the one and only e30 s52 engine swap
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It makes me all tingly inside seeing this stuff being put to use.
The manifold is still the one you ceramic coated @B C, ceramic downpipe, and through a very large resonator. -
Very long and over due update...
The last 2 months or so have been unbelievably fun with this car and its been exciting to see how competitive she can be against other considerably quick cars.
Over the month of May I took the car to a couple shows, local meets, and the occasional trips to Mexico. The car has been really good and for the most part has been running spectacular except for the occasional mishaps.
First off, guibo...
After about 2 weeks of driving the car I started noticing a lot of vibrations in 2nd and 3rd gear and knew something was up. At first it seemed like suspension so I did a shake down test and while doing this I came upon this.
When I got the new reman'd driveshaft the guibo seemed alright but with the extra torque it didn't last long.
Not only did my guibo shred up quite badly but my reverse light wire wasn't tied up enough causing it to droop down resulting in it getting caught in the driveshaft and being ripped out leaving only some wire running to the connector by the shifter. Ended up having to make a new one which I wrapped up nicely above the trans where it should hopefully no longer have any interference with any more moving parts.
Ordered a new oem guibo through fcp and haven't had an issue sense.
Next little fun incident I had was my fuel pump assembly o-ring going bad causing fuel to leak out of the top every time I topped off the gas tank.
It would pool out a good quarter to a half a tank of gas from the top of the tank. After pulling the back seat and access panel I found this knowing right away that's what it was.
Ordered a new oem ring through the dealer which came the following day, easy swap out. I'm assuming the e85 just took the best.
Haven't had a leak sense!
Next up I installed a catch can. The catch can was a much needed item as I had the ccv hose just running down underneath by the skid plate causing a oily mess in the skid plate and the surrounding areas.
The catch can was a fairly cheap one from amazon but being that I didin't have it recirculating back into the intake I didn't need anything fancy with a good filtration system, just something to catch everything coming out of the crank case. Mounted it in the only place I could find that would make for easy access and fairly clean look.
No more oily messes!
This was after a weekend of driving and racing around quite a bit.
Next up was my fenders. For the most part, my wheel and tire setup have been great but my front tires clearance from the inner fender was tight and was causing quite a bit of a rubbing. Thanks to @GunMetalGrey hooking me up with a fender roller and some guidance I spent a few hours making some better clearances.
Sense I had all the wheels off and the roller I decided to do the rear as well which oddly enough had been rolled but only halfway on both sides. After checking on a couple other e30's we determined that it definitely wasn't something done from the factory. Nevertheless it made for an easy job on the rears and they went quickly.
No more rubbing issues!
Next up was the steering wheel. I had just about enough with the airbag steering wheel and decided it was time for it to go. After spending a week researching and deciding on what to replace it with I decided on a momo steering wheel, the montecarlo.
Its incredible how much of a difference a slightly smaller better feeling steering wheel can make. The new steering wheel matched with the z3 steering rack makes for an unbelievable feeling that reminds me of driving a go cart, I love it!
Oh and I also have a horn now lol. The original airbag steering wheel was messed up causing the horn to go off every time I turned it forcing me to pull the fuse and run without.
Next up, brakes.
After refreshing the entire brake system I installed centric oem high carbon rotors and stoptech sport pads. This setup worked great with the NA s52 setup and I felt like I had sufficient stopping power. Now with the extra power they are starting to show their weakness. I went out with a couple of friends this last weekend and drove some country back roads with quite a few curves pretty intensely. By the end of it my front wheels were smoking really badly and I even noticed quite a bit of fade on the brake rotor. After seeing this I knew it was time for me to upgrade to something a bit better. I stuck with an oem high carbon rotor but switched over to some hawk hps pads for both front and rear. I was considering doing another step up to the hp+ pads but found that many said they weren't the most ideal if the car is being drivin on the street as they squeak quite a bit. I will see how the hps pads perform and go from there.
Lastly and most importantly, my cut out issue.
This is something I've had ever sense I got the car back from the dyno. It happened very rarely at the beginning but as I drove the car I figured out where and why it was happening but wasn't quite sure how i should adjust it.
