Engine swap...progress finally!

[RonDwyer]

After a long summer of house related issues I finally found time to put the short block in with bellhousing, clutch and thanks to PNP I found a 5 speed for the project.

The head is ready for re-assembly at the machine shop and I may take a few hours shot at doing some porting. I recall seeing an article here about it.

The B50 engine has a beautiful oil pan and nice accessory mounts, but I forgot to determine if it cleared the sway bar. That also meant the oil pump needed some work as well. I found a nice donor at the bone yard, with my new 5-speed and was pleasantly surprised at how clean it was inside. Guy must have blown a head gasket because the residual oil was milky. The oil pump however was brand new. Pop the sway bar, remove screws and the works was now mine.

Here's a few pics of the install so far. The incorrect balancer is still on the front, it is my crankshaft holder for tightening the front nut after I weld a suitably long bar on it. I got it to 150 so far on the torque wrench.

The hydraulic assist brakes have been a favorite of mine, they free up a lot of space under the hood.

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[Adam Gravois]

The hydraulic assist brakes have been a favorite of mine, they free up a lot of space under the hood.

Wait, what? Did you really get rid of the big brown brake booster? Do you mind telling me what you installed instead? Is it that silver doodad in picture 3?

Nice build! Good luck with the rest of it.

[RonDwyer]

I first learned about the hydraulic assist brakes on the large sedans of the 80's and worked on them for a few clients. Basically your vacuum booster goes away and is replaced with the silver booster in the pictures. Years back I saw the solution to a motronic manifold on my 74 CS coupe. The brake trick had been to put a long skinny Tii booster in. The easier solution was to go get the brake parts off a reasonable donor car for $100. Basically you throw away to old booster and put in the little replacement piece. Then there is a large hydraulic fluid reservoir, the new pump and a valve body. I just unplug the valve body sensor connections, there is nothing in an E12 or E9 to display any pressure anomaly warnings so the sensors are redundant. Suddenly one realizes there can be spare room over the starter. The only part that ever fails on this is the accumulator. It looks like a bomb in a Bullwinkle cartoon. Everyone called it the bomb. I found the set up to be very trouble free, just like on any E28.

This was my test mule before my ex forced my hand in the divorce, it still lives in Sebastopol.

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[Jamie]

I would love to see a write up with pics and parts on this! A how to...it sounds like a superior set up all the way around. Vacuum boosters for these cars are pretty pricey from what I've found. Just a thought! Thanks, Jamie