S54 Black guages?

It's possible that my job will move me to Germany in the next year, which is great, but I've had to verify that M Coupes are available on the used market. The good news is that they are, the great news is that S50 cars have black guages, which I've always preferred.

I've seen a few S54 guys mention that they'd like black guages, couldn't you replace yours with euro 1998-2000 guages? At least the tach, I assume all others except for the outside temp guage could be from any S52 car, and since I'd rather have an oil pressure guage than the ambient temperature one, that would complete the switch for me if I did have an S54.

Now that I think more about this, I assume you'd want to find a UK guage cluster if you were going to do the whole cluster, since they're in mph as well. Aside from the odometer settings, which I imagine you can correct, is there any reason this wouldn't work?

Just hoping to help you lucky S54 guys out with making your interiors look right! If anyone just happens to know of a nice low kilometer EB S50 car in Europe, feel free to let me know!

Ben

Reply » S54 Black guages?

Quote:

The S54 speedo and tach are different.
I have the black VDO oil pressure and water temp gauges on my A-pillar.
I have the black BMW VDO gauges in my center console along with the OBC.
In the process of adding a differential temp gauge shared with the water or oil temp gauge.
Trying to document the temps between the stock M cover versus the E36 M3 or Rogue cover used in Randy's dual eared diff trunk floor mod.
Connect to:
http://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/sho...stpost&t=46591

Reply » S54 Black guages?

I hadn't noticed that S54 cars had a 170mph speedo as opposed to the 160 in an S52, I guess BMW likes to give about 15mph extra over the governor to account for optimistic speedos!

Also I am referring to the S50 guages, not S52. My understanding is that the S50B32 has the same redline as the S54, or maybe a bit higher at 8200 like most S54's, correct? I'll double check what the speedo on an S50 car runs to, I hadn't thought to check before.

I need to do a little more research but I was thinking this would be a relatively easy switch from a US S54 car to a UK S50 set of guages. I've just noticed that 1998-2000 euro M Coupes and Roadies have black guages and given the potentially greater reliability of the S50B32 motor, I've narrowed my search to that engine for a potential European car.

Ben

Reply » S54 Black guages?

Quote:

Also I am referring to the S50 guages, not S52. My understanding is that the S50B32 has the same redline as the S54, or maybe a bit higher at 8200 like most S54's, correct? I'll double check what the speedo on an S50 car runs to, I hadn't thought to check before.
Ben

Not familar with the S50. Many of the tools I've purchased reference the S50 use as well.

Following pic is a S54 screen modified with help from Jon Maddux.
Tried to get this done, but the doer wasn't sure that they could do it to our satisfaction.
S54 max RPM in the Z3 is 7600.

Reply » S54 Black guages?

Quote:

Not familar with the S50. Many of the tools I've purchased reference the S50 use as well.

You might be on to something. Thanks.

S50B30:
Max permissable speed 7280 +/- 80
Permissable constant speed 7000
S50B32
Max permissable speed 7600 +/- 50
Permissable constant speed 7400

The S54 is 8000 / 7800 but we know that isn't so based on the limiter. The cluster implies that since it goes from orange to red at 8000.
I always thought that they lowered the RPM based on pre production blow ups.
The Z3's over here got the engines before the M3's.

We need a pic of the S50 3.2 instrument cluster.
The UK one gets rid of the km as mentioned and also may have the fog light indicator/s.

Reply » S54 Black guages?

Now that you bring it up, I recall that the S50B32 had a lower redline than the S54B32, at least in M3 trim. Seems like the matchup to the E36/8 would be about right. I haven't been able to find a high resolution pic of a UK car, but I will see if I can have a friend who lives there find one and snap a picture.

I think that they also have "Coupe" or "Roadster" already on the tach, saving one step of corrective labeling. Of course they also shouldn't have a stupid red dot at an arbitrary speed either and I imagine they still have the kph inside of the mph range, just as US speedos do.

Pictures to come, hopefully this works!

Ben

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