Northern's Sterlingsilber M52 Turbo 325is

[ba114]

Well that's annoying!
We only get additional fees in Australia if we buy goods valued at >$1000 from overseas.

Hey on RR logger, do you get a MAF reading with car switched on but not running? I get the MAF volts (~0.4v) but no MAF reading?

[Northern]

I'm not sure. I only start my logs after the car is on/warmed up, and they usually stop when I turn the car off, so that doesn't help. I'd have to check tomorrow at some point.

[ba114]

Updates?

[Northern]

Had a weird boost cut feeling where the car would pull pretty strong to ~800mg/stk/4000 rpm, and then fall flat on its face. After that happened, it would feel like the car was dead until I turned it off and back on.

Looking at the log, I see that timing drops to 7 deg right around where the "boost cut" feeling happens. After that event, the engine doesn't seem to respond to any inputs, injector pw stays the same regardless of load/rpm...

Busterhax/Kyle offered to take a look at my partial and he pointed out the lack of timing, as well as some strange mix of 41.1 and 41.2 maps across the ecu.

I swapped all the 41.1 stuff for 41.2 and now my fuel map is a little lean everywhere, and I get lots of -.75 to -2.88deg knock corrections around 250mg/stk...

I've added a lot of fuel and pulled a bit of timing. I want to say it's better than it was, but we'll hopefully confirm it today.


After my ebay shifter fell apart twice while trying to get somewhere, I started making a floor mount shifter from random scrap I've found in my basement/shed. Some tubing that is the perfect diameter for a late shifter cup and some 1/8" sheet, plus a Z3m shifter... Need to decide how to mount it to the floor (either a la PMC/dibed shifter, or AKG/others)



Some quick engine bay pics:







I flipped my BOV to move it further from the MAF. It's a really tight squeeze now, not sure if it'll stay this way.

I found a guy who wanted to offload an M52, but wanted to keep the crank for a stroker M20 build. I offered to trade him a good crank instead of him opening it all up.

So I took the M52 that Roy was using back from where he was storing it. This was my first M52, which had a trans mounting boss snapped off the block, as well as a load of screws snapped off in various spots. It also never really ran right in his car. It would run OK for a bit, then just idle terribly/rich/blow the cat out the back/etc. We never figured out what it was, so he now has another M50 in his car.

So I tore that one down, and I'm meeting this guy later today to make the swap.



Head isn't terrible, but has a few snapped off exhaust studs that we tried to drill out by hand in a car tent, with an electric drill in the middle of winter... with maybe a 50% success rate. Probably going to try to get them oversized to M8 to not deal with it anymore.


Head gasket fire rings look weird/deformed, but it's a VR gasket, so maybe that's normal lol




Bought a large amount of cheap automotive sound insulation off amazon as well, hoping to cut down on exhaust drone. Two 60x40" sheets, and they weigh like maybe 1lb a sheet, so I'm not extremely confident that it's going to work great.

New turbo inlet elbow finally showed up, so I can ditch the ducttaped one, and the replacement BOV is here, just too lazy to install either.

Nothing else to report really.

I'm having bad thoughts about machining 1mm off the pistons I pulled, and running a thicker OE style gasket, which should be sorta-kinda like running a 0.120" MLS. I'm a little concerned about how thin the pistons are to begin with, but it might live for a bit.

[ak-]

Bought a large amount of cheap automotive sound insulation off amazon as well, hoping to cut down on exhaust drone. Two 60x40" sheets, and they weigh like maybe 1lb a sheet, so I'm not extremely confident that it's going to work great.

Can you update on how well this works out for you?
I wanted to put some under the delete plates I'm making for where my rear interior used to be!

What's the blue stuff at the end of your vacuum lines?
Is this M52 on the side going to be your "built" motor? Maybe go cut ring?

[Northern]

Can you update on how well this works out for you?
I wanted to put some under the delete plates I'm making for where my rear interior used to be!

What's the blue stuff at the end of your vacuum lines?
Is this M52 on the side going to be your "built" motor? Maybe go cut ring?

I'll definitely make a post about it when it goes in.

I used some rigid vacuum line for the BOV and boost gauge, I think it came on an M52? The blue is silicone hose to connect it.

The pink M52 is getting it's guts robbed, I traded the crank for another M52 today:



The pink block has all kinds of issues on the outside, and the head has a lot of exhaust studs snapped off, so I think it'll be just for parts unless I'm desperate.

This new one was definitely sitting outside for a bit, there's some rust on the valves visible through the ports. Safe to assume there's rust in some of the cylinders as well.


I'd like to do a stock block/cutring/spacer setup, but I don't think I can spend that much on a headgasket setup right now.

I'd love to try an MLS for 1/3 the price, but I'm just really scared it'll turn into one of those "buy cheap, buy twice" scenarios where I just end up with a cutring anyway.

The sliding scale for MLS/Cutring/Built bottom end really kills me. I mean, $0 for stock CR, $250 for MLS, $500 for the CES cutring/spacer, or $1000 for pistons makes the choice difficult (not including machine work and ARP's)

[Northern]

Ugh, I went out last night and did a few light pulls to see where I'm at with timing/fuel right above cruise, but of course RRlogger would shit the bed and not save the log at all.

Tried again later and it saved the log, but no wideband data? What a pain.

Also it's raining again. I thought after friday thru sunday night it would be done...

