| Chassis
- Engine - BMW V12 |
| Ron
Boudreau
- History of my engine.
I bought it from a salvage car dealer that I do a lot of business
with. He sold it to me for $700.00 if I took it out of the car.
It was in a 88 BMW 850 that burnt from the firewall back, the opposite
of what a firewall is suppose to be for.
It is a pig in a poke. I don't know what the mileage is or how
well it ran. There were two factors in its favor though, it turned
over by had easily and after removing a valve cove the inside looks
clean and there is no detectable ware on the cam shaft lobes. So
I am hopeful. |
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| As for the cosmetics I spent a month cleaning and painting the engine.
On the air boxes they were originally cast aluminum with BMW raised
letters in the middle. I files off the letters and made a flat center
section. To get a Lamborghini name plate I scanned in the name from
one of my books to get the correct font and then I kept adjusting
the size until it looked like a good fit. Then I printed out two copies
and glued them on a 1/8 in. thick piece of aluminum and cut them out
on a band saw. Then it took about two hours with jeweler files getting
the details correct and "WALA" I had Lambo name plates.
I'd like to say it was easy but it is tedious and time consuming.
I next sanded and polished the fins on the air plenums and painted
the runners black and in between the ribs red. I was originally going
to paint the valve covers yellow and tried one to see how it would
look. It screamed and detracted to the overall look so I settled on
what you see in the pictures which I think is a little more refined.
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The BMW is a 5 liter 300 hp engine; it has two single
over head cams, chain driven.
It is a low tech engine with two valves per cylinder. The right
and left cylinder head and intake manifold are the same part. BMW
uses end plates the make one a left and the other a right.
This also allowed me to put the throttle bodies on the rear of
the engine to look authentic. It also saved BMW a lot of money not
having to design a left and right heads and air plenums. |
| Something else they economized on was the ignition and fuel injection
system. They essentially used two separate systems from their six
cylinder engine and treated each bank as a single six, real cute but
it worked. To use this engine it will be necessary to use one of two
after market fuel management systems. One like the one on the CCD
car at Carlisle and the other an Electromotive unit that also eliminates
the distributors. I haven't decided which way to go yet. Fortunately
both units come with there own harness and sensors because a lot of
mine were burnt. The throttle bodies have to be modified to use mechanical
linkages the stock engine used two electric motors in a fly by wire
approach. Like a linkage would have cost more that two motors, all
the positioning and driving electronics for the motors and pedal. |
| You can find these engines on Car-Part.com
from $700 up to an average unburnt one for around $3500. You can
see by the number of burnt ones BMW has a problem in this area.
At these prices I consider it a throw away engine. It would cost
more to rebuild one than it would cost to buy one from salvage.
One other note, like the Chevy Vega, Cadillac North Star and Mercedes
V8's and 12's the piston rings run on the aluminum cylinder bores
(no sleeves).
The Aluminum alloy in this engine has silicon mixed in and after
machining the bores the aluminum is etched out to leave a silicon
surface, so re- boring would be a high-tech operation if it can
be done at all. |
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| Here are some pictures of my BMW V12 cleaned and Lamified
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| I cut the Lamborghini name plates out of 1/8' thick aluminum
and stuck them on. I can asure you they do not come with a BMW engine. |
| Adapter Plate
This is an easy way to get an adapter plate.
Buy a bell housing in this case on from a BMW auto trans and then have
it machined down to what ever clearance you need to.
In the case of the BMW it has a 13" starter ring that must be incorporated
on the new flywheel and its surface is approximately 7/8" from the
engine mounting flange.
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| So before attaching an adapter plate for the transmission
you need a spacer with the correct hole pattern.
What better place to get one then from BMW. I bought a bell housing and
had it machined down to 1" thick. |
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| Now all one has to do is to transfer punch the hole pattern
to a plate and then do the same with the transmission to the adapter plate.
Cut out the inside clearance on the adapter plate and you now have an
adapter.
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| The bell housing also has the two locating hollow pins
that precisely locate it to the engine. All other holes on the housing
are .040 over the bolt size to allow for a great deal dimensional variance.
They are actually drilled tapered holes with the small end near the bolt
head side. Another marvel of BMW engineering. |
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| I am using the spacer to base my own spacer design on.
It will work on the same principal but since I will be able to do anything
I want, I will add mounting ears extending out the sides to mount header
and accessory supports to. |
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This is the engine and trans finally bolted together with
the adapter plate.
