Project "Try Out Drifting" (with an old slushbox E36 sedan)

[tptrsn]

Alright, I was able to get things going in the right direction yesterday as far as the Nissan MAF goes, which is nice since I think the way I have it setup with a 2.2k resistor will be able to meter up to around 450hp worth of air. From a very rough approximation, I think the 328i stock MAF with 2.2k resistor was good to about 300-ish (which may be enough for me in this case).

The corrupted tune file I created by trying to mess with the MAF scaling table in the 24k partial file was the problem. When I made the correct adjustments in an old (non-corrupt) full-read 256kb file, things started working. So this is what I have so far for getting my N/A tune dialed in just a bit with the Nissan 350Z MAF before slamming the turbo on here:

Nissan MAF Setup.jpg

Here's a shot of the nice little air straightener jammed into the tube about 5" ahead of the MAF:

Air Straightener.jpg

And for the sake of documentation, here is the wiring image for the Nissan MAF. Connect both the chassis ground (brown with orange stripe) and the MAF sensor ground (black) wires from the M52 MAF wiring harness to the lone ground wire on the Nissan MAF. Other ground wiring options create erroneous MAF and engine load readings. Also, the yellow wire in the MAF harness is the signal wire where you add a resistor if you are so inclined, and the red with white stripe wire is 12V:

Nissan MAF Wiring.jpg

[protomor]

Air straigthener? Why? What? huh?

[tptrsn]

I guess MAFs like straight (non-turbulent) air coming past them if they are to have the best chance of metering it correctly. Stock ones all have straighteners in them, albeit that they are in shorter straight sections than my fancy new one. So maybe mine wasn't necessary.

[protomor]

Looks like you just shoved a high flow cat into your intake lol.

[tptrsn]

Now that you mention it, it really does!

Oh, by the way, happy St. Patty's Day!

[tptrsn]

Alright, this time has come to tear this sucker apart for the turbo install. I've put about 30 tunes into it refining it or the 80# injectors with the Nissan MAF in the 3" tube. RomRaider is SUPER sweet compared to WinOLS, but man is it cumbersome compared to tuning MegaSquirt with Tuner Studio and Megalogviewer Tune Analyzer. Those are like heaven for tuning.

Anyway, at this point I have a pretty decent base tune going, without even having closed loop in effect to adjust fueling trims. I really like to tune with closed loop turned off, and only turn it back on when the tune is pretty well refined. So I hereby pronounce it turbo install time! Lol

Oh, one interesting thing I noticed was that I could have easily killed this transmission by simply decreasing the output signal of the MAF without rescaling the table to get load values back up into expected ranges. The first time I got the tuning coming around to where the engine was happy, I had rescaled the MAF table, but not enough to have high load areas into expected ranges. Because of that, the trans was shifting slow and soft.

At about 4am that night I woke up when it dawned on me that the trans was acting funny because it adjusts shifts and probably line pressure based on load information from the DME that it's getting over the CAN bus. Sooooo, I had to rescale the MAF table up a whole bunch, and kind of restart the tuning process all over again... Everything feels really happy now, so hopefully it was time well-spent.

[protomor]

E36s have can buses? I thought they were just wires and smoke signals.

[doktor b]

E36s have can buses? I thought they were just wires and smoke signals.

This is what I thought as well.
but you've gone down a tuning rabbit hole I'm happy to pay to stay out of. So idk.

[tptrsn]

Could be it's just a wire (or a smoke signal), I'm too used to thinking in unhappy E39 terms.... Hopefully I won't have to actually find out.

Made some decent progress today, but I have to get a shower and watch TV with the wife, so wrenching must adjourn..

[protomor]

I've scanned a few early E46s and their can bus system is funny. I always thought CAN BUS meant that things were all computers and shit. Nah, a lot of times they're just sensors with a small extra bit attached to them that go to a different ECU. But most of the time, it's just a unit that feeds to the main ECU anyway. Not much really changed. They just vin coded everything. Stupid stupid vin coding.

[tptrsn]

Here's a funny one: These turbo manifolds are all over eBay, and seem to be sold in the hundreds or thousands. After trying to slap one on my engine, I'm thinking that it must be that almost everyone leaves them sitting on the shelf or something... It's not even CLOSE to fitting on the engine, or fitting in the car. Not even close.

Strangely though, the apparent quality of materials and workmanship is as surprisingly good as the design itself is shockingly bad.

AWESOME $129 TURBO MANIFOLD

[welchct]

I know the Jeep headers on eBay are just Drake Off-Road headers that don't pass quality control. Most look great till you try to mount them and they contact the intake manifold and keep the pair from sealing. To the head.

Is there another brand that the eBay headers look identical to?

[protomor]

I had an ebay set. all the stud holes needed rounding out and the manifold split where the main pipes meet even after rewelding.

[tptrsn]

I know the Jeep headers on eBay are just Drake Off-Road headers that don't pass quality control. Most look great till you try to mount them and they contact the intake manifold and keep the pair from sealing. To the head.

