Boris3

Great trackside fix!

Car has been pretty solid since the last update, I did end up making a (crude) mount for the  MS3 to get it out of the way in the glovebox 
Finally got the car out to an HPDE at USAIR.  So glad the new management is cool with these events. There was a morning and afternoon session, we only signed up for the morning. It was a total of 4, 15 minute sessions for $125 (afternoon would’ve been an additional $125) - autox out there is usually $55 for 8 runs-  Ended up being about 36 miles of laps.
Car exceeded expectations as it didn’t break lol. Temps stayed in check the entire day. Coolant temps maybe peaked around 210/215 and came down very quickly on a cool down lap. Oil temps were maybe around 230 or so at their peak
The chase bays power steering reservoir with their “spill proof baffled design” did just the opposite, had to wipe that up between sessions.
Had one weird issue with the expansion tank cap, seemed like the orings/gasket had the worlds smallest leak and it would mist the intake pipe during the session. New cap will be here soon & expansion tank just in case. This was the quick fix trackside

 
car used maybe 1/4 tank of fuel, GFs evo x went through like 15 gallons of e85 lol
Nankang CR-1 were also a casualty, this event finished them off after 2 years of service, no complaints there—might try their updated 200tw compound “CR-S”

i only ran the racebox gps on 2/4 sessions, borrowed it out to a few cars on the other sessions-still need to get those laps overlayed but here’s some footage from the day
this was one of the last sessions so tires were pretty smoked 
Next lapping day is in September. This one actually still had open spots, definitely recommend.  
 
next on the list is to order up some tires and change all the fluids

Rear hatch panel and one door panel done. One door panel to go. The door panels are a pain in the ass!!!! Far from perfect, but good enough for me. 

If not needed by anyone else, I'll take it...because racecar. 😁  

Beautiful work!!

No one else has said anything. Come grab it!

Summer Picnic is July 8 at Waupaca Municipal Airport! 11a-3p
Bring your own lunch, or get something from Aftershock Smokers food truck.  
See you all there!!

Exploring an alternative explanation first.
I had found a 50mm bolt in the paddock grass after coming in early from qualifying when the issues started. I couldn’t figure out where it came from or if it was mine. I was focused on a prior issue of rolling resistance from passenger front which was a brake pad sticking. Fixed that, drove it around the paddock and all seemed fine.
Went out for the race and as soon as I was going around 40 on the out lap the issues started again. Fought the car for about 7 laps and said this is stupid and came in. 
Watching my race video I can’t hear the noises from the rear I was hearing in the race. So not sure. Still kept looking for a diff just in case
Meanwhile I went through the car at home looking for other possible sources of the driveline vibration / noise.  Motor mounts were fine, trans mounts slightly loose, wheel bearings no play, diff noise no different than usual, driveshaft, CSB, all good.
But when turning the driveshaft I discovered I was missing a guibo bolt. Best guess is that it had come loose, got hammered a bit and had fallen out when I jacked up the front end to check the brakes. Helps to explain why the vibration seemed to come on all of sudden during qual.
 
All the other bolts were tight and guibo looked fine. Replaced the bolt and the lock nut with BMW parts and I guess we’ll see. No real place to test it except for on track in a few weeks. 🤷‍♂️
 

Found one, a 4.10. That said, should a 4.27 show up somewhere let me know.

“How are you gentlemen!!”
I am alive but partaking of the car hobby in a much more manageable and scaled back manner.
The way I was trying to do it before was not in balance and not a good fit for my lifestyle.
Appreciate you thinking of me! Are you still involved with RA?

Well, the saga comes to an end. A family put a deposit down on it yesterday and they're coming to pick it up today. One day I'll share the full story of what is going on, but that's not today. 

I realize my posts in here were pretty infrequent but I sold my X5 to my brother. And bought a 2013 XC90 R-Design. I just sold that to my parents last weekend.

They drove me in my old car to Milwaukee and I took a train down to Chicago and picked up a 2013 Allroad. Higher miles, but the PO gave me a stack of maintenance done in the last year with the anticipation of keeping it for a long time before finding a good deal on a 5 series. 

