My E30 Rehabilitation! ft. Boost Noises

[zwill23]

Quick update to keep the R3v world alive.

I made it to the dyno! Roman over at Boostlogic in ATX humbled himself in this beat up chariot and got it running better than ever.

However, we ran into three major hiccups.

• Fuel leak
• Car is burning a healthy amount of oil, particularly after a hard pull
• Fuel pump ran out of steam

While strapping the car down Roman noticed the car was weeping fuel from the return line at the gas tank. He was nice enough to let me replace the fuel line then and there, but I completely soaked myself in fuel in the process. Now I'm the proud owner of a Boostlogic T-shirt at least

With that sorted he started doing some pulls, that's when we noticed a good amount of smoke coming out of the exhaust. We checked the oil cap to check for blow by and fortunately didn't see anything, at the moment valve stem seals or a turbo related issue are the probable causes. Valve stem seals have been replaced (Though 5 years and 40k miles ago) so I'm leaning toward the turbo having a draining issue. I'm all ears if anyone has input here, I performed a compression check on the motor over the weekend and received 175-180 psi on all cylinders except cylinder 3 which reported 160 psi. These cylinder pressures line up with the values I recorded 5 years ago so I believe my motor is pretty healthy.

We decided to press on despite the smoke and ran into the final issue that killed the session - the fuel pump. Roman wasn't able to get enough fuel to the motor to get past 7 psi of boost pressure. I am currently using a Walboro 255l unit which should be sufficient, but there is some suspicion that my stock wiring isn't supplying enough power to the pump. I am in the process of wiring the pump up with power directly from the battery and replacing the fuel filter to try and sort this issue. If that's not it a new pump will be on the way!

No dyno sheet since Roman would like me to come back after sorting the fueling issue out, but the car peaked at 265whp / 235tq @ 7 psi.

Untitled

P.S. I'll post a dyno sheet once I get these issues sorted so the world will have a good idea how the S257 performs on a stock M20B25.

[econti]

Solid numbers for 7 pound

[Mazi!]

Very cool build!!

[zwill23]

Solid numbers for 7 pound

Very cool build!!

Thanks guys!

I finished hardwiring the fuel pump directly to the battery last night with a relay and the car is still leaning out during a long pull. I'm replacing the fuel filter and checking out the pump pick-up sock to see if anything is amiss. I don't really expect those items to be the issue but I'll press on with troubleshooting before replacing the pump.

Roman is recommending I install a fuel pressure sensor for diagnosis and setting up a fail safe so I don't lose an engine over this issue. I have everything I need for that, but I'm getting hung up on the Megasquirt installation. I believe I need to open up the box and forgo knock sensing or barometric correction - at the moment I'm planning to remove barometric correction. I need to give DIYAutotune a ring to solidify my understanding of what needs to be changed and how the sensor pins need to be setup for the 5V input / output signals.

The saga continues...

[zwill23]

Howdy R3v, I have some good news followed by (hopefully) some more good news next week.

The great fueling debacle of 2021:

Pulled my fuel pump for the first time in 5 or so years and I was not impressed with my rookie wrenching Walboro retrofit. I was able to pull the electrical connections apart by hand and the filter sock was filthy. While I had it out I checked the authenticity of the pump with an online guide, fortunately the pump checked out as genuine.



Despite the dirty sock, the pick up was still looking good.



Reassembled with proper electrical crimps, fuel hose rated clamps, replaced the sock, and wire wheeled the fuel pump mounting bracket.



Slapping myself on the wrist some more, I was equally unimpressed with my choices of fuel lines to replace. About half the lines in this photo are presumably original and hard as rock. Not sure what my reasoning was for not replacing all the lines way back when, fear of screwing up? lol

Replaced all the fuel lines (and fuel filter) along with my creative fuel pump electrical connection.



Looking better, also note the external pump wiring.



Moving on, I modified the megasquirt to accept the fuel pressure sensor. I did this by pulling the pin for the barometric correction and replaced it with a jumper going from ADC1 -> EXT. Setting up the pin out for my fuel pressure sensor then, I used Pin 19 for the 5V Signal In, Pin 23 for 5V Out, and Pin 22 for Ground on the 26 pin options port.

If anyone else is curious in doing something similar with the PNP I used this article as a guide:

https://www.diyautotune.com/news/tuning-tips/how-to-wire-an-extra-analog-sensor-input-to-the-mspnp-gen-2/

Checked the sensor accuracy using a bike pump, it works!!



