SNAFU; high performance 318is build that lives up to the name, Turbo M42 ➞ Turbo M20

[TeXJ]

Yeah they're 225/45/16 tires.

thank you too! :D

[Northern]

yeah I honestly have no idea. I have two Innovate LC-1 setups, one with a red gauge and one with a blue.
I want to gut one to desolder/extend the 7 segment and use it in the check light spot, and I'd rather use the blue one (I already cut it up to see if it's possible, and I just don't like the blue.)

[varg]

Your best bet is finding a part number on the existing blue display and searching for its red counterpart. Usually the part number is the same but with a suffix, or one digit is different. You can power up the gauge and see what the polarity of the display is by finding the common pin and seeing if you get positive or negative voltage when referencing it to another pin for a lit segment, then it's down to measuring pin pitch and display digit size and hoping you can find a display which has the same outer dimensions for the digit size.

[varg]

I spent Christmas tearing down the spare head I bought recently. Plan is to swap heads and get the header flange machined flat to eliminate the annoying exhaust leak once and for all. Unfortunately the cam has seen better days, so I may be forced into an upgrade. There was also some sort of damage one of the rocker shaft tips, someone had this head apart in the past and pulled a shaft out with vise grips, I filed down the visible damage to protect the bores but there was some I didn't see due to its position which scored some of the lifter and shaft bores. Not sure if the lifter bushings are bad enough that it'll warrant replacement, I was hoping to just get the lifter pads ground to avoid spending $300+ on new lifters since I'm already in for a new cam. The head itself seems to be good though, I didn't see any evidence of cracks, the valve seats and valve mating surfaces looked good and it is fairly clean. I'm probably going to order one of IE's 272° cams, I'm not planning to upgrade the valve springs or anything and rev out to over 7,000rpm because it will probably fall off before then with my small turbine housing (0.63AR). Speaking of turbines, my wife bought me a shift knob for Christmas, and I was out test driving with it and remembered my boost creep is really bad in the cold (50s) weather. I was hitting 20psi boost cut before the rev limiter. I turned off the electronic boost control and was still hitting 20psi by redline. Looks like I'm going to be buying an external wastegate soon too. I'm glad to be employed and able to afford to now.

[econti]

Nice knob

[ForcedFirebird]

Unfortunately 885 heads crack where you can't do a visual. Typically when they are on the car, I have to pressurize the coolant system to about 20psi and wait about 30min for the coolant to start weeping under the cam. When off the engine, I have a rig that seals all the passages and pressurizes the passages. Usually filling with water to test takes forever to show a leak, so now I submerge them and pressurize with air.

[Bearmw]

I like that efficient way to check heads, a lot like checking for tire leaks. Old tech and high execution.

[varg]

I upgraded to a newer, full frame camera recently, had to do a new photo session with my E30 and experiment with the vastly improved dynamic range and low light performance over my 13 year old D200.
(edit)
This forum software is a giant piece of crap and makes posting photos quite frustrating.

[mike.bmw]

The photos look great. I think this one is my favorite of the set.

[Digitalwave]

Great photos!

[varg]

This fix has been a long time in the making. I finally got the spare head I bought recently rebuilt at wot-tech, it unfortunately had a bit of a rough cam (pitted) which forced me to do a full rebuild with new cam and valve job. I went with an Ireland Engineering 272° cam.


When I removed the head and pulled the header I discovered that the exhaust leaks were far worse than I had feared. It wasn't just #6 with its broken stud that was leaking badly, there were only two sealed ports. The header flange, when checked for flatness, was bowed by at least 1mm at the ends. Horrible.


Luckily a buddy of mine is a marine diesel mechanic and has access to a massive belt sander that they use for surfacing heads. This was a lucky break, he saved me a considerable hassle taking it to a machine shop and paying for an hour of shop time to have the flange made good.


Dirty engine.


After cleaning the deck and pistons a bit. Did not bother to try and get the pistons spotless.


New Goetze head gasket


Clean new head on the engine.


I'm very happy with the result. So far no exhaust leaks and the engine has a nice mildly loping idle. Can't really tell how much of a difference there is from before with the new cam and valve job because I didn't drive the car for 3 weeks or so before the re-tune, it does seem to have less falloff above 6,000rpm.

[roguetoaster]

Impressive flange distortion, pretty good to know someone with something like a linisher. As to sealing in future, have you seen any additional or alternate gaskets that might be good for an application like yours?

[moatilliatta]

Photos are fantastic! What kind of camera did you get?

Its amazing how many flanges are warped. Headers or turbo manifold.

[Northern]

I think the warp is just par for the course with heat cycling a flange that's had a bunch of welding done. Sure it's in a fixture and straight for first install, but I don't think there's anything you can do about the warping other than resurface it after every uninstall.
I know you can cut the flange into several smaller ones but I'm not convinced that does enough to avoid resurfacing the flange fully...

I assume the M20 isn't unlike 24v stuff, where aftermarket turbo gaskets are complete garbage and stock ones seal better 10 times out of 10.

Interested in camera info as well

[varg]

I'm sure the heat cycles don't help but man was that thing out of wack. Wouldn't cut the flange since it might wind up worse due to residual stresses. I've stuck with the OE style gaskets because of the heat shields, they definitely do not have a lot of give, not enough to make up for a significant warp at least.

As for the camera I bought a Nikon D610 and a 24-70 f2.8 lens. In January I had a good excuse to upgrade to a full frame camera with dual SD cards so I took the opportunity. I liked my D200 but was never entirely happy with the low light performance, the D610 is an immense improvement.