The BMW M50 gets the forced induction it needs!

Throughout the 90s BMW 3 series dominated with fresh styling and handling like no other.  Unfortunately their work horse signature inline 6 cylinder power plant, like the M50, while dependable and smooth, wasn't  much for putting you back in your seat.  Even the M3 3.0 and 3.2 s50 power plants while better, just needed a bit more.  So, what do you do?  Intake, exhaust, maybe a chip or flash for the OBD2 cars, yes that does help!  Camshafts while not an inexpensive bolt on, is yet another option. There are even a couple of companies still making supercharger kits for them but they use a centrifugal style unit like a Vortech, which is a great supercharger but makes all its power at high RPM ranges and are not much for torque.  Another option is turbo charging and we are no stranger to building those kits. But most often, to do it right, turbo kits can get very costly and are very complex.  So what is the answer?  Twin screw Blower.  Yes, that's the answer we came up with.  Ok so no one make a  kit, but we are nothing if not resourceful.  Knowing that by nature the M50 and its kin are  lacking in low end torque and also knowing that a supercharger of this kind will give us the instant boost and therefor torque we are looking to achieve we made a call to our friends over at ESS tuning about obtaining some parts from there already well designed e46 S/C kits.

Our project is a e36 325i  and the goal is to make a smooth, robust power band that gives the car that v8 feel with out the cost and complexity of a motor swap. Secondly we want a clean install with good serviceability and low mantainence.

So this is what we came up with, we used components from ESS tunings twin screw kit like the blower and the manifold and fabricated the rest, including the fuel rail system, intake system, pulleys, brackets, hoses, lines, coolant system etc. We also designed and developed a heat exchanger system that would take full advantage of the Lysholm intercooler core

In this case the car was a high mileage car so a freshening of the head and a good evaluation of the cylinders was performed to rule out any premature failures. We also went with a set of ARP head studs and a slightly thicker head gasket so boost would be more welcome.

The result was  fantastic and the fit is perfect, in fact we where so pleased we have decided that we would offer to do more e36 L6 cars including the M3 at customers request.

The dyno chart speaks for it self, gobs of usable torque and a very nice gain in horsepower throughout the power band. Driveability and idle are like stock.  In all an extremely successful build.