Vorshlag $2010 GRM Challenge car - BMW E30 V8

[Fair!]

Update for July 26, 2010: Worked on the car a little last week, but the scheduled Thursday work night went to Paul Costas' GT-1 car, as it is being run this coming weekend for the first time in a while at TWS (too much work was looming to make UTCC - I know how that works!). The new AST and Vorshlag sticker power will add some speed, for sure! Took a ton of pictures, so I'll start a proper thread for this car on the vomo forums when I get caught up on other pressing matters.



We also found some time to go get Matt @ Vorshlag's personal 95 M3 roller out of storage to bring to the shop here, to finally get the LS1/T56 drivetrain (which has been sitting in the shop for a year!) install done on his car. Some more little parts for our E36/LS1 swap can finally be perfected on this in-house install.

OK, back to our little $2010 GRM Challenge E30. Last weekend a week ago (?) I started the exhaust fabrication and realized quickly that it was going to be tight under the car, and installing V-band clamps - to be able to easily remove the rear exhaust from the headers - was going to take some planning. My first exhaust iteration was cut off and scrapped, and I marked all new locations for the V-bands (one pretty far forward at the collector and one downstream on the opposite side - both fitting into small clearance openings in the chassis). Wait... we're adding V-bands on a $2000 car? Well yes, thanks to our friends overseas, and sellers on fleaBay and CraigsList, there's some very inexpensive V-band options out there. But of course you get what you pay for... the pair we scrounged up didn't fit our 3" header collector or rear tubing we had scavenged for the rest of the exhaust. The I.D.'s were too small. Great...



But we do have a little lathe... so Tuesday night Paul M stopped by to fix the cheap 3" V-band flanges. He carefully opened up a bit of a step on the inner diameter of each one, and custom fitted each one to fit at each tubing or collector location. Then I tack welded each one up, then later TIG welded them in place (fusion welds). Only about an hour or two of work needed that night, but it let us finally finish the headers for the last time (I hope) out of the car, to prepare for the final (I hope) V8 install before it runs, and to move forward on the rear exhaust fab.



Another night last week we got the accessories, the valve/cam covers (hmm - guess which?), and flywheel/clutch/PP installed and torqued to the replacement junkyard V8 motor that I picked up a week ago. It was all buttoned up to the trans and ready to go in, but it sat like that until this last Saturday.

I needed more hands to get the drivetrain installed, so I burned Saturday morning jacking with/removing/modifying the holes/reinstalling the rear axle center assembly. The pinion angle was never perfect on this and causing all sorts of installation issues within the subframe assembly - the center section was not able to go in-out of the subframe without major cursing/prybars/dubious work. After I slightly opened up 2 of the 4 subframe diff mounting holes, and added small shims to all 4 axle mounting holes, it now fits properly within the subframe - with the driveshaft dead center in the opening and the pinion angle now matching the opposite trans angle. This was a nightmare 3 hour stint in 100°F heat working with a busted wrist, but now all of the custom and stock bits for the rear axle and driveshaft are totally cleaned, lined-up, installed, double-checked and torqued. Finally. I hope.



Saturday afternoon (after doing the "after" sound test on McCall's '91 E30 318is, with the new HP2 Hushpower installed - wow, what a difference!) I got some helping hands from McCall and Paul M. Together we put the drivetrtain in the car and bolted up and "the difficult header" in like 90 minutes - it helps to have 3 people for this one, as the driveshaft yoke has to be slid into the trans during the install, otherwise you have to pull the rear axle (don't ask). McCall and I also flipped and reinstalled the steering shaft we made from before, and now it clears the installed driver's side header with even more room. The steering wheel went on so the car finally steers again. Hot damn!


Left: E30 as bare as it gets. Right: The E36 is a lot easier to get drivetrains in and out of!

Not being able to pull the front radiator support off of an E30 chassis (like on an E36) makes pulling or installing the drivetrain MUCH harder than it needs to be. We've come this close to cutting that whole damn section off and making it removable via bolts... At least we managed to get the drivetrain in/out as a unit and without dropping the subframe this time - practice makes perfect! It also takes a tilting motor chain set-up.

