so there is a problem DD i thought that are from us east coast you know for us it now living e36 ...We can either write to bmwklub.sk nick ( 2RBA )
liking the bmw! making me really desperate to get myself an e36, would buy something "jdm" but way too expensive, the pod gauges look nice and i'm loving the rear strut brace
WRBA: I'm not on bmwklub :/. Maybe try sending me a private message here? ewdwan: Thanks! E36 is a decent chassis that comes with decent engines for dirt cheap. Sadly I dislike BMW fanboys mentality in my country so I wouldn't choose it if I had other options. Other than that, the actual car is very good.
The hydraulic handbrake install - part 1 It took a while but the hydraulic handbrake is finally mounted. I started by making the mounting bracket. It is made out of these three pieces: The actual handbrake is bolted to this piece (no idea about the name of this profile in English): I (or rather we) have started the job by welding the pieces together. We only have MMA welder at home and all my MIG welding friends are busy. Not only that but getting my car to their place would mean driving on salt covered roads. No thanks, MMA will have to do. It was great for this part tho: All welded together: Next step was welding the bracket into the car. This was huge pain in the anus because of the MMA welder. Center console cut, carpet cut (I actually made the hole a bit bigger and cleaned the edges a bit after the photo): I forgot to take pics for a moment so the next ones are with the bracket in place and zinced (and with few new holes in the body from the welder ): I couldn't resist and immediately installed the handbrake mechanism. The plumbing is left for the weekend. I like where the handle sits and the bracket is sturdy so hopefully it will stand up. You can notice red tint over the gauges to fix the color mismatch "problem". It's better than before although not perfect. It helps turning the brightness down too, which is nice. Stay tuned for part 2, hopefully this weekend.
It probably would but the DW hydraulic handbrake comes standard with this handle. The optional long one is 60 pounds. I can't justify spending that kind of money on such thing. I'll try this one and if it's too bad, I'll make my own bolt on extension for this handle.
The hydraulic handbrake install - part 2 Instead of week it took two to make part 2. Not because I didn't try but because I fucked up. My plan was to remove the brake line connecting master brake cylinder to ABS module. That worked out fine. Next step was to replace it by line going to the hydraulic handbrake and line coming out of it. This where I've fucked up. There's very little space between ABS module and fuse box. I've started to thread the union in correctly but the new copper line must have moved it and I've damaged the thread in the ABS module a bit. I didn't give up tho. Unscrewed it, took a fresh union, screwed it in all the way without problems. Took it out, put a new copper line in, flared it and started screwing it in. Guess what. Somewhere in process it got screwed (unintended pun) again. I've decided to throw away this idea and remove the ABS module altogether. That meant buying new parts and putting more time into it to remove the pump and make all the new lines. But it's done and here are some photos of the process. This is how I routed the brake lines through the fire wall. They go through right next to the throttle cable. Drilling the hole was PITA, because there's a lot of stuff going on behind the pedals. Next step was disconnecting the master cylinder to ABS module brake line. Master cylinder has H (Hintern - rear) and V (Vorderseite - front) labels on it which is helpful. We actually had a flare nut spanner that my dad made when he was about my age and clutch slave cylinder started leaking on his W123 Mercedes. That means this spanner has served us for two generations now. Luckily the unions weren't stuck but they didn't unscrew by hand either which meant taking the spanner on and off about 1000 times because it was impossible to turn it by more than 45 degrees at a time. Here's what kind of access we're talking about. Fast forward a week, getting the ABS module ready to be removed. Access to the rest of the unions wasn't that bad which is nice. ABS module out, female to female adapters (two M12 to M10 and two M10 to M10) on. Next I've mounted the T shaped three lines adapters. Pro tip: BMW T adapter from BMW dealer is 16 euros, cheapest generic T adapter is 7 euros, Skoda 105 replacement part (no 113595460) is 2 euros. Buy the Skoda part if you're from Europe. Fun fact: local parts store only had one piece in stock which was 3x M10 bubble/din/iso flare, second one that came the next day was 3x M10 double/inverted flare one. It doesn't matter tho since all (or most) flaring tools can do both. After two hours of making and connecting lines here's the result. Luckily the lines are labeled on ABS module too. This time no translation needed since it says L and R paired with V and H which I've already explained. I thought bleeding the brakes was last thing needed. Wrong. Tightening everything until it stops leaking was needed before. I was pretty stressed because I was afraid of striping some thread but luckily I've got everything to seal without any damage. Then we've bled the breaks with my team partner, supporting mechanic, mechanical first aid and all around guy - my dad. Next up: M50B25 intake manifold w/ adjustable fpr install, oil change, rear alignment. After that I'm ready to make the car scream. Do you've any recommendations about rear toe? I know a little toe in is ideal for drifting. From what I've read e36 are good with 10-20 minutes of total toe in. Which value should I choose?
