Boosted M54 Straight-6 BMW Engine - Engine Builder Magazine

Boosted M54 Straight-6 BMW Engine

Doing what every good gearhead did during the COVID pandemic, Steve Margossian spent two years boosting his M54 straight-6 BMW engine with both a supercharger and a turbocharger. Check it out!

Engine of the Week is presented by

If there’s anything we repeatedly heard over the past two years, it was the fact that – more than maybe ever – people had time on their hands to work on their car and hot rod projects. A prime example is Steve Margossian.

At 64 years old, Steve is a life-long gearhead who took the opportunity COVID presented to do some serious work on his 20-year-old, daily driver BMW 3 Series. Equipped with an M54 straight-6 BMW engine, Steve upgraded the internals in order to add both a supercharger and a turbocharger to the engine, which is naturally aspirated in stock form.

Doing these upgrades to the M54 entirely in his driveway, Steve opted to use all forged internal components, an Eaton M90 supercharger, a GT35 turbo, and progressive meth/water/nitromethane injection – all controlled by an AEM V2.

The build took two years to complete and was tuned by Steve himself as a way for him to gain further experience working on the car, which remains his only daily driver. All said and done, his M54 BMW engine now churns out 600 horsepower and runs on e85 fuel!

Engine of the Week is sponsored by PennGrade Motor OilElring – Das Original,Scat Crankshafts and Engine & Performance Warehouse Inc / NPW Companies. If you have an engine you’d like to highlight in this series, please email Engine Builder Editor Greg Jones at [email protected].

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