My Austrailian colleague Brenden is understandably fascinated with today’s snow, and it’s reminded me that rather than growing up I should be too. So here’s what Tregarth Place looked like at 4am in the morning - how tranquil!

The faithful 106R can be seen in the foreground; the 330d lurks upper left. It took an enormous amount of self-control not to go outside and stamp my favourite rude word into the perfect snowy surface!

Hot on the heals of our M3 Evo engine swap success, Ben, Robin and I decided to look for another challenge before the festive holidays were over. No need (nor time!) for anything as involved as an engine removal, but a challenge nevertheless. I’d been complaining about the M5’s clutch since I got it as it slips when upshifting under load. Over dinner on Friday a joke suggestion of trying to get the whole job, including sourcing parts, completed before Sunday rapidly became a plan we were itching to execute.

Come Saturday morning, Ben had successfully gained an MOT pass for the M3 and I woke the tractor from its freezing sleep to once again become support vehicle for the day.

I headed off to Wembley to fetch a clutch kit from ECP. I’ve been there before, but I’ve forgotten what a rancid experience it is - both the journey and the final destination. The LUK clutch kit was reasonable value at £260, but there were times this morning when I was wondering how much more I’d have been willing to pay to get the part from a BMW garage! While I was doing this, Robin took the M5 to the workshop and got it up in the air.

I think it’s important at this juncture to express that while we had done some research into the extent of the work involved in doing this job, we weren’t fully prepared. From this photo, taken at 12:41 Saturday lunchtime, we weren’t out of the workshop until 02:30 Sunday morning. As you know, we’re not inexperienced with the spanners, so here’s how it happened. Firstly, Ben ran away to play football, the big pansy! Then we tried to get the exhaust down.

For those who don’t know, the E39 M5 zorst is a single piece all the way from the join with the headers to the four tips. Here’s the usual view from the back of the car.

(Yes, I know I’ve got rather worn non-matching rear tyres. I will get around to fixing this, but Rome wasn’t built in a day!)

The photo to the left was taken at 14:02 - an hour and a half after the car was lifted onto the axle stands. How on earth did this take us so long?! Well, it’s a big exhaust system - probably as big as Diane’s 106! We don’t know, but we’d guess it weighs in at over 100 kilos (the M5 exhaust, not Diane or her car!).

After some experimentation with pallet trucks we ended up using our two faithful trolley jacks and some wood to support the mass while we worked on it. One of the studs on the exhaust headers snapped so we took some time considering how the hell we’d put it back together (more on that later).

Unfastening the middle section and lamda sensor connectors was fairly easy. Releasing the rear certainly wasn’t! Somehow we got into a right old mess trying to work out which of the three bolts to remove from each of the six mounts, we struggled to clear the bumper, and the heat shields proved to be a royal pain in the arse!

With the exhaust finally out of the way there were more heatshields to remove, then the propshaft was detached from the rear of the gearbox.

We got this far by around 15:00 - fairly good progress in the hour since the exhaust was removed (we British workmen need our tea breaks!). However, removing the gearbox proved to be the second major headache. Unusually, undoing the bolts that hold the bell to the block was all quite straight forward. Initially separating the two was okay, but after that they really didn’t want to come apart.

It’s all quite dodgy yanking a heavy gearbox rearwards when it’s supported on a trolley jack and you can only guess that the jack is supporting it on its centre of gravity - just think of the consequences if you get that wrong - you’re under there with it after all. Eventually much prying with a long bar got them off, but it wasn’t the kind of force I’d usually be happy using. I’m disappointed to reveal that including the removal of the bolts, removal of the gearbox took an hour and three quarters since the propshaft was removed; the below was taken at 16:47:

Even once free, getting the gearbox down to ground past the exhaust headers was a real chore. Here’s a view of the old clutch:

New clutch ready to go on:

Building up the gearbox side of things:

All nicely lithium greased. Next comes a comparison of the outgoing and incoming friction plates. At first I thought the outgoing one didn’t look too worn, until I noticed that like the replacement it once had grooves that had all but disappeared. Fortunately it wasn’t worn down to the rivets and there was no perceivable wear on the dual mass flywheel.

We aligned the friction plate with the pressure plate using our lovely clutch alignment tool purchased just days ago to do the Evo.

All nicely bolted up to the flywheel:

Now, here’s when the day turned really sour. The above photo of the clutch on the flywheel was taken at 18:09. We then had two giant problems. We should have seen both of them coming really, because like any DIY mechanics we’re extremely familiar with the mantra “refitting is the reverse of removal”. Removing the exhaust and removing the gearbox were both horrible jobs - therefore the refitting of both was no better.

