cameras ready prepare to flash

[s14brent]

hmm. Did you flare the 8mm hard tube or is it a compression fitting off the fuel rail?

compression fittings on the rail and hardlines. I was going to use the quick disconnect -an fittings on the rail since they will literally snap into place, but I already had the compression fittings on hand. I'm like 90% done, i'm waiting for a fpr circlip (my obd1 rail used a clamp?), and i need to drill holes in little brackets for obd2 rail to obd1 manifold. oh and I am waiting for -6 hose separator/brackets. once its all buttoned up I'll take better pictures and update here.

----
When I thought I had all the parts I needed... ::facepalm::

funny feeling cutting off the hardlines off. The Deatschwerks PTFE hose/fittings are actually not half as bad as I thought they'd be to assemble. Either that or I'm finally getting used to making my own lines. The hardlines had to be sanded down a little for the compression fitting to slip over.

will have more pics when its all buttoned up and installed. just waiting on parts. - Speaking of parts IRP shifter/dust boot est. shipping date just got pushed back again to the 17th. at least it gives me a little more time to finish up this project first since I'm literally just waiting on shipping for most of the other things.

edit: 05/14/21


My obd1 fuel pressure regulator used a spacer & clamp vs a circlip. Took me 2 days to locate one to finish up the install, but luckily I found one locally vs $5+shipping and waiting 4-5 days.


I had to trim the rail a little bit for clearance...wasnt a huge fan of that tbh, and almost makes me think NUKE + external FPR would have been a better idea, but it is what it is. Also made some small aluminum brackets for mounting the obd2 rail onto obd1 manifold


as clean as it's going to get until the -6 AN line separator/clamps get delivered..car fired up and no leaks. I'm pretty happy now that I finally got this all sorted.

also threw on a straight section of gates fuel hose getting rid of the hose clamped 1 way check valve. - Much cleaner back there!

gave the engine bay a little wash/wipe down. did not use the pressure washer as planned, but its also 96 in vegas "feels like burning" already. so it got a rinse/degrease/wash/wipe and that's it. Currently waiting for parts from fcp/ecs/condor/garagistic/skudak. excited to start getting things moving forward on this again!!

[moatilliatta]

hmm. Did you flare the 8mm hard tube or is it a compression fitting off the fuel rail?

[s14brent]

Love the truck. I was so close to buying a very similar unit (6mt TRD Off Road) but ended up with a 6mt Pro4x Xterra instead. Man those Tacomas look good.

Thanks man! and nice! I had no idea the Xterra's came in a manual tbh. I had to get a manual truck, and there aren't a lot on todays market. i had a 2007 Nissan Frontier in 6MT (07-2010ish) and ruined it putting bilstein 6xxx's and 33s and was getting 11mpg when gas was over $4!! With that said, I haven't been in the truck market forever - but I was in shock that the 2020's were basically the same truck. (i think in 2021's they did upgrade the motor but stopped offering it in MT..a few exterior differences but overall same exact chassis - its crazy that body style has been going for THIS long!!

I always wanted a 2nd gen in manual, but used prices on those are so ridiculous I figured I could justify buying a brand new 2021 and it would be worth it. The only runner up (non MT) was the 5.0 equipped f150, I couldn't justify the Raptor's dealer mark up (same with the TRD PRO mark up). The day I put a deposit on my tacoma, Nissan announced or photos were leaked of the new 2022 models. I'm definitely not doing a lift or 33s again. I'm also very against buying the first year of any vehicle, so that was a easy pass. I still need these to be able to go in parking garages on the las vegas strip for work, but if someone sells some low mileage trd pro FOX take-off's I'd be interested in that, oh and maybe a helper leaf out back for heavy loads/possible towing. i find the stock 4x4 OR bilsteins nose dive like crazy just in normal driving conditions, and it gets kind of annoying during rush hour, but other than that absolutely loving it!

