My new e30 resurrection project

[shawmcbigdis]

OK, so got the new retaining nut, and put the new CSB and dust cover on (left the dust cover thats behind the CSB off). Then I sprayed some PTFE in the ujoint, and that freed up the stuck side, so it moves freely now. Put the driveshaft back in, pre-loaded the CSB (pushed it all the way towards the front of the car). Tightened the nut down, put everything else back together and went for a drive. It's way better, but still ever so slightly there.

But I did notice it is only under load, if I put in the clutch, or even just let off the gas, it goes away. So given that, I don't think it is the driveshaft. Is it the broken transmission mount tab? I'm at a loss now.

[shawmcbigdis]

OK, so after a week plus of using it as my daily I still have no idea what is causing it. The vibration seems most sever at 55 and 80MPH. Its only while in gear though. In gear and coasting it dissipates a bit, but is still there. In neutral and costing it is totally gone, with or without the clutch in. So is it the broken transmission mount tab?

In some good news I got the ellipsoid headlights installed. I haven't got them aimed properly yet, but they aren't bad. Had my first night drive a couple daya ago and it sis so much better than the old sealed beams. I just bought like the cheapest 9006/5 bulbs on Amazon, I think they are the Philips standard OEM, or something like that. Anyone have any suggestions for upgrades, that are actually worth it?

[shawmcbigdis]

So finally getting around to installing some Christmas presents. Redid my steering wheel. Here is the before;



And after a new M badge and leather wrap and a little cleaning;



Not quite as nice as some of those $400 refurbed ones, but for $40 ($25 for the M Badge, and $15 for the cover, even though its not in the first pic it did already have the roundel) and an afternoon of my wife sewing it on, I'm pretty freaking happy with it. We also put a 1/8" layer of foam under the leather. Leather was to wide and would have overlapped without it, but it also adds a nice thickness and a bit of cushion to the wheel.

Now when it stops raining I will pull the cluster to see if the cruise control wire came loose on the back. Hoping for an easy fix for my CC since it worked fine, and then one day just didn't work any more.

Oh also waiting on one other part. I know I've seen a lot of bad reviews for them, but I ordered one of those molded ABS dash caps. I looked and I realized most of the "bad reviews" were 2nd hand or several years old. I found a couple of first hand more recent reviews that said they were pretty good. Then I found a place selling them for only $110, so I figured I'd take a chance. It should be here tomorrow. So later this week I will have some before and after pics of that as well. The dash has a cheap carpet cover now, but I hate it almost as much as the cracked stock dash. I'd love a new un-cracked dash, but how much they go for now they kind of go against the whole budget theme of this car.

[shawmcbigdis]

So 4 months since last update, what has happened..... Oh yeah the world went to HELL!

Anyway, in e30 land. I had this done last week;



Thats what a bone stock (well except for the "i" dual exhaust) 34 year old ETA is good for;

92HP and 120lB/Ft torque at the wheels.

If you add 15% driveline loss that would be about 110HP and 140 torque. Honestly that HP number doesn't seem that bad to me, with just 120 (127? I've heard both, so who knows) stock new. But the torque is pretty low considering it should have been 170 new.

Whats even harder to make out is the A/F ratio at the bottom. Its roughly at 15:1 the whole range. So it is running prettty darn lean. This most likely is dirty 34 year old injectors.

But why in the world would I both getting a dyno pull on a stock ETA anyway you might ask. Well because this;



That is a shiny new (well new to me) 885 head. Someone locally was selling all the parts needed for a swap, made an offer I couldn't refuse and he accepted, so lets get this party started.

This all happened right at the beginning of the whole Covid thing, so its been a crawling project on my side. My idea was, its only a few hundred bucks, lets see if doing a dirt cheap head swap is worth it or not. Of course, there is no such thing as dirt cheap any project. So what I was hoping would cost me under $700 total start to finish, well, let just say I'm about double that... But still trying to stick to my dirt cheap ethos.

