BMW E30 M52/M50 Swap Wiring Guide | 24v M5X Engine Conversion Electrics Wiring Chart | 048
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- Опубліковано 8 жов 2023
- BMW E30 M52/M50 Swap Wiring Guide | 24v M5X Engine Conversion Electrics Wiring Chart | 048
In this E30 build video I tackle the daunting task of wiring an M52 swap. Having recently installed the 24v engine conversion in my E30 I was keen to crack on and move the project forward in the direction of a first start.
Here's what I used in this video:
Solder sleeve connectors: ebay.us/z0qezW
Soldering Flux: ebay.us/fjBz1d
Wire stripper tool: ebay.us/aYNjWo
Heat gun: ebay.us/4YL6WV
A wiring adapter if you don't fancy DIYing: ebay.us/Ep1oGL
Or: ebay.us/oOKQHQ
Let's discuss whats involved in an E30 M50 swap wiring guide. For starters, you need to have the E30's original wiring alongside the wiring harness for your M52 or M50 engine.
In the most simple terms possible, you need to find a way to connect the M50/M52 engine harness to the E30's body harness, in place of the original engine harness the car came with. In my case an M40 engine loom.
Conveniently there is a large screw-locking connector on the E30's wiring loom, found just to the right-hand side of the wiring cowl cover within the engine bay on the bulkhead side. This large connector is called a C101 plug connector and effectively connects the E30 chassis harness to the engine harness via it's 20-pins.
The good news is that the chassis harness including the fuse box, can be left entirely intact for this engine conversion wiring. So you can focus on the engine loom side.
M52 engines can be found in a variety of BMW models, including the 3 series E36, the 5 series E39, and the 7 series E38. Each of them newer cars than the E30.
I believe the M52 engine I am swapping is from an E36, but whichever chassis its from, your M50 harness will have an X20 plug on it, which is the more modern equivalent of the C101. The X20 connector is a 25-pin locking connector of a very similar type to the C101 found on the E30.
What needs to happen, is you need to chop the X20 off your M52 loom and replace it with a C101 connector which can connect directly to the E30's body wiring.
Before we go any further, let it be known that you can quite easily purchase an adapter which connects between the X20 and the C101 to join your two harnesses together. However, there are drawbacks to this.
The main drawback in my opinion is the sheer cost involved for what is a relatively simple thing. I imagine the retailers of M52 or M50 wiring adapters understand how intimidating car electrics can be, and are charging accordingly for their loom adapters.
Additionally to this issue, using an adapter adds a lot of bulk to the wiring as you end up with two very large connectors instead of one which sits neatly in the carrier.
As my removed M40 engine and its harness has very little monetary value, I have no reservations on harvesting the C101 plug from it among other things to complete this e30 24v engine swap wiring.
Before I went ahead and started chopping wires, I took some time to compile a wiring guide table, or in other words a wiring chart for M52 swap. The table effectively takes the 20 pin wires from the C101 plug and their colours and maps them to the corresponding wires on the X20 plug.
This actually proved quite a difficult table to make as there appears to be a lot of variance in E30 wiring, I suspect they can be quite different depending on the model, year, market or even whether they had run out of a particular wire colour that day.
You will have realised that with the C101 only having 20 wires, to the X20's 25, we will have some redundant wires here. This should be no big deal providing we connect all of the key ones, bear in mind that the E36 is a newer generation BMW which has equipment that the E30 never had, such as climate control and cruise control.
After cross-referencing quite a few different pinout tables for the E30 and also for the E36 M52, I became fairly confident in what each wire does on both harnesses. There are still a few which I'm uncertain about, but thus far I can account for all of the important ones for getting the engine to run. See the wiring diagram in the video along with a more detailed explanation.
With that figured out, I went ahead and chopped the C101 plug off the engine side of the E30's wiring as far up as reasonably possible to give me a bit of extra wire to work with. I also chopped the X20 connector off the M52 harness as low as possible.
I followed my wiring table to connect all the wires together using solder sleeve connectors to make it easy.
