My E30 Rehabilitation! ft. Boost Noises

[zwill23]

No dice with the new coil packs, still runs like shit. I'm going to investigate the grounding, I used the ground wire from the OE coil which maybe is too indirect and I need to just ground out the coils to the shock tower.

Another suspicion I have is the solder connections broke in the coil pack board so the signal is intermittent. Car seems like it's running on all six when it first fires up, it just falls on it's face when it moves through the rev range. In hindsight I wish I drilled little holes on the coil board tabs and fished the wire through the drill hole before soldering.

To be continued...

[Pootis]

I need to look into it more but I don't believe you want to ground the coil pack. When my car was turbo I did that and fried the coil pack because that closed the loop. I believe the coil is grounded through the connection with the head but don't quote me.

[Pootis]

https://www.diyautotune.com/product/ign-6-six-tower-coil-pack/

This is the coilpack I ran

[zwill23]

I need to look into it more but I don't believe you want to ground the coil pack. When my car was turbo I did that and fried the coil pack because that closed the loop. I believe the coil is grounded through the connection with the head but don't quote me.

Good call, that was a miss type!

I'm grounding out the ignitor (Quadspark) not the coil packs themselves. The Quadspark has four grounds that I combined to a single 10 gauge wire that I connected directly to the old coil ground. I looked at the ETM and the coil ground wire seems to connect to the shock tower ground, though I'm not sure if it's a direct path. Going to try grounding directly at the shock tower and see if that helps.

[zwill23]

Alright, I figured out the wasted spark issue!

Unfortunately, I tore the entire system apart just to realize the problem wasn't with my wiring, but with the Quadspark igniter. For whatever reason, the heatsink on the unit was getting energized with 2-3 volts so when it dangled inside the glove box the car ran fine. But when the Quadspark was mounted on the glove box latch it would ground out and the car ran poorly, presumably because the Quadspark wasn't sending enough power to the coils. DIYAutotune was very helpful troubleshooting the system, ultimately deciding the unit had an internal fault and they sent me a new unit free of charge.

Here's a pic showing the Quadspark heatsink throwing 2.35 volts. Bad news, and definitely would have been a fire hazard if the issue wasn't caught.



While I was tearing things apart, I decided to take the old GM igniter board I gutted and make the connections using female spade connectors. My initial thought with my wasted spark problems was a broken solder connection that was grounding on the base of the board. Fortunately, that wasn't the case but this is an area where I figured I could make the system more robust. The solder connections didn't exactly inspire confidence..



Finished with a bit of heat shrink on the connections:



When I removed the bad Quadspark, unwrapping all the wiring was a serious pain in the ass and left behind sticky wiring. Trying to learn from this, I picked up protective wire sleeving and heat shrinked the ends... so much cleaner and will be nicer to work with if I have to open things open again.



Mounted for good! Hard to see, but it's tucked away on top of the glove box latch.



The red valence was starting to drive me nuts and with the downtime waiting on a new Quadspark I decided to pull it and give it a quick squirt of paint. Glad I did because I noticed my oil cooler was weeping a bit from one of the AN lines.



Installed!



I didn't love the plastic tee fitting that is used to send a boost signal to my gauge so replaced it with a brass tee:



I believe the V-band at the downpipe was too large for the flanges I used so I ordered a 90mm v-band and voila, exhaust leak fixed.



Very excited to have the car pass inspection and is officially legal and registered:



Here is a little video to prove that the car is in fact making boost noises :)

(Click me!)



I can finally say after 5 years of dreaming of boost noises that I'm on the hunt for a tuner and this thing is ready (I hope) for the dyno. It's been a long road so far and nearly a year tinkering on the turbo setup and working through the hiccups that have popped up. At this point my novice tuning experience and fear of hurting the engine is all that's in the way of a fun and ideally moderately reliable machine.

Fingers crossed a dyno experience goes well folks

[mike.bmw]

Awesome update! Good luck at the dyno!

[PieterVN]

So cool to see how far this car came. From being a parts car to a turbo build. Good luck on those dyno figures

[zwill23]

Awesome update! Good luck at the dyno!

