Pitchblack Motorsports Rally e30 318i (now with M50) - and some Porsche 924S stuff.

[irish44j]

Sorry if you already covered this, but did you consider going to the COP conversion? It's cheaper than a new set of plugs, wires, and coils.

i considered it for a minute, but a few reasons decided not to:

1. Since this car gets a lot of dirt in the engine bay, i prefer to have the plug area as covered as possible, and I've been told it's much less sealed with COP there.

2. I'd rather isolate the coils from vibration as much as possible. And since I"m using solid motor mounts, the engine is going to have a lot of vibration.

3. I have two sets of coils, both off running cars. So I'm assuming they're good.

4. I have two sets of wires, both less than a year old...so I"m assuming they're still in good working order.

5. Any money I don't have to spend on something I don't need is money I can spend on something else that I actually do need :)

6. I'd need new plugs regardless of COP or not, so that's probably not relevant!

Not saying I'll never do it, just saying it's way low on the priority list of things I want to spend any money on with this car. Though I've put a lot of new parts on here, I've really only done it when I really needed to and want to keep the car as budget-friendly as possible......I have other automotive and non-automotive projects that money needs to go to as well :)

[unevolved]

Ah, right, sounds good. Mine hadn't been done for years, so it was cheaper for me. That combined with the eventuality of a turbo next to my motor, and clearing those coils out of there made a lot of sense.

[irish44j]

^^ yeah, might need room for a snail :)

So on to another small project tonight. The IACV on the M42 is in probably the most inconvenient spot ever. The hoses are hard to get to, and it's hard to get out once the engine and wiring harness are in. In the interest of making everything that could fail be EASY to get to if it needs to be fixed/replaced......time for a relocate.

Also inconvenient is that the "nipple" on the valve cover and the one on the intake elbow are one size, and the ones on the IACV itself are smaller....so can't directly take one size hose between the two.....thanks Germans!

The solution I found was to use two of the original IACV hose elbows (that are different sizes at each end) and use BOTH of them on the IACV, and then go directly to the intake elbow with one, and plug one to a longer hose to the valve cover (I used an old bushing center "pipe" as the connector piece for the time being, actually :) ).

Anyhow, this seems to work pretty well and makes it all easy to access if needed. Note in the pics below the ziptie is only a temporary holder for the assembly - I'm going to bad up something out of aluminum strip in an "S" profile so I can bolt up a permanent bracket. haven't quite decided where to yet though.





more evidence of the IACV's stock position being lousy. Was taking it out and looked at the VC and was annoyed that somehow got some red paint on there. Oops, my finger has been bleeding for like 5 minutes and there is blood on about 10 parts of the engine in that area, lol. Add that cut to the half-dozen others that are on my fingers from recent work on this car. Gonna feel great golfing on Wednesday, haha....





One other little thing....cut off the M10 airbox bracket. Kind of sloppy right now, just used some metal shears since the kids are asleep, but I'll grind it off completely later this week so I can attach the M42 airbox bracket that is being sent to me by someone.

[irish44j]

got a few more little parts in tonight....the shifter bearing is one. Now I just need the rear mount bracket from Spencer so I can put the shifter assembly back on and hook up the driveshaft.

Also picked up a new boot, which is really a good design. Much better than my ghetto CV-axle boot that I used last year, lol.

Not exactly sure what these plastic ring things are though, that came with it....anyone?



also rerouted the main wiring loom to make it fit better. Nice that the fusebox has mount slots on all four sides for some reason, so I could mount it in a different location than stock..



what else......er.....still deciding on where to put the coilpack. I think I'm going to mount it in the battery tray, but we'll see...



