The Weedspeed Mark II: E46 330Xi

[yangt1]

Awesome skills you guys got weedspeed. Applause to you and your team. You guys are an inspiration for us 330xi guys showing that we could still boost like the rwd. Makes me want to boost my 330xi now since my wife wants a C7 Audi 3.0t. She told me to get rid of my car and ride her Lexus IS350 when we do get the Audi but I guess not anymore. Quick question, what differentials and ratios are you guys using for the front and rear? Any mods to them, are the differentials and axles capable of hold all that power? I never turbocharged a car before but always wanted do learn how to do one. Peterjakan, if I need any help in the future on my 330xi boost build would be able to help this fellow e46'r with your knowledge? Thanks.

[Peterjakan]

There's alot of expertise avaliable on the web, so the theoretical on how do it all is there for the taking, however when it all comes down to it one must also not be entirely unfamiliar with a wrench and a screwdriver....and a a machine shop if you want to get into higher power levels.

We haven't done anything to the driveaxles, propshafts or differentials. We're going to try it out and see if it holds up, if it dosen't then we'll need to get custom reinforced ones.

The ratio in the differentials are 3.15 for our car, they also come in 3.07 if I am not misstaken but I don't remember which production yearframe uses which ratio.

[Peterjakan]

Allright so we've made some progress at least.

We've added some heatshields every here, though we've forgotten to capture it all on camera...

But here's what we've got.

Starting off by screening off the airfilter with a simple aluminium piece.

It's not the ultimate in cooling but it will most likely stay cool enough.



Also made a small canister for the turbo, so the oil drains from the turbo into this, then we pump it from there back to the oilpan.









Attached a hose to the canister for ventilation if need be.



Connected the hose to a small filter.



We also made our own sway bar for the front end that is about 3 times as hard as the stock one.

For this we used a pipe of chromoly and some square steel piping.

















Tomorrow we will get started on the rear sway bar.

[daniels635turbo]

Howd that rear sway bar work out?

[Compactive]

Some serious fabrication going on up in here!

[Peterjakan]

Cheers :P

Right so here are some pics from the rear swaybar fabrication.

The upper part is a basicly just a beam that acts as a new mounting point for the swaybar, and the lower part is the rear swaybar itself.





We did not get any pictures of it but we reinforced this part of the swaybar later on, both on the rear and the front swaybars.



Here's how it's mounted into place in the rear.





Not very much space, but we have a couple of cm of clearence to all the moving/bouncing parts such as driveshafts and exhaust system etc.



Front swaybar in place.





We also added a spacer for the steering wheel.



And we have started a sponsored cooperation with www.exqbe.com



Basicly what they do is gather alot of the data from the ECU, and/or external sensors and then puts it all together into a readable format with graphs and everything and uploads it to their cloudservice in realtime, which means that we can monitor the cars vitals from the pit, and if something goes wrong or if you want to evaluate the numbers after a race they are also logged and stored for easier evaluation.
Hopefully this will help us dial in the cars settings and reduce the time for us to find the optimal settings.

Since it is equipped with a GPS it also functions as a laptimer and peformancebox so you can measure stuff like 0-100km/h or whatever you may wish.

exqbe box mounted into place with the GPS and 3G antenna connected.









That's all for now folks

[mateo m3]

Nice

[daniels635turbo]

That's gonna be a ridged beast.

[daniels635turbo]

Hey guys, had the green beast running again since all the tinkering?

[Peterjakan]

Nothing exciting yet really. Had some time off from the wrenching, probably going to pick up as we appreach raceday on May 23rd.

[daniels635turbo]

What sort of racing?

[Peterjakan]

Time Attack.

[daniels635turbo]

That's gonna provide some nice video for us!!!
Do you have any recent video?

[Peterjakan]

No recent video no, we haven't really used the car at all, but hopefully we will get to film on raceday

[tingjink]

How long was that other compact finished for? Seems like it didn't last long.

[yangt1]

So how was the result on race day? Got any surprise video for us? I've been checking back and forth for the pass few days now.

[Peterjakan]

Well, the weekend was eventful if nothing else.

Thursday
As soon as we got off work we went to pick up the trailer and get the car loaded together with all the tools that we might need.

