BMW E30 Drift Build

The project as it currently sits. The entire process took about two years of build time, plus another five years of collecting parts for the project.

The start of the project, pulling out the factory M20B25 engine and Getrag 260 5 speed transmission. The engine has over 300k miles and still ran like it was new. The engine and transmission was sold for $500, which helped fund the LS project.

The LS engine was sent to B&R Speed Shop on National Turnpike in Louisville to be fully rebuilt. The internals and block and heads have either been restored, or replaced completely. The block was painted black after the engine was finished. The shop was also nice enough to fit the new Sikky oil pan, custom built to fit with the BMW E30 subframe, using an E36 rack and pinion. Also pictured, the Ground Control coilover conversion kit that was ordered during my deployment in 2020. Koni adjustable shocks and Eibach springs, with custom front knuckles. Full damping adjustment as well as camber adjustment.

Megasquirt 3 Gold Box ECU with custom wiring harness for an LS engine. This allows me to tune the car on the fly, without needing to go to a dyno. I have full control of what the engine is doing at all times, without needing a laptop to plug in to the ECU, which will be shown how later. At this point, I am prepping the engine bay for the new heart to go in. Many lines, wiring, and reservoirs removed that we will not need anymore. Also a great time to deep clean the engine bay.

First picture: E36 rack and pinion install. This is necessary for the Sikky oil pan to clear the subframe, as the E30 rack and pinion is too bulky.

Second picture: Sikky "lollipop" control arm bushings. This is needed for the Sikky headers to clear the control arms.

Third picture: Sikky three piece steering shaft. This is needed to clear space for the bulky LS engine. Later, it had to be taken apart as the shaft goes in between the driver side header runners and the block.

Fourth picture: perfect time to prep the engine bay and make things look pretty before the LS goes in.

The LS6 intake manifold and fuel rail was in desperate need of paint. Much better looking now. This is where I made custom mounts for the new aluminum radiator made by Griffin. This was the mock-up, making sure the front accessories would clear the radiator and electric fans when installed.

Wilwood big brake kit install. The front brakes are 6-piston Dynapro calipers with 295mm rotors. The rears are aluminum 4-piston calipers with 295mm rotors. All with stainless steel braided brake lines and custom mounting brackets to install in an E30. The Work wheels that I ordered clear the brake calipers just fine.

The front accessories have been installed. I am using the LS1 accessory assembly with a custom billet alternator mounting kit. This allows for maximum clearance in the engine bay. The Sikky headers are installed. It is a very tight fit, and the engine had to be tilted to fit the driver side header.

The accessories are in, now it's time to finalize the radiator. Everything clears by just a few mm. Everything was good, now it was time to route the coolant lines and start on wiring the fans.

It was time to route the brake lines to all four corners. The E30 brake booster had to be removed due to lack of space in the engine bay. I am running a manual brake setup, using a Wilwood 3/4" master cylinder. Lesson learned, this should have been done before putting the engine in, making things a lot easier.

The fuel pump I have went with is a Walbro 450lph pump. I did not opt into using a fuel cell, went with the factory fuel tank. Lots of modification and trial and error to the factory fuel pump hanger and sending unit had to be done. The new fuel pump has a much wider diameter than the factory pump, it was very interesting maneuvering the pump into the small fuel tank hole.

The task list is getting smaller and smaller. The 80lb injectors were installed, as well as getting started on wiring the ECU and figuring out its permanent mounting location. The Sikky kit came with an oil filter relocation kit as there isn't enough room to have the oil filter in the factory LS location.

Time for the driveshaft. This is a Sikky one piece driveshaft. BMW E30's came with a two piece driveshaft with a guibo in the middle of it. The install was rough, as it was a challenge to tighten the bolts where the driveshaft meets the differential.

The interior rust has been taken care of. Cutting out the bad metal and welding in new metal was a challenge in itself. Everything was sealed and painted to avoid any rust down the road.