We could get the gearbox input shaft through the splines on the friction disk easily, but we couldn’t locate it in the flywheel for toffee. The default reaction was to assume that we’d failed to align the clutch correctly, so after half an hour of precarious gearbox wobbling on top of the trolley jack, we lowered it again past the exhaust headers, removed the clutch from the flywheel, realigned it and once again attempted reassembly. No better at all. Eventually I concluded that moving the gearbox’s input shaft within the flywheel bearing was the trouble we’d had removing the gearbox, so we needed to winch it back in. Robin agreed and constructed an ingenious winching mechanism from some spare nuts and bolts we had.

Eventually it was in, so I turned my attention to the snapped exhaust stud on the headers. I wanted to angle-grind it off and drill it out. Was there an angle grinder in the workshop? No. Had I left mine at home? Yes. Out came the junior hacksaw.

With about 1 inch of blade movement available, 15 minutes and a set of knuckles later I’d sawn the bolt off. Half an hour later I’d bluntened three drills bits, snapped another and got about half way through what has to be the toughest material known to man! Yet the damn thing had snapped on us earlier!

I can’t convey how unpleasant it is to have a really sore back and shoulders from a week of car mechanics, to be lying again on your back on metal drillings, loads of crap in your eyes (safety goggles still seem to permit dirt in!), drilling relentlessly wondering if you’ll ever get your exhaust on again. Eventually I got the bolt out - fortunately we had some replacements in our BMW stock bin. When I say eventually I mean it - from fitting the new clutch for the first time at just gone 6pm, by the time we’d got the gearbox back on and I’d drilled out the bolts to take the photos below, it was 23:14.

Those five hours were the darkest of our day by far. It wasn’t even plain sailing from that point on - finishing up from this stage took another 3 hours! This delay was partially due to us both being incredibly knackered, but also the rear mounts were a complete arsehole - maybe Robin will comment on this later as he fought, and eventually won, that battle.

By the end of this we were thoroughly knackered, but it’s a results based business and I’m delighted to say that the results are excellent. The new clutch is lovely and light, with a nice low bite point, and it grips brilliantly - the car is transformed! Makes it all worthwhile, despite the expressions on our faces at 2:15 in the morning!

(this article concludes a series of five, starting here)

I turned up after work today to find that Robin and Ben had basically finished the job - fortunately Robin took some snaps along the way. We left it on New Year’s Eve looking like this:

So the front of the car was rebuilt:

New exhaust brackets underneath:

Coolant was added by our proud sponsors:

Due to our disconnecting the steering rack we had to re-centre the wheel:

There is some BMW coolant in there too, and the container was clean, I promise! It was then time for the car’s first “warm run” - and we’re pleased to report that it passed with flying colours. All that was left to do this evening was to clean up the work shop and admire the vehicle.

Tomorrow we’ll need to get it booked in for an MOT. Stay tuned though - our Christmas break antics may not be over yet - if we can find something useful to do this weekend we sure will!

I found this picture, or perhaps it’s a diagram, on a forum and I think given recent engine antics it warrants reflection.

Looking at that - there’s not much of that car we didn’t take apart! Ben’s working on the car now - Robin and I will be there later so expect another update in due course.

I arrived late yesterday afternoon to find Robin and Ben had decided to source and fit a clutch - they’d assembled it all and attached the gearbox to the new motor.

Next job was to reattach the exhaust headers with new gaskets. This wasn’t the smoothest operation - some of the nuts had seized onto the bolts when removed so we had to free these up and reinsert the bolts - more tapping required here to fix broken threads etc. I left Robin and Ben doing this:

It certainly wasn’t a three man job, so I indulged in some relaxing cleaning instead. The car has been stored, uncovered, outside for a while, and so isn’t looking quite as beautiful as a nail-varnish Estoril blue car should.

The wheels were also in shocking condition. Sadly the lacquer has peeled off in large chunks - nothing I could do about that - but I could generally improve things. Should the car get back on the road satisfactorily I’m sure Ben will get them professionally sorted.

I think they’re the easiest-to-clean BMW wheels of all time! By the time I’d finished nancying around cleaning, the motor was ready for location.

Upon Simon Stevinson’s advice we’d dropped the subframe and steering rack out of the way to make this whole process a lot easier. We fitted new engine mounts and supported the subframe on a jack.

Robin worked on getting the gearbox all organised under the car while Ben and I tackled the daunting prospect of the massive wiring mess. What goes where? What does this do? How did this ever work? Etc! This took hours - roughly 10pm-1am. The next six photos show this process - hopefully you can see small progress between each!

