Turbo BMW E30 Build

Sick build. It's making me miss my old e30.
I'm guessing you already posted this on r3vlimited?

 

Thanks man, what model did you have?

And Yeah that's the other forum this is posted to. Pretty cool community over there.

 

I had a 91 318is. Threw a rod through the engine block and that was the end of her. Bought an s52 engine from a 96 m3 to swap into it. But I didn't have the time/funds to finish the swap. So I ended up selling everything.

I like the r3v community. But I hated that site because it made me want to do so many things to my e30. Kind of like this site. Lol.

 

Nice. Remember when getting suspension and tires for the truck in NM was a big deal? LOL. You've come a long way, baby. What are you actually doing now, profession wise?

 

I know the feeling, I did the same thing with my old v8 rx7 project. I even got it running but had to sell it for money reasons.

Haha no kidding. I just sold the truck last week by the way, no use for it in Ohio. Those wheelers springs were literally turning to dust out here in the salt belt.

Im a test engineer for Honda now. I develop and tune the electric power steering systems.

 

I sold my Wheeler's pack a few years ago for $100. I was not impressed in general with its durability, especially for the price. Put Dakars on the 01, which were great...then I sold the truck this past September for $1400 more than I bought it in 09, and bought the 15 DCLB for the bambino.

OK, I remember the Honda thing now. Outstanding, dude!

 

I was sad to let it go. Sold it to a friend and he intended to finish the swap and use it as a daily driver. But he ended up having to sell it to another friend of ours that bought it as a first car for his gf. He didn't have the money to do the s52 swap so he just bought an engine off of a different e30 and swapped that in.

 

I got a bit done this weekend.

Radiator is in, wiring harness is in minus a bunch of little plugs that I need to figure out, spark plug wires are terminated, c104 plug has been jumped over to the c101, and the downpipe now has an O2 bung. Also engine has oil in it and the power steering lines are finalized.





I got the mega squirt plugged in and powered up too. I wanted to make sure the starter circuit was good by just bumping the starter.

Turned the key, fuel pump primed like normal but I got nothing when I turned the key to "start". Not sure if it's the fact that I'm running the early eta starter with the late 325i harness or what. I'll look into it later. For now basically all that's needed for first start is to hook up the water lines for the turbo, fill it with coolant, wire the coils to the rs232 plug, plumb vacuum lines, and figure out my starter circuit issue.

 

It lives!

Turns out there are two spades on the early eta starter, I was on the one that's not completely hidden before lol.



Anyway once I figured that out and wired up my coils i just had to see if it would fire up.

Still no coolant in the engine at all, also zero vacuum lines hooked up other than the FPR.



https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F88Vw7EMQo8&feature=youtu.be


Up next is figuring out how to hook up my turbo water lines since the barbs on the turbo side take 1/2" hose and the engine side looks like maybe 3/8. Then I just need to tidy up the wiring, replace the slave cylinder hose I somehow broke, and start figuring out the charge pipes and vacuum stuff.

 

Getting closer! Throttle body side charge pipes are made, BOV flange is welded to the pipe, vacuum stuff is figured out, water lines are finished, and I was able to run the engine for about a minute just to check everything over for leaks, all looks and sounds good.

 

Thanks man. Im actually down in Columbus. Performance research did the work.

So I broke the cam in today, 20 minutes of 2k rpm. Ran ok, I'm having issues with my wideband, it's not broadcasting to the megasquirt for some reason so the ecu seemed to be pulling fuel to compensate for the fake super rich reading. I went ahead and disabled the O2 sensor feature and finished the breakin like that. Anyone have any idea why it would do that? I wired the analog out to the stock O2 plug assuming the mspnp would be wired to run like that.

Anyway The engine now idles at 2k rpm lol. Pretty sure it's just a massive vacuum leak somewhere.

There was also a massive pool of oil under the car after the breakin, I cannot tell where it's coming from though. Seems to be drivers side near the rear of the engine. There doesn't seem to be any oil above the starter, I'll look into it more later. The head gasket also has an oil leak on the exhaust side near the front, im just going to ignore it and hope it goes away when I re-torque the head studs down...

 

Got the vacuum leak figured out, just an open port I didn't see before.

She's running pretty good now, just waiting on one elbow to wrap up the charge pipes. I guess I should build an exhaust too lol

http://youtu.be/AlwPQX0TIKo

 

Well I put about 5 miles on the car the other night, super exciting.

I'm now about halfway through the exhaust fab, it's way way more work than I expected. Full 3" stainless all tig welded with mandrel bends bought off summit racing. It will be all one piece from the bottom of the downpipe back (vband connection at downpipe), undecided on mufflers still.

Trying to keep it high and tight.



Terrible pic but you can just see it hanging below the pinch weld. That's with about 0.25" clearance to the bottom of the car.



You can see the screamer pipe here and the beginning of the exhaust



Using oem mount location

 

Exhaust is all tacked and ready for final welding.

 

Oh. My. Gawd.

 

Thanks guys, exhaust is fully installed now, finished at around 9:00 though so I didn't want to fire it up. Tomorrow...

 

Well I went out and put some miles on the car to break the rings in and try and get it running better. I can't seem to get it to not pop under load/boost. It clears up somewhat under moderate to heavy throttle but under super light throttle it pops like popcorn. I'm going to check over my ignition power source and pull a few plugs tomorrow to see what they look like. The AFR's are pretty decent at a safe 11:1 under boost. Timing map is super conservative.

 

Figured out the problem, it was bad plug wires on the number 1 and 2 cylinders.

She's running pretty good now on 7psi. No problem breaking the tires loose in second gear.

http://youtu.be/Yk29iEOU9Tc

 

Ok it does burnouts.

Filmed on a closed course.

http://youtu.be/WIgRKYsbASI