Minerva: The S54 powered, better than new, E28

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1st 5er
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Re: Minerva: The S54 powered, better than new, daily driver

Post by 1st 5er »

:wave:
cek wrote: Nov 11, 2020 9:28 AM
hunneman wrote: Nov 11, 2020 7:59 AM Very impressive workmanship on Minerva..Great job!.
I have a question, how did you remove the cosmoline from the heat shields..I am in the process of installing mine.
I can't get them to come out like new like you did....The heat shield under the passenger side I powder coated mine..
if you can share any tips..
The trick is:

1) Oil Eater
2) Scotchbrite sponges
3) Elbow grease
4) Rinse and repeat

Opinions differ on what product to use, but I swear by Oil Eater:

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https://www.amazon.com/Oil-Eater-Origin ... =ceklog-20

Get the parts wet.

Spray diluted Oil Eater on them.

Let it sit for a few minutes.

Use your Scotchbrite pads to scrub-a-dub-dub. It is hard work.

Once you've made progress stop, rinse it all off with water and repeat the above until done.

Some of the cosmoline will be very hard to get off. In the past I've had success using either a heat gun or a steam cleaner to warm it up to soften it.

I've also had some success letting it with diesel fuel.

A brass wire brush can be used, but be very careful as that's very aggressive and will leave scratches which you'll then have to remove (if you are as anal as I am).

I didn't have to resort to anything but Oil Eater for these.


If only I had the patience. :facepalm:
cek
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Re: Minerva: The S54 powered, better than new, daily driver

Post by cek »

All knobs are all new.

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Last night I took my not-really-my-son-in-law-but-feels-like-it for a spirited drive. I think I scared him a little.
cek
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Re: Minerva: The S54 powered, better than new, daily driver

Post by cek »

Member @Galahad is building a blade-style fuse retrofit kit for E28s. He asked me to help him test/debug his solution and I couldn't resist. I absolutely HATE the bullet fuse design and have been contemplating how to convert our cars to modern blade-style fuses since the beginning of time. I actually bought a late-E24 new fuse box for Minerva and had all intentions of figuring out how to modify the wiring harness to make it work. I decided to wait until after the car was settled before doing that though.

It was a mistake choosing to use Minerva as @Galahad's test case though. I should have gone with either Vlad or Maytag...because they are US cars with US fuse boxes. @Galahad had not considered the Euro differences in his design, and I didn't understand those differences myself. I choose Minerva because it was the car that was in the garage when I decided to dive in. In the end, however, my trials and tribulations getting the kit to work in Minerva will pay off for everyone else because we, collectively, now have tons more details on how both the US and Euro boxes are wired.

See my thread documenting all of that here: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=155587

I've been inside the E28 fuse box before. On one of my cars, I think Maytag, I did some surgery at some point... I dont' remember why. Anyhoo, I knew enough to take tons of pictures as I pulled it apart and I'm glad I did. All the pics were invaluable in documenting it all and final reassembly. It started here:

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If you click on those photos, you'll go to my Flickr album and you can scroll through the rest. I've tagged those photos with "BMW E28 Euro Fuse Box Wiring" so they'll show up in Bing searches for others. If you searched for such a thing yesterday you got nothing useful.

@Galahad's concept is very slick. Brilliant even. The idea is a circuit board that replaces the bullet-style fuse holders in the original box. The board includes blade-style sockets for all 17 of the original E28 fuses as well as sockets for 4 spares. LEDs are provided that show status of the the fuses (off: no power, green: power and good, red: power and missing or blown). He's engineered the board such that it supports the right amount of current.

To install you need to irreversibly modify your original fuse box. For Minerva I had ALSO ordered a brand new-euro fuse box way back that we ended up not using because the box that was on the donor chassis was fine. I choose to modify the new one and then swap it into the car. Using a screwdriver and a pair of needle-nose pliers I pulled all of the bullet-fuse holders out through the top. This is a one-way door...

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Once they are removed, the new circuit board just slides into place providing all the same pins. Apparently, on early fuse boxes, the leads that attach to the relays on the underside are soldiered to the pins, so retrofitting will be a bit more work.