Installing the fuel pressure sensor was my ticket, upon start up and driving around I was seeing 40 psi-ish for the fuel feed to the rail which would then ramp up to 45 - 50psi under WOT. Checking the bently, these values are right about what I should be expecting, which pointed me down stream to the fuel pressure regulator.

After replacing the regulator the car ran pig-rich on initial start up, but once it reached operating temperature the afrs went back to normal. Driving it around and getting into even a lick of boost would peg the afr gauge to 10. Back when we stopped the tuning session, Roman said I should expect the car to run very rich once the issue is fixed since my injector duty was pretty much maxed out at 7psi. I figure the car runs so rich on initial start up now due to the fuel enrichment settings.

With that sorted, the car went back to the dyno... and it's been sitting strapped to the dyno at Boostlogic for almost a month :P. The tuner dealing with his own covid crisis at home followed by snowmageddon in Texas has put the tuning session on the back burner. The good news is we're back on schedule to get the tune finalized next week barring no more problems pop up... we shall see.

The car's new home ft. wide body S2K:



Before all the snow hit I made another trip to West Texas with my gf. Had the pleasure of meeting Keller in Marfa who has owned this super clean '87 325is since it was new. I secretly wanted to snag that (oxblood?) interior when he wasn't looking :)



Wicked FJ60 had me drooling...



And finally, proof of the Texas snow where many donuts and slides were had. We were very fortunate to have power the whole time, I believe because our apartment is on the nearby hospital grid. Nearly everyone else I know down here was out of power and some are still dealing with the fallout. Blech, at least I got to drive GoldE in the snow for the first time.



Hoping for some dyno figures and happy days next week, cheer y'all!

[spiDmang]

Awesome thread and transformation of this beast!

[zwill23]

Awesome thread and transformation of this beast!

Thanks dude!! If only I had it back to enjoy :P

Still waiting for news on it, hopefully news doesn't come with any new inspection holes and or a tow truck

[varg]

Would you happen to have the core measurements or part number of that intercooler? One of the deferred upgrades I want to do to my car now is getting rid of the 24x12x3 intercooler and replace it with something thinner so I can put a decent condenser fan on the car. As it sits there has been absolutely no chance of one fitting.

[zwill23]

Would you happen to have the core measurements or part number of that intercooler? One of the deferred upgrades I want to do to my car now is getting rid of the 24x12x3 intercooler and replace it with something thinner so I can put a decent condenser fan on the car. As it sits there has been absolutely no chance of one fitting.

Core is 17.5"x11.75"x2.76", I'm pretty happy with the fitment and the AC components fit pretty well with some careful packaging and a spal slim fan.

The intercooler itself is just a Mischimoto G-line intercooler: https://www.mishimoto.com/mishimoto-...er-medium.html

[zwill23]

Well, not the update I was hoping for y'all. I have the car back, but unfortunately I didn't receive a tune and was refunded my money. I may work with the tuner again in the future, but looks like I'm on my own for now.

I was able to drive it home from Boostlogic, but it was running pretty poorly and the wideband seemed to be acting up. I've since re-calibrated the wide-band and took a datalog, it's boosting at about 6lbs currently and I was seeing AFRs of 13+ in boost, which is obviously very bad. I've manually added a bunch of fuel and have been letting auto-tune run wild. Noticeable improvements, but still a long way off.

My plan of attack is to get my fuel table as close as I can to my AFR target table and then try cleaning up the idle. 6lbs of boost doesn't strike me as very detrimental, so I don't think it would hurt to give it a shot myself. I appreciate any advice for a novice tuner, not trying to blow this car up but getting a tune has also proved more challenging than I anticipated.

Here is my current AFR target table (which I believe is ballpark) if any tuning gurus want to chime in:

[zwill23]

This whole street tuning thing has been going pretty well so far (famous last words). Running about 6-7lbs of boost and it definitely gets out of its own way. I have the fueling pretty on par with the AFR target table above and spent a bunch of time on researching and adjusting settings as I've been learning the in and outs of megasquirt. The idle mostly stays solid and the acceleration enrichment settings feel decent, though still a tad sluggish r3vmatching. But overall, it's been good enough to put 3000 boosted miles on it! That's feeling like a feat in and of itself :).

Thinking about shooting for another professional tune soon though, looking like my best options are a tuner in northern Louisiana with M20 turbo experience or our R3v resident ForcedFireBird in Florida. Seems like either option would be quite the adventure (and drive)!

Tooner:



Did some intercooler pipe - valence clearancing with a BFH:



Got the AC working! Though my cooling system seems to have a hard time maintaining temp while sitting, not sure if this is a engine bay heat issue from the turbo, Compressor putting too much strain on the engine issue (it ran hot N/A with AC too), or just a general cooling system problem some where (everything is new or replaced at some point in my ownership).



