Engine-BMW - Lambo Lounge

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.

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.

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.

Here are some pictures of my BMW V12 cleaned and Lamified




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.
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.
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.
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.
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.

This is the engine and trans finally bolted together with the adapter plate.

Here is a view you don’t usually see.

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.

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.

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.

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.
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.
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.
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.

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

The following information (in the Red outline) is from the Diablo Support Forum.

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.

Although my information comes from various builders and sources, if you want any information contact me. The photographs used on this site are used with permission, if you want to use any, contact them through the various links on this site. I did and you can see the results!