A lot has happened since I've last posted but I wasn't in a mood to write. Here's a summary to catch up. The whole story started with M50B25 intake manifold install. I've removed the M52B25 intake manifold without any issues. (I've blocked off the intake ports instantly after the photo.) Thanks to the intake manifold gone I was able to spot that my engine mount bracket is cracked. That solves the unplugging brake booster "mystery". Few days later and the new bracket arrived to my local BMW dealer. Great way to burn bunch of money. Engine mount was also totally shot (split to two pieces) so I've replaced it with DIY hockey puck engine mount. New bracket in, hockey puck engine mount in. I needed the hydraulic jack to support the engine so I've put the car on a jack stand. I was afraid to lay under the car without redundant support so I came up with this. It was raining that day but show must go on. After that I was finally ready to put the M50B25 intake manifold on. I deleted the CCV and all the other unnecessary stuff. Here's the manifold on the studs. I knew fuel ramp wasn't going to be plug and play. I didn't expect this much hassle tho. The manifold is from e34 and the ramp mounting points on it collided with ones on my fuel ramp. I had to cut and grind the mounting brackets. After it finally physically fit in I've realized that the typical DIY bracket holds it in about as much as a zip tie. So I used zip ties instead. Should be ok on an N/A engine. I would be worried with turbo tho. I had the plastic covers off so I've decided to paint them. Here's everything put back together. The adjustable fuel pressure regulator which you can't see on this photo is mounted on the ASC module bracket. I've increased the fuel pressure to 3.7 bar (+0.2 bar) to compensate for the bigger air flow. With the car finally running again it was time to go get the rear alignment done. I've unscrewed all the RTA carrier bolts before hand because they tend to rip out and it's a huge PITA to fix. Luckily this wasn't my case. I've no photos of this. When I arrived to get the car aligned they told me it's impossible because the rear trailing arms bushings were shot (they did what they could tho). That's why I've ordered the cheapest polyurethane RTABs I've found on ebay. They were about half the price of Strongflex bushings but still several times more expensive than Lemforder OEM ones. Carrier out and zinced, bushings ready to go in. A friend of mine and a local touge specialist was around and had some spare time to kill so he payed me a visit. Here's his turbo M52B28 e30. Together we've managed to find a way to squeeze the bushings in without much hassle (it was a lot of hassle for the first side, second side was done very quickly). Next up: another try at alignment. I've stumbled upon a way to flash my ECU (Siemens MS41.0). Hardware for that should arrive soon. I'll use that to reset adaptations (should help with M50B25 manifold tune), set the rev limiter to 7000 rpm with 10 times quicker hysteresis, advance the ignition timing just a bit and maybe some other stuff.
I finally got to the stage when I'm satisfied with the car. It cost me a lot of effort, time and money (for a student) in the past months so I'm just enjoying the car and toying with small things for at least some time now. I've successfully got the car aligned. My setup is: Front Camber: -4 deg Toe: 0' Caster: unknown (stock) Rear Toe: 20' total (10' on each side) Camber: -1 deg 30' It works great and it was more beneficial for drifting than the M50B25 intake. Stock handle that comes with DW hydro is tiny so it doesn't look good and more importantly makes locking the wheels rather hard. I've made a bolt on extension. Basically what I did was cut and striped the rubber grip from the handle. Drilled two holes through the handle. We had some stainless steel 30mm diameter 2mm wall tube laying around and it's a snug fit so I've used that. I've cut it and drilled two holes through. Than I've just put two screws through the both parts to secure them together (tube holds on firmly even without bolts). Here's the result. {} I didn't get the length quite right. It's too long. I'm going to shorten it by 10-15cm. {} Another "upgrade" I did was swapping the original pins for bolts with shank and wing nuts. I don't want to grab attention of police officers so this is my DIY "quick release" system. When I'm not drifting the handle isn't mounted. {} As I've mentioned I'm able to flash my ECU. What I've done so far is I've raised the rev limiter to 7000 rpm, increased the intensity from 300 rpm fuel cut to 30 rpm fuel cut (watatata instead of waaaaataaaaataaaaa) and advanced the ignition timing in high load high rpm territory by hopefully safe 3 degrees. I want to copy US M3 deceleration maps (no rev hang) and US M3 WOT maps over mine, calibrate VANOS switching and reset adaptations next. {} Picture from testing. {}
Sure. I'll record it next time the engine is warm. For now here's a video of exactly the same mod but with M52B28:
