MyE28.com DEV

Small update.

Last year I stopped playing with this car as I was unsure I would be able to have it fixed in time for the August 2019 D4C event. After putting it back together, the car did not like my tune at all even though not much has changed. So I sort of put it on hold to focus on other things.



Fast forward and I was preparing for a new child and then the subsequent birth, I was focused on other cars and house projects in the second half of 2019.

I decided to take my 540i to D4C 2019. Grand Junction Motor Speedway Go-car track, my car wasn't the heaviest/biggest on this course!





Next to Travisj





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8TidS4tIa4


I got another project car, a 1981 635CSi euro running and then rebuilt the head after converting the car to M1.3 (which took a lot of time).





I also bought an E36 M3 and started sorting it out. I was lucky enough to be able to bring it to a private day at Aspen Motorpsorts Park




2020 has been a lot of time dedicated to playing dad and assisting my wife. In January, i did take my 535i (all 11 years of ownership!!) to Georgetown again to drive on the lake



My brother bought a project that I committed to helping with, a 1984 318i destined for 24 hours of Lemons. I have been helping on that project little bits at a time.











Now my son is almost 7 months old he could hang out a little while as we worked.



Last month, i was able to install a S3.73 into Fanklin, the auto 535i. Not much to show picture-wise, but the car drives better now in general with that gearing-- Still a pretty low cruising rpm.


Back to Burt though, I had started a couple months ago resetting the tune and shutting off real time baro correction. I had less time to work on it a couple months ago than now, so yesterday and today I got the car to start and (mostly) idle. I was able to move it into the garage yesterday and briefly drive it around and tune it.
It seems to run ok with the headgasket reinstall so I hoping I can make progress on the tune to drive smooth overall and to drive reliably. I am planning on taking it to Crested Butte this August for D4C 2020, 10th anniversary.

For some reason, though my odometer no longer works at 282k miles so I'll have to fix that.

More slow progress to come.

Nice stable of projects! My odo quit also. There used to be a guy that sold replacement gears. Let me know if you find a source for them.

Ok well, I went looking for it and found it so here's a link for the odo gear.
https://www.odometergears.com/documenta ... cement.pdf

Yes, Marc, I plan to get some odometer gears from Jeff at Odometergears, but haven't yet. Recently I had some more time to work on the car:

It seems to be running pretty close to normal again! Not sure why the tune from 2018 wouldn't work, but oh well.

I messed with the tune and eliminated a bunch of the jerkiness. The car starts and generally idles but I need to keep dialing the VE table and cold start/ MAT corrections in. What I found is that the autotune was not giving me accurate numbers and I started seeing much better results when tuning the VE table manually. Temperature fluctuations or something were causing the autotune to try to correct cells that were pretty close to begin with.

While I was driving around working on my tables, the coolant light popped on. A slow leak showed itself near the radiator. After inspection it turned out that the radiator had rubbed against the intercooler eventually wearing a hole in it.





I took the chance to see if the South African Behr radiator is any better than the stock/Nissen brand.



The fins are finer (shown on top) than the old one that came out.


I mounted the intercooler on top with a bracket to hold it from rocking and made sure there would be clearance even though both are mounted solid





I also mounted a front lip using a piece of trim that came off the original 633 that this thread started with



Hoping to do more road tuning these next couple of weeks where I'll snap some more photos.

I split the sheet, the sheet I split, and on the splitted sheet I sit.
Lookin good! I like the splitter

Thanks Marc!

I have been driving it on and off now a little bit-- enough that it seems to start up reliably and drive pretty smooth overall. Working on the reliability of the tune with MAT corrections, cold/hot start and overall performance. So far it is running pretty good.

I will share some datalogs and tune settings again soon.

In the mean time I wondered if I could get the Econometer working. Turns out the signal runs through the instrument cluster so all I had to do was hook up the correct wire (Which usually went through C103) to the injector pulse signal (thanks Karlo!) for the gauge to do something.

Right now I have larger injectors so the signal isn't accurate, but the gauge moves again and the OBC shows better than 5.9MPG. Now it is showing ~30mpg, when I'm probably getting 20mpg because I have larger injectors and shorter pulses. Would be nice to get this circuit more accurate, but it is great to see it working again.

