Northern's Sterlingsilber M52 Turbo 325is

[ncrmtrsprtsE30]

wow i cant wait to run into all these headaches you're running into now.. haha

Great Build btw!!

[Northern]

wow i cant wait to run into all these headaches you're running into now.. haha

Great Build btw!!

Thanks!

Hopefully there aren't any more unexpected issues haha

[ModernclassicxF]

Really cool story I hope the car keeps up with you!

[Northern]

So I'm running the M50 manifold, throttle body, and an OBD1 (two port, non ASC) intake boot. The cyclone separator mounted below the manifold to the block with a bracket made from its original bracket, with the hose going to the intake boot.
The ICV is mounted to the nut insert in the underside of the intake manifold and has a hose that runs to the other port on the intake boot.

That and a bunch more stuff was a pain in the ass to rig up, along with installing the clutch slave (didn't align right the first time), and plugging everything else in.

I also found out that I don't have #4, so I can't hook up the throttle body cables until I get one from the dealer...


So I got everything else rigged up, and this morning it looked like this:




Big news incoming...

[Northern]

First Start...

[Northern]

Also forgot to mention that I used a mishimoto puller fan, wired up as a pusher with the stock aux fan high speed wiring, and the 88 degree switch that seems popular for these swaps.

I made mounting brackets out of some scrap aluminum:


I also made a new heatshield for the rear of the driveshaft/gas tank before the subframe. The old one is thick, heavy, and very scaly/pitted, and I didn't want to spend any more time wirewheeling it.


Last night, I started thinking about the exhaust. I started with some E36 OBD1 downpipes, and cut them off at the merge. I noticed that the merge isn't very equal between banks, but I don't think I can do anything about that now. I filed down a big blob of weld and opened up the end of the tube to hopefully equal it all out:



May be working on more exhaust stuff today. I need to either buy cutting wheels for the little metal chop saw I have, or buy a full size one.

[Northern]

Not much progress to report really, but here's where we are:

Throttle cable bracket showed up from BMW.
Exhaust fit and tacked back to rear subframe

That's it.

Random exhaust section picture:


For anyone interested in details, I'm using a Lincoln Mig Pak 10 with Blueshield 6 (90/10 Ar/CO2) with .035" ER308L wire.

I'm cutting everything with a little Princess auto 7" chopsaw rig I got for free (I wish I had a full sized chopsaw because it would make things 10 times easier) and cleaning edges up with a flapper disc and half-round files.



I have a decent idea on how I'm going to do the hangers, modify the downpipes-to-G250 piece to bolt onto the holes in the ZF320, and fab up one to attach to the rear subframe.

The muffler is where I'm clueless. I have two large T-bolt clamps that I shortened to use as muffler straps, but I was planning on picking up the stock hanger locations, but that 100% won't work with the smaller vibrant muffler.

I'm thinking of either drilling sideways through the frame rail (one side is pretty much centered in the exhaust cutout) and semi-permanently attaching the T-bolt clamps to it via some rubber hanger material (read: old cut up tire) I don't have a 90 degree drill to do this, but I think this is my best bet.

[eduTechnic]

This guy does some pretty clean work. H welded little plates to the muffler and then made some hangers to match his mounting points. You could use some chopped up bits from stock exhaust if the muffler and piping will allow it. Then it's stock rubber hangers and rock 'n roll.

[Northern]

It does look nice, but I don't want to weld anything to the vibrant muffler or to the car if I can avoid it. Even with stainless wire, I feel like it may corrode or fatigue over time, and I am very paranoid about corrosion from living around here.

I'd be happier welding to the pipe, because that's cheap/easy to replace in comparison. I even found a decent sized sheet of T321 stainless in the scrap pile to use for hangers at the rear subframe.

I'm still thinking of using the two large t-bolt clamps (almost like these) to go around the muffler to hang it, but the stock hanger locations are too far forward/to the side to pick up unless I weld a huge length of metal to get there.


As far as updates go...

My new registration sticker showed up in the mail today. $200/2 years, plus I still need safety inspection somewhere where they won't fail me for dumb shit to try to make money.

