Sounds like some great projects Gents. Looking forward to tracking them!
This is my first full teardown and rebuild too Factory. I’m Not too worried about the teardown, it’s the rebuild part that I need to tame my ADD for! The good news is that I’m not going too far off the reservation and aside from the 4.6 cams it will be a stock 4.4. I’ll definitely keep my thread updated here and on BimmerForums.
Right now I’m down to cleaning carbon off of pistons and waiting for the machine shop to finish the heads. I do need to finalize the amount needed to take out of the piston top valve reliefs, relative to how much material is there to take. Based on discussions with JimLev, I think I’m going to do the full 1.5mm from the intake pockets, and maybe .5 from the exhaust sides reliefs. Apparently there is lots of exhaust valve clearance to begin with, which I assume means those valves are shorter. I have a new pair of intake and exhaust valves I can measure to make sure. Once I make a decision, I’ll drop the pistons off at the shop that is doing the heads, and they can mic them, and then cut the reliefs deeper.
In the meantime, I’m waiting on my spare transfer case bolts, as well as some misc parts to change while the stiffener plate is off to swap transfer cases in my x5. At the risk of exciting the “bolt wars “, I did finally spring g for new stiffener plate bolts. Ouch…but I’ve reused mine 4 or 5 times now so I’m not sure I trust them any longer. Next time it comes off maybe I’ll swap them for 12.9, normal torque bolts.
I would have made a ton of mistakes on the m62 already if it wasn’t for advice and lessons learned from guys here and over there. The e32 and e24 sharing parts fact, for example. Thank you BimmerBreaker. The Indy shop in town has an e24 M6 that has been parked in their lot for a decade or more. The owner dropped it off for a restoration, then never paid, so they never touched it. They offered him 5k and he refused but that was several years ago. If it’s not a rust bucket maybe he’ll take cash now for it. Apparently he moved out of the country. I wouldn’t normally mod a classic M car like that, but it’s a basket case. I suspect it’s got too much rust tho to make it worth paying anything for.
I too am not a huge fan of dropping the subframe, and I’ve asked him for some more input on why. Perhaps the pan can be modified, if that’s the reason. Or a big 60’s muscle car scoop on the hood, if it is just too tall ;-). Although a tastefully done power dome, like the e46 M3 I used to own might be nice.
Frankly I think one of the reasons I have always loved the e24 is the suicide hood…and that shark nose of course.
A couple shots from my piston cleaning and crank journal measuring efforts. I’m struggling to get all the carbon out of the ring grooves. I’m amazed at how much has built up behind the rings. The journals all measure to within OE (new) specs, but I’m going to have the machine shop re-measure when the polish it, be fore I order the cap shells.
