My E81 N54 MT Single Turbo build

[gklhso]

Hello everyone, I'm George Kirollos from Egypt, this is my first post here.
I thought it would be nice to share what we (people in the middle east) do for the love of the motorsport under limited budget constraints as 1 USD equals to 18 Egyptian pounds !! which makes buying parts from the US or Europe very challenging and very expensive as we also have 20% local customs

This E81 BMW started its life as a 116i (the only engine we had here in the 1 series at that time) then a friend of mine decided to swap in a N54 automatic engine, I got the car from him with the 75000 KM auto N54, I only drove it once taking it to my garage and I soon teared it down to start the ST build I've always dreamed of. I rear a lot online about the limits of the automatic and I was not happy with it, so I decided to go the manual route... searched the whole country till I found a good GS653BZ finallyy !! will not be able to tell the whole story as its going to be a lot of BS here are all the parts I used for this build, the target of this car is to be the most powerful drag car in the country (luckily we are in Egypt, there are no extreme drag builds here ) the most challenging competitor (a good friend of mine) has an M5 F10 DCT with pure stage two turbos and JB4 and all the other stuff like meth ...etc, so here we go

N54 automatic engine with 75K kms
GS653BZ transmission
Mfactory sprung twin clutch (one of the big inverstments)

no diff included with the gearbox so I decided to do a crazy conversior
I modified an extra rear subframe to take a 210 LSD diff from an E34 M5 (got that for the equivalent of 100 usd !!!!) and another 50 usd to get another diff with a 2.93 ratio (a bit taller than the 3.08 but that would be great for my setup) moved the pinion and ring to the LSD diff, fits great in the subframe and the good thing is the half shafts from a 335d e90 fit perfectly ! they are much thinner compared to the 335i but they are solid pieces not tubes like the petrol version so that should be a great plus ! paid 50 dollars for those, I also got a e39 540i drive shaft and shortened that to fit the e81 but with an f30 335i bearing carrier I know it sounds strange but thats how I could do it cheap and learn a lot more about the compatiability of BMW parts and also, save money for other parts of the build

so e39 540i drive shaft
e90 335d half shafts
m5 e34 diff
2.93 diff
and custom fabbing everything to fit together

as for the turbo setup, I decided to fabricate my own twin scroll T4 manifold using the stock headers with twin tial 38mm WGs

turbo is a HOLSET HX40 with a billet 67mm compressor wheel that I will port the compressor housing for it, turbine wheel I have two sizes for the holset (two versions) one is 67x76 and the smaller is 64x76, as for the housings I have 16cm and 19cm housings that I must try after I run the car

chinese charg pipe with BOV

intercooler is CXracing 4 inch intercooler, in my opinion it is the best value for money , it has a huge core with great surface area, the only downside is the 2.5 inch inlet/outlet but I cut the outlet and ported it and welded on a 3 inch cold side

piping is all customized from universal aluminum piping 2.5 hotside and 3 coldside

for oil cooling I got a chinese adapter for the thermostat housing to accept -10AN fittings and ran a custom 28 row oil cooler with a fan in the place of the stock oil cooler (with a custom mount of course!)

for the manual conversion, I got the shifter from ebay, pedal box from a 116i MT and sorted all the rest of the parts and did the wiring for the clutch sensor and the reverse light

for the engine mounts and rear subframe mounts, I filled these with polyurethane sealant to make them a bit harder, also made custom mounts for the transmission and the differential out of a polyurethane for bought locally to firm up the whole ride

put the coolant reservoir to the drivers side, relocated the PS canister... etc

as for fuelling, the best price port injection is MMP, got that for 550usd !!! and it came with 800cc injectors instead of the 600cc written on the website and when I asked the support they said customers had some problems with the 600cc so they started sending the 800cc I know these injectors are not the best and are chinese, so I guess I will switch to bosch later on

did not like to T in the fuel line going to the HPFP, so I decided to get two universal walbro 450lph pumps, custom installed these in place of stock pump, one pump will be pushing fuel in place of the stock pump, and the other I made a custom fuel line with -6AN fittings direct to the port injection, this one is going to be controlled with the JB4 port injection controller, also got a 40 micron fuel filter to be installed inline

as fuel is really bad here in Egypt, our 95 octane is only 92 in reality and we do not have e85 ready made, I decided to mix 100% ethanol to fuel myself, so the mix will not always be perfect so I decided to use the fuel it ethanol sensor and analyzer in order to be able to see the variations and deal to them. that came with a replacement high flow fuel line from tank to HPFP with the ethanol sensor inline, also customized a universal fuel pressure regulator after the PI and back to tank, in my opinion this is the most reliable way to fuel this setup

people always say if you are using ethanol delete the water meth, but I decided to get water methanol from burger as well with a single CM10, this should help with octane and also with cooling in bad temps, still did not figure out how to run this next to the Port injection so any help will be greatly appreciated

burgertuning mega order

JB4
JB4 port injection controller
antilag
launch control
bavarian tech cable (1 vin) to do the back end flash
2 step colder plugs
silicon BMS filter
cowl filters
water meth without tank
CM10 nozzle
usb cable
4 bar map sensor
MAC solenoid

as for the suspension, I think I might get a set of good springs only

wheels I am using are e92 M3 competition wheels 19" with 1 cm spacers all round

I also, custom modified the fenders for the widebody look (didn't go with 1M look)

you are more than welcome to help or criticize pics will follow

[gklhso]

photos

[gklhso]

great, I thought people might be interested in suck project but seams nobody cares

[Traf]

Oh no, we care, very nice project.
How did you setup your LSD ?

[gklhso]

thank you sir, my LSD is an old e34 m5 LSD, the dimentions of the half shaft bolts are the same, distance from flange to flange is also identical, the only difference was the mounting , it was completely different, I had a spare rear subframe, fitted the n54 manual differential to the subframe and then I fabricated a cage for holding the exact place of the two half shafts, then removed the e90 differencial and put the e34 differencial in place and fabbed all the new mountings for the differencial after making sure that the diff is in the correct place exactly

[Traf]

Stock locking ? I believe its 25/25?

[gklhso]

excuse my ignorance but i do not know or understand the locking ratio , can you please explain ?

[bm49]

Wow; what a fantastic project. In particular I love what you have done to widen the wheel arches. I look forward to following your progress.

[gklhso]

I'm currently finishing my 3 inch downpipe, 3.5 inch exhaust and the two WGs dump tubes, I am also done with the 67mm compressor wheel for my holset HX40 turbo, pics to follow, about the wheel arches it is time consuming but it is not that hard, although I am sure that if I did it again I will do a much better job and will be a lot quicker