Today's mission is to clear out a few hundred lbs of scrap that's accumulated in my back yard from this swap, Mazda suspension refresh, random work on roy's touring, and just general accumulation of spare E30 parts. I think I have 6 M20 intake manifolds and a bunch of old dual mass flywheels, and nobody wants that crap.

[Northern]

No updates in a while because it has rained almost every day I'm off work. This summer has been really cruel with which days are sunny.

I think I finished the exhaust... for now.

I didn't want to weld anything to the body of the car, so I made some brackets that bolt to the frame rail above the old muffler:



on the ends of these sit hangers which attach to the large t-bolt clamps. I should be able to shim the muffler left/right and rotate with this setup.

Front section:



Rear bit:



I don't hear any leaks so far. Fingers crossed.

It is much louder than I thought it would be though, and I could've saved a lot of money and effort by buying the regular vibrant 3" in/out muffler and mounting it with the stock hanger locations, then make tips out of the 3" stainless and spend that extra money on a borla proXS or other muffler instead of the little vibrant resonator I have.

Took it out of the drive way, flipped it around to try to bleed the coolant:




Back left corner of the car is getting pretty rough. I may need to buy a chuck of a car and bring it somewhere next spring/summer, since I'm definitely not going to have anywhere indoors to graft a new corner on.

I don't want to drive it too much because it still needs an inspection, although I don't know where to take it that won't just tell me everything is fucked and try to squeeze money out of me.


short lame vid incoming.

[Northern]

Random notes/issues:

FX Stage 3 clutch/flywheel is definitely heavier, but isn't hard to engage or anything. I do need my clutch stop back.

Brake lights stay on. pedal sits barely too low for the switch to engage. I have a shim taped to the pedal right now to go out and test other stuff, but I need to actually fix this.

Brakes feel like crap. I bled the brakes but no air came out. I think they just need to be bled a lot more. I swapped out all the bleeder screws though, I'm surprised the old ones even came out.

I keep getting CEL, and wasted a day trying to read codes. My old Peake scan tool doesn't work on this engine or my bench rig, and neither does my ELM bluetooth OBD2 scanner. Eventually I geared up INPA and used the INPA cable/ADS adapter and read them...

I had a MAF code, fuel trim codes, Cyl 1 misfire, Bank 1 fuel trim limit and some other cat related codes. Cleared them and just had the cat efficiency codes, cyl 1 misfire, bank 1 fuel trim limit. Cleared those again and they haven't come back yet.

Car seems to run a little warm... I tried to bleed the coolant, seemed like it worked, maybe not. Aux fan won't come on, so either it's not as hot as it thinks, or the new fan switch doesn't work (Fan definitely works)

I need to reinstall the hood, washer res/system, mount the cruise unit, and get some throttle cable clips.

[Northern]

[Sh3rpak!ng]

Congratulations on getting it running! Looks good and sounds good

[Northern]

My buddy Scott came by and helped me bleed brakes this afternoon, so I went out again after that.

Here's a quick and dirty exhaust vid. Quick pull around 2:15, the rest is me just putting around trying to get used to the clutch and not get too many dirty looks.



Vid still processing as I post this...

[Northern]

For the past few years, my hood wouldn't "pop" when opened, just sort of move upward 1/4". I figured that I could deal with that, as well as lots of small spots of rust before I put the hood back on.

I pretty much just drilled out the 10mm roll pins that were rusted solid, marked where the bits bolted onto the hood and removed them, and wire wheeled all the mating surfaces that were corroded, then prime/paint/clear it all. Reassemble with fluidfilm on the mating surfaces and threw a bolt with a self locking nut in place of the roll pin.

The hood pops properly now, and I don't have to mess with either hood alignment or the stupid spring system if I want to remove the hood now.

Also put the washer res back in once the hood was on. Apparently I ripped the connector for the pump off, so I had to splice a new connector on. Luckily the first connector I found was the right one, so everything worked out there.

N.S. "Motor Vehicle Inspection" is today...