A purists nightmare - E46 drift build
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Update!
Received the new SLR kit and got it installed the same day!
The quality and build of this kit is out of this world.
And fhe fit is right in par with everything else about it. I cannot believe I waited this long to purchase one.
Here is a photo of one installed.
And a photo of the wheels on at full lock, mind you this is without the lock stops that keep the barrel from making contact with the lower arm. Its just insane what this kit is capable of.
Once I had the lock stops dialed it was time for a good ole driveway alignment.
Went to a shop get together/party with the Pnuespeed guys (who we get our tires from) and they announced the big news of a rebranding! They are adding wheels, clutches, suspension and lots of other automotive parts to their arsenal and it will all be available through Track Day Direct.
Here's a photo from the get together
And after the shop party we went for a cruise to get ice cream in Milwaukee and I snagged a few pics!
It was really nice getting to go for more than a 10 minute cruise! Hopefully after getting the sway bar set up sorted out/parts ordered ill be able to make it to an event this year lol.
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Small update!
Ordered some drifttec toe brackets in hopes of really being able to dial in my rear alignment.
Last time i lowered the car it really messed up the rear alignment, the car had a 1/2" toe out which is obviously not great lol
These braclets are really well made as i was kind of skeptical originally.
Here is a side by side with the original one I had in the car, sketchy slotting and all lol.
Got these installed and the car aligned in just over an hour which was great.
Now the rear is sitting at 3/16" toed in. Which for now will be worth trying and aging with some settings to see how it will affect grip.
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UPDATE
With the new SLR ultra angle kit the general consensus seemed to be to run a non-m e36 sway bar in the front.
So I picked this one up from Earl. Also happy to know that this one is from a Ti and is slightly larger than the other non-m e36 ones.
I cleaned it up and painted it while I was waiting for the new endlinks to arrive.
And here are the SLR end links. They attach the same way as non-m e36 ones do as the SLR arms have mounting provisions for them.
Now I got the bar installed along with the links. I was not super impressed with the angle of the links. After talking to Sean at SLR it seems that they (now) recommend cutting the stock e46 sway bar and reshaping the end then drilling a new hole. The e36 sway bar has seemed to work for many before though so I am leaving it in for now, there doesn't seem to be bind even with the angle on the links.
Once i am able to do some actual testing I will start to play with sway bars.
Definitely nice having the sway bar mounted to the lower arm now though.
Now for something a little more fun. I finally ordered and assembled my roof basket to go with the roof rack that I have had for 2 years lol. Its kinda a cheapo basket but it should do the job of carrying a few tires to and from the track when im not able to have some help!
And finally, I snagged up a CSL style carbon fiber trunk! I've been wanting the don musk one but the price along with shipping is just not reasonable for me currently. While this one is in a bit of rough shape, extremely sun faded, its a great candidate to have cleaned up and then wrapped.
I will most likely end up putting this on the car in its current condition anyways to see how it looks, and if I'm going through all that work I'm just going to leave it on since the car is looking like a dumpster fire color wise always lol.
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It looks like those SLR arms provide some bump steer correction. I’ve been looking at ways to eliminate bump steer on my e46 but im not sure this full yeet setup is what I need
Hahaha so SLR offers this set up which is more geared toward drift but it has 4 Ackerman adjustment settings to go from full drift to full race. Id recommended checking out what they offer for a road race application on their website! Also Sean the owner is extremely knowledgeable.
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Been a minute! Have had quite the off season just getting to this point. I'm going to try and keep the story as short winded as possible.
First thing was first it was that time of year to get the car on the stands and drained the engine fluids.
Big news first, I was able to purchase a VF engineering supercharger kit from a friend!
He sent me everything to use the kit with the m54b30 manifold and the parts that he made up to have the kit work with a M50 manifold.
For starters you may notice that there is no mounting bracket for the charger to the engine. Well thats because the box broke in shipping and the bracket slipped out, never to be seen again. This is where the story could get long winded, BUT the short of it is UPS is absolutely useless with help or even through the claim process and I was forced to find another option.
Lucky I found a guy in Latavia that makes a bracket for Votech V1,2 and 3 blowers to M5x engines. It's no billet piece like the VF one but VF Engineering is also as useless as UPS. They told me they won't support old kits because it's a liability, so they won't sell a bracket separately. COOL RIGHT.
Anyways here's the steel bracket I sourced.
Now in typical fashion of course the bracket didn't fit right lol. It was hitting on the alternator housing, after talking to the seller it appears it was designed around a smaller 90 amp alternator, and mine is a 120 amp. Soooooo I took the alternator apart and massaged off some material.
And here is the alternator reassembled.
And here's the bracket mounted with the blower on as well.
The next hurdle I knew about, which was seeing how much clearance there was on the expansion tank being that this kit was designed with the factory radiator. I have the thicker CSF aluminum one, and the friend I bought the kit from tried to swap to a CSF like mine and said it didn't fit.
Somehow it fits on my car though, so I'm not mad about that hahahah.
