BMW Compact V8

[_Jamie_]

What a machine you have built! I have so much love for the compacts even though most people don't really like them.. Only thing I could recommend is the E46 compact steering rack as its a quicker one. Keep up the good work and get some sideways videos up!

 

[Timothy Haynes]

What a machine you have built! I have so much love for the compacts even though most people don't really like them.. Only thing I could recommend is the E46 compact steering rack as its a quicker one. Keep up the good work and get some sideways videos up!

Thanks Jamie, yes I already have a club sport rack fitted, (purple tag one) from a e46 compact. Only problem is I am not running power steering just using it as a manual. So steering is a tad heavy! its actually a track car but I'm sure I can try some cheeky drifts! Will post some vids up soon of dyno and track use...

 

[woods1]

I look at this thread al the time and it annoys me so much hahaha. I soooo badly want a jaguar s type r that uses this engine and they are relatively cheap, but I want a manual gearbox and although you have sorted a gearbox your method of doing it is sooo difficult.

There are zero adapter kits or anything online to buy to convert these to a manual gearbox and although im handy with the spanners having to have flywheels made and cutting up gearbox bell housings is a big job.

 

[Timothy Haynes]

I look at this thread al the time and it annoys me so much hahaha. I soooo badly want a jaguar s type r that uses this engine and they are relatively cheap, but I want a manual gearbox and although you have sorted a gearbox your method of doing it is sooo difficult.

There are zero adapter kits or anything online to buy to convert these to a manual gearbox and although im handy with the spanners having to have flywheels made and cutting up gearbox bell housings is a big job.

Yeah its's not the easiest engine to manually convert, and it was a real mission for us. The only way was to weld on the Mercedes(Jaguar) original Auto box bell housing to the BMW Manual gearbox, this obviously needs to be done well, welded inside and outside, don't want it cracking, before we did this we mock glued the Mercedes bell housing to the BMW box with fibreglass then doing some measurements with clutch kit fitted workout the thickness of your flywheel and have that custom made with the original flex plate bolted to it with the ring gear on. Spotted the Gearbox and sent it away to be properly welded, don't worry fibreglass just all peels of. Even then clutch didn't work properly as our flywheel measurements were not spot on, we had to machine some material of the Flywheel before it was perfect, anyway long story short it works perfectly now and have a really strong e39 530D ZF 5 speed box on the Jaguar V8 with a e46 M3 Clutch kit, clutch plate was modified to a button clutch with ceramic pads as it slipped to begin with.

 

[Timothy Haynes]

So New engine was dyno tuned and went really well, I have had a 30KW increase in power with the mods done and no smoke or breathing! going to the track next week. Final Figures were 319KW and 560NM of Torque. More than happy.