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Once I got everything plugged back in I quickly discovered something was wrong. Like the idiot I am I never really considered the US and Euro boxes would be different. They are. The difference that matters to this conversion has to do with the high-beams. On US cars fuse 7 is the right high-beam and fuse 8 is the left. The inputs to those 8A fuses is the same YL 2.5 wire from the high-beam relay. The input-side (top) of the bullet fuse holder is bridged between 7 & 8.
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On Euro cars Fuse 7 is 16A and carries both the right & left high beam. It is powered by the YL 2.5 wire from the high-beam relay. Fuse 8 is 8A and is for things other than high-beams and gets its power from the same VI 2.5 wire that powers fuse 11. The fuses have independent inputs:

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In my case, my stupidity (and @galahad's not knowing about Euro differences) meant that I had both the YL 2.5 and VI 2.5 wires plugged into the same bridged input between Fuse 7 & 8.

It took me far longer to figure all this out because I had (stupidly) put a US fuse box cover on the car. This led me to continue to believe Fuse 7 and Fuse 8 were for high-beams. Eventually, I figured it all out and realized the fix was easy: Cut the traces on @galahad's circuit board between fuse 7 * 7. We've discussed this and in his final design he will make the bridge between those fuses something that can more easily be modified so his design can work for both styles. I determined there are no other deep differences between the US & Euro boxes. Although some stuff does plug into different places, from the POV of the retrofit kit all will work.
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The other interesting thing about @galahad's design is built-in diagnostics LEDs for each fuse. HIs prototype has them working at all times, even when the car is off. This means that fuses 4, 5, & 17 are lit green even when the car is off. I don't like this because these cars don't need any more parasitic drain than they already have. I choose to put a little switch in place to control the ground for the LED circuit. @galahad says he's going to make it so they only work when the car is in ACC or RUN in his final design, which I'm cool with.
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I've ordered a new Euro (UK English) cover from Blunt.
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I was able to clean up some of the engine bay wiring around the fuse box since I had it all out too.
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And, of course, spares:
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This is an amazing mod and I'm grateful to @galahad for creating it. He indicates it will be a few months before he has the time to build the final versions. I'm sure he'll create a thread here when he's ready.

While I was in there, I fixed the fact that 425 didn't hook up the city lights properly. They didn't realize how the Euro lights went together and thus modified the euro harness to plug directly to the backs of the bulbs, without using the intermediary connector & boot. I had to undo all this and wire it up as it was from the factory. The city light bulbs weren't even installed!

But now city lights work correctly!
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Galahad
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Re: Minerva: The S54 powered, better than new, daily driver

Post by Galahad »

I'll make my own thread about these when the final product is ready, but I do need to thank cek for his invaluable input on the project. He has been immensely helpful both in testing and with recommendations that will make this a much better product - I would not have been able to figure out the Euro box differences on my own.
cek
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Re: Minerva: The S54 powered, better than new, daily driver

Post by cek »

Two more things checked off Minerva's list:

1) Mounted center brake light. Since this is a Euro chassis and harness, there's no provision for it. I had the interior guys only pull two wires (I should have checked the ETM first) so there's no way to wire it into the Active Check System as-is, so I've left it out. So what?

2) I painted the raised lettering on the speaker grills so they look moar new-ish.

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One thing back on the list. I keep trying US/post-85 defogger switches on this car. They keep almost catching on fire. Do you know the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

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I did this because the one in the car wasn't lighting up. So I noticed the one in Maytag was really tits and lights up. And Maytag's defogger is currently not working. So I said to myself "that should be in Minerva".

