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

[beat328i]

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.

+1, it's just a collector. N/A is where manifold design is the most important. That's why if I'm gonna turbo my m52, i'd just pick up one of those SPA log type doodad's and send it.

[tptrsn]

Those look real nice, I just didn't want a bottom mount.

[tptrsn]

It runs!! And I have the initial ~7psi tune pretty well completed. Probably going to add a touch of boost before the weekend, and just not try to break it until I get it on the track haha...

A couple of initial shots with more to come later:

Initial underhood shot without the turbo blanket:
Initial Underhood Shot - Small.jpg

A quick shot of my hackery on the front end for flow to the intercooler:
Initial Front End Shot -- Small.jpg

Downpipe on the floor (not my prettiest work, but I was in serious "get 'er done" mode):
Downpipe on Floor - Small.jpg

Downpipe wrapped and installed:
Wrapped Downpipe in Car.jpg

The rest of the exhaust all the way from the downpipe to the muffler in 3" aluminum. 6 lbs!!:
Aluminum Exhaust - Small.jpg

[protomor]

You work fast.

[tptrsn]

Yeah, I've been kind of under the gun on this... I didn't want to miss this weekend. Ideally I wanted to have it running a couple weeks ago so I'd have more shakedown and tuning time, but hopefully this will be ok. So far so good I guess.

Here's the turbo and upper drain line setup I ended up with:
Turbo and upper drain line - small.jpg

And the sketchy lower drain line I hacked together because I was short of parts and needed to make something happen:
Lower drain line - small.jpg

One of the two good parts I put on the car so far, or at least this is a decent part -- Treadstone 1045 intercooler:
Intercooler and uncut intake tube - small.jpg

Got lucky on how easy it was to mount this sucker, it fit like a glove with just some chopped up aluminum C-channel:
Intercooler mount 1 - small.jpg
Intercooler mount 2 - small.jpg

[audioscience10]

heck yeah man! can't wait to see how she does. I do need to pick one thing apart. you cant drain into the bottom of the pan like that. if there is restriction in your turbo drain, and below the oil line is a big restriction, it will leak past the seals of the turbo and into the exhaust.

[tptrsn]

Hey Nick!!

Any chance you're going to have your car all back together for Saturday? Looked to me from the pics in your thread like you could probably get 'er put back together in time if you had enough opportunity to work on it between now and then.

This whole oil drain thing is a super interesting topic to me. Probably like you, I've always done my drains in what I consider to be the conventional way, as you said above the level of the oil. But you know, the BF.c is an interesting place... It turns out that a lot of people on the F/I forum here actually use a setup like this, where they drain the turbo back to the drain plug.

To go one step further, one guy on here who I think might be an engineer, told me that the oil drain into the top surface of the M62 upper pan would work correctly because I was draining back to an area above the level of the oil, and it's possible that air movement in the drain line might impede the function of the drain....

To me that was a new one. But then he pointed out that the Oil Separator Valve on the M62 drains the oil back to lower than the level of the oil in the pan for that very reason. To which I said "good point." And then I started to think about it. As long as the crank case is not pressurized in some way that would keep the level of oil in the pan from rising, draining to a point lower than the level of oil in the pan should NOT cause a problem as long as the level in the pan is lower than the bottom of the turbo. It's like the physics of siphoning I think?

So anyway, I would call it a mythbusters style experiment I'm trying, if it wasn't for so many people on the F/I board already using this method with success. The only thing about the concept that really troubles me is the small orifice through the M12 portion of the -10 to M12 adapter. It's really small diameter, and makes me feel like my efforts to use 5/8" hardline and hose for the rest of the drain was just dumb (if it works!).

