The ups and downs of a 2.7L Turbo

[dugly52]

Great build! love seeing the road trips in the E30.
What part of Seattle are you in. I'm in Queen Anne, and would love to check out the car and pick you brain a little. I'm going turbo this winter and only have a few things left to get ready.

[2mAn]

Thats definitely the scenic path to San Bernadino, glad you made it safely. Hopefully we can meet up while you're down in SoCal. How long are you here for?

[squidmaster]

Unless I missed something about your routing for the WG, 100% WG duty means fully closed, which means it's spooling to the max psi it can produce. If you want less boost, you turn down your WG duty.

Keep in mind that no matter how low you tune your EBC, it will still operate on minimum of WG spring pressure since that is a mechanical component.

Another thing to consider: between each axis-point in your map, the ECU will extrapolate the value. So if you have your WG duty at 0% at 3000/20, then 60% at 3500/20, means that between 3000 and 3500 it is being commanded to go from 0 to 60%. This can cause unexpected results (keep in mind that even if you set it to 0%, it is still operating at spring pressure, so relatively it could be closer to 35-45%). It's best practice to tune those areas to match the mechanical wg duty so that the transition from RPM and KPa ranges are smooth.

If your turbo is overboosting with the stock spring pressure, an EBC won't be able to help you very much-- you'll need to find the point of restriction (WG) and fix it there.

[cleanasse30]

Great build! love seeing the road trips in the E30.
What part of Seattle are you in. I'm in Queen Anne, and would love to check out the car and pick you brain a little. I'm going turbo this winter and only have a few things left to get ready.

Thanks! I live in Greenwood, but I'll be down in California until early January. When I get back you are more than welcome to check out the car.

Thats definitely the scenic path to San Bernadino, glad you made it safely. Hopefully we can meet up while you're down in SoCal. How long are you here for?

Yeah it took me about a week, but it was beautiful the entire way. Idaho and Utah were incredible! I'd like to make it to one of the SoCal meets soon. I've been going to national parks with my dad on the weekends which is why I missed the Archie's meet last week. I'll be down here until just after new year's so we should have time to meet up and go for a drive or something.

[cleanasse30]

Been a while since I've updated this thread... When I was down in east LA the house we stayed at only had DSL so I wasn't about to try and upload pictures on that slow of a connection. I thought I'd post some pictures of the road trip down and update the thread as to the happenings down in CA.



This was taken shortly after leaving my friends place out in Forest Grove, OR the second day of the road trip.



Somewhere in central Oregon on my way to Bend. Stopped in at Deschutes Brewery for some lunch and a beer.



Drove on over to Boise and met up with ST1G! He and his roommate are cool dudes and suggested I head up north for some twisties and nice scenery on my way out...















It was epic! Idaho is beautiful...

Next I passed through SLC and the one thing that ruined the city for me (at least from an scenery perspective) was all the billboards along the interstate. Huge beautiful mountains to the east though. I drove south through central Utah avoiding I-15 as much as possible.





I came to find out there is a lot of open grazing in Utah, so I was bound to run into some cattle crossing the road.



As I was carving up some nice turns along Utah's hwy 12 I came across a Chevy team doing some kind of vehicle testing on the new Traverse (I think?)



And then there were canyons, lots of canyons!



Finally arrived at my campsite just before dusk, set up my tent and went to find dinner at the next town over. The hwy to and from this campsite is one of the best canyon carving roads I've ever driven and the car performed so well I was shouting with excitement after a spirited run!!





Its getting late and I need to get to bed, so I'll finish this up tomorrow.

[squidmaster]

Looks like fun! Great shots (except for the deer :( )

[downforce22]

looks like a fun trip

[cleanasse30]

Looks like fun! Great shots (except for the deer :( )

Thanks! Poor deer, I randomly stopped to take a picture and found it laying in the ditch near where I stopped :(

looks like a fun trip

It was a great trip down. Lot of beautiful areas and fun roads. I would highly recommend hiking in Bryce and Zion canyons if you are in southern Utah.

[SkiFree]

Seriously cool trip. Thanks for documenting it, makes for a great read when I've got a sick three-year-old in my arms.

[cleanasse30]

Seriously cool trip. Thanks for documenting it, makes for a great read when I've got a sick three-year-old in my arms.