Here is a photo of the fitment of the tank/radiator along with the start of fitting the new silicone upper hose, which I started by chopping off the clamps of an original one to get the ends off.
Then I trimmed the upper hose and installed the clamps.
Here is the blower mounted with the intake on it along with the M50 charge pipe. (This is the b30 manifold though)
I decided that I wanted to ditch the old leaky oil return hose that came with the kit. So I ordered up some Vibrant parts
The cool thing is the drain which just connects to the CCV drain on the dipstick, so I used a tube to AN adapter.
I then ran into another road block. The drain fitting on the bottom of the blower hit the housing because it was too big (-8 AN).
I couldn't seem to find an extension that I was happy with, plus the extension would make the line sit lower than I would like. Sooooo I decided to "clearance" the housing to allow for the larger fitting.
Before.
After.
Worked out great
Now that I solved that headache I finished making and installing the drain line.
And finally to finish catching up to where I'm at currently I pulled the intake manifold in preparation for the M50 manifold I will be picking up in a week or two.
Thats it for now!
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Oh god I’m having flashbacks
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Oh god I’m having flashbacks
Is that good or bad lmfao
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Didn't know M54 guys swap on M50 manifolds too. Great work as always! Excited to see this shred tires faster.
Yep! Just have to buy the adapter for the throttle body, plug the vacuum holes on the head and of course have a tune with the DISA deleted.
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Is that good or bad lmfao
Just remembering all the issues that came with putting 20lbs of poo in a 10lb bag
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Just remembering all the issues that came with putting 20lbs of poo in a 10lb bag
Thats definitely what this is hahaha
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UPDATE
Some parts came in. Silicone IACV hose kit with the aluminum boost proof fitting and a non-m fuel pump sleeve.
I broke down my M54 manifold as well. Removed the fuel rail, iacv, throttle body and the IAT sensor.
Then I started the modifications to the fuel rail that I know need to be made to use the factory M54b30 fuel rail on the M50 manifold, which is cutting off the mounting tabs.
While I was waiting for the manifold I also pulled the harness off and labeled it all as well as wrote down the pin numbers and locations in preparation for re-looming as well as some modifications.
Here is the manifold before I cleaned it up. I definitely forgot to snap a pic after pressure washing it.
Here is the manifold adapter to put my b30 throttle body onto the M50 manifold.
Mocked it on while I'm waiting for all the gaskets and O-rings to show up.
Then I got on to mounting the fuel rail, gotta thank my buddy @_Wackster for the idea to mount this way rather than what comes in the standard kits.
I have some ideas on how to spice it up appearance wise if I can't make the factory manifold cover fit.
Next I plugged up the ccv holes in the head.
I was able to test fit the manifold and I knew that the chase bays power steering resiviour would be a problem. So I devised an idea and began with the first CAD work of the season lol.
Here is the base part of the mount, originally used the pattern of the factory mount that the chase bays unit used. Then I modified its shape from there, below is the progression.
Then I made the upright mount with hols that lined up with the mounting holes on the chase bays resiviour, and transfered it all to some metal.
Here's the plate mounted to the oil filter housing.
Then I made a few final adjustments to the base plate and marked and drilled some holes for rivets.
The plan is to have this drawn up, cut, and bent so it is all one piece.
But here is the final product for now.
With the resiviour mount done for now I moved on to stripping down the engine harness.
I did remove all the wiring for the DISA, SAI, and the evap solenoid from the sensor plugs to the connector on the DME.
Once I removed what I wanted I put it on the engine and began the slow process of routing things.
The beginning.
and the end for now.
Waiting on a few things to finish up the harness along with a few other parts to finish up the manifold swap which should be here and done by next weekend.
So that's it for now!
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UPDATE
Got some parts in!
Throttle body coupler with 2 ports and a -4 banjo adapter for the vanos oil line.
Vibrant -4 oil feed line
New o rings for the injectors, new intake manifold gaskets, throttle body gasket for the m50 manifold side, exhaust cam sensor (found out mine was cracked), and also a centering bushing for the driveshaft.
and finally for parts the sleeving for the engine harness came as well.
While I still had the manifold on I got to setting up the new double port coupler. The reason I went with the double port one was to be able to connect the iacv separate from the diverter valve. Ended up chopping quite a bit off both sides but it fits pretty well now.
Once the throttle body elbow angle was finalized I was able to set up the IACV hoses. I ended up trimming the U shaped hose that the kit comes with because I was not liking how it was intended to sit.
Here's what I came up with.
This way tucks really well under the manifold when it's bolted on the engine.
I was also able to take my "prototype" power steering resiviour bracket to @Sam_Holzmann and he drew it into digital form and cut it out on the plasma.
Here is "V1"
And it fits great just like the prototype version.
Next I got to work on finishing the engine harness. I finalized some lengths and removed the harness from the engine one last time.
After lengthening some leads and shortening a couple others this is the bare harness.
And finally after about 4 hours of looming it is complete
Super happy with how this harness turned out.
Now that the harness is done I got the new injector o-rings, throttle body gasket on the manifold side, and the 6 manifold to head gaskets.
