E30 M3 S14B23 Turbo Project

[Colby Colbs]

Pick up one of these


Sent from the protesters chanting "FREE MilkT"

That would look soo at home on the S14! Roflmao

[dcvee]

Wow. Just wow!!!...getting ready to do 2 S14 E30M3's...mine and a friends. Mine will be turbo and mirror your build with the exception of a GT30R and a bottom mount system. EXCELLENT work here. I'm very interested on your tuning efforts. Just speechless.....

Don

[attrack]

Definitely interesting perspective from daman. Worth a try as those bike pipes get pretty hot

[e30polak]

Sorry for the lack of updates. My free time has been non-existent the past few months.

Here are some key updates:
-About 700 miles on the engine.
-Measured 1-2% leak down on all four cylinders, compression numbers are within 1 psi across the board. No oil consumption thus far.
-I have been doing a lot of tuning. While it has come a long way, it still needs a little work in the acceleration enrichment area. I made of bunch of changes today after analyzing some of the logs but have not had a chance to drive it.
-I currently have 0.6 bar springs in the gates and I haven't experienced/logged any boost spikes so far.
-It spools insanely quick. When I did not have a boost reference connected to the gates, I hit 18.9psi instantly at around 2800rpm & 50% throttle.


Here are some pictures:





The front bumper was also resprayed:

LOVE it! That thing must be a monster hitting boost that early! Are you running 19-20 psi to red-line, otherwise what's your max boost? What are you revving the motor to? Do you still have the 4.10 or did you go longer? I'd imagine a 3.46 would be awesome with that power band!

[attrack]

How is that sort of power and even possible. Must be a small turbo to wind that fast

[Motorsports14]

Just chiming in as I follow your thread and saw you have problems with the heat.

As far as I can see, your turbine housing is not ceramic coated but probably powdercoated with a coating that contains ceramic particles.
What you want on your hot items is a ceramic called Zirconium Oxide (ZrO). There are plenty of forms, dioxide, (IV)oxide etc. I'm not entirely sure which one of those is needed but the companies that apply it will. Don't spend all your cash on the company called Zircotec, which you will find all over internet, they apply a HUGE margin on costprice. Google and call around to companies that do ceramic coating of seal-liners, industrial ovens/furnaces etc. The color of the raw material is plain white, very matte.

The coating will prevent a large amount of the energy from leaking towards its surface. In some cases, the need for additional shielding is not nessecary anymore.

Then, heat can be conducted by three principles; radiation, convection and conduction. You don't have conduction issues, and convection is not really the biggest problem I would expect, as there is propper under hood flow and no direct flow from the turbine housing to the coils. Radiation is your issue.

The shield you have fabricated will do a fair amount of blocking of the radiation, actually it will block all radiation but it will heat up itself. You prevented the heating up of the shield by applying reflective foil which will reflect the radiated heat but it will actually get hot because of the convection!

So; my suggestion for if the problem persists; Fabricate an additional shield that fits inside the shield, with 5mm gap in between, and fill that gap with fibreglass matting (used in motorcycle exhaust mufflers). OR you can buy this fabric, on one side lined with silicon based glue and on the other side lined with aluminium foil (really thick foil) on which you can stuck the gold reflective foil (which isn't actually gold but kapton foil that is aluminized on the rearside, I'm 100% sure of)

Hope it is of educational use/help!! awesome build.

I am not sure what type of ceramic coating is currently on the turbine housing. I do agree that is likely some type of ceramic high heat paint and not made to insulate heat at all. It was done at a friend's coating/plating shop free of charge. At least it keeps the housing from oxidizing.

Radiation and convection are definitely the modes of heat transfer from the turbine housing to the coils, hood, valve cover, etc. Convection is less of a problem at high speed since there is more air flow through through the engine bay.

At this point, I ordered a DEI turbo blanket which will replace the stainless shield and take care of the turbine housing heat dissipation. I also made a heat shield for the coils as shown in the pictures below. This will provide thermal resistance to the heat from the exhaust manifold that is flowing towards the coils.

