Wilwood big brakes and other shiny bits (Not 56k friendly)

Post Sat May 21, 2005 12:41 pm

Hooray!

By big brake kit turned up the other day and I've managed to get some piccies of it and some of the other things I've been working on:

1) Wilwood brake kit. Couldn't find a baked bean tin or coke can to give it a sense of scale so we have skanky tinned tomatoes instead. It does come with most of the required fixings too, and those fetching gold brackets.

2) Polished the lettering on the cam cover and sprayed it grey

3) 'ere's the shiny gear knob I made up.

4) My dodgy Volvo 260 gearlever as a short shift complete with bronze bushes.

5) This is the beginnings of my direct to head throttle bodies. These plates serve to transform from the circular throttle tube to the funny oval shape of the port in the head.

6) And finally the one that's almost finished sitting on the engine.

Post Sat May 21, 2005 12:44 pm

Someone's been busy

Post Sat May 21, 2005 12:47 pm

Nice stuff man, those brakes are mean.
Did you consider/decide against cutting up a std maifold to give you a flange to mount the throttle bodies on? If you wanted to make your own I understand, it's a challange etc.. but I'm too lazy. are you going to use GSXR 600 TB's?

Post Sat May 21, 2005 12:52 pm

Thought didn't really cross my mind TBH. I'm making everything from scratch out of ali. I've only seen one set of motorbike TBs on an M20 and cylinder 6 seemed to point directly at the master-cyl.

I've designed mine to stand 75mm proud of the head before making a 45degree corner into the plenum into which the turbos feed.

Post Sat May 21, 2005 12:55 pm

So are you making the TB's from scratch??
You legend, I must admit fabrication is one of the bit's I enjoy the most. If they turn upwards will you have a clearance issue with the thermostat housing?

Post Sat May 21, 2005 1:19 pm

Those brakes look well good. And you get the brackets too

Wilwood must have changed that from when I looked.

You said on another post that the pads dont come with the kit, can you use any aftermarket pad or is it Wilwood pads only?

Fair play to you on the TBs.
And looking at the last pic, you either have a very clean and tidy garage or the engine is in your house

Post Sat May 21, 2005 2:14 pm

I get the feeling that rally design have the discs and brackets made to fit the calipers cos Wilwood don't seem to list the E30 on their site.

Think you can get EBC pads for them and ferodo too.

And yes, the engine is in the kitchen

Post Sat May 21, 2005 2:37 pm

Cheers for that. Im just looking at all my options before I spend the money i havent got

Turbo-Brown wrote:And yes, the engine is in the kitchen

Quality

Post Sat May 21, 2005 3:32 pm

some very nice thingys there mate

loving the sweeeeet brakes there

rocker cover looks nice

can't wait to see the finnished result on the throttle bodies

Post Sat May 21, 2005 6:51 pm

Well done on that TB plate,i'm doing some thing similar at the mo so i know how hard it is to shape the ports on THICK aly plate.

How thick is it ? Looks 20-25mm ?

Are you going to weld the TB's to the plate ?

I'm liking those Wilwoods as well

Post Sat May 21, 2005 10:39 pm

what size kit is that alex?

Post Sun May 22, 2005 7:00 pm

Andy, the metal's 25mm thick, it's just SO BORING filing away at it untill it's the right shape! Seems to take about 3 or 4 hours to do each port

Gareth, it's the 280mm one which is only about an inch or so bigger than standard, but it's bigger none-the-less

That and has four times the number of pistons :lol:

Post Sun May 22, 2005 10:39 pm

Turbo-Brown wrote:Andy, the metal's 25mm thick, it's just SO BORING filing away at it untill it's the right shape! Seems to take about 3 or 4 hours to do each port

Gareth, it's the 280mm one which is only about an inch or so bigger than standard, but it's bigger none-the-less

That and has four times the number of pistons

dremel maybe?

Post Sun May 22, 2005 10:57 pm

I'm using a rotary file to get 90% there and then finish off with a file or some thing.

Post Mon May 23, 2005 8:16 am

I've been dremelling to get a reasonable finish in there and to shape the last bits, might have to invest in a rotary file I think!

Latest is that I've given the other two blocks of metal to a mate to square up and drill the mounting holes in as I did the first one on the lathe and it took best part of an evening to get it down to size :lol:

Jobs for tonight are to make the oil takeoff for the turbos and start making the throttle tubes

Post Mon May 23, 2005 4:52 pm

turbo brown m8 have u fitted the brakes to ur car yet dude ??
im just about to order a set of these but would love to see a picture of them on the car nice 1 m8 cheers ian.

Post Mon May 23, 2005 5:00 pm

Hi Ian,

Not fitted them yet, it's got no front suspension on at the mo and my wheels are at the polishers

It'll be about 2 weeks or so before it all starts going back together (with any luck!)

Post Mon May 23, 2005 5:28 pm

loving the brakes

Post Mon May 23, 2005 6:18 pm

how long they take to come m8 im gonna be ordering mine in the morning amongst loads of other trick bits lol!!

easy job to fit anyway which is goods

cheers m8 ian.

Post Mon May 23, 2005 9:53 pm

Think I ordered them on a thursday, they called on friday to say that they'd run out of plain discs and only had the x-drilled ones in stock. I didn't get the message untill monday so I called them back and agreed to the drilled discs and they turned up on tuesday......so in answer to the question: pretty quick

You do need to either remove or modify the brake heat shield to get them to fit because the calipers are HUGE compared to the standard ones

Post Mon May 23, 2005 11:36 pm

theyre going on the hartge h35 i have the car already has the hartge setup but they no longer make the 285mm discs that are on there so i figured these would be the best step as its 225 pound to get a set of original discs fabricated!!

