I'll try to remember to take a pic. I really wanted those BW Group N mounts and was totally bummed to hear they were out of stock till September.
I've heard good things about the AKG mounts tho, they don't seem to have the stud snapping issue the Vorshlag mounts have.
PM you address and I will send you my mounts. Just buy me a set when they are available.
I will try to get them out your way today depending on how late I get home.
Appreciate it, but I already have a set of the AKG mounts on their way to me. At this point I'll just run them. Several friends have them in their race cars and haven't had any issues with them.
Next Friday/Saturday will be a big wrenching day for me, as all the parts are due to show up Wednesday/Thursday.
Need to install the water pump, radiator, fan shroud, electric fan conversion kit, fill and burp the coolant system and replace the motor mounts.
Going to try and have as little coolant in the system as possible while still having enough to protect the motor against freezing temps. I still have a 50/50 mix in the block, which usually holds more than the radiator/expansion tank does.
So I figure if I fill up completely with distilled water now I should be at a 70/30 water/coolant mix and that should be ok. Thoughts?
Sounds good. If you change your mind let me know.
As for the coolant. I run just distilled water with one bottle of water wetter. The ww is mostly for added lubrication than anything.
Given your location, I would add some coolant.
I missread your coolant question.
Yes, just refill with distilled water. The block holds a lot of coolant so you should be ok.
Good. I debated draining the block and using all water and water wetter, but then in the Fall I'd have to drain all of it and put in some coolant.
A friend is telling me to go with the Evans waterless stuff but I don't know if I want to deal with all the work of draining the block and totally flushing it out.
Had a little bit of time this afternoon and decided to work on what I could until the parts arrived. That basically means getting the car ready to replace the motor mounts.
So there are two 17mm nuts on each motor mount, one on the bottom and one on the top. You get at both using a wooble and extensions. Had a tough time getting my socket off the bottom nut on the passenger side, it got jammed against the subframe.
I couldn't get the top drivers side nut out, since the stud is broken. I figure when I lift the engine, it'll lift right up and out.
Then it was time to remove the upper strut brace, which is 4 8mm allen head bolts, then the lower X brace, which is 4 13mm bolts and two 16mm bolts. I always put the bolts back in their respective holes, that way I don't lose them and I know where they go.
The X brace is a nice piece of kit and quite a bit heavier than I expected.
I thought about removing the water pump but decided against it just in case coolant started to drool out. Didn't want it dropping on my Cayenne that I park underneath the M3.
Next up, parts delivery. Supposed to be receiving the AKG Motorsports motor mounts on Tuesday and the rest of the cooling system parts the next day.
Well, big pile of boxes has arrived. Tomorrow is ground zero for installation. Will be installing AKG Poly motor mounts, Stewart water pump, new radiator shroud, CSF Racing all aluminum radiator and an electric fan conversion. Plus the obvious filling and burping of the cooling system.
OK, got to work today. First thing was the motor mounts. Luckily I have a 4 post lift, so this wasn't too much of a PITA. I used my large jackstand with a piece of wood on it to lift the motor so I could swap out the mounts.
Turns out the stud wasn't broken on that one mount, but the base plate where the stud threads into was all boogered up and it wouldn't tighten and hold torque. This is Vorshlag's "old" design, so maybe their new updated design would've kept this from happening? Not sure. They're out of stock on the updated design anyways, so no go for me.
New AKG mount
AKG wants 35 ft lbs of torque, I was able to get on all the nuts except the top passenger nut to torque them to spec. Just couldn't get the wooble/socket to sit square on that top passenger one, so its tight, just not sure the torque spec.
Next up was going after the water pump. Remember to break free the water pump pulley bolts before you take off the belt, without the belt tension, you're not going to loosen them.
Then pop off the belts, remove the thermostat housing and use two of the thermostat housing bolts to thread into the old water pump and tighten the bolts to pull off the water pump, after you've removed the 4 nuts holding the water pump in place.
The new Stewart pump is gold baby, gold! Couldn't see anywhere that the bearing was marked, sorry Slippery! Gotta swap them fast, coolant comes pouring out of the water pump hole if you haven't drained the block, which I didn't. So new pump in place, thermostat housing back in place.
Belts are back on, and the Bimmerworld electric fan kit comes with this cool cap for the water pump snout. Remember this is a left hand thread...
Time to mock up where I want the electric Spal fan to sit. I used my old broken radiator shroud here. I ended up moving the fan up a bit as there's a hose that runs along the bottom of the radiator shroud that goes into the bottom of the overflow bottle and I didn't want to hit it.
Bimmerworld is using a Spal slim line fan, plenty of space between it and the pulleys/belts.
I used the push pins Bimmerworld supplied to tack the fan to the radiator. Then I routed the upper and lower overflow hoses through the new fan shroud and got it into the bay. Then I dropped the new radiator/fan assembly into place and locked it down.
