Bringing my dad's car back to its former glory and beyond

[dadsbmw]

I havent tested full lock yet but I imagine it should be fine. My previous setup was the same size tire in the front but a 1" wider wheel, so not much difference. I actually did adjust the suspension a bit today as the rear wheels were rubbing the fenders under heavy accleration/bumps due to the tires being 20mm wider. I'll post some more pictures tomorrow.

[twright]

One of the reasons I swapped my MR2 with a 2ZZ rather than a honda motor or something else is because everything works as it should, like an OEM car. The biggest issue I have right now with that car is the intake... and the whole CA thing.

Wifey hates the car, but then she has hated pretty much all of my cars. She prefers to drive an appliance, so she will never like my cars.

My wife has not liked (and hated some) of my project cars. Except for one: 1989 BMW 325i convertible. She liked that one so much that she would let me sell it for 5 years. It finally had to go when we moved to a house with a smaller garage.

[dadsbmw]

Got the height pretty well dialed in today. Things had to come up a bit all around, but I'm happy with it. Never wanted her to be super low in the first place.

[mike.bmw]

Those wheels were an excellent find. The ride height looks good!

[808ETA]

Those wheels look really good!

[dadsbmw]

Thanks for the positive comments everyone! Still trying to decide which wheels I like better, these vs the Emortal RS style. Honestly If I could find 2 of the Emortals in 16x9, I'd probably end up going for a staggered 16x8 16x9 setup, but they're discontinued and I don't think many sets were even sold. Anyways, continuing on with the current wheels, this set didnt come with center caps, which is a problem that needs to be solved. Looking at the SSR caps included from the factory, I'm really not huge on the style, but do want to stay close to original.


My main issue is how tall they are, so I set about trying to find a fix for this. Having a 3D printer makes for a fun project with things like this, so I scoured thingiverse to see if an STL already existed. Sure enough, one did, and it even had a shorter version of the SSR cap, but it was for a different wheel.




I did a test print to see what needed to be changed, and after a few iterations I had something that was the correct size for the hub bore, but it was didnt engage the bore correctly so it wouldn't remain in place.


So a little customization was needed to get them fitting. Started off printing a simple ring to make sure I had the correct bore size, then built iterations of a lip that would properly engage the bore lip and hold it snugly in place.


After a few tries I had a ring that engaged securely and honestly fit better than I'd even hoped! Then it was as simple as taking the cap from the Thingiverse STL and merging it with the mounting ring, and it's good to go!












Now I just need to decide what emblem to go with... I'll probably try both the BMW and SSR emblems and see which I like better.

[mike.bmw]

Wow, nice work! The low profile caps look great. Details like this make such a difference. Similarly, low-profile, polished hexes made a nice difference on my BBS RSes - a bit more modern than the tall stock ones.

[2mAn]

Awesome work!

[dadsbmw]

Well after a little over a week of delay due to a shipment not showing up at all, another with the wrong size, and finally getting the correct product today, the BMW roundels are on the SSRs. Decided to print a small lip for them to sit in, to make sure they're centered and to hopefully protect the edges and make it harder for them to lift.


Took a bit of back and forth but they finally fit perfectly


Can see there's a slight dome to them


Had already installed caps on all the wheels and they fit tight enough that I was afraid I could damage the finish on the wheels if I tried to pry them out. Removed the wheels to push them out from behind, which gave a good view of how they stay in place


Not a bad look


And the finished result




Still need to get pictures with the car washed, lips polished, and on an actual nice spring day. These dreary winter days really don't help in giving the overall impression.

[D.Martijn]

Things like this make owning a 3D printer so much better!
Great work on the modeling of the cap, looks good

[WAKman]

Another great thread to read through. Beautiful work.

[moatilliatta]

Ride height is always tougher on the late cars with lower rear arches, If you run equal front and rear wheel to fender gap you have mad rear rake which can make things swirly in the corners.

As far as breaking diff cover - What subframe bushings are you running?

As far a gaining traction do you know what you're running your rear alignment at?

Cool to watch continual progress!

Sad to see the probe go. I always though those were cool.

[dadsbmw]

As a quick update here, as have been noted in many of my previous posts there are some ECU oriented issues/modifications I've been looking to address:

• Cyl 1 misfire- injectors replaced, spark plugs moved around, ignition coils moved around, compression test performed
• 3.5" MAF tune- have a 3.5" TB and 3.5" MAF, would like to be able to use this MAF so will need fuel scaling

On top of this the car has always seemed to run rich to me and simply not quite right.

Well yesterday I had an e36 enthusiast with tuning skills come over and take a quick peek at the ECU just to see what all was happening. Back in the initial days of the swap I sent the ECU out for tuning before the first start, of course, and requested tuning to delete the air pump, EWS, rear o2 sensors and compensate for modifications like 24lb injectors, M50 intake manifold, headers/exhaust, cams, etc. I knew going into it that it would be an OTS tune and not super optimized for my exact motor, but at least some sort of starting point. Well after initially connecting to the ECU and loading the tune, we discovered that neither the air pump nor the rear o2 sensors were deleted, no changes to the stock fuel curve, and no scaling for the injectors. No wonder it doesnt run right! So the tuner is going to put together a new base tune for me and come back later this week/next and see if we can't get this lady running right!

