Weekend/Track car build

[dmytro98]

do you have any pictures of what that looks like since I'd like to do something similar.

[Ab28]

Originally Posted by bbnks2

I might've missed it in the thread but what radio delete is that?

I made it myself. Bought a few yards of alcantara and glued it down to the plastic face that was already in the dash. I don’t think anyone really makes parts like that for our cars.

[dmytro98]

December 2022 - Methanol Install
To start of this installation I had to figure out a general idea of where I wanted everything mounted, and how. The kit I'm using is the snow performance stage 2.5 boost cooler.

Reservoir
The kit came with a reservoir, but it was only a 3qt tank, and talking to someone else that's boosted they said they went through about 2 gallons after 3 20-minute sessions which is just not enough, and even then finding a place to mount it in the engine bay would be a challenge so instead, I opted to use the stock washer fluid reservoir.

Along with having the benefit of being much larger (6qts according to the internet), it also allows it to stay completely hidden, and it already has a built-in low-level sensor, which just means less wiring.

To connect the reservoir to the loop I simply drilled a hole where there's room for a third pump (maybe it's used in the hatchback for the rear washer?), heated up the plastic with a lighter which allowed me to screw in the 3/8 fitting that came with the kit which I also applied a liberal amount of JB weld, to make sure I don't have a leak.

Pump
Since the pump has to be the lowest point of the loop to keep fluid primed the pump basically has to be mounted on the subframe, or at least that's where I mounted it. I made 2 simple brackets that sandwich the top and bottom of the front subframe with a couple of bolts so I wouldn't have to drill any new holes into the subframe. It's not the strongest bracket, but once you have the little plastic cover for the bottom of the radiator and the undertray put back on it feels secure enough.

Gauge
When I first got the kit I wasn't too sure what I wanted to do with the gauge as I hate having random gauges all over the interior. When I started this I had a universal gauge that I used to monitor coolant temps sitting on the left side of the gauge cluster, which I didn't want to get rid of because then I'd have no way to watch my temps. But I ended up buying a different cluster that has an oil temp gauge in it which allowed me to get rid of the universal gauge, and replace it with the one that came with this kit.

The gauge that came with the kit was meant to be mounted in some sort of pod, but I already had a mount made in the perfect place for the universal gauge, so I made a Frankenstein gauge using the housing from the old gauge, and just swapping the internals and face from the new one, along with using some old rubbing tubing to hide the rainbow of wires that were originally coming out the back of the gauge. Overall very happy with the placement, and how clean I was able to get it installed.

Wiring/Plumbing
Wiring was super simple as I only need to connect 4 wires from the gauge which also acts as the controller.
*) 12v switched power
*) ground
*) power wire to pump
*) separate ground for pump
*)vacuum line to monitor boost.
*)methanol Lines

The grounds were pretty simple, so I'll just skip over those.

For 12v switched power I ended up using the cigarette lighter, and used the included inline 20amp fuse. The cigarette lighter circuit uses a 20amp fuse so I shouldn't have any issues with popping fuses.

To route the power wire from the gauge to the pump, I added a small hole in the rubber boot that sits on the driver's side and routed the wire under the cowl to keep it nice and hidden. Also, I added a simple to-pin connector to the pump so if I ever needed to remove the pump, it wouldn't be too much of a hassle.

For the vacuum line, I routed it through the same rubber boot as the power wire for the pump and connected it to a vacuum nipple I had capped off on my n54 manifold.

For the methanol lines from the reservoir to the pump, it was pretty easy to keep the lines out of the way by routing them mostly behind the plastic wheel liners. And routing it from the pump to the intake I ran it parallel to the radiator at the bottom of the car, but I just left it wrapped up out of the way next to my intake since I don't have the supercharger installed yet.

[DRLane]

Originally Posted by dmytro98

December 2022 - Methanol Install
To start of this installation I had to figure out a general idea of where I wanted everything mounted, and how. The kit I'm using is the snow performance stage 2.5 boost cooler.

Reservoir
The kit came with a reservoir, but it was only a 3qt tank, and talking to someone else that's boosted they said they went through about 2 gallons after 3 20-minute sessions which is just not enough, and even then finding a place to mount it in the engine bay would be a challenge so instead, I opted to use the stock washer fluid reservoir.