When I was pondering the whole thing, I decided I should whip up a crappy catch can that would hopefully work as an oil separator for all of the blowby that was going to be produced by my neglected old 225k miles engine. Keeping the drainback facility to the dipstick tube, I came up with this gem/piece of junk I made from stuff I had sitting around. The little spout extends down from the rear of the can into the factory drainback tube:
catch can complete - small.jpg

Here's what's inside -- Long tube from the valve cover into the rear/bottom of the can, and short spout out to atmosphere for now, and later to a draw tube into the intake between air filter and turbo inlet probably:
catch can innards - small.jpg

The .050" wall tubing was giving me a tough way to go, but then I started playing around with pulse on the 16ga wall material and cranked out some decent looking welds:
catch can decent welds - small.jpg

Oh and here's a perspective I liked from when I was hacking together some pie cuts onto the compressor housing:
pie cuts on compressor housing - small.jpg

[audioscience10]

I guess the way I have always heard is that you don't want to build oil pressure in your turbo, which is the reason the outlet is so much bigger than the inlet. It also may make a difference between journal bearing and ball bearing. I haven't messed with ball bearing so I don't know what the seal is like. perhaps it is more forgiving of oil pressure.

As far as Saturday goes, I will be there but I'm not sure my car will. I am in the process of building a new lca lollipop setup. I tweeked my frame rail a little so I am building almost a K-member to connect both lollipop mounts and the subframe. Hopefully I can add a bit of rigidity to the front end.

[tptrsn]

Hope you get er together in time Nic!

[protomor]

I had issues where I kept blowing oil through the turbo seals until I drained back above the oil level. I also ran HX35s at that point so that could also have been the issue. lol.

[tptrsn]

But when you had the problem you were draining the turbo to the oil drain plug?

BTW, the trans controller throws a fit if the boost goes above about 8psi from what I can tell so far. It's like hitting the overboost cut on megasquirt, except I could set that where ever I wanted it, like 30psi...

Anyway, 8psi really does seem to do what I wanted, which is just a little more power than I had. This actually feels pretty peppy.

[doktor b]

8psi is at least a 54.4% increase in manifold pressure. So it shouldn't be terrible at all.
(assuming 1Bar manifold pressure at WOT before FI)

[jakeE36325]

It seems that this whole oil drain debate has gained traction recently. Must be due to so many more people starting builds. I see no problem with drawing to the except if there was excess crankcase pressure like you've pointed out. I would think that high mileage engine would be more prone to that issue. Too late now but I'm pretty sure you can drill out the adapter to make it bigger.

In the spirit of reinventing the wheel I'm seriously thinking about putting my turbo oil drain to the lower part of the timing cover. It will be short above the oil level and crank case vacuum should be good there. I realize this location is very impractical as far as setup however I think it's worth a try.

[protomor]

Def didn't return to the oil plug. I returned to the pan but below the oil level.

[audioscience10]

In the spirit of reinventing the wheel I'm seriously thinking about putting my turbo oil drain to the lower part of the timing cover. It will be short above the oil level and crank case vacuum should be good there. I realize this location is very impractical as far as setup however I think it's worth a try.

I have seen this done by one of the m10 guys and I considered doing it myself actually. It just didn't work out with the placement of my turbo so I opted to drill and tap the block, just above the oilpan.

[tptrsn]

Too late now but I'm pretty sure you can drill out the adapter to make it bigger.

Definitely. If I run into problems with this current drain setup, that is the first thing I will do to see if it helps. I have a nice 45* -10 bulkhead fitting sitting here from another build that I can put in to a higher part of the pan too, but I didn't feel like pulling the pan right now, and honestly I just wanted to try draining to the oil drain plug to see what happened since I've always setup my drains above oil level previously.

In the spirit of reinventing the wheel I'm seriously thinking about putting my turbo oil drain to the lower part of the timing cover. It will be short above the oil level and crank case vacuum should be good there. I realize this location is very impractical as far as setup however I think it's worth a try.

I think that should work fine if you can find a handy location. I almost did that with my M62 turbo setup, but it was most unhandy.