Are you running gauges off an arduino? I noticed your LCD a few pages back?

I do not have any standalone instrumentation connected yet. I was using the Arduino to get acquainted with the LCD screen. I have not decided what to run but will probably end up using a MCU on a small PCB that can be packaged easily.

LOVE it! That thing must be a monster hitting boost that early! Are you running 19-20 psi to red-line, otherwise what's your max boost? What are you revving the motor to? Do you still have the 4.10 or did you go longer? I'd imagine a 3.46 would be awesome with that power band!

When I had the wastegate reference lines disconnected, I held 19psi for about 2 seconds and then let off. I currently have 0.6 bar springs and hold about 10psi with no boost creep. The tuning progress is currently on hold due to the misfire I develop when the coils get too hot.

I still have the 4.10 at the moment. I will be trying out a 3.64 before jumping to the 3.46. The standard E30 M3 transmission has long gearing.

I made a slight modification to the design of the heat shield. Here are some pictures:

[Unvmy996]

what rpm do you rev out too?

[Motorsports14]

what rpm do you rev out too?

7600rpm

[dohcdoh]

7600rpm

Need vids ASAP. That must sound like pure sex.

[ak5]

Awesome work

[attrack]

How wide are the e30 m3 gear ratios? They must be pretty wide to be considering a 3.46

[wazzu70]

The spacing of the gears is kind of irrelevant here. The E30M3 (US version) has an overdrive transmission where as the E36+ stuff had a non overdrive transmission where 5th is 1:1.

The factory final drive ratio for the car was 4.10:1

[e30polak]

When I had the wastegate reference lines disconnected, I held 19psi for about 2 seconds and then let off. I currently have 0.6 bar springs and hold about 10psi with no boost creep. The tuning progress is currently on hold due to the misfire I develop when the coils get too hot.

I still have the 4.10 at the moment. I will be trying out a 3.64 before jumping to the 3.46. The standard E30 M3 transmission has long gearing.

19 psi is plenty, that should put you around 400whp no?

As for the gearing, I'm well aware of the stock trans gearing, I simply know that the 3.46 is much easier to find than a 3.64. The 3.73 won't be enough of a difference IMO. I've driven Chris Castro's E30 M3 that had an airbox, making 197whp/182wtq that had the 4.10, 3.73 and the 3.46. We ran the 3.46 in the end, as the long first and second gear made the car really quick around town. With boost I think it would be perfect for a street car, but I agree that the 3.64 would be more ideal for the track. Worst case if you prefer a 3.73, they're a dime a dozen and will always keep you in boost on the track!

[Motorsports14]

Since many people on here are familiar with the E36 hardware, here is a comparison between E36 M3 and E30 M3 transmission ratios. As shown, the E30 M3 transmission with a 3.64 is almost identical to the E36 M3 with a 2.93. Although the S14 can safely rev further than the M50/S50, I set the RPM to 7600 on both calculations for comparison's sake. In addition, a 3.73 with the E30 M3 transmission will be similar to a 3.15 with the E36 M3 transmission.



The euro-spec, "dogleg" transmission is close ratio and its 5th gear is a direct drive. I do have one of these transmissions at the shop in case I wanted to experiment with it.

e30polak: Power level really depends on a lot of things (timing, compression ratio, etc.) I have seen another S14 make ~280-300whp at 9psi on an 8.5:1 engine. 14-15psi should yield around 400whp while 19psi should make 450whp.

[e30polak]

Since many people on here are familiar with the E36 hardware, here is a comparison between E36 M3 and E30 M3 transmission ratios. As shown, the E30 M3 transmission with a 3.64 is almost identical to the E36 M3 with a 2.93. Although the S14 can safely rev further than the M50/S50, I set the RPM to 7600 on both calculations for comparison's sake. In addition, a 3.73 with the E30 M3 transmission will be similar to a 3.15 with the E36 M3 transmission.



