Very unoriginal 1984 318i... M30 + Boost!

[CorvallisBMW]

Very cool! It's great to see another m30 turbo car in OR :)

[TimeMachinE30]

Cool!!

[keyland]

I've been short on time for both the project and this thread because I got this thing:


But to rewind a few weeks, I purchased a 28"x9"x2.75" bar & plate intercooler from cxracing... It was backordered but showed up eventually. It seemed like the perfect size to fit with minimal valance cutting.

After arrival and a quick pressure test, I ended up cutting about 32"x4" out of the valance itself and then trimming the rear of the horizontals to fit the piping in underneath the headlight brackets.

I will be very specific about the plumbing in case someone wants to do the same:

Turbo side of intercooler is a 90* silcone 2" to 2.5", a 6" straight aluminum and then a 90* silicone into intercooler.

Cold side is another 90* silicone coupler, a large radius aluminum 90*, a 9" straight with BOV flange, a 45 degree silicone and a 12" aluminum with IAT bung, and lastly a 135* 3" to 2.5" reducer.

I used some holes under the hood hinge to mount the intercooler, along with the brackets they provided. While I was in there I installed a SPAL 30101517 2000CFM pusher fan.

Test fit out of the box:


From below with fan mocked up:


With valance reinstalled:


The only outwardly visible clue there's anything in there:

[keyland]

Progress peekaboo!


Actually, I'm done already but I'm gonna drag this out cause I'm a dick... Also I have a lot of other stuff going on.

[e30m3s54turbo]

Sub'd....

[paynemw]

dope build! I had an e28 (1987 535is) before this e30 and man was that M30b34 awesome.

[2mAn]

Nice thread. I imagine wider tires are going to be necessary in the near future for you

[keyland]

It's amazing what you can accomplish when you don't go to work for a couple days.

First was wasted spark using the Bosch Motorsports (aka Saab V6) coil... Stole idea from this thread: http://www.r3vlimited.com/board/showthread.php?t=399056

It's Bosch part number 0221503002 and cost me $20 at the junkyard off of a Saab 9000.

For a DIYPNP megasquirt it's super easy... Jump IGN1 to S1, IGN2 to S2, and WLD to S3 just like in this diagram:


Then add your BIP373's Q2 and Q3 to the board itself (forgot a photo).

What I ended up doing was jumping S1 to both pin 1 of the motronic harness where the stock coil goes, and also pin 1 of the DB15 expansion connector to make it easier if I ever want to go back to stock coil/distributor.

Don't forget this 100 ohm pull up resistor in R2 or you're not going to have a Spark C output and then waste a couple hours trying to figure out why.


Soldered these three guys in and poked through the firewall:


I cut off the back wall of the spark plug cable guide and flipped the wires around so that 1 = 6, 2 = 5, etc...then I mounted the coil to where the battery used to be before I relocated it to the trunk.

Final product before being actually screwed down:


And in the glove box:


The thread above links to the Bosch datasheet in PDF. It provides the pinout of the coil:
1: SparkA (Cyl 1&4)
2: SparkB (Cyl 2&5)
3: SparkC (Cyl 3&6)
4: +12V

I used the existing +12V from the stock coil, and wired up as above. Dwell settings are also in the PDF... I used 3.5ms to keep things at/around 8 amps which I read somewhere is the sweet spot on BIP373s.

There were other activities today but I'll save that for another post tomorrow.

[e30austin]

Fuck yeah!

[keyland]

Some parts arrived this week...

[keyland]

Brought back a souvenir from my trip to Europe a couple weeks ago, finally got the right adapter for my momo hub and installed it.

Yeah I know it's from a Renault, but I like it and I'll find a replacement center cap soon :)

[keyland]

badass transformation!!

Thanks, although to be clear, that's still the original door on the car... It'll be a while before there's paint on the new one.

Probably a noob question, but what wheels are those?

I have a couple different sets. The older photos are BBS's off of a VW of some kind, never did figure out which one. They look alright but aren't the right offset and are pretty narrow.

The more recent photos are some BBS knockoffs I got over the summer. They are XXR 536. Not great quality but they're the right offset for the look I want, and I can run a little wider tires now too. I think I paid around 300 bucks shipped for the whole set on a closeout.

[c0rbin9]

Probably a noob question, but what wheels are those?

[Dj Buttchug]

badass transformation!!

[keyland]

I usually don't picture it but the PO had someone hit the driver's door and take off without stopping. It's in surprisingly good shape considering what happened to it, but it's one of the few body flaws on the car:



Since this car isn't a real BMW color I've never bothered to find a door because it wouldn't match anyway. Recently I found a cheapo door for a few bucks through a part-out and decided to try some bodywork.

It was covered in plastidip, not thick enough to peel of course. After quite some effort I got it all off but found some previous filler work underneath. Here's the door shortly after starting:


Because of the not-great filler job and to learn a little more I went down to the metal. Sanded the whole door with 80 grit on a DA, marked all the dents and dings and filled them a little more carefully. I forget if this is the 80 grit stage or the 180 grit stage but here's that:


In the meantime I bought a cheapo harbor freight HVLP gun to spray primer with while I wait for my nicer base/clear gun. It was pretty warm today so I shot a couple coats of epoxy sealer on the bare metal. I haven't ever sprayed paint before but I spent a lot of time watching how-to videos. After practicing for a while on some cardboard and getting the spray pattern dialed in I went for the door which started with quite a bit of orange peel, but seemed to level off over a couple of hours, ending up much nicer than expected. I brought it in the house to help it cure for a couple days.


The door came with a piece of early model trim (also buried in plastidip) from which I excavated the shiny bits and clipped onto the driver's door. From a few feet away, you can't even tell it's jacked up. So here for the first time is the driver's side of the car, haha!