Thanks, glad you enjoyed the pictures!

Unfortunately I've been really busy lately and haven't had time to update the thread with the rest of the trip until now. So where I left off I was camping in southern Utah.

This was the last pic I took before leaving the campsite in Utah to go stay with some family friends in St. George.


From St. George I headed back to Zion and spent half a day hiking Angel's Landing. The view from the top is breathtaking



The next day I drove to LA to meet up with my dad. He was getting a medical treatment in east LA for a couple months so I took time off work to keep him company since we are both from Seattle. I had hoped to be able to hit all the great canyon roads in SoCal, but during a night of spirited driving through some mountain roads up to Big Bear I broke a rocker in the head

The engine started making WAY more valve noise and was really down on power. Hoping the noise was just loose valve lash I pulled the valve cover and found the cyl 1 intake rocker pad had broke off. I was fairly upset and really had no idea what to do since I was a long way from my garage and only had hand tools with me. After messaging some r3v members in the LA area asking for shop recommendations and receiving quotes of $1200-1500 to fix the engine I thought about shipping the car home to WA.

Then 2man, aka Simon, came to the rescue! He offered to lend me a jack and any tools I needed to rebuild the head and get back on the road. Once Simon had dropped off the jack and tools, I started disassembling the engine so I could pull the head apart.



In the mean time I had contacted BimmerHeads who happened to be located in LA and they immediately offered to warranty the HD rockers no questions asked. HUGE HUGE HUGE shout-out to them for being so stand up about the exchange. Shant was a pleasure to meet and chat with.

I also picked up a full order of parts from BMA auto, also located in LA, to rebuild the head. New parts included:
-new cam
-new rocker shafts
-new rockers
-new HG
-new valve cover gasket
-new gaskets

Once I had the parts, it was time to rebuild the head! Shant gave me a few tips on getting everything put back together, and it wasn't too difficult for a first timer.



Head back on the engine




I finished getting the engine put back together 2 days before I was supposed to leave to go back to Seattle. After a shake down run to return Simon's tools I thought all things were looking good to head back to Seattle. I set the valve lash one last time, and as I was doing that I noticed that the clutch slave cyl has pissed itself on the garage floor...

I had the clutch slave replaced first thing the following morning, packed the car and left LA for Seattle... in January with bald bfg rivals through a rain and snow storm all the way up the 101 with about .5" of suspension travel before the exhaust bottomed out. IT WAS A LONG DRIVE, but we survived!

[ahrensNW]

Epic thread dude.

[stonea]

Man, this has to be one of the better threads on r3v. Keep up the great work!

[2mAn]

One of my favorite memories of my E30 is driving from Seattle to my parents place in Northern California.... in December. Halfway through Oregon, signs are telling me I5 is closed going over Sisikyou pass so I have to reroute across Oregon towards the coast. Driving through to 101 I'm going through snow and it's super sketchy but I make it to 101 and it's pouring rain but I'm having a blast. Damn E30s are so much fun

[varg]

Hopefully nothing happens to my E30 when I road trip it, but it's good to see that there are still folks out there willing to help out, and I hope I would be so lucky if something were to happen. If someone wound up in that situation near me I'd certainly lend a hand.

[cleanasse30]

Epic thread dude.

Man, this has to be one of the better threads on r3v. Keep up the great work!

Thank you! Its been quite the journey of memories both good and bad.

One of my favorite memories of my E30 is driving from Seattle to my parents place in Northern California.... in December. Halfway through Oregon, signs are telling me I5 is closed going over Sisikyou pass so I have to reroute across Oregon towards the coast. Driving through to 101 I'm going through snow and it's super sketchy but I make it to 101 and it's pouring rain but I'm having a blast. Damn E30s are so much fun

That they are!

Here is what the tires looked like when I got back to Seattle:



And some damage to the rear wheel arch from not having the fenders rolled and wayyyy too much stuff in the car...

Hopefully nothing happens to my E30 when I road trip it, but it's good to see that there are still folks out there willing to help out, and I hope I would be so lucky if something were to happen. If someone wound up in that situation near me I'd certainly lend a hand.

It was really awesome to have forum members reach out and offer to help me! I'm extremely thankful for the generosity of the community and would love to pay it forward if someone were in a similar situation near me.