When all is loaded and prepared we set off on our 3½ hour long journey towards Lundsbrunn, a pretty small community near the city Skara, where our father lives. The plan is to spend the weekend over there with him since he lives about 20 minutes from Kinnekulle Ring, the track where the competition will be held.

The journey down there is pretty uneventful, everything goes as planned and we arrive late in the evening and go to bed pretty much right away since we'll be getting up early the next morning.

Friday
We get up at about 07:00 in the morning so that we can be in time at the track to pick out a proper spot to make camp.
Once there we start off by having the car inspected at 08:00 by the event technicians who have a couple of points that they'd like us to adress.

• Safetypin for the seatbelt mountingheads are missing
• The +connector on the battery is exposed

We quickly fashion ourselves a couple of safetypin out of keyrings, and tape up the +connector on the battery.
Problemo solved.

About an hour later we get to start with a warmup session on the track, the car is having some issues starting because of the battery being partially drained, so we have to jumpstart the car but that's OK since it's working just fine as soon as it gets going.
Three or four years has passed since we last visited this track with out previous racecar the Opel Ascona A -75, and since then they have repaved it with new asphalt which is a welcomed change since it used to be pretty rough and bumpy in certain places.

This is where things gets worse, 1½ lap into the warmup session we lose all propulsion on gear 1,2,3 and 4. Fuck.
Once we've been towed into the pit and get the car onto the jackstands we notice that gear 5 seems to be functioning. Still, you can't use the car with just 5th gear, but at least it confirms that it is indeed the gearbox that has broken, which we find pretty wierd since the section of the track at which it broke was a rather wide sweeping 180 degree roundel corner which we went through without too much load, on 4th gear, which really shouldn't put too much stress on the drivetrain.

Oh well, what to do...we start scouring the web for a new gearbox on local scrapyards and other shops, and we find one just 30 minutes away. Though it'll cost us a pretty penny. Especially annoying since we have a spare gearbox in the garage...220 miles from where we are right now.
We load up the car on the trailer, make the journey to the shop and purchase the gearbox, then we head into town for lunch with our dad and once that is done we head back home to his place where we get started on removing the gearbox. The time is now at about 13:00 and since we only have 2x jackstands with us we get to improvise a homemade setup with wooden planks to be able to work underneath the car.







After a couple of hours the weather started to turn and served us some nasty winds that kept blowing gravel and dust all over us while we worked under the car. Then it started raining a little bit. Fuck our life.
In the end though, we managed to remove the gearbox which was alot harder now with the turbo and wastegate mounted underneath the car, and swap our transfercase which had the stiff mounting bushing over to the new gearbox.

When the clock finally hit the 20:30 mark we had successfully managed the transplantation and all the stuff was put their proper place, and we got ourself some dinner before testdriving the car, which thankfully worked fine, apart from the starter motor ending up a little too close to the flywheel which caused it to make one hell of a ruckus when starting, but it worked.

We also swapped out the battery for a new one at some point.

This whole ordeal had been pretty exhausting so we got to bed as early as we could and hoped for better luck the next day.

Saturday
We arrive at the track and do another inspection of the car, and this time we've covered all our bases.

It all starts off with a "media lap" where all the cars are drive slowly around the track while being photographed / filmed by a media crew, and then they let you do some warmup laps.
Yet again, we only make it about 2 laps before a new problem rears it's ugly head at us. The alternator is generating 19 volts according to our sensors. Not good for all the electrical systems.

Pull back into the pit and take a reading with a multimeter on the battery to make sure that the sensors aren't acting up. They aren't. It's really generating 19 volts. Damnit.

After a minute or two of "What now..?" we realize that hey...maybe...the E39 525 that we used to haul the race car around with the trailer has got a alternator that will fit...?

Said and done, we remove the alternator from both cars and compare them. Sure enough, they look identical. We put it all back together in the 330 and 10 minutes left on the click from the lineup deadline we get the car running smooth and generating 14 volts again.

Later on we sent our dad to the shop since we had no road legal car that we could use to go buy a new alternator, expensive as hell but what can you do, right?

