e30 M3 minor rust repair.

[///M Powered]

I've read it all and copied all just ctrl + a and paste into a word doc, now it is over 1300 pg. Just to have all the knowledge safe.

Any way you could upload that to a site like uploaded.net or rapidgator? Would love to have that file for future reference.

[rorschach]

Oh my God!
I never thought that a topic like this could exist.. but here it is !
I made this account especially to congratulate you and thank you that there still are people like you doing such acts of passion.
Thus, dear sir , i salute you !

I've read it all and copied all just ctrl + a and paste into a word doc, now it is over 1300 pg. Just to have all the knowledge safe.

------------------

Ok.
My second reason :)
I have on question if a may regarding the MAF (AFM in your case ) delete.
My dream is the BMW E34 M5 3.8 L.
The engines, at core, S14 and S38 are the same.
Th S38b38 has more electrical gizmos like:
- individual coil plugs
- variable intake manifold / resonance flap - controled by the ECU to increase volumetric efficency optimizing air flow for low end power and also high rpm scream - it opens and closes at various rpm points.


- uses a MAF insteand of an AFM.
- Bosch Motronic M3.3

- has 1 cam sensor (i don't think the S14 has it), 1 crank, 1 lambda, 1 TPS, the temp ones and what's left for the basic one etc.

So, including the above in your knowledge, what is the best route for me to delete the MAF (reason ? over 1000 euroes for a dam sensor !! ) but also no to loose the drivability and reliability. (no to mention i understand by doing this you also gain throttle response etc )

- alpha-n via a chip (piggyback? ) using only the tps from what i read (but i loose the self ajustment to elevation? ) ?? (also not forgetting the ecu controled flap inside the manifold-will it still work ?)
- can i also add a MAP sensor ? using a MAP will it do everyhting like self learning etc? (because the BMW E46 M3 CSL uses a MAP vs the stock m3 which uses a MAF )
- go stand alone like you and i can do everything but a lot of $$ ? Will it be like factory i mean can you depend on it to work 100% in every weather scenario etc once it is fully tuned ?
- etc

The electronic stuff i'm trying to learn so if anybody can spare some time to explained every scenario/ options etc i will be in your dept.
Thank you.

[adam-carmad]

I've only got up to post *83 and just had to reply.

I've seen this car at the e30 meet in athlone this year and cant believe this is the same one. Any pics I got that day were near the end of the day as the amount of people standing around it was mindblowing. Well done and cant wait till get reading further how you achieved such a stunner of a car. I thought when I seen it at the show it was brand new and one of these that was purchased and tucked away for decades. How wrong I was.

[Simon S]

:bow:

[Bartholomeo]

so by blueprinting a high-spec engine like the S14 , 50hp can be gained! Stunning build.

[silence]

looking forward to the final installment

[///M Powered]

Great update to my favorite thread!

[xworks]

So, did we manage to find a few more stray horses during the
engine rebuild?
Well it appears we did, exactly how many is a little hard to say.
You may or may not already know this, but the simple fact is rolling
road read outs from different places are practically impossible to
compare.
This doesn't matter to much if you intend using the same rolling road
for all your future tuning, as each new run should be reasonably
comparable to the last, allowing you to see what gains your modifications
have made. However, as we never had this M3 tested on any of the
following rollers while the engine was in original spec, it's hard to put
an exact figure on the gains made.

To illustrate the point here's the print out's from the 3 rolling roads the car
has been on to date..........

rollers A: max bhp = 265
: max torque = 188



rollers B: max bhp = 258
: max torque = 234



rollers C: max bhp = 252
: max torque = 191



So depending on whether your a glass half full, glass half empty, or a fuck
the glass gimme the whole bottle, type of guy, we seem to have made a
gain of between 55 to 65 horse power over the standard 195bhp engine
the car started with.

The truth of the matter is, for me, max bhp figures are for car magazines
and tv motoring programes, they tell you very little about how an engine
feels like to drive.
Since the bulk of the engine tunning has been completed (still some small
bit's to tidy up), I've wasted no opportunity in clocking up as many miles
as I can behind the wheel.
To date I've managed a little over 9000km and I absolutely love the engine.
It pulls reasonably well from low down, which is handy in everyday traffic,
but find a clear stretch of road and leave the boot sunk a little longer and
the engine really comes alive.
The sound of the airbox alone makes every bit of hardship and hard earned
(borrowed) money spent on nailing this engine together worthwhile.

