'87 e30 - the American Conquest

[jalopi]

Made some progress this week. Got the clutch pedal and master in



I found out by accident that if you leave that little bumpy sliver of material on the brake pedal bracket alone, the clutch pedal fits in... barely.



Also, finally got the engine in today! Progress :)



Ground clearance. Seems reasonable.

[jalopi]

Hey guys - so it's been almost a year since there were any updates... because there were none. However, now that winter is over and my previous job is no longer sapping my time I've been making good headway.

Got the car in the garage and prepping it for the engine



The engine is pretty much put together and ready to go



However, I ordered a manual belt tensioner from March Performance - I think they gave me the wrong tensioner 'sleeve' or whatever you want to call it... the metal bit between the two tie rod deals. All the mustang ones I've seen on the internet are much longer and as you can see, maxed out, the second connector on the alternator is pretty much blocked off. Still gotta call them up about that. Hopefully they'll send me another sleeve even though it's been over a year since I ordered the part.



So here's where I figured out why the e30v8 webpage says you have to use a Mustang acc pedal... I thought I might just bend the cable bracket and see if that works. I've mocked up the clutch pedal and it seems to clear it... we'll see I guess. (P.S. yes I plan on drilling a new hole to straighten out the cable)






So one thing I haven't been able to figure out is the manual brake delete... Massives' instructions warn about drilling the hole too high or have possible binding issues... well, I measured like 3 times and then drilled the hole (48mm, trying to get it as close to 6.4 as possible without getting too close to the binding issue) and after I installed the pedal I've got this intermittent grinding on full pedal depression, sounds/looks like it's coming from the master cylinder itself. So I slotted the hole a few more mm down, reinstalled... same noise. What's going on here???

[eurotrash]

Ya there great street carbs. Set it and forget it. Itll give good enough performance to have fun with but its just not great for drifting.
Do me a favor and check to see if both sets of butterflys open all the way when you give it full throttle (car off obviously) i thought mine was a mech. Secondary also but turns out they just have a wierd vacume secondary setup(u cant see the vacume canister like on a holley). Just curious if its the same for yours. If its a vac like mine the. Primary butterflys will open but the secondarys wont open all the way. Actually beter for a street car as it doesnt waste as much gas as a mechanical.

[jalopi]

Yeah I actually read something that you posted about the wedged floats, which is why I asked him if I should get a holley or not. Oh well :neutral:.

I guess I can always just get it running and going with the edelbrock and work out all the bugs of the swap until the next drift season comes along. At the very least it'll be fun on the street for a while and I don't imagine a used edelbrock on craigslist for a reasonable price would be there for long.

[eurotrash]

I was thinking it wouldnt be to bad my first time out but it wound up just being a waste of my $70 entry fee. Edelbrocks (and stock holley for that matter) are designed to deal with forward aft fuel slosh. Basicly what happens when u start whipping the car side to side is the fuel all goes to one side of the bowl and causes the float in either the primary or the 2ndary to raise and shut off fuel flow via the needle valve and seat. (not unlike your toilet actually). Obviously no fuel to keep the engine running so its studders and dies. If it has enough force on it the fuel is actually forced out the bowl vents which is what happens when you transition. Edelbrock hasnt done much to combat this since u just dont see this very much during normal driving or drag racing. Holley has been used on road race and nascar forever and thats why this technology is there. The nascar floats are only wedged on 1 side (they only turn 1 way) but the road race floats are wedged on both sides. This allows the fuel that would normally build up on 1 side during the turn to sit inside the area created by the wedge rather then raise the float.

Its kind of long winded but when u understand whats happening with the floats it make more sense as to why it wont work as well with the edelbrock.

As far as messing with the holley they are a bit more tempermental but its not hard to adjust. Your really only adjusting your idle air mixture and your idle. Idle air is just basicly adjusting for max vacume at idle and idle adj is obviously just setting where you want it to idle. All the other adjustments are the same types of adj as edelbrock (jets,powervalve, ect..) uve got some other stuff like pump cams and stuff but honestly you shouldnt need to mess with that stuff too much.

[jalopi]

Thanks for the links guys. I don't think I'm gonna go for the breeze alternator bracket though - not only is it more expensive than the march version, but I do plan on putting p/s on the car in the future. I already have a bracket, just no e36 or whatever pump is needed to make it work.