I also swapped in an old cluster odometer to track my mileage for the near term. Funds have been tight so I didn't want new gears at this time.

Here are a few more photos. Yes, it is rough around the edges but I haven't washed it since 2018!

Playing with more settings after a week of relatively constant performance based on temperature. Trying to get a consistent tune that doesn't always rely on computer corrections as condition change.

I looked up constant air temperature corrections and found this curve.


Interestingly, it was similar to my current MAT correction curve which is a tweaked default value from MS2


So I looked up default barometric corrections which have a change in standard temperature


I figured I could try to emulate this to start with since MAT corrections were working reasonably well.

But I needed to remove the corrections I already have programmed in based on temperature change. So i subtracted out the MAT %corrections from the suggested barometric changes.

See the difference here. My 100% is around 83kpa so it adds fuel at lower elevation and will remove at higher (lower kpa values).

It's possible these corrections are too extreme. If that's the case, I will simply scale these down in excel until it is correct. The shape of the curve should fit theory, but we will see (it didn't before).

I will try these corrections out in the next week or so and report back after taking the car up to altitude.

I'm glad I'm at sea level. That's one less thing I have to figure out on my tune. I've been working on my cold start,and idle. It seems to need a change with the seasons.

When trying to align last time, I was told my caster was out of spec on the passenger front. So I sourced some struts and got to work removing the original shocks. Eventually got them apart and decided the other week to do the swap.



Trying to visually see a difference. New on bottom





I made a paint mark on the harmonic balancer but couldn't seem to get the megasquirt settings to work out when verifying ignition. The paint mark was 30-40* before TDC when I had timing set at 10* on the timing light and on Megasquirt. Not sure what's up with that but I knew I was within ~3 degrees with a trigger angle of 87...



Oh and since I never showed, here is turbo inlet and piping to intercooler it is tight!



On Saturday I drove down south with the car with the intention of fine tuning my barometric settings and seeing my brother. The car ran well although my correction settings still aren't quite where I would like.

Considering the car drove there smoothly and made it ~250 miles, it was a win. Didn't like to start at altitude of 10,000 ft unless I held my foot down for flood-clear mode.

On to some pictures



I thought I'd try the Rial's on this car and I really like how they look! I added the banner last week just for fun.





If you have followed on the build, I drove the 633 to this same area with my brother (in the Z3) back in July 2016. Here was a picture then and now with our cars.



Overall it drove great and at my home I see boost of around 160kpa. At 10,000ft that same 12psi was only about 145kpa. At sea level this would be only 8psi (or 6) but this was good for now with my goals. Still faster than my M5 and I think handles better in the e28 than e24.

Seemed like my thermostat may not be working 100%, I saw temps over 190 regularly (vertical needle on cluster). Will look at that next. Also considering a diy paint of the decklid. Depending how it comes out I might consider the hood and airdam.

Great thread, really enjoyed it start to finish. Reminded me of cutting my teeth on my first turbo car, programmable EFI and all the trials and tribulations (and learning!!) along the way. Keep the updates coming!

Thanks! It has been a continuous project for sure -- but certainly a joy when boosting through the gears.

I have been driving the car for basically the last two full months. I have messed around with the megasquirt settings and have come to the conclusion that even the default MAT corrections don't resolve the differences in mixture based on temperature. I am thinking the sensor is heat soaking and IAT is not a good variable to correct based on temperature. Regardless once the car gets to operating temperature, my MAT curve works OK enough for summer temperatures of 70F-110F.

It isn't quite as smooth as the AFM especially near on/off throttle, but I have messed with it a lot.

Also, I have found MAP based fuel enrichment to be better than TPS based.

My spark plugs seemed to be too hot, so switching to the colder plugs helps in boost although there is some slight misfire feeling during cruising. I didn't have the same problem with stock temp plugs, so it must be something ignition related. I was considering Wasted Spark but haven't gone down that rabbit hole just yet.

I am running about 8psi (155-160kpa) and am pretty happy with the performance.


