Haven't updated for a while and quite a few things happened since, so I'll make some update. I'm not going to bother with maintenance work, only major things and mods.
I put on upper brace for better support and front-end feel.
Oil seperator/breather began to fail and started to spread oil all around the engine bay, so I decided to get rid of it completely and go for custom oil catch can. Oil vapor goes through can and back to oil pan, unlike OEM breather that sends vapor back to the engine. This leads to better fuel mixture with minimal hp gains and this system has no way to fail
only con is that under hard driving there is small scent of oil you can feel inside cabin.
Don't mind dirty engine bay, it's fully clean now.
All the time I had OEM exhaust, which was really restrictive. So I decided to go for full exhaust setup. Bought long tube headers and Magnaflow 2in1out free-flow muffler with OEM look tips.
Went to exhaust shop and got it all together, so in between headers and muffler I've got 2x50mm pipes with custom X-pipe and resonators.
Old exhaust with headers laying beside
I'm really happy with result. Exhaust note is completely different and intoxicating. Also much louder than I anticipated. It felt distinctly faster up top and lost some bottom power.
Here is some footage, due to crappy phone mic it doesn't sound like it does in person, but you can get the idea:
https://youtu.be/90DS8Sf5jWM If anyone got tips how to to make it more silent without sacrificing power, that would be great. I'm thinking about making electric valve on one of the pipes, but I don't know if it will be enough to feel the difference.
Went for remap and dyno, final result is here
This was the last thing I had up for that season as I did in November. Winters are cold here, with lots of snow and salt and since I've got mint condition body, I don't want any salt on my car, so it safely stored till summer tyre season in late March.
That doesn't mean I'm not working on car of course
I never planned to go turbo route, but from time to time I thought it would be nice to go for centrifugal supercharger. Power delivery, sound and throttle response would be the same, only with greater power. Problem that new kits are really expensive to buy and ship here and there's not much choice for second hand here.
Luckily, the only kit in Lithuania from e36 m3 came for sale and grabbed it without any extra thought.
It is Vortech V-1 kit. To make it bolt on for my BMW it misses ECU chip, MAF, IC and injectors. Supercharger itself is cappable of running 1.4bar and hold up to 680hp. Pic of happy me to give an idea how big it is
When I bought it, I didn't put much thought on it, but making it run on my car is not going to that simple.
First there is no ecu chip, meaning that tuning DME would be a nightmare for locals here without it. Second, I have 11.5:1 CR, so I could run only small boost without exploding my engine.
So in order to get the most of it, I have to go E85 and programmable ECU. This far from cheap route, so I'm not sure if I will put all of it together this season. I'll go for VEMS ECU, siemens deka 850cc injectors, walbro 255 pump.
I'm aiming for around 450whp with 0.8-1.1bar of boost. This also brings me to a problem - what pulley to use to achieve this kind of boost. I tried contacting ESS, VF and few others, but they are not too keen to share their knowledge with me, as I didn't bought it from them. If you went to similar route or know someone who did, it would be nice to know what size pulley to use
Another point is to put that power through a transmission. I decided to go for 6 speed transmission and bought low mile box from BMW 130i. It will be custom job to make it fit OFC.
I will use OEM 240mm double flywheel and clutch disk with Sachs performance clutch pressure plate, that should be enough I hope.
Also at the moment I've removed my LSD diff and left it at shop to change worn out clutch discs for 4 disc setup, to give me 45% locking as well as changing from 3.15 ratio to 3.46, considering I'm going 6speed and first gear will be useless anyway.
There are also some other minor mods. I have driver's bucket seat on the way and I'll be changing clutch-fan for electric fan from e39 AC, to free up few ponnies and make it more it simple.
To be continued