It truely is a crying shame that theres no (relatively speaking) "cheap" way
of going about fitting an airbox to these engines (when you add up the price
of the box itself, the stand alone or piggy back ecu required to dump the
airflow meter and the rolling road time required to dial in the correct fuel
and/or ignition settings). That being said, for me anyway, the induction
sound the airbox has added to the car is without doubt my single favorite
modificaton of the whole build.

Theres a beautiful change in tone when the engine heads north of 5000rpm
and for a brief moment your in your own little tarmac rally,
right up untill you spot the white van parked up ahead and have a brief shite
attack while you wonder if it's a Gatso van taking a Kodak moment of you
and your little pride and joy to accompany the fine and 3 penalty points for
speeding.

I'm going to leave it at that for now. For the final update I'm trying my best
to get some decent pic's of the finished car, and, if I can manage not to
electrocute myself with the camcorder I'll try and take a quick vid of the
car in motion that doesn't look as if it was shot with an electric tootbrush.

Till then.........

[xworks]

She still connects to the plastic seperator at the same port but instead of heading
for the inlet manifold she does a drunken u turn and makes a b line for the
gearbox bellhousing..........



and then runs down by the bellhousing to the underneath of the car.......



as she passes by, a little plate covers the now empty original crank sensor
holes and also secures the pipe......





The thinking is the air passing underneath the car will carry any
fumes off into the atmosphere. The tree huggers should love that one.



The little filter on the end of the pipe is absolutely essential by the way,
it does sweet fuck all, but it looks good and thats enough to keep the
nice people at the yearly car test center happy, bless them.

So that was it. There was no avoiding it any longer the car was ready
to be brought to life. Unfortunately I don't possess the actual brain
power required to programe a blank ecu to be able to run an engine,
so, off she went to some engine tuner's to work their magic.

Looking back it probably would have been nice to get some footage
of the engine coming to life, unfortunately I was too busy crossing my
fingers and toes that the engine wouldn't splatter itself all over the inside
of the workshop while being flogged on the rollers. I have though,
managed to get some footage of her doing a power run at another rolling
road recently.
If you've been following this thread for a while you'll probably be used to
the fact that I own a fairly shite digital camera, and, I'm fairly shite at
using it too, so it should come as no suprise that despite my best efforts
the video footage in this short clip is also reasonably shite and has the
look of something that may well have been shot using an
electric toaster rather than a camcorder.
What can you do.......

[xworks]

With the wiring finally finished there were some other small bits to take
care of before we could fire her up. As detailed earlier we were adding a
digital oil pressure gauge to the dash and this gauge would need it's own
sender unit to read the oil pressure and send the info back up to the gauge.
As the new gauge unit up on the dash was also going to be triggering the
low oil pressure warning light on the dash cluster we could remove the low
oil pressure switch and fit our sender unit in it's place.
However, the S14 is a notoriously "buzzy" engine and shakes the shit out
of anything bolted to it over it's lifetime. This usually isn't the ideal
enviroment an oil pressure sensor like's to live in, so, in an attempt to
prevent the sender from going prematurely tits up, we've remote
mounted it.

A few fittings and some flexible pipework attached to where the old
oil pressure switch used to be on the oil filter housing.........





allows the new oil pressure sender to live a more peacefull life mounted to the chassis leg instead.........



Final item worth mentioning before we finish off on the engine is a little
mod done to the breather system. The breather system on the M3 and
more or less any engine that was fitted to an e30 is a fairly straight
forward affair.

Inside the engine, no matter how "super duper" your piston rings are at
sealing up the cylinder bore, you will always have some small amount of
compression sneaking by and getting down into the sump. As this
pressurised air makes it's way past the piston rings down into the sump it
mixes with the oilly mist down there that has been created by the crank
spinning over at warp speed.
This pressurised oil mist has to be gotten rid of otherwise the pressure
would build and start bursting it's way out past oil seals or working it's
way back up into the cylinder again once the compression stroke has
finished. The way it's dealt with on the S14 engine is with these little
collection of pipes and a plastic chamber..........



The front timing chain cover on the S14 is basically a little hollow chamber
at the front of the engine that connects the sump to the cam box, so,
the pressurised oil mist makes it's way up this hollow chamber into the cam
box on top of the engine. At the rear of the rocker cover theres a breather
pipe attached to vent this build up........