So cool to see how far this car came. From being a parts car to a turbo build. Good luck on those dyno figures

Thanks y'all! It's been a wild ride so far, hopefully this old machine holds together and the M20 continues putting down healthy numbers!

[kid8]

Good stuff, can't wait to see what it does with the dyno!

[zwill23]

Good stuff, can't wait to see what it does with the dyno!

Thanks man! Me too

[the_eskimo_wonder]

Hey man, awesome build! I'm seriously jealous of that Podi vent gauge. Been trying to get my hands on one all year but they're not in production anymore.

I was wondering if you have any logs showing how you're building boost with the s257. I'm looking to upgrade from my ebay turbo and looking at the s252 and s257. Really curious to see when you're achieving positive pressure and full boost with that 257.

Also, make it to the dyno yet?

[zwill23]

Hey man, awesome build! I'm seriously jealous of that Podi vent gauge. Been trying to get my hands on one all year but they're not in production anymore.

I was wondering if you have any logs showing how you're building boost with the s257. I'm looking to upgrade from my ebay turbo and looking at the s252 and s257. Really curious to see when you're achieving positive pressure and full boost with that 257.

Also, make it to the dyno yet?

Thanks!! I actually have a buddy who is considering selling his PODI gauge, I believe the display is orange w/coolant temp, oil temp, oil pressure, and AFR. If you're interested I can poke him about it and see if he is actually willing to part ways with it.

As for a log, I can send one but understand the tune in the car is very rough at the moment and I try to slowly build boost with my novice tuning skills. Earliest positive pressure over atmospheric I've seen looking at my latest log is 2500rpms, I don't think I'll be able to do this turbo justice regarding performance until the car is properly tuned.

I am working with a local tuner now and I'm going in this coming Tuesday for a vacuum check and setup review. If all goes well, earliest he'll be able to get me in is January. Fingers crossed it goes well :)

[zwill23]

Also, for what it’s worth I was between the S252 and S257 as well, I started a thread a while back to get some opinions from others with some more experience and they guided toward the S257.

https://www.r3vlimited.com/board/forum/e30-technical-forums/engine-drivetrain/forced-induction/9861664-turbo-selection-advice-borgwarner-s252-vs-s257

[the_eskimo_wonder]

Thanks!! I actually have a buddy who is considering selling his PODI gauge, I believe the display is orange w/coolant temp, oil temp, oil pressure, and AFR. If you're interested I can poke him about it and see if he is actually willing to part ways with it.

As for a log, I can send one but understand the tune in the car is very rough at the moment and I try to slowly build boost with my novice tuning skills. Earliest positive pressure over atmospheric I've seen looking at my latest log is 2500rpms, I don't think I'll be able to do this turbo justice regarding performance until the car is properly tuned.

I am working with a local tuner now and I'm going in this coming Tuesday for a vacuum check and setup review. If all goes well, earliest he'll be able to get me in is January. Fingers crossed it goes well :)

I was hoping to have one with a slightly different spec that included my boost gauge but beggars can't be choosers. If he is serious about parting with it I'd be interested to know how much he wants for it.

Positive pressure at 2500 untuned and babying it into boost is still a good data point. I'm also planning a twinscroll .75 T3 housing, plus mine's a 2.7, so I'd guess positive at 2000-2200 wouldn't be outside the realm of possibilities. I'm leaning pretty heavily that way too.

For what it's worth my professionally tuned car with its shitty ebay GT28-ish turbo gets 1psi at 2300 in 3rd and 2k in 4th and chokes out like crazy up top to only make 280whp. Sounds like you're well on your way to that kind of spool with a top end that will make power to redline.

[Northern]

I haven't had a MAP sensor on my car that works since I turboed the car in like 2016 (M52, S257 & AGP T3 0.82 hotside) and I know it works well, but I haven't been able to actually show manifold pressure at all. I like that AGP makes twinscroll T3 -> Vband housings now, but I would need a different manifold to take advantage sadly.

It will be nice to have more data points, and hopefully the most recent MAP sensor I bought works and I can get to a dyno soon to contribute some data as well.