Scenario: I'm driving in 3rd gear at about 2600 rpms. If I gave the car 100% throttle right away the car would almost immediately cut out and I would lose all power. I would then let off the throttle completely and let the car roll for a few seconds in which it would then return to normal and I could go along my way with no problem. Now, if I rolled into the throttle in 3rd gear instead of 100% she never cut out and would pull well with no issue. It would also never cause an issue when starting from a dig and revving out all the gears. I started digging through TS a bit and I came upon the afr safety settings. After reading through the settings and thresholds set compared with when the issue was happening I feel that this is what is causing it. After 2500 rpm's when the afr was found to be off by 1.3 lean or 1.3 rich it would kill spark and then fuel tell I let off the throttle for 3 seconds in which it would return to normal.
Luckily I just recently found a local guy who tunes a lot of standalone systems and is quite familiar with MS and tunerstudio. I'm bringing the car over to him Wednesday and hopefully we will be able to clear up this issue before the weekend.
Well that's about it in terms of things that were fixed and what needs improvement. For those of you who I didn't get to talk to at the picnic I finally got to take the car to my local drag strip and got to see what she runs in the 1/4 mile. Being that it was my first time doing this I was quite nervous causing my first two runs to a little weak.
All in all I was able to get in four runs total with my best time on my third run, 12.23 seconds at 118 mph.
The match was against a Mitsubishi ralliart which had quite a bit of work done to it including a larger turbo and running e85. (Owner predicted it at around 425 hp awd)
Well, it wasn't quite enough...
What hurt me the most was my 60 foot which was about 2 seconds. I think I should be able to shave off a good .3 seconds off of that but it's a bit challenging being that trying to launch the car at all results in me spinning a little tire.
I had a lot of fun overall and it was a great experience.
As for upcoming events I am excited to say that I will be participating in my first auto x event this Sunday at the US air motorsports raceway in Shawano. Hoping to see a few of you guys there!
Burnout vids coming soon.
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12.23 seconds at 118 mph
I don't do drag racing, but this seems like a pretty solid time for something on street tires at WIR for your first event.
Time to get @suspenceful on the road with you and do some 59.99 rolls! -
I don't do drag racing, but this seems like a pretty solid time for something on street tires at WIR for your first event.
Time to get @suspenceful on the road with you and do some 59.99 rolls!
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I now realize it's the wrong crowd for that joke.
MTB jokes relating to SRAM switching from a 30mm axle to a 28.99mm
Carry on -
I don't do drag racing, but this seems like a pretty solid time for something on street tires at WIR for your first event.
Time to get @suspenceful on the road with you and do some 59.99 rolls!I told him I'm down to swap keys!
PS: that's a nice fender roller
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I told him I'm down to swap keys!
Absolutely!
PS: that's a nice fender roller
Oops, my bad.
Shoutout to @suspenceful for hooking @GunMetalGrey up who hooked me up with that badass fender roller, much appreciated.
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Update!
So last night I took the car over to a man by the name of Hunter Mulhollon (hunter tuned) who knows MS really well and messed around with my tune a bit to figure out why I was cutting out. Luckily he was able to get the car on the dyno the same night and got her dialed in really well.
First of all, before he did any tuning he went ahead and pulled a spark plug and checked the gap, it was .025. After informing him that I was running a 2 step colder plug and had gaped them all to .021 he pulled the other 5 and found that all of them were in the .025 to .027 range. It seems I was suffering from a bit of spark blowout. He brought them all down to .019 - .020 and popped em back in. After a few pulls he found that I was getting some pretty lean spots on the fuel table. Went through and cleaned that up making everything a bit more fat (rich) for safety and being that I'm running e85. After making some more adjustments else where he did one final pull and the car put down a whopping 400 hp! The crazy thing is the tune is still pretty conservative as I'm only at about 8 lbs (once in a while creeping to 10ish lbs) and running e85. There was actually room for even a little more power safely but unfortunately being that I only have the stage 2 clutch in there now she's about maxed out and he started to smell it slipping a little so he called her quits. The big thing is my cut out issue is now gone and she feels even more responsive! Driving it home I tried about every situation I could think of that would make the car cut out before and she just kept pulling. All in all amazing work from Hunter.
I also just wanna say that Shane at DB performance still did an awesome job on the car and I was very pleased with his work. I think that if my e85 ethanol content had been a little higher with the fuel that was in my tank some of my fuel map values may not have been as lean as they were and I may never had encountered any cut out issues. Overall, awesome job tuning from both Shane and hunter, this thing is a fuckin blast!
Pads and rotors should be here tomorrow!
Stay tuned!
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Update
It's still very fastIt sounds very lovely without the muffler. I added that due to getting pulled over and the cop yelling at me lol.