Along with having the benefit of being much larger (6qts according to the internet), it also allows it to stay completely hidden, and it already has a built-in low-level sensor, which just means less wiring.

To connect the reservoir to the loop I simply drilled a hole where there's room for a third pump (maybe it's used in the hatchback for the rear washer?), heated up the plastic with a lighter which allowed me to screw in the 3/8 fitting that came with the kit which I also applied a liberal amount of JB weld, to make sure I don't have a leak.

Pump
Since the pump has to be the lowest point of the loop to keep fluid primed the pump basically has to be mounted on the subframe, or at least that's where I mounted it. I made 2 simple brackets that sandwich the top and bottom of the front subframe with a couple of bolts so I wouldn't have to drill any new holes into the subframe. It's not the strongest bracket, but once you have the little plastic cover for the bottom of the radiator [...]

Where are you going to install the nozzle (s), and what size are you using?

[dmytro98]

I'm going to tap into the rubber boot that connects the supercharger to the throttle body and for the size nozzle yet I'm not sure. Still have to talk to my tuner as to what size nozzle, along with what mixture of methanol to run. As the methanol kit came as part of the "stage 3 supercharger upgrade" package from 22 rpd I'm sure they'll be able to help me figure all that out.

[DRLane]

Originally Posted by dmytro98

I'm going to tap into the rubber boot that connects the supercharger to the throttle body and for the size nozzle yet I'm not sure. Still have to talk to my tuner as to what size nozzle, along with what mixture of methanol to run. As the methanol kit came as part of the "stage 3 supercharger upgrade" package from 22 rpd I'm sure they'll be able to help me figure all that out.

Gotcha - so you’re planning to tune around it not just a means of lowering IATs. Cool!

[imported_mega]

fyi the meth pumps will draw through a wiper pump, and can draw up you do not have to mount the pump below the draw point, as long as you are using a solenoid and not a 1 way check valve to prevent it from drawing meth through the pump under vacuum

[dmytro98]

The kit I bought does only include a check valve instead of a solenoid, but either way, I already have it all mounted, but's good to know if I have to install another kit.

[dmytro98]

January 2023 - M3 Gauge Cluster
I bought the cluster preceded from clusterandcoding on Instagram, and it came as expected. Had a new clear lens without any noticeable wear. Also came with the mileage cleared, with my vin already coded to the car. Since I have the supercharger partially installed, I can't turn my car on to test if the oil temp gauge is working, but I was told it should work without any coding on my end. However just putting the car into accessory mode, I can see that my correct mileage is displayed without any dot warnings.

Getting the cluster to fit was another story. I was deceived yet again with how easy it is to install when I watched a video on how to make the m3 cluster fit into an e82. Even though it was just trimming a couple of mm of the cluster in various places, the fact that it's something you look at every time you drive the car, it leaves very little room for error. Also the 2 screw don't line up with the cluster shade cover so you have to figure out how to screw that in to hold it in place.

In the end I ended up scratching up the soft touch plastic on both the top of the cluster, and on the cluster shade cover piece, so I'm going to get some satin black vinyl wrap to cover it up, and there is a small gap at the top of the cluster, that if you just sat in the car you probably wouldn't notice, especially with my seating position as my steering wheel is in the way of that, but I know it's there, so I'm going to see if I can find a solution to fix the gap, otherwise it will forever bother me.

If you're a perfectionist I wouldn't recommend doing this swap as the chances of there being a minor gap are almost guaranteed, unless you're experienced with the precise trimming needed to make it work.

Also really like how well the cluster and the gauge for my meth controller fit together and in the end I'm happy with it but it could be better.