Is there another brand that the eBay headers look identical to?

I don't think the common eBay turbo manifolds are copies of anything good, because the design is really not good. Having said that, I definitely think the design of the tubes will be sufficient to flow what I want them to flow for this low power, complete hack build. It does seem that the basic design of these turbo manifolds (the cheap tubular ones like this) are all basically the same, other than some have a wastegate tube and some don't. So I don't know where the original design came from.

The funny thing is that the T3 flange interferes with the head and valve cover so badly, the top of the head flange is probably 3/8" away from seating against the head. I'm not joking when I say it's astonishing how far the thing is from being able to fit the engine. AND, the turbo would basically need to occupy the same space as the strut tower if this thing would fit against the head.

I'll see if I can get some pictures that show the problem for everyone's amusement, but it's kind of a difficult place to get pictures of what I want to show.

I had an ebay set. all the stud holes needed rounding out and the manifold split where the main pipes meet even after rewelding.

Once I hack on this one to where it can actually fit on the car (cuz I'm a badass jerryrig'er, er, I mean fabricator) it will be amusing to see how it lasts or doesn't last. That's definitely part of the fun for me on this.

If it turns out that I like everything about the setup except the turbo manifold, maybe I'll buy one from Otis (Rapidspool Industries?), or maybe I'll make one, who knows.

[protomor]

I had an otis one. worked great.

Are you taking a bottom mount manifold and making it top mount?

[tptrsn]

Well, the listing for the manifold says top mount. I did try it in bottom mount orientation just to see if they had F'd up their listing. In that orientation at least the damn thing would sit against the head, but it appeared that the turbo would probably be trying to share space with the block and the transmission... So basically I have to conclude that this manifold is just made in a jig that is completely mis-designed. I'd like to find out that I'm just a dope and there is an obvious solution, but I don't think so at this point.

At any rate, not a big deal probably. I like to cut and burn metal, and I think if I cut about half of the collector off I can reconfigure this one to make it work. It will just eat up probably about one of my days' worth of work opportunities, which is less than ideal right now. No biggie though!

[protomor]

IIRC that SS is super thin. Welding on it will be fun if you only have a point and shoot welder. Wouldn't be TOO hard to just cut the flange and put it where you want. I did recall having a similar issue. I figured most people just had turbos that pointed the other way lol.

[tptrsn]

Bro, I'm a tig welding mofo! Lol

MildWithFillerLowSpdPulse.jpg

AutogenousMildVBandLowSpdPulse.jpg

But to actually answer your comments, the stainless in the tubes of this manifold seems surprisingly thick and stout. I mean it's not schedule pipe or anything like that, but should be very sufficient for my purposes.

Regarding moving the T3 flange, it should be very do-able, but this thing is designed so wrong that I'm not sure whether the side of the collector will clear the side of the head if I cut the T3 flange off.... Seriously. What I'm thinking is to cut at least the upper half of the collector off and add a bit of radius tube in there to bring the collector away from the head and forward. Then I'll have to work out my new turbo placement and fill in the gap between the two points.

[tptrsn]

Well, I got the manifold partially cobbled last night, maybe half way done, maybe not... BUT, time is kicking my ass right now, so I ordered an OtisFold just now. It should be awesome, so even though it violates my goal of doing everything on the cheap on this car, sometimes I just have to bite the bullet so I can improve my chances of having a running car. Lol

[audioscience10]

Well, I got the manifold partially cobbled last night, maybe half way done, maybe not... BUT, time is kicking my ass right now, so I ordered an OtisFold just now. It should be awesome, so even though it violates my goal of doing everything on the cheap on this car, sometimes I just have to bite the bullet so I can improve my chances of having a running car. Lol

Hey you're farther along than me. I haven't really messed with the e46 lately because I wanted to get the e21 back together. But the drivetrain came out of that on Wednesday to fix the rear main seal leak, and the interior is being pulled so it can go to Andrew Lewis next weekend for a cage...

[protomor]

Sometimes it's just worth paying the extra money for something you know is going to work.

[tptrsn]

Hey you're farther along than me. I haven't really messed with the e46 lately because I wanted to get the e21 back together. But the drivetrain came out of that on Wednesday to fix the rear main seal leak, and the interior is being pulled so it can go to Andrew Lewis next weekend for a cage...

Dude, if I'm farther ahead, that's rough.. But exciting stuff on the e21!!

Sometimes it's just worth paying the extra money for something you know is going to work.

Yeah, I kind of doesn't fit with what I had in mind for this car, but I'd rather destroy tires than not haha...

[audioscience10]

You could have gone super low budget, and surprisingly well working, on your manifold like me...


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[tptrsn]

Thanks Nic, now I feel like a complete dumbass!

[protomor]

Funny thing though, most of the time, on low boost, manifolds don't make much difference assuming it doesn't leak and isn't full of obstructions.