E30 Zone

Hey again, continuing my turbo project, i have just changed from the small nissan 200sx intercooler i had inside the engine bay, (which i have now learned had a whole in it giving me a nice boost leak), to a nice new front mount. Now this is done i can book it back in for the last part of the rolling road setup, where hopefully i can open out the boost Will post the graphs up when it done!

Huuummmm... Looking good
Is it a drift/racecar project?

it is indeed, but...its also my everyday road car! Ideally I would have this for my trackcar and a smarter car with a nice interior for the road, but as im a student and can barely afford to eat iv had to mix the two for now! I do alot of drifting so have the handbrake and buckets for that, otherwise id have a nice leather interior.

That´s what i thought...
You´re doing a great job

Thats a nice idea putting it there. Does it not block the radiator a tad though?

nice job mate

ummm

hey youve proably already explained this before but where did u get the turbo manifold from? and did u need a differnt ecu? looks minted mate

i was a little worried about it blocking the rad, but as it get narrower towards the top, the rad has a good 7 inches or so on the left side (in the top pic) and some air should still pass through the intercooler, so im hoping thats enough. Ive given her a good test with 5psi and there is no problems with any over heating so far..so hopefully it should be fine.

The manifold was custom made by ant, im sure you know who he is! He made it for me when i ordered the megasquirt ecu and coilpack. If anyone is interested in a more detailed spec, look for my previous post titled:

"325 turbo student budget!"

and there is one called "finally finished" which has some exterior pics

Jon can i ask you a cheeky question. Roughly how much has this cost you mate? Also do you have a rough guide to where your money has went. The reason i ask is that i can get ahold of a cheap turbo and intercooler second hand. This is something i really want to do to my e30 but funds are really a deciding factor.

sure! Im not the most well off person ever, which is why this project has stretched my limits a little! The turbo and intercooler themselves are the cheaper parts of doing the job im afraid. The bigger expense is the manifold, ecu and then dyno time to set it all up correctly, and then in my case, i spent far too much on a garage bill for changing the head gasket, but if i were to do that again, i could avoid that one!

so far, this is roughly what has gone where (cant remember exact figures):

1. Parts, such as turbo, intercooler, exhaust, injectors, intercooler pipework, dunp valve, boost gauage = £500/600

2. ECU, manifold, oil lines, coilpack = £850

3. Stupid garage bill for thicker head gasket, non stretch bolts and welding a bit of exhaust= £1100!

4. Rolling road first session= £340

5. Estimated rolling road second session= £150 (final touches)

So, so far, probably about 3k

Then next year want to rebuild the engine with forged pistons, so will be adding another large chunk on to that!

Hope that helps, not meaning to put you off, but its worth doing it properly with the right managment and so on otherwise youll end up having continuous problems

Oh and forgot to mension, thats with the majority of parts being second hand, would be more new obviously

thanks mate thats a great help .. That garage should be shot for that bill. Thats rebuild territory

tell me about it, and they dropped my bonnet and gave it a nice scratch or two. They knocked 100 quid off for it but still much more than i wanted to pay! Thing is they refused to give me a quote before they started and two months later they tell me that price and the car still didnt even run! Had to finish what they didnt do myself again!

I have been done over by a few garages in the past.. Its so difficult to find someone you can trust to work on your car. Wish i lived closer to Ant

yea same! I have found a guy in silverstone who is sh*t hot, he used to work for option motorsport, and now he is freelance. He is one of the few guys that will genuinly help you out the best he can even on sundays! If anyone is close to silverstone a highly recommend him!

hell yeah its nice to see you got the turbine sorted now mate, how u getting on with the injectors? all this turbo bimmers are making me jealous, im on the hunt for another one so i can build another beast

Im sure this question has been asked a million times so sorry in advance but do 325 turbos ever come up for sale?? id love to build one but i dont have the space or time!!

yea its finally coming together now! Cant wait for it to be mapped anf finished now! The injectors are spot on cheers! Had trouble getting them all to fire but it was an ecu settup issue in the end, just had to change one setting and it fired straight up

I have always been looking out for turbo's for sale, but iv never seen one! Id like to as i would like to know how much mine is worth! Mine will be up for sale some time in the next year as ill be forced to sell it when i finish uni and have to pay off my debts! I guess if you find an owner and make them a good offer that will be your best way ;)

oh forgot to mension, was quit chuffed the other night, even driving midly due to mapping not finished, i still managed to pull away from a fiat coupe 20v turbo and a 330 e46, and its only on 5psi too looking forward to finiding out what she can really do!

jondrift wrote:oh forgot to mension, was quit chuffed the other night, even driving midly due to mapping not finished, i still managed to pull away from a fiat coupe 20v turbo and a 330 e46, and its only on 5psi too looking forward to finiding out what she can really do!

