My supercharged m20 daily driver

[Ether-D]

'Sup dogs? This is the story of my e30 so far. Here it is the day I bought it. It had blown shocks and struts, dumped ps fluid, transmission whined like I was in reverse in all gears but 4th, mismatched front seats, and weak motor. But it was a 5-speed, m20, non-diving board vert. It fit all of my criteria.


Then I ordered some chinese shocks, and some of the ST springs that were on ebay for $70 a year and a half ago. Too low for my liking.


So I got the Bavauto sport spring and Bilstein sport combo. I think it's the ultimate DD shock/spring combo. I also Picked up a set of wheels from Discount tire direct. They are Voxx 16" et20 I think. But they fit just right. By this time, I had also fitted some iX skirts and flares.


I also grabbed a hard top for $500 in decent shape. I then made a roof rack for it out of some poplar. I did this before I got the wheels. nThere's more to be said about what's under the hood, but I gotta go to work. To be continued…

[Ether-D]

Dead motor that lead to a VERY alive motor...

Then I was driving home one night and lost oil pressure and finished off the weak motor that it came with. I grabbed one at the pull a part along with a fresher 5-speed and put them in with all new gaskets and seals.

Then on the first test drive I broke a rocker. Long story longer, the yard motor only had single valve springs which are only good to about 5000rpm before rocker-snap-arino. next, I bought a bare head and rebuilt it and hand lapped all the valves and put her in and all was well.

But I wanted moar paur…

So, I went to work reading everything I could about superchargers. I didn't want to do a turbo, well, because I'm a special snowflake.

I thought that if you cut the flange off of the stock intake manifold, you could weld a box of aluminum on to it that could theoretically have an Eaton m90 from a Ford Thunderbird Supercoupe bolted right on.

Viola! After cutting and filing and figuring and ordering a sheet of 1/4" aluminum off of Ebay. I took it to the welder and he hooked that shit up.


Then I needed to figure out the belt-drive for the m90. I really wanted to keep power steering and a/c. So I took a crank pulley from a m50 and it was just perfect. I added an idler pulley and bracket and had a spacer made to adapt the m50 power steering pulley I had, to the m20 ps pump. Cut the opening in the new manifold and mounted up the m90 on my spare block and head (bad motor).


Then made an adapter for the m90 intake. Added a bypass valve off of a mini. did some throttle body riggery, AKA, I have a Ford thunderbird throttle body in my car. I know it feels wrong but it works great!


Blah blah… little shit here, details there… throttle linkage...


And then it was in.

[Ether-D]

Ms2

Oh yeah, I bought a MS2 from Whodwho. This motor wouldn't last long without that. It's fantastic btdubz.

[ArtFoodBMW]

Let me know how well this setup works for you! I'm thinking about supercharging my e30 and your idea seems good

[kalib0y]

Nice. Would love to hear the way it sounds

[Ether-D]

It works great. I have 3-4 psi instantly at low rpm and peak at 7psi at 4000 in 5th gear. It's a torque monster. You know how when you're cruising at 2000rpm on a stock m20 and you want to go faster, you have to down-shift or NOTHING will happen. With the m90, the car just goes, no matter what gear you're in. Here's a 0-80mph video from before I found a fairly large intake leak (I was at 6psi peak in this vid). It feels substantially faster now. I've put about 1000 miles on this setup so far.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=758488297497505&set=vb.100000090243381&type=2&theater

I'm going to start building another setup soon, but with a slightly different design. Functionally the same, but with more readily available parts. Maybe sell a couple of these...