3.0 cs engine rebuild

Thanks - this is excellent advice - You cant beat first hand experience, so here is another question. I noticed that brake dust appears on the the rear wheels and not the front ones! Having just passed an MOT without anything trouble I would like to assume that the front brakes are OK. But being a suspicious sort of person I reckon one of the servos might not be up to scratch - any views/advice? How does cream sound for the seat belts?

The 3 litre engine on the E9 is the trusty old M30 which is as tough as old boots. If well maintained they don't wear out. The engine should be good for 200k. However if you are going to do work then the advice above is good advice. Personally on my six which has basically the same engine i am slowly buying performance parts for an engine upgrade, but will wait untill the engine has a failure before doing the work.

To put it into perspective you can buy a brand spanking new complete M30 engine for £2000 and thats from BMW for the 3.5.

James

The carbs are always a bit of a bottleneck for power in the 3.0cs. They could probably do with balancing, which is a nightmare.

One thing you could do is junk the points and replace them with a Petronix ignitor, and a transistorised ignition system.  I did this on my CSL and it runs much cleaner, and is much more responsive than before.  I also noticed that the fuel consumption wasn't quite as bad as before.  They're never going to be economical though.  The Petronix fits inside the distributor so you can't see it, and the ignition unit fits in front of the bulkhead, so it all looks original, but makes a hell of a difference.

The CSL didn;t do too bad a job at Silverstone on Monday - though not up to Sabine Schmitz's standards!

Just to let everyone know that from previous posting about E9 carbs, I have finally tracked down the problem. The little black plastic linkages were worn and although I set them to the recommended 40mm they were in fact operating the butterflies out of sync. This was the case when I aquired the car and as you can imagine its been driving me mad - it now runs smoothly and has transformed the smooth running. I now like the car! Thanks for everyones input.

There is some good advice here and from people who know their CSL's. Yes the bottom end is just about bullet proof and it was the top that always suffered. All the things Sam suggested are worthwhile. But if you're not sure of the history of your car or indeed the mileage, then sometimes fixing some things will exaggerate the wear in other places. After all these are 35 year old cars that have probably seen their fair share of thrashing in their time!

Having gone through this recently, I can't recommend enough, that once you've started down the re build path then it's worth spending the extra and doing it properly.

My engine is a 3.3 unit from a 633Ci, fitted sometime in the late 70's. It was fettled with a bit bit of lightening and balancing. We decided to re build the existing engine rather than fit a new 3.5 (which as suggested before can be bought for @£2k) my technician who re built the engine is a perfectionist and much time was spent labouring over polishing ports and making sure the manifold outlets matched the head for a good flow.etc etc. I can supply his number as I know he would be happy to give advice and suggest a suitable route for you to take.

If someone can answer your earlier question on how to attach a picture, I will post one of the engine. Having seen what it can do against the other CSL's at Silverstone, it was definately worth the money!! 204bhp at the wheels!!