KaiserRolls

Where should we send the Culver’s gift cards? 

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. 
 

 

 
 
 

I bit the bullet and had Partee Racing do the bottom end as well.  Shipped the heads back to Partee Racing for them to assemble the motor. High compression pistons, Arrow rods, all new everything.  Almost ready to throw it into the wagon!

Rally road has something similar to that I had considered getting. I decided against it though after seeing the amount of success guys were having with just epoxying in a new oem one. I personally haven't found anybody mention anything about the epoxied in oem ones failing. 

Fish tank mod 

Well I reached the point where I figured it was time to roll the car into the shop. As any car that's been sitting in storage for a year it was quite dusty/dirty so I gave it a good spray down with the pressure washer before rolling it in.

I dug into the re wiring required for the new coils. The pigtails sent with the swap brackets come with matching colored wires with the old connectors for the original coils so splicing them in was pretty straight forward.

Before cutting the old pigtails off I got that part of the harness laid out on the valve cover to see what I would need for lengths.

New pigtails soldered and heat shrank on

Ordered some 1/4 inch wire wrap with an assortment of shrink tube to clean everything up.

Only thing left is to adjust the dwell timing for the new coils in tuner-studio.
On to the next big task. So I decided it was time to move on from the holset and get something that would give me a bit more flow and better response. After spending a lot of time researching options and what would fit my setup best I landed on going with a PSR5855G from pulsar. It is essentially a clone of a Garrett G30-770. Now typically for this motor, this size turbo would be a bit on the small side but being that I don't plan to surpass 500 whp with this car I figured it would be perfect. I also had them do the t51r mod to the compressor housing right away. Looking forward to the added turbo sounds that will bring.

Next thing was to address another issue I was having on my old setup. Boost creep. Although these rapidspool manifolds fit pretty nice and make for a clean look in the engine bay, their design with the wastegate location was sub par. On the original setup I wasn't seeing it to bad, maybe 2 or 3 psi of creep at the worst but that was on low boost (8 psi). I feared with the new setup and plans of turning it up quite a bit more that it would get worse. Instead of spending more money on a different manifold I chose to reuse this manifold and run the wastegate right of the turbine housing as there is no better location for boost control.
(pic of the old setup and waste gate location)

So without further a do I had my buddy swing by with his much better tig welding skills and lend me a hand. Started on getting the down pipe adapted to the v band flange for the new turbine housing. Used one of the old cylinder heads I had laying around as a spot for supporting the manifold.

Waste gate pipe was cut back to the flange and capped off.

While he was working on that I switched over and worked on getting the freshly cleaned flywheel, clutch and trans installed.

Before I dropped the engine in the car I wanted to get the Jesus bolt torqued down. Found some scrap steel laying around that I was able to drill out to fit the harmonic balancer hub. With my buddy there welding on the manifold I had him quick weld it to some rebar for a handle and voila! We did end up sliding a cheater bar over the rebar to add extra leverage. For a quick thrown together tool it worked awesome for holding the hub to get to that 300 ft lbs.


With that in we got the manifold bolted up and figured out our new placement of the wastegate.
Cast iron drills much easier then I expected.

Although it drills easy, it is not so easy to weld. In order to avoid cracking the housing from the stress of the weld we  first needed to heat up the entire housing with an acetylene torch to roughly 600 degrees.


After the welding was complete we wrapped the housing in a turbo blanket as an insulating barrier and monitored it with a temp gun to make sure it was cooling down slowly as letting it cool down too quick can also potentially cause stress cracks.

It was now time to pipe the waste gate. I personally really liked the much more mellow sound of the wastegate recirc'd back into the exhaust pipe for a street car vs just dumping it out the bottom somewhere. Luckily enough we were able to reuse most of the old wastegate pipe to route it back into the exhaust. Overall, I was pretty happy with the results and look forward to many boost creep free pulls in the future!

I also went ahead and had a elbow welded on to the compressor housing. My original plan was to run a silicone elbow there but with the smaller frame on this turbo, the elbow was touching the manifold and I feared it would melt it.

To keep engine bay temps down I got a new turbo blanket that better fits this housing and drilled a 2 inch hole in it to accommodate for the wastegate flange. Rest of the down pipe I wrapped with some heat wrap.
After wrapping this up I got all my an lines made up for the oil drain and cooling lines and installed them right away. Being that this turbo was ball bearing it meant I now had to run water to keep it cool. Ran the water inlet off the third port on the cylinder head next to the Coolant temp sensor. I chose to run the water outlet down into the block drain port.

