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Mark's S54 Touring Build

72K views 386 replies 39 participants last post by  ///Mark_D 
#1 ·
I'm looking to join the club with the rest of you guys who are building (or have built) an S54 swapped touring. I'd been searching for a while to find the right car to start with and was recently able to grab this one from Virginia and drive it 1200 miles back to Wisconsin:

https://forum.e46fanatics.com/showpost.php?p=18402439&postcount=2344







It took a really long time to find what I was looking for but I was finally able to pick up the car that checked (almost) all my boxes. Red, manual trans, power seats, xenons and sport package. Even though I'll be swapping in a S54, 6 speed manual, and M3 subframes I wanted to be able to enjoy this car a little bit as it is before tearing it completely apart. Plus I figured starting with a car that already had a manual trans would save me the work of swapping over a manual pedal box and adding the clutch hydraulics. Power seats were also a must, because as far as I know cars with manual seats are not prewired to easily swap in power seats.

The only major downside to this car is that it has a grey interior, so my latest project has been tracking down black interior parts to swap over. Instead of doing a full black interior I'm thinking I will keep the grey seats, and do grey/black door cards similar to the factory 2-tone option you could get in europe. Basically it'll be like a US spec natural brown 2-tone look but with grey instead of brown.

Here's a euro spec grey/black interior LEDER CHAMELEON/KIESELGRAU (V3KA)





For now I'm storing the car in my garage over winter and driving my 325i sedan while I stockpile parts for the touring. I'm also on the lookout for a good donor M3... I'm lucky to have copart and IAA auction sites across the road from where I work so I'm keeping a close eye on a few salvage websites.

For the exterior I basically plan on giving it the ZHP treatment w/ Mtech front/rear bumpers & skirts with either the style 135 ZHP wheels or possibly the staggered 18" style 189 5 spoke wheels from the E9x. My '04 sedan has the sport package 17" style 119's and I dig the way those look, so the 189's are very similar but a size up.

Major respect and credit to all those who have done this engine swap before and have documented so much invaluable info here on the board. I'm looking forward to all the work, problem solving, and challenges this project will bring. My goal with this thread is to do as much documentation as possible starting with what's essentially Phase 1: Parts hording and interior disassembly. I'll get into that in future posts.
 
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#3 ·
Yeah, I didn't either until recently when I was searching for black touring headliner/pillar trim parts out of European salvage cars. Europe got all kinds of cool stuff on their high end option cars like the M-Sport package, but also a lot of less desirable stuff on the base package cars. Lots of cars with manual HVAC controls and cloth manual seats.

If you're curious there are a bunch of parts cars listed here where pretty much everything is for sale:
Overview of BMW/ MINI cars for recycling

I was able to get the A-B-C-D pillars in black plus and all the handles, clips, rear seatbelt trim pieces, rear window vents, and some other misc touring parts for $180 plus 60 shipping to the US. I would have got the full headliner in black too but it requires freight shipping which is silly expensive.

I was also looking into buying the interior door cards with the black/grey inserts like in those photos I posted, but would have had to buy the full interior including seats and center console.

https://www.schmiedmann.com/en/bmw-E46/1970470-used?product=R12509




Shipping a full pallet from Holland freight to the US was around $650 so I had to pass on that deal, plus I had no use for another set of grey seats.

My plan is to buy a set of black interior panels from a local salvage yard and swap over the grey inserts from my existing panels. There are a few good DIY threads on the board and it doesn't seem too difficult.
 
#7 · (Edited)
Today my box of black pillar trim and headliner parts arrived from Schmiedman in Europe. During the unboxing and unwrapping of all the individual pieces my wife asked me if my excitement was going to last longer than 4 hours and if she needed to call my doctor.

Yeah, I was excited.





One cool thing I didn't realize when I ordered the parts was that the sun visors are fabric and don't have the airbag warnings that the US spec cars have. The A pillars are also slightly narrower than the US spec A pillars, but apparently still fit without any issues. Worst case I'd just have to find a set from a wrecked ZHP to use instead. The black C pillars and upper headliner finishers are Europe only parts that were on M Sport wagons that the US market never got.