This car fits the girls great after ditching the Graco Tranzitions car seats for Diono Radian 3's. Other than doing coilovers and maybe carplay, the car will remain as-is for a while.
Thank you everyone for the constant help with the e30 while I diagnosed goofy things, ranted, etc. It was a really fun car to own and was my first project where I was thoughtful in what and why I did things to it. The girls will miss it, but are OK  with it as long as it's replaced with a "red race car" one day.

I can't believe how well it fits!

I also got some new tools courtesy of Sonic Tools...

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

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 

Well, got the break in oil dropped in and did a thorough look over of everything. I ended up using the old tune from the last setup for start up. Other then lower compression and different turbo this new setup wasn't much different from the old setup tuning wise. I figured it would probably run a little rich but still ok for idling and light throttle. Pulled the coils and plugs for ease of priming the motor and got a solid 15 psi of pressure shown on the gauge before re hooking up the fuel pump relay. Did another check over everything and then hopped in and started cranking... 
Video was cut short as we noticed a coolant leak and shut it back off to correct that before letting it get up to temp. Once it was up to temp, I got the front valance re-installed and the car lowered on the ground. Being that the engine was running well and the afr's were looking good I wanted to get it out on the road and get some more load on the rings to break em in better. The tune obviously wasn't dialed in enough for this setup to see any kind of boost but some light to medium acceleration would be fine. Went down a few country roads near the shop and besides some trouble to stay idling at a few stops, the car ran really well!
Drove it around about 15 miles before returning to the shop and draining the oil right away and changing the filter.

Also went ahead and popped the valve cover back off to re-torque the head studs. I did notice that the gasket had some coolant seeping out which was not ideal to see. I originally torqued the studs in three steps to 75 ft lbs as per arp's recommendations. I did some searching around and found that others had similar issues and followed ces motorsports recommendations of upping the final torque to 85 ft lbs to correct the issue. Re-torqued the head to 85 ft lbs and also checked the torque on all the cam caps before re-installing the valve cover.

So not to much left besides wrapping the wires up and getting things buttoned up. Got my tuning date scheduled but unfortunately that's not gonna be tell June 30th. Wish it could have been sooner but by the sounds of it everyone is booked out atleast a month for dyno tuning. Gives me plenty of extra time to really go through things so it can be fully ready to go.

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 enough 

Took 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 time
 
ive been messing with some cheap wireless mics for the GoPro, had this one too close to the exhaust though I think
IMG_7082.MOV

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

Where should we send the Culver’s gift cards? 

They are 15x7 in front and 15x7.5 in the rear. The 16" RS definitely come with a premium. But I've always like 15s on the car better. 
 
Had the car out for its first test drive and it was pissing transmission fluid. Engine and transmission had to come back out. It ended up being my fault - I put the input shaft seal cover on about 90* off which just so happened to line up the fluid return hole on the transmission to be lined up with an open hole on the cover. So it literally was pouring out. Fixed that. Drove it around this weekend some. Realized I forgot to tighten up the nut on the driveshaft where it splits. Sooooooo one more fucking time on the lift to do that, but then it should be all set!


Other notes: 
This winter I also made rear speaker boxes and front door tweeter pods and fitted in Focal component speakers in the front and rear. I installed an Infiniti Basslink Mini under the front seat. The sound system is now fantastic and sounds like what I've always been chasing. 






Interior is exceeding my expectations. I love them. The seats are so comfortable. Also finished the e-brake handle boot. 


Also able to test my H1 LED high beam kits. Since the caps on the euro smilies can't really accommodate the larger LED bulbs or the wiring, I wanted to make these since I don't have my US Ellipsoids anymore. I am not disappointed with the performances of the MLED projector and LED high beams. 



 
Made a stop at Fermentorium in Cedarburg with our youngest while the older two and my wife were at a birthday part. After Fermentorium, I used the e30 to pick them up and continue on to Sahale in Grafton. What a family car. 


 
 

It has been awhile since I gave an update.  Lots has been happening! Popped on an Active Autowerks supercharger, 4.10 gears with a drexler LSD, CSL King Pins and new bearings, CSL steering rack and all new power steering lines and reservoir, replaced the cam bolts and did a valve adjustment (2 were out of spec), valve cover gasket, manual swap with a JB Racing lightweight flywheel and HD Sach clutch, ZHP shift knob and a short shifter, and turned 200k miles on the car (motor probably has 130k-ish on it), and some 18" Apex wheels wrapped in PS4s 245 front, 275 rears.