I also went ahead and notched the panel that separates the ebox compartment for the engine bay where the harness is going to come through now.
And finally I got that new oil feed line installed along with the vanos banjo bolt fitting. The line that came with the kit was not going to work for my set up but this way worked out exactly how I had hoped and looks super clean.
Thats it for now! Have a few more parts to order that were further down on the immediate priority list along with figuring out how I want to run the diverter valve hoses. Then on to final assembly I think haha.
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What products do you use for the harnesses? I love all the details you and Sam put into these builds.
Thanks!! And I use flexo flame retardant sleeving. That's what this harness is done in and same with the chassis harness wiring that I did.
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UPDATE
Got the engine harness installed.
Looks like a mess in the photo but I'm pretty satisfied with it.
My AEM wideband came in as well.
I was a little worried about where and how I planned to install the sensor but I figured out that I can just install the sensor in the rear of sensor location since I only have the primary ones installed.
To do this I had to chop down the sensor bung and then I chased the threads and installed the sensor.
Before.
After.
Once I had the header back installed I routed the sensor wiring up behind the head with the OEM o2 wiring. I then made a hole in one of the blank grommets and rand the wiring into the Ebox and then the chassis.
I need to decide where I plan to mount the gauge yet but the wiring is there.
Next I found a plug to replace the barbed fitting that was normally plugged since it is only used with the 330 manifold originally.
I then began the process of trying to figure out how to use the original VF mount that goes to the oil filter housing. Since the bracket I have rotates the charger a bit compared to the original bracket (that was lost in the mail), this is what I came up with.
I made a plate that mounts to 2 of the mounting holes on the bottom, and then figured out where the mount landed on that plate.
It started out as extremely crude, so just ignore the stud that I made in the mean time to land the bracket onto the plate.
Then my dude Sam worked his magic and waaaala, we have a much nicer bracket.
Then I test fitted it and I plan to weld the rod to the charger plate and it should be a much more compact package. I had to do it this way because I dont currently have a welder.
And finally today after some adjustments to Version 1 of the power steering resiviour bracket we landed on a final version 2 that just needs paint.
V1 on the left, V2 on the right.
Also got in a few parts to route the recirculation valve hoses. There's also an adapter in there to put my coolant temp sensor into the upper hose.
Hopefully will get a chance in the next few days to see how this hose idea will work.
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Final weekend update.
Got what I'm planning to be a temporary gauge mount in, the gauge didn't quite fit so I had to make an adapter out of abs plastic to allow it to press fit in.
Here it is with the gauge installed.
And in the car where I believe it will be mounted, again the plan is for this to be temporary as I have an idea brewing. Thus $10 mount is definitely a bit tacky, but it will work for now as it needs to.
I also got in the ICT Billet 3/4 to 1" adapter union to make the diverter valve hosing work.
This is a nice piece for sure and made in the USA too
Here's what I came up with. Really happy with the outcome and the way these silicone sections worked out.
My order with all the clamps I need should be in this week along with a few other parts that should lead to final assembly
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UPDATE!
Finished up the charger to oil filter housing bracket mods.
Then painted it along with the power steering resiviour bracket.
Also got in the upper radiator hose adapter from ICT billet.
and installed.
I also got in my clamps, the manifold vacuum fitting, the line for those fittings, and a section of 3/8 silicone hose plus my German Auto Solutions coolant cap came in.
Drilled and tapped the manifold for this DOT push loc fitting and then routed the hose from the recirc valve to the manifold.
Really excited for how this worked out, too bad no one will see it hahahha.
I then cut the section of 3/8 silicone into sections to act as couplers with the hardline I bent up for the vacuum to the booster. Just waiting on some more clamps to come in, because you know I forgot to get these ones lol.
Next I wanted to see how the HELL the headlight was supposed to fit with the intake. The way the kit came had a 45" coupler off the main intake and then the maf attached to that followed by a plastic piece that went from the maf to the filter.
I dont have pictures but theres no way I was jamming that behind the headlight and pinching and pushing things around. Not to mention I have Xenon headlights so the ballast would need to be "moved". I have a solution for that once the parts come I will.share that!
So here is what I came up with for the intake.
I stepped the main intake tube down to a 3" then used a aluminum 45° to get past the back of the headlight. Then stepped back from 3" to 3.5" to the MAF and then the MAF straight to the filter.
I have a sock for the filter to keep water off as well as I made this splash sheild.
Started as a good ole CAD template.
Then cut it out of some plastic sheet.
Once I formed it to the corner to mount it I added some supports of aluminum.
Pretty happy with the outcome especially considering I used what I had. We will see how well it performs.
And finally I got everything in to add my under hood lights.
I wrapped all the wiring in the same flexo stuff I use on the engine and chassis harness, and then routed it through the ribs on the hood.
I added a switch similar to the switch for the tire sprayer but it is an on/off rather than a momentary switch.
And here it is all lit up! Really hyped to see it once it's on the ground with the underglow on too
Thats about it for now, waiting on a few more parts. (Seems to be the usual latley lol)
More updates as parts roll in!
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