My PASoft cable also finally showed up today from China (took like 2 weeks ordering from https://www.xcar360.com/bmw-scanner-1-4-0-car-diagnostic-interface-tool-code-reader.html

I also did some more digging at a couple of local salvage yards today and picked up a homelink garage door opener for $2 and a set of 4 black interior door panels for $100 including all the HK speakers, window/mirror switches and trim pieces.





The LH front panel had a busted speaker grille so I'll have to grab one from another car next time I'm at a different salvage yard.

 
#11 ·
That was a great deal. I got my off eBay in Portugal. Paid somewhere around $350-375 shipped. The one thing that miffed me is he didn’t send the alarm sensor cover. I ended up getting one off eBay fairly cheaply though. Still need the sunroof slide and trim, and the sunroof motor cover.
 
#21 ·
Anybody ever have any luck finding out where a salvage car ends up after being sold on auction sites like Copart or IAA?

I saw this 330i with Mtech side skirt panels sell this week and was hoping to figure out what salvage yard it went to so I could go pull them off. They are extra tough to find in electric red. I called Copart in Milwaukee but was told it was sold through a broker and the lady wouldn't give out the info. Any ideas on how I might go about tracking this thing down?

 
#24 ·
That's a really good idea, I just checked and nothing on it so far, but considering it just sold i'm guessing it would take a while to actually make it to a salvage yard / pick and pull type place.

Not the car you're looking for but I found one similar searching ror rocker moldings on car-part.
https://cpprohomeoh.car-part.com/im...001 BMW 330 i Rocker Moulding-Stock# 160055#1
Wow, thanks for finding this one. I'll definitely hit this place up and see if I can get more info. It's tough to tell from the photos but the LH side looks like it might have gotten crunched along with the front fender.

It's been tough to find in red since the skirts would have to come off of a 330i with the MTech body kit but not on a ZHP since those got painted Imola red instead of Electric/Japan red.

Worst case I'll just have to find a set of side skirts in a different color and paint them with the front and rear bumpers.
 
#26 ·
You make a pretty good point there. Salvage yard cars especially seem to get a lot more damage on these rocker panels from getting moved around by a fork lift. Seems like the first thing to go are the wheels due to the aluminum scrap value. Once those are off cars are left sitting there on the ground.

I'm hoping to get down to southern WI sometime this week and get a few other interior parts. This guy parting out cars may also have a ZHP that I could get the Mtech sills from.
 
#27 · (Edited)
Parts hording continues...

Last week I met up with a seller I found on craigslist to get a bunch of parts for my black interior swap. I pulled pretty much everything rearward of the back seats. A few pieces were missing like the cargo cover roll shade and one of the RH lower trunk inserts, but other than that it was a pretty complete car. It was super rusty and had somewhere near 245,000 miles but the inside was in good shape.



One thing I'm not sure how I'll address yet for my 2 tone interior swap is how to get the black seat backs onto my current gray seats. I want the interior to look like a factory natural brown interior but gray. The rear seats don't look like they are easily disassembled to be able to swap over the black seat backs I have onto my existing gray seats. It's looking like I may have to just dye the carpet sections on the back to match the rest of the rear cargo area. Here's how the factory natural brown interior looks where the brown seats meet the black carpet. Anybody have any other ideas on how to accomplish this but w/ gray seats?

 
#29 · (Edited)
The more i'm looking into it the more it seems like the only real option is to dye the rear section black unless I want to start cutting threads and sewing things back together.

I posted a link above to a factory set of gray/black 2 tone interior that was sold in Europe (https://www.schmiedmann.com/en/bmw-E...product=R12509) and you can see in the picture below how it's two different colors of leather sewn together where the carpet attaches.

I considered buying this whole interior but it looks like this euro option had a different color gray than the US and the $1000 w/ shipping to get it to the US didn't make sense to my budget.