---------------------------------------------------
small update not requiring a new post:

I got lucky and got to return those tires (free return shipping) and will eventually order another pair closer to an event (no real rush right now, the car might be down for a little while soon to do the front -an fuel lines/rail). I also found the original autozone special fuel pump I bought all those years back. (basically to drive the car after initial purchase) - I swapped it out for a new one because -lifetime warranty, and figured I could use the cradle/housing in the future (weld on a male -6an fuel feed) for whenever I do the -an rear -an lines.

I drove the car maybe early friday morning and realized my shifter detent pins went out overnight on this spare zf. My shifter now lives right below 5th gear which is a huge bummer. I have the spare trans that I did the detent pins on a couple years ago still. It needs a new front input shaft seal and guide tube, but I kind of questioned if I wanted to pull the trans just quite yet and try seeing what the fuss is about the self-centering shifters. Ended up between Samsonas or RTD. I always wanted a samsonas shifter...so I was ready to buy, and I actually was waiting for a paypal invoice from VAC. I liked the RTD because it uses stock mounting location supposedly and is loosely based/copied from CAE (which is out of budget) but I also liked that it has a threaded shift knob so you can have options.. But of course I randomly decided to pull the trigger on the IRP v3-SC with the shifter boot to save a little cash on the product (which is readily available somewhere in the USA from multiple sources & free shipping). I think I will do the install first and if it recenters the shifter as it should, I may run this trans until it needs to be dropped for something more serious. The trans doesn't have any grinds between any gears, and it seems to be doing a good job currently, plus if I changed the trans I'd be tempted to replace all new wear items.....(tob/guibo/pivot pin etc) which technically should all be in good shape still since the car hasnt had much mileage since the swap. So depending on mounting, I may redo the hydraulic hand break mounting location, the two ashtray location 52mm gauges. I might be able to put in a non-cut up center console as well which is kind of exciting. Oh and I purchased a skudak kick panel - people seem to be having great reviews in the fb group and the price was right.

Soooo that's what's next. I thought the list was growing smaller!!

[AWDBOB]

Love the truck. I was so close to buying a very similar unit (6mt TRD Off Road) but ended up with a 6mt Pro4x Xterra instead. Man those Tacomas look good.

[s14brent]

Not really an update, but finished thouroughly cleaning the interior throughout the week.


The overhead check panel cover flew off again during the event and i found it between the passenger seat. decided to keep it unplugged moving forward and clear siliconed the faceplate on and gave it a few more wraps of electrical tape so it will fit more snug.


Found out the passenger interior door handle trim cracked. (the one i just replaced.....) I'm not sure why as I think maybe the door was opened 4x total that weekend.....Kind of thinking about getting those baller leogrande billet handles for the fronts only.
Also turns out i'm dumb and can't read....I ordered the wrong size tires - waiting on a return label currently. but I meant to order another pair of 205/45's

and now the most exciting part of the post. I ordered the final pieces i needed to complete the front fuel system on the e30. Putting a -6an 1 way check valve up front so I can get rid of the check valve above the pump. I will wait to do the rear section when I have a need to drop the tank. Also need to see how much PTFE lined hose I have leftover (most likely will need to order more) - currently have 20ft at my disposal. Deatschwerks makes a nice -6an fuel filter so the rear would be pretty easy to assemble. I'm not 100% sure what the best way to connect to the fuel pump sending unit. I'm thinking having a -6an male fitting tig welded onto the assembly would probably be the ideal situation. Threw on the hardline compression adapters on the brand new unicorn obd2 fuel rail and got excited!!