[dadsbmw]

Well hello there folks, been a bit since my last post. Referring to the words written directly above you'd think that the car is running perfectly by now, but unfortunately you'd be mistaken.

Got a new tune put on the ECU and it ran ever so slightly better, but still had a rough idle and cylinder 1 misfire. At that point I was convinced there was something wrong with the ECU itself or the injector wiring. It just so happens that I had another ECU, as I'd been expecting this eventuality, but when we tried to load the tune and start the car we found that we couldnt get the EWS deleted. Blast! I had also decided that perhaps my diagnosis skills were simply lacking and a high quality shop would have some sort of magic that I wasnt aware of. As such, I dropped the car off at Edge Motorworks for a day to get the cylinder 1 misfire diagnosed. I could write an enormous and pissed off detail of what happened here, but long story short, they wasted my time and money and found nothing. They did note a couple completely unrelated issues, that I never asked them to find, but that I'm now going to take action on. So I supposed that's a "positive", but still pretty upset by the whole situation.

One piece that I vaguely assumed was the case, is that there are vacuum leaks in the intake system. I've mentioned before how unhappy I was with the Bimmerworld M50 manifold adapter setup. So I finally said eff it, and decided to go full OBD2 conversion and get the Turner Motorsports M50 manfiold adapter. For a bit of context here, the guy that I originally bought the swap off of was planning to go OBD1 and had a number of components for that goal, but specifically the powder coated valve cover. After picking the swap up I decided to go OBD2 and endedup converting most of the pieces over, but wanting to keep the powder coated pieces, I had to make some unusual little fixes and basically ended up at OBD 1.9.

WELL, to make another infuriating story short, Turner Motorsports cannot figure their shit out and I had nothing but problems with them until the point that I just cancelled the order. Even getting my money refunded was a hassle, as even today, 12 days after cancelling, I have not been refunded. When I called yesterday to check on why I wasnt seeing the money in my bank account their response was "oh oops, we gave you store credit instead of refunding your card." Jackasses, I can't say it enough. I will NEVER be doing with Turner Motorsport/ECS Tuning again.

As a result I've decided to take a slightly different path. While searching the interweb for a different retailer of the Turner style M50 adapter kit, I happened upon rallyroad.net. I was prepared to buy the $300 adapter kit from them, but while scrolling through their other items I had an epiphany... I'll just convert to a catch can. The main issue with my OBD 1.9 situation was that the OBD2 CCV and OBD1 valve cover weren't compatible, so I'd have to buy a new valve cover, new MPower plastic, new ignition coils, and the manifold adapter. That's like $750+ worth of parts. I realized that if I deleted the CCV and just went with a catch can I could just keep the OBD1 cover and wouldn't have to deal with any of that! So I made a different purchase:

• Anodized aluminum ICV fitting- The shortened plastic one that came with the Bimmerworld adapter setup became damaged almost instantly due to the strain placed on it by their terrible silicone adapter hose. I'm pretty sure this was one of the main causes of leakage. The aluminum version is obviously much stronger and can stand up to any abuse thrown at it
• Silicone ICV hose kit- The hose I had appropriated from O'Reilly to go from ICV to intake elbow was a bit too short and I'd need to replace the small curved piece from the aluminum ICV fitting to the ICV as well.

Another area of concern from a vacuum leakage perspective, is the throttle body. Last year I'd disassembled the 540 TB and adapter plate and I don't think I cleaned the silicon sealant remnants well enough, so I opted to disassemble and clean it all up. While I had it apart I also had a grand idea... let's do some measurements! The tuner guy I've been working with has constantly been telling me to not worry about the 3.5" MAF or TB because the IM opening is the main restriction anyways. So while I had it all apart I got the caliper out and checked his math.


And whadda ya know he was right!

• Throttle body opening- 81.5mm
• Throttle body ending- 82.5mm
• Adapter opening- 82.5mm
• Adapter ending- 76mm
• Intake manifold inlet- 78mm

I gotta admit, I was immediately a bit heart broken! With a 78mm intake manifold inlet, there really wasn't any need for a 3.5" TB or MAF. So decided to just stop messing around with this custom setup and find the stock components to make things simpler. I'd be able to use stock throttle linkage, no more manifold to TB adapter, readily available intake elbows, etc. As I started my research however, I had a thought... what's the ID of the stock TB? After a quick search I found that it's ~63mm! Well shoot, I guess I still do need a bigger TB, so I may as well keep what I have! So back together it went.


And then the pieces of the manifold went back together. It's a much better setup now, as you can see in the below before/after




So now the only issue left is the crank case vent situation. My preference would be to tie it back into the intake system to have a closed loop, but I worry that this will just reintroduce vacuum leaks. I may end up with the Rally Road -10AN PCV adapter so that I can run a large enough line to adequately vent to atmosphere and then mount a can somewhere that the smell can't find it's way back into the cabin. We shall see.

[dadsbmw]

In other news, I got new wheels on the Z4... they're pretty okay I guess