The dash was pulled as there were many large cracks to fix. It's a common problem in E30's to have cracks in your dash. How I fixed it was taking a Dremel and make the cracks slightly larger, creating a valley almost, and filling the cracks with Bondo. After the Bondo dries, I sanded down everything smooth. Once the dash was smooth and clean, I brushed special glue all over the dash, and applied the suede fibers in a projectile fashion. This is a common practice in race car drivers to avoid having the sun glare into the dashboard.

It was time to give the ECU its home. I built a small enclosure using the spare sheet metal I had laying around, welding it together, and painted it with a black wrinkle coat. The edges of the enclosure was wrapped with carbon fiber side mold to prevent the passengers from cutting their leg on the metal.

There were many small rust spots that had to be taken care of before paint. Cut and weld, and fill with Bondo and smooth everything out. Factory antenna delete was done as well.

It was time for paint. Lots of prep work such as wet sanding, and careful removal of trim pieces and taping off pieces that don't need to be painted. A month long painting process later and it has turned into the car that you saw at the top. Other things are in the menu for the car in the future, such as a hydraulic handbrake, reinforced rear trailing arms, and a 6-point roll cage install.

After painting the car, this is how it sat. Satisfactory for painting a car for the first time, as well as it being a drift car that will get banged up over time.

The rear suspension on the E30 needed a lot of love. The rear end has not been touched or serviced since the car came out of the factory 40 years ago. As you can see on the left image, the spring seats have caved in on itself and created a big hole. On the right image, I received another set of trailing arms with the spring seats intact.

Pictured is a big parts haul to completely restore and reinforce the rear suspension now with the added power from the LS engine. Pictured are new subframe bushings, trailing arm bushings, spring pads, reinforcement plates for the subframe and trailing arms, new bearings, axle hardware, and a secondary differential mount to keep everything nice and strong for the clutch kicks.

The results came out very good. Everything properly reinforced and all wear and tear items replaced, and painted.

It was time to deal with the brakes in the rear of the car. The hydraulic handbrake is mounted and reinforced, this will never break during the hard pulls during a drift event. The hardlines in the rear of the car were rusted out and in desperate need of a replacement. The hardlines have been replaced with a copper-nickel alloy line because of the ease of bending and manipulating the line with just your hands, and this material will never corrode with the brake fluid. While the subframe was out, it was the perfect time to go ahead and replace these lines.

Next was to run the lines from the master cylinder of the handbrake to the secondary calipers. The secondary calipers were bolted on to a bracket that was welded on to the trailing arm. This became a problem later on, as the welds did not hold and it is back to the drawing board with this design. Currently in the works of designing a bolt on solution using the existing bolt holes for the dust cover and e-brake cable mounting bracket. This will be designed in CAD and professionally manufactured, as well as tested and track approved.

Another problem that I immediately ran in to was that the left trailing arm was bent, giving my car a tremendous amount of toe in, more than 10 degrees. I have designed and built a rear trailing arm setup that allows me to adjust toe on the fly. This was the first version of my design, and this has been ran on the track once. This design has given me a caster issue on the left side, which will be addressed in a later version of this design. More on this design on another section of my website.

My first drift event on the trailing arm design that I came up with. As you can see there is a lot of caster in on my left side. This did not affect driveability and was able to successfully drift the entire day, as well as drive home afterwards. The plan for these trailing arms is to cut the inboard arm (camber side) shorter, in an effort to correct the caster problem. 

Picked up another set of trailing arms from an E30 at a junkyard. The restoration and reinforcement process was the exact same as before, using the same exact parts as before as well. Learning from my previous job, I was able to put out a much better product this time, as well as improving my welding skills to make everything just that much stronger.

Much better. This is how the car sat as of the end of 2023. It is now the off season, and there will be more buttoning up to do this winter to prepare for next season of drifting.