The euro-spec, "dogleg" transmission is close ratio and its 5th gear is a direct drive. I do have one of these transmissions at the shop in case I wanted to experiment with it.

e30polak: Power level really depends on a lot of things (timing, compression ratio, etc.) I have seen another S14 make ~280-300whp at 9psi on an 8.5:1 engine. 14-15psi should yield around 400whp while 19psi should make 450whp.

Of course, just throwing ball park numbers out. Sorry for not looking, but are you set up to, or do you ever plan to run E-85? I know higher compression really shows the advantage with E-85 and boost, but even a low CR motor benefits greatly from E-85 with boost.

That 3.64 is perfect! Almost identical to when I had the 2.93 in my E30 M3 with the S54 and the ZF 5 speed! DO IT!

3.46 may be too long after looking at the 3.64...

[bawareca]

I wonder why 189 mph top speed for something else than the Texas mile?It may be Ok for everyday cruising,but even on the fastest tracks you will hardly touch 150-155 mph.If it were me I would leave the S14 to rev free,that is where it shines.
I have 3.46 with E36 M3 tranny and only on the fastest track here I need few more RPM.It does ~135 mph at 6500 rpm,will probably go to 145 with 3.25.

[e30polak]

I wonder why 189 mph top speed for something else than the Texas mile?It may be Ok for everyday cruising,but even on the fastest tracks you will hardly touch 150-155 mph.If it were me I would leave the S14 to rev free,that is where it shines.
I have 3.46 with E36 M3 tranny and only on the fastest track here I need few more RPM.It does ~135 mph at 6500 rpm,will probably go to 145 with 3.25.

Depending on the track, a 3.73 maybe better suited.

[Keith1054]

Bump for updates!

[attrack]

Sleepy thread needs to wake up. We need to know what's going on

[dcvee]

Yeah, give us a tease of this monster. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you want to look at it, I just can't find a good "donor" for my turbo E30M3 project. Every time I find one it ends up being a numbers matching, correct, perfectly fine car!! Of course I still buy it, but it's really not what I wanted. I'm not too motivated to tear into an original one...but I may have to. So I'm still looking for 2 more "project" E30M3's.

Don

[GG///M3]

Blip

[jakermac]

Yup! Hoping for an update.

[bootlegskate]

i think there would be enough closure with at least one video of the car running!

[Motorsports14]

Apologies for the lack of updates. I started a great job shortly after getting the car running in 2014 and honestly haven't had much time at all to tinker with it. It makes it especially hard when I see it once every month for the weekend. I am currently about ~365 miles from where the car is currently stored and am trying to fix that soon.

Good news is the car is running great. It has been converted to run on E85 fuel and I have put about 4000 miles on the engine now.

Had some issues with the MLS multi-layer gasket sealing well under higher boost levels. I ended up replacing the head gasket with a cutting ring style and that has alleviated all issues.

Next up is integrating knock sensors with the ECU and getting the tune dialed in on the dyno.

I'll try to get some go-pro footage with external mic posted when I get a chance.


Here is a link to a video of the first start up back in 2014:

Another video: https://www.instagram.com/p/m6nwO8By...=charbel.elian

Current state of affairs:

[215m3]

Apologies for the lack of updates. I started a great job shortly after getting the car running in 2014 and honestly haven't had much time at all to tinker with it. It makes it especially hard when I see it once every month for the weekend. I am currently about ~365 miles from where the car is currently stored and am trying to fix that soon.

Good news is the car is running great. It has been converted to run on E85 fuel and I have put about 4000 miles on the engine now.

Had some issues with the MLS multi-layer gasket sealing well under higher boost levels. I ended up replacing the head gasket with a cutting ring style and that has alleviated all issues.

Next up is integrating knock sensors with the ECU and getting the tune dialed in on the dyno.

I'll try to get some go-pro footage with external mic posted when I get a chance.


Here is a link to a video of the first start up back in 2014:

Another video: https://www.instagram.com/p/m6nwO8By...=charbel.elian

Current state of affairs:

Hi

Are you able chat? I have the same issue with my S14 Turbo where the MLS has failed at higher boost.

Thanks