metric mechanic

[mohaughn]

Does anybody know anything about this company? They have an ad in the latest roundel where they show a NA m42 putting out 205hp. Not sure if that is at the wheels or at the crank. They also have a full blown m42 race motor putting out more power, but with the longevity of a standard racing motor. The 205hp motor is what they call their "rally" motor which has the same build up as the racing motor, but they detune it to get more longevity out of it... They are going to give me a call tomorrow to give me a quote on their m42 2200cc rally motor along with their recommended cooling system upgrades.

They have a video of an e30 with the rally m42 on their homepage, www.metricmechanic.com.

[mischief]

did you see that vid its fast car and nice find

[DustenT]

Are they turning 9k rpms? Post what you find.

[Variance]

That engine was built for an E30 318 owner on M42Club. I'd link you to the post, but the board is down, and by the looks of it, the post was lost to hacking anyway. From what I remember, he was quite happy with the engine, although it's not exactly cheap; anything associated with Jim Rowe is going to make your wallet a lot lighter. And Dusten, yep, the engine's built to take 9k just fine.

[aceyx]

The RDSport R24 motor (2378cc) motor makes 220@6100, 190ft-lbs@3950.

I'm willing to bet it's not cheap either.

[mohaughn]

It would probably be comparable in price to doing an i6 swap and weigh a lot less. They have the price for their m10 engines online and the sport at 165hp is a little over 3k. The rally and racing engines are up over 6k.

[mohaughn]

So I talked with Jim Rowe for a little bit today and he is most certainly very knowledgable about these motors and they are not cutting any corners in building these motors.

For that m42 they lightened the valve train by over 1.75 pounds. The engine is built out to be able to handle well over 9k rpms but on the rally motors they set the rev limiter at 7700rpms. He says the life expentancy that his website has on the motor is only a guess and that he would always guess low. He also said that the 300 hour life span would be running the car on an oval track with the RPMs up around 8k for the entire time. Based on what I do with the car, minimal street driving and road racing/auto-x he would expect the motor to well outlast the same motor with stock internals... He also said that chart was made well over 10 years ago and that the longevity of their motors has improved dramatically over the last ten years. He said he knows of several people running their high end motors in their daily drivers with well over 150k miles on the engines.

They also do a lot of work on baffling the oil pan to get rid of any oil starvation problems in left hand turns, learned by doing oval track racing. The next time he builds a motor like that he would prefer to switch it to mechanical lifters instead of hydraulic lifters. He said that would cost about an extra 500$. With the mechanical lifters you could misshift and momentarily push the engine up to 13k rpms and not blow the motor. The oil pressure would also stay up over 30psi at idle with the mechanical lifters, where it drops into the teens with hydraulic lifters. They obviously also port and polish the engine, they use their high flow head, they change the oil pump, use forged pistons, cnc'ed rods, and many other stronger/lighter parts.

Some technical info-
part name MM weight stock weight

lifter bucket 64.5grams 77.09 grams
valve keeper 1.0grams 2.5 grams
valve retainer 10.0grams 19.0 grams
bee hive spring 45grams 62.0grams(dual spring)
intake valve 45.5grams 58.5grams
exhaust valve 46grams 54.09grams

And Variance is right. They are not cheap motors. $8,900 is what that m42 in the e30 cost. But that car was faster in the quarter mile than an e36 m3. For the ad they used a gtech system to time the 1/4 mile and acceleration. That recorded 98.6mph and 14.5seconds. On an actual drag strip the car did the 1/4 mile at over 100mph. They did an e30 M3 s14 at the same time and he said the 318 was a lot more fun to drive.

He seemed to be really excited to know how a Ti would run with that engine being lighter than the e30 318is, having a closer gear ratio, and a 3.45 lsd.

So you could have a bomb proof NA m42 m3 killer for about 10k. Their e36 s50 rally can outrun an e46 M3 evo. They could also build the engine with a lower compression so you could turbo the engine for even more power.

Which isn't really that bad considering that my local mechanic quoted me somewhere around 8-10k for a rebuilt m52 installed with all the bells and whistles. I know for a fact that the m52 would not be as well built as what Jim is building. You can't even touch something like a sunbelt racing m52 for less than 15k.

[AlaskaBlue]

Go for the M42! That sounds awesome. More horsepower than a DASC 4 cylinder and it is a new engine. How could you go wrong?

[mohaughn]

Well, like I told Jim. I really appreciated him taking the time to talk to me about what he is doing with the m42 and I definitely think the engine they are building is worth what they are charging, but I won't be doing an upgrade like that any time soon. I've always put the budget for what I want to do with the car at 15k, and this fits the budget. But the power part of the equation is going to be the final piece of the pie. The only thing that could push it over budget would be getting the engine from MM to me. But with what they charge to do the motor swap I'd think about driving the car to them and staying a few days instead of paying shipping costs. Of course my suspension is already looking like it will be going over budget since I have really been contemplating the tc kline coilover instead of the originally planned for pss9.

And to think. That 15k doesn't even cover any body work or paint... Which is easily another 3k.. ahh.. Gotta love expensive hobbies... Good thing I bought a new surf board and snowboard last year before starting this project...

[jkilla71]

Which is the better deal?? What would you put in your car?


My 1995 Ti just hit 160k. The car runs better than ever and never had an oil leak of any kind. However I would like to have it for another 5-10 years with some updated HP. I am thinking to have some new reliable power before the end of 2007. (Considering my woman doesn’t make plans for all of my vacation time).



Bavarian Engine Exchange "Performance Engine" has 20% more HP than stock @ $4,700. 5yr warranty
http://www.bavengine.com


The "Sport Engine" from Metric Mechanic has 160hp @ $6495 and the rally engine 205hp $8495

http://www.metricmechanic.com

I am thinking the Bavarian Engine is the better deal due to the warranty?

[ClubSport]

Bavarian engine claims 20%, but they won't say what exactly they do to the motor to gain that. MM details what they put into the motor.

[jkilla71]

Originally Posted by ClubSport

Bavarian engine claims 20%, but they won't say what exactly they do to the motor to gain that. MM details what they put into the motor.

I think you are right.

The price difference may have been confusing my judgment.

[mohaughn]

I'm also pretty sure that if something were to happen to your MM engine and it was pretty obvious that it was not abuse or neglect that caused it Jim would take care of fixing it for you. They don't specifically give a warranty because most of the engines are probably being used to race and you don't get a warranty for that...

The Bavarian engines it seems like they are basically doing an inspection and overhaul. For the MM engine they are hand selecting the cores they are working with, inspecting everything and then doing a performance rebuild.

For a street car I don't think either way is really the way to go though. You could probably find a mechanic local to you that will overhaul your current engine and probably get the same gains that bavarian is claiming. If they really get 20%..