Finally My Own Boost Story: The E30 M30 Turbo

[darknezz7]

Hey thanks for the comments and info! Means a lot to me to see some of the big names chime in here.

The car still runs just fine, I just kinda stopped driving it when it got rainy and colder.

But I just recently finished the new wastegate setup and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Now my hood can be on

However I found out by using a air regulator with some fittings and vacuun hose attached to the wastegate that my spring starts to open at 15 psi and is fully open around 18 psi.... No wonder I was making that much boost, it was supposed to be shipped with a 7lb spring but I never checked it....

So now I have a 7lb spring and mac 3 port boost controller on the way and will use the top and bottom port of the wastegate to control and tune boost much better.

With tuning I had the car running pretty good no more flames and all that business.

Heres some pics.

Used a carbide hole saw and drill press to cut a hole in the turbo, went like butter with good cutting paste.

Used 309l rod and tig welded the pipe in, admittedly these are not my tig welds I had a friend do it that welds for a living. I practiced but tig is hard hah.

Then it was put in a kilm where it went from 900* and dropped 100* every hour over 8 hours. I believe I did everything possible to make this a strong weld.

I made a little block off plate for the manifold with another turbo smart inlet flange and clamp.

I built the rest of the pipe and joined it into the exhaust finally. Then had to re wrap it all.

Its sooo much quieter now, much better.

I installed my garagistic custom length dssr and selector joint. I have never felt a bmw with such precise no slop shifting, its great!

I also plumbed back in my heater core for cool weather driving and have a set of kuhmo 225 50 15 all seasons to put on some extra wheels for winter tires as the rivals DO NOT like to be cold.

Thats all for now, next is run the wire for my dash tablet so I have a full info gauge cluster using msdroid or shadow dash.

Also I think I'm going to have to put some louvers in the hood to let some heat out, its hot under there!

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[darknezz7]

I have been battling an exhaust leak pretty much since day one and after trying to tighten the manifold nuts several times they finally pulled out of the head. So I heli coiled several threads and took my manifold to my machinist, turns out it was warped by A LOT. Suspecting it might have been warped from the beginning, never bothered to check it as I assumed it was good quality and flat. Anyway its definitely nice and flat now, I used factory style gaskets this time so they have the heat shields and I used longer bolts with flat and lock washers instead of studs. Hoping it all stays good for awhile now, it sure is nice and quit now.

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Still working on tuning when its not raining and warm enough to drive on the rivals, trying to get it ready for spring enduro.

I also bought hood louvers from track spec motorsports to let some heat out of the engine bay and ordered my oil cooler stuff.

Oh and I bought a 4k60fps action cam so I plan to get some good videos in and out of the car.

More pics to come, heres an ice storm from a few weeks ago.
Oh also I bought a 2000 Ram 1500, its poking its nose out in the right side of the pic, to the left side my boss's RHD turbo diesel Delica.

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This is the current timing map Ive been working on, untested as of now but basically I smoothed it out some and added more timing in the lower section low boost and under vacuum.
Looking for opinions on it, oh and if you choose to copy it I take NO responsibility if your car blows up.





This seems pretty conservative still, other maps I see have around 20* even at full boost.

I feel like I can raise everything from 160kpa 1000 rpm up by atleast 2*

[darknezz7]

Afr map for autotune. Just edited this because before everytime I turned on autotune it made my car run terrible.

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[darknezz7]

***This is several posts copied from my msextra forum thread if you want to read about the issues I have been trying to troubleshoot and what I have done****

Turns out I did not have "incorporate afr target" option turned on.

I made the afr table basically 11.6 for everying above 3k rpm and 115 kpa except for 6000 and 6700 cells i made 11.3 afr just for some extra fuel at the top.

I went out with a friend and laptop and drove watching the afr gauge and where on the fuel ve table it was then added more fuel where it got lean also added more timing in areas. Its running better and better the misfire popping sound is gone which I know think was detonation.... Engine seems fine though.

My afr on the log however is still doing this rising then a lean spike then drop and repeat thing on a wot pull. I looked at my friends sc mr2 and his afr is a mostly solid line during wot.


I determined one or more of my injectors are leaking, fuel pressure rapidly falls when pinching the feed and return after regulator lines on pump prime.

Turns out despite reading it would be ok you DO NOT want to use the factory e30 in tank lift pump as it causes a restriction. I also rewired the pump witha relay directly to the battery. The pump sounds much better much quieter and consistent sounding.

Looking at my logs duty cylce was going up to like 110% and there was weird dropouts and thats when I was going lean.

I have some genuine siemens deka 60lb injectors coming this week and will get them installed and start rebuilding my fuel table and all that.