[dmytro98]

March 2023 - big Oopsie
After getting the supercharger on the car and getting the car driving again and trying to dial in the tune, I found out I was out of injector. But I found this out after I had my flywheel come loose. When I changed out my stock clutch/flywheel I used a video guide that had all the torque specs and everything, and the one torque spec that ruined my day was it said to torque the flywheel down to 65 ft-lbs. I didn't know any better so I went along with it. I first noticed there was a problem when I heard what sounded like a rock flying around in my bell housing. I took the little cover off and found the head of one of my flywheel bolts. From there I didn't think the whole flywheel was loose, but just had one bolt fail so I went about to drop the trans and replace the flywheel bolts, but when I got to the flywheel the remaining 5 bolts were just about finger tight. When I took the flywheel off it looked like the slight vibration of the flywheel caused chunks of the crank to get welded to the flywheel.

"Band-Aid Solution"
At this point, I knew it was fucked and just tried to sand both the crank and flywheel smooth, but I knew I probably wasn't going to be able to get anywhere near balanced but figured it would at least let me drive the car for a couple of months while I figure out a permanent solution. Well after reinstalling the flywheel and torquing the bolts to 90ft lbs, after 30 minutes of driving, I was getting a terrible vibration, so I immediately took the car home.

Permanent Solution
Well, I knew no matter what I did, the engine wasn't going to be balanced as long as that crank was being used so I first tried to look up how much it would cost to replace it. And the crank itself was cheap finding used ones on eBay from $200-$300, but what I wasn't expecting was how expensive all the weird tools, and one-time use bolts and gaskets I would need to replace to even get to the crank. From my estimation, it would have cost me around $800 in just parts and tools, and I'm sure I was still missing stuff. And that would still leave room for me to mess up assembling the motor as I've never built a motor before. So then I started looking for used motors since you can get a complete motor for around the same price. I was looking for a couple of weeks, but kept seeing motors going for around $1300 and had over 120k miles on average which I didn't think was a good deal. So I kept looking until I found one on eBay that only had around 30k miles out of a 2012 128i convertible and was only $1200 shipped. I immediately bought it and patiently waited.

Where I'm at now
Well the new motor was scheduled to be deliver on march 7th, so I started to work on getting the car ready that same day. Well as the days went on it kept getting delayed being told it will be here tomorrow, over and over again. I tried calling to see if I can just pick up the motor myself as it was at a distribution center only an hour away from me, but they said I can't until Monday next week as it's still just sitting on the back of a truck waiting to be unloaded. So as frustrating as that is I used the free time to clean up the engine bay, and have my oil pan baffle welded in. So hopefully my new motor will be here soon, so I can finally have my car driving again.

[dmytro98]

March 2023 - new motor in and more problems
After getting the motor and the new flywheel in I got the car started for the first time and had the typical swap issues of random things being unplugged, but after I confirmed all the sensors and solenoids were plugged in and functional I was left with two codes that have been haunting me since; 2A98 and 2A99, which are codes for the intake and exhaust camshaft reference.

At this point, the car ran and drove, but just barely. It struggled to hold an idle and would die out if I didn't give it gas to fkeep it running, and once I was driving it felt like it had almost no power. From there I tried swapping out parts from my old motor like vanos filters, vanos solenoids, camshaft sensors, and so on, and was still stuck with those codes. After this I realized it probably wasn't just a bad sensor and order the tools to verify the timing.

After I got the valve cover off, I set cylinder 1 to tdc, but when I tried to install the camshaft lock, it wasn't even close to fitting. When I looked at the intake and exhaust cams I could see they were both off. I figured maybe I wasn't at tdc and between me and a friend who has much more experience working on cars than me rechecked about 5 times to be sure it was at tdc and the cams were both still off. So then we tried to set the cams to tdc by rotating the whole assembly and the camshaft locking tool fit no problem. This means both the intake and exhaust cams are in time relative to each other, but out of time relative to the crank, and the odds of both cams being off is unlikely so I'm thinking either the new motor was retimed incorrectly, or I spun a crank hub. so I pulled the crank hub and I'm honestly not sure if all the spots I'm looking at are normal or signs it spun. (also I know there's a pin in the stock flywheel to easily lock the crank at tdc, but since I have the jbr flywheel which doesn't have the timing hole, I had to find tdc my just sticking an extension in cylinder 1)

Where I'm at now
I plan on just replacing the crank timing sprocket, crankhub, along with all the one-time use bolts, and retiming the motor and hoping for the best, because as far as I can tell nothing was damaged in the motor. If anyone has any insight or suggestions, it would be appreciated because at this point I feel like I'm way out of my paygrade with this car and just about ready to throw in the towel and take it to a shop and have them deal with it.