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Here is a view you don’t usually see.
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| Cliff
Brown
I decided to install the BMW V12 5.0i engine (300bhp/450Nm torque) the
specification convinced me this was the way to go.
I found out the engine was little larger than the Rover V8. To get the
rover to produce the same power as the BMW would cost three times the
price of the BMW engine. |
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| I did not know the problems I had in store fitting the
BMW engine. The engine was supplied with the loom cut and most of the
sensors missing, I had to work out what I had and how I was going to solve
the problems. In November 2001, I ordered the Bentley workshop manual
from the USA, we all know what happened after 11th September 2001.
Not ever worked on the BMW V12 engine before I tried to get help from
all the BMW forums I could find on the net. Everyone was saying the same
thing to get the engine to work without the complete loom and all the
electrical components connected were impossible, and would cost about
£14,000 ($20,000). Eight months of wiring diagram coming through
my ears EUREKA the engine revs.
The engine now starts from the key, but running in limp home mode. I
need to get a diagnostic machine to read the codes coming from the Engine
Management. |
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Gene
Mosmeyer
I need to take some better pics of the engine during the day.
This is the best one I have. The plate is what I used to adapt the intake
runners to the heads. The other plate is the process for the header flanges.
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This is the beginning stages of the tunnel-ram intake. If you look between
the runners, you can see the aluminum plate that holds the runners to the
head. There are 1/16" flanges welded to the bottom of the tubes that
the head plates torque dow on. I also had to make my own gaskets.
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Using 1/16" flat plate a floor was made and holes were matched to the
tops of the runners. Keeping everything straight and square, the rest of
the box was welded together.
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After the outside demensions were verified, a band saw was used to cut the
flanges 3-at a time. The aluminum plate for the flanges, carb plate and
oil housing, has all been 3/8". The intake runners and exhaust tubes
are 1 3/4" All to help keep things simple.
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| The paint was sandplasted from the valve covers. The intake, distributor
housings,distributor adapters,head housinsa and valve covers were all powder
coated. It was very time consuming to custom program the D.F.I. system on
my last project. I decided to keep this one mechanical. The distributors
are 6cyl. Chevy H.E.I units and it will have a 6-pack of Weber 40mm I.D.F.
carbs. The engine runs on a test stand and the next step is to mount it
in the frame and build the headers.
If it looks too tall and too long for a kit car, it is. It will be installed
into a Pro-Touring 1968 Camaro. If the dictributors were mounted to the
back side of the heads and a shorter box was made on top of the intake,
a large D.C.O.E. side draft between the distributors might work in a Lambo.
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Godwin
Just thought you would like to know a basic BMW V12 has 3 ECUS, 2 for
each 6 cycliners, 1 to control the two.
Drive by wire control EML, and the drive by wire, gas pedal. Also V12
has a tendancy to overheat, that is melting wire harness and stuff.. I
would suggest if someone is serious going do a V12.. they mind as well
rip the whole electronics out and start a new from people like MoTec..
which seems to have a 12cylinder application. |
| Links: |
| Haltech in Australia make an engine
manangement system which may make the job of managing the V12 easier than
re-building the mess supplied by BMW with the original. E11-new |
1FASTBULL
New Member posted 07 July 2002 09:16 PM
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Any information on the overall dimensions of a BMW V12 engine would be greatly
appreciated. In particular the length vs SBC.
Also has anyone mated this engine configuration to a Porche 915 or G50-50
unit?
Thanks |
Ron Boudreau
New Member posted 08 July 2002 12:34 PM
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At the widest point which is at the two distributor caps and as mesured
with out wires in the caps it is 20.75 wide. It is 29.25 long id you cut
off the viscus fan clutch. At the oil pan it is 16.5 and it is 26 high mesured
at the top of the air plenums. As far as the trans look at the pictures
on Lambolounge of the CCD car they mated it to an Audi 5000. I am still
vasilating on a trans. I looked at the Renault shown on Lamborghinireplica.com
but it looks too small to handle the power. The reason this trans looked
desirable was the bell housing is removable and would make it easy to adapt.
The problem with the Audi is the bell housing is small in diameter and the
BMW flywheel is 13" in diameter so the to retain the BMW starter and
ring gear the trans must be steped out passed the flywheel before you get
to the adapter plate. This steped out the trans 2" on the CCD version
and placed the axels at a acute angle. |
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