I started to notice though that after a drive I'd come back and look at the gauge on the aeromotive regulator and it would be randomly dropping 5psi at idle. I think that was the pump struggling or the injectors leaking so much and I noticed it no longer holds fuel pressure when engine shuts off.

Theres no exhaust leaks, now... The wideband is about 2 ft from the turbo in the down pipe.

Yes the afr reading is about .3 or .4 higher on the megasquirt gauge than what I see on the Innovate gauge. It used to be more like .7 off but I rewired the Innovate with a relay off common power and grounds.

Turns out my injectors were not leaking, I pulled the rail activated the pump nice and dry. I put in the deka 60lbs in anyway and it is running so much better from idle and all the way through. Using the required fuel calculator its down from 9 to 6.1, I have dead time set to .7 and batt correction .2 My batt voltage at megasquirt is pretty steady 13.8. It seemed really happy here so I left it alone but I may drop down to .6 or .5 dead time as I've seen these injectors want .4 to .5.

Im at 44psi on the aeromotive fpr vac line off and its super stable now even after a drive and drops to about 36 vac line on, my engine only runs at about 16inhg vacuum at idle (284 mid cam, factory is 262) so 8psi drop is correct.

But the 2 issues I was actually trying to fix have not changed. One was after pump prime engine off my fuel pressure drops to 0 almost instantly and its not the pump check valve. Before removing the factory in tank lift pump it would sit around 30 psi after prime and slowly drop over 10 min or so.

I've now read countless threads on the aeromotive fpr the ball not seating and not holding a prime so I'm going to take it apart and check the seat make sure no crud and mby take some sand paper and a similar sized ball bearing and "lap" the seat. According to aeromotives website this is normal and theyre not supposed to hold rail pressure with pump off, but it did before and I would like it to again. I see everyone also saying its no big deal, it runs ok and does start ok but takes a few seconds cranking.

The second issue is the dropouts in duty cycle/pulse width that corelate with the lean spots and little misfire feels in 2nd and 3rd gear wot above 4700 rpm. It is however not as bad as when I first started this thread, it doesnt make poping sounds thru exhaust anymore and the misfires are not as bad and have seemed to moved to a higher rpm.

Im still tuning ve table but my afr line also looks much better its not constantly jagged like before and is staying around 11 to 12 for the most part except where the duty cycle drops out where it goes to 13.

At this point I'm not sure what is the root cause. Am I seeing the duty cycle dropouts and lean spots because of a ignition misfire or is the misfire caused by the dropouts and leaning?

Oh also I set the wideband to custom and changed the voltage correction until the gauge and tuner studio matched so not really an issue anymore. Might be a bandaid but it seems to be working as what I see on the gauge and in logs now match pretty close.

My timing table has come along way as well and it also seems really happy where it is at, pic to come.

****

[darknezz7]

OK idk why I'm still up.

Here is my current timing table, it has come A LONG WAY since I started and it feels really happy right here for now. I TAKE NO RESPONSIBILITY IF YOU USE THIS ON YOUR M30 AND IT BLOWS UP.


Current AFR table, have not tried auto tune since the new injectors.


Here is a screenshot from before the deka 60lb injectors and fuel pump mods. You can see the dropouts in DC and PW correlate with lean spikes and during when I was feeling little misfires. Also the injector duty cycle skyrockets over 100%.



*says zip file invalid when attaching* Attached is a short log WOT 1st thru 4th pull AFTER the new injectors, pump rewire and removed in tank lift pump. If you compare the dropouts in DC/PW they have moved up to about 5300 rpm in 2nd and 3rd and only one little drop in 4th at 5000 rpm. Max duty cycle now however is only 81% now which is much better. I also notice above 5000 rpm the rpm line gets choppy like it will show 5024 - 4979 - 5069.

Just for immediate comparison here is a screenshot of after injectors attached log.



So is this ignition, fuel, tuning, crank sync loss or possibly hardware communication loss? I'm trying to troubleshoot this and keep upgrading things I think it may be along the way. Race season is fast approaching...

If I could just get this sorted the car would run perfect then I can go up to my true target of 15-16 psi. Right now I'm on just the "7" psi spring which gets me 11-12 psi with a nice flat line no creep but I have a MAC 2 way boost controller to wire in when I feel its running good enough.

Oh and here is the car, its a "body work in progress" I just painted the hood that was white and put the trackspec louvers in. This is the first time (since this project started May last year) I've been able to drive around with the hood on since before the wastegate was a open dump tube last fall then when I moved the wastegate to the turbo and plumbed it in it was super hot under the hood but the louvers work amazing. The whole car is a constant "work in progress" haha...


Ok its after 2am, must sleep, thinking/researching about this is what keeps me up at night. :RTFM:

Fuel pickup mod