Z4-forum.com

Hi,

I’ve been into BMw’s for years and have owned quite a few. I also love building/modifying cars and have had an S85 V10 sat under my bench for years. Well now it’s got a home in the form of an E85 Z4.

It’s early days yet but I have most of the bits I need and the mock-up engine is positioned correctly in the car and I have the hard points around crossmember/rack figured out. Lots still to do though!

Anybody else on here done the same swap?

Sorry, I’m not much of a forum user but I’ll do my best to post a few updates if it’s of interest.

Cheers,
Jason.

Well done!

Welcome! Looking forward to seeing more of this

Looks mega . Good luck

It’s been done elsewhere but not on the forum- will be great to see this build come along!

Remember manhart doing one years ago . https://youtu.be/WubVG3qqJk4?si=Z1-cfoicRRuHqq-2

Love a build

Someone on here did one years ago - here's a link:- viewtopic.php?t=55073&hilit=V10

Sounds like a fantastically mad project - I'd love to see some updates.

Welcome to the forum. Please do post up progress will be watching out for this build.

Insanity on four wheels......I like that

Thanks all, hoping to have the engine mounts, gearbox mounts and crossmember all finished by Christmas, then I can start on the long list of other jobs! I’ll post a few updates and photo’s once I get to that point.

Most important mod will be a bit of tape over the traction control light or it will drive you mad.

Stevie up near Edinburgh did, sounded an looked amazing

Stevie up near Edinburgh did, sounded an looked amazing

Quick update.

The engine and gearbox are positioned, crossmember is modified and the engine and gearbox mounts are fabricated and fitted. The crossmember and gearbox mount need final welding and a couple of extra bits fitting when I get my Tig sorted. I reckon that’s about 40 hours work in fabrication so far. I got hold of a complete Z4M rear suspension/diff/subframe, so that’s in. Next job is to measure up for the propshaft. I have a Z4M one to shorten. I wanted to use the Z4M rack, which I have, so that’s made my life more complicated getting all that to fit. I ended up dropping it 30mm so will need some bump steer correction track rod end drop pins to get me back to stock geometry.

I had to notch the chassis rails on both sides to clear the exhaust and also for the S85 AC compressor.

I trimmed the bracing out of the middle of a stock bonnet and it clears the plenums - just - so the Z4M bonnet I got off a forum member should give me a bit more space once suitably trimmed as they have a bigger hump in the middle.

I found a German company who reprogrammed the stock S85 ECU so that it works standalone. They also re-coded some of the CAN data so that it talks directly to the car. The engine loom needed a few mods on the power side and there is a small adaptor loom to connect the Z4 chassis loom to the engine loom and ECU, so fingers crossed that should all work as planned. The guy who did it is an ex Bosch Motorsport engineer so I’m confident it will all function as planned. He’s done about 20 standalone S85 installs this way so this isn’t new territory.

Still a massive list of things to get done but it’s propshaft and steering linkage next. The latter looks fun!

Cheers,
Jason.