E30 Zone

Well, the oil leak what was making it's presence known on the rolling road this week has now turned into a flood of biblical proportions with the car getting through about 5 litres of oil in 100miles of driving!

Something or other has started periodically making an incredibly alarming noise, which I think might just be the exhaust leaning on something like it always has on left hand corners, only now it does it in a straight line and seemingly without provocation.

As of yesterday, there's a nasty bearingy screech at about 2500rpm when the engine's cold which goes away until the engine's hot.

Then there's the gearbox which is starting to complain more than ever under the strain of a 47% torque hike.

Oh and the wheel bearings which drone merrily away when you're cruising at 70mph.

Break out the tiny violins guys, I need sympathy!

I've got plenty of old oil you can have...

This week end has been shit for bad car related news

Have you got to strip it all down ?

Perhaps you could fabricate a additional fuel tank that is actually an oil tank to pump oil back to the engine, might be expensive to fill up though.

On a more serious note, have you got no idea where its coming from, 5 litres in 100 miles must be easy to spot Alex?? Couldn't be the relocated oil filter/housing could it?

Oh dear, you having troubles too Andy?

Wish it were easy to spot Jon, but it's absolutely everywhere, like it's even found it's way onto the back bumper!!

My cheif suspect is the oil system, but I checked it all so carefully before the rolling road day and it seemed only to be a tiny weep (compared to what it used to be).

Think I'll have to give it all a good clean, then start it up and keep an eye out because like you say, that much pissing out can't be hard to spot!

Tis such a pain in the arse to get at though as it means taking off the front turbo

Still, might give me a chance to sort out the chuffing exhaust flange connections properly.

Just really dreading what the screeching might be though. I fookin' hope it's not a turbo bearing!

Scary thing is that I'm not far off moving further away from work so cycling might be out of the equation, and public transport's shite around here!

One of these days I'm gonna buy a car and just drive around in it, not make any of these drastic changes which reduce the reliability of the thing!

Turbo-Brown wrote:Oh dear, you having troubles too Andy?

Yeah

http://www.e30zone.co.uk/modules.php?na ... ic&t=35310

5 litres in 100 miles sounds pretty serious...when the mpg of your oil almost matches your petrol mpg something needs serious attention unfortunately it seems to be the downside of turbo charging,high maintanance.but youll be like me and will never buy a car and keep it as it is,its part of the fun. hopefully its nothing serious

Turbo-Brown wrote:
Wish it were easy to spot Jon, but it's absolutely everywhere, like it's even found it's way onto the back bumper!!

!

There's always a bright side - You shouldn't have any underbody rust problems. - Sorry.

Many moons ago i had a 323i that consumed oil at a greater rate than fuel, eventually i found the oil filter had a hair line crack in it.... the oil mist it produced was too fine to see, but like Brian said, the chassis down the drivers side was never going to rust...

cheers guys, guess there are two ways to look at it:

1) throw in the towel and buy something sensible
2) stop whining, fix the bloody thing and see how much power it can make

Did wonder if it might be a porous oil system casting, but that's probably wishful thinking!

Stop whining, just throw more time & money at it!

Its not the seal on your takeoff plate is it?
I know when mine went it made a hell of a mess

Yeah, I'm hoping it's either the take off plate for the filter or the pressure take off block having wiggled itself loose. Just haven't had a chance to get under there for a look yet, bloody weather!

Well, been out under the car this morning to see if I could trace the oil leak.

Started it up with some clean newspaper under the engine and stuck my head under the car to see if I could see anything untoward.

Sure enough there's a steady drip coming from.....somewhere, so I take off the under tray so I can get my face right in there.

Seems that the oil filter take off plate's sealed well enough as the drip doesn't seem to be coming from there, but the oil take off block for the turbos, oil pressure gauge and switch does seem to be leaking from both ends!

So, put some mole grips on the giant banjo bolt that holds it on and give it such a tiny tweek with my fingers and, lo and behold, it's barely finger tight!

So that's done up good and proper now and a quick inspection with the engine running again suggests that the problem's gone away ........for now.

Good news then Alex.

Might be worth pulling the banjo and adding some threadlock maybe ?

Yeah definately! Just a bit worried about getting little bits of crap in there when the bolt's out though

Anyway, just been for a nice 40mile drive (in bank holiday traffic) having first made sure the oil was dead on the top mark so once it's all cooled down and stopped raining I'll go have a look at whether the problem's solved.

had a bit of an investigate on the awful exhaust noise front too.

Seems that the can has split open all along one side!

Bit worrying as I made it from the same material and using the same methods as the rest of the exhaust system including the manifolds so fingers very crossed that it doesn't all fall apart!

Lets hope it was a weak bit in the metal.