Post Mon May 23, 2005 11:47 pm

What wheels will these fit into?

Andrew

Post Tue May 24, 2005 8:10 am

They fit in my 15" MSW X-spoke jobbies so they'd probably fit in the BBS wheels, although I wouldn't guarantee it. I did need some 6mm spacers to get them to clear the back of the spokes though.

Post Sat Jun 04, 2005 12:01 am

How are the TB's going mate ?

Are you going to get some longer studs to hold the TB's to the head ?

Have you started wiring the Emerald up yet ?

Will you take it to Dave Walker to map or have you a trusted local place you use for that sort of thing ?

Are you making your own exhaust manifold ?

Will the turbos bolt to the top side/above of the manfold ?

How far off are you from refitting the engine to the car ?

Sorry for all the questions but you have a very interesting project

Post Sun Jun 05, 2005 3:29 pm

Hi Andy,

The TBs are a work in progress at the moment. I got the drilled base plates back from my mate yesterday so I can crack on with them, I've also made up three of the six throttle tubes which take about 3 hours each to turn up

I've bought some 50mm long socket head M8 screws to attach the plates to the head so I'll have to take the studs out altogether. I got the socket heads as the heads are smaller than hex heads and obviously don't need any room around the outside to tighten them which was a consideration given that BMW decided to position one of the studs right next to the port!

Depending on how I get on, I'll start wiring the Emerald up some time this week or next although I need to buy an alarm/immobiliser first so I can splice that in at the same time.

Spoke to Dave Walker a while ago about getting the cars mapped (should have the Mi16Turbo finished at about the same time as mine) and he reckoned we needed about 500 miles on the newly built engines before mapping, but once that's done, we'll be off to Emerald to get them set up. If nothing else, the flat rate should make it worth it, plus them knowing exactly what they're doing with the system.

I will be making my own manifolds. I've had some stainless flanges cut for the turbos and the cylinder head so I just need to measure up for pipe so I can order that. I'm giving serious consideration to making up the rest of the system too as I reckon that the 130bhp going down each pipe means they both need to be about 2" diameter (based on my old 205GTi which was 130bhp and had a standard 2" system)

I haven't decided the exact positioning of the turbos yet but my initial thoughts are that the rear most turbo for cyls 4-6 will bolt on above the manifold with the front one for cyls 1-3 will be lower down so that hopefully the inlet plumbing should be fairly simple.

I enlisted the help of a couple of mates yesterday and we fitted the engine and box

Not a relaxed day and it did take about 10 hours in total although that did include re-fitting the sump, flywheel, clutch & gearbox. I'd seriously recommend lifting the car in preference to the engine to anyone!

Cheers!

Alex

Post Sun Jun 05, 2005 9:29 pm

Thanks for the reply mate

Those home made TB's sound very labour intensive but i guess thats all part of the fun,you can take satisfacion in knowing that you built them from scratch to exactly the specs you wanted.

I'm looking forward to getting my TB's on and the loverly noise they will make

Bolting my adapter plate to the head isn't going to be straight forward as the base of the TB's obscures the mounting holes so i can't use either studs/hex bolts/hex nuts.Like you i'm going to remove the inlet manifold studs and use some allen bolts.The heads of the allen bolts will still clash with the base of the TB's so i'm going to counter sink the mounting holes by 5-10mm(the plate is 20mm).

Are you going to weld the tubes to the plates ?

Are you going to use aly tubing to connect your Turbos/inter cooler/TB's together ?

I just bought a carb balancer from the US which will be handy to set up the TB's.Your welcome to borrow it if you want ?

Cheers

Andy

Post Mon Jun 06, 2005 8:19 am

As you say, very labour intensive, but once they're done I'll hopefully have something to be proud of :lol:

My plan is to bolt the tubes through from the cyl head side with M4 socket head screws into counterbores drilled in the base plates. It'd probably be better to weld them, but I'm paranoid that I might need to take them apart at some point

Really can't understand why BMW designed the ports on both sides of the head with the fixings different distances away from the hole! It obviously caused them some problems too as a cursory glance down both the inlet and exhaust manifolds reveals that they had to take up some of the port area to make way for the fixings.

I'll probably use stainless tubing to go between the turbos etc. as I can weld it reasonably easily whereas I'm a bit stuck with ali

That balancer thing looks fancy! Fairly sure my mate's got one similar but I might well take you up on that offer!

Cheers!

Alex

Post Mon Jun 06, 2005 9:35 pm

I'd love to be able to TIG weld but a decent spec TIG welder is supposed to be about a grand !

I've found a place local to me that does TIG welding at a fair price.If/when i get around to making a plenum for my TB's out of aly plate i'll form and cut the aly to shape and get them to weld it.

Did you see the readers letter in PPC (page 116) about the bloke that was after some spindle clamps ? I take you will need some thing similar ?

Cheers

Andy

Post Mon Jun 06, 2005 11:10 pm

turbo brown my brake set turned up today WOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOO so did u have any problems fitting them dude? mine are going on saturday ,along with the newly rebult gearbox!
theyre lovely brakes i tell the!

Post Mon Jun 06, 2005 11:14 pm

Nice one Ian

,how long till the beasty is back on the road ?

Post Tue Jun 07, 2005 8:10 am

I'm kinda making the TBs piecemeal so haven't decided whether to have a single spindle per 2 cyls or a spindle per cyl. Nothing like planning ahead! :lol:

Ian, I did have to modify the heat shield with a pair of tin snips and also bash it back a bit, but it literally took 10 mins a side

Do check the fastner kit that came with it as mine didn't have the M12 nuts needed to fit the brackets to the uprights. Other than that, no probs at all!