Engine Mounts & Headers
This is another background post as I attempt to retroactively document the work. Thus, they are little jumbled.
¯\(ツ)/¯
At some point, I acquired two engines. A “good”, unknown miles M54B30 (3.0) and a blown head gasket M54B25 (2.5). I tore the 2.5 down to use the block and head for mock up since it was much easier to move around the shop and in/out of the car. I bolted this block to the transmission and threw it in the car to check clearance before creating mounts in CAD. I could have scanned/modeled the engine bay but that felt like more work than it was worth.
With clearances checked and driveshaft alignment eyeballed (a future item), I designed mounts and 3d printed some test pieces. I had to create my own engine block model as the one I found online was not super accurate. Verified everything, then had metal cut.
Got sidetracked and built an equal length section 2 for my M3.
I tried a couple different headers prior to finding the goldilocks setup. I built a driver side header for the LS swap and while I still want to build a high-rise 6->1 for this car, I didn’t want to get bogged down with that straight out of the gate. Originally, I thought I could use S54 headers and change the flanges but the M54 has an oval exhaust port compared to the round S54 port. This looked like more work than it was worth. E46 M54 “long tubes” would require too much work to clear the firewall. I actually bought and checked the previous 2 sets of headers but no pictures. E36 M3 headers had the best clearance and only required mods after the collector, so that’s what I chose. These won’t make the most power but required minimal fab and look cool. I will need to do a little bit of math to determine the length of the secondaries to promote scavenging at peak torque. Cut the flanges, added some bends, then welded on V-bands.
Fin.
