SNAFU; high performance 318is build that lives up to the name, Turbo M42 ➞ Turbo M20

[ForcedFirebird]

Use studs on the header. Over the years, I have never had luck with aluminum heads and header bolts. Studs with stover nuts has been the choice.

Also, if you bead roll or put a weld bead on the end of your pipes, you will eliminate coupler leaks. (I have also seen the "poor man's" strap where they put a strap from pipe to pip over the coupler to keep them from popping, sorta like this...



Too bad you moved so far north. I probably have a CHRA you could borrow and/or a stock exhaust so you could go to Spectoberfest. :/

[varg]

My cylinder head to header hardware is OEM stuff, either the studs back out or the nut loosens, I think the header flange is not flat and the heat cycles cause the fasteners to back off as it moves. I put bolts on the turbo to header due to studs backing out like they're bolts anyway after they rust together. As for IC piping, all pieces aside from one have a bead rolled in, that one piece has a "bead" crimped in with a modded vice grip. Anyway, it's the t-bolt clamps which were causing leaks, even tightened down they would leak where the bolt threads through and in every case except one a worm gear clamp fixed the leak. Haven't really blown any hoses off aside from the throttle body hose a few times.

Yeah it would be nice if you were a little closer, it's the out west part that makes it so far, 20min to get to I95 then another 45 to get down to where your shop is. I'm probably going to be riding down to broward county tomorrow after class to have my turbo rebuilt by one of the shops down there, it's unfortunate that they won't do it while I wait and I'm going to have to make 4 hour and a half trips

[varg]

Life took some turns this week, but I managed to get my car back on the road in time for spectoberfest. I wound up shipping the turbo to the shop via UPS to avoid having to carry it around campus and ride to Hialeah on my motorcycle with it, and got it back on Friday. Removing the header is a pain in the ass, the bottom rearmost nut was impossible to get a wrench on in the right angle because of the bellhousing and firewall, and the clearance between the nut and the tube was too small for any of my sockets to fit. I wound up grinding a cheapo deep socket down and hammering it onto the nut which got it off and on just fine, but taking the header off took at least an hour. I welded the 4 cracks with my fluxcore wire and had it ready for the turbo on Thursday night, and installed the freshly rebuilt turbo Friday afternoon with an nice big oil filter temporarily placed inline. I don't like how it's hanging off of an Aluminum AN fitting and I'm waiting on a short 4AN line so that I can place it between the existing line and the turbo in a way that isn't in danger of cracking and falling off.




Other than the spec E30 crowd the E30 turnout at spectoberfest was unfortunately very poor, only a few showed. The convoy in was short, I led 2 other E30s down bumpy, foggy roads around Lake Okeechobee, taking a different, shorter route than in previous years. I don't think the other guys appreciated it in their lowered cars. Got a nice ride on the track in the beautiful M20 swapped 318is track car that I tuned earlier this year, the highlight of the trip for sure.





Got a nice sunset on the way back too.

[varg]

Found a suitable line for my oil filter. It isn't a perfect solution, but it was free, and it eliminates the risk of that aluminum elbow cracking due to the weight of the filter and line vibrating away at the end of it.

[driftxsequence]

what megasquirt are you running? I'm running a simple wastegate setup but wouldnt mind trying an electronic setup if the MSPNP supports it.

[varg]

My water pump saved my engine. It was squealing so I bought the parts to do the timing belt and pump after the end of my semester and found this:





The belt has been rubbing for who knows how long, and I doubt it would've lasted until its change interval which was around 20,000mi away. The tensioner didn't have much play in it, but its bearing was pretty dry. It's a shame there's no easy way to inspect the timing belt on an M20, no inspection cover. The best you can do is pull the cap and rotor, which I will be doing periodically from now on to make sure my belt hasn't started rubbing again.

what megasquirt are you running? I'm running a simple wastegate setup but wouldnt mind trying an electronic setup if the MSPNP supports it.

MS2 kit build. No idea if your PNP supports it, depends on who built it.