Looking great fella

Nice to see you sizing up the competition already


Well done

jay1980 wrote:Im sure this question has been asked a million times so sorry in advance but do 325 turbos ever come up for sale?? id love to build one but i dont have the space or time!!

Why not give Ant from A Tech a call> Im sure he will be glad to help.

His details are on his sigs

jay1980 wrote:Im sure this question has been asked a million times so sorry in advance but do 325 turbos ever come up for sale?? id love to build one but i dont have the space or time!!

speak to turbo-brown (alex) he has one for sale right now I think he said.

awesome car mate,

lovingthe hydro wand aswel, is that the driftworks one? was it easy to instal and do you have any pictures of where it enters the brake lines,

cheers ian

it is indeed the driftworks one! as for fitting it, i didnt fancy messing with the brake lines myself, so i took it to my local genius. He did a really good job, with nice welding and all the proper lines. I think its worth it for something like this as it takes alot of stress so i wouldnt wanna bodge it!

ill try and get some pics next time the car is up on ramps!

ive fitted the driftworks wand on my silvia last week and its great.... only prob is that the actual handle does wobble round a bit side to side

the piping is all straight forward...just buy a reel of copper pipe, some m10x1 fittings and a pipe flaring tool and of you go

yea i think its an ok job on the silvia, but the guy that fit mine said its a bit harder on the e30 as the bake lines are seperated in a funny way and its hard not to affect the front ones or something? I cant remeber exactly what he said, but yea its an awsome thing to have!

i thought hydraulic handbrakes were illegal on road cars without a cable driven backup...?

very nice dude!

CraigG wrote:i thought hydraulic handbrakes were illegal on road cars without a cable driven backup...?

a mechanical cable ebrake is reqd but im sure mot guys wouldnt mind too much especially as that one has a locking mechanism in it anyhoo

hey again, just got the dyno results for my final setup... initially at 10psi it was making 210bhp at the wheels, but unfortunately it was pinking at top end. So due to the fact i wanted it to last as long as possible, we decided to pull the ignition out a fair bit. Its now making 217bhp at the fly, which isnt the best result but it also got 262 lbs of torque, so still feels good, and im a bit more confident it wont go bang the second i get it sideways!

Seeing as the engine is the high compression version of the m20, i think this result is ok? Im planning to do forged pistons to run at a bar in the summer, so should see a good gain then!

Hey Jon, good results on a small turbo dude.

with a small snail... you'll always struggle to get topend HP as the turbo wont allow the engine to breath all the exhaust gasses out on each stroke so the net result is high cyl temps and pinking as you've found out.

yea blokey at the rolling road said something pretty similar! Well, im pleased with it so far, at least its up and running well!

My plans over the next year are to change to low comp forged pistons, metal head gasket and prehaps then a bigger turbo too!

All in good time thou

If i do the pistons, is there anything else worth doing at the same time without spending bucket loads?

Weld the coolant passages on the inlet side to match the gasket , bigger face area= more clamping force, all good dude, you could go mad and do the block too for double safe, Exhaust side best left as OE, the H/G always blow to the intake side in anycase.

TBH, I'd go for a bigger turbo( 2x what you have now) before dropping the CR, give the exhaust gas some room to escape, add the timing back in and enjoy, will boost later but harder and with better HP gain and less midrange TQ gain.

Just to add, re the H/brake, the text in the MOT testers book is a mechanical backup, Ie rods and links or Bowden cables, hyd is exactly that, however........ never cars have an H/brake thats electronic in operation(E65), so , Welcome to yet another grey area guys.