I'm interested to see how your beige/black interior looks when it's done. Finding a donor car for the black trunk parts didn't turn out to be too bad, but I could have just gotten lucky with my timing.
 

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#30 ·
Kind of a tangent, but I***8217;ve been wondering how you get the forward side panels off (the ones that cover the wheel humps). I haven***8217;t spent a lot of time researching as it***8217;s not a big priority, but it wasn***8217;t super obvious when I looked a couple of months ago
 
#31 ·
Kind of a tangent, but I've been wondering how you get the forward side panels off (the ones that cover the wheel humps). I haven't spent a lot of time researching as it's not a big priority, but it wasn't super obvious when I looked a couple of months ago
You have to unbolt seemingly every other part in the interior. It's a PITA, and why a lot of guys go out of their way to change upper shock mounts out to something that can be accessed from outside the car when they do it.
 
#33 · (Edited)
Not much for updates here lately besides more parts gathering. I've also been picking up a bunch of extra parts at the junk yard for cheap selling those on eBay to fund purchasing more parts for my actual build. So far I've made a few hundred bucks selling stuff and offset the cost of my wagon build a little. I'm out hunting in the yards for wagon parts anyway so it's pretty easy to grab extra stuff that I think will sell.

The other day my wife was out of town and I finally got a picture of my sedan and the wagon parked next to each other in the garage. Not really a flattering pic by any means, but that will have to wait until spring when the road salt is gone.

 
#35 · (Edited)
Not much for updates lately, just spending more time in the local salvage yards (weather permitting) picking parts. My parts hoarding pile has grown quite a bit and I've been making a few bucks selling stuff on eBay.

I also created some stainless steel mounting tabs to fix a few interior parts. These are designed to glue in place on the back of the interior hatch trim pieces to replace the broken plastic tabs. I used some 3M WindoWeld adhesive and pretty sure the glue is stronger than the plastic it's adhered to. I made the rectangular base of the tab the same size as the witness mark from the injection molding tooling on the back side of the interior panels so it's easy to line up where they need to go. I'll try and get some better photos posted so you guys can see what I mean.





I'm also planning on heading down to Chicago sometime this week to get some MTech side skirts and possibly a few other parts. Hopefully going to hit a few few salvage yards along the way too and see if I can find more E46's.
 
#38 · (Edited)
I finally got a chance to do some work on the Wagon this week.

The seats are all slathered up with Leatherique and I parked the car out in the sun to let it soak in and float up all the dirt and grime. If you're not familiar w/ this product it's awesome stuff and cleans and conditions leather like nothing else. The follow up is to use the Leatherique Pristine Clean cleaner to wipe away all the dirt and grime that is released.

I've pretty much got all the parts I need for the 2-tone interior swap minus one rear trunk panel on the RH side that goes over the top of the battery, and I also still need black carpets. There are lots of junk yard cars around but they've been sitting so long that the carpets are all trashed. I gotta find a fresh car in the yard w/ black interior sometime this summer.

Most of this winter I've been hitting up the salvage yards for other parts and extra stuff to sell on eBay. I've made a pretty decent chunk of money to put towards buying the donor M3 for my swap. If anybody needs a full factory alarm system (Ultrasonic sensor, Tilt Sensor and Siren) I've got about a dozen sets of parts that are ready to go.

Anyway, I'm hoping to start posting updates more regularly now that it's finally warmed up. I think the next thing I'm going to do is modify the black door panels I have to swap in the gray leather inserts from my stock set of door panels.

I'm hoping to get the license plates for this thing soon so I can actually drive it. I got the registration in the mail the other day but the personalized plates take a couple of weeks. I probably shouldn't have waited so long to send in all the paperwork :tsk:

 
#39 · (Edited)
Found another wagon in a local salvage yard for pulling a few more parts. This one is a 2000 323i in silver w/ gray interior.

