Hi to all as this is my first post I thought I would give you all a challenge , I own a 523i e60 with the n52b25 engine .....which recently was destroyed after sucking salt water into the cylinders ........I know what your thinking it's a long story

Well my question is this, I have sourced an n52 b 30 for a z4 3.0si, it has a lot more hp than my engine .....I know the engine fits but how do I upgrade the ecu as I understand that if I change the ecu I will have to change the keys and othe items.......is it possible just to have it chipped with the program for the bigger engine or is it mores complicated


Thanks for all your help in advance

Regards james

 

Hello James and welcome to this forum.
That's quite a story. Care to share?
To start you must have an EU BMW because there was no 523i marketed in U.S. So I would assume that the E86 Z4 is also an EU model? The engine may have a slight fitment problem unless you change mounts. This is a common issue with engine swaps. If you are swapping the engine, you will need to swap the DME and you have to think about a few other modules as well. It would really take a blueprint before this process and make sure you cover all the points. You will have to change the FA and you will have to manually flash DME unless it's coming from the same donor car as the engine. In this case you will have to simply change the FA of the car and you will have to marry all the components. It is not necessary to change the immobilizer and so forth. Let me know if I can be of further assistance.

Nic

 

Thanks for your reply nic, so here goes the story......it was a cold winters night in November and there was a massive storm out at sea ....unfortunately for me I was in an area of flooding ...I was driving a little too fast and the puddle of sea water was a little too deep.....so after loosing my front bumper and grill I made it about 150m and the engine went bang.......to cut a long story short it would cost me more to make an insurance claim than it will to fix it myself by replacing the engine.....

Just to reply to your comments ......the engine is a strait swap all mounts are the same
Yes both models are euro only, the 523i (177hp) is basically a detuned 525i for euro market and the z4 3.0si is a 299hp version only for euro market
My understanding is that the 2 ecu's are basically the same it's only the program that they run that is different....I,m not sure about the USA but in Germany we can just rewrite the programming of the new specs on the old ecu....or so I understand ......please tell me more

Thanks

 

If the ECU's are the same then you will just need to flash it will the software for the Z4 and you'll be all set for that. Now as far as the car after you flash the entire ECU you'll have to do a complete coding process and then re-align CAS. That's it! Contact me for further details perhaps I we can be of assistance. Together the two BMW Programmers here (Sam and I) have about 17 years worth of knowledge. Not so much in the EU specs but BMW is BMW and I have played around with EU motors and some electronics imported for M3's.

 

Hi guys, I have just found out that I will need to change the ecu, so could some body tell me all the parts that I will need to change the engine over.......please give me the full names of the parts a swell as the abbreviations as some of the parts have different names over here

Thanks

 

Wait a minute, that N52B30 is pushing 299 HP??

That must be by EU measurements... No way a NA N52 has that power.. The new N55's have 306 (US) and they're twin scroll turboed...

 

Even by EU they are pushing 262hp probably 270hp at most. but even so that's still a nice gain from what he previously had. good luck with swap.