M30 OEM Turbo project

[CorvallisBMW]

Well duh - only old people drive 745's :p
Anything other than stock is loud AF & drones. You're going to be surprised how surpressed it's going to be.

I guess I'll just have to wait and see then :)

[ThatOneEuroE30]

Soooo

[CorvallisBMW]

Last night was a mixed bag. On to details. Or rather first, pictars!

New turbo pipe to the intercooler:


Exhaust from the rear:


Downpipe and wastegate dump attached. Gold foil, copper nuts, anti-seize, etc:


downpipes and clearance around the CAB:


Merge, O2 sensor, v-band blamp, and center section with cat and resonator:



I got to the guy's house around 7pm. We looked everything over, plugged in the O2 and wideband sensors, and... she cranked on the first try! Boom! I'll upload the video later today, it's on my wife's phone)

Ran super rough at first as the entire fuel system was dry and likely not all of the injectors were getting fuel for the first couple minutes. It was rich too, but I kind of expected that with the Miller setup.
Oil pressure: good
Oil temp: good
Water temp: good
Coolant bleed: good
No major leaks: good
A/F gauge: reads a constant 7.3... I must have a wire crossed or something. I'll need to revisit the wiring diagrams and double-check everything.

After 5 minutes or so the idle smooths out and she's purring like a kitten. Still kind of rich per my nose, but not to the point where it's a problem. We raise the front of the car and bleed the cooling system, check that the fans are operating, and pull her out of the garage. So far, so good!

I hop in and start driving down the road. I instantly realize my steering is very heavy. It occurs to me: I need to bleed the PS system. When I pulled the rack to drop the subframe, I had to drain all the fluid. When I refilled it, there was no way to bleed out the air until the motor was running. So I undoubtebly had very low fluid levels since the air had now worked it's way out. No worries, there's an Autozone about 2 miles down the road.

I stop at Autozone, add about 750ml of ATF, and it's good to go. Then I notice a very small leak around my new VDO water temp sender. I figure I need to snug it up, so I grab the 13mm wrench from the toolkit and give it just a slight turn...




















FUCK THESE FUCKING THINGS. seriously, fuck Equus parts and every single person that works for them. This is the 3rd thread adapter I've gotten from them that has snapped in half with minimal torque applied! (see here and here)
So if anyone needs thread adapters for their gauge senders, NEVER EVER BUY THIS FUCKING GARBAGE

So the next inevitable step was this. Thank god for AAA:



















I got home late (around 11pm) and crashed out. This morning I had a few spare minutes before work, so I grabbed the busted adapter from my workbench so I could take it to Fastenal and try to get a better replacement. Then I noticed the stock aluminum plug that I had removed in order to make space for the sender. I thought, 'why can't I use this??' So I chucked in in the vice, drilled an 11/32" hole, and tapped it out to 1/8" NPT. Voila. I sure as fuck wish I had thought of this sooner!






So long story short, the car is running but my A/F gauge isn't reading correctly so I'm hesitant to drive it very hard/far at this very moment. The idle quality is also quite poor and it seems to run rich (it was the same way on the Miller system before the turbo too). So I have some tuning to do for sure.

Otherwise, I'm pretty happy. The fact that it started on the first try and didn't explode in bits of antique turbo makes me quite happy :)

I'll be working on it tonight and hopefully driving it to work tomorrow. Thank god I'm meeting up with a group of the Cali guys and caravaning to Tacoma on Friday, they can all help me if I break down along the way :)

[CorvallisBMW]

Here's a quick video:

https://vimeo.com/131772097

And a shot of the check panel installed with the volt meter:

[IronFreak]

Amazing setup for a GORGEOUS car! Well done man! I'd watch that pass. LCab, maybe its the picture but it looks like its really close to the exhaust, heat could become a factor with the turbo setup.

[CorvallisBMW]

Amazing setup for a GORGEOUS car! Well done man! I'd watch that pass. LCab, maybe its the picture but it looks like its really close to the exhaust, heat could become a factor with the turbo setup.

Yes the LCAB is close, about 3/8". I have a set of Bimmerworld solid CABs I'm going to attempt to install tonight if I have time; if not I'll just throw the stock shield back on. It will be good enough for the picnic :up:

[CorvallisBMW]

I figured out why my AF gauge was so far off, I forgot to calibrate the LC-2! Derp. Did that last night and it seems to be working perfect. It's still pig rich when starting cold/cool, to the point where it misses and bucks. I definitely need to do some tuning.

