Rudolph the Red 318ti
 

Hello Everyone, First time Ti owner here, Recently I came across this little Red 318ti (1998) and I just had to grab it. My first BMW was actually a 4 Pot some decade or more ago. I had so many BMW's in my life, my other car is a Supercharged M52B28 E36, Factory M Spec. But I think so far I have a soft spot for the Ti for reasons that I can't explain. Maybe its the sunroof. :wink:

The M44B19 318Ti is SUCH a wonderful little machine that there is nothing I can say that can make up for the feeling the first time you start driving this down the road and then take it up on the highway. Its just brilliant! :biggrin:

The downsides, apart from the typical dent or scratch, its pretty good, but the cars got some leaks, which I suspect could be the timing cover gasket, I will be doing the pan gasket and oil filter gasket hoping it fixes the issues. Will then replace the fluid on the auto box. Going to start a build topic on the projects section soon as I already did some work.

These cars dont get enough love. They deserve it. There is a good community behind it and so I will be doing a supercharger project for it this year and release it to public as we did for the 6 Cylinder BMW's.


Here are some pictures of mine.

I like your interior cloth. But, you are driving on the wrong side of the road!

Welcome.

I was thinking exactly the same thing! Welcome. You are correct, these little things don't get enough love. Mine is a blast & I continue to love driving it every day (when I can)! Keep us posted.

That interior is awesome! Welcome to the org. Would love to hear more about the supercharger kit.

Thanks guys, yea the interior is quite good actually for its age and mileage, held up well and the head liner was also replaced, the seats are fine, the glove box doesn't have issues, overall very tidy.

So I have been doing some maintenance to the fella. Took off the intake and well the injector vacuum lines were half broken and leaking. Cleaned them up, replaced with better hoses and all everywhere. The CCV was cleared a but as well as the ICV.

I deleted the Charcoal Canister and plugged the hole with a nut and some JB Weld. Cleaned up the MAF. Finally had to go under and wash the engines front a bit and now that's its got some more miles on it, I don't think the timing case was leaking at all and that it was likely years of fumes and crap along oil from the oil filter housing there somehow. (I hope this is true)

Here's some pics.

Also not sure if there is a better place to post in the forum where the posts wont disappear and can be more like a build log? sorry a bit confused. :confused:


Here are some pictures of the 2 Superchargers I will start with, the small one is the AMR500, and the larger one is the SC14. :biggrin:

But before I begin on those, Next in line is a DIY X Brace, The Oil Filter Housing, The Oil Pan, Trans Fluid & Filter, may add a second trans cooler, remove the fan shroud, alter the top radiator hose, Rocker Cover Gasket and New Sparkplugs, Battery Relocation to Trunk, PCV / Catchcan with one way valve. Then I can begin the SC project. :wink:

One oil problem I have had to fix on more than one M44 is the O rings on the oil filter housing. You will know if that is the issue since it is a big leak but only about a 3 hour job to do. Once the Fan, belts, alternator & bracket are off, the oil filter housing is pretty easy to access.

Good Luck.

I am still hanging on to a DASC kit I have hoping for a 1991 318is but it was awesome on the 318ti too.

Man this is gonna be interesting to follow, if only I had enough money to mess around with a supercharger haha. Super clean car by the way i love it


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Thanks guys, So tomorrow I am heading to a yard in the morning to find myself a e36 sedan to pull the positive cable outta, along with some other bits, may add a secondary trans cooler and a cross support bar usually found to support auto boxes or just the regular bar that connects the sides of the unibody and make my own xbrace from it. gonna pick up some check valves too.

This gonna be fun.. Just preparations before its supercharged. :D

PS: I am thinking of doing my own Red/Copper RTV for the Pan Gasket & the Oil Filter Housing Gasket, getting the Orings part new. Any objections?

So.. I got myself a long piece of cable, a transmission cooler and a transmission cross member strut.

So around mid day I went to the local junk yard where they had a bunch of 3 series and 5 series (newer models) being parted. All the 3 series ones either had their battery terminals cut off or wires stripped out, I was looking for something complete in one solid piece so I found that in this newer 5 series. I went to work, I didn't even have to move the seat in the 5 series to get the wire out.

