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Old 06-14-2019, 01:32 PM   #54
spidertri
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Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: Elizabeth City, NC
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Yeah, I totally forgot to update this thread.

My head was definitely cracked where they usually do from the coolant passage to the exhaust valve stem seat at cylinder 3. Looked at local machine shops but didn't feel great about them.

So I ended up getting a rebuilt head from Autohead Performance in AL. Highly recommend these guys if you need a BMW head reconditioned or rebuilt. Excellent communication, fast shipping, and a nice clean head to install with a 1 year warranty. I was even able to send them my S52 valve springs and valve stem seals and they installed them in the new head for me.

The reinstall went pretty smoothly, going against traditional forum techniques, I did not use any scotch brite pads or roloc disks to clean the block surface. I was very worried about getting contaminants in the oil and coolant passages. What I did buy was a "Superscraper" and that thing was amazing at getting the gross old stuff off of the block surface. I was able to get the block surface pretty smooth and shiny using the scraper, brake clean, and lint free cloths. Cleaning that up was definitely the bulk of the time I spent prepping.

I installed the elring gasket by itself, no copper seal or anything. Just a couple dabs of anaerobic sealant where the timing case meets the block. The ARP studs were helpful for lining up the head with the block as it came down. I definitely needed my wife's help to set the head on the block smoothly. I then installed and torqued the studs using the original ARP torque specs, not their lower new specs, the forced induction forum on BF.c has good threads on that. I wasn't in a rush so I torqued and retorqued the studs over the course of 2-3 days.

While this isn't a super thick HG, there is some compression in the material so letting it go for several days let it get to the final thickness and torque spec.

After that, I installed the cams, I used the pelican (I think) technique, where you loosen all the caps except the cap over cylinder 1 and then rotate the cam slightly so that you can remove that cap. It went very smoothly, no issues getting the new cams in. The most trouble I had was installing the VANOS, I bought some timing tools from Amazon that were $45 but I eventually found out that the intake side cam block was not machined completely flat which made me think the cams were not timed correctly when they actually were okay. Big pain, the blocks worked but I should have checked their flatness before I started.

After that it was just putting everything back together. I did a fill and drain with some cheaper oil before I filled with my regular oil. Same with the coolant, fill and drain to get any debris out of the passages.

While I had it apart I removed as many wires as possible from the engine harness that had to do with the automatic transmission stuff that was just hanging out since the swap. I was able to pull a lot of wires out.

With everything reinstalled I turned the engine over by hand several times to lubricate stuff and make sure the timing was still good. After that it fired right up.

Since then I've done two autox and two track days, the car feels fantastic. Pulls super hard in the upper RPM, it's awesome. At this point I just want to get more seat time, although I need to get new track tires, thinking about going to 245/45-16 R888R on my BBS RKs.
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98 328ti Morea Grun slicktop
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