Das Beast: My E30 track / street build

[325e '87]

Look, I’m sure you know better than I but I’m surprised there is a line through the throttle body. Is it for heat, or for cooling? Wouldn’t your boosted air be plenty hot?

[dvallis]

That's the OEM cooling system. BMW provided throttle body heating for cold climates. Some E30 owners in warm climates delete it. We're not using it.

[dvallis]

Air box riveted in so it doesn't rattle around. Nice and solid now.



Here's a good look at the air box and turbo final assembly. Note the turbo oil feed and waste gate vacuum control hoses. Love that ceramic color. Very non bling.





Turbo manifold heat shield reincarnated. Bolts on to the valve cover studs after plugs are installed. I might touch up the brackets. They're a bit ghetto now. :devil:



Coolant expansion tank in progress



Oh hell. Rob is loose with the saws-all again.



Ready for a heat shield. Down pipe runs right next to it. We want to keep direct radiated heat away from coil packs and sensors.

[Elysian]

Love that heat shield on the valve cover.

[dvallis]

Water water everywhere

Time to finish off the cooling system. All parts arrived.

First up, return hose from thermostat to water pump. We got rid of that crazy loop hose, since we're not going around a distributor any more. These are 1.5" ID gates piece parts, re-engineered with a hacksaw. Rob didn't get to use the saws-all.



Looks pretty sweet installed.



Next, coolant return from bottom of radiator to thermostat. Our rad lower outlet is 1.75" (go figure) so that had to be adapted with a bell housing.



Installed nicely.



This one is thermostat outlet (top) to radiator inlet (top)



Perfect.



We're moving the coolant expansion tank over here. Maybe. There is just not enough room on the hot side of the engine. Waiting for hoses.



In the meantime, we finished off the air box with a couple of brackets for the lid with nutzert inserts.



Bolted down lid is not going anywhere now. Nice tight air seal as well.



Finishing touch for today is adding a radiator bracket. This is Very High Bond tape. We used it in other places in the build. Red stuff peels off. Once the bracket is pressed down into this, metal will rip before the tape comes off. Pretty cool stuff.



Bracket installed. Rad is very solid now.



To be continued ...

[dvallis]

Forgot this pic. We are checking to make sure everything is below the hood line. It is.

[dvallis]

Finishing the cooling system today.

Surge tank fitted with a bracket.


Sits here in the engine bay



Routed 1" hose from bottom of expansion tank past the front of the oil pan. Didn't like it behind subframe due to proximity of down pipe.



Almost finished product. Look close and you will see radiator expansion hose routed to the tank.

I still need to add an overflow tank to right of expansion tank, sitting on the frame rail.

[dvallis]

Fab weekend

More fab. And it's 110F in the garage. Ugh.

Working on the coolant overflow tank next. It's down stream from the coolant expansion tank. Could not find anything suitable online so I'm making it from scratch. Here's the shell in progress. The sight glass slot needed some precision angle grinder work. I need to look into a notch/punch sheet metal tool.



Here are all the pieces: custom metal shell, plastic bottle, hose barb and 1/4" ID silicone hose.



Here it is installed. Looks OEM. It's nice to have the oil dipstick, coolant fill / sight glass, coolant overflow sight glass and hydraulic fluids all in one place.



Revisited the plug wire shield. I re-fabricated the mounting bracket as a single angled piece with four mounting tabs.



Easier to see the tabs here and how the bracket installs. Note how it wraps under the plug wires. Heat shield material is on the outside, towards the exhaust header.



View from underneath. You can see how it keeps direct radiated heat from the header off the plug wires.



Fully installed. Acts as a plug wire guide and heat shield.



Not done yet today. The down pipe is close to the coils and we don't want direct radiated heat on those either. Need to make another heat shield.

Using the roller press for this one. Great piece of kit for making compound curves.



Test fit, bend, test fit, bend, repeat ....



Finished piece with heat shield material applied.



And fitted in place. Think I'll finish it with an "ear" that wraps around to the right for complete coverage of the plug wires and harness.

I'm done for today though. It's too darn hot.

[ForcedFirebird]

Looks great! I was just shopping for that DEI stuff, made a trick ram air intake for an e36. Kinda pricey, but have to check it out.

Out of curiosity, why use the water pump outlet for the expansion, and not use the thermostat housing heater outlet? It's already on the same side as the expansion. We typically block off the back of the m20 and 24v heads and just run the 1" hoe to a tank, never had any issues with cooling.

[dvallis]

We're using water pump inlet for coolant expansion tank, same as stock. See diagram below. It's on the left side of the pump, looking from the front. I liked that it's a 1" hose and routes easy to the pump.

We kept the heater loop but built our own lightweight core and blower. Didn't want to be "that guy" with a rag on a stick when the windows fog up on a rainy race day. :devil:

[ForcedFirebird]

We're using water pump inlet for coolant expansion tank, same as stock. See diagram below. It's on the left side of the pump, looking from the front. I liked that it's a 1" hose and routes easy to the pump.

We kept the heater loop but built our own lightweight core and blower. Didn't want to be "that guy" with a rag on a stick when the windows fog up on a rainy race day. :devil:

Yes, been following fairly closely, remember all that Jazz :P


I meant the stock late model e30 doesn't have that outlet on the water pump and uses a tee hose to go to the expansion, thermostat housing and heater core on the driver side. If you tap that driver side of the engine, you avoid running a hose all the way around. :D

[ForcedFirebird]

# 13 here (hose clamps #15 are heater)...

https://www.realoem.com/bmw/enUS/showparts?id=1113-USA-01-1991-E30-BMW-325i&diagId=11_1167

[dvallis]

Ah, I get it. I have an early model so didn't know that about the pump. We could have tapped the heater core loop like you said but what the heck, it's done and works.

Need to get the engine started. All these nitnoid details are driving me nuts. :devil:

[dvallis]

Finished off the heat shield



Moving on to the plug wires. First thing, need to make sure they get connected to the right coils. :devil:



Before starting I was curious about plug wire resistance. The stock wire show 6K ohms.



New plug wires are a bit hotter: 5K ohms. That's ok. Don't want them too low though. Coils produce ~30K volts peak when they fire, so the wires act as a current limiting resistor. 5K wires keep the current to 6A.



Staring on the plug wires. It's easier too pull the boots on first. Use some lube.



Stripping these plug wires is a pain. You need to carefully trim off the insulation and fiberglass. A regular stripping tool didn't work very well. Xacto knife and patience required.



Pre-crimped the connector with a 8mm hand die. Wire is wrapped around under the crimp connector.



Used the hydraulic crimper to finish it off.



That's a proper crimp



Wire 1 done



Wire 6 , including the pulse sensor.



That's all for now

[Elysian]

Had to do custom wires for my V8 build... Learned a lot of lessons quickly, the hard way