Turbo30 Build

[Turbo30]

Hey Everyone, I'm new to the E30 community, I just picked up a 1987 E30 "project".

A Little about the car.
I've been looking for an E30 project for a while now, after driving more rust buckets than I can count, I decided on a car. It is a 325 4 door sedan with a Nissan SR20DET swap. You may have noticed the quotes around the word "project" above. This car needs some saving (READ; it's rough). My goals are to make it as pristine as I can, drawing from a several decades long background in motorsports.

About me.
I start out in the motorsport scene, focusing on Japanese Turbo cars. I owned many DSM (Mitsubishi Eclipse platform) in the past and worked at a Dyno shop, tuning ECUs, so I am familiar with turbo import cars. I was also the administrator of DSMTalk.com, the largest DSM community online. At some point, well over a decade ago, I decide to get an office job and leave my car hobby behind. I had kids, found new interests, and moved on. I eventually found my way back by way of a E446 M3 which I loved and eventually sold to a close friend of mine. I replaced it with an E90 M3 and I truly love both platforms. Staying true to my background I've always had the aspiration to build a K-swapped E30 but spend almost a 1 year hunting through rusted/rotted out examples or pristine exemplars costing more than my E90 M3. Right when I assumed all hope was lost, I was presented with an opportunity I couldn't refuse. This opportunity was in the form of a 325 sr20det project. Although not my engine of choice for these cars, I decided to pick it up, considering I'm familiar with the powerplant from my previous life as a ECU tuner.

As the car sits... it is rough. I hope to lean on many of you for E30 expertise. During the winter, I plan on pulling the powertrain and reassembling it, as I would have done the first time, methodically. If anyone here is in the Maryland area and works for beers, I could definitely like to make new friends.

I promise better pictures, build updates , and detailed writeups, if anyone cares..... But for now, here she is, as it sits currently.

[OSAH racing]

Looking forward to all your updates.

[f2892704]

Congrats!

[Northern]

awaiting the promised pics/updates haha.

[Panici]

Subscribed for updates. Sounds like a good project.

[Swoozley Macklin]

Ay, a r3v member got that. I was chatting back and forth with the owner. This was from PA?

[rmdashrf]

congrats!

where abouts in MD?

[2mAn]

Need more than a teaser pic... lets see it

[Turbo30]

Ay, a r3v member got that. I was chatting back and forth with the owner. This was from PA?

That's the one.

[Turbo30]

congrats!

where abouts in MD?

Montgomery County, over by the Germantown area.

[Turbo30]

Need more than a teaser pic... lets see it

I'll add as I go along. There's really nothing more to it than a sr20det wedged into an e30. There is a ALOT to clean up and fix/address. It's going to be a good winter project.

[Turbo30]

I thought it would be good to showcase the starting point. At some point, I will be playing "what does this connector do?" as there are several connectors in the engine bay just hanging out.

The engine bay, as it sits right now.


The car in the garage.

[Panici]

Wow, lots of room for activities in that engine bay!
Strange seeing the intake and exhaust sides swapped from the regular E30 engines.

[Turbo30]

Small update today.
The interior of the car is not "terrible" but it does need some love. The door card on the passenger side was off and the interior door handle had been "hulked" off, the doors squeek, and the glove compartment is a rats nest of wires. At least it's not a real rats nest. So today in convinced myself that I would dedicate some time to working on the car, so In order to motivate myself I work up really early and drove to my local Cars and Coffee to get in the mood to work on the car. Having spent a couple of hours drooling at the 1970s RUF 911 that showed, I decide to come home at tackle the door card. I removed the door card, replaced all the clips as well as the door handle. Here is finished product :



It may not be impressive to you, but I'm pumped that I have a passenger door handle that works!

Next I need to figure out what I"m going to do to keep the glove compartment closed. I don't necessarily need a glove box to store stuff in this car, so I'm OK with it hiding the ECU and wiring. Eventually I'm going to migrate to Link ECU to run the SR20DET and will clean up the wiring then. For now I need to find a way to keep it closed. Contrary to what the previous owner thought, No duct tape is not going to hold it closed for longer than a day, tops. This is what it looks like now.




As a way to treat myself,. I pulled the car out of the garage, turned it on, and drove 10 ft. Then I parked it back in the garage. Soon The engine comes out and the real fun begins.

[Turbo30]

Almost two months since the last update, which may sound terrible but when you have two kids under the age of 4 running around , you find little time to devote to other things. Today is thanksgiving and i was able to pull myself away from the family for a couple of hours to wrench in the garage.

My goal for the winter was to pull the engine, but I'm quickly realizing that there are other things that really need to be addressed first. As I've mentioned earlier, the thing that keeps me from being able to actually drive this car is the cracks in the turbo manifold and the exhaust dump out of the top of the hood (its just not my vibe). So I've decided to tackle the hot-side of the engine.

The turbo manifold seems to be some knockoff EBay brand (maybe CX Racing) with a no-name external wastegate (not that it really matters, the section of piping the goes from the collector the the wastegate is falling off, so I'm not building any boost). The Turbo itself seems to be a stock turbo with a the internal wastegate welded shut.



Note that in the picture above, there should be a runner sticking out to an external wastegate, but it cracked off when I "accidentally" knocked it with a wrench. Here is a picture of what the turbo manifold looks like once it was removed from the car:



Clearly this needs to be replaced and I have two options. The stock configuration is a bottom-mounted turbo and the other option is to keep the top-mount configuration. The problem in either configuration is routing the exhaust. in the case of the top-mount, I have to go back along the head then down between the block and the brake booster. It is REALLY tight back there. So I'd have to either go with a smaller brake booster or remove it altogether (which I'm not too crazy about). I've seen folks have really good luck with retrofitting an e9x brake booster which is considerably smaller, so that is the route I am planning on taking for this build. Below is how I plan on routeing the exhaust.


The turbine housing is a completely different matter. This particular turbine housing pushed the turbo forward toward the front of the car. Most tubular manifolds for sr20det swaps are for 240sx application which has a little more space width-wise. I may still be able to get away with a an off the shelf turbo manifold if I go with the e9x brake booster because the master brake cylinder is shorter than the stock e30 master brake cylinder. So another really popular swap is to put sr20det into Datsun 510, which is much smaller bay than ours. So i've been reaching out to folks in the community to see what manifold options exists there. My dream setup would likely involve a vband top-mount manifold and and turbo with a 2.5" outlet that I can sneak back and down then expand to a 3" when I get to the bottom of the car.

realistically, I want to get the car running and make sure that I am comfortable with where its at before I start throwing big bucks at it. I have a stock bottom-mount manifold and I can replace the exhaust turbine housing with another stock unit (where the internal wastegate isn't welded shut). for minimal $ I can likely swap the the stock stuff back in (folks that usually do this swap elect to keep the bottom mount setup anyways), and start addressing other stuff in the car. Before, upgrading to a (slightly) bigger turbo and dripping big bucks into the manifold and turbo setup, I'd like to get a programmable ECU (sr20 folks like Link ECU , so I'll likely go down that route). I wanna make sure The car is running well before I start upgrading it.

For now I have a car in a garage, with missing turbo parts.....