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Yeah!! Nice!!!

Love it, much better than the original looks

Cheers fella's!

A couple of recent ebay finds to improve the look, I'm very happy with the headlight, one of mine has had a bit of corrosion on the reflective surface which has annoyed me.

More importantly I've taken the car off the road for the engine swap.

On the drive


the bonnet off




An empty bay


A (Cold) and happy boy


We didn't let the snow slow us down, it took us under 4 hours to get it all out which I think is ok for a couple of first timers crawling around on a drive

Wha, Love that last pic. You made some good progress!

Nice bit of progress there!

Now the bay is empty we set about cleaning it up,

Removed the battery tray



Some before and after de-greasing:



And I've ended up with a swimming pool.

the time has come to swap the gearbox bell housings.



Most of the steps were fairly straight forward, such as taking off this capping


We modified a pair of circlip pliers to remove the locking ring under that plate


but be warded, you MUST take out this plug. We didn't on the E30 box and half the selector mechanism fell apart when we finally got them separated.
It didn't matter because all we need is the E30 bell housing.


We welded some threaded bar onto the first one but a flat screwdriver can prise it off too

Then out comes this


and then they are separated.


It's also worth noting that the E30 bell housing is about 20mm longer then the e21 bellhousing, meaning that it will change your engine/gearbox position slightly.
Probably more of an issue if you were using a 6 cylinder engine where space is more limited.

've made a start at figuring out the wiring loom,
I think I'm correct in saying that once I figure out the c101 plug (from the m42 loom) I can connect the necessary wires to the plug at the base of the fuse box (keeping all the plugs so that the loom can be unplugged and removed in future)
and then that should be it?

Those covers look great! I'm slowly preparing my swap and I've noticed that you have the e30 intake, mine has the e36 DISA intake, are those interchangable? I'd like to put e30 one on later because it loos more period correct(ish) than e36 but the advantage for the flow is on the e36 side. Your project is comming out nicely!

l3v4rt wrote:Those covers look great! I'm slowly preparing my swap and I've noticed that you have the e30 intake, mine has the e36 DISA intake, are those interchangable? I'd like to put e30 one on later because it loos more period correct(ish) than e36 but the advantage for the flow is on the e36 side. Your project is comming out nicely!

Yeah the engine I have came from an E30.
I would imagine the intake manifold shape would be the same, not so sure about all the hoses etc that are around there.
There's quite a bit of info on the E30 zone about the differences if I remember correctly.

What is 'DISA'??

Thanks for the detailed progress reports including advice for others with similar projects!

The DISA valve controls the variable length intake manifold on the more modern engines like M44 and M54. Located inside the intake manifold, it gives better torque at low revs by closing keeping the intake runner long but after about 4500rpm, it opens up by and makes the intake runners shorter for more horsepower.

Correct Jeroen and this system is also on the e36 m42 version and since it's a bit odd looking I was wondering if it could be swaped for the e30 (fixed 4 tunnels), eventhough I'd loose that 5% of torque I'd like to do it for the looks. Sorry for going offtopic but since there is talking about swaping m42 into e21. Cheers!

No clue but I can imagine the E30 M42 is a straight fit