[s14brent]

Felt bad about not having any updates so I decided 14hrs before a local drift event to try and take the car out to play. Saturday roadcourse entry was sold out, but wet-session still had available spots and I don't really have the spare tires to truly enjoy a last minute entry right now at $40 vs $180 entry fees. So I decided it was about time to change the differential fluid. Annoyed the fluid came out looking new and I probably wasted the 1.5qts (+/-) of Redline 75w90, but at the same time very happy that my 3.46 differential is that healthy after the abuse it's been through since its mainly used for jacka**ery

Next on my list was to retorque the whole front suspension components down to spec (i haven't checked since installing the SLR LCA's I decided it'd be a good idea. everything was about 1/8 turn out of spec (not terribly bad especially if i make this a pre-track day routine -or maybe just apply some blue loctite). However my fcabs were pretty far off from actual torque spec and I'm so happy I checked all that. Next was fluids.....oil level was good - decided to slightly overfill (as usual per track day with a US s52). Topped off coolant with just distilled water, but prior to checking oil...I wasn't hearing my fuel pump...but i was definitely smelling fuel. =( Got out and saw some splashy splashy....(this was post panic shut down/quick wipe)

Some may remember I added a fuel one-way valve to the return line a while back.....the short section from the return hardline to the valve was approx a 65 degree bend with hardline in proper spot. Anyways....that fuel line ruptured and I had to run out to get some gates 5/16" (7.9mm) fuel line since finding 8mm fuel line at 730pm wasn't gonna happen. I also kind of used the 1 way valves' hose clamps to keep the hardline slightly moved over to keep the fuel line as straight as possible.

Its not the prettiest, but I will eventually redo the whole fuel system once I see how much it costs me to make some other minor changes. I really want to do the radium fuel surge tank/2nd pump but if I don't let the car get under 1/4 tank I seem to not have any issues but I'm not doing super long banks at WOT either..so it might be overkill. I also would have to figure out if I can put a -AN 1 way check valve in there and most likely that would require 2 more additional -6AN female fittings. I only want to drop the tank once if I can help it.....and when I do the fuel lines in the rear I'd love to do tackle the weld-in roll bar finally that i've been talking about. Anyways, the new section of hose fixed the issue immediately thankfully, short test drive and confirmed no leaks then proceeded to load up the car at 11pm-ish. Got to the track at 9am and problem free thus far......wet session is gross. fun but gross. the car is so yuck right now and I probably won't have time to clean it tomorrow because of a work gig. Sooo....I suck at driving in the wet....very inconsistent all day - but so were the track conditions......it was either "freshly sprayed down/soaked" or it was the "puddle period" which i think is self explanatory. god speed if you hit a puddle mid drift.


Overall fun day. no track pics or video unfortunately, this was a very last minute thing, and all the cool cars/experienced drivers were on the road course quite a distance away.

Things I learned or need to address:
-2nd gear with my tall pmc shifter/hydraulic hand brake location is terrible. I would smack the shifter with my forearm on pulls....ended up trailing the stock hand brake more than using the hydraulic hand brake. I'm not sure if I want to look into a solid mount - stock length shifter like garagistic or move the hand brake onto the passenger side....which will definitely be in the way of the Recaro LS/LX whatever it is. I'd love a nicer shifter that has the self-centering feature, but i'm just not willing to drop that kind of money on a shifter at the moment. Got too many hobbies that requires burning money. I'm really loving my custom wooden shift knob on my PMC setup - I highly doubt they used the same size/thread pitch, and I'm pretty sure that would almost total $400 into minor ergonomics alone on top of ordering a pair of spare tires for the next dry event - sidenote: I never had an issue with any of this in 3rd gear LOL...
-might be time to buy more redline MTL and inspect shift linkage/change trans fluid at the same time.
-chase bays power steering reservoir is amazing. no more spillage/overflow at all.
-stewart pump is all the hype. I know it was only 93ish today in vegas, but it was staying right under the halfway mark on the stock temp gauge. I'm horrible and realized I only look at the aftermarket gauge when temps are above the middle line on stock temp gauge - probably just not used to driving this thing again....
-NO MORE RUBBING...I've been having issues due to caster or wheel/tire sizing and finally didn't have to worry about any of that.
- alignment felt great. tire wear was minimum on the wet, but the car felt good-really healthy. I ran this event without a rear sway bar.......i'm conflicted. will have to try again on dry next time and make a decision based on that, but the car didn't feel like it had a lot of body roll since I increased the rears to 12k spring rate.

if you read through all that kudos....i probably should have made this post after I got some sleep.