The amount of smoke it produced was impressive.
mottati
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Re: Minerva: The S54 powered, better than new, daily driver

Post by mottati »

that fuse box is slick. I like it!
cek
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Re: Minerva: The S54 powered, better than new, daily driver

Post by cek »

The punch list is getting much shorter (and growing at the same time, mostly due to the famed two steps forward, one step back syndrome):

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Just knocked off:
- Fixed ABS System
- Adjusted Parking Brake
- Aimed headlights & high-beams
- LED backup lights

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16 mpg!
cek
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Re: Minerva: The S54 powered, better than new, daily driver

Post by cek »

I'm in the middle of buying every variant of LED bulb available on Amazon. I finally discovered a good 'un that I think works well. Comes in white, red, and amber (white look too white under the lenses), doesn't trip speedy blink or active check, and has good ratings. Once I get em all and I'm confident I'll post details.

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Today I (foolishly?) decided to tackle the heater fan noise that I kept hoping would just go away and the oil leak from the valve cover gasket.

Along the way I refurbished the firewall cover. Like most of these, the foam insulation was awol and the lower part had crumbled way. I used single-sided foam tape *(back to back) to re-create the original area on the bottom. I also Vynlix'd it to make it pop.

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I also discovered that it is not possible to remove an E28 heater fan from an S54 swapped car without removing the fuel rail.

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I had really hoped that Sofica (old style heater unit) fan just needed oils. Alas, it was broken at the negative connection and no amount of oil would prevent it from squealing. Good thing I sourced a backup Sofica fan ages ago as these things are hard to find. Now nice and quiet.

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After watching lots of Youtube videos I had the confidence to dive into the valve cover gasket. The ///M cover is plastic. I thought it was metal.

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Sexy, Steve Dinan equipped innards.

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Too bad 425 re-used the old gasket set when they did the Vanos upgrade. I already yelled at Dan. But getting a new gasket (and all the other O-rings that go with it) in was easy.

All back together and (I think) running fine.

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Next up I get to pull the center console apart again to fix whatever the heck I did that made the AC fan run the wrong direction. Sigh.
Bonsaibacker
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Re: Minerva: The S54 powered, better than new, daily driver

Post by Bonsaibacker »

The pictures of Vlad were "tits" but I fully enjoy these action shots. Great stuff here Charlie- I struggle to figure out how you have the time to tinker and then document so thoroughly (both). Thank you for doing so and I dread the day you feel that you are done. Hoping at that point another E28 finds its way into your garage with yet another vision.
cek
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Re: Minerva: The S54 powered, better than new, daily driver

Post by cek »

Bonsaibacker wrote: Dec 07, 2020 5:06 AM The pictures of Vlad were "tits" but I fully enjoy these action shots. Great stuff here Charlie- I struggle to figure out how you have the time to tinker and then document so thoroughly (both). Thank you for doing so and I dread the day you feel that you are done. Hoping at that point another E28 finds its way into your garage with yet another vision.
Well, the resurgence in activity is due to the fact that I don't currently have a job :rofl:
Ju@n
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Re: Minerva: The S54 powered, better than new, daily driver

Post by Ju@n »

Amazing work! Loved that fuse box.
Regarding the fuel indicator not showing full, I have the same issue, started when I switched clusters a long looong time ago, never went in to fix it to be honest :laugh: but if you do find the issue let me know hehe
Bonsaibacker
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Re: Minerva: The S54 powered, better than new, daily driver

Post by Bonsaibacker »

cek wrote: Dec 07, 2020 11:20 AM
Bonsaibacker wrote: Dec 07, 2020 5:06 AM The pictures of Vlad were "tits" but I fully enjoy these action shots. Great stuff here Charlie- I struggle to figure out how you have the time to tinker and then document so thoroughly (both). Thank you for doing so and I dread the day you feel that you are done. Hoping at that point another E28 finds its way into your garage with yet another vision.
Well, the resurgence in activity is due to the fact that I don't currently have a job :rofl:
Well now this is awkward... Lemonade from lemons?