If Mr. Mike gets pulled over it wont be because of the noise... Best of luck catching up to the E30 Mr. Policeman!Patiently awaiting auto-x update!
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Patiently awaiting auto-x update!
I’ll let veggiemike tell you about his adventures lol
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I’ll let veggiemike tell you about his adventures lol
I was hoping you would be there!
I suggested Mr. Veggimus speak with you / see if he could steal some of your knowledge. -
I was hoping you would be there!
I suggested Mr. Veggimus speak with you / see if he could steal some of your knowledge.We had to scramble just to get him to run the afternoon heat lol
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Update:
Brakes came in Friday!
After work I buckled down and spent a few hours tackling all 4 wheels.
Once the brakes were done and the car was back on the ground I took it for a little drive to get the pads properly burnished in, all ready to go for Sunday.
Well Sunday morning came and I had a bit of a late start from the night before. It was roughly 7:30 when I woke up and I was two hours away from the track. The two hours was not including the fact that I still had to get home to grab the car plus pick up two people, stop for fuel and make it there before ten. Well needless to say I made it to the track... at 10:20. I get inside to find out that my spot had been taken and I wasn't gonna be able to run. I was pretty bummed out at that point as I had been looking forward to driving this track for some time now. I decided to stick around anyways as once they started sending cars out I was able to hop in and ride with another fellow e30 driver who was also quite fast (turbo M20) and I learned quite a bit as well as had a blast. After they got midway through heat four I noticed a car at the starting line who had its hood popped open smoke going everywhere with coolant spilling all over the track, it was the same guy who had replaced me and his car had overheated. I wanna give a huge shout out to @KaiserRolls who approached Tom (the main man running the event) a few minutes later and asked him if I could drive in place of the guy with the crowd killer (found out later his name was Jake) if he would be willing to give up his spot so I could drive the last four laps of round two. Tom acknowledged the idea and so I approached Jake and after chatting with him for a few minutes and informing him that this was my first time doing auto-x he happily gave his spot to me for the last portion of the event! I was in!
Once we got the numbers swapped over on to my car and tech inspection was passed I was in line ready to go for the fourth heat which was being combined into four laps one after another (hot lapping) in order to get everyone through more quickly and avoid the rain which was beginning to approach us. As a way of expressing my appreciation I offered to let Jake ride along with me on my first lap which he gladly accepted.
I never quite realized how crazy 400 hp in a light car such as the e30 was until I took it out on a proper track like US air raceway. It is quite a lot to handle and makes things really interesting when it comes time to stop to make a turn. I knew going out I wasn't gonna be setting any crazy times and more just wanted to enjoy the car on this incredibly fun track and get a feel for it. Unfortunately I didn't notice to much of an improvement with the hawk hps pads other then the fact that my wheels weren't smoking quite as much by the end of my fourth lap. During my second lap I found out just how little stopping power I had after I was unable to make the last turn to the finish line from the amount of speed I had built and continued straight into one of the a bails of hay which was being used as a wall around the corner. Luckily the car endured no damage other then the valance being slightly pushed in which I pulled back out with ease. For now though I will continue to run with the brake setup I have and just work on not going quite as fast, focusing more on the handling and technique of it.
Overall had an awesome time, car ran great and I am really looking forward to the events to come.
Now that the car is running properly there is only more thing to do...
(Potato phone quality video for your pleasure)
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My experience when I started the transition from parking lot autox to on track events at Blackhawk and Road America was that Hawk HPS were rotor friendly but overwhelmed by the speed of a stock m20, HP+ were better for a few laps and then dropped off quickly and also sounded like a dump truck when cold and chewed rotors. I switched to Performance Friction PFC-06s and then the PFC-08s still with stock calipers and rotors which has been great. When I was still driving the car to track events, the PFCs also worked well on the street. Chewed the rotors but no worse than the HP+ and at least you knew you could slow/stop the car...which is a comforting thought to have on the track. Not sure what brake fluid you're running, but ATE or Motul are popular options. Basic auto parts store off the shelf stuff will boil with what you're putting it through.
All that said, with a 400 hp e30, maybe a big brake kit is in your future?
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I brought this car up today to Brian, and it made me wonder if anything has happened to it as of late.
Or are you just working on farming the 'sparagus? -
I brought this car up today to Brian, and it made me wonder if anything has happened to it as of late.
