http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a79...W/DSC_0136.jpg


Also FWIW the M54 and S54 do not share the same block.

I just threw a set of gloss black Squared 214's on last weekend. 275/45/20 all the way around. It's nice to have a set of slick looking rims that you can rotate with all of the camber that's in these machines.

If anybody knows anything about camber delete kits. Please let me know

I also have a set of hubcentric rings on order for the wheels. I felt like a weeble wobble when I first pulled out, and there's a shimmy at 45-70. No miles will be put on it 'till those rings get here.

Wow, That just ruined my year......

Just kidding. That's really awesome. Let me know where there is a thread/article about this. I'm really interested to hear about it.

Yeah, I apologize about the M54 being the same thing as the S54, I always thought that they were the same block but the S54 was bored out to 3.2. But I see that it's closer to being an S50 than anything else

Nice to see another manual. Looks like you are up to some nice modifications.
I would do the differential swap first. I really dislike the ratios on my 5mt.

differential swap with a S54 would be awesome

The old headliner was ripped in the back, the sun roof cover had been stained from someone leaving the window open when it had started to rain, and to be honest, it looked like someone had been shot in the passenger seat (Either that or they spilled coffee on the ceiling in a very interesting way). But I wasn't digging the old headliner.

The factory seats are nice too, but the sport seats look way better, and feel noticeably different. I picked up a pair of seats and the sport headliner and brought a friend down to swap them in.

The seats were easy to install. Each one had 4 bolts and a few plugs to disconnect. The factory wiring harness is pretty much the same with most of the x's, so the heated seats plugged right in and so did the new switch cluster at the base of the dash.

The headliner was a different story, I thought I was going to be able to do the swap in a day, by myself. It took me most of the evening to pull the sport headliner out of the donor vehicle myself. The next weekend I wasn't going to mess around, I hired a friend and we drove down to get the project finished.

I've got detailed pictures on the swap if anybody is interested in seeing them. If not, here's a preview of the swap.

Headlights update
 

I mocked up the halo's last night in the headlights. There's a bigger gap then I first expected there to be. No big deal, Still not bad for $27 from china. I've seen a few other headlights that have been done and it looks like clear silicon is used to fill in the gap? I'll see what I can do with out ruining the headlights too much.

I had originally planned to leave the turn signal backing shiny, but after seeing bcredliner's headlights, I think I'm in love.

After I'm done with the headlights, I think a set of HID fog lights will be next on the topic of lights.

You are very busy...oh, to have that kind of time.

How long should one person budget to getting the headliner out?
How are you powering the halos? Did you run a new relay? I put projectors in with halos years ago, but only cared about seeing and never wired the halos.

S54 basically revs higher, and that's where most of the additional power lives (if you look at a dyno from stock M54 vs stock S54). They did that by putting killer valvegear and way better oiling on it. FWIW, don't spin M54 over 6k if you like your oilpump nut where it is. M54 harmonics are bad at higher RPM.

That being the case, S54 seems pretty impractical for a 5000lb truck, given it's expensive. Just put a 420g behind a M62 and call it a day. Stock configuration for 545. E38 people do that kind of thing all the time. All the parts already exist. The only trick would be keeping it AWD, and most people don't care for that anyway.

One person can remove the donor headliner in an evening (from 3ish to sun down) if they know where all of the screws are. After pulling the new one from the donor X I realized that it was going to take more time than I thought. So I had a friend come down and we pulled the old one out and got the new one hung in one (almost full) Saturday. A lot of it is how fast of a worker you are, how much you care about not messing up the headliner, and how many hands are working on it.

For the Halos: I'm still working on the wiring myself, I just test fitted the one headlight and I still have to modify the other. A new relay should be used to activate the halos. There's a signal wire up by the dash in the engine bay to pull so the halos come on when the ignition is switched on. I've seen Xoutposters pull a signal from the drivers side foot well lamp as well so that the halos come on when you unlock your car. I plan on doing the wiring next weekend (if I can get the headlights back together) and I'll post some pictures on the progress.

I really do want to get a manual V8 X5, and I don't think I would mind it being rear wheel drive either. That just gives more for burnouts and screetchy noises. I think when I get done with "The Black One" I'd like to look for a 4.6is to drive or a project 4.4 to mess up with the manual.

I've been following the 4.4 manual thread for a while and there's a lot of work involved with doing the swap. It's a shame that it didn't come from the factory like that.

I have wondered if there is a technical reason they didn't offer if, or if it was all "business" and "marketing." The only technical reason I can think of is that the NV125 or ATC500 are pretty small and light, chain driven, and may not be able to handle the torque. Sure, they put them behind v8s with autos, but the auto soaks up some power via the torque converter and shield the rest of the driveline from big shocks.

Every other big heavy AWD V8 truck I have ever seen had a giant cast iron transfer case that weighs 3x as much as an NV125. Granted, those are 70's Broncos, Ramchargers and K5s, but that's the blueprint. When I had an AWD V8 manual Ramcharger, the transfer case was widely believed to be the weakest link in the driveline.

Same, I do a lot of commuting and I try not to run the car at too high of RPMs. The one nice thing about sitting at 3k rpm around 60 is that most of the torque is right there.

The donor 4.4 that I've been pulling parts off of still has the diffs in it and lower miles than mine. I'm thinking about pulling them over the summer and doing a thread on the results.

Also, I've been thinking about swapping the factory black exhaust tips (mufflers) on to mine. I can't decide if I want to do a resonator back straight pipe and put tips on or do the factory exhaust, because I don't want to "rice" up the X too much. I might put a poll up here soon to see what people think.