Dropping the Motor In

So Then came the day when it was time to put the motor in. This day marked a huge swing in momentum. I have really turned up the juice since this day. In any event, I had to start by clearing a bunch of space in the garage. I was stoked to be able to do this on a lift, it made it a hell of a lot easier.

After I cleared space, and got all the necessary tools together, everything started to work itself out. I covered every painted surface with a thick blanket to help with safeguarding the paint, and rolled the engine over to the car.

Fetch Me The Engine Hoist!

The engine leveler that we had was barely adequate.  I had to work it pretty hard by installing it almost all the way back, and then using literally all the threads it had to get the motor to tilt enough to go into the transmission tunnel easily.

But that was pretty much it.  It was really that easy – there weren’t any tricks except for muscle. And for that I never EVER could have done it alone, I had the help of Matt (fellow HMS Rocka) to help guide the motor in. You can’t see him in any of the pictures, but he’s under the car making it all happen. We got it to slide in really easily – those of you that have done this swap already know how easy it actually is.  We just took our time to make sure it wasn’t hanging up on any of the freshly painted sheet metal.  We didn’t even tear up any of the brand new sound insulation that was installed on the firewall.

So once the engine was installed, I bolted up all the mounts and got on to putting the shift linkage together.

With the E36 ZF transmission, you can still use the E30 transmission crossbrace. These are stock transmission mounts – I fully expect to blow through these pretty quickly, but I want to run them to see what it’s like. Remember, I’m not going for a race car feel, I want it to be cush and quiet. So wherever I can use rubber mounts, I am.  I installed the UUC Short Shift Kit with DSSR.  This is an awesome piece.  And even though it’s made for an E36, it fits my E30 perfectly.   The shifter is a little bit farther towards the passenger side than it normally is in an E30 with the Getrag G260 transmission, but It’s not uncomfortable at all.

The next few pictures are just some shots I took of the engine sitting on it’s mounts.  This felt really good – a real milestone, and as I mentioned before a turning point for my own energy putting the car together.

These motor mounts are not the ones i will run for real.  As you can see on the Driver’s side, the mount is tweaked pretty good.  I have already replaced these, as you will see in subsequent pictures with the Green Trapezoidal 535i mounts.  I found a thread somewhere on some forum with these mounts listed as working well.  They obviously didn’t work for me.