I wasn't allowed to pull any parts myself but I was allowed to take a walk (supervised) through the yard and make a list of parts I wanted them to pull for me. They also have a few salvage E46 M3's, all were SMG cars and the engines have already been pulled and sold. Two were convertibles and the other was a hard top w/ sunroof so I'm having them pull the black sunroof shade w/ trim, front upper console and alarm cover for my black interior swap. I'm still on the hunt for my own donor M3 to buy on Copart / IAAI that isn't half way across the country.

I also FINALLY got my license plates on Friday so I can legally drive my car now. It took the WI DMV a full 6 weeks to issue the plates.

Anyway, here are some pics of that salvage 323i. I should have taken some pics of the M3's too but I was trying to be quick since I had a guy literally babysitting me as I walked through the yard.





EDIT:

Oh yeah, and I also picked up a set of style 189 wheels last week from a guy on craigslist for only $150. Eventually I'm going to get some style 135 (ZHP) wheels, but for the price I couldn't turn these down. A couple have some pretty decent curb rash, but nothing that can't be fixed. I really like the style 119's that came on my sedan and the 189's are pretty similar but 18". I think they originally came on E90 335i's w/ sport package.

 
#40 ·
Hi.
Makes me happy to see people doing serious reparation and modification on the Touring of E46.
I'm my self a Touring persona, I own:
1 Alpina B3 Touring Silver Met, Manual, sunroof.

1 320i Touring 2003 Silver Met, Full MSpec II, with Sports suspension 150000 km, My daily driver.

1 330Xi Touring 2002 Topaz Blue, 2 tone door cards (black/white) now undergoing transfer to my daily driver.
Just mounted all new bushings in the rear suspension, and about to change rear front wishbone bushing and struts and both front driveshafts
before prep for sale. I bought this car to take the complete Harman Kardon system including the cable stock under the floor mats and behind
door cards to upgrade my Alpina. The 330Xi after diet now has a standard C53 stereo system without any amplifier and no more speakers in
the rear doors and stock black door cards.
While I was working on this I started to really like the 2 tone door cards in the 330Xi, and now they are in my daily driver and perhaps I transfer them on to my Alpina
in the future, but I have more wild ideas for my Alpina, I want the Extended leather and blue/green stitching door cards. I have manage to source black handles with extended
leather, they are very rare for Sedan/Touring in Europe.

1 320i Touring 2001 Pre facelift Topaz Blue, 310000 km my friend and me bought this car for $350 and it was still in MOT and taxed. But was in limp mode for the
automatic gearbox, only 4'th gear was usable. Drove it home 3 hour, worked on it for 2 month when we had the time to spare, found no fault with gearbox, ordered
new databox on Ebay for $17 for the gearbox and VOILA, now works extremely well. Ripped out the complete HK sound system in this car also to use later in my friends Alpina B3 touring.
This car is now prepped for sale to a friend.
yes, we both own Alpina B3 touring, and they are both 354 Silver Metallic, and we did't know each other before we meet in the scrap yard looking for parts for the Alpina's.
His Alpina is a Automatic with no sunroof, but his car is in crazy super condition, 110000 km less then mine.

I think I can help finding parts for you US people who wane do similar swaps if we can solve the shipping issues. I have collected to many parts for my Alpina and other E46 Touring
during the last years. I also happens to have a scrap yard 10 min walking distance from my home in the middle of the city where I stay. lets just say I'm a regular customer there.
This scrapyard have webpage with 3 pictures of every car that comes in so you US people can even see what comes in and tell me if you need something.
In return I want some stuff from the US, like mirror with auto Dim, compass and HomeLink, none existent here in Sweden, also the receiver stuff for the HomeLink so I can open my garage door.
The round signs in the boot saying Prepared for Mobile Phone, Bluetooth and so on. OEM cable stock for the Auto Dim, Compass, Homelink out of a US car all the way down to the fuse box...

PM me.
 
#43 ·
Wow, that is a seriously impressive list of cars you've got. Thanks for offering your assistance with sourcing some of the hard to find parts that weren't available to the US market. The black headliners and related parts are tough to find here and it's even more difficult to arrange shipping from sellers overseas.

