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Ke70Daves New Euro Toy


ke70dave

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  • 1 month later...

Well Merry Christmas and happy new year to all!

So good news, i got a work ute! company car that i can drive anywhere. so the BMW is off daily work duties. It did 12000km in 10weeks and not a single issue. not bad eh!

Few weeks ago i picked up set of oem wheels. They are 14x6 and slightly better offset than the steelies. i gave them a coat of paint and i reckon they are a big improvement. 

They have some sort of bridgestone tyre on them. Certainly a considerable improvement over the chinesium tyres that were on it. 

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I did develop a bit of a driveline vibration. I changed the support bearing on the driveshaft that seems to fixed it mostly. Wasnt too bad of a job, but  its never much fun climbing under the car...

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Now the wife bought me a 3d printer for xmas, probably one of the coolest toys ive played with in a while. very cool thing. I took no time in printout a toyota logo. 

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Once i had fgured out the settings on the thing i eventually modelled up a proper gauge holder for my water temp gauge. turned out quite good i think!

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I am still working out the settings. its a trade off between print quality and print time. You can reduce it to 0.1mm layer height and it looks great, but it takes hours to print. 

Alternatively you can print it quite course, and then just hit it with some primer/putty and paint to smooth it out. I probably should paint the parts anyway as currently i'm printing in PLA which is the easiest to print for a beginner but it doesn't have the best UV resistance.

Next projets on the car will be:

- 3d print a cup holder for the beema!
- Replace the front castor bushes (in the mail)
- do something about that megasquirt that is sitting in a box in the garage
- I'm on the lookout for a decent aftermarket steering wheel. I think id like one of the classic momo leather motorsport wheels. Ill keep my eye open for one.
-save up and buy an LSD

Edited by ke70dave
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A factory LSD was the best mod I ever did in my AE86. Not one of the aftermarket this way, that way jobs. It was already good, but it just transformed it in that seat of the pants way of things. 

How much are the consumables for the printer. Is it like with an inkjet where you pay not much for the printer, but zillions for the cartridges?

And when do you print your first gun?

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Yah the factory e30 lsd is considered  to be very good. Theres a guy down  the gold coast that does bmw lsds for about $1000. Comes in any ratio of your choice  and a warranty. Gotta Save my pennies!

Consumables for 3d printer are suprisingly affordable.  Its about $30 for 1kg roll. Which  sounds expensive but that gauge pod thing is like 15grams. The software  is cool in that it makes sections of the model  honeycomb to reduce material usage.

Edited by ke70dave
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  • 3 weeks later...

Right well today was a fun day. Made me this!

Megasquirt 2 on a diydave custom  loom. For those of you following along this time last year i tried and failed  with the haltech e8. Turned out the haltech was faulty and i gave up. 

Picked up this MS from my mate who ive known for yrs. This exact MS is the one i heloed tune prolly 10yrs ago now. It was sitting around amd i decided it needed a new home. 

I originally anticipted making an adaptor loom fpr the stock loom but it turns out this engine actually runs batch fire injection! Batch! 

So rather than try and and mod it i made my own loom with a semisequential setup. 

As of this arvo the tps , coolant temp, intake temp and all the injectors are done and have been bench tested  using the inbuilt testing in the MS.

Im going to make a second loom that will include the ignition wires, CAS and wide band. 

I dunno when ill get actually get it installed but there is some progress happening:D

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Well more progress was made today. 

I decided to join a wire to every  pin including all spares to make it easier to add stuff  in the future.  Tested the fuel pump output  and it seems to work. 

All that is left is to add in the CAS wiring. I think ill go to jaycar and buy some microphone cable for the cas. Seems to be the go. 

The grey casing of the db37 is a reaaaally tight squeeze. Im away for work this week  so i might use my down time to design somethhng  better and then 3d print it next weekend. 

Then its just a matter of putting my wideband  back in and wiring in the power and ground on the loom. And adding a bit morw loom tube where required.  

But that might have to wait till next weekend. 

 

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  • 1 month later...

thanks matty.

Well update is, I finished the loom and it is all tested, all the injectors work and all the sensor connections - tps, coolant temp, air temp all work. 