Next up was fighting the shroud and overflow bottle into place. Man, that sucked! Finally got everything lined up and tightened down. The old plastic push pins wouldn't fit through the upper mounts of the CSF radiator, the holes on the CSF radiator were too big. So I resorted to zip ties, should be fine. I also cut a relief into the fan shroud for the Spal wiring harness, it comes out the passenger side in front of the overflow bottle.
Here it is all back together again.
All I have left to do is wire up the Spal fan and fill/bleed the system. Unfortunately I need to source a few diodes and now that Radio Shack is gone, there's no place in town for me to buy them. So I'll have to order them off Amazon and finish up next Friday.
I need the diodes as I need to tap into the fan switch wiring to trigger the Spal fan. There are low and high temp wires, problem is, if you tap into the low temp wire (which I want to do to control temps and also let the Spal fan pop on with the A/C) the Spal fan will cycle off when the high temp limit is reached.
I don't want that, I want the Spal fan on from low temp threshold and stay on until the low temp threshold drops off again.
So I need to tap both the low and high temp signal wires and the diodes will keep the signal seperate for the ECU.
I'll try and run the rest of the wiring this weekend, so power, ground, switched power, etc. Everything but the trigger wire....
F'ing Photobucket, you suck!
Ok, got the diodes from Amazon and finished up wiring the electric fan conversion and went to start filling/burping the radiator. Except I see a whole bunch of fluid running down the left side. Where's that coming from?
Turn the car off, lift it into the air and find out that the clamp on the lower radiator hose has slipped half off. Ok, fix that, then refill. Went though the bleed process, much to my delight my electric fan comes on, so I did the wiring correctly, hooray!
Got lots of air out, hot air through the vents. Noticed that my stock electric front pusher fan didn't come on though, which is should of with the new rear puller fan. Awesome.
Waited for the car to cool off, topped off the coolant in the tank and did another heat cycle. Still no front pusher fan action and I replaced it already, so its brand new.
Time to check the fuse for it and see if it popped for some reason, then start checking the wiring to it....
Ok, turns out I had the diodes wired in series and I should've put them inline with the temp triggers and than the outputs of the diodes should've gone to the Spal trigger wire.
Right now I've reverted the wiring back to stock and tapped the Spal fan into the stock low temp wire. I wanted to do that to see if the front pusher fan would come on.
It does, both come on at the low temp threshold and I can trigger both with the AC. Now I have to decide whether its worth my time to go and deal with this a third time to wire in the diodes so the Spal will come on at the low temp threshold but stay on when the high temp threshold is hit.
I suspect I don't need to, as the front pusher will go to "High" when the high temp threshold is hit and bring the temps down to the point where the Spal will then kick on and take care of the rest.
Thoughts? Am I being lazy and I should do it? Anyone reading this besides Slippery? :-)
Let's try this Photoberkit hosting thing. Below is how I originally had the diodes wired. I had them correctly oriented and on each trigger wire.
Where I messed up is that both diode outputs should've gone just to the grey trigger wire for the Spal. In other words, I shouldn't have linked the Spal trigger wire back in line with both the fan switch trigger wires...
Well, shoot. If I paste the Amazon link into the photo part it doesn't show the photo. If I put it in the link part it just shows the link.
So how do I actually get the Amazon Prime service to show the photo here?
Hit the track yesterday, only the second time this season. Had just put the car back together again. I'd been having problems with the low speed fan relay, it wasn't making good contact.
I'd take it out, clean it, test it and everything would be good. Then the front pusher fan wouldn't work.
Think I have the front pusher fan working, go out on track. Session over, come in, notice the front fan not working. Clean relay, stick it back in, front fan works. Rinse, later, repeat.
Finally at the end of the day the I notice the relay is blazing hot. Ok, time for a new relay!
Good news is the rear puller fan kept things under control and despite it being 90-95 degrees out my water temps never went over 215-220, so I'm really happy about that.
One of my grill kidney's popped out on track, so the car looks like its doing a farmer blow right now.
Gotta get a new set and a new relay. Car performed well, I liked having the Traqmate, it lets you know if you're ahead of your best lap so you can keep pushing.
Ended up going 1.4 seconds faster, which made me somewhat happy. I'm still 2 seconds off of where I want to be though.
These Toyo RR tires are fairly sticky but compared to a Hoosier R7 they're giving up at least 2-3 seconds. I'd say they're a stickier DE tire than a Nitto NT01-Toyo RA1 but they're not really a competition tire unless they're the Spec tire for the class.
Got Amazon Pics to work!! Woot!!!!
Dammit! Went through my entire thread and put in the Amazon Prime links, pics were working yesterday and now they're not. WTF?!
In reply to docwyte:
The amazon links in your thread all have /templink/ as part of the address. I suspect these are not permanent links. I searched google but was not able to locate an easy fix for you.
Shoot. I followed the directions that another member posted in my "How do you hot link Amazon photos" thread. Was happy they worked and thought I was done.