I had a battery drain that I ended up tracing to the power window relay which was activated at all times due to the incorrect relay.
I also traced my power lock issue to the lock control module behind the passenger front speaker. The door locks would default to locking sometimes and my key less entry didn't work even though the trunk lock would work.

Planning to take the car on the D4C 2020 Mountain drive next week so I should have some more updates and photos after.

I'm running 100% map on accel enrichment. I think I need to rescale the tps accel enrich, because even fast stomp doesn't show much movement on tps
accel enrich scale (tps does work as expected otherwise). Map moves as expected. I still need more work on accel enrich. Mine doesn't stumble , but I'd like it to rev quicker. I feel I'm running an aggressive spark map, so I think it has to be accel enrich.

Made it back from D4C 2020 in one piece and the car did fine. Overall only about 600 miles, one of the shortest weekend drives I have taken for this BMW meet.

I am disappointed in the South African radiator as it couldn't keep up with cooling on the long uphill grades, hitting 200F (12:30+) on the gauge. Rally it cools worse than the Nissan brand radiator. So I'll have to get one of those back in. Luckily the cooler temperatures of the mountains meant that once I got out of 80 degree weather it did fine.

I drove up a day early with the car loaded up so that we would be able to stay on schedule and split our drive up.

Our stop for the first night


Required some mud driving





A morning hike


We had about 12-15 miles of dirt roads where the car ended up hitting some rough washboards. Had to slow it down a bit.

We met the group at the fuel up stop.


Top of Cottonwood Pass








Freshly stitched wheel by Nosis


The regroup


Our stay in Mt Crested Butte




The slope area is nice





Group drive meetup Friday


The cool am rain before the group drive Saturday was amazing!


My son was wearing his shark fin. The other day was 'future BMW driver'


I followed Travisj down the mountain


The next morning I found a place to wash Burt


Hike the next morning with aspens was refreshing.




Coffee downtown in historic CB. Like the hoodie? Ben a few years since I got that.


My son fell asleep while driving back so instead of waking him up by shutting off the car, I decided to take some photos







The meetup Sunday AM


Stopping on Cottonwood Pass headed the other way home








On Friday night my brother noticed that I had some smoke coming out at night after shutting off the car. Turns out somewhere I lost my oil fill cap. So I drove to town to get one and clean up the oily mess. Not sure how that happened but got a replacement and didn't lose it going home.

So good. Love the dirty photos. And the clean. And the kid. And the deep dish wheels. Love. Love. Love.

The passes were better when they all were just dirt !!

Thanks Charlie!
Ken, it was great to see yo' momma out on the mountain.

I didn't get any driving videos unfortunately but maybe can come up with some later this year. My brother got a bit of me running down the mountain pulling away from the E39 M5 which was no surprise with the weight difference. But boost in those cool temps sure felt great!


I did forget to mention the week before the trip the car stalled out on me in front of my house and would not restart. It turned out that the coil went bad and had failed. It was also the source of the slight misfire I described above. I had checked the plugs and they looked good so I had been thinking of Wasted Spark. For my low boost setting, no need so far. The (used) replacement did just fine as I understand they rarely fail. Surprising that it failed, but otherwise smooth sailing. Deciding if I want to buy new or just a cheaper used unit that will work just fine.

A couple more photos.

I have been letting you all down with my lack of updates and photos, I know!

The cooler temperatures mean I haven't yet swapped out the radiator but plan to do away with the south African unit--harder driving and the temps just creep up and up if the ambient temperature is above 70F. I have been driving the car for the last 4+ weeks and made some small adjustments in the tune.
This means I have driven the car about 2750 miles this year, a lot of which has been trying to tune is for consistency in the tune and drivability like stock. I am averaging about 20.5mpg and running up to 150/160kpa boost (8-10psi).

I did advance some timing in the boost region (Thanks to Nosis for sharing his tune) which helped improve performance and has made the car fun to drive although it doesn't loose traction when going straight due to the way boost arrives. Makes for a fun setup and definitely faster than the old M5... I might look into a boost controller solenoid to reduce the spool time some more by holding the wastegate shut, it seems my board might have the provision for it, so I just need to verify it has the output signal I expect.