Regardless you always seem to get a shit ton done and looking at your WIP chart it is not accidental.
cek
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Re: Minerva: The S54 powered, better than new, daily driver

Post by cek »

Bonsaibacker wrote: Dec 08, 2020 5:53 AM
cek wrote: Dec 07, 2020 11:20 AM
Bonsaibacker wrote: Dec 07, 2020 5:06 AM The pictures of Vlad were "tits" but I fully enjoy these action shots. Great stuff here Charlie- I struggle to figure out how you have the time to tinker and then document so thoroughly (both). Thank you for doing so and I dread the day you feel that you are done. Hoping at that point another E28 finds its way into your garage with yet another vision.
Well, the resurgence in activity is due to the fact that I don't currently have a job :rofl:
Well now this is awkward... Lemonade from lemons?

Regardless you always seem to get a shit ton done and looking at your WIP chart it is not accidental.
Spiked lemonade! For sure. ;-)
cek
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Re: Minerva: The S54 powered, better than new, daily driver

Post by cek »

I thought I had until Sunday to get everything done before transport to Utah. But the trucking company called and asked if they could pick it up Thursday. I agreed. Fortunately, they then slipped to tomorrow and I was able to crunch-mode and get it all done by last night.

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I left a few things undone so I'll have projects in Utah (ha!):

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Pulling the center console apart was motivated by the fact AC air wasn't coming out of top vents, just the sides of the evap box. I was flummoxed because it seemed like the fan was turning the wrong way, which made zero sense. After diving in I discovered (thanks to a hint by Kohler) the flappy doors on the top of the evap box were wedged and wouldn't open. Many many hours of futzing with this, trying to reinstall the box such that they wouldn't bind eventually led me to discover the evap box I was using had two broken tabs on the top!

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It's a good thing I built an E28 HVAC system fort over the years.

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Y'all will recall the time & expense I put into refurbishing the metal-old-style HVAC controls. After getting a set all together and "tits" I broke a tab again. Frustrated I looked at my collection again. I now feel extra special for noting that there are TWO versions of the old-style, cable only, controls. A newer version that's plastic. I have TWO of them here. How I didn't notice this before is beyond even me. So now:

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Once this was figured out the rest went together fairly easily. Even the weird fabric thing is finally on correctly.

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I have no idea where I got the brown one from, but it's nice to finally have an anthacite one in this car.

I clearly screwed up the wiring in the fuse box for the wipers. I noticed on my shakedown drive last night in the rain that the stalk works in reverse. It now goes: Off, Fast, Slow, Intermittent. This will be easy to fix when @galahad gets us all the final fuse box kits.

When I changed the valve cover gasket I damaged an injector o-ring. I replaced it (twice). I'm now very practiced at removing the fuel rail on this car.

I'll need to re-do the kick-panel install at some point because the stereo wiring bundles that I ran down the left side of the center console cause the center console to be too wide where the kick panel goes. On one hand, this makes the kick panel fit tightly which actually negates the need for the bottom left screw and makes it easier to install (it literally sicks in place). On the other hand, it is TOO tight and the upper screws are under more tension than I'd like. Plus this kick panel is not in great shape. Plus I decided to move the OBDII connector from the hole we cut down by the temp sensor to the glove box and now this one has a big hole down there. I may put a footwell LED down there like Vlad has...

I moved the OBD II sensor to the glove box because I found I didn't like having the USB cable run across the footwell to the laptop in the passenger seat.

These are the LED blinker bulbs with built in resitors so they don't trigger the fast-flash. Very, and I mean very, bright.

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Got the second key cut. I had bought a new blank from Blunt. Found a guy in van with a CNC cutting machine that will do steel. Perfect.

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Rear fogs weren't working because this GY/VI plug was not plugged in. I had previously stashed the business end away because I figured it was one of those underdash plugs that doesn't go to anything.

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Best of all, I got it all done in time for the transport to Utah this morning...

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Adam W in MN
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Re: Minerva: The S54 powered, better than new, daily driver

Post by Adam W in MN »

I really enjoy all your pictures and the storyline that accompanies it detailing the work involved.
muleskinner
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Re: Minerva: The S54 powered, better than new, daily driver

Post by muleskinner »

:bow:
cek
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Re: Minerva: The S54 powered, better than new, daily driver

Post by cek »

Safe and sound in Utah!

