Think Sweden and what pops to mind ... meatballs, IKEA furniture, and the Swedish bikini team? Meatballs: Italians do it better. IKEA: they provide stylishly disposable furniture for the masses and more Allen wrenches than any other entity on earth. The Swedish bikini team: well they might have one up on us there. Those ladies definitely rev our engines.
Although Mikael and Erik Kilander of Falkoping, Sweden, surely appreciate their home-grown bikini team, they're focused on revving engines of the traditional kind: the kind you make with pistons, fuel and boost. They're such huge fans of horsepower that they follow the imaginary Ten Commandments of Tuning, especially the first two: "Thou shall swap in bodacious engines at will;" and, "Thou shall boost the bejesus out of said engine without hesitation." The Brothers Kilander have followed these two axioms with impressive results, making us wonder if their next miracle will be something like walking on water or parting the Baltic Sea.
Their story begins in a typical fashion: two 20-something brothers are looking for a project car. It starts as something innocuous, but is morphed into something obnoxious. The platform in question is a well-worn 1988 325i and the post-morph product has an M3 body and M5 soul.
Cracking open the hood reveals an S38B38 3.8-liter inline six scavenged from a 1991-1993-vintage M5. These are the pristine E34 M5s hand-built in Germany with motors that are rated at 310 hp. That's 70 hp better than an E36 M3, and 28 hp more than an E39 540i with a V8. The S38B38s are rare birds and require diligent maintenance - especially where the valvetrain is concerned - but they're fast and will last. To prepare the M5 bullet for boost Mikael and Erik o-ringed the block and used a custom copper head gasket to enhance the sealing properties of the engine. The reciprocating assembly consists of a stock crank, Mahle 7.8:1 compression forged pistons produced to Kilander specs and stock rods modified by the Kilander's.
The brothers fabbed up a sweet turbo header that positions the turbo in such a way that it looks very much like a 2JZ Supra with a single turbo conversion. The first turbo to see duty on the Bavarian bruiser was a Volvo truck turbo. The home-grown Volvo turbo was soon replaced by a Turbonetics T72 that had a lot more on the ball. The remainder of the turbo system consists of a 50 mm Rosenkrantz wastegate, a custom downpipe, a 3.25-inch exhaust system and one of the largest intercoolers we have ever laid eyes on. The Kilander's took two gargantuan Iveco truck intercoolers, joined them together and then welded up custom end tanks to seal the deal. It looks like an intercooler with the front of a BMW wrapped around it. The unit, which measures 1080x140x250 mm, dominates the front of the car and sends a raucous message to the viewing public.
Fueling has been addressed with a SX Performance high-flow fuel pump, SX adjustable regulator and 960cc Rochester injectors. The system is fed via a 17-liter fuel cell mounted in the trunk.
Along with the M5 engine swap the E30 was fitted with an M5 transmission, a 325/535 driveshaft shortened for this application, 535 axles and a rear end with a 3.07 final drive and LSD that the Kilander's fitted with extra discs to withstand the brute torque of the pressurized powerplant. The clutch is a Kilander special using an OE single-mass flywheel, an organic disc and a harsher racing-spec sinter disc.