I adjusted my EGO control to PID instead of Simple and noticed it was quicker and better at holding my target AFR in normal driving. It seems that there is some error built into the fueling equations where sometimes at idle the computer wants to add/remove fuel, but otherwise with VEAL running, the map I have is good for the load range otherwise, regardless of temperature. I also set the control interval for the idle valve at 100ms which helped almost eliminate my hot idle oscillation although there is a little bit of oscillation during warmup.

I also found that CLT based table is best for idle valve initial values, rather than MAT based-- this results in a more consistent tune.

I do get some strange startup behavior at about 40F and below where it takes a few cranks to keep the car running by itself. Otherwise though, I have been able to hop in the car and drive it. Smoothing out the advance in the low load range reduced some bucking that was occurring at light throttle.

Last week, I noticed boost was building way higher than expected and acceleration was lazy. I hit 178kpa (13.5psi) which is just below my boost cut limit, although I didn't fully rev it up, we were close. It felt slow since the pressure was bleeding out and the wastegate was partially open. That limit is also at 90% duty cycle of my injectors, so a good ceiling it turns out for my current setup. It turned out the wastegate line and blow off valves had popped off and boost was leaking as the wastegate wasn't opening fully (spring pressure only, no pressure assist).

I hope to share some more photos and details soon here.

In the mean time, here is the 318i project I have been working on here and there with my brothers. I designed and had the center console 3d printed. Hoping to do something similar for the cluster surround.

Just to follow up, here are some recent settings from my tune, good with B34 and 91octane:

current MAT correction, about as close as I am going to get for consistency based on temp:


Current barometric correction by altitude. Not intuitive but these setting work for me... good about 85-60kpa:


Current throttle accel enrichments:


The improved ego closed loop control settings that have been working 30F-85F:


Closed loop idle settings. Sometimes has a small hunt warm and still have more of a hunt when warming up:



Driving last week with the wastegate not fully opening and the boost leak--see how slowly boost builds. Hit max duty cycle of my injectors at 170+kpa. My target has been 150-160kpa for max boost.
Good to know my spark advance was good.


Fixed, that acceleration and steady boost is more like it! Mixtures right at 12:1AFR. Duty cycle at about 80%



Here ire the corresponding ignition table, advanced slightly in boost from 2018. Reduced advance near low rpm low load to eliminate most of the slight bucking that was occurring.


Also I found some slip on Coilovers from Ireland engineering for a good price. I decided to see if they were worth the risk in getting a stiffer rear spring and possibly changing to camber plates that will allow me to dial in a bit more negative from camber and maybe some caster and height adjustment. This was me mocking them up with some spares I have on the shelf just for comparison purposes and mounting. 280# front springs, 440# rear, both fixed rate springs.


Here's how the PO had them on his car:


A great thread here talking about handling: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11423

I have found that I have a bit too much understeer, but going up close to stock ride height has helped reduce understeer. That is to say, I want to keep some rake and keep the camber in the rear close to 0 so that I don't add too much grip and cause even more understeer.

If I do go lower, I will be looking to keep the correct geometries. My 25/18 bars are good and I may play around with their settings a bit more.

Another update on the 535is.

Recently I have been working on the reliability of the 535is and still haven't figured out the cold start issue. It stalls after starting up when temperatures are below 50F. Touching the throttle makes it stall. But when warm it works great. Still working on that.

In the mean time, I did some research and found that the springs I bought would give me a similar bias as the Dinan setup. So I went about replacing the rears and using the height adjustable sleeves to get the height I wanted. This means I have standard Eibach Pro springs up front (~220#'s) with Bilsteins and the fixed camber plates. Then in the rear, I have 2.5" race springs (fixed rate instead of progressive) at 280#'s.



Front camber is about -2.2 degrees on both sides and I have almost 0 toe.

I wanted to dial out the understeer, so going to fixed rate and increasing the rear rate from what I had was to help me. Keeping the height at the rear also means that I have limited camber in the rear to hopefully limit the rear grip and promote front grip and the front turning in better. My rear shocks are Bilstein's that are supposedly Dinan valved. I have used them for basically 10 years and they help the rear of the e28 from feeling soft like typical Bilsteins. I liked that this spring rate should be pretty well matched to the shocks for Dinan rear 280# springs.
I also turned my front sway bar (25mm) to full soft for the same reasoning as it seemed like the E28 defaults to total understeer in tighter turns.
My rear bar (18mm) is set to soft as well, but I contemplated setting it to hard if I still want more rear end action.