As far as the carb goes... goddammit. I don't really have too much experience with domestic stuff so I've been taking the advice from the older guys at work for all my parts purchases. One dude told me I shouldn't have an issue with the edelbrock since it's got two bowls or something like that, and that fuel slosh shouldn't be a huge issue. Also, to absolutely not get a holley.

Then again, I have z-e-r-o experience with carbs and I think that's the reason why he made me stay away from the holleys. Apparently you've gotta mess with them all the time or something.

But yes, I do plan on drifting it. All the time? No. Competitively? Definitely not. Well, probably not. In any case, this car is only gonna be the recipient of my wrath maybe once or twice a weekend each month. Maybe I'll take it to the drag strip too, who knows? All I know is that I'm probably not gonna be driving this thing too often; it's gonna be a recipe for trouble.

[eurotrash]

Also here is the link for the drivers high mount serp setup

http://www.breezeautomotive.com/details.php?prod_id=158

[eurotrash]

If your just giving it a flick one way it'll be fine. Its on transition that it doesnt like. I havent starved it on the street a single time but when u get out on the track and your throwing it both directions @35+ you start having big starvation problems. I thought it wouldnt make a dif either when my buddy said the same thing to me but it makes a big dif. Plus its really no fun to pay your entry fees, tire mount, and gas to only be able to slide 1 corner at a time. The edelbrock worked great for a street/occasional drag car but theres a reason holley has been used in roadrace and nascar for so long.

Plus after pulling both apart it is 100x easier to tune/rejet/rebuild the holley. You can get thumb screws for the bowls and rejet in a matter of a min with the holley.

[FunfGan]

I've gotta ask, how extreme of getting sideways are you talking about? I have no doubt about fuel slosh, but I've had my car sideways at 20-40mph with no problems.





And here's the FPR link!

FPR: http://www.summitracing.com/parts/HLY-12-803BP/

Fuel connectors: http://www.summitracing.com/parts/SUM-G3116/

[eurotrash]

So if your planning on drifting this the edelbrock will not and cannot work. You'll need to get a centerhung holley based carb with wedged/notched(nascar style) floats and jet extensions. The carter/edelbrock style carbs cant handle the g's and fuel slosh caused by the g's produced in drifting. I ran an edelbrock 600 my first even and going 1 way it was great but it killed it on transition everytime due to fuel completely sloshing out of the bowls so bad that i had to wait for the bowls to refill in order to restart the car.

Im running a holley double pumper because the vacume secondaries dont work as well with a light manual car due to lack of load to help produce vacume. This is the same reason that boosted brake setups dont work real well for track cars. Buddy of mine has problems stopping his 355 swapped 240 due to this.

Im alittle jealous of ur heads. Thats gonna shave a ton of weight off the top of that engine and you should be running around 320-360whp with that setup. Im planning on heads and bumping up compression/beefing up the bottom end this winter in mine. Also be aware that these engines dont like seeing over 425hp without cracking the block.

I did find a standard wp/serp belt setup that you can run the alt high on the driverside vs the pass side. It also relocates it so u can run a supercharger if u wanted. Of course i didnt find it til after i bought all the ford motorsport vbelt stuff.

[jalopi]

Well when I saw your car I really wasn't paying attention to the belt setup, I was more like "mother of god it's real" and gawking at the engine

[jalopi]

Although once you get back, all I need to do is paint my car red and pick up a similar set of wheels... then we can roll around town a minute apart and give people wtf deja vu moments.

[jalopi]

Hahah thanks for the offer bro ~but~ I'm hoping to get this done before December 1st so I can attend the 100 drifters of December at Summit. Not sure how your school works, but I think that's about the time that most schools let off for winter break :(

However, that link for the FPR would be nice :). All I need now is that, headers, the alternator bracket, alternator, belt, tranny, clutch kit, driveshaft, thermostat/housing, hoses, spark plugs/wires, clutch pedal/hydraulics, brake master setup, driveshaft, fuel filter, fan... ok that's actually alot and now, thinking about it, my wallet hurts :(.

[FunfGan]

Also, have you seen my belt setup? It's not the best but it does the job as well as anything else.

[FunfGan]

Holy cow man! Minus my engine being bored over slightly and you having aftermarket heads, were going to have almost identical engines. Same intake, same carb, same cam, same distributor, head bolts, etc etc. No wonder you're spending so much, but you're right, at least it's the proper stuff and not cheap stuff that will come back to bite you in the ass. I'd also recomend the same FRP I got(can send you a link). But keep it up man, I'll be watching this while I'm at college, dreaming of my car hahah. And when I'm on break, I'd be more than willing to come help out.