Drove to work the morning and didn't break down, which is also excellent. I finally got to get on the boost (currently it's set to about 3psi lol) and man does this thing pull! I'm giddy as a schoolgirl. I did notice though that if I open the throttle suddenly, it just falls on it's face and stops, almost like it was cutting all fuel or spark?? If I roll in to the throttle gradually it doesn't happen, but any time I go from say 20% to 60% throttle I have to ease in to it very slowly. It does the same thing while idling; if I open the throttle slowly it revs great, but if I snap it open it stumbles and dies. Any ideas??

[CorvallisBMW]

Update after the picnic weekend!

I met up with Andrew, Abe, Eric, Matt, Clay, Fred, Nate, and all the other CA/OR guys on Friday afternoon and we headed up to Criv's house from Portland.

The car runs very well when warm, but not when cold. Until it reaches about 1/4 temp, it runs rich as hell, misses, sputters, backfires, and I see A/F ratios around 9 or 10. Once it warms up though, things seem to be fine. Checked the Ohm values for the temp sensor and it checks out perfect (it's only a couple years old too). Not sure what's going on there. It's likely related to the Miller stuff which has always had cold driveability issues. The good news is that I met Dan Miller at the picnic Sunday and we talked for a while, I should be able to get his help to do some tuning in the near future.

I also had the problem of the car not wanting to accept more than a tiny bit of throttle at any one time, or it would just fall on it's face. I met a guy at the Griot's tech day named Pual (I think??) who was some kind of troubleshooting guru. He checked the TPS with a multimeter, cut the wire that detects WOT, and now it runs perfect. I literally have no idea...

Also, it stays cool on the highway, around town, and in almost every situation I can throw at it. But I did discover that on days when it's +90F, and I'm running the A/C on high, and I'm in stopped/bumper-to-bumper traffic for more than about 10 minutes, it will get too hot. I saw coolant temps as high as 105C before I caved and shut off the aircon. Oil temp never got above 90C. So not bad, but I'd like to have it 100% perfect.

Sorry no pictures or videos, I'll work on getting some this week. I was so preoccupied this weekend with all the picnic shennanigans that I didn't bother taking any pics of my own car, or even anyone elses. I've been going to the picnic and seeing the same cars for so many years, I'm always focused more on the friends and people. Not as exciting for build threads I know....

[ThatOneEuroE30]

When you turning duh boost up?

[G-Man the Visionary]

Pumped for footage of boost!

[CorvallisBMW]

Right now the boost is at 4psi, it's hard to dial it in right the first time with a manual boost controller. I'd like to get it to 6psi and leave it there for a while until I can get the other issues fixed. Then we'll crank it up :evil:

[CorvallisBMW]

So yeah, it might be running a bit rich...


Actually it's only rich in cold startups. Otherwise it's good :P


I pulled the plugs after realizing my cold start and idle issues were not related at all to the Miller stuff or to the tune. The prior day, just for shuts and giggles I had tried plugging in my old ECU with the sssquid tuning chip. Now prior to the turbo, this was the most flawless tune is ever ran, and the cold start/idle were absolutely perfect. Post turbo, it idled and ran just as terrible as the Miller ECU, so I knew it wasn't the tune that was causing the issue. The only other things I changed during the turbo install that could effect this were the injectors and spark plugs, and that got me thinking: what if the colder plugs I installed were too cold and were struggling to get enough heat in to the spark during cold starts? So I pulled them out (see photo) and replaced them with OEM-rated plugs. It was a night-and-day difference. The cold idle is still too rich (AFRs around 10) but it doesn't cough and sputter and die. So good news in that it's significantly improved, bad news in that it's still not quite perfect. But the idle fuel is easy to adjust, so that's next on the list.

[ThatOneEuroE30]

Any updates

[ThatOneEuroE30]

Any updates

[CorvallisBMW]

Yes and no. I haven't had any time to work on the car with grad school and such. This compressed summer class I'm taking is destroying my free time (why do I sign up for grad school classes in compressed summer terms?!?!).

It's still running rich on cold starts, but it doesn't stumble and die like it did before. I still need to boot up the WAR software and make some tweets.

I also noticed that my intercooler is getting rediculously heat soaked, even with the fan on. In fact I think it's doing more harm than good at times. So I bought a set of thermocouples:


Once they arrive I'll hook them up to my reader and I'll be able to read the charge air temp right before and right after the intercooler, see what's going on. The awesome thing about them being mounted in hose clamps is that I can stick them right on the inlet and outlet in place of the normal clamps; no drilling, tapping, or leaking. If the temps are going the wrong way in critical situations, I may just ditch the IC entirely. That would let me run a bigger filter (less restrictive) and put my highbeam back in so that I don't look like a ricey fucktard.

I could also install a universal air-water IC system...