cameras ready prepare to flash

[s14brent]

expensive weekend..... local 318ti guy had these arms (MRT dual adjuster DTM setup) up for grabs since he scrapped the project. These were properly built on a jig and tig welded.



they did have bit of flash surface rust on them, but it was easy to clean up. looks like the mounts are the same so i'll be running the e46/325i rear caliper/rotor setup again but this time with 318ti hubs vs z4.



of course 318ti wheel bearings are smaller than late model e30's.....ordered up a new pair



was gonna scrap the hubs, but apparently ti hubs are $150-160ea and bmw only.....i find that odd



I already had some garagistic trailing arm reinforcements and secondary caliper mounts when they went on clearance at ECS. I went ahead and ordered the rest of the subframe - differential reinforcements RSB and will mock things up to weld soon.

If that wasn't enough, i bought back my 02 525i that i manual swapped (zf320) + m54b30 swapped.




It's currently exhaust manifold-less, i just need to replace a few studs and throw the header/gaskets back on there. I'm undecided what this is for, but for the price, having a spare zf320 isn't a bad thing. It even came back with m-pars and pilot sports FTW!!
plans after its running is to convert rear sls to diy coilover spring (reuse my 14k swift springs) setup with bilstein shocks....maybe throw in a 528i 3.9 welded diff and have a spare fun car while the e30 gets some work done! who knows.....All I know is that while I drop the rear subframe out of the e30, I really should check out the gas tank while i'm there and finish up the rear fuel system (relocate fuel filter + install surge tank), oh and finally weld in the stim tech rear strut tower reinforcements. super happy to have it back though. it was a lot of work converting it all the first time around, can't wait to be able to drive it around the block or something. Kinda opening a bag of worms with another project car..

[s14brent]

woke up on friday and decided to sign up for vegasdrift last minute. ended up spending most of friday/saturday before work doing nut/bolt checks, i'm surprised i still have to reference torque specs still tbh.



lotta cool cars came out from socal





rome cp brought his e36 out




nikita's sick 190e



and a couple other sick e36's showed up also.

i picked up some solid akg 24v swap mounts and trans mounts from a local while i was there. i'll eventually go solid mount when i replace the oilpan/subframe.



had a blast out there, but my alignment has changed with all the ride height adjustments. i found out on the way to the gas station it pulls to the left now, which i was fighting most of the day. oops.
I was having issues on the main track. turn 1 was kicking my ass and after seeing a few cars hit the wall there i got spooked and took the e30 off-roading and then called it a day.



with my little offroad adventure i almost had a blow out apparently.....after the wash i found all these rocks lodged in the left rear bead. Feel so lucky I made it home on those wheels! I used my fun little emergency debeader and got all the rocks out and luckily there was no damage to the rubber and it sealed right back up. There is some scuffing on parts of the wrap. thankfully all in one piece, and not upset, the wrap did its' intended job! I really need to figure out the trailing arm route i'm going asap and get a fresh alignment soon.



i havent seen many photos get posted yet, but here's one of me going pretty straight LOL

[s14brent]

I still love the colour. New flares look great too

ty! i'm glad i stumbled on the set.

------
i haven't had very much time to do car things so far this year. I got the LINK can-lambda finally but now I'm thinking I should order up a couple pressure/temp sensors for oil and fuel before moving forward.

everything i've done is pretty much out of boredom on days off like reverse-mounting the rear speakers so the speaker cover would fit.




and of course I noticed my rear spring adjuster was a bit cock-eyed/possibly binding, so i removed the shock so i could reset it and lowered it a bit more. My left side coilover collar/adjuster has more threads than the right but visually its even, the right side collar is bottomed out. It is somewhat frustrating because I guess if I wanted to ever go lower, I'd probably need to change to 4" springs vs 5". (i doubt that would ever be an issue that would come up). I'm happy with how its set currently.



The front is as low as i'm comfortable with. it's got a little less than a 1/4" at full lock, but also at full lock my front end does lift up a bit due to caster I believe.



