Well were in the process of swapping a 94 LT1 into my 92 bmw 325i.

The mounts, tranny crossmember, steering, and driveshaft are all finished and installed.

Now were getting ready to start on the wiring and this is where we might have some trouble as my father is really into muscle cars and doesnt know much about fuel injection.

I have the complete LT1 wiring harness along with the stock ECU. Can i just use that harness and ecu, hook it up to power and ignition and be good to go as far as wiring goes? Or should i get a custom harness and Standalone ECU?

I'm going to use the stock body harness in the bmw as they use a seperate computer to run the body functions. I already tested the power windows, locks, sunroof, etc and it all works even without the engine finished.

Another question i have about vacuum. Again, the only V8's my father and i have worked on were in his 67 and 70 camaro's, which doesnt really involve vacuum lines. Do i have to run all of the vac lines, or can some be eliminated?

I'm going to pickup a shop manual for the LT1 soon, can anyone give me a recommendation on a good book?

TIA
-Chris

 

The stock harness and ECU will work but you'll probably need to eliminate the vats.
Other than the EGR, if it has a vacuum port, hook it up.
I have a haynes manual, but from what I here the chiltins is better.

Sounds like a sweet project my the way. Any pics? Did it fit under the hood with minor or major mods?

 

Thanks for the help!

It fits under the hood fine, the I6 that comes in the 3 series is huge and actually takes up more room than the V8.

I have some pics, ill have to upload them to my server. The car is filthy in the pics, as i havent had much time to clean it cause of school, work, and the car being over a hour away (thats going to change in the next week! )

 

Ok, here are the pics so far....

Engine mounted - In this photo you can see the issue i have with the relocated steering. We had to move the steering rack to make it work and now the sway bar hits the steering rack. So if i were to keep this steering setup, i would have to use a different sway bar which might be a big pain in the butt.
Engine Mounted

Relocated steering
Relocated Steering

Transmission Crossmember with custom driveshaft installed.
Crossmember

Drivers Side Mount

Pass side mount

 

Oh, here is a link to a guy who swapped a LS1 in his 318ti.

http://www.nash8503.com/index.html

 

if you get one of the helms manuals (the best one there is) it will give you a full break down of the wiring so you can see what needs to be spliced to what to make stuff work, just order one for whatever year motor/harness/pcm you have. they are kind of expensive though, around 120 bucks

 

That is a WAY EXPENSIVE KIT!

 

I have been telling my buddy he needs a LT1 in his Z3 to keep up

I would that thought you'd get all the modding out of the way when it was out, LT's, E-WP, etc.

Cool project though. Did you need heavier front springs and shocks?

-Dustin-

 

sweet jebus soon there will be a lt1 under every hood

 

Take a look at what Painless has to offer:

http://www.painlessperformance.com/a...og_pg17-19.pdf

P/N 60502 looks like what you need. It solves the VATS problem.

Here's the complete installation manual:

http://www.painlessperformance.com/M...0517Manual.pdf


As far as LT1 shop manuals go, spring for the Helms (factory) stuff for the car model and year of your engine. You might be able to finsd a used copy on e-Bay.

 

Thanks for all the help guys, im really glad i came on here and asked a few questions!

Do you guys have any idea how much that harness costs?

 

Forget that special harness. All the vats system uses is a resistor in the key, measure the resistance with a multi-meter and just solder a resistor of the same value to the vats wires on your harness. If you google around you should find a chart with the different vats resistance values, pick the one closest to what you read off yours and use that value when buying a resistor.



Mike

:edit: Goto this site http://s-series.org/Sections-article57-p1.html and scroll down to the bypass section.

 

You might want to add a piece of u channel or something to stiffen that mount a little. Look beefy enough but some type of ridge would stiffen it a little.

 

Try www.summitracing.com

 

hey, how you doin?
very intressting swap
looking for a roller to put my LT1 in it,
BMWs are very cheap around here, could you post me pictures of your progress to me if you still got them, thanks