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    Hmm. The Ix doesn't have a csb. Not sure what that means honestly.
    Build thread

    Bimmerlabs

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      Lol. It’s a lot of the reason I don’t already have a driveshaft built. I wasn’t willing to get under my silver car to find out if it’s the early or late center support bearing. I suspect that the red car I’m working on is late (88), and my silver car is early 87) but I’m not planning on driving the red car around so I’ll figure it out when the time comes.

      Comment


        Ok. hoveringuy and I spent about two hours shouting at each other through masks in my driveway this morning about drivelines, engine position, and wiring. I learned a ton. I went back out just now to confirm some things in the dark. Best time to make these kind of observations.

        First of all, the driveline is not centered down the car. It's more complicated than that. Since we were looking at a car with a missing motor (or at least not a factory motor) we started from the diff. I pulled my spare out from the back of the garage and we were already slapping our foreheads:

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        The pinion yoke is NOT centered between the output flanges of the diff. The casting is very obviously not symmetrical (I would have put money on this from memory if you'd asked me). The yoke is very, very obviously off to the starboard side of the diff... just look at the relationship between the front two diff mount bolts and the input. The output shafts are the same part number, and there's no difference in the hub thickness between left and right... The diff output flanges are centered on the car, and the input is off to one side. How much?

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        Something metric, but it's about 5/8".

        I centered the engine using the 330i engine arms against the frame rails, and checked it against the ball joints. The centerline of the engine is correct. I centered the shifter in the tunnel opening, and had the shift carrier in the bushing when I locked down the engine position, so rotation in the vertical axis was correct. the lean angle of the engine was checked against a few parts of the car that looked "level" and I'm within a 10th of a degree. Engine and transmission height were guessed... for sure... but that doesn't mater for now. The question is... is the engine pointed at the diff, and if not, why not. We looked at the complete engine/trans and convinced ourselves that the input and output of the transmission were probably aligned (the output is at least aligned with the casting joint, which looks as much like the CL of the trans as it can be.) So crank center can stand in for trans output center. We centered a stringline at the front main seal:

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        And then one of us pulled it tight against the rear subframe while the other shouted directions until it was centered in the rear main seal:

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        Guess where it ended up?


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          It ended up here...




          Not even close to the middle of the diff. Not *exactly* 5/8"... about another 1/4" to the port side (right in this photo). But damn close to the centerline of the car according to our diff output flange measurement.

          So what. Is going. on. Maybe everyone else on this forum already knows this. I couldn't figure out what was going on. I went back out in the dark just now to try and figure out what was centered and what wasn't. The pictures aren't great, but I have two long aluminum straight edges that I think are for drywall. One has a pinned 90 degree tee. There's a rib that looks like it must be perpendicular to centerline right where the fuel lines turn, and I could measure the inside-to-inside between the pinch welds at the sills along this ridge. The straight edge is held against it on the left here:

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          I took the centerline of the car and set my 90 deg square against the edge above, and again this is hard to see:

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          I know this is a terrible photo, and the shadow makes it worse, but the visible edge of the tee is dead center on the ovoid in the crossmember, but the diff is offset to starboard (left in the photo). The opening in the subframe is centered, and the pinion yoke is very obviously offset:

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          This is an old photo of the E30 drive shaft (left) and Z4 drive shaft (right):

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          I haven't been able to figure out to this point why a driveshaft from a motor and transmission mounted to the frame, to a CSB mounted to the frame, to a diff mounted to the frame, needs U joints.... and if they do need u Joints, why doesn't the front section need u joints between where the trans output is to the CSB? The engine is the big heavy moving thing at the front, and it seems like the lever arm with the hard point at the CSB would just reef on it every time it moved.

          The reason for the U joints is that from the CSB to the diff, there's a horizontal offset. The diff pinion and crank are parallel, but not concentric. The U joints are there in the back half of the shaft to allow the shaft to deviate to one side (something around 5/8") so the diff can be centered. The E30 joint arrangement is notoriously difficult to align because one of the joints is in front of the CSB. I'll be using the Z4 assembly order, but with the correct E30 CSB carrier (not flipped... in the correct location). If I can't get this aligned at the transmission output with shims, I'll modify it. I'll check to make sure that the pinion yoke and trans output are parallel (and adjust that with the transmission mount) so that the u joints have equal angles.

          Comment


            Someone PM'd me with a fear about exhaust manifold clearance. There's a huge weird schwoop shape in the factory starboard side engine arm that I didn't re-create. It's to clear these cats:
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            If you aren't running the cats, there's a ton of room to turn a little higher and clear the fabricated arm:

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            The arm ends up just aft of the gap between the manifolds.

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              Um. Guys.

              Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.

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                Interesting - but I dunno, I feel like that would be so out of place in an E30. I'd probably run my E46 M3 cluster before that. I think it wouldn't work without all of the other modules, either.

                regarding your alignment pictures - the first one in the above post isn't working.

                As far as the mount/header clearance. Have you considered picking up a set of cheap ebay headers to see if they will clear? Unless you're in california, I can't imagine anyone running the stock E90 cats. If you want cats, I'd run one in the E30's original location.
                Build thread

                Bimmerlabs

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                  Ugh I hope we aren't losing photos. I had to go back and re-post like 10 a few weeks ago.

                  I certainly hadn't considered any n52 headers, because I hadn't understood how the O2 sensor relocation worked. Your response a few pages back that you just add a delay for the header tune probably means that it's worth investigating that. I have no intention of running cats. I expect this engine is cleaner without a cat than the M20 was from the factory... certainly than my m20 is right now with the cat rattling around.

