Bronzit E30 - OBDII S52 shaved bay - weekend/autox toy - Journey

[Sh3rpak!ng]

Amazing shaving work ! love it .

M2 looks fantastic lowered.

Thanks! The shaved engine bay has been done for years. It's fun to finally see the full vision coming together now.

M2 is sitting perfect with the spacers and lowering springs IMO

[Sh3rpak!ng]

Been a busy month but I’m back to the normal routine. Here are some more updates. And good news that there is actually a full circle of completion for this project ahead! The updates are slowly catching up with current progress. I have the “final” dyno tuning day coming in a week or two.


Firewall wiring is neat and tidy ready for zip ties and covers.






Had a minor issue with the cam sensor. Didn’t realize I had to use an older style sensor to work with the ecu. This also required repining the sensor to match the body harness connector. This was a “no start” issue #1.






Done. Originally had a 90* male connector, needed a straight female.



Pinning the body side cam sensor.






Done. Should’ve used a bold font on the label for a cleaner look.



Plugged the old ICV port on the intake manifold. Idle is controlled fully by the throttle body now.



Finally I got a relatively clear workbench.




Car is running! And we’re starting to map a tune and configure basic parameters. It wasn’t without some further hiccups though! Somehow I ordered the wrong igniters twice like an idiot, which threw us off substantially and caused a full pin and continuity check over the whole harness. First set of igniters were 1 channels. Second set were 2 channels. I needed the 3 channels igniters… doh! 6 cylinders, two banks of 3. Two igniters with 3 channels for 3 cylinders… anyway. We figured it out, swapped igniters and it fired up immediately.



Had some more minor issues that I didn’t mention. An intermittent grounding issue was causing a fault to trigger on the PDM 50% of the time. I traced it to a “dirty” ground on the oem aux fan wiring which was tied into the AC system (the AC on triggers the high speed fan). Bypassing that with a good ground solved it.



Now that the major wiring stuff is done, I started to work on the new gauges.



The gauge pod will get the same nice clean wiring as everything else.



Got the tune on the car good enough for some street driving and tuning. It’s been over a year since I last drove it!!



Gauge pod wiring came out nice. One lead is for the powder supply, the other for the sensor signals.









F1 on the garage TV is fun



Dash back in the car is a nice milestone



Goodnight!

[QuiqueUy]

Amazing shaving work ! love it .

M2 looks fantastic lowered.

[Sh3rpak!ng]

Continuing work on the ignition sub harness. Finishing up the chassis side tying in the igniters. This got tricky with the tight space.



It ended up looking really good though. Working on the main harness already provided a lot of useful experience.



More service loops. Marked some wires with the yellow tag to denote which ones were going “in” to the igniter vs “out” of the igniter to the coils



Engine side of the ignition sub harness. I reused some of the oem wiring for simplicity and because they will continue to match the oem wire diagrams. Brown wire split off is a ground



You can see the ignition subharness connector mounted in the background. Now I’m getting the lengths and layout of the rest of the wiring marked and crimped






All buttoned up nice and neat under the oem cover



The wiring nest is more or less completed. I’ve left plenty of length to give me future opportunity to clean this up by moving them all to bulkhead style mounted connectors. It’s something I’d like to do but was added complexity that I did not want to deal with now.



With all of the covers back in place, nothing looks amiss. I kinda feel like I cheated myself a bit. Did such an obsessive job of keeping the wiring neat and hidden that you can hardly see the evidence of all of that work. Next up I get the car running and start working on tuning plus a few loose ends.



Obligatory M2 photos. I lowered it just a touch. Looks perfect IMO

[Sh3rpak!ng]

Dude. Do mine.

This is art.

Also, tell the intern she’s a gorgeous lady and she brings joy.

Thanks man. There's definitely an "art" to it. Feels like adult arts and crafts actually with all the colors, glue, scissors, tape, mess all over the table

[DEV0 E30]

Dude. Do mine.

This is art.

Also, tell the intern she’s a gorgeous lady and she brings joy.

[Sh3rpak!ng]

Time to get the glue out and shrink some of the larger Raychem boots. This was not easy.



For this 90* bend I didn’t have a boot, so instead used a large diameter glue lined piece of heat shrink cut to shape to help the harness hold the angle



Slowly shrinking it bit by bit to ensure the right orientation



Not bad I think



Here’s another junction which splits under the intake manifold leading to all of the various sensors



And done



Doing my best to keep everything neat and tidy, it’s coming together





















Finished off the C101 connector with some nice loops



Looking better and better… shame so much of it will be hidden behind covers. Kinda thinking I might change that in the future






Made a little tab off an unused threaded boss on the throttle body to hold the harness in place



Started getting tired of the service loops haha, I made this engine harness side extra long anyway






Mounted one of the milspec connectors



Pinned another one



I messed up. Somehow got my markings wrong and heat shrinked the boot clocked 90* off what it was supposed to be.