And after digging around in drawers of random stuff, found some odd bracket (I think from an old Jeep roof rack) that just happened to be perfect for hard-mounting the IACV. Better than a zip-tie for sure :)



and some engine bay bling

[silence]

the plastic ring goes around the boot flange, and when you install it you pull up on the ring and it pulls the boot through the trans tunnel... looks like you installed it ok with out it ;)

[irish44j]

the plastic ring goes around the boot flange, and when you install it you pull up on the ring and it pulls the boot through the trans tunnel... looks like you installed it ok with out it ;)

ah, ok.....yeah, was pretty easy to install without. But leave it to germans to give you a handle to install, lol.

[Danny]

I love this thread. PMing you.

[irish44j]

So today was my birthday (and I'm a decade older than this car still, sadly). Played hookie from work and went out and played golf with some buddies on a rare 55-degree December day here. For all the work I do on this car, golf makes me much more sore, lol.

Anyhow, when I got home had a couple boxes with some random small parts that I was waiting for to finish up some stuff.

Now the only things I'm really waiting on to have this engine ready to be started are the O2 sensor and rear shifter mount (coming from Spencer in baltimore, hopefully tomorrow) and mount brackets for the airbox and coilpack, coming cross-country from DJ.

For today's projects (for the 2 hours between golf ending and wife/kids coming home):

The replacement PS pressure hose came in (quick ship by Rockauto again to replace the one that was wrong, though I still need to send the first one back, lol...)

One would think that a PS hose that is going between two spots less than a foot away from each other would just need to be.....a hose.

But, of course, it isn't....It has to be all funky.



Anyhow, with some minor bending of hardlines and generally trying to fit it into tight spaces, finally got it in. I think I oriented it a bit differently from stock setup, but that's because with the charcoal canister relocate I have a bit more space to work with in there.

rack end


pump end


I also added some cut-up heater hoses to act as rub-guards in any place where various hoses are against or close to other things that could wear them..



After hooking it all up, added fluid and bled the steering system manually. Only problem: forgot to tighten down the lower pump banjo bolt when I test-fit it yesterday. So ended up with half a bottle of ATF on the garage floor :P

Got it all tightened up and re-bled. No leaks, but we'll see once its under pressure.

Also got in some 7mm copper bolts for the manifold and put them on, torqued to spec, etc. Much easier with the tubular M42 manifold than with the cast M10 manifold, I have to say.



Got all the shifter stuff ready to go in once I get the rear mount bracket. I was planning to use the M10 rod that came off the car, but it was a bit longer and the transmission linkage "peg" was longer on it too. Odd. I had to go dig a super-rusty M42 rod out of the crate in the backyard, clean it up as good as possible, and throw some paint and new hardware on it. So ready to go on this end. That's a Z3 shifter if anyone cares.



So that's it for the moment. The garage is a disaster area...tools and fluids all over the floor, benches packed with crap. Before any more work on the car I'm going to spend an evening doing some serious cleaning/organizing/putting away.



A bit of bling for my man Carlos at Condor Speed Shop.

[MattTHEe30GURU]

Love this

[phenryiv1]

Once you get this fired up you can come up to WV and help me swap this B25.

[phenryiv1]

Josh-

I bought some digial rights to some shots from the 11.12.12 rallyx. I got these 2 of you:








Email me and I'll send you the files.

[irish44j]

nice pics pat, I'll get them from you :)

So....almost ready to give the engine a go. Tonight I cranked it with the DME unplugged just to circulate some oil. Cranked fine seemingly.

Then I plugged the DME in, and kind of got ahead of myself in impatience, and decided to give it a go on a start. No dice....no crank and didn't seem that I heard the fuel pump going. What the hell.

Went through and re-checked the crank position sensor (505 ohms on the one on the car AND the one on the spare engine, both well within spec), and the cam position sensor (1200 or so ohms, also within spec). So those are good.

Checked power: 12 volts at both the main power distribution line and the secondary line (power to DME). So that's good.

Checked power to the DME: pin 26 is getting power so that's good.