Moved on to the intake side of things. Got the harness back into the car and hooked all up. As for the intake manifold I chose to use some plastic epoxy on the IAC port underneath so I didn't have to worry about that causing a leak.

Manifold is in and everything hooked up underneath. Also got the shifter linkage, driveshaft reinstalled and clutch pedal bled.

Fuel stuff showing up early this week. Lots of other little things to run and tighty up but the to do list is getting shorter!
 

Is your ODO broken? 

Is your ODO broken? 

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

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

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 

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. 
IMG_6467.MOV

IAT bung welded up
new AEM filter that isn’t a cone shape so it fits better

wired up the MS3 pigtails for the WBo2 signal and the IAT. Dropped the 2017 battery in the car and hooked up the MS3 to the laptop. Before turning the key I removed the fuel pump relay. Key on and we’re live 
i bought this MS3 back in like 2017, so needless to say I had to update stuff a few times ha. Firmware updates wiped some oem temp sensor calibrations so had to re-enter the coolant temp, IAT was no big deal as I’m using a GM sensor and would’ve changed it anyway.
-Calibrated TPS, changed to GM IAT, added values for stock CTS, switched to wbo2

I was going to continue on, but the battery voltage was dropping fairly fast, so I wanted to get a few cranks in to get some oil moved around. It quickly dropped to around 7 volts and wouldn’t really take a charge. Bought a new agm battery a day later, have that on the tender for now. Pulled the oil filter cap off and it was full of oil, will probably do some more priming before putting the fuel pump relay back in. Can probably remove the stock O2 relay now too  
next up is to jump into the reqfuel & injector settings as I’m running some EV14 380cc (36lb) injectors - when I bought them 3 years ago 380cc was the smallest they offered, now they offer 315cc (30lb)
after that’s adjusted can probably attempt a first start. Once it’s idling I can then verify/set base timing. Bought a LS(?) plug wire to use as an extension to go from coil pack to spark plug so I can grab cyl1 signal. 
 
assuming that goes smoothly I can drop the radiator in and get PS/coolant bled and go for a first drive 

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

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

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 

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. 
IMG_6467.MOV

IAT bung welded up
new AEM filter that isn’t a cone shape so it fits better

wired up the MS3 pigtails for the WBo2 signal and the IAT. Dropped the 2017 battery in the car and hooked up the MS3 to the laptop. Before turning the key I removed the fuel pump relay. Key on and we’re live 
i bought this MS3 back in like 2017, so needless to say I had to update stuff a few times ha. Firmware updates wiped some oem temp sensor calibrations so had to re-enter the coolant temp, IAT was no big deal as I’m using a GM sensor and would’ve changed it anyway.
-Calibrated TPS, changed to GM IAT, added values for stock CTS, switched to wbo2

I was going to continue on, but the battery voltage was dropping fairly fast, so I wanted to get a few cranks in to get some oil moved around. It quickly dropped to around 7 volts and wouldn’t really take a charge. Bought a new agm battery a day later, have that on the tender for now. Pulled the oil filter cap off and it was full of oil, will probably do some more priming before putting the fuel pump relay back in. Can probably remove the stock O2 relay now too  
next up is to jump into the reqfuel & injector settings as I’m running some EV14 380cc (36lb) injectors - when I bought them 3 years ago 380cc was the smallest they offered, now they offer 315cc (30lb)
after that’s adjusted can probably attempt a first start. Once it’s idling I can then verify/set base timing. Bought a LS(?) plug wire to use as an extension to go from coil pack to spark plug so I can grab cyl1 signal. 
 
assuming that goes smoothly I can drop the radiator in and get PS/coolant bled and go for a first drive 

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. 
IMG_6467.MOV

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. 

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. 
IMG_6467.MOV

Still waiting... Recycled pics from last year.

Poked around a bit on Sunday, everything is hooked up in the engine bay now(other than radiator), just need to have the IAT bung welded up to the intake tube
Here’s a better pic of the duct routing for the intake 
TBD if it will help or not, they’re fairly tight bends - eventually will add a ‘heat shield’ of sorts along the drivers side frame rail to block what heat I can coming off the rad
Added oil & PS fluid, brake fluid level is good, getting closer to hitting the key & finding out if I screwed anything up

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
 

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