E30 from Ausieland

[lukeADE335i]

The e30 L-Jetronic distributor has a fairly mild curve, and retards in the top end which makes the motor feel a bit flatter than it probably should.

From memory (back in my e21 days, which admittedly was 8 years ago now) the trick with the e30 2.3 L-jet used to be either to source an e28 520i distributor or an e21 323i distributor - the e28 distributor had the most aggressive timing, followed by the e21. This woke the engine up nicely, although you had to run 95RON fuel or better to avoid pinging. On normal 91RON, the engine would ping really badly with the e28 distributor.

Note that you need the correct timing settings for each distributor as they were all timed differently, but they're listed in the Haines manual.

[e30davie]

Very interesting, thanks for the info!

I'm fairly sure I would need an adjustable timing light to even set the timing and i only have a normal timing light, not to mention i removed the standard l-jet harmonic balancer in favour of a late model 60-2 trigger wheel, so i don't even know if the timing marks will line up any more.

I'm not even sure what its set to at the moment, i haven't touched it from whatever the previous owner set it too...it seems to have plenty of go to it and it doesnt ping on 95 octane so it must be fairly close. perhaps i could try and advance it a tad by ear.

Not to worry, wont be long before i get rid of the dizzy entirely.

Also i'm just reading through your build thread, nice car mate!

[e30davie]

Alrighty, another weekend goes by.

I temporarily hooked up my haltech e8 on saturday just had it sitting in the engine bay to be honest.

I managed to get what i think is a decent RPM signal to the ecu from the 60-2 tooth wheel, the rpm was matched to the tacho.

To be honest I just guessed the polarity of the VR sensor.

How does one know if the polarity is correct?

I know you can swap from rising to falling in the software, but Im unsure if this "fixes" it if you get the polarity wrong.

[lukeADE335i]

Very interesting, thanks for the info!

I'm not even sure what its set to at the moment, i haven't touched it from whatever the previous owner set it too...it seems to have plenty of go to it and it doesnt ping on 95 octane so it must be fairly close. perhaps i could try and advance it a tad by ear.

Not to worry, wont be long before i get rid of the dizzy entirely.

Also i'm just reading through your build thread, nice car mate!

Without the L-Jet harmonic balancer you won't be able to set the timing properly - you could adjust it by ear, but if it's running fine then probably best to leave well enough alone. Sounds like it's not going to matter once the Haltech is in there! :D

Thanks for the kind words on the car - I'd love to go wasted spark on mine one day to get rid of the distributor and get a bit more room at the front of the engine.

[e30davie]

yeah il think ill jsut leave it. Drives good enough as it is.

Having all kinds of trouble getting a decent idle at the moment (said every m20 owner ever?)

Half my issue is that all the vacuum lines are 14mm (or 9/16"ish) and even finding vac hose in this size (that isn't silicon.....) seems to be impossible. I'm actually using some high pressure oil line hose i found in 9/16" size to replace some of the dodgy vac lines. I'm pretty confident i don't have any vac leaks at the moment.

My coolant operated idle up valve is no good, jammed up, i have another one here that is also stuffed. So i removed it from the system and blocked off those hoses completely. I am just working on getting a decent hot idle, at the sacrifice of a not so great cold idle.

I've got it to the point that it just keeps itself alive when stone cold, but fairly easy to stall if you aren't careful. its a fairly steady idle, but its pretty low at around 600rpm. But when it heats up the idle is all over the place. if i blip the throttle it sits up at around 1100rpm fairly steady, but then randomly drops to 700ish and fluctuates up and down between 700 and 900 Spluttering away.

The idle adjustment screw on the back side of the manifold (above rocker cover) seems to work great down to about 1200rpm, any lower than this and I get the symptoms as listed above. But 1200 is too high to sit in traffic, so i just put up with the fluctuation.

Does anyone have any suggestion on where to buy proper 14mm vac line, and more importantly 14mm vacuum port plugs?

Not all that keen on buying brand new BMW hoses as they cost a fortune and with my haltech plans will probably get cut up anyway.

[e30davie]

Ok updates, not too much to report.

I changed out the gasket on the rear right taillight. I actually had some non oem gaskets off those aftermarket taillights that were originally on the car. I had to cut them up a bit to make them fit.

We had a nice downpour last night and upon inspection i seem to have solved the issue. I also drilled a hole so if/when water does get in it will drain out.

Drove home after said downpour and i reaaalllyy need some better tyres and an LSD. tires have plenty of grip but they are a bit old, too easy to spin one wheel...

[econti]

Why a Haltech E8? Have one lying around?

[e30davie]

yer pretty much!

I bought it a few years for cheap as it was "locked out and needed to go back to haltech for repair" turns out previous owner was just using wrong software and it just needed a firmware update which I did myself.

E8 pretty good ecu. With the latest firmware it has alot of advanced features. and standard they are 32x32 fuel and ignition maps.

About the only thing it cant do compared to more modern ecus is ignition retard on knock. oh and it only has 4ign and 4injector outputs, so its really designed for a 4clr (the E11 had 6 of each), so on a 6clr you just gotta go wasted spark and groups of 2 injectors.

[econti]

I had an ECU set up like that on my Skyline when I bought it, be wary of very bad fuel economy

[e30davie]

My current m20b23 running on L-Jet is 2 groups of 3 injectors and distributor ignition, and it gets 11L/100km in city driving.

Hopefully i get into the 10L and maybe 9L/100 with a decent tune and a light right foot.