This breather pipe (yellow) feeds the oilly mist down into a plastic
seperator chamber bolted onto the side of the engine (blue).........



The seperator chamber uses some voodoo shit to seperate the oil from
the air, after which the liquid oil is fed back down to the sump via the
red pipe and the air is fed back into the intake system via the green pipe.
And everyone goes home happy.
Well not exactly, in reality some of that oilly mist often ends up making
it's way back up the green pipe and into the engine to contaminate that
lovely fresh air coming in.
With the amount of ball ache we've gone to trying to get some premium
fresh extra air into this engine to make more power I'll be fucked if I'm
going to start spraying oilly mist in there too.

So, the solution, vent that green pipe to atmosphere rather than recirculate
it back into the engine.
To do this we'd need a new green pipe.........



See that? Formula one technology that is........



Bit hard to see the actual pipe when refitted to the engine........

[MattAvino]

No shite..

Than loom work got me all hot and bothered..

I was gonna say...you must adore this thread.

[Simon S]

I want to have your babies.

No shite..

That loom work got me all hot and bothered..

[CorvallisBMW]

I want to have your babies.

[xworks]

Once back in everything gets connected up for the final time,
including the main power feed for the whole engine loom which
I've tapped off the remote battery connection on the bulkhead........



relays and fuses get hammered home.........



Relays are, main relay that powers up pretty much everything
on the loom via the 20 amp fuse beside it, the fuel pump relay,
and the final fuse is a litte 5 amp job to protect the lambda sensor
controler from melting should it take on suicidal tendancies.....



which was the final step in building the engine loom. There was some other
wiring that needed to be addressed in the engine bay before the job could
be signed off on though. The earth straps........



Alot of the various sensors and stuff used on the engine (including
the starter) will use the engine itself as an earth path for the voltages
return route to the negative pole of the battery.
(All positive voltage wants to do is flow from the positive pole to the
negative pole of the battery, it's inherently lazy and will always take the
shortest route offered to it. Your just putting sensors and electric motors
in it's way to get some work out of it as it makes it's journey.)
As the engine and gearbox are rubber mounted, and as such insulated
from the cars metal chassis, the need arises for some earth straps attaching
the engine to the chassis and giving a route for the voltage to make it's way
back from the engine through the cars chassis to the negative pole of the
battery. As standard, the M3 came fitted with 3 engine earth straps,
the 2 pictured above and another one detailed below.
The original earth straps were starting to show their age a little, and as a poorly
connected, corroded or broken engine earth strap can cause absolute mayhem
with a cars electrical system it was decided to make up some new ones.

The first one (smaller one in the pic above) attaches from the engine bay
battery shelf to a bolt on the cover at the back of the cam box.......



The second and main one, (fat one in the top pic) attaches from the drivers
side chassis leg......



to the engine sump pan.......



and the third one is just to earth the alternaor to the engine block
(as the alternator is rubber mounted to the engine).......



And that was pretty much the end of the wiring.
There was just one or two other small jobs to complete
before we could bring the engine to life.

Will try get the next bit up for tomorrow, think I've a shite
quality vid (as usual) here somewhere of her on the rolling road as well.

Till then..........

[xworks]

These little bunch of brown and black wires were the
various earths that needed to be secured to bare metal of
the chassis somewhere around the ecu. I'll freely admit to
being in the typical red blooded male catagory when it comes
to reading installation instructions, only ever read them when
the item your attempting to assemble starts to go on fire.
However, when it comes to installing Ecu and instrument earths
it's worth making the time to double check the fitting instructions.
Although all these earth wires are only returning spent voltage back
to the battery negative pole through the chassis, alot of them don't
like sharing the same ring connector to bolt them to the chassis.
And, out of jealousy, will sometimes start to fuck with each other
leading to all sorts of wierd and wonderful problems.
Most decent made products usually give some info on how to treat
the earth connections, worth reading to avoid the voodoo shit.......



Last little connector was for all the wiring traveling to the oil and
lambda gauges in the dash switch panel.......



Should the switch/heater control panel have to come out again
somewhere along the line it's a lot easier to disconnect a plug
than undo a clatter of wires.

And thats about it, engine loom was done........



Only other thing to add was the heavy gauge wire to feed the
starter and alternator which would sit along side the engine
loom when she goes back in.........