Northern's Sterlingsilber M52 Turbo 325is

[Northern]

So pretty

No, you.

Calling around to get it ceramic coated this week. That leaves me with no more reason to procrastinate.

[328ijunkie]

So pretty

[ncrmtrsprtsE30]

nice manifold

[Northern]

^ Going to try to fit common wrenches, screwdriver, 1/4" and 3/8" sockets, torx, allen bits or keys, tire plugs/tool, and a few spares of screws/bolts/nuts for like fenders and stuff. I haven't cut anything out yet, but I've been buying a few things for it as they go on sale.

@Josh
Same here with the welds. Especially recently, I'm worse than when I first started somehow lol. I'm hoping the liner in my mig is messed up, or I'm screwing myself with the extension cord I'm using.

Surprise surprise, somehow the charge piping fits around the rad support/ABS on the iX, but it's not even close on this car. I need to make a question mark shape out of pie cuts to wrap from the IC, around the rad support, and then back again after it clears the ABS unit. It's not going to stay steel forever, but for this year I think that's how it will stay.

Somehow my hacksaw sprouted legs and vanished, so I'm stalled for the moment...

[Sh3rpak!ng]

A mini project I've though about ever since I snapped my timing belt last year and realized how useless the stock toolkit is. I couldn't even pull the valve cover with the open ended wrench in the kit.

I bought an E34(?) Full size tool kit, and gutted the molded inside for some foam. I'll grab some wrenches, sockets, pliers, screwdriver, etc and shadow them into the foam.

I did the same a while ago out of the same frustration. This was the "prototype" and I also have the big e34 tray that I'll do the same to when I have some spare time. Was planning on holding a full set of open ended wrenches, full set of 1/4 and 3/4 sockets and ratchets, a breaker bar, various screw drivers, a pair of one or two pliers and a flashlight.

[irish44j]

I came home to a pleasant surprise...

At first glance I was a little scared. USPS and/or Canada post tried to work it over a bit:


But there's not a scratch on it. If anything, it must've pummeled some other poor bastard's package. Despite the above image, it was actually packed really well, and all the Tial gear was wrapped in a lot of foam and taped together to hold it together.



Really happy with the welds on this too. And the flange looks to be 1/2" thick.




Other than that, no progress to report. I finally moved the iX and my old M20 out of the parking spot behind my fence. I just need to move this car back there, put up the car tent, and put some anchors in the concrete to stop the tent from blowing around.

that is more shine in one piece than my entire car has, lol.

And those welds look better than any bead I've ever laid down :)

[Northern]

You can safely run 8psi with stock compression. With the addition of meth 10psi is safely attainable with a spot on tune.
You'd be surprised how good 8psi feels.

Check the intercooler coupler clearance under the high beams, I trimmed the bottom buckets for fitment.

I've seen a few stock compression M/S52's recently with PT6262's or GT35R's running 10PSI, and one or two pushing it a little at 12PSI, and I don't think any of them run meth or e85.

I'm going to try to start off with 10 on stock headbolts and see what happens (Then do studs, and probably Oring.) Markert is going to do my remote tuning, and I'm going to pretty much do what he says if he tells me to back off or go smaller.

This setup was installed on my IX before, and I changed all the charge piping to clear the US ellips (with trimming) but I don't know how the valence will fit. There's just a 2.5" pipe that goes through, no coupler, so it helps with clearance. I'm probably going to re-do some/most of the charge piping, it's mild steel and fugly right now. I really want to have a 90 degree elbow welded on the compressor housing before it goes on to make it even easier.

[Good & Tight]

You can safely run 8psi with stock compression. With the addition of meth 10psi is safely attainable with a spot on tune.
You'd be surprised how good 8psi feels.

Check the intercooler coupler clearance under the high beams, I trimmed the bottom buckets for fitment.

[Northern]

Thanks :D

I do have a growing list of stuff I need to buy.

I have 2 1/8" of clearance for the rad fan, and SPAL makes a 16", 2.05" thick pusher fan, so I need one of those.

I also need to buy:
PMAS HPX blow thru MAF/housing/pigtail
Devilsown Water/Meth setup + some bits
Intake boot
Turbo oil feed adapter from VANOS port
Oil pressure sender adapter from pressure switch location, maybe rig up an oil temp gauge to this too...
Elbow to weld on the outlet of the HX35 compressor to simplify some charge piping.
Turbo blanket
Get my manifold ceramic coated
IX washer res, or modify the normal E30 one to somehow still fit/fit somewhere else.


Probably a lot of other crap too, I just can't think of it.

[efficient]

Car is coming along nicely

[Northern]

Alright, the plan is slowly coming together, and I've spend a few evenings out working in the car tent (which is working much more nicely now that there's 25000lbs worth of anchors holding one side down, and the fence holding the other)

I want to stay stock compression and see how far I get with 91 octane pump gas and water/meth.

I pulled the front end off the car on a snow day this past wednesday, and found a little rust on the valence that I'll eventually take care of.



First, I tried to test fit the FMIC because I was curious about fitment vs my Mishimoto fan. No dice, it's like 1.5" too thick to fit between the rad and FMIC.

So I spent the rest of the time pulling all the rotten old wrap off the wiring that runs across the front of the rad support, and cleaning all the wires. I re-ran the city light wires through the stock sidemarker grounds (Before, I had new grounds run to the closest ground stud, and it looked kind of ghetto) and snipped/terminated/labelled the sidemarker/AC/OBC horn wiring. I found, and repaired couple broken wires - the stock connectors seem to fail from strain right as the wire leaves the rubber of the individual pin. Then I rewrapped the whole front harness section, and threw some spiral wrap over the cloth wrap for good measure:



Then I pulled the fan off and started thinking about FMIC mounts. I bent up some 1/8" steel tabs to weld on, but I really don't like the idea of grinding paint off/welding some thick metal to thin, then rust proofing all of that again. Not to mention welding with my (probably) messed up welder inside a small flammable car tent without ventilation, so that was a good enough round of excuses to make some lighter aluminum brackets to rivet on:





Still need to work out how to do the bottoms, then I'll pull it all off to deburr/clean/paint mating surfaces or the whole bracket, then wet install with some sort of sealer to try to prevent any sort of galvanic reaction between the Al and steel rad support.

[Northern]

And one last shitty video from some crappy footage testing my external mic, complete with loads of mic/plate filler rattle: (still processing)

[Northern]

With my car I surfaced the head, cleaned the block with a razor blade, and sprayed the MLS gasket with copper spray. No leaks. Hardly extensive prep, the only unusual thing for me was the copper spray, but It's about the same level of prep as I'd use for any head gasket.

It all comes down to how fast I pop the stock gasket.



Random cold start video...

[varg]

Mls leak nearly without fail, unless extensively prepped.
We use cutring hgs on all our customer FI cars.

With my car I surfaced the head, cleaned the block with a razor blade, and sprayed the MLS gasket with copper spray. No leaks. Hardly extensive prep, the only unusual thing for me was the copper spray, but It's about the same level of prep as I'd use for any head gasket.

[Northern]

This made me LOL....!! Good to see everything arrived safely.

All my packages have been getting the shit kicked out of them recently (My first set of Koni Race inserts were dented to shit, as well as a few smaller packages.) I think it has to do with increased workload from holiday mail... Well at least I hope it is, because maybe it'll get better after the new year.


I still have everything sitting in front of me. It looks too nice to store it in the basement, but my fiancee will probably kill me if I don't. haha