Had to cut the boot off, and can’t get another boot over the connector without depinning it. I decided to draw the line here. One mistake is ok. I’ll just wrap it with tessa tape the old fashioned way



My intern saw what happened and laughed at me while hiding behind the car



But then she apologized



Time to start working on the ignition sub harness. This is the last piece of the puzzle

[Sh3rpak!ng]

That's the thing. I couldn't deal with having my car down for a year. It just isn't worth the time and effort for what is going to be gained.

Yea, neither could I really. The M2 helped me through the ordeal

But this brings a topic I don't think I really mentioned yet. Why I decided to do this other than the obvious "performance gain". Yes I assume there is/will be something gained from having modern electronics, better tuning protocols, higher degree of control and a custom setup tailored to my car, but certainly not enough to warrant all of this work and expense on its own. Another fairly obvious benefit is all of the data logging and failsafes that can be setup. I also have in mind several other future projects that either couldn't be possible without this ECU, or at least would be much more difficult - traction control, launch control, ABS... maybe a DCT down the line, there's also my intention to add a supercharger which will be easier to tune and take advantage of with the ECU.

But really the other huge motivation was/is a unique opportunity which probably would not have presented itself again. A good friend of mine - Neel from Apex Speed Technology - offered a barter exchanging my labor to do a clutch/trans rebuild, custom short shifter, and a pile of other maintenance and mods on his e36 in exchange for his guidance and labor through the harness building process and tuning. He was also able to purchase a lot of the big ticket items at wholesale pricing which helped. Neel is winding down his motorsports tuning company to start another business. I am not so sure I'd have been able to pull this off as smoothly as I did without his expertise. Now I've learned a seriously valuable new skill in the realm of building custom cars that I will be able to apply in the future. That was worth a lot to me, maybe even worth the year of downtime for the car.

Beautiful work.

I'm seriously in awe of your attention to detail. Shaved bays are cool, but you've taken it to another level.

Thanks! I get quite a rush out of all the OCD details

Can't tell you how much I enjoy your wiring exposition. Love the use of kapton tape.

I didn't even know about kapton tape before. I love it too!

This is absolutely epic. I'm stunned and envious of your skills.

Thanks! Don't be fooled. I didn't know much about how to approach this wiring project before I started. Had to do tons of research, reading, studying etc. And then jump in

[WAKman]

This is absolutely epic. I'm stunned and envious of your skills.

[DoDatsun]

Can't tell you how much I enjoy your wiring exposition. Love the use of kapton tape.

[DEV0 E30]

Beautiful work.

I'm seriously in awe of your attention to detail. Shaved bays are cool, but you've taken it to another level.

[Sh3rpak!ng]

It wouldn’t be a “milspec” wiring harness without some milspec connectors



And DTM connectors



Had to open up the fusebox to hook up the aux fan and fuel pump wiring



The intern is back. This time sun bathing in her favorite spot



Marking up some metal for brackets







Rough mounting locations



Every change has consequences… I quickly noticed that I’d run out of space behind the firewall cover to mount all of the hardware and connectors. So I had to clearance the cover to gain a bit of extra space.

Clever use of aluminum blocks to make the tight bends















Getting tidier and tidier above the glove box



Setting up canbus for the two wideband controllers






Started to work on the intake manifold sub harness. The idea is that the manifold will be able to be removed with wiring, fuel rail, and accessories still attached to make future maintenance easier.


















I am able to retain use of the OEM fuel rail wiring cover to route all of the extra wiring through, and use the original downward exiting boot to direct the wiring for the throttle body, TMAP sensor, and intake air temp sensor.





















Here it is finished with labels and all



These big Raychem boots are a real pain to heat shrink into position.



Trusty Bentley manual helped clarify some wiring a few times



Workbench is always full of stuff through this project

[Digitalwave]

That's the thing. I couldn't deal with having my car down for a year. It just isn't worth the time and effort for what is going to be gained.

[Sh3rpak!ng]

What a project! I would never have the patience for that.

I wonder if I'd have even gone through with it to begin with if I actuallly knew then what I know now both on cost and timeline. It's taken me a year to finish (granted there were many distractions along the way). Of course as it is with all things I could do this again in about 1/4 the time. Maybe less.

Very big fan of that wiring table/labelling/velcro setup. I would love to try to make a nice engine harness someday. If I ever graduate from grafting jank additions onto the factory harness, I hope I remember this setup

I tried a few different approaches until I settled on this. Velcro straps + ziptie mounts + gorilla double sided tape + painters tape for labels. This way you don't destroy a perfectly good fold up table, you can rearrange the layout easily, and remove/install on/off table in/out of car easily. So much easier to work on the harness when its fixed to the table instead of flopping all over the place.

incredible work!

Thanks!

[s14brent]

incredible work!