'89 318i 6 speed m50b32tu turbo swap build

[ba114]

New return pipe made, this time using steel braided teflon instead of steel braided rubber. Used higher quality fittings as well and so far so good.
Will check the garage floor when i get home to make sure no more leaks then its back out there for more fun times.

Side note: When you remove and re-install the intake manifold, be sure to re-fit the hose from the valve cover to PCV otherwise you'll be chasing your tail and cursing all sorts of bad words at your "shitty" Injector Dynamics injectors for inconsistent idle and running lean on take off.... :stupidsign:

[ba114]

Summer has hit and i've had to retire the e30 to the garage and start daily driving the 135i and the x3. All week we've faced 38C temps which are just unbearable without working A/C.

Time to figure out how to adapt the e36 hoses to the e30 ones.

[ba114]

Over the break i finally pulled the m54b30 block down to scavenge the crank from it. While i was in the mood, I also took the time to pull the crank from the other m50NV i had in the back of the garage.

I had major issues with getting the crank bolt undone on the old m52b28 but these two came undone more easily.

Debating whether i want to run the NV rods in the stroker build, or just buy some Eagle/K1/whatever.

Starting to think about piston options too and these have caught my eye:
E-Dish pistons

They've recently gone unavailable...

[Eliminare]

Cool build. Did you take any pictures of how you modified the steering wheel? I've been thinking about trying to fit an E36 wheel using a Momo adapter.

[ba114]

Cool build. Did you take any pictures of how you modified the steering wheel? I've been thinking about trying to fit an E36 wheel using a Momo adapter.

No pictures, but i just cut the old splined section off the back of the wheel, marked out the hole placement for the hub adapter and then bolted it up.

[alistairolsen]

Well done for the perserverance where most would have thrown in the towel!

Always interesting to see these conversions on RHD vehicles.

What was the reason for selecting the diesel box specifically?

For the E46 rear seats, did you move the mounting parts on the seat base, or the shell by 75mm?

Cheers

[ba114]

I wanted a 6 speed box. I knew these could handle torque as diesels make plenty, and if cost far less that a petrol 6 speed.

For the seats I moved the body side mounts.

[pazi88]

I wanted a 6 speed box. I knew these could handle torque as diesels make plenty, and if cost far less that a petrol 6 speed.

For the seats I moved the body side mounts.

Have you driven the diesel 6 speed gearbox? The gear ratios are different and don't work very well on petrol engine. The first gear is almost useless in practise.

[ba114]

I have the diesel box currently.
I know first and second are different to the bz version but perfectly usable with my 3.15 final drive.

[ba114]

Latest updates:
Bought a 2.93LSD from the states.
Haven't fitted it yet as I've been pretty busy with my most recent project...

[ba114]

Fitted the LSD last saturday. Its so nice not to be instantly pointing towards the side of the road when i put my foot down!
I then spent the late night putting the new polisher to the test before a show on sunday.

The paint was in really poor condition, very faded pink, white chalky type finish but i managed to bring it back pretty well for the first time using a proper polisher.

I also had started respraying the bonnet as the paint was destroyed, but i ran out of paint. As a temporary measure i wrapped it (poorly) with some carbon wrap i had lying around.

Made it to the show with a few spirited runs on the way, then as i was about to enter, i lost fuel and stalled. Very strong fuel smell, immediately know there was a leak somewhere.
Popped the hood and one of the injector orings (cyl 3) had popped down and out of the rail. i can only assume that perhaps the ID1050x adapters aren't quite long enough, and when combined with the fact that there arent slots to use the factory retainer clips along with not enough pressure clamping the rail down resulted in the leak.

Pulled the rail, re-seated the injector and continued on my way.
On the way home, same thing happened on the same injector. Have yet to do a full analysis but i think i should be able to lower the rail by flipping the adapters for fitting m52 rail to M50 manifold. That should get me the required clamping force and remove ability for anything to pop out.

[ba114]

Been trying to work out why i cant get the correct speed signal to the DME. This is important for VANOS control in MS41.2 as it's speed and RPM dependent instead of just RPM dependent as in ms41.0.

At idle/stand still, i record speeds between 21km and 31km. when driving, the signal differs far from the actual speed and is potentially having a big effect on my low RPM power and torque as the VANOS would be operating wrong.

I've adjusted the tune to account for the different in teeth on the diff trigger wheel but there is apparently a source of noise being introduced somewhere.

To focus my troubleshooting, the first thing i did was completely externalise the speed signal from the chassis. So i ran a wire straight from the brown/red wire at the diff, straight to the engine side of the harness and cut the signal through the C101. This immediately fixed the issue

The speedo on the cluster reads correctly when driving which would imply that the wiring from the diff to the cluster is fine (although there may be enough signal dampening in the cluster to filter the noise). Speed comes into the cluster through pin 12 (brown/red) on the white plug (C2). It then exits the cluster through pin 10 (blue/yellow) on the white plug (C2) and runs to the c101 plug.

My next test will be to run a wire from pin 12 on the cluster directly to the engine side of the harness. If this works, then the noise is introduced through the cluster/speedo, or through the blue/yellow wire that connects pin 10 in the C2 plug to the body side of the C101.

I'll then remove the cluster and bridge pin 10 to 12 on the white plug and see what the result is. it will either:
- read correctly and indicate the cluster/speedo is the source of the issue, or
- read incorrectly and indicate there is an issue on the blue/yellow wire between cluster and c101.

[pazi88]

Could you use scope for seeing how the signal looks like? For example cheapo dso138 will be enough to see how the signal looks like. It should be 0-12v square wave.

[ba114]

Dont have a scope, but actions would be similar anyway.

[ba114]

Update time:
Started purchasing parts for the m50b32 build.
JE 297170 9:1 Pistons have arrived.

I was originally going to run these with the m50NV rods i have lying around but it's recently been revealed to me here that apparently these wont fit without modifications. Can anyone else confirm?

If so i'll have to decide what rods i want to run instead.