Sunday morning I spent a good long while getting the coolant/heater hoses routed, fitted, lined-up, and clamped-up perfectly, so all of the coolant lines except the radiator hoses are done and tight. Sometimes a slight amount of OCD pays off. Can't show any of this cooling stuff yet, dammit. But I can show the exhaust work I knocked out Sunday afternoon, if I'm careful...



It ain't pretty, but the dual 3" into single 3" merge above took me hours to get lined up, marked, cut, and welded right. Yes, it looks pretty rough, but please remember - I'm building an exhaust system out of mostly recycled/old/used bends and tubing thrown away by others, or scrounged from old projects we did here long ago. Some of my slowness also comes from the fact that I've never before scratch-built custom headers + full custom exhaust for a car at the same time in my life, so I'm learning as I go! :)



In this exhaust there's some old stainless junk, some rusty carbon steel bits, some powder coated bends from the old EVO X exhaust, and some aluminized steel bends. Differing wall thicknesses and alloy compositions and coatings make for some interesting welding, heh. Sometimes I can't find the right bend needed and have to piece together a series of angled cut straights... its pretty ghetto, but its cheap! For the flow capacity of this V8 engine I think it'll be overkill. Its definitely something I'd want to go back after the GRM Challenge and "do right", given a couple hundred dollars of proper 18- or 20-gauge stainless 3" mandrel bends. Or, if I was smarter, just let Taylor at Dallas Performance scratch build a new set-up - his exhaust work is so damn pretty, and always makes great power. Respect.


This big bag of nasty is craptastic, but cheap!

Another used bit getting re-purposed on the E30 is the old 3" Flowmaster Series 50 muffler from my wife's M3. It has a hole in it (from my crappy mounting tabs + several years of use), has seen better days, was gong to take some work to fix, and the M3 needed to be a bit quieter, so that car got a 3" Hushpower and dropped several dB. So now the old Series 50 (which I know sounds great and makes good power behind any V8, as I've used them on Ford, Chevy and BMW V8s) is getting cleaned up, patched up, and the old tubing ends cut off to be mounted to the E30 when I get some time to finish the rest of the exhaust.



We're meeting Tuesday and Thursday nights this week, with lots of little stuff to bolt up and wire up and plumb. This week is a bit hectic, with lots of updates and upgraded parts going onto my DSP E46 330 Coupe, in preparation for a Divisional event this weekend. Pulling the trans to get at the clutch/flywheel has not been fun!

More soon,

[Fair!]

Update for August 12, 2010 - part 1: Holy crap, no update since July?? Well we've been working furiously on my DSP E46 a lot (Nationals is in 3 weeks), and the "oil pressure problem" suffered on that car last weekend has gobbled up more time this week. We got Matt's 95 E36 M3 in the shop and cleaned up, ready for another LS1 install and some more kit part development. Some other cars have been in the shop, too. Anyway, we did work manage to get in some night work on the E30 including last Thursday, this past Sunday, this past Monday, Tuesday and we're going to attack it again tonight. This is all we've been able to manage due to the other projects on the front burner right now, and its put us a bit behind. The high temperatures in August (its still 100°F at night in the shop) here have also made the number of volunteers... thin out considerably. :D



OK, the exhaust was finish welded and completed a week ago. Sean and Matt worked on the rear section without me one night and the routing went over the driver's side halfshaft in the rear, necessitating a tight bend there and a 3rd V-band (to be able to remove the system without dropping a half shaft). Maybe they could have tucked the 3" pipe under the halfshaft near the diff housing with a straighter section, which would have allowed the entire exhaust to come off without another V-band... but oh well. It looks good and should still flow plenty well. :)



By the time I saw the routing it was tacked up so I just made sure they pulled a spring and compressed a tire to check clearance to the halfshaft at full bump travel. Looked good, so I asked Sean MIG weld up all of the seems with the exhaust off the car. We looked at the pile of scrap left over from the old/used/scrapped EVO X exhaust and there was only one old bend left. Its SO much more work making an exhaust out of used scraps than from new bends (as we noted when building the 3" E46's exhaust last week; it took 1/4 the time!). Proof once again that "building on the cheap" can add LOTS of extra work.





