Incredibly good CSi engine

[pmansson]

My recently acquired Turkis CSi got a new engine from BMW back in 1993. It has only done about 6000 miles since. I drove it today, after spending the day rebuilding the front axle with all rubber and moving parts. Brakes and shocks were done last year. My mechanic has known the car since it came from Italy in 1993. He said before I drove off: "you have the best CSi engine I have ever come across". He has driven hundreds of these.
I can only agree, but none of us understand why...Everything is stock incl the normal 272 camshaft.
I would say that the engine is at least 33% better in all accounts than my other CSi cars, (and not a drop of oil on the floor after a week, not even from the PS pump).

The colour is sensational, but it sits on stock suspension ahead of the MOT which on these cars here in Switzerland, takes place every 6 years. (the Swiss are very tough on modifications, which is not the case in Sweden where I have several coupes registered) The steering box is very good but the car moves about on quick turns due to the height, vs my other cars which are all lower by about 2". Perhaps I will keep it this way, incl the stock 4 speed box. All my other cars have 5 speeds.

Has anybody got an idea on why this particular engine is so much better than the other CSi engines....? (I haven´t put it on a rolling road test yet)

 

[Arde]

Peder,
I would say that some of your intriguing questions are the result of having that many similar cars. How many coupes do you own? Seven? If I had seven girlfriends I would also be torturing myself over the differences, but then again I may not.

As for this engine it is possible that the answer is in the question. This is a brand new 1993 BMW engine, and when you do something for more than 20 years you get better at it, plus you have decades of field experience around M30s driven in the real world.

Mine is also a new BMW short block from the early 90s, so one day we should meet and see if my engine can push yours down to #2.

 

[Nicad]

I'd like to drive it and see for myself. I know my engine is a dog so far. I have driven it about 120 miles since purchase and it did not impress me. Hopefully a rebuild of the carbs and some tuning and it will fly. Fingers crossed. My first Bavaria (I paid $250 for it) smoked on deceleration, but it was a very smooth and powerful engine. I rebuilt it as a 3.3 with a Block from a 733i and it was a dog again

 

[execmalibu]

Some engines just run better... Ask the anyone from the Porsche factory....

I used to race vintage 356 Porsches... We would build our all our 356SC engines exactly the same... Same heads,valves,cam, pistons etc etc and built by the same mechanic...

But for some unexplained reason every once in a while one engine would rev faster and higher and would pull much harder then the others...

The engine in my 356B- 1962 Twin Grille Roadster was one of those engines... The same story with the engine in my 1973 911S... The engine was in a buddies car who wanted to sell the car... He gave me the car to sell and I told him that I was swaping the motors between our 1973 911s... We did not build that engine but it just runs so much better then any other 2.4 Liter 911S engine I have ever seen... It looks bone stock but that damn motor pulls hard from a smooth idle all the way to 8,500RPM!

Back in the late 1950s even the engineers at the Porsche factory would find one engine out of thousands that on the Dyno was stronger then all of the others... They would keep that one for their factory race cars...

 

[Honolulu]

One can only imagine that with a range of acceptable tolerances for stock engines, once in a while the right combination of tolerances comes together to produce something just a skosh (or three) better than the average run of the mill.

 

[Sven]

Any chance that it could be a 3.5 liter? Maybe the previous owner had some additional work done: different cam, lightened flywheel, oversized pistons, longer stroke, port/polished head, etc...

or, maybe the D-jet ECU is different/modified?

 

[pmansson]

Stock engine from Munich

with less than 10.000 km. Normal 3.5s have slightly more torque but this one has much more liveliness. A bit like the 3.8L E-types vs the 4.2s