MrMuddle's First Turbo Build- E39 528 Budget Build!!

**MrMuddle** · 02-04-2020, 06:53 AM

So, it's been a while...again! After the last posts, I bought a cheap E46 Compact and used that as my daily and track car. The Tank sat on my drive for just under a year, gathering mold and looking sorry for itself!
Then a mate was selling his '98 528i for £500, it was an MOT failure, but had a good engine and some nice replica BBS LM 19" wheels, so I snapped it up.
I then proceeded to rip it apart on my drive, removing the engine and box etc and swapping them over into the Tank!

Thankfully my next door neighbours are nice and didn't mind me lugging an engine up their drive!!

Once the engine was in, I had planned on remaking the turbo manifold, but had kind of lost interest in that year, so just wanted it back on the road. I did however re-do my downpipe and centre section as the v band flanges were junk!

I also bought a new AEM wideband and some genuine Siemens Deka 650cc injectors, plus re-did all the wiring on the Megasquirt.

I also fitted a sport wheel I got off a friend and got the car back on the road with MOT and tax etc. I decided to lower the ignition advance by 6* and just take it easy for a while while I decided whether to keep the car or not.
That didn't last long and I fell back in love after like a week and started turning the boost up and booked my first track day!

As it was getting close to the end of the year(2019), I squeezed in as many track days as I could, so did Llandow twice and Pembrey. The car was great on track, with the only issue being my PAS reservoir was leaking when cornering hard. I fixed that by moving it over to mount near the passenger strut tower.

Little flyby video on track at 9psi.

Then I booked it onto a RR to see what it was making and it made 244.4whp at 9psi.

I then upgraded the intercooler from the weeny 2" core to a 3" core and that made a big difference. Intake temps dropped massively and stayed cool on repeated hard driving and on track. It made such a difference I had to lower the boost duty cycle as it was trying to make so much more boost at the same load!

So I turned the boost up to 13psi and booked it back on the RR and it made 300.4whp at 5825rpm. It pulls so much better now and feels much stronger.

Here's a vid of it on the RR making flames out the screamer!

Next plan is to change the cold side IC piping to 3" to see if that helps some more. I've also picked up some cheap 540 front calipers, so I'm going to try those to see if they improve the braking, along with braided lines and some brake ducts.

I've booked my first track day for Saturday 4th April, so can test the brakes out then.

So yeah, that's it up to date, I'd like to make over 400fwhp this year(it was 375fwp at 13psi). It also just generally needs some tlc as it's starting to show it's age and deserves some pampering I think! I guess at some point I'm going to have to upgrade the fuel pump and it's also still just about hanging in there with the stock Sachs clutch, which I'm amazed at!
It's done about 5000 miles, 3 track days and two RR days since being back on the road, so it's doing well so far!

Oh and I think I'd possibly mentioned somewhere before I was getting spark blowout, so I changed from the Bremi coils\boots to the E36 Bosch coils and boots and no more blowout!

Thanks for reading and here's a few cheeky pics.

Oh yeah, I painted the wheels purple too as I couldn't help myself!!