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Interesting swap, and cleanly done, but the E30 poses challenges that are hard to ignore:
Doing a race car build makes it easier because you can ignore some of the fitment problems and hack away things like the firewall, brake booster, etc. Personally I would have cut the firewall out, set the engine back another 6", and made for a better weight distribution. Its a race car with a custom dash anyway.
There's a well documented E30 LS1 street car build-up on bimmerforums ("garrett and steve") but the mods they do to the strut tower to remotely mount the brake booster/mc are more fab work than most want to tackle, and the engine location is on the nose. Not a swap Vorshlag will be tackling.
Interesting swap, and cleanly done, but the E30 poses challenges that are hard to ignore:
- The engine bay is so short that most of the engine sits well in front of the front axle centerline
- Engine bay is very narrow
- The brake booster impedes the LS1 engine location greatly (notice - they removed it and went to manual racing brake MCs)
- The rear suspension is crap
Doing a race car build makes it easier because you can ignore some of the fitment problems and hack away things like the firewall, brake booster, etc. Personally I would have cut the firewall out, set the engine back another 6", and made for a better weight distribution. Its a race car with a custom dash anyway.
There's a well documented E30 LS1 street car build-up on bimmerforums ("garrett and steve") but the mods they do to the strut tower to remotely mount the brake booster/mc are more fab work than most want to tackle, and the engine location is on the nose. Not a swap Vorshlag will be tackling.