I had been satisfied with its performance but with new cars with so much more umph, I wanted to have the power of those new cars with an older but great BMW. So my thought was to turbo charge the engine, this seemed to be one of the common ways that tuners had done it. I did my research and started to collect the parts to build a secondary engine that would be turbo charged. This was not going to be easy for there were no available turbo exhaust manifolds readily available. As I was scouring the ads I ran across an ad in the Die which was the San Francisco Chapter Die Flüsternde Bombe. It was an ad for a turbo engine from an 84’ 323i and I couldn’t believe my eyes. I called and went to see it and sure enough it was an Schnitzer Turbo charged engine with transmission.

The story goes that the owner hit some black ice in Santa Rosa and wrecked the car. The car was then parted and sold for parts. When I examined the setup I noticed the air throttle box was missing and asked if it was around and it was not. This part is major to the engine running and I knew it could be a specialized part so I took a chance and bought it.

So started the daunting task of transplanting this turbo setup from an E30 chassie to an E21. There were many obstacles in the way and I often thought it was out of my capabilities. I started calling around, thinking, since I lived in the Bay area where there was Dinan and AE Performance and many more I thought I would have no trouble finding a shop to make to come to life. Well I was wrong, nobody wanted to touch such a project. So I was left with no choice but to try it myself.

I started hunting for that air meter, I picked up a couple of different ones for an E30 ranging in years and once I mated the electric connecter from the engine harness the pins did not match the pins of the air meter, no luck. I then had my buddy, Andrie Fenner, run a check of all the available part numbers for a air meter for an E30 including European. There were only 3 or 4 parts and I had already tried most of them but there was one that was different and it was an European one for an E30. With part number in hand, I started calling all BMW parts suppliers, you wouldn’t believe it but one place said “ I think we have one. Wait one moment while I go check.” sure enough they had one. They said “Wow this one was sitting on the self for a long time thought we would never sell it”. Still at this point it was a gamble it might not work, maybe Schnitzer had modified the original one from BMW who knows, finding info about this engine was impossible. Well when it arrived I matched up the connector and the electrical pins matched, this must be the one, I hope. I wouldn’t know until I try to start the car and that was a long way away.

Other problems included the mounting and routing of the turbo plumbing. Since this had come out of an E30 chassis, none of the mounting for all the piping including the intercooler would bolt up. I had to cut and rearrange some of the plumbing. The Intercooler went nearly in the same spot as the E30 but I had to cut the wheel well out for this to fit. The pluming from the input (bottom) of the intercooler would no longer work. So there laid a problem. When the engine was dropped in the output of the turbo housing was slammed right up against the cars frame. At this point I thought I was doomed project over, I can’t cut the frame. There was a major problem so the next day I spoke with a co-worker who was big time into Honda turbo charging. In fact him and his buddies were going to be my source of help and inspiration. I had consulted early on with them about building a turbo engine out of a normally aspirated engine, thank goodness I didn’t have to take that route. Anyway, he told me that the front fan housing will rotate and can allow for the output to come out at other angles, wow what a relief. Then I felt a little stupid, but hey, I knew very little about turbo charging. So I was able to angle the output upwards toward the hood and just clear the sub frame. Now how was I going to get plumbing from the turbo to the intercooler? It was a really bad route of bends to accomplish this so I set off to find some flexible hosing that might do the trick. I thought I would surly find something at the hardware store but nothing was either the right diameter or could make the radius turns that would be required. Andrei helped out by mentioning that maybe a brake cooling hose from a local race shop might work and he mentioned that it was used at times for blowers. So I picked some up and it was the right diameter and could make very tight radius turns.

Now that the pluming was done the intercooler was sort of mounted and the engine was in, it was time to wire up an E30 harness to an E21 car. Luckily for me I have a Haynes British version manual for the E21 and early E30 323i. It happened to have the wiring diagram for both cars so I matched up what was needed and left alone the extra stuff that the E30 had. Sounded simple but it wasn’t. The first thing was to chop off the end of an E21 engine harness connector so that I can splice it on to the E30 engine harness. I found this easily at a local export dismantler in San Jose. With all the wiring in place I think that was done.

That was most of the related E30 obstacles to get around. The others were the radiator, which I was able to use, one I had already modified previous to this transplant. I had used a 77’ radiator with an electric fan, which gave me the room for the plumbing of the output of the intercooler that was feeding the throttle body. I mounted the oil cooler in front of the radiator. Thank goodness I converted this US car body to European bumpers. In doing so this allowed me a nice little access hole to feed the oil cooler hose through. The E30 tranny went in fine but I had to slightly modify the transmission bracket. Ok, I know what you’re going to ask next, especially for those of you who really know the E21 in and out like me. The drive shaft matched up nicely to a certain year of a US E21, I can’t remember if it was from an automatic or manual. I will find out for those interested. Next did you know that when using an E30 tranny you loose the output to drive a speedometer? Well, I had this already covered; I had switched over to an E30 electronic speedo with a chopper wheel at the rear. So there the drive train was finished.

Now would the car start? Nope, I had spark but no fuel. Ok find out why I had no fuel. Did I mention that the E30 engine was Jettronic and had a small computer that mounted above the glove compartment? Well the E21 European 323i never had this so I had a big hole in the firewall to send the connector of the computer thru. Well I was stumped why no fuel, well the fuel pump was not turning on. That was easy to determine but why. I manually ran the fuel pump and the car tried to come to life but this would not work in manual mode. So I asked my buddy Andrei to come over and help. Two heads are always better then one. Sure enough we figured it out. There were two wires that connected directly at the computer connector inside that the E30 would have had wired inside the car. So I simply ran the appropriate wires to it and voile, the fuel was there.

Well the Schnizter engine was on its way to life again. I got it to run after messing with the timing and ran it for while to check for all other normal things after putting an engine in. Then it was time for a road test, but very cautiously, for I had previous bad experiences and costly ones not knowing what I was messing with and breaking it. So I drove slowly and listened and checked constantly for problems. Well things didn’t seem to bad so I gave it a highway test, wow what power, this is going to be fun. There were some problems and it definitely needed some tuning and adjustments.

Old and New Pictures of Exhaust Manifold

Home |  Suspension/Brakes |  Interior |  Racing |  Autocross |  Specs. Sheet |  Parts Wanted/For Sale |  Resources