‘91 E30
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All the MS3 stuff is good to go after some help on injector dead time voltage curves from a friend, figured I’d burn it to the ecu & then wanted to see if it would start. This was the first time I put the fuel pump relay back in
didn’t let it run too long without the radiator, just wanted to see if it would hold idle. It was in warm up enrichment so the idle was pretty high, but should be enough to verify base timing and then toss the radiator in and get everything bled.
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Catch can fittings/hose showed up yesterday so I got that installed. Hose routes with core support, we’ll see if that routing works - if not I can re route it.


radiator mount thing shows up today (holds the rubber isolator in place) - going to install the radiator stuff after messing with some tooth #1 angles in tunerstudio to make sure commanded timing is lining up with what I’m seeing with the timing light. Hoping to maybe drive this thing around a bit Friday afternoon/this weekend
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Added some DEI heat sleeve to the fuel lines/brake line by the header, PS bled, coolant bled (had to do that a few times). Ended up changing tooth#1 angle from 327° to 324.5° BTDC, set it to fixed timing and cranking at 0° which allowed me to confirm TDC on the damper was aligned with TDC on the timing cover.

All washed up an swapped over to the non storage wheels
I did end up taking it out for a quick 3 mile blast and honestly the base map that’s provided is pretty decent. It was for s50 originally but changed all that with reqfuel settings and such to work with the s52
maiden voyage v2 coming soon
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V2 voyage went decent, only annoying thing is having the cluster temp gauge, vdo temp gauge and a laptop reading the blue e36 temp gauge - all are slightly different lol. The laptop reading from the MS3 (blue e36 sensor) seems to be hotter than the other 2 gauges by a decent amount, kind of annoying
ive bled the thing like 2 or 3 times so I’m not too worried about it overheating, but on the laptop I’m seeing like 200-210, while the stock cluster is reading less than center and the vdo gauge is right around 190
need to get the fog light deletes painted yet, but I think most of the stuff is wrapped up. It’s been a year since I’ve heard this thing run, so I’m trying to get re-acclimated to “new” vs “normal” noises lol
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Changed the oil/filter on this as I was just using some cheapo 10w-30 as a way to get the storage crud knocked out of this thing. Filter looked as expected as this engine has been sitting for almost 3 years under a trash bag & I’ve messed around with the cams in and out a ton, new lifters, etc etc. no big magnetic chunks- just dirt/old crud.
pulling the valve cover off to double check the torque on the cam caps and other miscellaneous hardware in the head after a few heat cycles - once that is good to go just going to button everything back up and get it bolt checked for a local autox in early May.
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Probably have around 5hrs of drive time on this thing -have been letting VE analyze do it’s thing after adjusting the afr targets/idleVE/rescaling the tables.
I had the valve cover off just to double check the cam stuff, good to go there, but I have developed the smallest oil leak from the valve cover on the passenger side rear of the cover, true to bmw form
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First autox event of the year (ignoring ice racing) & the car did great.
probably needs an alignment after having everything out of the car for the swap but it was close enoughTook fastest raw time of the day.
Unfortunately was only able to run the 4 morning runs as the fan??(tbd) died.
GF was supposed to co drive it but I couldn’t get the fan going which is necessary for the conga-line style this club had for grid. Tried everything short of directly powering the fan but gave up attempting to fix it. Quick ran the car home (local event) and grabbed the e36 so the GF could at least get her full 8 runs in. She did great and took second overall raw timeive been messing with some cheap wireless mics for the GoPro, had this one too close to the exhaust though I think
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Forgot to add the e36 part
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Nice driving!! You car sounds fantastic, did the solid lifter conversion eliminate any post-run ticking?
E36 video isn't working for me unfortunately.
Solid lifters sounded the same at the start and end of every run, happy with that.
I reloaded the e36 vid, hopefully it works
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I reloaded the e36 vid, hopefully it works
Worked for me before. Both cars sound amazing.
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Solid lifters sounded the same at the start and end of every run, happy with that.
I reloaded the e36 vid, hopefully it works
Worked for me before. Both cars sound amazing.
Its possible my work network was blocking it, sorry for the fake news
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New CSF rad is in, re-did the foam in between the rad and the core support to seal up air gaps, replaced the tstat, replaced the ecu temp sender in the head, re routed the catch can line, got a new fan harness/relay that is wired as a ground switched setup - future MS3 triggering perhaps

earlier I mentioned I thought the fan was bad, but I think the mounts shifted and caused some binding between the shroud/fan. I tested the fan out of the car and all seems well (it’s a 2 year old SPAL pusher) just remounted a few brackets and gave it a touch more stand off from the radiator (1/4-3/8” standoff in case stuff moves around).

currently have the glovebox and center console stuff out of the car to get some of the wiring cleaned up. Once it’s back together it will be more dialing in The tune/car
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Used the install of the new fan wiring as an excuse to Clean up a bunch of wiring for the MS3, gauge wiring, and other stuff I had been putting off as I hate removing all the interior stuff. Got it all buttoned back up last night. Tonight going to rebleed the coolant after putting in the new radiator.
eventually I should probably have it aligned, but next up is making a mount for the MS3 as it’s just hanging out in the glovebox & making some type of heat shield to go in between the filter/engine Bay Area along the frame rail
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Is that the EPAuto coolant kit on the reservoir? Always wondered about those.
Yes sir
EPAuto Spill Proof Radiator Coolant Filling Funnel Kit https://a.co/d/cM6Vx8S
I use a combo of the red neck, yellow cap & I steal the stock gasket from the stock expansion tank cap
it looks like they may have updated it since 2020, so YMMV on the colors.
it works great, makes bleeding super easy
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This last weekend was the first fvscc event at USAIR. For this event they ran the layout backwards which was a first for me. They also usually cap the event at 100 cars, this one had 137. Ended up placing 1st in XSB and 3rd overall raw time.
http://fvscc.com/results/2023_Summer/event2_raw.htm
here’s my fastest run of the day
gf brought out the e36 and ended up placing 19th overall
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Looks like this thing shreds.
Car gets light in the front coming over that bend into the hairpin? (@ 0:21)
Yea the track kind of dips down away & to the left, I just screwed the entry
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