With this done, I took my M52 harness into the engine bay and began connecting everything up, which was quite difficult but luckily BMW used a lot of unique connectors which help you identify which is which.
With this done I hooked the battery up and plugged an ECU in (one which I suspected still had EWS II on it). To my surprise the car now cranks on the key which is incredibly good news.
#e30 #e30build #wiring #m52 #m52swap #m50swap - Авто та транспорт
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Hi Rash 😊
This is the most interesting part of any E30 M5X builds !!
Most of everyone will get mixed up of the wiring, even after doing so many wirings, i even get it wrong occasionally 😅😅
Ok, some help to you on the wirings.
1. Pin 7 (EWS) in X20 can be easily identified by using a multi meter and trying either the green wires by both ends to the ECU adapter. Look for Pin 18 and test for continuity. Or open the harness near to the adapter to look for the green wire joined to a black purple wire to Pin 18. Yes, BMW purposely did that to confused thefts that jumps the pins to drive away. But please don't join the both wires together as any voltage to the ecu may cause it to burn.
2. ECU that you have can't be flashed for EWS delete, you need another one that says index 10 or 9 ,etc. Trust me, i received one also same number as yours. Perhaps try the other ecu u have.
3. Black with green wire at the engine is for the starter unloader relay, it joins to the starter solenoids.
4. For the Temperature sensor to the meter, using the m40 type is 1 sender pin only, plus you need to ground the sensor to the block. The alloy head has bad conductivity.
Oh on the C101 side look for the brown/voilet wire Pin 4 on C101 to connect to by either 2 ways, run a independent socket (use your old m40 socket) and wire straight to Pin 4.
Or cut 2 wires (only need 1 to connect to Pin 4) from the original 4 pin sensor on the cyclinder head.
I will try to help u check on the wiring set up to see if u done any mix up.
Cheers 😊
Rash, as for wiring colours
Pin 8 on C101 doesn't connect to Pin 8 on X20, don't need
Pin 14 on C101 connects to Pin 9 on X20 for the vehicle speed sensor for input from the meter to the ecu to tell the ecu the speed of the vehicle.
Pin 16 on c101 should connect to Pin 16 on X20 as pin 17 is the auto transmission.
Cheers. 😊
@@felixjayasuria8963 Amazing, thanks so much for sharing knowledge on this one mate! Really appreciate the input. 😁
Looks like I need to go back and do a bit more fettling, I will work down your list and confirm/correct where necessary. 👍
Most welcomed Rash, can't wait for another episode 😊
Awesome job! Just a little pro-tip, for when you do your final clean up: when you've got a large loom like that, spread your splices out over a few inches so that they're not all in one lump. It'll help if you need to run the loom through a firewall hole, etc. You did a fantastic job on what most people would really get hung up on. Can't wait to see this fire!
Cheers Zak! 😁That's a great bit of advice which I will keep in mind. It makes good sense if I want the result to look OE eventually. Thanks for sharing it mate👍
I’m doing an m50 swap rn too and I swear to god everytime I’m at the next step here he is uploading the tutorial within days. Praise be Spanner Rash!
Haha I must be just ahead of you TJ. Really glad my vids are helpful for you. I try to pack them with information about what I learn along the way!
@@SPANNERRASH if ur next video is doing the security and door locks that would be insane.
@@tjmaxxstan1516 Ahh we've gone out of sync. 😆 I'm on the exhaust next. To be honest I don't think I have any issues with my door locks. 🤔 I would like one of those remote central locking kits though.
This series is awesome. There was an opportunity to cut the video off right before turning the engine.. thanks for not leaving us in suspense 😂
Haha Steven, I couldn't do that to you! 😂 Glad you're enjoying the vids mate.
Great video my friend !!! Getting close now and doing a mighty good job
Thank you Jimmy 😃
Looking good M8
Cheers pal! 👍
I'm currently working on getting things in order for an M50 swap into my E30 316i Touring, so these videos have been incredibly helpful. Thanks so much for taking the time to film and talk through everything!