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Adam W in MN
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Re: Minerva: The S54 powered, better than new, daily driver

Post by Adam W in MN »

cek
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Re: Minerva: The S54 powered, better than new, daily driver

Post by cek »

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It's that sorta light that originally had me hooked on the color. Too bad in bright lights it can look washed out because I still think it's beautiful.
glowell222
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Re: Minerva: The S54 powered, better than new, daily driver

Post by glowell222 »

cek wrote: Dec 14, 2020 10:57 AM Safe and sound in Utah!

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I definitely prefer the Alpina wheels most. Is that your Studebaker truck?
cek
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Re: Minerva: The S54 powered, better than new, daily driver

Post by cek »

glowell222 wrote: Jan 21, 2021 12:05 AM Is that your Studebaker truck?
No, that was just on the rig along with Minerva.
glowell222
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Re: Minerva: The S54 powered, better than new, daily driver

Post by glowell222 »

cek wrote: Jan 21, 2021 1:26 PM
glowell222 wrote: Jan 21, 2021 12:05 AM Is that your Studebaker truck?
No, that was just on the rig along with Minerva.
It was cool to see them both together, and Minerva made the Stude look a little more cool with reflected glory.
mmk61
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Re: Minerva: The S54 powered, better than new, daily driver

Post by mmk61 »

How were you able to keep your cruise control functional with your s54 swap?
cek
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Re: Minerva: The S54 powered, better than new, daily driver

Post by cek »

mmk61 wrote: Feb 10, 2021 11:15 PM How were you able to keep your cruise control functional with your s54 swap?
Here's the deal - it is all theoretically possible and I have done all the work on Minerva, with the exception of hooking up one final wire.

Recall the S54 uses an electronic throttle and part of any swap is replacing the E28 go pedal with one from the E46. Thus there is no throttle cable. Cruise is controlled by the MSS54 ECU.

On E46 M3s the cruise control stalk communicates with the ECU via the CAN bus. While it's possible to get CAN bus in an E28 swap (I actually have it, but am not using it; via andrew: http://www.r3vlimited.com/board/showthread.php?t=275468) there's no easy way to get an E46 cruise stalk in an E28 steering column.

However, the Z3 M with the S54 has an analog cruise stalk! And for that application, BMW made this little bugger:

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Z3M Cruise Control Module: 65718380054

Z3M Cruise Control:
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E28 Cruise Control:
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This thread on r3v shows how it gets connected on an E30. Which is not very different than an E28 (E28 does not have a decel function, so you won't wire that up):
https://www.r3vlimited.com/board/forum/ ... rol-in-e30

In short:

On the big connector this is how you'd wire it up:
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Module pin 5 stays disconnected (would be used for the decelerate funhttp://www.tunerpro.net/ction)

For the smaller connector:
Pin 1 -> X60004 Pin 35 (DME)
Pin 2 -> X60004 Pin 27 (DME)
Pin 3 -> +12v (Fusebox)

Then you need to wire up the brake light switch, clutch switch, and speed signal.
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You also have to tweak your ECU programming, per that thread.

I've done all of that. However, there was one report that read

"I know the guy above said wiring up +12v to his brake light switch fried his DME, but apparently that's how it's done in the S54 Z3M"

I'm petrified to connect the output of the brake light switch to either pin 24 (or pin 34) because MSS54HP's are made of unobtainium and I haven't been able to find any definitive info that eases my concern.
cek
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Re: Minerva: The S54 powered, better than new, daily driver

Post by cek »

Finally, put a new hood badge on Minerva. I had a brand new one, but broke a pin on it. So bought another.

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I also bought a new rear badge because this one just bugs me.
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Then, I realized in order to remove this I need to pull the trunk lid liner out and probably the light and the lock mechanism. I don't really have the right tools here in Utah so I am going to do it another time.

The mirror mechanisms were no bueno. I didn't really inspect them before they were put on, and neither of them worked. I ordered new ones from Blunt (use the E34 part: 51161394107 as it is the same mechanism but labeled separately for the E28) and now they are tits.

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Coco in mirror is cuter than she appears.
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Then I went skiing.
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