I did give into some, well if I'm here I might as well though, because I at least want to get the most out of this that I can. So here's what it has turned into;

Bone stock ETA bottom end. I'm not removing the whole engine or pistons or anything, just seeing what I can get done with a head swap.

stock 885 - shop cleaned and decked it, I did everything else. polished and lapped the valves, all seals and assembly was me. Lightly hand ported the exhaust ports, because why the heck not. I don't think it will amount to anything, I just had it and a dremel and was like, well lets see. The gasket is still way bigger than the ports. Besides seals and gaskets nothing else was changed... except the cam, there in lies my first bit of scope creep.

So the head was all in all pretty good shape, so I was planning on just cleaning everything and reusing all hardware. I figure since I am using a less than optimal bottom end, I might as well try and get as much as I can out of the parts I am swapping (within as low a budget as I can) So I ordered an IE 272 regrind, and some oversized eccentrics to go with it, along with new eccentric nuts and bolts because might as well.

So, since I'm swapping the cam, its going to absolutely require a tune, so might as well get new injectors, so a set of 19lB injectors was ordered.

It will all be controlled by a SSSquid custom chip.

On the intake side, everything is bone stock except for a Pipercross drop in filter, with the baffle thing removed from the airbox. I seriously considered a KA Motors intake with the high beam snorkel, but at $200 it jsut goes against the dirt cheap plan. And probably barely adds any power. (If you disagree please let me know, if its really worth it, I might bight the bullet)

Exhaust side is stock "i" the whole way, manifolds and all. I'm pretty sure the manifolds are actually the same on an I and E, but I have the "i" manifold off so I was able to do this;



Its just that flameproof ceramic paint. We'll see if it actually stays on or not.

Behind that will be the stock cat and resonator, and then a cheap eBay Stainless exhaust.

[shawmcbigdis]

So all that said, this is where I am at now;



Got the head and manifolds off, and started cleaning the deck and piston tops. And then I came to piston #4 and found this;



Every other piston looks fine. Top of chamber looks the same, but no valve damage that I could tell. So I assume some time in the past ownership it broke a spark plug tip off. The damage doesn't look bad enough for it to be much of anything else. Because budget build not touching the bottom end, I just smoothed it with the dremel and I'm going to move on. I know this is a risk, but worse that happens is it blows a ring and I loose compression, and I have to replace the pistons. Everything on the top end should be fine even if this does go wrong. At least that is what I'm thinking, hopefully i'm not wrong. To that end, the cylinder walls look to be in pretty good shape. you can see a few light scratches on the wall, but can't even feel them with finger or nail.

I never did a compression test on this engine, which I am now regretting. I will now when it is back together, and I should see right away if there are problems in that cylinder.

OH, the other problem I forgot to mention. Before taking the T-belt off I was getting the engine on TDC and I realized I had the cam gear off by a tooth. It was a whole tooth retarded, so that might account for a bunch of that "lost" torque.

So I just got the EC U and wiring harness out tonight and I started to run the new harness.

So my first question is, for reassembly should I put the head and manifolds on separately or put it all together off the car and install as one big monolith? I took it off as one piece. And that seems like it is the easier way to go, because reaching those intake manifold bolts in the car seems like a nightmare.

I'm sure I will have a ton more questions as I start hooking things back up. But for now it has been relatively simple. It helps that its my 3rd car and I am in no rush what so ever, thus nearly 4 months of working on it and just got the head off.

[econti]

Pull the engine out, assemble everything, put it back in. Far easier than doing everything in there. For bonus points, pull the front subframe do a quick ratio steering rack, assemble the engine and box complete onto the subframe, then lower the car onto it. Easiest way I've found.

[shawmcbigdis]

Pull the engine out, assemble everything, put it back in. Far easier than doing everything in there. For bonus points, pull the front subframe do a quick ratio steering rack, assemble the engine and box complete onto the subframe, then lower the car onto it. Easiest way I've found.

I dont have an engine hoist, or even room for one in my garage, so there is nothing easy about pulling the whole engine. I also already have a purple tag rack from and e46, so that's done. Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

[shawmcbigdis]

OK, next question.