I'm also very interested to see what your exhaust setup will look like.
Cheers Jonathan, really glad the vids are helping you out with your M50 E30 project, it will be extremely similar no doubt as mine is/was a 316i also.
Exhaust vid to come soon, gotta get that sorted before the M52 can run! 😁
just as promised! hopefully it gets started soon!
Thank you! I hope the info helps you out. We won't know if it truly works until we try to start though. 🤞
@@SPANNERRASH it’s definitely helpful! Thanks man!
Looks great so far and I love your videos!
Thanks Drifty, appreciate it! 😃
Yeahhh, nice progress. Always thought the wire diagram was a no brainer, but it clearly is a bit more difficult then it seems. An ecu with ews does crank but it shuts out the spark when it wants to run as far as i've seen in videos. Good decision to avoid the adapter clutter!
Thanks! I always thought it was going to be difficult, but actually not too bad. It's looking pretty promising currently. Ahh thanks for letting me know about the EWS. I wasn't expecting it to even crank with this ECU, that was a surprise. Looks like I will need to switch over to my other one after all. 👍
The non-index one may be flash-able so I'd still try it, you'll know pretty quickly if it isn't. Generally the ECU's with index on them are a safer option for flashing.
Thanks @@JoshuaStacey782, I didn't know about that, I thought it was Index or bust.
I've already got another ECU, but I will give this one a try at some point and see. I quite fancy having a go at flashing the ECU and playing around with it. Seems really interesting to learn.
@@SPANNERRASH it's really not that hard once you work it out, the information is all readily available. For an old late 90s ECU it's quite powerful and simple enough to tune, if you're not highly modified there's no good reason to go aftermarket.
Putting an m30b35 in my 318i touring as we speak. Have been following this series since the beginning and its given me the push I needed to buy an engine and start doing my own swap that I have been talking about for years. Very intimidated by the wiring part of the swap, even though it should(in theory) be much simpler than an m5x swap, so its nice to see that its doesn't look too bad at all. Excited to see your swap fire up for the first time, hopefully mine won't be far behind, engine in planned for this month so fingers crossed
Thank you Rob, that's amazing that it's given you to push to crack on with your M30 swap!
I have a feeling the wiring on the M30 swap will be very well documented too, and like you say in theory it should be simpler. Either way I'm sure you'll work it out when you get there, it won't be as bad as you fear. 😃
ΕΥΧΑΡΙΣΤΩ ΠΟΛΥ
Καλώς ήρθες, ελπίζω να βοηθήσει! 😄
wow, lucky enough that the paper in intake ports didnt get sucked in the cylinder :D great job overall
Haha thanks! Yeah I had no idea it could be a big deal. Others have warned me about it too. 😅
Brilliant, going well. Love watching.
I wonder if the previous owners battery was in the boot. I can’t remember where the battery was in my old E36. They might have had to cut the power cable (as it would have ran all the way to the boot) to release the harness.
Thanks Shane 😃 Ah that's a solid theory on the battery cable. Couldn't for the life of me imagine why it would have been cut. But that could well explain it.
Great progress my friend! Next time please watch out for the paper in the inletports from the cilinderhead or they will be sucked inside. Until the next one!
Cheers Frank! Yeah, I should have taken those out shouldn't I. Although hopefully, they acted as a dust filter if nothing else. 😂
I’ve just rewired my c101 connector for my m10 megajolt conversion. You can get the c101 pins. They’re used on modern minis. Makes the job much neater.
Ah nice, thats great news the pins are still readily available.
I'm likely to come back and do a proper C101 repin job once I've confirmed everything is working and I have a running car. Cheers! 😁
@@SPANNERRASH nice one, your videos are egging me on to get mine back on the road so thanks for the push!
Congrats man, really helpful videos, i myself am planning on M50 swapping my E30, gonna use the G260 from a 325 and need to be rebuilt, let's see how will it go. Greetings from Greece.
Thanks Marios! Sounds great but I was warned that an E30 g260 gearbox will be rotated incorrectly when mounted to tan M50/M52. I think because the M20 engine has a different lean angle in the engine bay.