In the meantime the under body heat shields were attached and the exhaust refitted. A question for the wise: the gearbox has an easy to spot reverse switch, but there’s also another couple of terminal connectors higher up on the same side. We’ve duly refitted them, but wondered what they were for! Also, there’s an electrical connector on the fluid supply to the clutch slave - what’s that for?!

Next came the refitting of the inlet manifold. This is a horrible task, as there’s an electrical connector, an oil drain pipe and two air pipes, one on top and one underneath, that need to be jubilee clipped to it - almost impossible unless you’re Mr Tickle!

Eventually this was done, so we set about slapping the induction on and completing the oil, coolant and a/c loops so we could test the engine.

In this comedy condition, we figured everything was ready. We gave the car some oil, and refitted the now fully charged battery. Here’s a video link to our first start attempt. What went wrong there? We left it in sixth gear with the handbrake on - pretty unfair on the starter motor really! So, second start attempt.

That turned out to be oil leaking from the pipes that leave the oil filter housing to go to the oil cooler. We left it there for the night (finished at gone 4am!), but Ben has reported today that he’s dismantled that and re-seated everything, rebuilt it, and it now runs just fine without any oil leak. There’s more good news - the engine seems to run without and knocks or rattles from the bottom end, the top end sounds sweet, and the Vanos is quiet. It’s early days with cold oil, and no coolant, but the signs are good.

Soon we’ll get the coolant in and bled, get the front back on the car and get it on the ground, but for now we’re going to celebrate this success and the advent of a New Year - cheers to all!

A busy day today. We’ve not got much to show for the 20 man hours we’ve put in today, but we’ve overcome a lot of hurdles that we’re pleased to have behind us. We had a rounded bolt on the clutch assembly that caused a delay first thing.

The clutch doesn’t look new but is certainly serviceable so despite the potential for saving labour later by changing the clutch now, Ben has decided not to; we don’t even know that this engine swap is going to work yet!

So, left is the clutch and flywheel assembly, photographed with a torque converter couple of pot noodles.

Ben set about stripping the remaining assets from the outgoing block: fuel feed, throttle bodies, ancillaries; until we reached the stage where both motors looked about the same.

In the photo below the outgoing motor is on the left and the replacement is being prepared on the right.

The next job was to swap the sumps over. This was necessary because the ‘new’ motor had a damaged sump - it’s taken one hell of a whack. Here are the two sumps side by side - crack clearly visible on the right end of the lower item:

This was also an interesting step because it gave us the first chance to look inside the outgoing motor. The whole reason for this process is that the old motor has developed an alarming knock which sounds decidedly bottom-endish. I’d heard that it was common for the bottom of piston 5 to slip on the crank, and lo and behold this seems to be exactly what’s happened. I’m annoyed that my SLR won’t take video because it’s so hard to describe the issue with stills, but in the picture below the bottom of piston 5 is pretty much in the middle. The gold casing - a U section clamp around the crank, could easily be wiggled vertically by hand in a manner that the other 11 (both engines!) couldn’t.

Below are two items that I believe are referred to as ’shells’; semi circular clasps that surround the point at which the con-rod meets the crank - a bearing like interface. They certainly looked worn, if not a bit damaged.

Note the wonderful fingerless mechanic’s gloves Ben’s wearing there! The photo below shows where the shells sit around the crank.

Sumps swapped, it was time to reassemble the ‘new’ motor. Lots of cleaning has taken place!

Above you can see the water pump, fuel rails and throttle bodies have found their way on. I also replaced all the VANOS bolts and VANOS filter in accordance with my article on the matter, and changed the oil filter and all associated seals and washers.

We were just popping the damaged sump onto the old motor for safe keeping, when Ben noted with alarm that there was a feature he’d not remembered seeing in the ‘new’ motor before we popped the good sump on that:

I guess that’s a second oil pickup protruding from the sump there. We removed the sump from the ‘new’ motor and found to our dismay that this part was indeed missing, and we could clearly see the oil pump assembly was broken where that arm had snapped off.

There was no other option - we had to remove the chain from the oil pump and swap the parts over. It all got a bit frantic at this stage so I omitted to photograph the oil pump assemblies out of the blocks, but to the left you can see the ‘new’ motor once we’d fitted the good parts from the outgoing engine.

This done it was time to refit the sump, and here we had another setback - despite using a torque wrench @ 12Nm I snapped a sump bolt. This prompted the sump to once again be removed while I surgically removed the bolt from the block, and we then chose to run a tap through any sticky holes as a precaution. Again, loads more time lost here!

Finally we’re in a position where most of the ancillaries are on the new block. Tomorrow’s jobs are to get the gearbox and clutch assembly on the new engine, and generally prepare matters for the unit to be reunited with the car.