                  Cheap ebay M20 headers are $100, cheap ebay n52 headers are $500 (shipped). That's too pricey for something that I already have a solution for. If anyone has a banged up set or knows one of the manufacturers and they want to know if they fit the chassis (with the engine mounted here) I'm happy to test fit them.

                  I think my reach goal would be a cut-down cluster with just the e46 or e90 or e85 cluster display. I'll worry about that later, but it would be fun to have that mounted somewhere other than the cluster.

                  Comment


                    ugh please don't tell me this is how much we get out of long tube headers:

                    https://www.europeanboost.com/showth...r-Dyno-Results

                    Please. I don't want it to be this much.

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                    I'd believe 10 hp. This is silly.

                    Comment


                      Yeah, I'm not sure about that either. Also, the 328i auto is pretty damn slow. that's 50whp less than mine, bone stock, lol.

                      I happen to know the 2014 version of the AA tune was pretty weak too. but 207whp with just headers, and no 3 stage, on an auto, on a mustang dyno... seems optimistic.

                      But there were definitely guys putting down over 250whp with headers and a tune (and a manual transmission).
                      Build thread

                      Bimmerlabs

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                        This is an early photo of the AA headers. There's certainly plenty hope that they'll clear my engine arms. my motor-mount end of the arm is maybe 1.5-2" higher than the one in the photo here. (that's a guess based on the motor mount height in my car vs the wood blocks I was resting the same arms on.

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                        As soon as I build a fixture to stop the engine rotating around the motor mounts (when I remove the not-a-sump) I"ll be able to get a photo from the same angle to the block, here's the best I can do now:

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                        The rear stiffener *might* interfere with cylinder 2? but honestly I don't really need the rear stiffener. If that became a priority it's easy to make adjustments. (this reminds me I have to make a heat shield for the motor mount).

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                        From the motor mount back you get into very familiar e30 header clearance problems: the sway bar, control arm bushings, and tunnel. I run the (solid) rubber e30 M3 control arm bushings on my daily in the original castings. switching to lollipop style is necessary for a few header fitments if I recall, and buys you another 3/4" or so. from what I remember of M5x headers, pipes designed for newer chassis hopelessly interfere with the control arm and bushing.

                        The sway-bar can obviously be relocated to the front, but I've got a whopping great big oil pan I'm putting there now.

                        What I see here is plenty of room for me to collect the two manifolds together, but not a lot of hope that pipes designed for a different car are going to clear everything.
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                          Oh. This write-up makes more sense:

                          https://www.bimmerboost.com/showthre...ntake-manifold

                          They recorded +40hp with their tune, headers, and the 3-stage intake manifold. That's suspiciously close to the difference between the BMW ratings for an e90 328i (228hp) and an e90 330i (268hp)... and the only difference between those engines is the 3-stage intake.

                          Comment


                            The off-the-shelf AA tune was garbage though. All they did was increase ignition advance by 3 degrees across the board. I think if you brought your car to them, they did actually do a decent tune, but it still had issues (limp mode and torque overflow errors).

                            also the 330i does not put down those power figures stock - it's around 220whp, not 248whp. 268bhp was for the "3.0si" motors on the Z4, X3, and X5, the 330i was 255bhp. The differences there are basically all software. However it's kind of funny because the 335i was originally 275Bhp, barely any more than the N52 could do N/A (although it has more torque than the N52) - but BMW clearly couldn't have a 7hp difference between the high end and "low" end cars, so they de-tuned the N52 to 230hp.

                            Obviously, tuned to an inch of it's life, an N54 can put down a lot more than 275bhp, but still. It illustrates that the difference really wasn't so big. It's too bad the M guys all left for Hyundai and BMW wouldn't let them make an M version of the N52..
                            Last edited by nando; 07-27-2020, 02:13 PM.
                            Build thread

                            Bimmerlabs

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                              With my M54 I've had to do all kinds of stuff to it, including ZHP cams, porting, M50 intake, etc. to get to ~245whp and I still have the looming issue of oil pump shaft harmonic failure. The N52 is a dime-a-dozen soccer motor that will do that off the shelf.

                              Getting back to the motor alignment issue, it's clear that the motor is centered and the diff is offset to starboard. I've never really paid attention to this on my car, how is this resolved on stock cars? I know the CSB is offset, does that mean the shaft is straight from the transmission to the diff pinion (at an angle), or does it go straight to the CSB and then jog left?

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                                The offset CSB could easily be an indication of the goofy underbody shape, and nothing to do with the driveline location.

                                Factory I expect that the shaft is straight to the CSB (so that the flex disc is perfectly undisturbed in a resting state) and then the rear shaft does all of the offset.

                                This is what I did with my lunch break:

                                https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kZ8...H4RSWaKi1/view

                                This spreadsheet compares the 330i DME pinout to the Z4 DME pinout. Differences that probably don't matter are in yellow. Differences that area big deal are in orange and get a little essay.

                                nando : If you can get your arm down to the connection on your 330i to the AC and find out if the white wire pumps out 12V when you ask the dash for refrigerated air I think that'll be huge. If that wire is CAN, I don't understand how the compressor clutch works, because there's no other power supplied to the compressor that I can find. Dash control is CAN, and the DME may get a vote in whether the compressor is on or might get notified so it can raise idle, but none of those things matter if I can engage the clutch with the e30 chassis compressor wiring.

                                How AC is handled is the biggest difference between the two cars. Everything else we pretty much knew. Once I know that the yellows don't matter for your tune, that the sport button doesn't matter, and that I can disconnect all signals for the MAF, I can apply this to the other spreadsheet and finish the harness design.

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