You might want to do some research and confirm that. But it's one of the reasons I elected to use the G240.
@SPANNERRASH condor makes a transmission mount specifically for a g260 with a m50 swap. It takes into account the extra angle on the bellhousing. It's only like $90 usd.
Love the series. I think the long extension cable goes to the cruise control module.
Thank you mate 😀 ahh you reckon the long one is cruise control related? That's interesting, mine definitely doesn't have cruise, nor have I any plans to add it.
It's the reverse light connector for an e36, you can remove that safely in an e30.
@@JoshuaStacey782 Ohhh, I guess that would make sense as it has to reach the gearbox down in the transmission tunnel. Thank you!
Awesome job keep it up 👍
Cheers@@louislouis7037 👍
I am running m50 b25, m52 b28 is the best value for money engine swap!
Nice John, they're very similar engines but I'm told the M52B28 is slightly better if you're planning to keep it mostly stock and NA.
The M50 is more robust and better for a turbo build though, or so I'm told.
Both great value, but both getting harder to source!
Welcome to 16 years ago 😅
I did this back in 2006, as did a lot of us. I have a few uploads on UA-cam from those days!
Awesome! Do you still have the E30, Steve?
@@SPANNERRASH sadly not. Sold it in 2009 after a magazine feature
@@ZafiraSteve Shame, but fair enough, onto other things I imagine. Can't keep them all can you?
@@SPANNERRASH wish I'd kept a few cars I've had over the years. Nova gsi, metro turbo, mk2 escort etc etc
Love the build. I'm planning on relocating the battery to the rear. Is this something you have thought about doing?
Thanks Tylor, glad you're enjoying it! And yes 100%, battery relocation is something I'm thinking about doing. I think it will be one of those that I revisit in the future though, once the car is an actual car again.
A lot of people seem to run the battery up front on M50/M52 swaps without issue so it's one of those "nice to have" mods I can look forward to doing at my own leisure. 😂
Worthwhile though for sure, anything you can do to improve weight distribution.
I am sure you have it on your to do list but just in case, make sure you get the O2 sensors connected up correctly i.e. Bank 1 plug goes to Bank 1 sensor and bank 1 sensor goes to the front. If you mix them up you will get emission/fuelling issues
Ahh thank you for mentioning that Martin, I would probably have assumed it didn't matter which way around they plugged in. I'll be careful to get them right now you've said that. 👍
Hi, what sized solder sleeve connectors were used?
Hi, these are the ones I used: ebay.us/z0qezW
Hope that helps!
On e30 the cable to the starter goes from the key to the starter, on cars with ews2 the starter cable goes to the ews unit. That can be wired around the unit so you can crank it, but it wil not start because the ews is prevnting fuel and spark.
Aha! So the ECU probably does have EWS enabled still then. Thanks for the insight.
@@SPANNERRASH could be, if it got spark or injectors are working then it has ews delete. Looking forward to the next video, Cool project!
Cheers@@vegard390 , I guess I will try both ECUs when I've got it ready for a first start. That should tell me whether its been removed or not pretty quick! 😁
Are you familiar with the $126 m52 crankshaft sensor "adapter lead" harness fcp is saying I need in addition to the sensor?
I can't say I can remember that. But I replaced the crank sensor earlier when I refinished the exterior of the engine. You might want to check that vid out to see details on what that looked like. It certainly wasn't anything super expensive though.
Got questions for your alternator wiring
Feel free to ask, happy to help if I can. And if I can't, maybe someone more knowledgeable can wade in. :D
curious why you have the battery in the front?
As this car was a 316i 4-cyl it came with the battery mounted in the front as standard. I am considering relocating it to the boot for better weight distribution, but not before I've got it working as a car again. 😃
Hello . How can i delete oil service check alert onn my gauge ? Have m52b28 with ms41.0
Now that's an interesting question! So the light has appeared on your cluster and you can't get it to disappear by bridging the OBD port pins like before?