[e30davie]

Was driving home the other day and the coolant temperature started getting a bit hotter than normal, rather than 1/4 where it usually sits it was up around 1/2 when stopped then would quickly drop back to 1/3ish when driving. Got it home only to realise i was missing around 3L of coolant....

Took me a while to find but there was a tiny crack in one of my heater hoses causing a leak. It wasn't until i was fiddling around with the idle for ages in the garage the other day that i found the puddle under the car. Luckily i had a new heater hose already off the other engine, so on it went. No more coolant issues it seems.

Reason i didn't pick it up sooner is cause the "low level coolant light" never came on. because it is broken. Thanks coolant light, you had one job and you failed.

I got my haltech and bosch idle up solenoid temporarilly wired in the other day. I got it to work quite well, took me a while to tune in the PID settings for the idle control. I got it to the point where i could set the idle target rpm and it would very nicely catch the rpm as it came down and hold it VERY steady. Best idle i have ever heard from the engine.

Unfortunately i couldn't complete the install as i didn't realise that the idle up relies on a TPS input to know when to turn on. And with no TPS it assumes that the tps is always at 0% and thus tries to target the rpm all of the time, which i think would stuff up normal driving of engine and might work the idle control valve too hard..I thought i could limit the idle control to only kick in under a certain rpm but unfortunately its under a certain TPS.

I thought i could get away with running the haltech only running the idle control and leave oem ecu for the time being, but looks like it might not be possible at this stage.

I am also in the planning stages of my new wiring loom. Having enough wires for full sequential injection and 10 spares for various potential outputs or other things it looks like i need approximately 42 wires going from ECU to engine bay.

The OEM wiring loom only uses about 10 wires so it doesn't help me.

One option is to buy a 100m roll of 1mm^2 cable and make it from scratch, issue with that is all the wires would be the same colour, so would need to make wire tags. I could go to the wreckers and buy a wiring loom off a straight 6 engine to get at least enough wires but i fear that may be too much work in modifying it to work. Or i could buy a universal wiring kit for the haltech, but they arent that cheap ($250ish or so).

I have purchased all theplugs i need to make the loom, i just need the wire!

Does anyone know where i can buy say 42 wires that are ~3m long that are all different colors? that isn't going to cost me the world.....

[2mAn]

Why not get the M20B25 engine wiring harness?

Love the early models. Any suspension mods planned in the future? With a drop, and some spacers it will look great with those steels

[e30davie]

Why not get the M20B25 engine wiring harness?

Love the early models. Any suspension mods planned in the future? With a drop, and some spacers it will look great with those steels

The m20b25 loom would work to an extent but i would end up modifying it considerably anyway. m20b25 appears to group the injectors in batches of 3, where as i want to group in batches of two. m20b25 also still runs a distributor of sorts and i intend on going distributor less with 3 coils in wasted spark config. I am attempting the "do it once do it right" method, which is different to how i have approached wiring in the past:P

I may end up using my m20b23 harness as a base and just adding more wires and re-wrapping.......see how i go.

I'm actually quite happy with suspension as it is, it does have the "m-tech" suspension already (apparently...) which seems to be a bit lower and stiffer than the regular suspension. Some new bushes are on the cards and maybe some upgraded shocks at some stage. It certainly goes around corners nicely. It is mainly a commuter car for me so comfort is definitely a priority.

[econti]

Only place to get bulk wire like that is from China unfortunately. Ebay is your friend

[e30davie]

Fitted up my wideband yesterday.

Went for a 30min drive or so, and the whole time i thought that the numbers seemed a bit lean......at wide open throttle i was getting 13s,, idle i was up in the 15s and would even drop to 16+ (max lean reading) at times. very light cruise i could also see 16+ as well. It is a brand new NTK sensor and i calibrated it as per instructions.

After some investigation it turns out that what i thought was Exhaust gas re circulation is actually an auxiliary air pump pumping fresh air into the exhaust. You can see the pipes in the exhaust manifold below. BMW calls it a "pulse pump" or some such thing.



Fairly ingenious design in that it uses the pulse of one exhaust to push fresh air into the other exhaust via those air valves. Emissions thing to attempt to burn left over fuel in the exhaust, only on the very early m20b23 and only in Australia and Switzerland or something. Wasnt on the later m20b23 i dont belive. Quite a good idea, but not great when trying to read 02 readings accurately.

So next step is to block off that contraption and see if i get more reasonable readings.

I also started making my loom yesty, ended up buying a roll of 1mm^2 tinned wire. Got most of the new wire cut and labeled. Will start soldering them to the haltech patch loom this week. Still waiting on my bosch injector and sensor plugs to turn up. Australia post is so damn slow these days.

In other news I also adjusted my tappets first time since rebuild, about 1500km (i got the engine shop to set them the first time), they all seemed a bit too tight. The manual specs 0.25mm both in and ex, mine were set to around 0.15ish or so across the board, which seemed strange. I had always thought that perhaps the they should make a bit more tappety noise, they were almost too quiet.

I set them to 0.25mm and holy dooly its quite tappety tappety now. A little bit too much tappety perhaps. I think there is one that is a bit looser than the others as there is definitely a louder tap in amungst the rest. Will adjust again in the next few days. Engine does seem to idle way nicer, hard to say if its more powerful or not.

I have had plenty of old tappet engines, admittedly only ever had 4clrs and i dont recall the tappetty being this loud. Perhaps 6 cylinders worth of tappets is supposed to be this loud!