Height is the same as this past summer, I measured and set the bilstein to second from the top circlip.



Here's my recent MAT/BARO settings.



Ignition advance. I backed off some advance for smoothness near low load/low rpm. That got rid of most of the jerkiness.



I run through a couple round-abouts on a regular basis where I can easily assess how the car handles. The spring change certainly helped the rear want to slide earlier, so the next step was the sway bar change. That again helped and make the car feel easier to change directions.

I just purchased a boost controller after thinking about the output of my megasquirt unit. I confirmed it was wired up with grounding signal on the IAC2 circuit. I did some research and decided upon a 4 port solenoid valve that I can run as 3 port or 4 port MAC 46A-AA1-JDBA-1BA.





The main advantage of the 4 port is that you can send boost to the top of the wastegate with no signal to the bottom to literally hold it shut. This allows high boost control up to 4x the wastegate spring but I decided to use it like a 3 port because I didn't want to have the touchy duty cycle where 1% duty could change boost by 2-3%. May play with those setting later since now I have the option.



The controller simply starts with an initial value table like idle valve and then sends a signal when active. The signal is a pulse that is a % of the window of time, so 100% duty is open fully for the full unit of time. 50% is half. Then, the frequency settings change how long/short the unit of time is. So in test mode you can audibly hear the change in speed of opening/closing when going from 19Hz to 15Hz-- it gets faster.

Here are some datalogs once I got it hooked up and was testing it's function. I found that 20-30% duty gave me about 5-10psi boost-- I was using my tunerstudio dash to view it.
This was my fist log of 155kpa after I knew the solenoid was working at 135kpa. It is easy to see that the 80% duty cycle was exceeded while boost was ramping up, trying as aggressive as possible to reach max boost.



Fuel mixture was a little rich and I was approaching 85% duty cycle (the limit) of my injectors. Timing was smooth after I applied a smoothing factor on my ignition table, which is visible in the log. Notice how boost jumps above to 169kpa and slowly levels back down to the target of 155kpa. This was too aggressive PID settings and I found some detail on tuning the PID:

1- Playing with the P term will influence the moment when the boost duty will start to increase when the boost is increasing. Big P number make the boost duty coming up sooner when the MAP is increasing and vice-versa.
2- Increasing P will reduce initial overshoot and vice-versa.
3- Increasing I will slightly increase initial overshoot. If the target isn't reached initially, a bigger I term will make the boost climbing to the target faster. Too much a I term will make the boost oscillating after the initial overshoot.
4- The D term will reduce the oscillating effect of a large I number. Too much D term lead to huge oscillations in the boost duty. It takes some large D number to reduce the initial overshoot.
5- I've varied the Control Interval from 30ms to 10ms without seeing any changes in boost control performance. Smaller Control Interval will lead to higher oscillation of the boost duty.
6- You can limit the maximal boost duty by setting the Open Duty at a number lower than 100%. It is useful if you do not reach the target initially because the boost is climbing faster. But this is not a good solution because it prevent the PID code to do his job if a smaller boost target is wanted later.
7- You want some sort of initial overshoot to have a good control. If the target isn't reached initially, the I term will try to get the boost to the target, but it will take some time.
8- Initial overshoot will be bigger in higher gear (4th, 5th) for a given PID setting compared to a 3rd gear run because the boost is climbing much more slowly and the P term is supposed to react to (current_error - last_error). When boost is climbing slowly, (current_error - last_error) isn't a big number so the P term do not have the same impact as in 3rd gear. The inverse is also true : you will get less overshoot when boost is climbing faster (like in 2nd gear).