--- next morning update:

one last dirty shot

pressure washed as much of the undercarriage/suspension as I could with it still on the ground. Then I finally got to try out my new foam cannon....my mix ratio (suddiness or whatever) could use work, but the sun was brutal and drying it off super quick. same shot before & after while hiding in the shade

[s14brent]

Any updates for us?

spam messages brought me back to this forum LOL. I unfortunately have 0 updates for you guys. Had a stressful end of 2020, moved the ex out, minor house projects here and there, built a 2 stroke mini supermoto, been going out to apex kart track in socal to blow off steam. I sold my e39 touring to a friend, and sold my creepy old moto-van and ordered a 21' tacoma trd offroad 4x4 in 6 speed manual. There was a full month where the only car I had was the e30 so I drove it pretty heavily as a daily driver. It checked out great, super reliable, no issues at all thankfully. I've been thoroughly enjoying new car/truck ownership though. It took almost 2 months to find one that I wanted (tech package, premium package) in cement grey and another month and a half to get it here. I was considering a trd pro but the dealer mark-up was insane and finding one in manual was impossible with the shortage (due to small production #'s coming from the factory due to covid restrictions). Ended up getting the trd pro shift knob, oe toyota roof rack, knock off trd pro grille and modding it for the front facing camera....fun stuff.



I threw on an ARE MX camper shell so i can take my dogs out on hikes - over night trips. picked up the shell locally for over $1000 off retail and it was only 6mo old. Believe it or not some of those camper shells would take 5-6 weeks to order, same reason as low tacoma production #'s basically. I'm just happy its satin black vs a totally different color. It works for now.

I also used it to camp out at the track recently with a bike hauler and it worked great despite the 5' bed, sleeping bag was laid out in an angle lol.


There's a vegasdrift roadcourse event at LVMS in May, I'm considering going, but it's also getting really HOT in Las Vegas again. I might do it for sanity purpose, but I have to look into a spare set of tires and probably about time I change my diff fluid out, possibly trans fluid also. Its actually cheaper for me to drive to socal and do a bikes only track day out there. If they have a night event scheduled that same month, I may just do that. Hopefully I'll check back up on this board more frequently and possibly have some e30 updates. lets see if i remember how to add a little clip from YT

[moatilliatta]

Any updates for us?

[moatilliatta]

AAF make a nice ADJ rear sway bar link that has a turn buckle, so you don't have to unbolt it to adjust.

Works nice when your squished under the car while it is on scales.

Pontiac always said, wider is better :p

[s14brent]

These cars seem to like soft rear bars, esp with more power. If get a set of scales you can set your sway bar preload also.

You could look at 330 E46 front knuckles to get your front track with under control. Front brakes are similar to e36M, but you’ll need E46 front struts.

i forgot about smart strings, i'm pretty sure I had that page bookmarked. Curious how to adjust preload on a stock rear sway bar, or are you're talking about like a 16mm IE/aftermarket setup.

yeah, i'm not doing any more suspension changes - i'm super happy with this setup i have finally, I just need to one day figure out flares and paint eventually. I wanted the wider front track width and additional steering angle/clearance.

[moatilliatta]

These cars seem to like soft rear bars, esp with more power. If get a set of scales you can set your sway bar preload also.

You could look at 330 E46 front knuckles to get your front track with under control. Front brakes are similar to e36M, but you’ll need E46 front struts.

[moatilliatta]

Stacks are outdated, you’ll end up needing XP to fool with it.

But period correct looking!

Maybe look at getting some scales, smart stings for doing alignments in your garage .

[s14brent]

So I decided to go down to 2 of the slr rack limiter spacers vs 3. I didn't spend all this money to not be able to get more angle LOL!! A little poke won't kill me.

