The shade tree swap. California legal lS3 e36 318ish - Part 1.

“Just another LS swap.” is something you read a lot these days because of how common the LS series transplant has become. There are many reasons why the LS has dominated the swap sense over the past decade but It comes down to main four reasons.

One reliability, the LS is not the most sophisticated engine with only one cam and two valves per cycler, however, that means less to break when you are pushing the motor to its upper limits.  The LS takes your granddad's small block chevy and adds all the modern engine tech that GM could throw at it.

Reason number two, is packaging, because of the pushrod design the LS is a very narrow engine compared to 32 valve v8s. This allows the LS to fit into any more chassis with less modifications. Couple Inherent compact design with an all-aluminum construction you also get a very light package, weighing in at around 400 lbs with accessories. 

Three, it can do almost anything you ask of it. From being a junkyard boosted hero to a high revving race engine and everything in between or even both. 

Four, all the POWA you could ever want. Even if someone starts with a junkyard LS-based engine because of the massive aftermarket for the engines it can be built into a high horsepower monster over time. 

Somehow Chevy convinced the sticklers at the California air research board to allow a crate motor to be 50 state legal, This series of motors are called E-rods. This means you can buy an LS3  from Chevy performance that is California legal in almost any OBDI car or truck, anything pre-1996 is fair game. The motor comes with everything from the Mass Airflow sensor to the catalytic converters and everything in between. All of it has to be used to make the car legal. 

The way this project came to be is, I had done an E-rod Volvo 960 a few years ago, it was an amazing project and a lot of fun. But the lack of support for the chassis made everything difficult. I ended up wanting more from the Volvo than just a freeway bomber. At the time my friend was selling an e36 318is was clean and we knew the full history of the car.  He was planning to put an s52 in it. In the process of getting it ready for the S52, he had put a Stoptech big brake kit on it along with a full Ground Control Coilover system.  Plans changed and he ended up selling it to me. The new plan was to take the LS3 out of the Volvo and put it into the 318. This series will be going through every detail of putting the LS3 E-rod into a 1993 BMW 318is. The Last thing that I did to the chassis was add in the AKG Subframe reinforcements and bushing to help it handle the new levels of power it was about to receive.  

The E-rod was brought from Summit. The engine package comes with almost everything that is needed to make the motor run. The big-ticket items in the E-rod package are;  an LS3, the wiring harness, headers, and catalytic converters. 

I mated the E-rod up to a Tremec T-56. I decided to use the wide ratio box because of the insanely low 6 gear, it will allow the car to run almost any rear end gear and still be able to cruise on the highway. At the end of the day, this is a purpose-built streetcar that is meant to drive to the event and have a ton of fun and then cruises home.

To bolt the engine into the car I went with the Vorshlag kit, the reason why I chose this kit was because Vorshlag has been in the LS BMW swap game for a very long time now and they seem to get overall good reviews. I ended up using their engine arms,  transmission cross member, steering linkage, driveshaft, power steering line, and ABS pump relocation kit. 

The first step in this swap was like any other.  Taking out the old driveline. In the first week the m42 engine, five-speed, driveshaft, differential, and axles were out of the car making it a really good paperweight.  After the motor was out the engine bay was power washed because working in a dirty engine bay doing a swap is no fun at all. 

Once the cleaning was done I set on putting the rear end of the car back together.  The 318 uses a small case BMW diff, that had no chance of survival with the v8.  The easy upgrade is using a medium case diff out of a 6 cylinder, which should be able to handle the power to start.  I might end up going to a large case or a Ford 8.8  in the future. For now, though, the car got 3.38 LSD from an m3 with non-M axle flanges and new 325i axles.

The reason why I choose the 3.38 is that the c5 corvette has the about same tire rolling dimensions as the e36 and it runs a 3.42 and I assume the GM engineers know what they are doing, if not I have a 3.91 I can throw in if the car is too slow...

Next on this list was relocating the ABS unit to make room for the headers on the driverside’s side of the engine bay. There are a few different ways to do this some people just lift it a couple of inches, others move the pump to the battery tray on the passenger side.  I decided to use the Vorshlog bracket which moves it to behind the driver side headlight. 

This requires making new custom brake lines from the back for the bay to the front; I used brake lines and fitting from Fed Hill to make this happen. I also added a Wilwood bias valve for if I ever decide to upgrade the rear brakes that the car still can have balanced braking. For the rubber feeder line from the reservoir to the abs unit, I used brake fluid resistant lines.  

The go big or go home purchase on the project was an S1 sequential shifter. This shifter bolts onto the top of a T56 and it adapts the standard H pattern into a sequential pattern which means you pull back to go up a gear and push forward to go down. Installation is actually pretty easy as long as you have the transmission outside the car. You remove the shift plate and change the shift carrier in the trans being very careful not to drop the bolt in the transmission. And then remove a spring and reverse lockout solenoid. Everything was going great up until the point I bolted on the shifter and it would only shift into first and no other gear.  This was a day ender….

After going back and forth with S1 for a few weeks we finally figured out that my aftermarket t56 magnum had about a millimeter shorter throw than the one that S1 had tested the shifter on. To make sure we were on the right track S1 sent me a file that I 3D printed to prototype the fix. Once we diagnosed the problem S1 sent over the parts to fix it now it works like a charm.  

There were a few things to tidy up on the e36 before the engine could go in. The bay was shaved a bit by cutting out the old brackets for the coil packs etc. Then I painted the bay with the Paint Scratch alpine white. for heat production in the tunnel, the stock BMW shielding was removed to DEI heat shielding because it is slimmer and more effective. To fit Sequential shifters the hole in the transmission tunnel had to be opened up quite a bit until it was about 8 inches long and 5 inches wide. Now it was time to stab the engine and transmission in the car. Now the hard part actually making it run!