Since we were using the World's Cheapest 3" V-Bands (that don't fit over 3" tubing!) I asked Paul to re-machine yet another one for the rear section, and he test fit each tube into each flange again. Then we welded that on the next night and finished the exhaust system. You can see the rear exhaust hanger/mount we added from using an old end link bushing, bolt and piece of strap steel.



With the exhaust being wrapped up, Chris spent that evening doing some repairs to the non-ETA E30 gauge cluster (7000 rpm tach) we bought, and it should work correctly now. Complete with cheesy smile picture. :D



Last Thursday night McCall and I worked on a seat bracket floor brace to mount below the (purchased half-complete and cheap) Sparco slider. We found this old discarded piece from a tire trailer I built 5 years earlier (that I later sold to Chris, who still has it) that didn't fit when it was finished welded for that trailer, but it donated all the material we needed for the seat bracket. McCall cut off two sides and mocked it up for me to tack weld, then Sean TIG welded the "square".



The next Sunday Matt and I spent a few hours marking, drilling, clearancing, changing the design, welding on extra parts for the slider to land on, drilling some more, and finally got the seat bracket wrapped up and the slider mounted.



Due to some sketchy measurements and a partial re-design midway through fabrication, its not the prettiest seat bracket I've made, but plenty strong and the slider mechanism and fore/aft seat range works great for this car and roll bar. On this past Monday night I made a adjustment handle (these sliders usually come with this, but it was missing and hence VERY cheap on CraigsList) out of more of the scrap tubing from the old trailer piece - never once using a measurement device. It is a little ugly, but functional.





Getting the seat in felt like a big step... I don't know why, it just makes it seem more like a real "car" now instead of a hulk of metal we've been pushing in and out of the shop for the past 10 months. We got started on the harness mounting, and now have the sub's mounted as well as the shoulder harnesses. Once we get the clip-in ends for the lap belts (ordered today) we'll have our seat and harness 100% complete.



more below...

[Fair!]

Update for August 12, 2010 - Part 2: I've been farting around this week at night making new radiator brackets. We had to lower the used E36 radiator 3" to clear some stuff on the front of the motor so I had to yank off the brackets I had built and scratch build new upper and lower brackets, after Sean cut a slot in the lower radiator support to clear the lower part of the rad.



I used some 1" strap steel and some bushings from an old and discarded rear shock mount, which gives a nice cushion to the lower radiator mounts. To attached the brackets to the radiator support I pre-drilled some holes in the brackets and used some self-tapping roofing screws to zing them home. Cheap and fast.



The upper mounts were a bit trickier, but they start by going down into the E36 rad's upper mounting slots. We lost the OEM rubber inserts for those so we used some cut lengths of old heater hose for the upper rubber isolators; they slid down into the plastic tank slots fine. The brackets are made from .10" thick strap steel, cut and bent to shape and welded together.



So the radiator is now held in place in its new lower location, and isolated from metal-to-metal contact. Last Tuesday Chris and I worked on the fuel pump assembly and I worked a bit on the throttle cable and a custom bracket for that.



We had a discarded Subaru fuel pump assembly to scavenge and source the pump (the stock OEM in-tank pump was a low pressure "pusher" feeding an external pump; we ditched the external and used the Subaru unit for the in-tank portion), fuel pump strainer/sock and part of the Subaru's in-tank wiring/harness. Chris soldered the harness wires from the pump to the stock E30's wiring plug, so it will be a plug-in deal.



So that's the past two weeks on the E30 project. We've gotten a bit of work done but I've been so slammed that I was tardy on the updates.

More soon!

[Fair!]

