Northern's Sterlingsilber M52 Turbo 325is

[ak-]

Just o-ring it.
You can rent the tool for it.

[Northern]

Were running ~450whp on stock gasket on a SC car...

I didn't see that. Last one I saw was the 400whp sc s52. I don't have the cam/displacement of that, and as far as I understand, high comp SC'd cars are less temperamental than turbo ones. For now I'd be extremely happy at 350. Keep in mind there's only 91 here, no fancy 94 like central Canada or e85 like in the US. Water/meth may help me out a lot though.

[Northern]

Just o-ring it.
You can rent the tool for it.

I'm not worried about o-ringing, I just don't want to remove the head, or buy pistons/rods/hardware to lower CR until sometime in the future when I can afford to do so.

[Northern]

I came home to a pleasant surprise...

At first glance I was a little scared. USPS and/or Canada post tried to work it over a bit:


But there's not a scratch on it. If anything, it must've pummeled some other poor bastard's package. Despite the above image, it was actually packed really well, and all the Tial gear was wrapped in a lot of foam and taped together to hold it together.



Really happy with the welds on this too. And the flange looks to be 1/2" thick.




Other than that, no progress to report. I finally moved the iX and my old M20 out of the parking spot behind my fence. I just need to move this car back there, put up the car tent, and put some anchors in the concrete to stop the tent from blowing around.

[Good & Tight]

But there's not a scratch on it. If anything, it must've pummeled some other poor bastard's package.

This made me LOL....!! Good to see everything arrived safely.

[Northern]

This made me LOL....!! Good to see everything arrived safely.

All my packages have been getting the shit kicked out of them recently (My first set of Koni Race inserts were dented to shit, as well as a few smaller packages.) I think it has to do with increased workload from holiday mail... Well at least I hope it is, because maybe it'll get better after the new year.


I still have everything sitting in front of me. It looks too nice to store it in the basement, but my fiancee will probably kill me if I don't. haha

[varg]

Mls leak nearly without fail, unless extensively prepped.
We use cutring hgs on all our customer FI cars.

With my car I surfaced the head, cleaned the block with a razor blade, and sprayed the MLS gasket with copper spray. No leaks. Hardly extensive prep, the only unusual thing for me was the copper spray, but It's about the same level of prep as I'd use for any head gasket.

[Northern]

With my car I surfaced the head, cleaned the block with a razor blade, and sprayed the MLS gasket with copper spray. No leaks. Hardly extensive prep, the only unusual thing for me was the copper spray, but It's about the same level of prep as I'd use for any head gasket.

It all comes down to how fast I pop the stock gasket.



Random cold start video...

[Northern]

And one last shitty video from some crappy footage testing my external mic, complete with loads of mic/plate filler rattle: (still processing)

[Northern]

Alright, the plan is slowly coming together, and I've spend a few evenings out working in the car tent (which is working much more nicely now that there's 25000lbs worth of anchors holding one side down, and the fence holding the other)

I want to stay stock compression and see how far I get with 91 octane pump gas and water/meth.

I pulled the front end off the car on a snow day this past wednesday, and found a little rust on the valence that I'll eventually take care of.



First, I tried to test fit the FMIC because I was curious about fitment vs my Mishimoto fan. No dice, it's like 1.5" too thick to fit between the rad and FMIC.

So I spent the rest of the time pulling all the rotten old wrap off the wiring that runs across the front of the rad support, and cleaning all the wires. I re-ran the city light wires through the stock sidemarker grounds (Before, I had new grounds run to the closest ground stud, and it looked kind of ghetto) and snipped/terminated/labelled the sidemarker/AC/OBC horn wiring. I found, and repaired couple broken wires - the stock connectors seem to fail from strain right as the wire leaves the rubber of the individual pin. Then I rewrapped the whole front harness section, and threw some spiral wrap over the cloth wrap for good measure:



Then I pulled the fan off and started thinking about FMIC mounts. I bent up some 1/8" steel tabs to weld on, but I really don't like the idea of grinding paint off/welding some thick metal to thin, then rust proofing all of that again. Not to mention welding with my (probably) messed up welder inside a small flammable car tent without ventilation, so that was a good enough round of excuses to make some lighter aluminum brackets to rivet on:





Still need to work out how to do the bottoms, then I'll pull it all off to deburr/clean/paint mating surfaces or the whole bracket, then wet install with some sort of sealer to try to prevent any sort of galvanic reaction between the Al and steel rad support.

[efficient]

Car is coming along nicely

[Northern]

Thanks :D

I do have a growing list of stuff I need to buy.

I have 2 1/8" of clearance for the rad fan, and SPAL makes a 16", 2.05" thick pusher fan, so I need one of those.

I also need to buy:
PMAS HPX blow thru MAF/housing/pigtail
Devilsown Water/Meth setup + some bits
Intake boot
Turbo oil feed adapter from VANOS port
Oil pressure sender adapter from pressure switch location, maybe rig up an oil temp gauge to this too...
Elbow to weld on the outlet of the HX35 compressor to simplify some charge piping.
Turbo blanket
Get my manifold ceramic coated
IX washer res, or modify the normal E30 one to somehow still fit/fit somewhere else.


Probably a lot of other crap too, I just can't think of it.

[Good & Tight]

You can safely run 8psi with stock compression. With the addition of meth 10psi is safely attainable with a spot on tune.
You'd be surprised how good 8psi feels.

Check the intercooler coupler clearance under the high beams, I trimmed the bottom buckets for fitment.

[Northern]

You can safely run 8psi with stock compression. With the addition of meth 10psi is safely attainable with a spot on tune.
You'd be surprised how good 8psi feels.

Check the intercooler coupler clearance under the high beams, I trimmed the bottom buckets for fitment.

I've seen a few stock compression M/S52's recently with PT6262's or GT35R's running 10PSI, and one or two pushing it a little at 12PSI, and I don't think any of them run meth or e85.

I'm going to try to start off with 10 on stock headbolts and see what happens (Then do studs, and probably Oring.) Markert is going to do my remote tuning, and I'm going to pretty much do what he says if he tells me to back off or go smaller.

This setup was installed on my IX before, and I changed all the charge piping to clear the US ellips (with trimming) but I don't know how the valence will fit. There's just a 2.5" pipe that goes through, no coupler, so it helps with clearance. I'm probably going to re-do some/most of the charge piping, it's mild steel and fugly right now. I really want to have a 90 degree elbow welded on the compressor housing before it goes on to make it even easier.

[irish44j]

I came home to a pleasant surprise...

At first glance I was a little scared. USPS and/or Canada post tried to work it over a bit:


But there's not a scratch on it. If anything, it must've pummeled some other poor bastard's package. Despite the above image, it was actually packed really well, and all the Tial gear was wrapped in a lot of foam and taped together to hold it together.



Really happy with the welds on this too. And the flange looks to be 1/2" thick.




Other than that, no progress to report. I finally moved the iX and my old M20 out of the parking spot behind my fence. I just need to move this car back there, put up the car tent, and put some anchors in the concrete to stop the tent from blowing around.

that is more shine in one piece than my entire car has, lol.

And those welds look better than any bead I've ever laid down :)