2nd e30, 87 Lachssilber Revival

[Reichart12]

Looking shiny inside and out.

Do those ITBs need to be balanced/adjusted at all?

Balanced with a synchrometer air flow tool. That part has been fairly straight forward but it's set with too high of an idle currently. They are balanced off the middle pair since that is the one connected to the throttle cable. Need to back that off and hopefully the others move with it since they are currently all in sync.

[Reichart12]

Ok, played around with two things today and at least one of them helped. The LC-2 wideband has four wires. Previously had all four connected. Just undid one and that showed the AFR gauge more responsiveness but was still stuck sitting at 10. But now with throttle it would shoot to 22 and fall back to 10 when off the throttle. Reading some other threads, I saw people mentioning "getting alpha-n good then go to ITB mode". Turns out I totally forgot about alpha-n. So made that switch and burned it to the controller. Now my AFRs were in the 12-14 range! Took the car for a spin around the neighborhood roads (25 mph) and it would stumble coasting at 3000 rpm in 2nd needing to go into third to fix it. Throttle reponse seems laggy, like it need a deeeepth breathe being going. And once after a stop sign it bogged down on me and took a few seconds to do anything. Not sure what's going on. Will play around more tomorrow and might try this cruise around the neighborhood again with the autotune feature on.

[Reichart12]

Old stroker engine back in Maryland was apparently taking up too much room as a complete engine, or just that my dad was bored. But anyways, he decided to spend a weekend taking it apart and seeing how everything looked. Here are the photos he sent me after. Let me know what you think. I'm going to start looking into ways to get everything checked out so I can try to plan a rebuild with hopefully some reused parts. Reminder, it had about 20,000 miles on it...

[Reichart12]

Tried to toss these photos up the other day but couldn't get r3v to open. Then forgot for a few days. Still not the best part out there but it was fun to make and I like how it looks. It was the last piece of my fiber roll and I managed to misalign the fibers. Still a lot of difficulties getting a good even resin layer. I bought a vacuum pump and vacuum bagging material but need to iron out some kinks there. Not much warm weather left to make much more but I may just try to squeeze one other part type in before winter...

Video on the process

https://youtu.be/5qoWX_KtIXI

Couple photos I took

[2mAn]

Still not the best part out there but it was fun to make and I like how it looks. It was the last piece of my fiber roll and I managed to misalign the fibers. Still a lot of difficulties getting a good even resin layer. I bought a vacuum pump and vacuum bagging material but need to iron out some kinks there. Not much warm weather left to make much more but I may just try to squeeze one other part type in before winter...

CF hood?

[moatilliatta]

Glad to hear ITBs are making progress. The gas lids are looking better. Looks like maybe trimmed a bit small?

[Reichart12]

CF hood?

Trunk! But I miscalculated fiberglass resin so my mold is thin. The part side looks good though.

Glad to hear ITBs are making progress. The gas lids are looking better. Looks like maybe trimmed a bit small?

Not so much trimmed small but misaligned bonding to the metal backing. The hinge part sits too close to the edge and that just messes up all the body gaps.

[Reichart12]

Mostly just a photo dump. Had to replace the o-rings for the bitch tube and decided to replace the tube, spring, and washer too. All in for ~$35. I believe that fixed the main oil leak I had from installing the ITBs. Still maybe something coming from the oil filer housing/cooler lines but not positive. (Now my truck, I know where that fat oil leak is coming from, but I digress). Have only tuned the car up to about 40 mph and below 4500 rpm. Lazy me. But I might take this thing to work this week. Stay tuned. Anyways, should have a Youtube video coming out in a couple days covering this change but I know you all appreciate pictures more.

[roguetoaster]

I wonder if ITBs need to be readjusted at some point early on after initial setting as the fresh parts wear in?

[Reichart12]

I wonder if ITBs need to be readjusted at some point early on after initial setting as the fresh parts wear in?

I'd imagine they constantly need adjusting. After my first drive around the block I had to retighten the set screws on the throttle pairs. It's better now but I will probably check the set screws and flow rating before any long trips or autocross events.

[ForcedFirebird]

They will need adjustment periodically.

I stopped using that flow meter, they work "OK", but are a pain if you have an air box. Had a customer come in work a few months ago with DBilas ITB's that balance was so horrible, sounded like it was running on 3 cyl. My neighbor is an outboard mechanic and loaned me his carb sync tool, works so much better, and is just generally makes it a faster process all around: https://www.amazon.com/P1-Tools-Moto.../dp/B07MJZ1RFB

[AWDBOB]

Nice work on the ITBs- do you plan on trying to retain cruise? That's such a killer for me, as I do a lot of highway driving.

Re: adjustments. Everyone I know that has run these has had to make fairly frequent adjustments, which is what scared me away from using them on Linda, as I wanted the car to be a worry free driving experience.

Perhaps you could guide us along your journey with them.

Are you running trumpet filters?

[digger]

i hadn't adjusted mine for over 5 years without issue and only needed to after i needed to remove them. i did do some massaging of the end of the set screws to grind them flat, and i might have changed out some wear items e.g. the little tabs, for harder/more wear resistant materials (stainless) but mine are older versions.

i always balance the throttle with the ICV nipples closed off (i.e. ICV inactive) to eliminate the variable and i use the flow tool.

I have tried several different vacuum type gauges that exist and there is no benefit in moving away from the flow tool IMO.

It would be different if the throttles had individual bypass screws so that once you balanced the blades using the flow tool and then enabled the ICV you could do secondary balance by trimming air flow using the individual bypass without moving the blades using a vacuum type setup. However since these are are somewhat budget ITB they don't have the individual bleeds like the more expensive setups do. This is why when you setup the ICV everything needs to be as close as possible to identical on each cylinder e.g. each nipple identical and i drill them so they are the same, same hose lengths and so on and is why i went to a log type tube for the ICV similar to used on S54B32/S50B32

[Reichart12]

They will need adjustment periodically.

I stopped using that flow meter, they work "OK", but are a pain if you have an air box. Had a customer come in work a few months ago with DBilas ITB's that balance was so horrible, sounded like it was running on 3 cyl. My neighbor is an outboard mechanic and loaned me his carb sync tool, works so much better, and is just generally makes it a faster process all around

This was definitely the style I would see more often when doing some Google searches about ITB syncing.

Nice work on the ITBs- do you plan on trying to retain cruise? That's such a killer for me, as I do a lot of highway driving.

Are you running trumpet filters?

This car never had cruise and honestly I don't ever use it in my truck either so that was a non issue for me. Currently open trumpets but I do plan to put the plenum air box on with a singular filter.

It would be different if the throttles had individual bypass screws so that once you balanced the blades using the flow tool and then enabled the ICV you could do secondary balance by trimming air flow using the individual bypass without moving the blades using a vacuum type setup. However since these are are somewhat budget ITB they don't have the individual bleeds like the more expensive setups do. This is why when you setup the ICV everything needs to be as close as possible to identical on each cylinder e.g. each nipple identical and i drill them so they are the same, same hose lengths and so on and is why i went to a log type tube for the ICV similar to used on S54B32/S50B32

I always appreciate the knowledge coming through. This has been the only set of ITBs I've been exposed to so it's definitely interesting to hear about the variations that might exist between different sets and different price points.

[digger]

I should be clear that while these are economical itb the quality is more than adequate to achieve good results. The setup and tuning are critical but not overly difficult