Driving around is feeling pretty sweet:



Got to be a the caretaker for a friend's LS swapped landie for a few weeks, wicked machine:



That's all I got for now! Hopefully this machine holds together a while longer

[Northern]

Sad to hear about the tuner and the time spent without the car, but it sounds like your tuning adventure is going well.

I think one of my favorite sources of info (besides just googling things) has been Youtube videos by Andy Whittle, as well as the "MLVHD" Facebook page (the Megalog Viewer HD group, started by the same guy).
He made a few informative posts in May in that group about Accel Enrichment/Tip In Enrichment that might help with sorting out the rev matching

[zwill23]

Sad to hear about the tuner and the time spent without the car, but it sounds like your tuning adventure is going well.

I think one of my favorite sources of info (besides just googling things) has been Youtube videos by Andy Whittle, as well as the "MLVHD" Facebook page (the Megalog Viewer HD group, started by the same guy).
He made a few informative posts in May in that group about Accel Enrichment/Tip In Enrichment that might help with sorting out the rev matching

Definitely a drag, but admittedly the whole debacle saved one of the cars from hail damage as Austin got pummeled while this thing sat in Boostlogic's shop. Car god's looking out...

This is all really helpful, thanks man!!

[zwill23]

I am proud to announce that I finally got this damn car tuned and I blitzed an 1100 mile road trip with it in two days. Did it make any sense to risk driving a freshly tuned home brew turbo setup over the course of 24 hours in two days? Nope. But life has been hectic lately so it was nice to run around Texas and Lousiana making boost noises through the bayou and sometimes ya gotta throw caution to the wind.

Feeling pretty proud of this machine at the moment :)



Jacob Edwards and Hans at Dynomad Mobile Tuning out of Shreveport Lousiana handled my tuning and I had a great experience with these dudes. They were quickly able to identify issues with my setup - leaks at the throttle body, wastegate spring too small bleeding boost, incorrectly seated wastegate, and spark blow out with a plug gap of .03". Instead of sending me back to Austin to fix my issues, we pulled the car apart and got it sorted for some proper runs. I'm glad I had the forsight to bring an extra set of plugs and an 8lb wastegate spring.

Pulling up to Dynomad after a 5 hour drive from Austin on my own tune. The tuner laughed at me calling the car quick when it put down 165whp on their dyno after my tuning attempt lol:



Strapped!



Final dyno run! A month or so ago I rerouted my oil drain to make it as vertical as possible and it seems this fixed my smoking issue on deaccel we experienced on Boostlogic's dyno. Man was that a relief to see clean exhaust during a pull.

The dyno run (click me!):

Untitled
The results, my goal was 300whp and I got 304whp. What a menace.

It runs so much better than before, but I still left with some homework.

I need to JB weld the barbs into the intake because the cement I previously used already broke, they also were having issues with my stock ICV and recommended changing it out for a Jeep ICV to fix my idle. It's currently hunting pretty often. My filter is too small, wideband vent gauge isn't reading correctly, need to adjust startup enrichment for cold starts, and after the long trip, I'm noticing the car bucks ever so slightly on light cruise. Thinking it might need an extra point of fuel in this area and it's too lean for the old M20. Regardless, I figure these issues are expected and now I'm back in the tinker phase and ironing out driveability - that feels good.



Took some pics, grabbed a beer, and cooled off after an 8 hour day in the Lousiana heat.



Rocket ship!



Caught a full rainbow leaving Shreveport, thought about trying to catch it but was on a mission to make it to New Orleans by midnight ;)



Broke 150k!



Spent the night at a friend's place, had beers, ate brunch, and 15 hours later I was back on the road driving directly into THIS.

I was questioning if I was operating an E30 or a submarine driving through this, I watched my oil temps go from 205 to 185 deg F from water being kicked up off the road onto my oil pan...



Stopping for dinner and a beer in Lake Charles:



Here we have the only issue of the trip, my AC works well at highway speeds but the car gets hot if I'm sitting or in traffic so during the trip I would turn the AC on and off when I pulled into gas stations and things. Well, with 5 hours to go the AC button popped out and wouldn't stay depressed lol. I was in the middle of a podcast and driving with the windows down just wasn't acceptable, so I popped the button out and ziptied it in the on the position to finish off the trip.



Finally made it back to Austin by 3am...



P.S. I sold GoldE!! Bittersweet, but it appears this machine is ready to resume daily duties

[econti]

None of your pics or vids work lad