Near spring update. 
Interior almost done: 



New wheels on after being circle jerked by a "racing shop" that fucked up the seals multiple while mounting them. Eventually took them to Big Bear Tire in Oconomowoc to have them dismounted. I did the seals myself, and now all is good. They're awesome BTW. The guy who did the tires has an e30 touring. 
The shop's attempt at fixing damaged seals and the seal that was about ready to start leaking. 

My job at cleaning all the sealant and resealing them. Pretty damn good if I say so myself. 


After removing the transmission to replace the input shaft seal, I was having issues the starting pinion gear not engaging the ring gear. It was hitting the side of the ring gear instead of engaging it. Dropped the engine and it ended up being the metal plate must have gotten slightly bent that it wasn't allowing the starter bolts to line up with the holes in the transmission. That's all fixed. Bench tested the starter on the engine before putting it back in. 


 
Revised my retrofit adapters and now have them for Morimoto's MLED 2.0 and the Micro D2S. 



 
That's all. Hopefully getting close to this winter's projects and I can get the car out and start driving it. 

So as far the head I decided on leaving it fairly stock. As for right now I don't have plans of revving past 7k so it should be safe just running the stock valve train. The head I'm using was originally from a M50 vanos. The only difference between the head from a s52 and a M50 non vanos were the springs and retainers. I kept the springs matched with the cams I was running which was from the s52 so I needed to swap those over. I went ahead and installed all new valve stem seals at the same time.

Made myself a little tool for spring removal and installation. Not quite as nice as some of the ones you can buy out there but it did the job well.


Once that was complete I began reinstalling the intake and exhaust studs. For the exhaust side I reused the N54 studs from the previous motor for ease of installation. After inspecting all the holes I noticed one of them was missing half the threads in it, wonderful. So out came the Heli-coil kit.

Springs and new valve stem seals were in. Studs were all installed. Time to go on the motor.

For the head gasket I went with a stock thickness 87 mm Athena cut ring headgasket. I tapped in some new dowels and then test fitted the gasket first to make sure everything cleared and all the cut rings fitted properly.

Everything checked out good on the HG so before installing the head I popped it back off and ran a small bead of the right stuff gasket maker around the entire timing cover area. Most say it is only necessary to dab a little where the cover meets with the block but I feared since there was only M6 bolts compressing the head down in this area there was still a chance it could possibly still leak. I should also note that before installing the head I made sure all the pistons were all shifted to as close to the center of the bore as I could to avoid any valves coming into contact when the cams are installed.

Once the head was on I threaded in the rest of the arp studs using the moly lube provided and torqued them in three equal steps to 75 ft lbs.

Trays and lifters were about ready to go in and then I noticed this in some of the bores on the exhaust tray .

Some light scoring in these areas is typically normal but this was far beyond that which pretty much made them scrap metal now. Unfortunately the cam trays that I got with the M52 were different. One of them was for a M52 but the other was from a M50 non vanos head so that wasn't gonna work out either. Thankfully after some research I found that M52 and S52's actually use identical cam trays so I took a trip out to the local junk yard and luckily found an untouched M52 from a 98 528i with trays and caps that ended up being in great shape!

Since they were pretty heavily varnished I dropped them off at a local machine shop to run through a hot tank.
With those back and cleaned up I went through my two sets of lifters from the M52 and S52. The lifters from the S52 worked well for me in the last motor but they were also pretty scored up similar to the cam trays they were in and I was unsure about the ones from the M52 and how many miles were on them. So, instead of trying to clean those up and risking some of them still causing issues I resorted to just purchasing all new ones.

Sprayed all the new lifters down with some break cleaner and compressed air to remove the protective oil that they came covered in.

Before Sliding them in to the trays I dunked each lifter in some break in oil and compressed the inner piston a few times with my fingers tell the piston felt a little softer to compress. This was done to prime them with a little oil so they weren't dry on first start. After rubbing a little assembly oil in each bore of the trays I popped them all in.

