The newest video upload. The number on the digital gage is air fuel ratio, as you can tell, it runs lean.
We just found out about RomRaider for the MS41 ECU so we have ordered the necessary cable and downloaded the software. We are quite excited to have the capability to tune the ECU and fix all of the fueling issues we are having as well as turn off the VANOS controls.
A kit publicly available is unlikely, however the car most certainly will be at some point.
Current fleet:
1999 BMW e36 M3
1999 BMW e36 328is with rotary valve engine head
1999 Oldsmobile Eighty Eight
1990 Jeep Comanche Eliminator
1962 Austin Healey Sprite
Famous Bill Murray quote applies here:
"I wanna party with THIS guy!"
i get crap about throwing ideas against the wall on improving the S52 to S50B32 performance... I do things for me, not for anyone else.
" We do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. " another famous quote you may know...
anyway, carry on! I had a different image in mind for a rotary valve than what you made but I like it. I was also thinking of ways to vary the valve timing (like vanos) for application to your design. That should widen (or flatten) your power peak you seem to have. In the old days you had to static time the cam... pick where your power peak was based on gearing and intended use. You noted your timing gaps for the "cam" are ten degrees I think it was? Can you use an offset key like we did to "degree in" a cam? Not sure McMaster has those. I think I got mine from Mancini Racing before the internet existed...
"Speed's just a question of money. How fast you 'wanna go?"
PM me for E36 engine swap books and BMW ETMs! NOW SHIPPING!!!
At a first quick glance I just saw rotary, came in here, heard the videos... Something seemed a little off. I read more, saw the engine... And now I'm blown away and I can't stop listening to it idle. Well done! Holy Sh**
Instagram: Jaws.garage
2007 Saleen S331 Supercharged #133 Oxford white
2002 Mercedes E55 AMG Tectite Grey/Black, Kleemann upgrades, Supersprint muffler
2007 Buell XB12scg Cherry Bomb
Thanks! I appreciate the quotes. In terms of timing, yes, we only have control of timing in 10 degree increments because we have 36 tooth pulleys. We can time each valve relative to each other in 10 degree increments and we can time the overall valve train to the engine in 10 degree valve increments which are 20 degree crank angle changes.
We think that the peaks and dips in power are a result of fueling. Our AFR is super off most of the time, usually it is way lean. We intend on fixing this soon as soon as a programmer cable arrives in the mail to start playing with RomRaider.
Thanks. Yeah, people don't quite grasp the first time around that this is a rotary valve engine, not a rotary engine. It is a good conversation starter for sure.
Last edited by pizzaman09; 07-07-2017 at 05:13 PM.
Current fleet:
1999 BMW e36 M3
1999 BMW e36 328is with rotary valve engine head
1999 Oldsmobile Eighty Eight
1990 Jeep Comanche Eliminator
1962 Austin Healey Sprite
Been a while since I had an update to this thread. My brother and I have been working hard at making some big improvements to the design. First we have converted the unreliable belt drive of the rotary valve to nice heavy #40 roller chain. In the process of this conversion, we also pinned the valves so they are all timed exactly relative to eachother rather than +/- 7 degrees, which is very important. We ported all the valves so that they flow the same and ported the exhaust headers which were quite restrictive in the grand scheme of our flow path. A stand alone wideband o2 sensor and gage has been welded to the exhaust and we made big changes to the cooling system. We upgraded to 30lb injectors and are working on the new fuel tables using rom raider.
The video below shows the engine running with just fuel control, no throttle body. Once we finish buttoning up the cooling system we will reinstall our intake and see how we have done. So far this are looking super promising for some big performance improvements.
Last edited by pizzaman09; 12-03-2017 at 09:49 PM.
I love seeing updates on this thread. Cool stuff.
'94 325i Sedan, Arctic Gray: UUC LTW FW, EVO 3 and DSSR, +.020 Maxsil pistons, ASC delete, Eibach shocks/springs, 16" contour reps 238k
'93 325is Coupe, Schwarz, work beater 299k
'89 325i Vert, Alpine White: 5spd swapped. Sold
'04 Toyota Sienna XLE Limited AWD, In progress swapping to M50/G250, http://www.wibimmers.com/board/index...nna-25i-build/
'05 Volvo V70 R, 6mt, mostly stock, kid hauler 200k Sold
'85 Toyota LandCruiser: Lifted, gas hog. 205k
Can the mods please move this to thread to the porn section. Dear god <3
Well it had a slight setback yesterday, timing of the valves was too advanced and it backfired enough fuel out of the open intake to catch the engine significantly on fire. I used an extinguisher on it and am now cleaning up all the dry chemicals. Will probably get it all back together by tomorrow.
We found out that our cooling system issues revolve around not having a flow path bypassing the thermostat when cold, I removed the thermostat and now it looks like flow may actually be successful.
I believe you will overheat without a T-Stat to slow the flow of coolant thru the radiator.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Hopefully the engine is still okay after the fire and the damage isn't too significance. Awesome car and one of the craziest builds I've ever seen! Good luck!