If you're looking for auto dim/homelink/compass mirrors I actually have a few of those that I've pulled from salvage cars. I can post some photos of what I've got. Typically these come from E90 generation 3 Series but plug directly into the E46 harness with no modifications. Most cars here are already are set up for the auto-dim feature.

If you need the full headliner harness for the mirror/homelink module in the headliner I could probably pull that from one of the salvage E46's. I didn't realize that these were not options outside of the US. I've also got the rain/light sensors that you'd need if you're looking to retrofit the rain sensing wipers.
 
#41 · (Edited)
Holy crap, I have your car's sibling!



It's not a manual sadly, but it was too good to pass up. ZSP, ZCW, ZPP, black leather interior, one owner Florida car, not a M56/SULEV. The only downside is that it's an automatic. Anyway, love what you're doing with yours! I am also planning on S54 swapping mine.

Currently in the process of accruing parts to swap the headliner to to black/Alcantara, and sourcing Mtech2 parts. If you don't mind me asking, where did you find them in Chicago?
 
#42 ·
Awesome! You should post up some photos of your wagon. The auto to manual swap isn't that much extra work if you're already planning on doing an S54 swap. It's pretty much just a matter of changing out the pedal box and adding the clutch master cylinder. Fortunately there are quite a few manual salvage cars to pull parts from so you should have no trouble finding what you need if you choose to go that route.

I got all of my black headliner parts from Schmiedmann which is in Europe, but they ship to the US for relatively cheap. Check out this link for what they've currently got in stock. They part out a lot of euro BMW's. Some of which had the M-sport package and anthracite headliner.

https://www.schmiedmann.com/en/bmw-E46/Interior-seat-parts-and-trunk-c26-catu-ol

The only thing to keep in mind is that the A pillar covers on the European cars are slightly smaller than in the US due to different side curtain airbags. I'll probably end up buying a new set of black covers since the likelihood of finding a ZHP parts car to pull from is pretty slim.

I've been down to the Chicago area a few times to roam through the salvage yards, so if you're looking for places to check out try:

-Aurora U-Pull & Pay
-City Auto Wreckers
-Joliet U-Pull It
-Ashley's U-Pick-A Part

Interesting note about Ashley's, it's right across the street from the old Joliet prison where they filmed a The Blues Brothers.

The set of M-tech side skirts I got were from a guy that posted them on Craigslist in the Chicago area. I'm still looking for a MTechII front bumper, and the rear I'm going to order from the dealership.
 
#47 · (Edited)
Apparently it does need to be freight shipped but the price was still low enough that it made sense for me. $115 for headliner, all pillars, oh-**** handles, a couple other pieces and then $85 for freight to me. I'm psyched.

Somehow it would have been $300 freight for the black set which was strange... I mean it was a more comprehensive set of parts, included things like the sunroof cover and such but I can't imagine it wouldn't fit in the same package as what I bought. Plus it was $315 for the parts themselves so I'm happy with my deal.

I think if your plan (buy material, strip headliner and handoff to a shop) is a good one. That was what I was planning to do until I came across your post. I think I'll come out spending less time and money this way. Only risk is that the 'new' headliner will fail like mine did. Not sure if there's anything I can do to reinforce it before I install.

BM134 shows up as just 'Black' on this site, BM1417 seems to be Anthrazit.
http://www.globalupholstery.com/product/headliner/bmw-headlining.html
 
#50 ·
BM134 shows up as just 'Black' on this site, BM1417 seems to be Anthrazit.
http://www.globalupholstery.com/product/headliner/bmw-headlining.html
Ah yeah, technically 134 is listed as black but from the sample I got it matches the rest of the headliner parts on a ZHP (Pillar covers, alarm sensor cover, upper console, etc). I think the Anthracite 1417 must be from a 5 series or some other generation.

The color looks similar but the main difference between the two is the weave/grain pattern. The 134 has more of a straight grain type of look to it (similar to the titanium gray 1997 and sand/beige 1998) and the 1417 has kind of a cross hatch pattern to it. The photos on the website you linked sort of show the difference but it's even more obvious in person.

