3MPowered's Euro S50 E30

[stanhayward]

Beautiful exhaust! I live in Victoria now and will be coming over to the mainland the 30th, if you're down I always like meeting people in person and seeing their cars.

[3MPowered]

Holy shit this took a long time:



























After all of the frustration with the headers, trial-and-erroring my way through the rest of the exhaust, and troubleshooting issues nobody on the internet seemed to have a conclusive answer to, I lost all motivation to document in detail the remainder of the swap. What a feeling it is to be done!

There is still one issue to sort through: The cooling system seems to have a blockage. At least, that's what my untrained eyes tell me. It's almost as if the thermostat is stuck partially open. Enough to keep the car at 1/4 temperature on the highway but not enough to keep the engine cool at idle. Hopefully a new thermostat fixes the issue, but my worry is that the radiator is the root of the problem. The rad was a gift from a friend who was unsure of it's working condition. It holds water well enough, but it may have a blockage.

Other than the cooling issues, my symptoms are as follows:
- In traffic, the temperature needle will creep past the halfway mark, and every now and then will make a slightly quicker jump towards the red (as if there was an air bubble).
- When I unscrew the reservoir cap, coolant will seep out of the overflow pipe unless the engine is stone cold. When the cap does come off, it sounds like the system pressure is equalizing and I can hear water trickling through the engine or radiator.

What a machine though! Like... OMG.

[allmotorguy]

Awesome car. You have made skills mate :)
I was a very big fan to your previous car e36 M3, it was very inspirational and stays forever that for my e36. I have quite similar goals at the end, including S50 Euro engine(S50B32).
I can't wait to see new updates here.
End result will be gorgeous, engine and all car- awesome setup for everything, daily, autocross'es, track use.
Greetings from Latvia mate.
Stay tuned and all the best to you!

Any new updates? :)

[CorvallisBMW]

That Lincoln looks pretty awesome, if I decide to pick up a welder in the near future that's going to be high on my list.

[3MPowered]

Good work on that oil cooler mount! That is my next project for keeping things cool. I think my car has the factory e30 M3 cooler. I'd like to keep a long/skinny profile instead of a rectangle one, but that might be harder to source.

Even if you notched the subframe instead, you would have sway bar clearance, since modifying the headers fixed both, well done!

What TIG machine do you have?


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A long and skinny oil cooler would have been ideal but you're right, finding one in an appropriate size was difficult. I could have reused the M3's oil cooler but I wasn't sure if it would hold oil or not given that it was hit in the accident.

I have a Lincoln Electric 210 3-in-1 machine. I wanted a machine that was versatile enough for me to not need 2 machines, and the 210 has great reviews. So far, on 120V it has performed very well (although I haven't welded any super thick material yet).

[Eric]

Good work on that oil cooler mount! That is my next project for keeping things cool. I think my car has the factory e30 M3 cooler. I'd like to keep a long/skinny profile instead of a rectangle one, but that might be harder to source.

Even if you notched the subframe instead, you would have sway bar clearance, since modifying the headers fixed both, well done!

What TIG machine do you have?


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[3MPowered]

^ thanks for the tip. I will see if I can get something in there to clean up the slag. No point in further restricting flow!

[CorvallisBMW]

Nice work on the fan and oil cooler mounting, they look very solid. The last thing you want is either of those flapping around as you drive down the freeway, eventually the mounts would fail from stress fracturing.

I think you took the right road with your header clearance issue; better to fit the headers to the car than fit the car to the headers. I see a rather large step and some chunks of slag where the header tubes arrive at the collector. This will likely cause turbulence as the exhaust gas the flows along the walls will get disturbed as this point and "tumble", causing turbulence and adding backpressure. If you have a way of adding in material (filler rod) and then smoothing the transition with a dremel or other sanding device, you'll likely improve the flow.

[3MPowered]

Cheers for the kind words everyone! And thanks to those who chipped in regarding the brake booster (or rather, running booster-less). I ended up buying the Massive kit and have since taken delivery of it. It's a nice bit of kit and I can't wait to get it fitted. I'll be sure to write a brief review of it both with the stock brakes and with the BBK.

Update: June 9th, 2015

I got the pusher fan mounted. Was pretty straight forward, I simply cut a few thick mild steel bars into strips and drilled holes in them for stainless steel screws:





Then I tackled the oil cooler. I bought a Setrab oil cooler (24 row if I recall) along with 10 ft of SS braided hose and a bunch of -10AN fittings. The Turnermotorsport -10AN oil cooler adapter will allow me to use all of this stuff without ruining the factory Euro oil filter housing.

First job was to mock up where I wanted the oil cooler to sit. I wanted it out of the way of the radiator while still allowing it to receive as much air across its surface area as possible. I used the jack to hold it in position while I measured the distance from the oil cooler's mounting points to the nearest place on the chassis I could attach it to. I then cut some stainless rods to length and welded some stainless tabs to the ends of said rods:



I think it will receive plenty of air flow in this location:



Crappy pic of the rods leading down to the oil cooler:



I then made two more rods for the lower mounting points:



Joining the upper and lower rods together and bracing them with trusses:



No pics of it fitted yet because I'm rust-proofing the mild steel that holds the fan in place at the moment. the whole kit should be pretty rigid in the end.

Now, the headers have been causing me some headaches of late, and I was pretty sick and tired of waffleswaffleswaffleswaffleswaffles-footing around with them. I cut some more material from the bottom of the headers where they hit the subframe and went about welding it all up. Result:







It's hard to tell in the pics but that gap is about 1 cm. The AKG mounts are fairly stiff, so I'm banking on that being enough clearance between the header and the subframe. The cutting I had performed earlier worked a treat though, effectively aiming the outlet pipe above the anti-roll bar by a fair amount.

So do I wish I'd just notched the subframe while I had the chance?

Perhaps.

While I don't think I've ruined the headers (you have to see them in person to judge for yourself), it certainly would have made things easier to make the subframe fit the headers as opposed to doing things the other way around. That being said, cutting up structural components of the car just doesn't sit right with me, especially when an extra 50 - 100kg or so will be sitting on said structural component. If I've affected the performance of the exhaust system at all, it will be negligible at most.

I'm loving my welder though. My TIG torch made easy work of the SS header. I think I'm ready for the rest of the exhaust system... which just arrived at my door today.

[e30m3s54turbo]

Sub'd for a awesome project!

[AdOz]

I ran wilwoods with a 750i master in my old 30 it was a good setup but I never really used it on a daily basis so can't comment on that

Love the work so far it's a shame what happened to the 36 but silver lining and all this is going to be awesome! Loved the method of getting the axle out lol! And also you keeping the beer caps I've been doing the same with the cans of monster consumed because if I drank beer I'd most likely cut it up with a grinder

[Aguedae30]

I am doing over 40miles everyday way to the university,so I would assume it is xD

[OfirAs]

Very nice !
I'm also doing this swap and i dont know what to do with the brakes setup.
It's possible to run boosterless in daily use? i want to run really close to the boosted system.

[Aguedae30]

If anytime you feel the brakes too harsh,the direct option is to swap the master with a porsche 914 unit,they are of 19mm and I've read that the feeling comes nearly as if it was a boosted system.

[3MPowered]

I am running the boosterless setup that eric is mentioning,I've already done over 1000miles with the system and it is something you can easily get to after having modded the pedal ratio,so easy that I'm still running the stock MC and pads lol

Thanks for weighing in with your impressions! I think I may pick up a kit. I'm really hoping to make the E30 picnic this year and the kit should shorten the time spent faffing about with plenum modifications.