I backed off the I and D settings and saw this result, boost too conservative in ramping up, but solenoid duty a nice level setting. Boost reached 10 and was slowly rising to 154kpa, but never eaching the target in 3+ seconds. Notice the gearshift and general good control of the fuel mixture. I simply need to dial back the fuel a little bit and be at 12:1 after, not 11.7:1


Here is a single pull merging onto the highway about 45-85mph. This section of the map was slightle too lean at 12.4:1



I am still dialing it in, but yesterday with boost reaching 8psi(145kpa) and slowly opening to the target of 10, I got this virtual dyno plot. My engine's blowby means I think I am losing some power, but overall I will retry this plot once I get boost settings dialed.




In the mean time, I just installed brake pads and did a fluid flush (ATE TYP 200)-- EBC redstuff street/track pads. They are ceramic and low dust which means they should be a nice fit for my dual duty (but street focused) use. Don't forget I have the E32/E34 upgraded brakes which allows use of E36 M3 pads.



Next up, aiming for a track day with the current setup. I am contemplating changing the radiator or running as is since temps should be below 60F.
I also have an oil catch can coming to try to collect any blowby instead of oiling my intercooler as it has been.

More updates and some photos/video to come!

I love the gradual improvements and am learning a lot from your experience. What will you do when it's "perfectly" sorted?

interesting setup! what turbo are you using again?
I have an mbc(cranked all the way shut) on a top diaphram, single hose setup. That way I get all the boost my little kkk27 can produce. I've been tempted to try a bigger turbo. I just don't know if I'm ready to upgrade everything else, that will probably fail, when I put more power in it.
I was lookin at your spark map. Mine is more aggressive, looks like you have room to move up if you wanted.
good luck

Thanks for detailed update.

foolish wrote: Dec 09, 2020 5:07 PM I love the gradual improvements and am learning a lot from your experience. What will you do when it's "perfectly" sorted?

I know I have made slow progress overall but:

The goal for this car has always been a dual duty vehicle--being a hop in and go driver for mountain runs or trips. The four doors and truck space of the E28 make it a nicely sized vehicle without being too big. It handles well overall, but I have been focused on making it perform better without spending $$$ for anything and everything. The second piece of it all is being able to drive it at the local road course and have a blast improving my driving skill and outpacing the run of the mill E36's and more modern cars. I felt more comfortable messing with and pushing the limits of the turbo M30 than the E28 M5 I had. It has been fun to gradually improve and tweak-- the process of thinking about it, executing it myself and seeing the result has been more fun than simply paying somebody to put parts on and go.

It's been a balance of my other life/family goals and car goals which is probably why I don't make quicker progress. I have a lot of ideas of course! Not sure I have decided which pathway to go, but I have thought about the following:

-Add KnocksenseMS input for safety margin
-Bring to Dyno expert for tuning and ignition advance fine tuning
-Remove dents
-Repaint
-Install euro bumpers and headlights
-Flip throttle body
-Install B35 or similar engine upgrades (head work? pistons?)
-Consider wasted spark and distributor removal
-Larger injectors and upping the boost with confidence in the ignition timing and my tuning

Otherwise is to drive it. I have put over 5000 miles on the 535is and over 8000 on the turbo 633 since I really started this turbo project in early 2015.


Marc, I have TCD's comp turbo: 60/P Trim with the garret 60 wheel which is about 65#/min for flow. I am hardly pushing what this thing can do as it is rated for up to 20+psi boost on the M30. Do you care to share your spark map? I am running 91 octane of that is different than you...

I'll be glad to share . I just have to figure out how to post pics. I'll work on it.

NOTE;

Long overdue update.

I have Burt still though haven't been driving him as much lately. I was collecting parts and then got extra busy welcoming my second child last year. Two boys keeps me busy, that's for sure, so my time was limited as far as car projects and simply maintaining the fleet was about all I was able to work on.
A lot of spare time went towards the M42 E30 for 24 hours of lemons in 2021. We raced in september but had re4liability problems and could not complete the full 24.

Donated the front airdam from the 633 for the car


painting it ourselves




Some work last yer in 2022 got the car runnign reliably finally back in November for us to hit a race or two this year in 2023


But for the e28, I was slowly collecting parts and deciding about some improvements on the car. I got some pistons and a B35 cylinder head and decided to start a B35 engine build up. Main reason for this is for better response and a new engine with rings/bearings.




crank measured within original spec!






