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Just a quick one. Spent today finishing off the marlin. It's off to Marlin in Exeter on Friday for suspension set up and moving the seatbelt mounts prior to them taking it for IVA on Wednesday the 19th of October. It's far from perfect but I think it's a good build, and will be the first 5 series donor to be put through IVA and registered. Never mind its got a whopping 3.2 M3 lump chipped for 330 BHP!
3 year long build, but I had work get in the way, and had breaks over the winter plus lots of unforeseen issues with the 5 series donor elements of the build!
Yup s50b32 M3 Evo engine, very very tight squeeze! I had to chop of a fair few bits of the engine, including relocating the alternator to where the secondary air pump used to sit. I think there is only one other 3.2 M3 sportster that has been built.
Awesome, that will be very exciting with that much power!!
Ought to be fine in the dry, damp roads are exciting with just under 200bhp available if you're too liberal with the throttle... I used to get the wheels spinning in 3rd before I got some new tyres
None of the issues were horrific chassis changing mods, just loads of little things, the steering column took a lot of work to get fitted correctly and I had to make a new extension shaft running through the engine bay. The rear shock mounts needed some modification to allow the coilovers to fit without sitting on a massive angle and locking up on the rose joints, the e39 wheels have a wider wheel base so they sat around an inch outside of the wheel arches, so I tried to use 3 series wheels only to find the spigots on the rear hub have a larger OD than the wheels would take, so I had to machine 0.5mm off the spigot OD. Also the steering column switches on the e39 are for a plc and won't control relays, so I had to blend together the best bits of an e36 column onto the e39 column so I could retain my steering set up but use the switches from and older 3 series!!
I am only an hour from marlin so I have been working with them to resolve most of the issues in future builds... so now they make the rear wings wider to allow for the increase in offset!