I wired in the CAS wiring using some microphone cable from Jaycar. I connected it up to the CAS on the engine and the CAS works and gives the correct RPM. so i got the CAS settings correct. Its a late model CAS and the early engine doesnt use it so i can start the engine on old ECU to test the CAS.

I have made a little diy fuse and relay box, even 3D printed up a holder for all 3 relays (no photo unfortunately). It should work out quite well. I tried to use the stocko wiring but its just too old school and the relays are all genuine BMW things, which admitedly will probably never break, but if they do.....they are very expensive. so im using automotive relays from Jaycar, which may not last as long (10yrs vs 30yrs), but they are cheap to replace. 

I have put 3 relays in, fuel pump, EFI (ecu and injetors) and wide band 02 sensor. little fuse box thing has 5 fuses i think couple of spares for anything else i want to wire in....

After looking at your spot liight install i might install some myself...

And this all happened 4 weeks ago and nothing has happened since. little fella is growing up fast and im currently working in lismore...

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 months later...

Ah I didn't see your message there mate. what do you mean by that? I think they have both normally on and normally off contacts. I intend on using them  as normally off. 

Nothing to report at all really, car has hardly been driven in 6 months, maybe 400km max.  However i've just been made redundant from  this job at  lismore (as  its basically finished). So last weekend I dug out the car and got it ready for daily duties again.  (work ute gone!).

I'm not sure if i mentioned it previously but i have had some tailshaft issues. I started to develop a vibration between 2000-3000rpm before christmas last year. over christmas i installed a new centre support bearing and rubber bush. Which unfortunately didnt really help. The old one didn't look that bad but i replaced it anyway. 

Fast forward to about a month ago and i decided to remove the tailshaft and take it to get balanced. Hardy spicer in Eagle farm did  the balancing. it was out of balance a bit, so they balanced it. Put it back into the car two  weeks ago and the vibration  was still there! Though much reduced. 

Started reading on the internets and they mentioned the idea of putting preload on the centre support bearing. Sure enough i dug out the workshop manual for the bmw and it mentions that once you put the tail shaft in, you push the center support bearing slightly forward (~5mm) then tighten up the hold down bolts on the center support bearing.

Vibration gone! Its always the smallest of things.  

So gave it a wash, put armor all on all the exterior plastic to make it look good for another few weeks, and it even got a vaccum. Took it for a fairly long drive up and down the highway and it just pured along like it should. never driven better to be honest. great fun.

With the loss of job i think  purchases will  be limited for a while. Shock absorbers are definately next on the list, but they are fine for now. Fronts are definitely worn, rears seem to be passable for the time being. 

Megasquirt loom might have to come out of the cardboard box and actually be installed one of these days...

I am looking for any work....so if anyone knows anything...Brisbane Southside.

 

 

 

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

ok updates! Got a new job in brisbane, 9-5 no more living away from home!

In my 1 week off i got the megasquirt installed, running and quite well tuned.

I purchased tuner studio for the auto tune feature which turned out to be incredible. worked very well. 

I used an m20b25 map that i found somewhere. Engine started 2nd go and after about 1hr of driving around on the auto tune we had a tune that is quite good. I have been working on the acceleration enrichment lately which is a bit more tricky but seems to be working well. Cold start needs some work too but it generally starts first time, it just needs some acceleration to keep it going. I am not running any sort of idle control at all so that doesnt help. Might have to try and implement something one day. Once it has been running for 20seconds id idles perfectly at ~900rpm. 

I have only got it running on fuel at the moment, hoping to go to the wreckers on saturday and get the bits anmd pieces to run the commondore v6 coils. 

Over 300kms of driving i have gotten 9.8L/100km fuel economy. Probably half highway and half hooning about in high load areas. So i think we are in for some very good economy.

Engine driveability is much improved, drives like a different car really.

Downside is my AC has stopped working. Looks like all my gas has leaked out somewhere....

 

 

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  • 2 months later...

Well its amazing how time flies. 

Not going to lie, done nothing to this car apart from driven it 300km/week without an issue...