8psi is at least a 54.4% increase in manifold pressure. So it shouldn't be terrible at all.
(assuming 1Bar manifold pressure at WOT before FI)

Agreed, it's very surprisingly zippy! Before turbo I got this old girl down to about a 15 flat quarter mile at about 90mph (from about 16.1 at 85), through tuning and just generally beating the crap out of it, which brought compression back up in one weak cylinder. In that state of tune and whatnot, and with the new Nissan MAF in it I was getting load numbers of about 700-ish mg/stroke (correlates to torque), and about 675-ish kg/hour (correlates to power). With me in the car (~200#) I think it was about 2900# total at that time, which put power at around 180hp going by online calculators.

During a couple of tuning sessions yesterday and Monday, it seems like I can have it pull 925 to 1000-ish mg/stroke and about 900 kg/hour without hitting the "boost cut" thing. It seems to me that this MAF curve can be a little bit misleading, since I had to do some pretty funny things to the MAF transfer curve to get it to run reasonably well with the Nissan MAF.

At any rate, being the skeptic that I am, I'm doubtful that it's gained the 54%-ish that would be guessed by 8psi boost, but it doesn't feel a whole lot worse than that. I'm totally guessing that it might be currently making about 250-275hp??.... Who knows. Feels good though!

Boost comes on hard right around 3k-3200, and on one run when I hit "boost cut" I had 1200 mg/s by 3200rpm. By eye on the boost gauge that appeared to be 10ish psi.

That is all of the rambling I have in me at the moment haha...

[tptrsn]

The turbo works

18222300_1671772766465226_4066253473637127813_n.jpg

18194220_1671772099798626_2855074338258486626_n.jpg

I spun out a couple of times in the infield section I think....

18199163_1671771369798699_4648727305403974509_n.jpg

Link to the first pic on facebook for proper credit of an awesome shot!
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?f...type=3&theater

[protomor]

lol with an automatic.

[doktor b]

Let's get some better pics of that hood vent.

[tptrsn]

lol with an automatic.

Yeah man, it's fantastic!!

I wish I would have been counting the number of times I heard words pretty similar to yours repeated by people: "Oh! You put a turbo on it!! . . . . Wait, is it still an automatic?" Then quick glance inside at the shifter, frowns, head shakes, and looks of confusion.

Turns out it's a pretty popular car though, maybe just because it's so ridiculous haha.

Let's get some better pics of that hood vent.

I took a bunch of when I was making it, and a couple after it was complete. I'll post them up soon. I copied Mike Stokman as much as possible, although it was my first time really trying to hammer and dolly a long creased edge, and I screwed it up pretty badly. It didn't help that it was one of the last things I did before I packed up, so I was rushing.

But hey, the great thing is that hot air gushes out of it! Well, that is when it's sitting still. I am trusting the Bernouli Effect and testing done by Inflame to make me believe that it's also working when driving along. I don't see why it wouldn't work though..

[Mikestokman]

I'll pm you doc, I bent my vent by hand hahah much too lazy to hammer and dolly that shit on a racecar

[tptrsn]

I'll pm you doc, I bent my vent by hand hahah much too lazy to hammer and dolly that shit on a racecar

I think bending it by hand gave you a better result anyway. Mine looks sh!tty, and of course I broke the paint along the "crease." It's okay for me because shi+box, but still, might as well go with the thing that will give the best results. I do think it works great, which is all I was after.

Ah! Pics of hood vent:

Attachment 599076

Attachment 599080

[tptrsn]

Attachment 599081

Attachment 599082

Here's how I made the messy bastard:

Attachment 599083

Drilled corners, cut out with angle ginder:

Attachment 599084

Then messily hammered it down, and hastily took a flap disc to everything to try to make it a bit less ugly and much less likely to create bloody wounds.

Attachment 599085

Thank you Mikestokman for the insights!

[Mikestokman]

Links no work for me, but sounds like you put way more effort into it then I did hahaha

[tptrsn]

Ah hell... I screwed the whole thing up posting those pics, cuz I is a dumbass. I'll re-do it later. Gotta go to a meeting now.