Update for Aug 17, 2010: Final update before we fire it up! I swear, no more mundane, boring brackets or nonsense. The next one after this - It goes VROOM, or I will refund your price of admission! :D


Objects on screen are closer than they appear

OK, where were we? Last time I detailed the seat bracket/slider, radiator relocation is done (nape: yep, the lower brackets do need more meat to them, I agree), exhaust fab was shown in painful detail, and the gauge cluster was fixed. Plus a lot of other stuff I didn't show on the motor. Since then we've knocked out some more bullet points, thanks to a LONG Saturday at the shop last weekend - big thanks to Costas and McCall, and to Chris for coming Monday night. Amy and I raced on Sunday (the repaired oil pump on the E46 did great!) and I'm going to tackle some solo work tonight on the E30.



The giant hole in the trunk floor (long ago we cut out the rusty spare tire well) is finally covered up with some aluminum sheet. I went to Garland Steel and Scrap Yard and traded 56 pounds of old E30 exhaust and 30 pounds of aluminum bumpers for this small piece of relatively clean sheet, that was in a pile of drops/scraps there. It fit trunk floor's hole nearly perfectly without cutting - sometimes you get lucky! I'll drill some holes and put Clecos in place until I decide weather to screw or rivet that down.



Above you can see the 7000 rpm gauge cluster (from a 318is) in the car (I hope it works now!) as well as the V6 Camaro shifter in place. You can see the repairs we had to do to the BMW trans tunnel, mostly from a giant hole a previous owner put in there (for some weird reason?) and then fiberglassed over (facepalm!). The new sheet metal is cut to fit around the V6 trans location and our motor placement, and its not the stock hole. The shifter angle/placement itself is a bit odd but the price was right! (it came with the trans) The normal V6 Camaro trans is at a 15° tilt but it is no longer, so its angled a bit to the right. If it feels weird we'll make a new shift handle. We're going to put the giant "8 ball" leather Camaro knob on there, too. Speaking of brakes...



We have some goodies mocked up and ready to go in place of the E30 ABS pump, but I'll talk about more of that when its done. The E36 master cylinder is being used, since we have E36 non-M brakes on both ends of the car. Why mess with the proportioning/balance? We're now using a complete E36 braking system, sans power booster. The booster got in the way of the V8, so I laid out two patterns - the E30 firewall holes and the E36 master cylinder, and managed to scoot the MC up and to the driver's side, sharing the top right hole.



Check out the high tech equipment in the Vorshlag shop! Yep, that's an old $40 table top drill press. I have a big $900 beast of a drill press, but its a paint to remove the spring perch fixtures from it we use on a weekly basis, so half the time the $40 hoopty gets used. The extra hole drilled into the firewall was done with the engine in place, using a regular drill and a 90° adapter. Worked like a charm - especially when wielded by a left-hander like McCall. Sorry, some of that photo was redacted by order of the president (National Security concerns, of course), plus parts of the next two.



OK, what else? We finished the throttle bracket and cable and tested that. The power steering pump was pulled, the pulley removed, a different bracket installed, and all that put back together. Some other hydraulic lines were mangled/remade. Serpentine belt installed, plus all fluids in the motor/trans/diff. We nearly burned up the donor battery cable, but we got part of it shortened and attached to the starter and another to the alternator. The power steering cooler (cheap swap-meet trans cooler) kit was installed. The old cooling fan is remounted and ready. I was wasting hours trying to design/cut crazy F1 style mounts for the cooler, and Costas knocked some sense into me - it was installed with 1 bolt and 2 roofing screws in 5 minutes, done his way. Yes, its vertical now, and not behind the fan (which was making my layout nearly impossible without moving the fan - again!) but the cooler lines are far from the lowest part on the car. Sometimes I over-complicate things...



We're still doing a lot of recycle/reuse/save the planet/save a buck tricks. More re-purposed hoses from various sources (old cars, old projects, old washing machines!) were installed and buttoned up, plus lots more used clamps from the old motor were cleaned up and installed. We've gotten good at cleaning up old crap! So much extra time is being burned to save $1 here, $5 there, but that's the nature of this contest. We found a set of throw-away 275 Hoosierss this week, plus a set we bought for cheap, so we can do some testing on the correct 15x10" steel wheels and tires soon and save the throw-aways for the GRM event.