Then futzed around with the main and fuel pump resistors looking for I don't know what. And of coursed discovered what I hope was the problem: somehow when I pulled the resistors to clean the contacts a while back, I put them back wrong, with the main resistor and the fuel pump switched (one the pins are numbered differently and the main resistor has 5 pins vs 4, but they physically fit in each others' sockets). So dumb....

So switched those back. And now since everyone is asleep in the house and I can't exactly try to fire up a car with no exhaust on it, I have to wait until tomorrow to give it another go. Let's hope that was the problem and that everything fires up right.

Two things:

1. Where does the DME ground? I have it mounted via zip-ties since the K-Jetronic DME has a different bracket that doesn't work with the Motronic DME. Is there an external ground someplace (I assume it needs one)?

2. Thanks to slow Christmas mail jam-up, I didn't get the O2 sensor today from Spencer as I (and he) expected. So now I won't get it until Monday. According to several people on the forums, though, the car should start without it present. We'll see :)

3. I'm still concerned over whether I have the right wires on the coilpacks matched up. They have identical color wires, so there's no way to tell other than trying to put them in the same orientation that they "seem" to go in per the way the wires are bent and such. I'm pretty sure of 2 of them, but the other 2 might or might not be switched. That's pretty annoying....

Also got in the airbox and coilpack mount brackets...I was hoping to be able to somehow bolt them on through the lower tabs, but of course those had to be cut off to remove them from the P/O's car, so they'll have to be welded on. Not a major issue at the moment, since the car isn't going anywhere soon, but something else to do.

(and I suspect my dad bought me a welder for Christmas/Birthday (which are 6 days apart), so that would be a nice/useful gift :) ) IDK, he just said that when I come down to their place in January I had to pick up my gift and that is was "heavy" and later in the coversation he alluded to whether I had taken "those welding classes" yet. :)

[irish44j]

ok, after that last post I was restless regarding the coils, so I spent some time digging through the electrical troubleshooting and wiring diagrams, and finally found the pinouts from the DME for the coil wires.

Pin 25 = plug 1
Pin 52 = plug 2
Pin 24 = plug 3
Pin 51 = plug 4

With this information in hand I busted out the multimeter and did some resistance tests, which enabled me to determine which wire went to which coil. Happy to say that I had them correct from the start, but it's one more thing to rule out being a problem when I start the car and it doesn't work, right?







While I'm at it, anyone know what these wires are coming off the DME? I think they're for the tach and CEL perhaps? I'll look them up eventually, but in case anyone knows offhand, it would be helpful.



Then rigged up the coilpack bracket. Again, will weld this eventually. For the time being, a few well-placed rivets actually have it really secure...



ghetto rig


from the wheel well


And one last thing. For no apparent reason wanted to glance in to the valve cover and see if there was any evidence of oil making it up there while I was cranking the engine earlier. Looks like there was some, but it's hard to tell. What I DID notice, though, is that the mounts for the upper timing chain guide were both cracked. They were not like this when I put it in. The part came out of a box of spare parts and I used it because it looked less worn than the one that was in the engine when I took it apart. I don't see anything amiss with the timing chain, so for the moment I guess I'll assume that I either torqued the bolts too tight or that the plastic was brittle on this piece for some reason.





I replaced it with the original one from this engine, and will be checking it often as I get the car running. The chain alignment and tension seem to be fine, so we'll have to see if this happens again or if it was just a faulty piece that maybe was already weak/cracked when I installed it. Not real pleased with that, needless to say...

"New" replacement

[irish44j]

Started it up this morning. No leaks (except from the oil filter cap that I forgot to tighten down), runs ok, though I still have no O2 sensor attached so once it comes off cold idle it's a bit variable. Anyhow, good news :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fxhtiJPWm8&feature=youtu.be

[Dj Buttchug]

seems like those brackets worked out. Sorry about the one closest to the firewall. Those spot welds were a total bitch to get off without destroying the whole bracket. :(

My old car lives through yours :up: