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

[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

[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

[DEV0 E30]

Dude. Do mine.

This is art.

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

[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

[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

[QuiqueUy]

Amazing shaving work ! love it .

M2 looks fantastic lowered.

[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!

[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

[Northern]

Great to see the car back on the road. Glad there were no massive issues.

The MS41 frequency based cam sensor is such an oddball setup. No idea what the reasoning was. I think Pazi88 on here found out a few years back that you can desolder a conversion chip on the ECU and run a regular M50tu or M54 hall sensor on the stock ECU, which isn't the worst option.

With the Link, did you use the M50 sensor? I hear they're getting hard to find.

[Sh3rpak!ng]

Great to see the car back on the road. Glad there were no massive issues.

The MS41 frequency based cam sensor is such an oddball setup. No idea what the reasoning was. I think Pazi88 on here found out a few years back that you can desolder a conversion chip on the ECU and run a regular M50tu or M54 hall sensor on the stock ECU, which isn't the worst option.

With the Link, did you use the M50 sensor? I hear they're getting hard to find.

Yes, I used the M50 sensor. Didn't have an issue procuring it.

And I was also relieved that generally there was no huge mistake. Actually had a small scare on the harness when I found I was a wire short on one sensor and had power wire in the wrong spot, but I got clever and switched some pins/wire colors, and added a splice to correct it without much peeling back of the harness. That was the only actual mistake in the harness. I think I also made a small mistake on the fuel pump relay wiring too, also a quick change of pins and it was fine.

[rzerob]

I love this build. I plan to redo a lot of my S50 swapped wiring before I sell it. But nothing to this degree. I admire your attention to detail.

[Sh3rpak!ng]

I love this build. I plan to redo a lot of my S50 swapped wiring before I sell it. But nothing to this degree. I admire your attention to detail.

Thanks! Yea the wiring project was fun, lots of details

[Sh3rpak!ng]

Taking a break from tuning work for a minute until my tuner has an open time to do a last dyno session. The tune is already quite good, we just want to do a last review and fine tune.

So while I wait for that I finally pulled the trigger on parts for a couple other lingering projects/issues.

First, I need a new battery. Not sure what happened to my odyssey battery only 4 years old, but the battery has recently been weak if not constantly on the battery tender, and over the weekend I noticed it has swollen considerably. So I need a replacement.

Another project is to address the rear trailing arm bushings. With the adjustable rear trailing arms, this is putting an angle into the natural pivot of the arm/bushing. The bushings are deforming because of this, and each time I’ve replaced the bushings, very shortly after they wear out enough to have significant play. With everything bolted tight, I can shift the wheel/trailing arm assembly forward/backward ~1/4”. So that’s not good. To solve it I picked up a set of the spherical joints from stim tech. Being a spherical joint, it can take the angled pivot. I hope that solves it. Additionally, I decided to swap out the subframe and diff bushings for something a bit softer than the AKG set (their hardest poly bushings). I decided to give the garagistic subframe riser bushings a shot since they’re the only ones who make the riser bushings in softer poly. I am also changing the diff bushings to match.

I’ll also finally assemble the rear axles I had cryo treated and replace those while I’m in there.



Second major project is adding an oil cooler. I suspect that my old VDO gauge setup never really worked properly. With the new digital gauiges, and beter sensor placement, I’m already seeing ~220-230* with just a bit of spirited canyon driving. I imagine that at the autox I’ve been cooking the oil which is why I’ve had TERRIBLE lifter ticking after a couple back to back runs. It’ll be nice to use the ECU to datalog temps and pressures next time out.

The setup I decided to install is an S54 oil filter housing and a mishimoto dual pass cooler.

Here’s the mock up location.




Of course I can’t just install parts without first refurbishing them. So the S54 housing got the usual treatment.

First I grinded, sanded, and filed any rough casting marks and degreased it inside and out



Masked all the critical surfaces and open ports






Sand blasted






Marked a few spots for touch up



And then I decided the part was cleaned up enough for paint. Opted against powder coating because they didn’t do a good job masking last time. This is also “free” when I do it. I’m also enjoying the use of steel-it. The metallic grey is a nice gunmetal color.






Motoring club members drive up through Malibu mountains now that it finally stopped raining in Socal.



And lastly, I’ll have a handful of smaller future changes coming that’ll tame down the visual of the car a bit. Had my yearly shakedown by the local law enforcement this past weekend which was rather unpleasant. The cop profiled me/the car as I was casually driving to get my haircut. Followed me, pulled me over, pulled me out of the car, sat me on the curb, noted the “modified exhaust” as reason for the traffic stop. Then noted the modified steering wheel and harnesses as illegal, and potential felonies?? For which he could take me to jail?? WTF. Told me the fire extinguisher mounted on the roll cage looked like a rifle??? Tried to ask me what I had done to the car, what’s under the hood, how much did I spend… I didn’t answer. Asked to open the hood, I refused and said it required special tools haha. In the end I just got a fix it ticket for no front plate. The officer explained that they’re targeting modified vehicles as a way to crack down on “street takeovers”, but he didn’t suspect that I was participating in that scene so he didn’t feel the need to ruin my day.

The whole situation was crazy, and unpleasant. I’m going to change the headlight intake – as cool as I think it is, it’s quite a target. I’ll get the scroth DOT approved 4 pt harnesses which have a provision to add a crotch belt for track days. I’ll move the fire extinguisher to a seat base mount. Probably put a high flow cat just to cut the smell and a bit of noise. I hope that’ll be enough to allow me to continue to fly under the radar. And maybe I don’t drive around in that part of LA.

[MrBurgundy]

That sounds like a terrible experience...

What a moron.. especially about the fire extinguisher looking like a rifle.. That's actually ridiculous that a cop would even make that mistake.

The steering wheel felony is about the airbag. If your car is a 1990 or newer, then he's right and they could theoretically prosecute that as a felony, but we all know that would never happen. That is probably reserved for people removing the airbag and then selling the car to an unsuspecting buyer.

My car used to be loud and I got over the whole getting pulled over thing. I swapped to a high flow cat, vibrant resonator and vibrant muffler. Sounds way better, no drone and haven't gotten pulled over since.

The fact that LA officers are even pulling people over/targeting cars for issues like that is also a joke. LA has much more pressing issues than having officers target modified cars..

/rant

I moved back to OC and haven't looked back

[Sh3rpak!ng]

That sounds like a terrible experience...

What a moron.. especially about the fire extinguisher looking like a rifle.. That's actually ridiculous that a cop would even make that mistake.

The steering wheel felony is about the airbag. If your car is a 1990 or newer, then he's right and they could theoretically prosecute that as a felony, but we all know that would never happen. That is probably reserved for people removing the airbag and then selling the car to an unsuspecting buyer.

My car used to be loud and I got over the whole getting pulled over thing. I swapped to a high flow cat, vibrant resonator and vibrant muffler. Sounds way better, no drone and haven't gotten pulled over since.

The fact that LA officers are even pulling people over/targeting cars for issues like that is also a joke. LA has much more pressing issues than having officers target modified cars..

/rant

I moved back to OC and haven't looked back

Don't get me started... mine is an '89 anyway, and did not come with an airbag. Funny enough towards the end of the whole situation he thought to ask me if the car had originally came with an airbag, and when I said no he dropped the issue. Maybe that also helped my cause... My car is really not that loud. It was just another BS excuse. I was profiled, dunno why, but I sure as hell didn't want to push my luck and end up with a referee ticket and have to go get the car inspected. Would've hired a lawyer again anyway.