So how do you hot link pics from Amazon Prime here then?
There is a recent post in the Please stop using photobucket thread with more details. I have not personally tried prime photo hotlinking
So it looks like my head gasket might be bad. Got home from the track day and left the car on the trailer over night. Pulled it off the trailer and into the garage and the "low coolant" warning went off.
Hmm, weird. Popped the hood and confirmed the coolant was low, it was at the bottom of the over flow. Let it sit for several more hours, then went to top it off.
When I started to remove the cap, I was surprised to see that it was still pressurized! Even though it'd been hours since I started the car and the move from the trailer to my garage wasn't long enough for it to get any heat/pressure in it.
Slowly removed the cap, released all the pressure and the coolant level jumped up to the "Kalt" level.
Well, crap. Looks like it's time for a head gasket, ARP head studs, rebuild the vanos, replace hoses and sensors that I can't easily get to, have the head checked at a machine shop and maybe do a set of cams, along with adding an oil cooler.
Motor has ~87k miles on it, stock head gasket.
Ok, pretty much confirmed that the head gasket is bad. Now its time to decide what to do. Clearly I'm going to fix it as this car is totally track prepped, selling it and buying another car would cost too much just to replicate what I already have.
So, head gasket then. I know I'm going to do ARP head studs and would like to raise the compression, so I'll use a Cometic head gasket. Head will go to a machine shop to get it pressure checked. Then I'll rebuild the vanos, replace all the heater core hoses, cam/crankshaft sensors, vacuum lines and anything else that's a huge PITA to reach with the engine assembled. I'm also probably going to install an oil cooler now, might as well...
Then the big question, cams?? It makes sense for me to do them now, everything will be apart. It seems that the "cams of the hour" are the Schrick 276/270's.
These cams aren't just drop in and go though. They require stronger valve springs, plus a limited travel vanos, plus new lifters. Once all that is added up, it really jacks up the price compared to a more mild set of cams that I can reuse all my factory stuff with.
Thoughts? Think its worth an extra $1500 for another 10rwhp that these more wild cams will give me?
Oh yeah, I was all excited to check out the video footage from my Traqmate system from the track day last weekend.
Pulled out the memory card and discovered that nothing had been recorded. Hmmm. Looked into it a bit and turns out that the cable that attaches the GoPro to the Traqmate data box is just a data cable, it doesn't supply power.
Oops. I thought it supplied power as well, so I didn't even think about having to plug the GoPro in the night before to charge it. Hmph. Well, at least I know now...
OK, well I ordered a whole bunch of parts today. The good news is that I don't have to pay for a retune, Epic includes that. Woohoo!!
So I ordered: Schrick 264/256 cams ARP head studs New cam/crank sensors Euro E36 M3 oil cooler core and lines Found a used S54 Oil filter housing Bimmerworld oil filter housing thermostat bypass and vanos adapter
The cams work with the factory valvetrain and you don't need to limit the vanos travel. If the shop or machine shop tells me I have to replace my valve springs, then I'll upgrade to Supertech valve springs and go to the more wild Schrick 276/270 cams.
Went with ARP head studs because they weren't too expensive and will give me a little more piece of mind. The Euro E36 oil cooler stuff bolts right on, cooler oil will mean cooler water temps. The Bimmerworld parts make for a bolt on arrangement on my car, plus get rid of the tstat, allowing maximum oil cooling.
Bummer about the head gasket, but I bet it's going to be fun once it's back together.
OK, thanks to Stampie and Photoberkit I've got most of the picture links back up and working. Looks like I have a few photos still on Photobucket that I can't seem to find on my phone/computer, so I may have to go there and try and grab them. Or not...
Not much to report. I ordered a whole bunch of parts and got most of them delivered to the shop. Some came quickly enough that I just threw them in the car.
I uploaded the new camshaft tune from Epic Motorsports into the car. That was a PITA! My old XP based garage laptop had a little hissy fit about the drivers for the OBD cable. Since I'm a philistine and am not much of a computer guy, I had to call Epic and they webbed into my computer and fixed it after some head scratching on their part.
Uploading the tune went fine, gotta say, customer support from Epic is awesome! Not only did he fix my drivers issue, but the tune updates are FREE. Yup, so far I've gotten two more tunes from him at no additional cost.
So, the day came to send the car to the shop, did it Friday, July 28th. Rather than me get my trailer and take half the morning to take it up there and drive back, drop the trailer off, etc, etc, I hit the easy button.
Yup, called AAA and got a flatbed to take it up there for me. Figure I pay for AAA, might as well use it and save myself a bunch of time.
So the car has been there for the past week and a half. I called them last Friday to see if they had any updates. Unfortunately not. I don't think the head has come off yet and been sent to the machine shop.
I expressed my concern, being that this is track season and I don't want miss a bunch of events. They assured me my car has priority, guess I'll have to be patient (not my strong suit) and see what happens.
Pretty sure I won't be making my next track day though, since its August 19th....
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