Here’s how the block looks now - I can’t believe how much better it all looks for a good scrub!

A couple of hours today saw a good deal more progress. I grabbed a spanner from Robin to get rid of the fan - I can’t tell you how much I could have done with that yesterday!

Then it was time to get the injector wiring out of the way, which marked the point at which all electrics were clear. We removed the power steering pump and tied all that gubbins out of the way to the car. The fuel lines were separated, and then it was engine out time!

A few bolts and a bit of a wiggle and we had the gearbox separated.

That was our objective for the day, so we finished off with a bit of a tidy. Tomorrow we’ll work on moving all the ancillaries, and the flywheel and clutch to the replacement motor block. So for now, the car looks a little like this!

My friend Ben Smith clearly is. He had a rummage around in his yard and found this:

That’s an S50B32, or for those of you who don’t speak in code, the 3.2 litre 321bhp engine from a BMW M3 Evolution. Which is handy, because Ben also has one of these with a dead engine. We dragged it to a workshop to do the deed - the hope is that we’ll successfully swap the engines, the more likely outcome is that we’ll put the whole lot in a skip!

First job, car up in the air.

We decided that taking the front of the car off should make things easier.

We had pretty rapid progress up until this point. Then we took the exhaust headers off - took about 4 hours!

We’ve disconnected most of the electrics, drained all fluids (inc already empty aircon), clutch slave out etc - the whole thing is now on the dangle.

That’s how we’ve had to leave it overnight. Next steps are to get the gear shift clear of the car, sort the power steering, and remove the electrics from the fuel rail. Oh, and disconnect the fuel supply and return. All good fun! So cast your bets now, success or skip?!

A great day out today! Together with Andy Eccles, Adam Tier, Olly Bloxham and Paul Young I hired a small sprint circuit in the Midlands for a morning of ‘testing’ and photography. This is something I tend to do around this time of year, mainly because it’s nearly always damp or cold enough for a low-friction tyre-friendly oversteer surface - but not today! It was 10 degrees and bone dry - a couple of quick cornering tests presented far too much grip.

Fortunately Andy had a great idea during the planning phase, so we’d brought some irrigation for a nearby water supply.

The line up:

Neil - E39 M5
Olly - E39 M5
Adam - E39 540i (manual)
Paul - E87 120d
Andy - E91 325d

Andy and I are sideways veterans at this circuit, so we set about using the wetness to get all attendees sliding their cars around the bend.

Great success! We spent the vast majority of the morning just hooning around. I learnt that I can do over 45mph in reverse, and that the M5 doesn’t need much help from me to oversteer: look mum - no hands!

In an attempt to get some vaguely scientific information out of the day, we recorded some laps times. Andy has neatly converted these into a Top Gear style “Power Lap” board!

The diesels did really well against the massive V8s, but again the nature of a small sprint circuit will level the playing field somewhat. Interestingly I did a lap in Andy’s 325d that felt every bit as fast as my M5, but that was a 1:28.

Overall a fantastic day out - throughly enjoyable! Best bit was that there were absolutely no complaints from the M5. I did over 300 miles, visited the rev limiter often, spun, got the oil well over 100 degrees etc, and it took it all in its stride on just one tank of fuel. What a car!

Today the weather has been mild and dry, so I’ve seized the opportunity to get things done. I cycled (yes, cycled!) to Vines of Guildford to collect all sorts of goodies: for the 330d a new leather lift strap for the boot floor and an oil filter kit, and a new thermostat and coolant for the M5. The 330d has 8,000 miles to go until its next service, so in about 1,000 miles time I’ll give it an interim oil change, but more on that as and when I do it.

The M5’s temperature gauge has struggled to get above the lower ‘norm’ dot recently, so I figured a new thermostat should help. As mentioned in a previous post, I followed the instructions on an M5 board, which were really useful. The biggest pig was removing and then refitting the under engine belly panels, necessary to drain the coolant. Once that was done, the MAFs and associated tubing had to be removed to permit access to the thermostat housing.

Then the coolant pipes were removed and the casing lid could be released. The instructions said “Remove thermostat housing (tug it! hard because VANOS sending unit in the way and doesn’t like to move due to SS hoses)” - tug it hard is an understatement, it required levering with a breaker bar! Still, eventually it was done.

Then the thermostat was changed, and as ever refitting was the reversal of removal.

This sad thing is that while the temperature needle now sits closer to upright than it did, it’s still not perfect and I suspect the improvement is as much down the milder weather than the new thermostat! Still, at least I’ve tried and I’ve got nice fresh coolant on board - I’ll have to do more reading before chasing this problem again.