If I recall you need to bridge pin 7 to pin 19, or 7 to ground.
I would have expected that to work to be honest.
@@SPANNERRASH bro there is no entrance like before m40 obd . I added some cable to e39 m52 cable and enter to ecu m40+m52 ( I combined the wiring ) . I have obd 2 next to ecu i can see my problems and i cam clean it . But i dont know how i will reset oil service check alerts on geuage .
Old obd head dont have inside of the hood
@@aniluzun2321 Oh wow, thats a real conundrum then!
If it were me, I would probably block the LEDs off somehow to stop them annoying, then just not worry about it. 😆
bro how about esw ? if didnt delete the program how to start?
Hi mate, see 32:01 for what was said about the EWS situation. I do have an alternative ECU (DME) which is remapped with EWS delete that I will be using. Turns out this one is not editable because it does not say "index" on the label. I will be explaining this in more details in an upcoming video so watch out for that. 😃
hi,is bridge from m40 or m20 engine?
The car was originally an M40 powered 316i. Check out the playlist to see how it started out.
@@SPANNERRASH so so engine mount subframe has not been changed to m20 6 cylinders,you use original one that came in that car
@@MrZoranbebek The front subframe is the same on all E30s I believe, and I am using a stock front subframe, although I welded some reinforcing plates onto it to make it stronger. Check out one of my early videos to see that.
I used Condor engine mounts and E36 engine arms to mount the M52 to the E30 subframe. I did a video of fitting the engine into the car not too long ago, check that out for details. Hope that helps!
@@MrZoranbebek It's not actually the original subframe I got with the car, because I bought it as a spare so I could weld and paint it in advance of this build, while this 316i was still a stock driving car.
But I assure you the E30 subframes are identical so it doesn't matter. 😄
@@SPANNERRASH thank you for info
Not sure if I'm seeing this right but it looks like you used plumbers flux for the job. If so I've known it to eat the copper wire away really quick mate, hopefully I'm wrong and it was electronics flux.
Would be a proper ball ache if you end up with black wires in a year or two and it running like a bag of crap.
Hi Jim, thanks for the heads up, that's an interesting point, you really think flux could damage the join over time?
I'm not certain what type of flux it was, I'll have to give the tin a check.
I am planning to come back and maybe repin the plug at some point instead of soldering though. Hopefully, it will be fine in the meantime. 🙏
@@SPANNERRASH It can cause damage mate, flux that plumbers use is really acidic. Back in the day we used it all the time and you would see some repairs come back bad a year or two later.
I'm not saying it will fail, I just hate the idea of you finishing your pride and joy and ending up having to tear the harness apart again.
Best you do a bit research and make the call either way while the car is still in the project phase.
@@Jim_M_75 I had no idea about that! Really appreciate you pointing it out, I will definitely investigate. Sounds like I will need to go the full way and repin it after all. Not the end of the world I guess. Expecting to need to make some changes anyway. 😄
I am certain that you considered de-pinnng and decided not to. Why, I don't know. I assume you have your reasons.
Hi Ben, I certainly did think about it, and it might be something I end up doing.
But I opted to take the quickest/cheapest/easiest route and splice them for now.
I can come back and make things perfect later, but I decided to just work with what I got for now on this one. 😃
So basically what you did was to splice black to black and green to green and so on…? 🤔
I know it looks like that, but trust me! 😂 I first cross-referenced as many pinout tables as I could find for both the E36 M52 and the E30, and mapped what the function of each wire was and its number in the plug. Afterwards I added my column for wire colour and the vast majority shared the same colour too, which was really unexpected!
I have read nowhere on line saying you can get away with just matching the colours, but it seems like you can at least 80-90% of the time. Stay tuned to find out whether it works out. First start coming ASAP!
@@SPANNERRASH Yeah I’m just kidding with you, I know what a rabbit hole wiring can be. Just seemed a little bit funny when the solution was that obvious when it came to it ;)
@@Mrtweet81 Haha indeed, it almost never ends up being simpler than you anticipate. But this might be one of those rare occasions. 🤭