[ForcedFirebird]

#8 in the link is the "inspection cover", but it won't help much for the tensioner...

https://www.realoem.com/bmw/enUS/showparts?id=1113-USA-01-1991-E30-BMW-325i&diagId=11_0405

[econti]

you know, a M42 doesn't have a belt that can fail. Maybe you should swap to one of them

[varg]

you know, a M42 doesn't have a belt that can fail. Maybe you should swap to one of them

Yeah, it's really too bad that just about everything else about it is crap :giggle:

[varg]

Ah this weekend. It started as a fixing a simple thing, a blown out turbo gasket caused by fasteners that won't stay put:



Then this happened:



And then this:



All because this stud showed up in a search for "m8x40 exhaust stud":



I didn't bother to look up 45H steel, which is a set screw specification, and according to ISO898-5 "The use of set screws of hardness class 33H and 45H under tensile stress (axial or bending) is not recommended." For a project in school, or in my future job as an engineer I'd definitely have looked into this 45H spec before ordering, since it would be my job to double check something like that, but since this was "just hobby stuff" I didn't and here I am. I spent a few hours trying to weld a nut to the stud and back it out last night and failed, I need to get some nuts that aren't contaminated beyond what a wire wheel can fix. Now I'm working on stuff for school and don't know if I'll have time to fix this before the school week starts. I'm so glad I couldn't replace the other studs when I got my new hardware in months ago because I couldn't remove them without taking the header off, they may have all broken because I was torquing them down pretty tight to compensate for a warped header flange. The stud didn't break when I torqued it down, it stretched, and when I went to remove the nut that's when it failed.

[TeXJ]

ouch man, would an Easy-Out help get them out?

[varg]

I don't do easy outs because of the chance that one will break, they're way harder than this already hard steel set screw and you're in a world of hurt if you have to remove a broken off easy out from a limited access area like this. I'd either have to pull the head and have a shop fix the problem or try the 'dissolve steel out of aluminum by immersing in heated alum solution over a long period of time' trick. I once saw this done by attaching a cut open aluminum can filled with alum solution to an aluminum block with clay and tape, with an incandescent light underneath it for heat. It took a few days but it dizzolved the busted off tap right out. I'm reminded of an old dupont advertising slogan that became the name of a Fatboy Slim album; "Better living through chemistry"

[econti]

drill up the middle, hit with an abuse flatblade until it makes a flathead shape, then undo
unless of course it's right up in the gooch area between block and strut tower which it no doubt is

[varg]

It's a hardened stud, there's no getting anything done to it with hardened steel tools, it blunted my punch when I tried to make a divot to start drilling and it kills 5% cobalt bits. I only made any good progress with a carbide tipped tile/glass bit which eventually shattered. Too busy with school to work on it now, maybe I'll finally get through it next weekend. Even hollowed out (drilled most of the way through) the damn thing won't budge with a weld, I figure I can't fill it with weld effectively because I'm welding with fluxcore and there are too many voids created by the flux vaporizing. Next step is to try a better carbide tipped (masonry) bit and try to get completely through it, then progressively larger bits until there's almost none of the stud left. Couldn't dissolve it out because nothing would seal a heated reservoir of alum solution to the oil-saturated aluminum head without leaking, tried clay, silicone caulk, hot glue, rtv. All leaked. Had I been able to get it to seal it would've been dissolved by now, I know it does work because I dissolved part of the broken off stud in a measuring cup.

[varg]

The car is back together. I gave up on getting the stud out, made drilling progress with carbide tipped masonry bits but the bits wandered so much that the hole wound up oval and oversized so my M8 helicoil tap just wasn't going to cut it. Ran out of time to deal with it and had to get the car back together so I could use it. The replacement header flange is warped too, just not as badly as the old one, so I'm guessing it's just a matter of time until the exhaust starts leaking at cylinder 6 where only the bottom of the flange is clamped. Also replaced the disintegrating turbo blanket with a crappy bent piece of E30 heat shield. Very fitting.