I'm really, honestly hoping we can fire it up this week. Two small pieces of fuel line are left, two radiator hoses need to be cobbled together, and the air inlet piping. Chris is finishing up the engine harness this week - just a few more wires to extend and terminate! We've got all of the pieces and parts here to do that. This week we wrapped up a custom exhaust for Hanchey's ex/future World Challenge Subaru race car and the DSP E46 was completed enough with prep for Nationals (no more additional projects on that until winter), and the 2011 Mustang GT we ordered in early JUNE won't get here in time to do our last minute sneak attack F Stock entry at Nats, damn it. That's probably good news for my sleep deprived brain - getting this E30 cleaned up and running and sorted and do bodywork and paint will gobble up every hour after work between now and Sept 30th, as it is.

Next up - videos from "first crank" and exhaust sound tests!

[JamesE30]

Fuck that's wide!
Everything looks great, You guys sure are putting in alot of work to this one :up:
Can't wait to see videos!

[Jean]

Awesome as usual! Looks all proper and business like! I wonder how the pedal is like with the MC but no booster assist at all??

[fiftytakedowns]

incredible. I cant imagine the hours put in

[Ian Bowers]

Love this build, SO much. Can't wait to see it run in videos!

[Erick]

I do admire the build, but how are you guys keeping this car on budget for the GRM Challenge?

[CorvallisBMW]

I still am amazed every time I click on this thread I'm amazed by the shear amount of custom fab. You guys are gonna wipe the street with every other car there...

[FredK]

Awesome as usual! Looks all proper and business like! I wonder how the pedal is like with the MC but no booster assist at all??

Yeah, I'd be curious to see what it looks like inside the cabin! Most people move the clevis tang upwards to increase the leverage ratio. I'm uncertain how the arc of the pedal is soaked up, since the path of the brake pedal isn't completely straight. Maybe a bearing rod end connected to a pushrod?

[rbhanks]

We know the engine is a low priced v8. That it makes 300+ when tuned by a noted engine builder.
THAT its narrow enough to fit in to a e30.

I think the motor is a lexus ls 400 v8. i searched car-part.com for a 93 ls400 engine there are 41 pages of results most range about $400.

It has 6 bolt cross mains was based on a cart/irl design.

i saw one in the junk yard with out a core support and saw how narrow an engine it is. They used it in cars designed for inline6's

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_UZ_engine#1UZ-FE

[Fair!]

This isn't a project update - this is a series of questions.

Why do E30s have such terrible wiring schematics? I've been fighting with final wiring of the motor and car for the last week and its making me nuts (as well as wrapping up the last of the fuel/power steering/brake lines/trunk floor). Doug stopped by Saturday (thanks!) and we put the battery back in the car (first time in 8 months) and, after a little digging and a wire repair, got power to the fuse box and to parts of the interior of the car. Headlights work, some other systems work but others don't - there's power to some fuses/circuits, but not many.

Whenever I need to reference a wiring schematic, it rarely matches what's in the car. The wiring references in the Bentley manual are a JOKE - I wish I could meet the guy that put this book together, and punch him in the face. Little clips of the schematic sections here and there, and they don't always match the car. Chris found some more complete online schematics but, once again, they don't always match the car.


Half of these wire colors match the wiring at the connector!

So the wiring is kicking my butt. I don't know E30s well to begin with and we're trying to splice in the engine harness and computer from another vehicle to some of the E30 systems. Its usually pretty simple stuff in an E36, which has relatively good wiring schematics, and what we're trying to splice in are very simple systems (start, fuel pump relay, tach, brake, Check Engine Light). We've got everything on the donor harness identified/pared down/lengthened/connected to the engine, I just cannot get accurate connector pin-puts for the E30's wiring connectors for some of the last 5 wires we need to splice in. Some of the systems just aren't behaving like they should, too.