I had one nice 5 series power distribution block and then I went over to a e36 and took its power distribution cord and the cord that goes to connect to the alternator & starter, unbolted and voila. There I had my nice giant piece of cable for less than 20 bucks or so. I took off the trans cooler from an e36 and the cross member support some cars came with, to make up my own xbrace with some box tubing. :biggrin:


After I was done with nicking a few small parts here and there, I was off with it all in my trunk. Was time to light up a cigar. :wink:

Some pictures.

Battery Relocation & Custom Xbrace!
 

So I finally relocated my battery few days ago to the trunk, I was also able to reuse the existing battery tray in the engine bay and mounted it in the rear most corner (usually where the regular E36's have their batteries. The rear side panel clips needed some attention so JB weld plastic bonder to the rescue! :D I will do some more maintenance before the supercharger goes in but not going to spend more than a few hours on it every other day.

I also added a custom DIY xbrace any I made, that anyone can do. It still needs to be painted...will have separate topic on the xbrace in the other forum.

Adding some pictures below.

More pictures... :cool:

I had a few problems while relocating the battery, the worse was since the cable was out of a newer 5 series it joined in the cabin, and then I realized the rear windshield wiper lines were cracked and my cabin was flooded with water, so a days delay and replaced the solid plastic type brittle hose with some nylon and regular transparent hose, which did the trick. The battery was mounted using a nutsert and 2 threaded rods, sit sturdy as a rock. :tongue:

Replaced the rear and side water hoses the other day. added some red rtv just to be safe, gosh the rear one is an awful job. Just 2 bolts and it takes a lot of patience and PITA to get it out and back in, not to mention clean up the area smooth.

........................

Also a sneak peak on the 2 superchargers we have been playing with

The AMR 500 is the little guy - 500cc which is a bit smaller than the M45 thats around 750cc.

The buffier guy is the SC14 - 1.4L which is around the same size as the M90 Eaton.

Thoughts please :cool:
I will probably make a better log in the forced induction section of our M442/M44 supercharger kits development. :wink:

Such a nice clean Ti! Love the red too.

Same! Looks like a very interesting build! Update when you can please. :smile:

Here I am! Thanks everyone for the compliments, its in good shape, and so are the mechanical except for a few leaks and preventive maintenance I have been doing and those are coming to an end soon.

So today I replaced the leaking m44 engine oil pan. Pics below. See what I did do was, on the 4 corners where the engine front/rear cases are joined, as the Bentley suggests on the 6 cylinders. Then I went a step further and put a small bead of red RTV after the gasket, around the edges of the pan, so it holds up well for another decade or so. :wink:


Its a simple process on the 4 cylinder; I have done it on the 6 cylinder and the 4 pot process goes a bit faster imho or maybe I am just very good at it. I dropped the front subframe which took maybe half an hour after getting the car up on jack stands, supported the engine later by my engine support beam. Once the subframe was dropped, I took off the pan; there are a few bolts on the dipstick side that are a bit fussy to take out, but overall you can have it all off in a two hrs at most really. Then an hour to clean up everything depending how much time you want to spend to clean up, my car must had gone to a few golf courses as it has a lot of mud under it that I am still trying to get rid of. Finally I put the pan back on, blue locktight it all. I'd say all in all a 4-6Hr job at most for those wanting to do it, very simple. Hardest part may be getting the darn steering wheel guibo joint back on, hence I left it for the day. :rolleyes: Tomorrow I will do the oil filter housing as well. :wink:

On a Side note, I have finished building the supercharger prototype setups I was working on. Actually managed to fit the 1.4L SC14 roots supercharger that we use for our 6 cylinders, all while retaining the stock manifold! Making it the largest displacement supercharger fit on a M42/M44. I will go start a thread on it in the forced induction topic with lots of pictures and videos. :smile:

Clean maintenance work :smile:

Once you get that thread on the supercharger going make sure to link it in this thread too! It seems super interesting!

I second this.


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Rudolph now has a Remus exhaust. After much run abouts I found a shop willing to try.Glad thats done.

