crossmember. This will solve a few problems at once:

  • Mounting to the 245 body can be accommodated through the stock crossmember bolt holes
  • Crossmember shape can be whatever it needs to be to clear the sump, hold the steering rack, and locate the lower control arms.
  • A new custom crossmember can account for the fact that the 240 crossmember mounts totally horizontally but the E36 crossmember mounts at an angle, due to the upward tilt of the E36 "frame rails" towards the front of that car.


240 structure side view vs. E36 structure side view, showing that angle difference:







In this old mockup shot you can see E36 crossmember, lower control arm, spindle, and strut. The suspension parts will all end up very close to these locations but the crossmember will be new.



In order to properly locate everything I'm going to take another page from the Project Binky cookbook and make a "negative suspension mount jig... thing" using an E36 shell that I prepared earlier. That's the next big step. It will be a solid mojangus that plugs into the strut towers, lollipop bushing mount points, inner ball joint holes, and steering rack mount holes. It will also have a feature to represent the centerline of the wheel in the wheel arch. Using that wheel center feature I can align everything in the 240 body shell and then start making adapters and my new crossmember. Sugoi!
 
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