Or are you just working on farming the 'sparagus?As of right now the car has been sitting in storage collecting dust. Have a few big things in the works for it to get done before spring time roles around. I've been accumulating parts over the last few months and hoping to get er in the shop within the next 2 weeks. Updates coming soon!
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Last season was a blast! Car felt near bulletproof throughout the summer but there were a few issues that need tending to.
The transmission. G260 + Boost = Ticking time bomb. Also the gearing could be a little longer, So I'm switching it out for the zf trans.
Picked up a zf trans from a local junkyard. Overall condition is not to bad. Trans was pulled from an e39 528i.
Also snatched up a 2.93 lsd diff to sit behind the zf. Hoping it should make for decent gearing for the power level I'm at. Plan is to rebuild it. It will be getting a 3 clutch disc upgrade to hopefully reach a little more lock up. (40 - 50% I believe)
Unfortunately ever since this car ran with the turbo the oil drain line fittings leaked from the back side caking oil all over parts of the engine, skid plate and car. Should have replaced it sooner buuuuutttt I was lazy so i put it off and now I get to deal with it now.
Luckily we hit a patch of warm weather for one day and I ripped out the pressure washer, de-greaser and a scotch brite pad and went to town on all the oil and grease on the transmission casing.
After a good cleaning I got right down to it and replaced a few things.
Seal replacement went really well with no major issues along the way and is now all ready to be installed besides the throw out bearing which I had forgotten to order but is now on its way.
As I started disconnecting the driveshaft and shifter linkages I noticed some blue coolant dripping from the drain ports from the heater core box, great. I had noticed that my coolant level had dropped a good amount over the season but I made sure it never completely emptied itself. Nevertheless I have added to the list to replace the heater core.
After a few more disconnections...
A while back I noticed quite a bit of shaft play on the turbo and thought it might be nice to go ahead and rebuild it.
I must say It is quite nice having a turbo with a very reasonably priced rebuild kit. I am also quite impressed with everything that it comes with as well. Kit was from turbo labs of America.
Rebuild process went very well. I was a little nervous at first but quickly realized how easy rebuilding one of these actually is, as long as you take your time. Only challenging part was the removal of the smaller snap rings that hold in the small thrust bearings but otherwise everything else came apart and went together no problem.
After pulling the g260 off the motor and clutch/flywheel. clutch disc still looks pretty good with no unusual wear. Even though it worked out well most of the time there was a few times during hard pulls from 3rd to 4th gear I could feel it slipping and truly it was at its max if not over what the max for what it was rated for. Luckily when I picked up all the turbo goodies way back when, there was a brand new stage 3 clutch and pressure plate thrown in with everything else as part of the deal so I will be using that as well as switching over to a chromoly flywheel that I am getting resurfaced by a local machine shop this week.
Now that the DSSR was all nicely welded up at 10 degrees it was time to turn it back. There was a few options to do this but I found it easiest to just heat it up red hot and twist it. Called up my buddy who had an oxy acetylene torch and he made that happen. we did figure out that even at red hot we were gonna need better leverage then a screw driver through the holes. A pipe wrench was used instead which worked terrific!
Did my best to polish it up afterwards with a scotch brite pad.
Lastly I picked up some solid control arm mounts from condor back during their black Friday sale. I wanted to try and get a bit more caster for the front wheels and I have heard really good things about these in terms of handling. Install was easier then changing a battery.
And that's what I have done so far. Ordered quite a few parts last Friday night that should hopefully be arriving sometime later this week. If all goes well I should be able to get the engine back in the car this weekend. Besides getting the diff rebuilt that will be it for drvietrain stuff, at the moment.
There are Couple other things on the check off list.
1. I plan on installing a flex fuel sensor. Come spring time I hope to get the car tuned to run on 91 octane. For the most part I do plan to continue running the car on E85 cause mo power! Its more for when I find myself in an area where E85 is less prevalent.
2. Make some holes where the eccentric hardware are located. With the subframe raised in the rear to fix excessive negative camber there is no longer any room to fit wrenches to adjust them. More to add to this later.
3. Front brake duct cooling kit
4. Different pads and rotors set up
5. Different seats. Still looking around at what I'd like to get, all I know is the seats I have currently have to go. I originally wanted to rebuild/re-upholster the seats but at this point I would rather run something different completely. Still hunting around though.
Maintenance to-do's before returning to the streets...
1. Oil change
2. Clean intercooler
3. Flush brake fluid
4. Swap out spark plugs
5. Replace air filter
6. Drain fuel
i d
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