Milano 2.5 to 3L conversion




I'm sure there is an article out there that give the long and the short of doing a 2.5 to 3l engine change in a Milano. Well, this one is going to be the long of it.
My story starts about a year ago, with many of the faux pas that I myself have told others to avoid, so much for that free advice... If you like milano's this will be a good article for you otherwise I hope you enjoy the cheap entertainment. I like my milano, does everything I want of it, hasn't let me down and for an everyday four door sedan is a blast to drive. It's a Plat, 2.5l, leather interior, ABS, the works. If you enjoy driving Milano's you lust after the 3L cars, but the premium they get on the market makes them a little out of reach for the cheap people like me that just want something to flog everyday. My problem started when I accidentally found a 3l car on ebay for cheap on the correct side of the boarder. Being the insatiable romantic that I am I put a real low bid on it. Unfortunately for my wife I was the only one to bid on it... The actual transaction went quite smoothly, it was the first time I bought a car on Ebay and the most expensive thing I've bought on ebay. The seller was very friendly about getting my money, looked after shipping it to me (which was cheaper than going to get it) by rail. The things you learn, there were a bunch of pics on the auction but the few things that would have made me go eeek were conveniently missing. Of the few really prized things on a 3L Milano, the front seats are right up there. On my Ebay car the driver's one was bent pretty good. My plan once winning the Ebay car had been to make one good car out of two OK cars. I had wanted to use the Ebay cars chassis to get the better serial number but that didn't work out. The head gaskets on the Plat went Kaplouie at a bad time too so my 2.5 to 3L swap was at hand. I had it easy, I had my donor car side by side in the garage with it's new host. The whole operation was done on a weekend with the odd bit of help from friendly partners in crime. Getting the bits out in such a way that it would all go back together was a comedy of errors. Exhaust and driveshaft have to come out. The exhaust on the two cars though serving the same function  were about as far from identical as one could get, plus I already had a Stebro center and rear that I had put flanges on to eliminate clamps. I was going to have to use the OEM cat piece with my flanges on it and hope it lined up with original cast headers on the 3L. I also ended up swapping the bell housing off the 2.5 on to the 3L, that went really well, the engine didn't even tip over while sitting on the garage floor. I wish I had changed the rear crank seal at the time, lesson learned. The seller of the Ebay car had said he got the car for super cheap from a friend but it came with broken valves so this engine was supposed to have gone through a recent top overhaul, the water pump shaft had zero play, it had a new spring type belt tensioner on it too. Of the two engines I was only able to salvage one set of engine mounts though. When removing the 3L from the Ebay car I kept all the accessories with it, wiring harness, the two ecu's, distributor, starter everything. Some worked out well that way like the engine wiring harness. This is because the ignition ecu in the passenger foot well has different plugs on it than the 2.5 cars. I swapped AFM's too, I must have forgot in the flurry of activity but the 3.0 in the plat didn't run right in the beginning but putting the 3.0 AFM back with it's original 3.0 engine really helped, I also cleaned out the wiper track under the black plastic cover with spray contact cleaner. Physically getting the engines out and in was a snap, I didn't even have to take the hoods off either car. I just used ratchet straps to the engine hoist, that worked really well too. Here's a hint, if you are thinking about doing anything with the starter do it now as being able to get the header off easily makes this job much more enjoyable, I took advantage of this and put a heat reflective blanket around my starter. I also cleaned up my steering rack and made sure the bolts were tight. Once the engine was in and the driveshaft was all reinstalled it was time to get the exhaust all hooked up. What a pain, the outlets of the L and R exhaust manifolds was a little narrower than the two ball connectors of the OEM Alfa cat pipe. No sweat says I, I'll just bent then together the half inch or so that's needed. Man, this turned out to be harder than I was expecting, like trying to bent a tuning fork. I got it done, so well in fact that I had gone too far. Bending it back out was way harder than getting them together, so much so that I ended up shattering one of the ball connections. There was a moment of silence after that happened. What to do now, my cat with the flanges was broken and the other cat would cost some now scarce moola to get hooked up to the Stebro center. I decided to try and weld the ball connection back together and quickly sell off some bits from my now 3L milano parts car and get CSC headers from Andy at Performatek. This worked and it didn't, yes the ball connection physically fit but it wasn't a closed system anymore, I was quite worried at the time of melting my one and only engine mount so I was easy with the gas for a couple of months until the headers came. So after all this all you really need to put a 3l milano engine in a 2.5 car is a 3L engine (duh) complete with the engine wiring harness, ignition and injection ecu's, the AFM or a BMW one and exhaust manifolds though if I were to do it again you could probably get away with 2.5 manifold as there is only about a 1mm difference in primary diameter. You also need a 3L flywheel but the engine should come with it. Everything else from your 2.5 will work, at least is has for me and I've done 5-6 autocrosses on the new setup this summer.
                                        

Carson Damm
Oct 6, 2004