Right front caster

I tried to pressure wash under the wheel wells/undercarriage, and had the nozzle set at the softest/widest spray, and ended making my clear coat flake off even more =(


It's sooo bad now =( Guess wrapping is out of the question. I'm just not sure I'm ready to even think about color or anything right now because I still don't know if I want to run these flares. I do know I'd like to run a 16x8+0 square setup to use minimal spacers as possible. Shopping in that size in 5x120 isn't really proving easy.

and as promised here's a pic of the ground clearance from under the pan, the rear of the pan is a little more than 3.25". I think i'll be leaving the ride height as is for a while. I'm not trying to get a ridiculous rake.


Here's a pic from kind of above at an angle to show how the current wheel/flare combo is working out.


I drove the car out for only a short distance. unfortunately ambient temps have been weird lately here in vegas, we're getting all the smoke from the san bernadino fires, so air quality is atrocious. As for cooling, it's been perfect, but it hasn't been as hot.

After my first test run I prefer running a rear sway bar endlink. The rear end almost feels like it flioats on the highway vs being tight. I also 3 wheel up into my drive way now. I'm pretty sure I want adjustable rear swaybar endlinks on here - which pretty much pushes me towards the IE 16mm rear swaybar kit with the reinforcement bracket - I just want to take it to an event first to see if theres a big difference in snap oversteer in transitions. All the "normal" spots we'd go for testing are blown up/hot LOL!!



oops.
-----------------------------
9/9 update:

local photographer/e30 owner sent me these photos from a euro meet i cruised by last night.

[s14brent]

So I got a few things checked off tonight. I was basically trying to figure out what would work in current form and future setups. I was playing with rack limiters as SLR provides the slip-on stackable style. With e46 arms and the SLR mini kit i was running 3 on ea side. I'm still doing the same amount with the new setup, but once I get the larger flares I can throw on some spacers and remove 1 rack limiter on each side and be able to utilize some of the increased angle this kit provides. I thought about setting it up and having the front wheels stick out a ton, but decided against it for now. Its truly an eye sore when i mocked it all up with 25mm spacers

In hindsight I'm not sure why I was afraid to go longer lca's over extended e36 m3 setup especially since I planned on going with different flares. The "super" length arms are only 27mm longer than the e46 lca's which basically means I'm 2mm wider than where I was with 25mm spacers (no big deal). The "ultra" arms are 11cm (according to their website - which is 110mm and I think those are more meant for e36/e46's vs e30s because they're more advertised so they can achieve full lock with 18" wheels/tires).

I think my kamotors standard flares are 1.25" flares, but that's not really accurate with the e30 front fender design since the stock fender lip sticks out past the mounting area. (technically 50mm-70mm flares would be ideal with this setup - 90mm is definitely going to be overkill unfortunately unless their measurement isn't true like a lot of ebay flares- but i doubt it based on charlies/tread and pics). I'm going to wait and see if there are any black friday sales for the BDC sedan m3 fender flares. I've been a fan of those since released. I just hate that shipping would be an additional $200 - so I may have to pick them up if anything.
Also, I have those AKG swaybar end links thinking they were going on extended e36 m3 lca's before I upgraded. I noticed SLR sells their own sway bar endlinks with a thicker machined spacer so the endlink doesnt have as bad of an angle as mine do. They also use 8mm hardware vs 10mm though.



sorry the whole car is pretty filthy since last event (months ago damnit lol) Heres a quick pic of the suspension when i only had 2 rack limiters in vs 3. Also turning from lock to lock it felt smooth, no binding or rubbing whatsoever. Also will be sure to take pics later to show difference in caster. I'm thrilled. It made doing all this totally worth it!!

also when the car's on the ground on its own weight, the sway bar endlink angle isn't as horrible as I thought it'd be.



Apparently not all 16" wheels clear these kits. it was this close before but I guess I never noticed. Hopefully I'll finish putting on the hood and drive it for once and report back.

[s14brent]

As far as oil pressure, the more work you're doing in the car, the more work the motor is usually doing. Its really hard to catch the oil pressure gauge on a low pressure scenario. Id get a 20PSI switch hooked up to a light if you don't have something simulator. Although the oil pressure gauge is good tool for diagnostics, but tough to monitor when in the zone.