The coolant flow is so modified that it really doesn't operate as an original M52 cooling system at this point. The thermostat is currently preventing 100% of the coolant from circulating thru the engine so it's removal is necessary for any flow. This is due to us not having a single clue when we designed the engine as to how the cooling was supposed to circulate. We tried a lot of things and most of them ended in large amounts of coolant overflowing out of the expansion tank as we eventually realized that it was the only place for coolant to flow after it went thru the engine until the thermostat opened.
The damage was super minimal, mostly we are trying to clean it up well from the extinguisher dust which might be adversly abrasive. I basically sprayed a dry chemical extinguisher into the intake of all 6 cylinders since that is where the fire was originating from.
I'm so happy that you said that and I didn't have to...
But as far as the thread at hand. Wondering more about how accurate and in control your valve setup is? Is it possible you have a timeing slip?
- - - Updated - - -
I'm so happy that you said that and I didn't have to...
But as far as the thread at hand. Wondering more about how accurate and in control your valve setup is? Is it possible you have a timeing slip?
Nobody would recertify these machines after somebody screwed with them without any visibility into what they did.
HONK! HONK! Clown car coming through!
-Oakdizzle
Each of you is 50% correct about the thermostat. The purpose of thermostat is not to just keep the engine from running cold or running hot. It's purpose is to keep engine at designed operating temperature, not just one or the other.
Also, as OP mentioned the cooling system and the flow has been havily modified, so the thermostat functionality now seems far from it's intended spec.
- 96 328is 6.0L. (LS1 to LS2 build thread: http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum...ad.php?2098938)
- 96 328is 5.7L. (LS1 build thread: http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum....php?t=1289987)
- 95 ///M3 6.0L. (LS2 build thread: http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum....php?t=1619249)
- 97 ///M3. (e46 Fender Flares/track car build thread: http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum....php?t=1727098)
- 96 328is (Dual Fuel Pump to Surge Tank thread: http://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/sh...ad.php?1964025)
The radiator and coolant volume must be OVERSIZED to accommodate the possibility for HOT environments. (Maximum)The thermostat is to disrupt the oversized coolant system from over cooling the engine, and to achieve a standard engine temp.(minimum) A thermostat keeps heat in, not allow heat to escape. A radiator will expel more heat with more flow through it rather than cyclic cooling( like the thermostat does). This is proven on any car ran without a thermostat. They don't overheat. They run cooler. Its proven and common knowledge.
Nobody would recertify these machines after somebody screwed with them without any visibility into what they did.
HONK! HONK! Clown car coming through!
-Oakdizzle
Last edited by bluptgm3; 12-12-2017 at 09:34 AM.
Not with a non faulty water pump, air pocketless coolant system, and working mechanical and accessory fan you didn't. The accessory fan is designed for that EXACT scenario. As long as they work (air through) and the coolant flow through the radiator is sufficient (set by the water pump) and its not above 150 degrees or so outside,,, your car should never overheat with or without a thermostat.
Nobody would recertify these machines after somebody screwed with them without any visibility into what they did.
HONK! HONK! Clown car coming through!
-Oakdizzle
Actually we finally have all parts of the valve timing pinned so they can not slip. Relative timing between cylinders is within a degree of eachother, barring any chain stretch. With the updated timing setup it really does run much better.
Currently we are awaiting glue to dry on our intake we will probably be able to test how well it all runs on Christmas day. That is when we aim to reassemble it, correct any overall timing issues and fire her up and see what happens.
Update: The engine has been fully put back together and it runs! We had some trouble with a poorly placed coolant level temp sensor, it was on a blocked off coolant line so was reading outside air temperatures which are in the single digits Fahrenheit right now. With the coolant temp sensor moved to an actual coolant line the engine now starts every time as the fuel tables are closer to correct for the temp of the engine. It blows heat out of the heater and it doesn't stall every 5 seconds, it actually idles rather well.
As you will see in the video, the car doesn't have snow tires on it. They were not doing well on the slight grade of my driveway. We have been getting a lot of snow in Erie lately so not ideal for testing the car.
While running it we had a coolant line blow near the heater core, we are going to investigate soon.
It definitely needs to be tuned. We have yet to plug the new wideband O2 sensor in, we had a bung welded into a header so we can now get an accurate reading.
Current fleet:
1999 BMW e36 M3
1999 BMW e36 328is with rotary valve engine head
1999 Oldsmobile Eighty Eight
1990 Jeep Comanche Eliminator
1962 Austin Healey Sprite
Update again. Just a random driving video set. Finally starting to tune for air fuel ratio.
It has been a while since I posted an update to this project. The video is a bit lengthy, it goes into depth of the details of what is happening with the engine and how it is running today.
If you want to skip straight to where it is running, go to 17:35.
Current fleet:
1999 BMW e36 M3
1999 BMW e36 328is with rotary valve engine head
1999 Oldsmobile Eighty Eight
1990 Jeep Comanche Eliminator
1962 Austin Healey Sprite
The exciting part of this project is now scheduled! We have the engine running very well and not leaking too many fluids. So it's time to Dyno the rotary valve! We have a day scheduled at a local shop that is going to let us dyno tune the car for a day. It's the same shop that we had the car dynoed in 100% stock form so we will be able to overlay the plots.
When is the dyno day? The last video showing all the issues you've sorted out was nice. I'm shocked this project hasn't gotten more attention already.
Bookmarks