I'll have to find the sample swatches I was sent and post a couple of photos for comparison.
 
#51 · (Edited)
Minor progress... I got all of the black interior parts emptied out of the car where they were being stored for the winter.





I'm almost ready to actually start swapping things over. Just haven't had enough time to do it all it one sitting. I want to do it all in one day so my memory is fresh on the order of reinstalling parts and where all the hardware goes.

Also picked up the black carpet piece for over the battery that I was missing from the trunk and a piece of plastic hatch trim from this guy:
https://forum.e46fanatics.com/showthread.php?t=1256559

He's got a lot of black interior parts if anyone needs stuff.

Yesterday I bought some parts from that salvage yard I posted a few days ago and got some more pics of some of the epic s*** they have in their yard. M3's and all kinds of good stuff. Pics here:
https://forum.e46fanatics.com/showpost.php?p=18568257&postcount=48



I got the matte black window trim from the 323i wagon and a few other parts from that white M3:
-Black front upper console headliner/homelink/sunroof switch
-Black alarm sensor cover
-Black sunroof shade and related trim.

I actually got the entire sunroof from the M3 which I wasn't able to fit in my sedan. Yesterday I got the wagon put back together enough to drive it to work today and I'm going to stop back at the salvage yard and and pick up the rest of the parts. Here's the current state of the interior.



The gray doesn't actually look half bad w/ some blacked out trim instead of wood. I was running these vinyl wrapped pieces in the sedan for a while and they still look pretty decent after 4 years.
 
#55 · (Edited)
I started pulling the gray rear hatch parts to get ready to swap in all the new black interior pieces. I've also got an appointment coming up with a paintless dent repair guy to fix a few minor dings on the rear quarter panels. To give him better access to the inside of the panels I ended up pulling extra stuff out like the rear washer reservoir and the rear speakers.





While the rear hatch is gutted I also need to diagnose the poor FM radio reception issue I've been having. I picked up a used set of amplifiers, both the one in the driver's side rear quarter panel and the one in the spoiler. I'm going to start by swapping those out and putting some Deoxit on all the connections to see if that improves reception.

Any suggestions for other stuff I should do while I'm in there? Aren't there some aftermarket upper shock mounts that allow you to remove the shocks without having to pull all the interior panels? Eventually the whole rear subframe is getting swapped out to the replacment from the M3 donor car. I also plan on reinforcing the subframe mounts from below. Are there any wagon specific rear strut braces that can be welded or bolted in on the top side?
 
#56 ·
Any suggestions for other stuff I should do while I'm in there? Aren't there some aftermarket upper shock mounts that allow you to remove the shocks without having to pull all the interior panels?
Yes there are indeed!
https://www.rogueengineering.com/Rogue-Engineering-Rear-Shock-Mount-E30E36E46_p_270.html
https://www.turnermotorsport.com/p-...rsm-hp-aluminumrubber-e30-e36-e46-z3-z4-pair/

I have the Rogue Engineering set in my car and they've been great. Haven't had to remove my shocks since the mounts went in but it'll be easy when I eventually do. They are slightly overkill for a stock setup but if you're lowered, track the car, or will be going to an aggressive setup in the future (M3 rear end...) then I think they're perfrect. I included the turners as an alternative option, probably also good.
 
#58 ·
I second the rear shock mount upgrade. I actually made my own set using Meyle HD mounts and ECS reinforcement plates by simply knocking the studs out of the mounts, flipping them around, and tack welding them into the upper plates. Considering what a pain it is to get to the rear upper mounts on these cars this has become one of the "must haves" for any touring owner, IMO.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk
 
#60 · (Edited)
Very nice work. I love this thread.

I am sure I will reference this thread as I refresh my 03 325it, also sport, xenon, power seats and manual. I got mine here from California.

My touring is Steel Blue, but I have a Japan Rot sedan I am almost done refreshing for my daughter's first car.

How many miles on yours?
 
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