I don't know though how drifting and E34 oil pans handle oil starvation.

Whats the limiting factor in the fuel rail?

agreed! I wanted to look into hooking up a light, but tbh it seems like getting some nicer/newer gauges with built in warning lights would be nice. i've set warning lights on the apexi' el series gauges in my old s-chassis, and they were simple to operate. Ideally, just take all the gauges out and throw in a STACK but loool money. The car won't be for purely drifting - I don't think. I'm doing a lot of this stuff to just learn/teach myself how to do things really and most of it is unnecessary for drifting I'd say. it's just sad that I think my ideal auto-x alignment specs are not what I currently run for drifting and I really don't have an alignment hook up either so it adds up quick - and my local auto-x.....i dont know if they've changed, but I showed up 25 min late and wasn't allowed to participate and lost my entry fee. It really shouldn't be THAT serious for auto-x in my opinion. There are a few track days happening this month (spring mountain, and our local rip off "race experience" track, but they are $350-375+ track membership or fees. Kind of out of my price range at the moment.

So the e34 oil pan is pretty much why my car ride height is so damn high....I'm not used to it still - if I stare at it too long I always want to drop it lower but I have to remind myself of that stupid pan that i'm so scared of cracking. I'm currently running one of the 1st gen hik fab skid plates for a m20 (modified to fit the s52), the thing is super beefy, i'll try to remember to take a photo of how low it sits though.
I have the achilles e34 oil pan baffle and oil cooler setup, but I do the old e36 track guys trick of adding in 3/4-1quart of oil extra at the track. and i use an evacuator down the dipstick tube to take it back out before driving home. - but i've been changing the oil after every track event also, so it seems to be overkill. I also go on a full tank because I worry about fuel starvation. I really want to do a 2.5-3qt accusump setup and a radium fuel surge tank just for peace of mind, and most likely will eventually. I priced both out and it'd be about $800 for the accusump with the electronic valve tapped into my oil cooler setup, but I haven't found an ideal place I'd like to mount it without running 10' of -12 AN. The Radium setup would probably cost pretty close to that after putting -AN lines into account with the second pump.
(sidenote: have you seen kmiata/kpower industries oil pan clearance for their swap kit? It's pretty damn amazing, i believe its even with the subframe - it looked in the pictures they posted at least, and it's a baffled custom pan, that you can have a oil drain bung added if you want to boost it) I'm pretty sure touge factory's oil pan is similar - it might be higher capacity. Anyways.....lots of cool swaps out there now days - but the s52 is strong and takes a beating like a champ so I can't complain - I think I'd be happier with a little more power but I'm definitely okay with only burning up a pair of tires after a full track day - and the power level for local track layout is good enough to link most of it)

I don't think theres a limiting factor in the m50 fuel rail. I just wanted to convert the front half first since my hardlines are kinda questionable, and eventually do the surge so it'd be nice to have the whole feed/return lines done.
The problem I'm running into with the m50 fuel rail is that the hardline coming from the rail (both feed & return) is really short and has a large barbed end. It won't fit inside the -6 compression fittings, and I thought about getting another from the junkyard and grinding them down to test fit, but I don't think I want to chance that kind of crap on a fuel system. theres a perfect oem rail out there, but it's super hard to find. BMW part # 13-53-1-436-468. It's actually more expensive new than buying a nuke fuel rail which is stupid, but I'm not sure I'm wanting to do an external FPR because I'd have to find a place to mount that, and it seems unnecessary for a basically stock s52. The nice ones are li $3-400!! and not including the gauge, fittings, or lines! Everything is just money - It'd definitely be easier if I didn't have a house about as old as I am that I am that needs constant attention. Anyways, the plan is to keep checking junkyards or ebay for the oem rail, no real rush to do that or keep my car down longer than necessary.

Oh, and for image tagging/keywords, I do that all for work, but I never do it for any personal project stuff. Most the time it goes straight from my phone to the app/gallery.

sorry for the super long response. sheesh.