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

[2mAn]

With the mounts I'm running and the rear sump setup, going from the Alu M52 to S52 the mounts have sagged very quickly to the point where the sump will contact the subframe over bumps.

I wonder if this why it wasnt as much as a pain for me since the Alu M52 is 50# lighter than the Iron S52

[dadsbmw]

With the mounts I'm running and the rear sump setup, going from the Alu M52 to S52 the mounts have sagged very quickly to the point where the sump will contact the subframe over bumps. Being a RHD too, initially I had enough steering clearance, but now that they've sagged I can quite easily foul the steering on left hand turns. I have a pair of 90a Revshift mounts but they're too stiff, the E36 mounts flipped looks like my next solution.

I'm also running rear sump and had steering clearance issues with the Revshift mounts (until I went to an aftermarket joint). Haven't noticed any sagging issues with any of the mounts thus far, but I have very few miles on them all.

[jsta1109]

With the mounts I'm running and the rear sump setup, going from the Alu M52 to S52 the mounts have sagged very quickly to the point where the sump will contact the subframe over bumps. Being a RHD too, initially I had enough steering clearance, but now that they've sagged I can quite easily foul the steering on left hand turns. I have a pair of 90a Revshift mounts but they're too stiff, the E36 mounts flipped looks like my next solution.

[dadsbmw]

Re: revshift and AKG bushings, was it just the vibration that you didn't like, or were there fitment concerns?

The entire thing was about vibration, which even after going to stock E36 mounts still persists. That said, the Revshift mounts sat the intake manifold SUPER close to the brake booster. Maybe a couple mm from touching. The AKG mounts moved the distance to about 1cm away.

The overall difference in vibration through the mounts is definitely less with the AKGs and then even less with the stock e36s. I'm happy with the e36 mounts, not sure how they would be too soft?

[jsta1109]

How do you find the E36 mounts? I'm running the E28 black cylindrical mounts and they move too much for my setup, are the E36 mounts sufficiently stiff?

[Northern]

Basically my plan is to switch from CondorSpeedShop solid mounts to current (3rd gen?) Revshift 75A.
There has to be a noticable decrease in NVH from that, but I'm concerned about turbo/downpipe fitment since they seem offset to the right side of the car.

[2mAn]

I liked my AKG mounts, but I understand wanting to dial it down a little

[Northern]

Re: revshift and AKG bushings, was it just the vibration that you didn't like, or were there fitment concerns?

[dadsbmw]

[dadsbmw]

Long time no see! Did some things to the E30:

• Smoke tested the intake tract- no leaks
• Cylinder 1 misfire code is now gone- Hooray!
• Vibration at idle remains- Boo!
• Bought LED bulbs for the headlights- OMG so much better

• Installed a new keyless entry- the fobs for the old one stopped working
• Bought a larger front swaybar from Garagistic on a whim because of their Black Friday sale. Turns out it was legit 1mm bigger than my current cabrio swaybar... :sadface:

• Tried out AKG 70A poly motor mounts- no better than the Revshift

• Moved on to stock E36 mounts flipped upside down- took some work but they fit

• Went back to stock trans mounts as well

• Modified the mid-section of the exhaust
  • Cut out the huge straight through Magnaflow muffler

• welded up the pin holes at the flanges- oh the boogers!

• replaced the old muffler with a 3" race catalytic converter

• Reinstalled the driveshaft tunnel shielding

• Exhaust sounds even better- videos to come
• She continues to make advances, albeit slowly and with much expense

[AndryBismarck]

Very good looking car!!! Nice work. Your father lucky guy

[dadsbmw]

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

[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]

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!

[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.