Very odd, it's broken a line of stitch welds! Just wonder if it's the resonance the noise sets up in the can that's fatigued them all or something.

Still, it's nice to have an explantion for the worrying noise and horrendous din on acceleration!

your lucky the oil leak turned out to be so minor.the usual way it works on turbod cars is any problem=expensive repair

Well, slightly more encouragement this weekend!

Started with the simple things to try sorting out cyl 5's low compression so I had the rocker cover off to check the valve clearance on the inlet.

By some quirk of fate, when I'd stopped the engine last, cyl 5 was at TDC on the compression stroke so that was handy!

Anyway, sure enough there wasn't any valve clearance! God knows where that's gone, but now it's back

Car seems to idle a little more smoothly and you can trickle along with a closed throttle without the car lurching as much as it used to so if I'm really lucky, that'll be the end of it!

Had a great drive back from my mates house too (was borrowing his garage) got to embarass a nice new 330i, and some nipper in a Mk2 MR2 tried to have a go and didn't seem too happy about a 21year old brown barge laying the smack down

thats the best thing about having a 'sleeper',embarrasing the owners of newer 'faster' machines and seeing their expresions of disbelief in your rear view mirror

Turbo-Brown wrote: some nipper in a Mk2 MR2 tried to have a go and didn't seem too happy about a 21year old brown barge laying the smack down

was it a blue chavved one? there is a guy i know who lives your way with one, fucking tw@!

It was blue and it did have giant wheels, but it looked pretty standard other than that.

Poor bloke, I stopped accelerating shortly after I reached the speed limit and it took him aaaaaaages to catch up

what a twat! jap wrongness

i'm keeping my eyes peeled for this brown horror as i also lurk on the same roads!

i hope it's not the rear wheel bearings which have gone Alex

Aah the rattly exhaust drowns out the droaning noise now

Good news then alex

Glad that valve wasnt anything more serious.
Have had a chance to play with that map you sent me (cheers again ) i cut,n,pasted your ignition map over the top of mine
And it knocked like fukc at anything over 3.5krpm but that was probly a week spot in my fuel map as a few logs on a flat road showed.

Ive also replaced a suspect TPS and given myself full throttle at last!
Ive never had it above 3/4 throttle forgot i limited it for runing in

Got intercooler being piped in tomoro. will see how much the temps drop

just had a look at that map, it's running up to 45degrees advance in places!

Can you cut and paste your MAP corrections in here? Just wonder how they compare to mine, although mine's only knocking about 8degrees out at 7psi.

Just spotted a glitch in the new software though, it's got the pressures listed going 0,10,20....100,110...120,130,171,170.... most bizarre!

Turbo-Brown wrote:Just spotted a glitch in the new software though, it's got the pressures listed going 0,10,20....100,110...120,130,171,170.... most bizarre!

Very odd?!? not got that in mine!

I had to knock loads of ignition out under boost
Looks like this
Map sensor:
0 0 0
10 0 0
20 0 0
30 0 0
40 0 0
50 0 0
60 0 0
70 0 0
80 0 0
90 0 0
100 0 0
110 60 -8
120 65 -12
130 75 -16
150 80 -20 <Alltho it only boosts to about here
170 85 -24 <
190 80 -28
210 95 -24
230 115 -24
250 135 -24

Had to add a fair amount of fuel too

Hmmm, your MAP corrections are pretty similar to mine:

0 0 0
10 0 0
20 0 0
30 0 0
40 0 0
50 0 0
60 0 0
70 0 0
80 0 0
90 0 0
100 0 0
110 15 -4
120 30 -8
130 45 -12
171 75 -16
170 87 -20
190 108 -24
210 132 -26
230 156 -28
250 180 -30

Although I've only got a 2bar sensor and the ECU isn't calibrated for anything other than a 2.5 bar apparently, although that does beg the question of why you have to tell it what range it can sense over.

Looks like your fuel ramps up alot quicker than mine, but mine goes way way higher, but then I'm only boosting to somewhere between 130 and 170 (guess that's probably supposed to be 150?)

So youve got 75% more fuel @ boost. just seemed a lot to me.

Thats the thing with a supercharger it does boost early so i guess i could have a big ramp as soon as the map sensor reads anything over 100?

Be interested to see a trace of the boost you get actually.

With mine, and I guess any turbo, it kind of builds from 2psi to about 6 psi from about 2250rpm to 4000rpm odd, I guess with a positive displacement charger you get a sudden boom of boost with the throttle pinned open?

It is all or nothing!

Blimey, that does rise insanely fast

Then again, I'd have thought the ECU should be able to keep up with what's going on so it doesn't seem unreasonable that they MAP corrections should only start after 100KPa.