I reached out to someone about getting the ball rolling on different set of trailing arms. If that doesnt come through, I think the extra-long garagistic/serrated adjusters and stimtech sphericals will be the play. hoping to go with a custom set of trailing arms at this point. buy twice, unhappy wife or whatever....LOL

There is a March 2nd local drift event i'd love to make, but I get back in town on the 27th, so we'll see how i feel. hopefully more significant updates soon.

[Northern]

I still love the colour. New flares look great too

[s14brent]

just washed. had to share a photo with the color matched flares all clean!!

[s14brent]

so i've just been keeping myself busy and stumbled across this AFE intake pipe i had from my old e36 m3, unfortunately i don't have any of the maf adapters for it, but nothing a silicone reducer can't handle. I have a brand new AEM filter for this as well, and this will be the setup used once i convert it over to MAP.
I also have a straight foot of 3.5" aluminum piping if I decide to just extend my current setup.



I have always had the thought of going to obd1 (M50 vanos) valve cover. I actually have one but don't like the condition of the casting and wanted to hold off to find another. Meanwhile, I did find this oem s50 vanity cover for cheap. I had to do a little jb weld repair on the back inner side, but I got this for cheap so it's perfect. (if i go m50 valve cover - there's a big chance I cant run this because I'll be running -AN bulkheads for catch-can setup.

bought myself a new track-day jack from HF. the old 1.5ton was giving me issues last event so an upgrade was well needed.

KAmotors ultra-wide flares showed up and they had some imperfections that i wanted to fix before fitting (jokes on me i did it like 3x!! It's a shame so many parts are unavailable now, I would have loved to just buy a pair of front ODI/GruppeBAV fenders and call it a day. I epoxied some areas (mostly edges) and sanded them down and cut to fit all 4. After that basically used the pnuematic finger sander to sand the inner edge/lip down flush and made sure each flare was to my approval prior to sending off to get wrapped.

what's cool about the kamotor flares is that the bolt pattern was the same as the standards. I only had to do 10 rivnuts up front instead of 20 all around.


Since I went back to the stock swaybar I could reduce the spacer size up front. I essentially swapped the spacers around, 25mm to the rears and 10mm up front. I also lowered the front end a bit and i'm tempted to do more. I will finish up the flares, and drop them off for wrap first, and drive around flare-less to let it settle a bit, but I definitely am happy with the flare-swap.

Also....turning the car lock to lock to test clearance, there was some vertical play in the china/flashpower short hub. I tried remounting it and torquing down the nut more, but the pot metal probably ovaled a bit. Thankfully I kept my momo hub and threw that back on. Strangely I now want a thicker spacer/ nardi adapter to bring the wheel back to where it was previously with the quick release. I won't miss the quick release, i dont think i took off my wheel once since I put it on!!

Here's a final pic before i remove the flares and drop them off to my wrap guy.



I want to wait for the harperfab oil pan before it goes down any lower, but it will probably only be another .5"-.75" max - not really about that low-life, i just want it to look good at full lock LOL!!

---
I also fixed the hunting idle issue.....maybe since 2 events ago - it was kind of stalling out at stop lights or would stumble after revving at idle and was throwing that o2 sensor code (replaced o2 a month or two back) and it was getting quite annoying. I even tried swapping out the 3.5" maf sensor just to rule it out. Turns out my idle air control valve was getting a little sticky. I just needed to do a little cleaning on it to loosen it back up but I replaced it with the spare I had (from the spare s52 parts bin) and cleaned the original part to keep as another spare. (turns out i found another spare ICV in my storage, so I'm good to go if this thing ever causes problems again LOL!!


old ^


pretty happy I completed the check list I made before end of year! I particularly wanted to fix this idle issue before I change over to the LINK setup. (driftHQ said they are waiting for link to get restock of the can-lambda's in NZ and will drop ship it directly in about a week - we'll see!)

edit: 01/01/2025

wrap-buddy got the flares done QUICK!! Threw on some fender welting and slapped them on with some all black hardware like the rest of the car!!





super glad to have these knocked out quick! I am tempted now to take it to a dyno to get my base numbers pre-link ecu.