Question 1: The current (ha! a pun!) problem I'm having is trying to get a 12V positive "START" wire to trigger the starter solenoid. The "connector 50" 12V lead from the BMW engine harness to the BMW starter is long gone (we sold the engine harness with the motor) so I went upstream to the ignition switch, and the C200 connector under the steering column:



The connector doesn't look exactly like the numbering diagram (why aren't wires 9 & 10 shown in the picture above, right?) and many of the color coded wires are incorrect (from Figure 10-11, above). Apparently "Terminal 9" (black/yellow wire) is the start signal that becomes "Terminal 50", but at this wiring connector it is a microscopically small wire. There's no way that little thing can handle the juice needed to energize a starter solenoid. Did this "Terminal 9" go through a relay or circuit somewhere to become the larger "Terminal 50" wire that triggers the BMW starter? Or is it "Terminal 10"? Its so damn hot in the shop right now its hard to think, and once inside the car (with the windows stuck up!) you just sweat like mad and can't see within 2 minutes.

I've done continuity tests with the key in OFF, ON and START positions - and damned it if I can find the right circuit, or verify that "Terminal 9" is even the wire we want. The one we need only makes a 12V circuit when the key is in START. Once we get a 12v signal to a starter solenoid we can crank the engine. Sure, I could throw a momentary push button switch in the car to energize the solenoid, but the ignition switch and key WORKED BEFORE and I don't want to clutter up the car more than it already is with unnecessary custom buttons and switches. I've already burned hours on finding this wire... one stupid wire. (facepalm)

Question 2: The power windows no longer work, and they did before we tore the car down last year. I traced the schematic for this circuit back to fuse # 17, and there's no 12V power even when the key is ON. It shares the fuse with the sunroof, which we completely removed all traces of. Thoughts? The wipers worked for about half a stroke, then stopped. A closer look at the firewall routing for the wires to the wiper motor looks like it was cut then put back together by a previous owner (just twisted together - not even taped), so all that needs to be removed/re-soldered. I'm so sick of soldering and heat shrinking I could scream.

Question 3: Does anyone recognize this wiring bundle, located back at the diff? This cable was cut and dangling under the car when we got it, and it has 3 wires: red, blue, & yellow/green. Probably not critical, just want to get the mess of wiring as cleaned up as possible before we crank it. Its not the speedometer wiring, which was spliced together with speaker wire ends just and smashed onto the speedometer sensor terminals (ugh), but is now properly spliced/extended and has weatherproof spade connectors clicked onto the 2 terminals there.



Question 4: I've also got to trick the fan to come on when the key is in the ON position. Need to find an accurate diagram for the aux cooling fan, and try to decipher the hi and low speed circuit and relays for that.



Question 5: What do the K5 and K7 relays do?

If anyone has any answers, please feel free to share. Also, if you are in north Dallas and know a bit about E30 wiring, we're working on the car tonight - let me know if you want to come by and educate the E30 Ignorant! :)

Thanks,

[aaron.j]

To help with your questions we will need to know what engine/ecu you are using =P

seriously though, everything you need runs through c101 located on the firewall, or if its an early model through the connector on the side of the fuse box, and one little connector (c104) located near the glove box. c104 on the early models, if rpm, ti signal for the fuel consumption, and the fuel pump (think that one is green)

[Gnarles]

Question 1: pins 9 & 10 are on a separate plug that plugs in to the C200 connector. I unplugged this accidentally when I was messing with the brake booster and the starter would not activate, plugged it back in and everything worked. This connects to the starter relay and eventually feeds to pin 18 on the C101 connector at the firewall.

Question 3: Possibly ABS sensor wiring?

Question 4: There is a thermoswitch that energizes the low speed and high speed relays at specified coolant temperatures. I would think you could just jump these relays and the fan would come on when the key is on. It is also common to tie the high speed circuit in with the low speed so the fan is always running on high.

Question 5: I believe K5 and K7 are unloader relays for the starter circuit.

Make sure you have the correct ETM for your E30. Check the build date on the drivers side door. For example, I have an 89 325i, but the build date is 9/88 so the 1988 325i ETM matches the wiring in my car.