I didn't snap any pics of the next part but the install of the trays and cams went smoothly. I dropped some assembly lube on all of the lifter tops as well as on the cam caps and bearing locations on the trays.
I then began installing all the upper timing components. When I was torquing down the four bolts that held the upper timing chain guide into place I was finishing up torquing down the last bolt on the back side to 10 NM when I felt that wonderful feeling of it come back lose again when I was just about torqued. Backed the bolt back out of the hole with broken pieces of threads attached to it. Out came the Heli-coil kit, again.

Covered and taped off all areas of the motor leaving only the hole exposed. While drilling and tapping the hole I had help with holding a vacuum right next to the hole to suck up any metal shavings.

New insert was installed and I got back to installing the timing components. This time everything was torqued down to the proper spec with no issue.

When installing the front cam sprockets a new upper timing chain was used. With everything timed correctly I got the vanos unit installed with a fresh oem gasket. Once that was all completed and all bolts were torqued down to spec I spun the motor around 720 degrees to make sure everything spun smoothly and nothing was interfering with each other.
Onto installing the valve cover and getting this thing closed up.

After the timing was complete I did start installing a lot of the outer parts and accessories as well.

Two things I added from the old setup included an upgrade to my crankcase breathing setup. The single oem port I was using on the old setup I felt was just not gonna be adequate enough so I purchased the catch can kit offered by SLG. The kit is pretty slick and comes with all the drill bits and taps needed for modifying the cover and plugging the factory hole as well as all the necessary AN fittings to install for the new catch can lines.
The other addition was the ignition coils. On the old setup I ran the original 20 year old obd1 coil packs. For the most part they worked just fine but they started showing their age when during an auto-x event they got heat soaked and caused the engine to misfire. Of course I didn't wanna run into that issue again so I either had to get a new set of oem ones or try something else. New set of coils would set me back close to $600 so I looked around to see what else was out there. Well sure enough I noticed quite a few other boosted e36 guys running coils out of a b58. I then came across a company called Tunertech that actually designed a full swap kit with custom brackets to fit the coils in the e36 valve covers and the necessary pigtails to splice into the harness to run em. The main advantages of running these coils were that they produce stronger spark energy over stock, allow you to run a looser spark plug gap resulting in smoother idle and the cost of the coils come in at around half the cost of the stock ones. Because of these advantages I figured it was worth the try. One other thing I really liked was the fact that these brackets position the coils away from the down pipe so I don't have to worry about any wires burning over time.

 
Up next:
Clean and prepare clutch, flywheel, and trans
Wiring for ignition coils
Re fabrication to the down pipe for new turbo

Thanks for all of the detail!!  My garage has no room for a 2 or four post so I've been thinking about a QJ off and on.
You also anticipated my next question about where to actually lift on the e30 with the QJ given the typical abused pinch welds. Much appreciated!

It’s the quick jack 5000TL (110v) So far have had evo x, nb miata & e30 up on it. Nb miata is about the smallest wheelbase I think you could fit with it.
Works well with the e30, I’m lifting off the subframe pinch weld connector area (added “race German” extended plates) & pinch weld under the front of the door.


Once you figure out which liftblocks/orientation works best for the car, setup is a breeze.

They are a little on the cumbersome side for maneuverability, the wheels they have on them are hilariously small - but I really didn’t have the room for a 2 post lift.
these store nicely against my wall on the hooks when not in use. 


super easy setup, bleeding them was kind of annoying as the ATF went everywhere. I opted to use Teflon tape instead of the “updated” pneumatic sealant they provide. (They used to all ship with Teflon tape, but apparently people couldn’t figure out how to tape things and sent it into the pump) 
Here are the 2 locking positions when using the tall blocks
Lowest lock


highest lock

 
these pics are only using the “tall” set of lift blocks, they include both a short/tall set that do have the ability to be stacked together, I don’t do that though 
Because of how they lift, the car will move about 12” front to rear, just something to keep in mind if you don’t have much room in front of/behind the car 
what’s nice is if you plan on the car being up for a while (lol) you can lower the jacks onto the locks and disconnect all the lines 
I waited for a while for these to go on sale and due to some Home Depot shipping mess ups, ended up getting these for like $1200. 
overall I really like them, changing wheels/tires/oil changes/bleeding brakes is all super easy
 

Nice work!
I also noticed the Quickjack (?) in the latest picture. Experience with it so far?