[s14brent]

more action shots rolled in!!!

finished up the s54 oil filter housing job and gave the car a much needed wash. I also gave the engine bay a little spray down....the techno e36 m3 mirrors are hard mounted through the cast aluminum baseplates into rivnuts so it's easily reversible.






next up: waiting for parts.....hoping to get the link can-lambda and start planning the switch over to the link ecu. I'm really motivated to get that part done! I'm also waiting on a set of new flares. found a set of kamotors ultrawides and think they might be a better option. However i do like the custom front bdc flares i've made, i just can't go low because of how they're mounted below the body line.i think the rears still look great, not sure i want to go wider back there since that means i'd just need a fatter spacer more than anything.

[Northern]

Ah that makes sense. And yeah I only have mine because I found a deal on ebay back in the day.

[s14brent]

Thanks for the alt comparison, I had no idea they were physically different sizes... I'd round up to 2 lbs and call it a win lol.

I've had an S54 OFH in a drawer for years, but realized I need to pull the radiator for the top alternator bolt and have been too lazy to even consider installing it.
Are you keeping the mishimoto oil t.stat? You know the S54 OFH has an internal one but I wouldn't blame you for leaving it there because it's not going to hurt anything and saves some work.

2.67 lb's with the ac crank pulley delete!!

the s54 thermostat is known to limit the amount of oil flow even at temp (does not open 100% ever). so I used bimmerworld's oil cooler diverter valve for full flow and using the mishimoto thermostat to do the temp regulating since it opens 100% when at temp. For hot lapping like I do I prefer it to be fully open, but the stock probably would have worked to be honest!!
....yeah s54 oil filter housings keep raising in price it seems, and I don't think I would have bought one outright to be honest... so I wasn't really planning on installing it right away either, but I wanted to remove the wp pulley and the ac crank pulley so timing was right since the radiator had to be pulled once again! (wish i could have upgraded but this radiator for some reason is doing its job!!) For some reason though, prior to this my s52 took closer to 8qts of oil (top line of dipstick). I think I have 7.4 in there this time around. whatever right LOL

[Northern]

Thanks for the alt comparison, I had no idea they were physically different sizes... I'd round up to 2 lbs and call it a win lol.

I've had an S54 OFH in a drawer for years, but realized I need to pull the radiator for the top alternator bolt and have been too lazy to even consider installing it.
Are you keeping the mishimoto oil t.stat? You know the S54 OFH has an internal one but I wouldn't blame you for leaving it there because it's not going to hurt anything and saves some work.

[s14brent]

She looks great

Thanks man, my link can-lambda won't be here until january apparently. I was hoping to be on the link ecu (na tune) before the january 25th event, but new goal is March it seems. I might not be able to do that january event also as that lands on a Saturday and i'm heavily busy normally with all the conferences/conventions that month.

-----
I decided since I was going to need to do an oil change that I'd do some maintenance while I was at it...when i was running the 14" spal fan (for like a month) the rubber bushing for the radiator busted and pushed the e-fan into the ecs overdrive waterpump pulley. I didn't get around to changing the pulley that time, so I went ahead and added it onto the "to-do list".



I also still had the s54 oil filter housing and 80a bosch alternator from the roached s52 I tore down.



Bosch 80a VS 120a


bosch 120 ^ bosch 80 v


I was hoping for a bit more than 1.79lbs savings, oh well.....

I finally pulled off the AC crank hub/pulley. It was just taking up space to be honest.



s54 oil filter housing, bimmer world oil cooler -an fittings, and bimmer world diverter valve were installed back when I got this. I also got the MSW 14mm to 12mm banjo bolt and replaced the vanos oil line. I also added a -4an fitting to the banjo bolt for future turbo oil feed. I had to buy a -4 cap to block it off for now.




s52 OFH removed along with a bunch of other stuff....



s54 OFH installed



-4an cap for turbo oil feed.



Since the oil cooler cap was where the oil cooler feed/return were prior - i had to shorten the lines and changed the fittings from the oil cooler to 45 degree fittings. clears the intake very nicely now




I didn't know turner made a kevlar accessory belt for us 24v guys. Ordered that and a repalcement OD waterpump pulley




I also had to do some ricer stuff while I was waiting for parts......a buddy had a pair of technoviolet e36 m3 coupe mirrors laying around....i just had to see what it'd look like. I'm not done fitting them 100% yet, but they are going to stay because I have totally ruined them for anyone else LOL.