Looked at mounting my intercooler a bit more solid. Here is the mock up


Playing with euro valance and fog light clearance from the frame rails. Some used euro headlights!


Got some new piping to mate the intercooler all underneath the euro valance, euro bumpers and front airdam. Also got the replica euro headlight wipers and I think they look pretty good for replicas!




Piping routed


Next to my '85 which has been parked for a little while also

Can you slide that intercooler up a bit if you trim the sheet metal under the grilles? I think it's worth it to maximize clearance and keep the plumbing tight to the bodywork.

I love the durability of these engines. After 35+ years all they need at most are rings and bearings. Cylinder walls are mint, crank journals look new.

Not sure why the engine bay photo didn't work, but here it is again. Sorry for the dirty, car hasn't been washed in over 2 years.


In moving the intercooler, I am limited by the pipe routing under the front end as well as the sheetmetal in the nose. Both prevent it from going up. So if I were to ever upgrade, I think I'd try to get a similar unit that was just a bit taller.



You can see my 2.5" piping which is going underneath the front end but hangs about the same height as the oil pan. I couldn't really fit it the way you did (above the tow hooks) because I have euro fog lights in that area. I wanted the euro look so I was willing to go with this solution. You can also see my euro valance covers in that photo. I had them made and am selling to help fund the build. I have 10 sets remaining right now.




Very true Dan, here is a better photo of the cylinder wall! I don't know true mileage for this block as we pulled it from a 533i and then I ran it for a few thousand miles in this car before pulling it back out in 2017. It did have an oem Goetze headgasket which was a good sign! I'll have to record the vin on the block and see what it originally came in.

Cylinder #4 during piston install




Speaking of clearances and wear, the crank came in very good, for reference an average 2.3597" and clearances for the mains (inches) ended at:
For the connecting rod journals, the average was 1.8886mm with clearances (inches) as


The majority of the wear is on the pistons with them averaging 3.6188"(91.916mm) in diameter, translating into the following wear (inches) listed as 1-6: I am thinking about using stock headgasket instead of MLS as I intend to keep boost at or below 10psi.


I liked the weathered look of the block after getting it cleaned up but I decided to paint it. Here it is after removing oil and wire wheeling the surface. I know L block is M90, I never noticed the F before... I will share another photo of the painted block the next time I get back to it.



I have to start thinking about when I will swap the engine into the car as I need the oil pan from the one in the car.. I wasn't sure I wanted to tap a second oil pan for draining, but thinking about it, that may be quicker to swap and I can improve the oil drain pathway if I did so...



The trick with the rotomaster turbo was how to clear the subframe nicely. Of course I won't need to worry about it quite the same with my current turbo (See above).

Lookin good!
I just want to say the timing map I posted above, resulted in 2 pistons with broken ring lands. I edited my post to say that as well. I really think I'd like to just remove the photo entirely. I would hate to be the cause of someone hurting their motor. My current build is using b35 pistons. I milled the tops flat and flycut for valves, which should give me 9.2:1 static. I'm starting to tune for the added compression. I just keep pulling out timing, but still getting knocksense light, so not sure where I'll end up. I'm considering a meth injection kit to help.

Shame to hear! It makes sense to need less timing with additional compression if you were previously 8:1. Not quite sure how you got to higher compression though unless you swapped B35 pistons and head and even still I think you should be below 9:1 (due to your machining work) unless you went with a skimmed head or thinner gasket.
Stock B35 bottom with B34 head may be getting closer to 9.8:1 from my research. B34 bottom with B35 head should be closer to 7.5:1...


I swapped on my style 9 wheels which are the same ones pictures on the gold car that I bought the lowering coilover kit from. I didn't put the covers on but I did drive the car for the first time in over a year.

I'm pretty excited how it is looking even though the paint is rough.







I have a boost leak I need to track down in my short test drive. Also ABS is not coming on and the rears are locking up, so the E34 brakes are definitely too much rear biased. I will need to swap pads or something else to further improve the brake bias. A lot of people don't seem to realize this happens when you go to the bigger brake setup of E34/E32...

May be a bit quiet for a few weeks until I can make more engine progress.