B35 hibernation mode with MS3X

[Bearmw]

Yesterday I was able to get the car to idle for about 60 seconds at about 1300 RPM using full sequential. The learning curve with megasquirt has been steep but at least I haven't given up lol. I am running Tuner studio lite for now but may upgrade to the full edition at some point. Right now I am trying to figure out if there is a discrepancy between my actual A/F ratio and what TS is telling me. It reads super lean at idle in the range of 17:1 so I'm not sure if there is an issue yet. At least it won't hurt anything at such low load if indeed it is actually that lean. More diagnosis and learning I guess and then I can move into more tuning.

[Bearmw]

Another small update. Due to other commitments I had put working on the car off for basically the whole summer. Yeah messed up I know but now I'm back in the ring with her. I finally figured out that the sparkcutoutt* I was getting at about 2500 rpm was noise from the VR sensor. I had originally installed a 10 ohm rssistor on the signal wire when it should have been 10K. I also made sure my crank and cam sensor wiring was well away from ignition wires. Now that cutout is gone and I attempted a little driving with VEAL on and felt it was making some positive adjustments. I still have to work on some restart issues but I'm not so overwhelmed anymore. Unfortunately I brought the car for its annual safety inspection and failed due to an inoperative tail light (my stupidity had left a known intermittent ground issue unattended) and an "exhaust leak". When I asked the shop owner where the leak was he said "I don't know but you could hear it". After I left the shop I read the report which said "loud exhaust". In any case I have 60 days to return for a retest but can't legally drive it, in fact I took a chance getting it home. So unfortunatly my autotuning will have to wait a bit. In the mean time I will attempt to nail down all types of starting and idling as well as possibly put a larger muffler on and I may relocate my IAT sensor if I have a heat soak isuue.

The saga continues

*The sparkcutout wasn't actually resolved it just occurred at a higher rpm.

[Bearmw]

Managed to pass re-inspection. Wooo hooo. I had made this janky exhaust bafle to quiet it slightly before I brought it in and resealed one of the header primary connections with more sealer. I drilled a bunch of various size holes in a bottle cap center cap and then jammed it into the tail pipe and added 2 pop rivets to hold it in. It made a subtle and annoying difference so when I got home I removed it for good. Once that was accomplished I took her out for a 2 hour drive using autotune the whole time. The roads were wet so I had to avoid testing some higher load areas but its certainly driveable now and should get better as I learn more.

[bmwstudent]

congrats, i just picked up a beautiful m30 out of an e34 and now I'm considering looking for another e30 to swap it into.

[TimeMachinE30]

One of the first things I noticed were the Al CAs. Crazy how their price has soared.

Seems like it will drive with a decent amount of NVH, "feel" if you will.

You resprayed the bay but in photos later posted the bay seems three colors?

If you go powerless steering, please LMK. I'll be needing an M30 PS pump.

[Bearmw]

The bay was just sprayed from cans and it is only one color. The body however shows several shades of blue/purple depending on the light and the angle. I don't imagine I will try a manual rack until sometime next summer. I am in the middle of putting some collar locks on my front sway bar because it moves laterally and it shouldn't. I am also going to install drop hats to drop the front a little. It continues to be a fun project with little refinements here and there such as a bigger muffler to tone it down a little. I also will begin doing some analysis of my tune and begin to mess with ASE and more idle control. I am running an Innovate LC-2 and it seems to be functioning fine so far.

If I had unlimited time and money (yeah right) I would consider having the car seam welded to see what kind of effect it would have. I have read that seam welding can make an E30 about "10% stiffer" but who knows what that would actually do on my car. On a side note, I decided that I am not using a strut bar because nothing I have read has convinced me it helps the car handle any better. It can be a good spot to rest your hand on when doing engine work and it looks cool but since I am trying to avoid gaining non-functional weight I decided to leave it out.

[PimpinWalrus]

Nice work man, this is going to be a beast

[Bearmw]

Thanks man. I think when I try a 3.46 diff it will definitely have some quickness and grunt, not V8 like but still good. I'm running a 3.25 now which is already pretty good and certainly nice on the highway. One thing I really like is how it shifts. I have a UUC DSSR combined with their shifter and newish bushings as well as the jaffster knob. It works for me. I had a short shifter at one time but this is better.

[Bearmw]

Got my car corner weighed at Flat Out Motorsports in Mendon, MA. They are primarily Mazda guys but they did have an E30 M3 track car in the shop as well. I had the car weighed with about half a tank of fuel (my gauge is kind of wonky), spare tire and jack, Luke box, full interior, and X brace. Not too bad considering a stock 89 vert is something like 3015 lbs.
On the scales

[Bearmw]

In the shop..

On the scales...

[Bearmw]

On the scales

[Bearmw]

Final weights...

[CorvallisBMW]

Jesus... your vert is literally 400lbs less than mine. I don't even know how that's possible.

[Bearmw]

I ended up lightening a lot of small stuff such as the engine compartment cowl cover and carpeting (I removed the heavy under padding). I also have a lighter exhaust, brakes, hood, etc. I could probably get it down by about 100 more pounds without cutting any sheet metal by deleting the Lukebox, power steering, ABS, and so on but I like having these things.

I was happily surprised by what it weighed and by the balance. Nick at Flat Out Motorsport said it was really good. This is with regular M3 springs and KYB struts so I have no adjustability there.

[Bearmw]

Since I first swapped in the M30, until now, I was never able to run full load without some sort of ignition breakup. That was with the WAR chip I had and with the megasquirt...until now. I never figuerd out why it happened with the WAR setup and with megasquirt I made the mistake of running my VR sensor on the Rising edge of Tooth #1 instead of the falling edge. ( I tried every other VR related fix first). Tooth Logger and lots of reading was useful in the diagnosis. Now that's resolved I was able to do a bit more auto tuning and during my tuning I had it up do its current rev limit of 6500 and another spot I hit 105 mph with no issue. I can now say this engine pulls like it should and there is more on the table with tuning and a gear change. It never ends...