E30 Zone

Well, I was gonna make up a take off for the turbos and oil pressure gauge this evening, but I was scuppered by the fact that the thread on the oil pressure switch has an M12x1.5 thread which is metric fine rather than metric standard.

Just thought it might be some help to anyone else making a similar thing

Also discovered that the inlet studs are metric fine too.

What a pain in the arse BMW are!

Yes this is a pain. I can confirm for definate like turbo brown says that its an M12x1.5 pitch. What i did was purchase a male 1/4" fitting that went down to a 10mm olive(where you put the 10mm pipe) this is a gas fitting I believe. Then i got a bloke to Die(spelling??) the bolt to M12x1.5 pitch. Now its a Ԛ£170 kit of taps and dies so i don't think your average halfords kit would have that size so be aware.

This now gave me a 10mm hose fitting to work with so i've used copper pipe as its easy to get hold of. I've then used a 10mm tee piece, with the 90' piece going towards the turbo. The other end i'm either going to have to put another piece on so i can tap either the oil pressure switch or have a oil pressure guage instead.

Have a look at the below picture:

looking good dude but the bore of that pipe is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay to big for what the turbo needs, 2.0mm ish is normal size dude.

I'll do some pix of mine over the weekend and post them up dudes

What did you use for the pipe ant?

I was thinking of some of that 1/4" OD plumbing pipe as the tubes on my turbos are pretty much the same.

Can always squidge the pipe down a bit if it flows too much

1/4 OD would be OK, mine are aeroquip fittings, ones a banjo stylee, the other has an elbow fitting , the inside bores are 2mm ish for sure.

biggest prob withthe 10mm, even with a restriction added is the sheer vloume of oil they'll swallow on a cold startup, even with a check valve fitted the prevent the oil draining right down theres got to be a "gap" in oil supply from cold everytime.

10mm down to small bore gas fittings and pipe would be a budget soloution.

ant wrote: biggest prob withthe 10mm, even with a restriction added is the sheer vloume of oil they'll swallow on a cold startup, even with a check valve fitted the prevent the oil draining right down theres got to be a "gap" in oil supply from cold everytime.

Yes thats what i'm thinking of doing putting a valve/restrictor just after the tee piece. Down to about 2mm you say that is small, well, smaller than i thought anyway. It'll then just be connected up to the hose which is already on the turbo so that has a restrictor sort of thing in it to get the right amount through the turbo hopefully!

With such a gap, do you think it could damage the big end bearings after hard use as it may take a fair bit of pressure away from the main oil flow system. As i don't really want to kill the engine if i can help it.