The leak was tricky to find, even with the engine out of the car. We noticed oil leaking out of the transmission bellhousing which we thought was the real main seal. After pulling the engine and transmission out, it was time to clean the engine bay from years of dirt from driving and drifting and give it a fresh coat of paint.

Since the engine was out, it was decided the best choice to make was to replace all gaskets and seals to eliminate any possible oil leak. Valve cover gaskets, intake manifold gaskets, header gaskets, front main seal and real main seal, and oil pan gaskets were all replaced with brand new Felpro gaskets. During drift events and hard driving, the brake fluid would get hot and the brake pedal would fall to the floor. The temporary fix for this was to use Motul RBF 660, which did help a ton. A more permanent solution was to heat wrap the headers as the brake lines and master cylinder are routed next to the driver side header. As with any car enthusiast, the "might as well" bug has bit me and I thought to myself, the engine is already out, how about swapping a new camshaft?

I swapped in a Brian Tooley Hot Rod camshaft, 217/23X, .619/.607, 114 LSA. Included in the kit was a set of .660" steel valve springs with steel retainers, new valve seals and 7.400" chromoly pushrods. With this setup I should have a 100+hp gain with the intake and header and fuel setup in this car. With stiffer valve springs, I can now turn up the redline on the engine via MegaSquirt's Tuner Studio software.

The engine is dressed back up with fresh gaskets and seals, new cam, new lifter trays, fresh paint on the valve covers, new coil wire sleeves, and freshly wrapped headers. 

We pulled the car out of the garage to degrease the engine and front suspension components since it was caked in oil and debris from drifting. After a fresh pressure wash, the car was cleaned and ready to go. Inspecting the Spec Stage 3 clutch from the original LS swap, it was decided to reuse it, there were still plenty of clutch material with no hot spots on the pressure plate. Mated the transmission back to the engine and it was ready to go back in the car!

The engine ran fine with no issues from the build. The engine was in time and all was well. The car ran into an issue with fueling. Turns out the fuel pump has died and the engine was no longer getting fuel. It was later found out that this specific trim of BMW E30 has a secondary booster fuel pump that engages after the main pump inside the tank. The fuel pump I had in the tank was rated for 450lph, while the secondary pump is rated for 255lph. The main fuel pump was being restricted by the secondary pump, essentially "choking" the pump. The main pump burnt itself out and was no longer working. This happened the day before the October SMP Drift event. Bummed out from the situation, it was decided to retire the car for the season and go down another rabbit hole of building the car!

As seen in the previous pictures, I ordered a prefab 6 point roll cage with NASCAR door bars from Cybul in Poland. The kit was shipped extremely quick and the customer service was top notch. In order to fit the cage, I have completely stripped the interior down to bare metal, and the sunroof cassette had to be cut out, eliminating the factory sunroof completely. The sunroof cassette hung down 1.5" below the roofline, which the cage needs to be as close to the roof as possible for maximum protection and headroom for a helmet. A fiberglass sunroof delete panel will go in place of the factory sunroof.

After many weeks of trimming, welding, and getting with Cybul customer service to have new door bars shipped because they were not the correct length, the main structure of the cage has been fitted and completed.

The entire 6 point cage has been completed and welded into the car. The chassis is noticeably more rigid, and the chassis no longer twists when lifting the car from one side. For a grassroots build, this cage is more than enough. This cage is not Formula Drift legal, however, because the rules state that the cage must not have tubes protruding the front firewall. With this cage design, there are tubes coming from the A pillar tubes through the firewall and out onto the front shock towers. There are also tubes coming from the rear of the main hoop to the floor in line with the rear shock towers, just above the rear subframe. This is where the car currently stands and the next things on the list is to paint the cage, mount the Tilton pedals, put in a fuel cell with a Radium surge tank, AIM PDM32 and completely rewire the chassis, and install a front angle kit. This build is expected to finish by the end of the year and will start another season of drifting!