Good news is here is the supercharger thread as promised :cool:
http://www.318ti.org/forum/showthrea...ewpost&t=44651

Bad news is that I hit a speed bump at 10km/hr along the way between shops and right away and since then the car has been bogging down, didnt find any exhaust leaks but the codes I read point to a cam sensor. :frown:

Will be looking into it along with the fuel lines, no vac leaks. Fingers crossed that is what it is.

How did the twin tips fit? Did you have to cut anything out or swap to the 323ti diffuser?

Wierd that it bogs just from a bump - I have hit many bumps in my m44 when I put 80k on it with no bogging from hitting bumps! :cool:

Well it had a msports diffuser or maybe whats called a 323ti one? (sorry still new to the ti :redface:) So what I did was cut it a bit, sand it down a little, passes the 1 foot test ;) - Its also got some custom ribs on the diffuser that I put on. Credits to Moron95 on the Bimmeforums who did those years ago for my other car.

Totally weird, I have bumped so many cars, bmws included, we have horrible bumps on our roads but as soon as I bumped with this one, it just went.. I wonder if the cam sensor was already on its last leg and just the coil inside gave up or something?? I really really realllllly hope so. Fingers crossed.. I have done all the maintenance on this car, and I am going to get really busy from next month so if the cam sensor doesn't do it, I dont know what will. :frown:

Ah I see, the reason I asked about the 323ti diffuser is because it looks like you did not cut the diffuser - you are correct in saying it is the msport diffuser. The 323ti has a m52 and comes stock with twin tips, like the other E36 6-cylinder models, so taking the msport diffuser from the 323ti is the only "oem" option for fitting a twin tip muffler on the 318ti. All other e36 compact msport diffusers have room for a single tipped muffler.

It might have been that it was on its way out, I certainly hope so for you!

I have beat my m44 hard on twisty canyon roads (which were most definitely not always smooth) with RPMs staying in the 4.5k+ RPM range for at least 30min strait and the m44 took all of it. It was not a daily occurrence of course but that along with daily driving over the course of 80xxx miles and I had no issues (the m44 was kept up with strict maintenance - so that probably helped), I sold it as a good running engine when I swapped in the m52.

New cam sensor is here!
 

My box of parts have just arrived from the UK today! Its a Meyle sensor I will take some time to go bolt things up tomorrow and see if it resolves the problem. fingers crossed! :wink:

Hoping the best for you too, get Rudolph back on the road! :biggrin:

Thanks Anassa! :wink: Alright guys Rudolph is now back on the road! The Cam sensor did it, no more of the MAF or CAM sensor error.

I did test the cam sensor using my multi meter, and the old one was VERY much out of spec. Maybe the hit just did it with some old sensors. After starting the car I got the #1 Knock sensor error for a but but drove well. A few hours later that error is gone now, never had a reason to be there as the car has only been sitting in my garage for a few weeks. I do I get a 121 elevation/load register error but thats related to the throttle potentiometer I think. apart from that all is well. :tongue:

Below are some pictures labeled as well, I took of the values of the new (first ones) vs old cam sensor incase it helps anybody out.

Thanks for posting the values i think Ill go test mine out just for the hell of it.


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Went for a drive around town today, still getting the knock sensor error :(


In Inpa Cylinder roughness, Cylinder 1 and 2 are showing some 60 - 70 while the 3rd and 4th cylinder are at 120 - 200.

I have ordered some knock sensors & a crank sensor. meanwhile will install a boost gauge and maybe the AFR meter gauge this weekend. :D

Knock sensors did fix some of it, but after it warms up I get some issues with the MAF or o2 Sensor. I am leaving for Germany at the end of this year so time is short, I may have to put Rudolph aside or pass him on to good hands. Good news is I will continue the development of the SC project for the community.

I Fixed RUDOLPH!! :D

http://www.318ti.org/forum/showthrea...t=44669&page=2

Was a ABS/ASC issue that was the root of all misfires and issues!

Sad part is I am leaving the country in 2 months, so I might leave this back as a holiday car for when I return but so glad its fixed, invested much work and love to this car, least now its issue free. Only thing being I gotta fix the ABS line, one of them went cross threaded.

I appreciate the effort and detail of this build. Hope to see updates soon.