Finally wrapped up everything and refilled oil & coolant (distilled water+water wetter). Ran it up until the e-fan kicked on, and shut it down. I'll do another round of coolant burping, but everything seems happy and I can report 0 leaks. Very happy with that.




is it weird i'm used to seeing the AN's going to a billet cap? i actually think the 80a was required for the oil cooler ports/clearance. I'm really happy I got something out of the s52 deal....that was a bummer, at least this looks much cleaner of a setup and a true Feed/Return - i could safely tee an accusump in there now if I wanted!! I'll try to finish up the car this weekend and give it a much needed wash.

Not sure if I'll do it this time around but I plan on changing diff+trans fluid. It's getting to be that time again!

[Northern]

She looks great

[s14brent]

Nice driving. I love that cammy sort of sound they get when being worked hard.

thanks, wish i had video of some of the more aggressive runs i did that day, i had a pretty sweet run with a 4 s-chassis tandem going on in front of me that got me super hyped...i was probably 3-4 cars behind them just pacing.....nothing super cool, but it was nice to have people i trust in front of me and not parking it in the corners...(which happened a lot unfortunately) i still don't like to follow too closely but i'm definitely opening up to it a lot more now that i trust my driving a lot more than before, but sometimes there's absolute chaos out there and i just rather play it safe since i'm not anywhere near done enjoying this car!!

-----
got tagged in some pics earlier!!

[econti]

Nice driving. I love that cammy sort of sound they get when being worked hard.

[s14brent]

end of the year update!!

notes:
I sold the s52 head to a local drifter in need....really didn't want to sell, but he agreed to the "i don't want to sell price"
i went to japan for 3 weeks with the girlfriend.
i got fat.
i ordered a harper fab oil pan....while in japan and figuring out time zones to place the pre-order.
came back and worked during f1 madness here.
i dusted off the e30 and went drifting.

i need to do oil change - might do the s54 oil filter housing and redo the oil cooler lines (if needed), I want to go from a 120a to 80a bosch alternator, and replace the timing chain tensioner crush washer (it developed a small leak). Will probably pull the radiator to make the alternator/OFH job easier, and i'll remove the ac pulley off the crank while i'm there to gauge how much room i'll have for an eventual 3 row radiator upgrade.
- I need to redo rear subframe with taller-serrated tabs and I need to order a set of those Stimtech spherical RTABs. and do the rear fuel system still....Feels like i should do more "while i'm there" but i'm hesitant as i have more travel plans for this upcoming year. Basically both front and rear subframes will be pulled this year and hopefully i'll be able to have an alignment done that actually will help improve tire wear/life throughout these drift days.



Link ECU update.....I ordered a can-lambda over black friday, still no shipping info. I also bought a 2nd hand link can-gauge a while back. I think there is about $500 in sensors I could go with but I may wait until I go turbo to add those (flex fuel/fuel pressure sensor, and another for oil temp/pressure). I don't mind keeping the VDO oil temp/pressure gauges for now but it'd be good to setup the link with warning lights for both!

drifting notes: The car feels so fantastic. I am so thrilled how the car no longer fights me. The track layout was kind of daunting but by the end of the first lap going both ways i had it down. That's a huge improvement for me. I was keeping up pace with some v8 cars and I was smiling a bit too hard! Hopefully will update when some media pics pop up!




i replaced the delrin slip-on steering rack limiters with aluminum ones. I feel like the delrin ones wore down or even snapped out of place causing inconsistent rubbing issues in the past. 2 of the aluminum rack limiters are the same height as 3 of the delrin ones and seem to be the ticket with my setup.




small clip of me pacing a ls2 gto on my 2nd lap out of the day..... unfortunately had gopro issues and didnt get any of the spicier runs!! (note: i don't know the driver of the gto so i was trying to maintain the distance between us, there were times i could have throttled forward but i really dont need to pressure myself or him on a non-comp run. He actually asked if i wanted to do a light tandem run but we kept missing each other when we were going out and i ran out of tires already =*( maybe next time i'll dip my toes in as it seems to be much more fun chasing vs solo runs