The camshaft arrived this week from flying brick performance, unfortunately it arrived in 2 pieces. 

Its always a bit of a risky business shipping an item like this across such a large distance. Camshafts arent actually very strong, the treated lobes are very hard to resist damage and wear from impact but the metal is actually quite brittle and can be easily damaged. Any weight across the cam or a sharp knock to one end could see it snap clean through (as in my case). Now, generally good packaging will take care of this, but nothing is assured and accidents do happen. This however leaves me with a problem, pistons are paid for, headwork is done as far as can be, now the camshaft is holding up the whole process.

The approximate cost of importing another camshaft from the states or the UK runs to approximately $700 and can take 3-4 weeks wait before stock arrives, then another week or more to ship the item out to me. This has left me exploring other options, I have spoken to a few camshaft regrinders here in aus and a real possibility is having a brand new fresh billet copied from the broken cam. This eliminates the shipping issue and will take approximately 1 week to produce.

The cost to create an initial profile is quite high, however once it has been created, the cost to produce a camshaft drops. If a price can be arranged, I might look into the possibility of producing a few camshafts in various profiles, a limited run of a few items to begin with, then if they sell, expand the range.

Thanks do go out to Daniel from flying brick performance, when the camshaft arrived broken he arranged a full refund quickly so the build could continue.  

Right from the start I had always intended to use forged JE pistons for the build, their quality is next to none and I wouldnt trust my motor with anything else. The average base cost for a set of JE pistons to suit a 6 cylinder is around the $900.00 USD mark, then you have the choice of adding ceramic coatings, total seal rings, lightened pins, gas ports, lightening, etc which significantly adds to the cost.

While browsing some forums tonight I managed to stumble upon a guy selling a set of JE pistons (yet to be made) for $800 including shipping, taxes etc. This is a huge steal and saves anywhere from $200-$300 a set, money that will be put back into the order with options for lightened pins, ceramic coating and total seal 2nd ring's being ticked.

Needless to say I jumped at the chance to pick them up.

The manifold I have for the motor was made by cutting down the original inlet manifold head flange and welding on some new runners and flanges to suit the 45mm toyota throttles. This is a perfectly fine proposition and works well, however given the nature of the motor we are searching for every few horsepower we can find, so the decision was made to correct the flaws in the design.

I must make it clear, the "flaws" are really sacrifices made to fit the throttles into an E30, this is because both the thermostat housing and the brake booster causes clearence problems, so the runners had to be bent or offset to clear both items.

Fortunately, there is an alternative with Rowland Manifolds offering an "off the shelf" manifold to fit the M20. As with all manifolds for the M20 the brake booster is still an issue.

However because the RHD E21 utilises a booster on the right hand side of the engine bay suspended on a long bracket and linkage, there is nothing in the way preventing their use.

While RHD owners usually curse bmw for placement of components (especially manifolds), in this case, the weird brake setup on the cars actually works to our advantage.

The manifold retains the original crankcase breather, a huge relief personally as it saves a load of hassles trying to design something to reroute crankcase gases back into the motor somehow.