What the heck is this sensor. It is on the firewall, to the right of where the positive power cable from the main harness attaches. There is no connector for it on the "i" harness. I wasn't able to track it down on realoem.



I assume its fine if I just abandon it, but maybe I'm wrong, do I need to wire it in somehow?

[e30sh]

Don't recall what that is but you don't need it converting to an i harness.

You will need to enlarge the firewall hole to get the i harness into the cabin. e harness hole is a smaller diameter..

I would add manifolds after the head is installed since you are doing it without a hoist.

[shawmcbigdis]

Don't recall what that is but you don't need it converting to an i harness. You will need to enlarge the firewall hole to get the i harness into the cabin. e harness hole is a smaller diameter.. I would add manifolds after the head is installed since you are doing it without a hoist.

I figured if it wasn't on the harness I didn't need it, just wanted to make sure. Yeah, I already enlarged and painted the whole. Got the harness laid in place and some of the connections hooked up. So is it even possible to mount the intake manifold with the head on? It looked basically impossible to get to some of the bolts. But yes, it does look pretty hard to place it on there with the intake already in place. I was thinking of mounting a pulley to the ceiling to help lower it in place. Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

[e30sh]

Zip tie the spring on the vent tube to keep it in the down position when installing the intake. The intake is doable in the engine bay but not a lot of fun. Some people remove the long intake stud and add it after the intake is installed.

[shawmcbigdis]

So today I put the 7kRPM tach into my cluster. I swapped the tach and coding plug into my existing cluster since I recently replaced the ODO gears, the PDB with a re-soldered unit, as well as SI Batteries. So overall my cluster was better.

While i was there I tried to track down if there were any obvious problems with my cruise control. It worked fine when I bought the car, then it started going out over bumps, then it just stopped working all together. I took the steering column apart and inspected the control stalk. Looked good, but from what I could tell you aren't able to open it, so not sure if the mechanism inside looks good. traced it back to the 4 wire connector under the cluster. All wires looked connected in all ends of the connector. Also checked the CC computer above the main ECU. All connections looked good. I sprayed them all down with contact cleaner and gave them as much as a wipe/scrub as I could. Of course I wont see if that helped until everything is back together, but oh well. Is there any way I can test the control computer without power, or a running engine? Like maybe some pin to pin continuity tests or something like that?

While I was out there I was just going through parts making sure everything was in place and deciding what to do next. I realized I couldn't find my new head bolts. I know I ordered them.... So looking around, no where to be found. Start checking all my accounts from my preferred online resellers and nothing there. WTH, I know I ordered these things. Finally start searching my email. I find my order from discountbmwparts.com or something like that. Then I see the 3 emails I missed from them saying they didn't have the head bolts and had no ETA, and then the order was cancelled. Then I checked ECS, out of stock no ETA. I ordered them from FCP Euro who claims they are in stock. nearly 50% more than from the first place I ordered them though, that sucks. But hey, I'm not going to cheap out and order Victor Rienz head bolts. This may be a cheap build, but even I have my limits, and I've seen enough horror stories about those bolts to know better.

I also bought a compound pulley hoist from Harbor Freight, so I can use it to install the head and intake as a single unit. still not positive that is how I am going to do it, but it is how I am leaning. I think with a hoist thingy and 2 people it should be fairly easy with it assembled.

[Northern]

For me, cruise always went out because of a diff speed sensor issue. Every e30 I've owned has had the wires right at the plug rotten to some extent.

[shawmcbigdis]

For me, cruise always went out because of a diff speed sensor issue. Every e30 I've owned has had the wires right at the plug rotten to some extent.

Hmm that sensor is fairly new, I replaced it shortly after I got the car, because the speedo would randomly stop working, and when it did CC stopped also, obviously. I can double check it, but I haven't had any speedo problems and I would think there would be issues with it if there was a problem with that sensor, wouldn't there be? Sent from my Pixel XL using Tapatalk

[Northern]

yeah there should be some sort of issue with your speedo itself at the same time if it is bad