I still can’t believe you bought this.
Coming along. Great work!
The guy who I bought this car from had an e30 that he put a 350. It also went 13.9 @ 100, heh.
A few big updates. I didn’t like how my wire tuck was going, so I re-did it, running all of the wires in behind the dash, and using factory grommets by the fuse block. Much better :tup:
Here is how it was. Even though the harness was extended and run along the fender, it still had a bunch of wires:
And here is after (sort of. That one wire holding the rest of the harness is gone now). This is where the main harness was coming through before. Now I need to plug this hole with a new grommet:
This whole harness was removed, and 90% of it was deleted entirely, as it was the factory engine harness:
Lastly, you can see where the wires come up behind the fuse box, on the driver’s side of the engine bay:
I am waiting to loom the wire, until I verify that everything works properly.
I also washed the car to test for leaks and see how the paint is. The car leaks at the tail light seals, which I guess is a pretty common problem, but that was the only leaks anywhere. The paint cleaned up really nice too, and even took kindly to some clay bar and wax :tup:
Huge thanks to Travis for coming with today, and helping me out getting it to and from the inspection facility. I ended up renting a Penske 16’ box truck and car mover for $76, after Gates Automotive quoted me $297 plus tax to get it there. Penske was wonderful, and the trailer was really good, so I highly recommend going there for anyone who is in a similar situation to this.
The inspection was very throughough, the officer spent about 45 minutes or so going over all of the VIN numbers, and I assume checking it against a database. He was under the car with a mirror and light reading VINS, etc… But, he came out, said we were all set, and the title will arrive in a week or two. He also joked and said “you don’t see too many BMWs come through here with Ford motors”, and chuckled. Definitely a cool dude.
So, now I wait a week or two, and then this thing can actually come out and play :tup:
Glad that worked out :tup:
Any plans to take this to NYI?
I sure hope so! Now that I can get it on the road legally in a week or two, I want to put some mileage on it and just make sure it’s safe, and then I’ll definitely be taking it to NYI. I just want to make sure she’s going to hold together going 100+ :tup:
Things have been going great over the past month or so. The car is driving great, and I started to do some tuning. It’s currently making ~ 6 psi at 70% throttle in 2nd and 3rd gear, and holding quite rich at high 10:1 / low 11:1 afr. Now that I verified it has enough fuel (it’s only going to like 20% duty cycle), I am going to start doing some WOT logging, see where the afr is at, and lean it out to high 11’s, low 12’s. Then, I will probably up to the boost a little bit, to 10 - 15 psi. I don’t’ want to go much past that without having it on a dyno, but it should hold strong. People are going 12’s and 11’s on the stock motor here, it’s a VERY strong iron block.
I guess I can take it to 7k pretty easily, but that is when people start to see failures under power, so I am going to set the soft limit to 6,400 and the hard limit at 6,800, so that I don’t stress the motor any more than I have too.
I have quite a few miles on it now though, and no smoking, no leaks, no drips, no overheating :tup:
:tup:
A Truck and Trailer for $76…? That’s damn good. I need to get my MR2 to a shop sans motor. I may check into this now…
I’m also reading into how to tune my boost with the variable vane controller, and it’s really neat. Basically, the AR is very small (not exactly sure, but could be as small as .14) at normal setting, which is for extremely fast spool. Then, as boost goes up, the boost pressure opens up the actuator that pushes the variable vane open all the way, which makes the AR huge. This on my car, will probably limit boost, but on larger displacement cars makes them pull like a train up top, without giving up bottom end spool.
I have a simple boost controller in-line here, so I am going to start adjusting that to set my boost. I should be able to find a sweet spot of spool and boost where the car is fun, but not crazy.
I then have a second boost controller which goes to a open atmosphere wastegate, but I have not heard it open yet. I assume that is set for something higher, like 14 psi or so (I’ll actually have to test that theory at some point), but that is my failsafe for not blowing the motor with too much boost. It’s quite interesting the more that I read up on it, and there are some Supra guys who are doing this, and having GREAT results. I would never see it, with my small displacement, but they are seeing upwards of 900 hp with this turbo, on their motors and high boost. I bet I could squeeze out 400 if I wanted :tup:
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Oh yeah, and it looks half-ways decent too!
How do you like tuning with megasquirt?
Seemed really nice when turbociv had it on his BMW.
I’ve been doing it since like 2006, so I’m really comfortable with it now. I just wish the actual loading of the software wasn’t so clunky. You have to get matching versions of the Megasquirt software for the version of the tune on the car. It can get confusing. For tuning though, it’s great. I do a lot of logging and post-analysis tuning for in-boost, but for vacuum and normal driving tuning, I plug in my AFR targets, and let autotune do it’s magic.
I’m sure you can go crazy with it with features, but when it comes to basic tuning, a standard VE table with fuel for editing is just so nice.
Why was that type of inspection required?
Definitely a swap you don’t hear of everyday! Cool car!
what do you mean loading of the software? the firmware flashing? theres a new loader out with the newest firmware. and actually a new beta firmware out tonight for ms2 … it takes all of about 3 minutes to upload and saves calibrations now… so load firmware, update tune and away you go… ive actually been helping test all the beta stuff the past year or so, i found alot of bugs, but the latest is the best ive used yet… do you use tunerstudio or megatune? megatune just makes it look sooo bad, tunerstudio atleast had 3d fuel, spark and timing maps… its worth the money to upgrade… but this cars awesome, i was trying to get a buddy to buy it…
The car had a rebuilt salvage title from Ohio, so to get it registered in NY, it had to get a rebuilt salvage title for NY. To do this, you have to go through the NYS salvage inspection, which checks the car over for stolen parts via VIN number registries. The nice thing is that once it gets this once, it’s good forever in NYS.
All of the XML files have to match up the Megatune software with the firmware you are using. If you upgrade firmwares, you have to upgrade XML file. If you don’t know what firmware you are running, it makes this very difficult, and you may have to translate your whole tune over by hand, to a known firmware.
Mainstream tuning sotware packages like AEM or HPTuners aren’t like this, and it just works.
Seems like a cool little project for very little investment…can’t go wrong there…
So did RPS help you out with the BOV spring or did you have to swap to a Tial BOV?
If you have the newest(up to date) version of tunerstudio it can detect and pick the correct files for you.
ya deffinatly, megatune is like trying to use dos for shit, tunerstudio is a million times better. is this ms1 or ms2? ms1 is a lost cause, its good for a starter setup but once you figure out how much it doesnt do, the 100 bucks for an ms2 chip is nothing… or 200 for ms3 and 100 for the expander board…lol… sorry to go off topic again, but most of the people who dont like ms are still stuck back in the megatune days… or worse the old b&g code days… i honestly tried MT for about an hour, and went right to TS back a few years ago when i started messing with these…
I use MS2e, MS1 ran alright, but MS2 was better. I’d like to go 3+3x, I setup my waste spark system so it would be easy to convert to full COP, injectors would need to be rewired, but that’s not too bad.