Northern's Sterlingsilber M52 Turbo 325is

[Northern]

Going to be in Michigan for a week for Formula SAE Michigan... Our car wasn't ready so 5 of us are being sent to spectate. Should be a brutal drive, but hopefully lots of fun.

[Northern]

Did a few things today:
Added fogs/brake ducts,
rewired driver's low beam, ground was nearly broken off from strain at these stupid connectors.
repaired some plastic shit in the wheelwell.
Bent the dipstick tube bracket to clear the steering linkage
Raised the car up 0.5"... probably should've done .75" or a full inch.

Now I'm out here tuning idle... pig rich right now.

[Sh3rpak!ng]

Never heard of that standalone before. Just read the whole spec sheet, sounds absolutely sick!!! I hope you go with it so I can let you figure it all out and grab one myself! :D

Sent from my SM-G920T using Tapatalk

[Northern]

If I were obd1, it would be a hard choice between that and a pnp Link G4 setup. The pinout is wrong and the connector is slightly different for me though, plus it's hard to know if it will do knock without the $400 box... Seems to vary depending on who you ask/which page you read.

I know a guy running the model below the black on his 1j and loves it. I think it's worth the extra money for the Black for the extra i/o and smaller packaging

[ahlem]

There's a guy from Hope College in Holland Michigan in FSAE who has an e30 as well.
He'll probably be there somewhere.

[Northern]

I haven't run into him yet, but I found some E21 guy... lol

[marek|steezkal]

Have you looked into VEMS?

http://www.efiexpress.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=133

You can source it through Gunni from GSTuning for cheaper. He builds these to directly plug into M5x 24v motors even with knock control. Last I remember he had been developing it for M52. I have the pnp for M50 and am liking it so far. It's a pretty user friendly interface and even a noob like me was able to tune it to idle very nicely and map it well.

Another good one I see the Swedes using is Autronic SM4.

[Northern]

I've always viewed VEMS as a megasquirt competitor, and I'm not really interested.
From what I can see, the current gen Link and ECUmaster offerings seem to be highly regarded in most communities besides the BMW ones(which seem fixated on megasquirt for the most part.) It's about as good as you're going to get for the <2k range, unless you're also considering getting into like a high end MoTeC or Bosch MS unit for significantly more.

Not sure if I'm going to go with it yet. Big potential for drivability issues if I ditch the stock ECU, and I'm not sure if I like that. Plus cost. It all comes down to how well this setup works once I get some tuning done.


I got idle somewhat dialed in before I left. Power went out while I was flashing. It wrote a blank file to the ECU, but somehow it didn't brick and I just rewrote over it.
It took me a few hours to figure out what the hell had happened.

I also did a little part throttle fuel tuning, but now I guess my lowbeam died, so I have to figure out what the hell happened to it now. Not sure if it's just not plugged in, or if this damn HID setup died already.

[Northern]

Battery was dead when I came back(8 days sitting.) Not sure why... draw is 50mA, which is above "ideal" but not unreasonable, or enough to kill a battery in a week.
I also had a solar battery tender hooked up, which I assumed would help, but maybe not.



For my future reference:

Derale 51610
6.7" x 13" x 2" overall

Derale 51910
7.6" x 13" x 2" overall

90deg fittings?

[Roysneon]

Just push start it.

[Northern]

haha that reminds me of the time when I had stored the car at my dad's place for a week during the winter... (I think I went to Banff for a week to work or something?)

I came back and the battery was completely dead. I had my dad and his friend pushing the car up the street trying to roll start it, and the battery was just too dead for it to start.
After two attempts going up the street plus coming back, I think they really regretted their decision to help push haha

[marek|steezkal]

How do you like the FX 6 puck clutch and chromoly flywheel? I'm going to order the same exact kit (or the stage 2) for my ZF box. I'm a little worried about going 6 puck though. I've put a lot of miles on their stage 2 in m20 228mm size and love it but will probably slip once some boost is added this fall.

[Northern]

For the price, it's the best thing out there.

Would I buy it again? For ~400HP or less, probably.

I don't find the 6 puck that bad. There's still a friction zone and it's not hard to modulate the clutch at all, just the window is much smaller for slipping the clutch. The stock s52 HD pressure plate probably helps, I don't think it's very aggressive (comparatively)
In traffic it sucks - as it heats up, it starts to chatter.
Upgrade route if this slips would be to change the pressure plate to the Sachs 792(iirc) pressure plate. It's not rated as high as the M30/S38's -765, but would definitely go further than the M3 HD plate.

Alternatively:

RHD recently started making 24v flywheels that fit an S38 pressure plate. Pair that with a Sachs 765 like Nisse or Matti (and others) run, and you're good for 1k+ depending on clutch disc choice.

Probably a little heavier on the foot, but I think Matti runs an organic disc with >1k awhp



Now that I typed that all out, a Sachs 618 pp for the M20 flywheel will also hold ton of torque, so that might be a reasonable upgrade.

[ak-]

I would appreciate an update :p

[Northern]

Nothing really to report. The car sat all winter while I was bumbling through the rest of this school year. Now that exams are done, I'm scrambling to get a car together for Formula Michigan (again).

I'll be back from that halfway through may, then I plan on getting this car running again.

It needs:
Washer fluid reservoir
Lowbeams inop again - probably HID kit related again
Catch can


I also want to:
- Buy new 225's for the rear. They're currently cracked and almost to the wear bars.
- Get rid of the 2.5>3" adapter before the MAF to smooth airflow/ move BOV to before the FMIC. I don't think it's a problem, but the car stalls after a WOT pull and I'm picking the low hanging fruit first.
- Retune MS41 using the 'WOT Enrichment" table. I currently have it zeroed, with the main fuel table set up to go richer as MAF increases. But with fuel trims are enabled, it's constantly trying to make this main table hit stoich so it tries to lean everything out all the time. I need to make other changes to scale tables more so I don't run off the map anywhere.
- Swap in some OE shifter to get rid of this ebay thing that keeps dropping down into the trans tunnel.