[econti]

RE insulation, get some Dynamat. Works tits

[Northern]

RE insulation, get some Dynamat. Works tits

I'm not rich pls.

[econti]

I'm not rich pls.

Must have different prices there, down here it's not too bad.
For the product you get as well I reckon it's pretty worth it

Though on a friend's car we stuffed the trans tunnel with house insulation lol, worked a treat

[Northern]

Must have different prices there, down here it's not too bad.
For the product you get as well I reckon it's pretty worth it

Though on a friend's car we stuffed the trans tunnel with house insulation lol, worked a treat

It probably works great, but I think it's like ~$300 for enough to do the trunk. This stuff was $50 for 33 sqft, which sounded great in theory, but it really doesn't seem to do much.

[varg]

When it comes to sound deadening material, the heavier the stuff is the better (a simplification, there are other factors, but it's a basic way to judge how good it is). The goal in a car isn't to absorb sound waves in free air and reduce reflection like the foam on the wall of an anechoic chamber, it's to reduce vibration of the sheet metal. That's why you don't need to coat an entire panel in a good sound deadening material to significantly reduce road noise, you only need some rectangles of it placed in larger flat areas of the panel; the mass of the stuff is dampening the vibration of the body panel and that's what makes it quieter.

[Northern]

When it comes to sound deadening material, the heavier the stuff is the better. The goal in a car isn't to absorb sound waves in free air and reduce reflection like the foam on the wall of an anechoic chamber, it's to reduce vibration of the sheet metal. That's why you don't need to coat an entire panel in a good sound deadening material to significantly reduce road noise, you only need some rectangles of it placed in larger flat areas of the panel; the mass of the stuff is dampening the vibration of the body panel and that's what makes it quieter.

I get that, but I was hopeful that this would be a little heavier, but not undo all the savings from removing all the tar plates. At this point, I'm going to live with the noise and concentrate on getting a taller diff so I'm not spinning 4000RPM on the highway.

Dropping that down should do more than any sound deadening anyway.

[varg]

I'm with you on the need for a lower ratio differential, my 4.10 is just not right for my setup. Amended the previous post because it's just a general rule, there are factors other than density of the material but it is the best one to judge something on at a glance. Unfortunately it's not often that you can see a good selection of automotive sound dampening materials in person to compare their properties, you can really only find the stuff online.

[Northern]

It started snowing sometime around the second week of December, and the car was off the road a week or two before that once the city started their salt/brine bullshit. Right before I parked it, I reset the ECU's adaptations (which I hadn't done since the first start with the turbo...) and found I had some issues related to TPS or ICV:

From cold start, idles at 2000 RPM unless I physically choke the ICV hose to make the idle drop down. Very often it would rev hang while shifting.

I thought it might be related to the M50 TB, since I've heard a few people say it doesn't align the TPS shaft the same as the M52 TB... Now I reset adaptations again and for the last two days I drove it, it was fine... so no idea.

I might pull the TB off and compare TPS reading when closed to the same TPS on an M52 TB, then drill out/reposition the TPS mount holes as needed, but probably not for now.


Ever since I bought the car 6ish years ago, I've been looking for replacement black leather bolsters/foam for the driver seat that I didn't have to pay international shipping on. Two weeks back, I finally found a pair that were intact enough to use. One seat had the base snapped in half, while the other is pretty nice. Between the two, there's one of everything I need.

Since the worst part of the interior is getting fixed, I also ordered a new leather shifter boot (old pleather one is dry rotted and falling apart.) I probably should've done a shifter/ebrake boot combo, but I fucked it up. At the same time, I ordered a small generic washer reservoir which I might use, otherwise I'd love to retrofit an E9x reservoir inside the fender.


iX Content:
Since I finished exams on the 16th, I've actually been working on my iX for the first time in ~3 years (if you don't count removing/cutting pieces off of it or moving it out of the way)

The quarters are rotten and are made up of dozens of patches. I removed the spare tire well already, as well as the centre of the rear valence. More recently I had cut out the RHS quarter panel wheel arch, trunk pocket, and the last 6" of frame rail.

I spent the last few days patching all of this. I have a set of first gen early model Kamotors flares for this car as well as his rally mudflaps, so I just welded the inner/outer quarter together. Instead of a trunk pocket, I welded a flat piece(well, pieces) of sheetmetal in, and replicated the frame rail in a fairly half-assed manner.

For rust, I need to:
Do this again on the LHS.
Fix a hole in the rocker on RHS.
Fix three holes in the floor.
Fix massive hole in front battery tray.
Fix whatever other holes I find during this process.

Then it needs:
- New front calipers (I believe same as RWD, which I have)
- Brake hard lines: Fronts at least, check others. Probably buy prefabbed and bend them myself, then paint them after they're installed.
- Flush brakes and make sure they work now.
- Rear bilstein HD's from the iS, with IE RSM's from wherever they went
- Front diff/tcase fluid
- oil flush
- rad install/fill.
- Will it be turbo/NA? - Turbo: need injectors, fmic, and new turbo/HX40 comp wheel. N/A: Need exhaust manifolds/downpipes I think...
- Figure out an intake setup
- Build 3" exhaust from leftovers. Thinking offset center exit.
- Install MS+sub harness+ wasted spark.
- Install flares/flaps
- Shifter maybe?
- Mount tires
- Registration
- Insurance
- Hit some Rallycross.

I should make a build thread for this thing if I actually get close to completing it.