Anyway, we can finally start getting a feel for the track for the first time, and a couple of laps into it we check the tire preassure and realize that the front tires are running way too high preassure so we let some of the air out, and we also add some more camber. By this point our current session is out of time and we'll have to wait a while before it's our turn again.

Next session we start off a little better, running times of 1.02.xx which is about 1.5-2 seconds slower than our previous record with the Opel Ascona. Not good enough, though we are carving the time with about 0.5 seconds per lap, so it's getting there. about 5 laps into the session we lose boost preassure. Into the pit again, check all the preassure pipings and sure enough one of the pipes have popped off. Only a minute or two left on this session now so there's no time to get back out there. Yet again we will have to wait till the next session.

Sometime between the 2nd and 3rd session someone in the another racingclass has had an oil leak which sort of screws up the racinglines a little bit.

On the 3rd session we get about 5 decent laps, until someone else on the track experiences a mild crash, the yellow flag gets waved and the rest of the session is lost because of it. No preassure piping lost this time though.



We end up with a time of 1.00.234, which we aren't really satisfied with but...considering the circumstances we'll just have to accept it.

As we are getting ready to load the car onto the trailer and leave we are informed that our time puts us in 7th place in our classe which qualifies us for a final run, but after a couple of laps the preassure piping pops off yet again, and the previous time of 1.00.234 still stands as our record run for this day. As we drive the car back into the pit we notice the fuel preassure is dropping from 300 kpa, to 200 kpa, then minus 46 kpa (wtf..?) and then back to 500 kpa.

We suspect a faulty fuel preassure sensor, since we can't hear any misfires and the lambda is on a proper and steady value.

We are confident that with some small fixes and adjustments coupled with more track time per session we'd be able to reach a low 58 second lap, maybe even a high 57 second lap, but that would require better circumstances.

We load up the car, go back home to dads and have dinner, then we head homewards. We quickly check the fuel preassure with a mechanical manometer first though and sure enough it's all good. Faulty sensor probably.

All in all we're one experience richer, and it's sweet that we got through it all despite the challenges that arose, and sour in the sense that we and the car weren't able to perform as well as we'd have hoped.
The format of this time attack competition isn't really fitted to a car that hasn't been thouroghly tested and configured, because of the very limited time that each session recieves. We'll try and catch some additional track days until the next competition so that we can arrive with a car that is more sorted out than it was at this event.

I am sad to say that amidst all the hectic circumstances we totally forgot to even power on the GoPro camera so we have no video footage

The TV channel Viasat filmed alot of the event though so hopefully I can get ahold of some footage one way or another from them that isn't exclusive to Swedes.

Here are some pictures of some of the rides that participated though.

[Fatandre]

Some of those cars are just mental
Keep up the good work although I found the compact to be such a killer

[daniels635turbo]

Great update! Thanks guys. Excellent that you kept it going despite some fairly monumental challenges. Please take more jack stands next time.

[daniels635turbo]

How long was that other compact finished for? Seems like it didn't last long.

I believe it was a deer strike while on the maiden journey.

[daniels635turbo]

But the new green machine is a beast and shaping up to to smash the opel's track times.

[daniels635turbo]

Updates guys?
Get those gremlins sorted out?

[xgvjgyu]

The car was up and running an hour or so with a completed fuel-map before the crash.

[bnjzkcbg]

Love this build. Can't wait to see the completed project.

[Peterjakan]

It's progressing along nicely.

We participated in a little nightly event on the streets, with the car stripped of the wing and front splitter to avoid suspicious eyes from the brothers in blue.







All went well and we ended up in 2nd place, with a V8 Volvo beating us just barely, but these things are just for fun so ..

We also went to Mantorp during Gatebil to see if our changes made any difference, and boy did it make a difference. The car is much much more direct in it's steering compared to the race at Kinnekulle and much less prone to understeer.







Of course, as always, a couple of things reared it's ugly head that needs adressing.

• Motormounts aren't stiff enough, engine keeps moving sideways during acceleration / engine braking.
• Bushings in the front frame have seen better days and needs replacing.
• Bushings in rear frame are just as bad.

All in all though that's not a very long to-do list, and during the coming week we will take care of all those problems.

Next friday-saturday is raceday with the 2nd event of Timeattack.nu