Fünf Null Part XIII: Stereo Upgrades –or- “I Knew You Were Trouble”

“You belong with me,” I said to my V8-swapped M3 as I ripped down a backroad in rural Iowa. I thought back to December right before last Christmas when I first bought this M3, blown engine, rust, and all. It was a stark departure from the time after getting married when I thought to myself, “Man, an awesome project car is one thing we are never getting.” Back together after I made sparks fly by cramming a Ford 5.0 V8 under the hood, I couldn’t go fifteen minutes without thinking about the next step towards making this car mine. I approached each new challenge fearless, but enough with all of this pontificating, let’s talk about this labor of love. Story time! Read More

Fünf Null Part X: Everything Needed to Install a 5.0 V8 in your E36 M3 –or- “Total Assimilation Part 1”

Welcome back to another episode of This Old, Dilapidated, Beat-on, POS Car. Last time we assembled and wired up the ECU with a little help from our good friend Mr. Soldering Iron and his accomplice Toxic Lead Vapors. This week we’ll walk through how to mate a burly, brutish American engine with the lithe, willing German body of an M3. Read More

Fünf Null Part IX: The Final (ECU) Solution –or- “Das Megaspritzen”

The E36 M3: A masterpiece of engineering that could only have been created by the kind of mind able to focus on a singular purpose to the exclusion of all other consequences. Unfortunately, the example that I found had suffered unfathomable, intentional abuse at the hands of a ruthless tyrant that brought the engine to its knees faster than a central European country in September. So as usual, it was the Americans to the rescue with a crude but incredibly powerful, highly effective solution. More than midway though the project, I was tying up loose ends and approaching the day I could finally fire up the car and drive it. A sort of Drive Day, if you will. D-Day for short. Read More

Fünf Null Part VIII: Mounting the Engine –or- “Wednesday Night”

The internet is simultaneously home to an unfathomable wealth of information without limits and few good men that can appreciate that fact. Trusting something the internet tells you is risky business, far and away from a safe bet. But here I was, despite what the others said, about to try and fit a legend of an American V8 engine into a BMW M3; you don’t have to be Rain Man to know what a cocktail of bad ideas that would be, but I was on a mission. Impossible you say? I’m losin’ it? Until somebody taps me on the shoulder and shows me the color of money, I’m going to keep my eyes wide shut, breathe in the scent of fresh magnolias, and fall off the edge of tomorrow into oblivion. Tropic Thunder. Read More