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Thanks all! Hopefully I'll be driving it around the area soon and of course it will show up at Spokes/SASCA autocrosses every now and then.
Car is still dirty but wanted to get a shot with the refinished E46 330ci wheels. It has a little too much rake so I'll lower the rear just a bit before I get it aligned.
A couple of bugs from over the weekend I'm working on or addressed:
1. OIL LEAKS! The plug I put in the oil level port was a little loose so I cinched that up but it looks like the front crank seal is leaking a bit too. Going to keep an eye on it and probably replace soon. Hope to be able to do it without removing the front cover.
2. V-BANDS! The car started sounding like an old farm truck yesterday so I checked the collector v-bands and they were a bit loose. I tightened them up and sounds a lot better now but hopefully this is not a recurring problem and will resolve itself once the exhaust "settles in" a bit.
3. FUEL! The crimp connectors on the Vorshlag fuel line kit leaked a bit on the line from the pump. I replaced both of the crimped hoses with 5/16" fuel injection hose with FI clamps and seems to hold a lot better. Not sure if the original lines were damaged in shipping or while sitting in my garage but the FI clamps (vs. crimped clamps) give me a bit more confidence here.
Last edited by TypeIsCheap; 01-13-2014 at 08:42 AM.
In my opinion NVH was not bad as long as the header collector v-bands were tight. There is certainly some vibration between 3-4k rpm that can be felt in the car but I like it so far. It reminds me that this is not your average BMW. I know a lot of swappers use rubber mounts to "keep the BMW feel" but to me that's not what I was going for. My race car has solid mounts, my other daily is an NA Miata, even my truck is a bit stiff!
I purposely built this car much closer to an autocross/track car than a daily driver. That said, I've only put about 50 miles on it so far so I'll reserve final judgement after I drive it back and forth to work for a few months.
Unfortunately the car developed a miss this morning, threw a cyl 3 miss code, and the LTFT on bank 1 went to 25% at idle. Thinking the vibration I've been feeling between 3-4k rpm is/was an exhaust leak or some other miss root cause and just got a lot worse.
Drove the car quite a bit yesterday and it felt great (except for the vibe) and didn't give any indication of a problem when I parked it. I've been watching LTFTs quite a bit lately and they have been in the ~7% range on both banks steady state so nothing too out of the ordinary. The code lit up this morning only about 3 miles after I left the house.
I'm going to pull plugs tonight, check the collector v-band again, and see if I can figure out what happened. Any other suggestions are welcome.
What do you estimate the total time and cost (minus suspension upgrades) for the swap? I've got a e36 that I'm getting tired of and an LS1 on hand. Adding things up roughly, it seemed like a minimum of 8k at least. Vorshlag kit is 3600, Transmission ~2500 not to mention wiring harness, PCM, exhaust, and misc items.
If you already have the LS1 then 8k-10k seems doable. As for time, it was a total of about 7 months of work, hard to break it down further than that since it seemed like I was /always/ working on it.
If you already have the LS1 then 8k-10k seems doable. As for time, it was a total of about 7 months of work, hard to break it down further than that since it seemed like I was /always/ working on it.
Looking to do a 97 M3 Sedan in half the time, on half the budget!!!
CHeers
It's been a while since I've updated this thread I guess. Car has been great with just a few issues I had to address:
* Plastic heater hose coupler failed, too close to the headers, replaced with brass.
* Rear wheel bearing failed. I think this was due to the cheap AutoZone axles and the axle nut loosening, I used some Locktite 272 on it, marked it, and I check it often.
* Replaced the front main seal, decided to install the ATI damper on there to not have to do it again.
Didn't drive the car much during the summer months since it does not have A/C yet, everything is there I just have to make the hoses, hopefully by next summer!
Oh yeah, and I got a baseline dyno pull this week:
This is a 100% stock LS1 so this was really more of a health check than anything else and fits within the general range for an LS1 with Vorshlag headers and a custom dual 2.5" exhaust (built by someone with very little experience building exhausts, me). I'll take it!
Got some new goodies to play around with, all in the interest of performance!
Really wish I had put an extra bung on the exhaust when I built it. I pulled it last weekend and finished the job. Felt good to get in the garage and melt metal again!
Wiring up the wideband analog out to the A/C was fairly straightforward, Getting the harness through the firewall was a bit of the pain, I still have to get back in there and seal it up. Oh yeah, if you have the A/C compressor hooked up electrically but not plumbed be careful doing this since the PCM will sense that the refrigerant pressure is good and cycle the compressor during startup. Ask me how I know! (Ooof.)
The A/C sampling for the wideband works very well, I used a video to sample some output vs. the HPTuners scanner and they were all within 1%. But of course, I'm already asking for help with tuning questions, lol.
01-10-2014, 01:41 PM
