My Garage Imaginarium

this thing is bananas in all the right ways... 

Your garage door is wide enough, right?

If this thing is going to be on track in October I think I need to sign up for that school so I can witness it, just need to fix the heater in my car so it isn't digital anymore for the cooler weather.

Thanks guys! 

adam525i said:

Your garage door is wide enough, right?

If it's not, it's about to be.

Finishing touches. I think I'll paint the airdam kickout bodycolor with some acrylic spraybomb I should have left, and leave the airdam raw/polished.

Love the car but I think my favorite part is the progression of your fabrication skills

Anyone who is scared to pick up a welder and start learning needs to read your thread.  From a few less than stellar MIG welds (no offense) in the beginning to miles of beautiful TIG welds, what an inspiration.  Thanks for sharing the wins and fails too, hard to learn without both.

I hope you look back on the first couple pages from time to time and pat yourself on the back.  Really have nothing constructive to add other than nice work and thanks for taking the time to share.

Thanks! No offense at all, it's not like I meant for any of it to suck, I'm proud of all of it - it's what I could do at the time. Even now, I dream of what I could do if I had a real paint booth and a space where I could fill and sand to my heart's content without worrying about cleaning up dust all the time to not make the garage a complete disaster. Or if I had the time and space to strip the car to a bare shell/bare metal and not work ad-hoc pragmatically. But again, it's what I can do with the limitations I have, and I'm proud of it. It's part of the reason I'm not interested in following unlimited resource builds - they better be flawless. Like this asstastic work I saw on the frame of the Zonda R. They charge millions for this? I have even scarier photos from underneath McLarens.

Anyway, back to my junk, splitter almost ready to go, few more touchups. Need to secure the back of it and then start assembling the car. Need to install the 22ch CAN module for the inputs I moved off the ECU to free up inputs for the DBW. Figuring out dyno time...

Can't win em all. Dyno didn't happen as the car is very grumpy at idle, wouldn't want to idle well below 1700rpm and I thought maybe something's wrong. It turned out that it was my inexperience with aggressive cams and I refused to believe that a garbage idle has to be accepted. Here I thought I had most of EFI figured out but I got a good lesson on injection timing. By drastically delaying the injection timing at low engine speeds, it transformed the way it ran. The way I had it explained to me is that with the epic duration, the amount of overlap means that most of the fuel is getting swirled around and kicked out of the exhaust with overlap, and I'm probably having to drown it in fuel to make it run. It was neat watching the car run richer by doing nothing other than retarding the injection. I got it to idle great at 900-1000 rpm, might even be able to go lower but I'm happy with this. Unfortunately, this meant the dyno day had to be cancelled, and in turn, this weekend's track visit. But I still took it around the block and almost most importantly, I get to make this post, 2 years later. The lead is buried at pic 7. The level of satisfaction is about 11.5. Thanks to all of you for sharing this journey. Hopefully track action comes sooner than later.

Maybe I missed the cam discussion some time back, but I thought cams with a lot of overlap were to be avoided in forced induction engines?  Since the overlap essentially blows the intake right out the exhaust?  

Ian F (Forum Supporter) said:

Maybe I missed the cam discussion some time back, but I thought cams with a lot of overlap were to be avoided in forced induction engines?  Since the overlap essentially blows the intake right out the exhaust?  

Yes and no, like all of this junk, it depends. If you forget the turbo, a boosted engine is just like any other but living in a much denser atmosphere. Even in the ideal world, the pressure it takes to drive the turbo is usually not far from the intake pressure, ie compressor output. So while this remains true, the engine will still benefit from overlap for the same reasons as one without forced induction. Where things get difficult is when the drive pressure starts exceeding the boost pressure, where you start running into and climbing past the wall of efficiency of the turbo and your setup (the limiting factors could be various, from the turbine size, turbine housing size, downpipe and exhaust size, cats, mufflers etc - anything that creates a restriction). When that happens, then the overlap actually ends up hindering the ability to fill the cylinder.

So in my case, the cams are timed to retard the intake 9 degrees and advance the exhaust by 9, which, going by the cam card, results in reduced but not eliminated overlap, and the theory is that with VANOS enabled, which advances the intake 25 degrees, I should be able to have an improved idle from reduced overlap (not enough as I've recently learned) then during high performance mid-range, benefit from overlap, and then VANOS turns off around 5k rpm because based on previous data, my turbo starts to choke around then. Even with a 1.45 hotside housing and a 4" straight through exhaust pipe, around 5k rpm my exhaust pressure starts exceeding boost.

In theory, it should be the best of both worlds. Not as ideal as a more modern motor like the S54 with full control over both cams but should be darn good... we'll see.

Very cool!  I'm surprised how quiet it seems.  Isn't your exhaust just that turbo dump coming off the hood?  Is the gear whine from the transmission?

Nader said:

Very cool!  I'm surprised how quiet it seems.  Isn't your exhaust just that turbo dump coming off the hood?  Is the gear whine from the transmission?

Yup, but the turbo takes a lot of the edge off, makes straight pipe exhaust a lot less obnoxious.

Yeah that's the sound of glorious straight cut gears (except for when I first pull away from the house, that was an angry power steering pump, as it seems I didn't fill the system enough).

Quick update, the parts for everything I want to do this winter are here and I'm so excited that I just can't hide it.

First a gratuitous photoshop goof:

Ordered a VW TPMS setup off Alibaba for 130 bucks shipped, instead of a box of rocks I surprisingly got what looks like a real setup, and so far it even does what it should. Sending it the appropriate messages for it to enable, it reports the expected message with the expected data, but the sensors won't pair and transmit until they see working tire pressure so that step is TBD until I can get the sensors in the wheels. But, so far so good.

"209" is the tire pressure message

Improved Racing has released an adult sized thermostat so I'll add it and an oil cooler back (removed it since my oil was never getting over 80C with the remote drysump tank).

Penskes are on their way to their place of birth for a once-over, maybe some valving changes and droop limiters.

Annnd this finally happened. Full Bosch Motorsport M5 ABS setup

FUHRAZE ONLY

With help from the Bosch dealer and some friends online, I managed to track down the DF11 sensors that the system requires to work that actually came in some flavors of Z3 and E46

I may spend a few more nights sleeping with it and then start the install.

To be continued.

I just want to say this car is what I dream to attain one day in fabrication skills now I just need a car a welder and ton of metal to burn through. You've done a fantastic job at building this absolute monster!

Honda_newb said:

I just want to say this car is what I dream to attain one day in fabrication skills now I just need a car a welder and ton of metal to burn through. You've done a fantastic job at building this absolute monster!

Thank you! As you can see from page 1... all it takes is time while trying more and more things out of your comfort zone.

Holy E36 M3 dude. I'm blown away by this build. Super inspiring for some one like myself.

birdmayne said:

Holy E36 M3 dude. I'm blown away by this build. Super inspiring for some one like myself.

 

Thank you!

Damn son, the hits keep coming!

AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:

Damn son, the hits keep coming!

Haha, thanks for sticking with me for so long, it's been quite the journey! I feel like I owe some of you a shot of my boobs or something.

What a year. We moved to Norcal last year for my work which set off one of the worst experiences of my life revolving around this car.

But first doubling back, we hit the dyno last summer with all the upgrades and hit 1000whp, or 998 if you wanna be a dick about it. The nutty thing is that this was at 26psi, 10 fewer than it needed to reach 920 with the Schrick Sport cams. So I suppose there's something to this cam nonsense after all lol... It would have been more but the accessory belt started failing and got thrown. My tuner noticed it early thankfully, where the water temp suddenly started getting a bit high (still "normal" but my cooling system is gangster, keeping things in check no matter how much power the engine makes, so if it starts climbing at all something is very wrong). My guess is that this is due to the fact that it turns out the belt I ordered was a bit long. I have underdrive pulleys except the alternator, which doesn't make a big difference and while the belt normally never rubbed it was probably enough slack to cause it to jump a rib (and only one edge of the belt was damaged).

Anyway, that was overall a huge success, everything worked great and the car makes more power at much less boost with ease. And it looks cooler than ever. Compilation of some IG videos the shop guys took:

In the next installment... the US government tells me that the only way my car can ever enter the United States is with a temporary bond and then return, which was bullE36 M3.

BigD said:

 

In the next installment... the US government tells me that the only way my car can ever enter the United States is with a temporary bond and then return, which was bullE36 M3.

I swear I saw this thing at PRI in 2018 or 19? Or are they telling you that you cant bring it to the US permenately? 

metty said:

BigD said:

 

In the next installment... the US government tells me that the only way my car can ever enter the United States is with a temporary bond and then return, which was bullE36 M3.

I swear I saw this thing at PRI in 2018 or 19? Or are they telling you that you cant bring it to the US permenately? 

Yep you did, in 2018, with the old body:

PRI was also when I wasn't living in the US, so they didn't care as obviously the car was coming back. So that's why I thought they don't care about racecars and it's like me taking my appliance with me to my new home. Turns out not true... I'll write about it a bit later as it was a whole epic horror story that does have a happy ending, and a bit of foreshadowing of what was involved:

"it's just an E30 325..."

Hahaha. 

You should find a pretty decent track or two in northern CA.  Were I still in that neck of the woods, I would definitely make a point of sniffing this car's exhaust.

rustomatic said:

You should find a pretty decent track or two in northern CA.  Were I still in that neck of the woods, I would definitely make a point of sniffing this car's exhaust.

Yeah there are quite a few awesome ones "nearby" (as far as racetrack proximity goes). Sonoma is an hour away, Laguna Seca 2h, Thunderhill 2.5.