I've done some refining of the tune but to be honest i think ive gotten it pretty damn good (fuel only at this stage). My record fuel economy is 8.7L/100km now which is slightly better than i had gotten wtih OEM. I reckon i can afford to remove some more fuel on cruise but for now its fine. 

My brother drive the car the other day and he coudlnt find any hickups in the tune, so ill call it good for the time being. 

Littleredspirit was kind enough to post me an AU falcon idle air control valve, same as he used on his 2azfe. Ive got the fittings for that but i still havent had a change to install it yet. I also bought a set of LS1 coils to wire in. 8 coils for $60. bargain. 

Ive just bought myself a 2003 impreza as a daily drive, so once i pick that up i will have the ability to do some significant work on the ol' bmw. My wiring install needs some tidying up and the coils and idle control valve installed. 

Hoping to sort out an LSD and suspension in the near future. Though painting the car is likely to be up there too (mainly cause its quite cheap compared to buying parts...)

And i'm having thoughts of adding a turbo....but thats a while off id say. 

As suspected life is getting in the way of playing with cars....

 

 

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  • 4 months later...

Right well another 4 months goes by.  A big 4 months in bmw world. 

In about November i was given the approval from the minister of finance to purchase some new suspension. 

I had of course been researching suspension for years....

The design brief was quite simple for suspension. good enough to go well on the track, but soft enough to still drive nicely around the streets. A bit lower but height adjustment not necessary. It was always a question of Koni vs bilstein. Both being comparible in price (about ~$1k  a set). but the koni were adjustable. Koni are also a twin tube design which are technically not as quick to react as the mono tube would be less harsh because of this. Littleredspirit on here has been advocating konis for years so i took the plunge. 

Ended up buying a set of koni adjustables from GSA suspension in Spingwood. they were comparable in price to anywhere i could find. I put the konis in with the oem springs at first, but immediately realised they were not suited. just not stiff enough. The suspension was very over damped and made for a horrible ride. 

For springs I didnt know what to get, but a set of king springs popeed up for very cheap. I rang king springs and the rates are about twice as much as standard. Which was about what i wanted. threw them in and it made a world of difference. Extremely fun to drive now. Just dives into corners and is not much less comfortable than standard. its sporty for sure, but it passes the "can i drove holding a coffee" test fine. 

then in the Christmas break i also purchased a set of wheels. I had been researching wheels for years as well.  I was almost going to buy a set of wheels from USA, but then these really cool German wheels turned up. they are "EXIP" brand, which as far as i can tell is a German brand that was an aftermarket option for the bmw back in the day. these were made in 1987 so period correct. They have been refurbished very recently and are dead straight. They are 15x7 +25 so are basically the perfect size for the e30 (correct centre bore too, which is rare outside e30 specific wheels). So here is the car rocking its new suspension and wheels. the tyres on them are just normal tyres, but pretty good, next on the list is some semi slicks.

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So onto the next Christmas project. LS1 coils. I made this bracket to mount the LS1 coils. 6 of them, and they are running in wasted spark. Hooked them up to the mega squirt and it immediately started and idled. So i now have full control of ignition advance. and a shit load of spark power to make it happen. These coils and ignition control has again transformed the engine. it is incredibly smooth and i have been slowly teaching myself to tune the ignition. Ive done about 1000km. My WOT area is quite conservative. I will get it dyno tuned in the next few weeks hopefully. the actual installation is not the neatest as you can see. the coils are currently tucked in behind the headlight. I have a battery box that i intend on putting the battery into the boot with. then the coils will go where the battery is. I designed the wiring so that i can easily change it. 

you will also see the AU falcon idle air control valve installed on the rocker cover. This was a fun project. but the idle up is now working perfect. idles up to around 1200 when cold and drops down to 900 when hot. Was alot of trial and error to get the valve to "catch" the engine as the revs dropped without it feeling it was holding the revs up. Its proabbly needs more fidling but its alot better than what i was (no idle control valve.....)

Anyway that is the end of the mods for the time being. Have to wait a few months before i will be granted any more money for sill cars!! (got to paint the house in the back ground....)

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