crankhub: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ZRlN01fb5zk
crankshaft/timing sprocket:

[dmytro98]

April 2023 - Retiming Motor Didn't Fix it
Well I started off by replacing the crankhub, and timing sprocket and retiring the motor, put the car back together and it started right up. No codes while it sat idling in the garage so I took it for a drive after it was warmed up. At first it was fine, but I tried to do a pull and it just started running like shit so I knew something up. So I go to turn around and when I came to a stop to make a u-turn the car died. After that, the car didn't start again with timing synchronization codes. I spent like 2 weeks troubleshooting random shit that all led nowhere until I decide to pull the valve cover off and check timing. Sure enough timing slipped just like before with both cams still in sync with each other but out of time with the crank.

So at this point, I knew timing was going to be an issue again but since when crankhubs/timing sprockets spin, they don't typically cause any damage so I thought I'd retime it and baby it to see that the motor was still healthy. So I retimed it and sure enough, started right up. Took it for a very calm drive around the neighborhood, and it was running about as well as it did with the original motor so I thought fuck it, let me do a pull and see if timing slips again. And I did a pull and it felt good. Felt like it was making the power it should. Then I did a second pull and it definitely felt way worse, so I started to drive back to the house, and as I was slowing down to make a turn, the car just died. I knew timing slipped again so I looked for a solution.

May 2023 - Car is Fixed, But Still Needs Work
Well after doing a lot of research comparing part numbers, and asking Noir I found out the n54 splinned crankhub does in fact work on the n52. All you need to make it work is an n54 oil pump crank sprocket. The installation was a bit of a hassle since I had to drop the oil pan, but besides that, it wasn't too bad. About 12 hours of work spread over the weekend.

After I got everything put back together car started right up and so far after about 200 miles of driving, it's still holding together. I'm not sure what initially caused it to keep slipping, but all I know is that the Vargas splined crankhub, and bolt capture has kept it together.

The next steps are to get the tune dialed in and to find all the random issues. The first thing I need to do to a boost leak test since I haven't done one, and I definitely have some questionable connections for my charge pipe, and I suspect I could have some on my manifold. Also an Issue I didn't think I'd have to deal with is my meth controller gauge overheating and turning off. Gonna have to relocate it somewhere, but still unsure where.

[tracer bullet]

Sounds like a mess, but hopefully it works out! I can't believe I only saw this thread for the first time. Thanks for making it, and for keeping it updated!

[dmytro98]

August 2023 - Clutch Issues
My issues initially started when I went for a drive and I realized I was having issues getting the car into gear at high rpm. No grinding, but just felt like a lookout. After that would happen it felt like I would just lose my clutch and couldn't go into gear at all. This would solve itself after just turning the car off and back on and it would be like nothing happened. I tried a bunch of different things including bleeding the clutch, replacing the master and slave, and replacing the pivot pin and throwout bearing. And after all that still the same issue. Well, I went to drive the car again just trying different things to and after dumping the clutch from a stop I heard a grinding noise. Luckily this was maybe a quarter mile away from the house I just limped it home. After pulling the transmission I saw that I had one clutch strap completely fail, with the other 2 being bent. When this happened I was running a 550i pressure plate, stock 128i clutch, and a jbr 12lb flywheel.

I thought it was just a fluke since I only had maybe 1000 miles on the pressure plate. So I replaced it with a fx350 pressure plate with a sprung clutch but reused the flywheel. After installing that and driving the car again it felt like it was much harder to shift. It felt like there was so much extra resistance on the shifter. Well after getting the easy break-in miles, I tried doing some aggressive shifts near redline and it just did not want to go into gear. Same sort of lockout feeling. Well, I kept driving around seeing if maybe I just forgot how to drive but along with this, it felt like there was a lot of extra vibration. I have solid motor, trans, and diff mounts so I was used to vibrations, but it was to the point where above 5k rpm I could barely see out of my rearview mirrors. Well, when I tried to rev with the clutch in I heard a grinding noise and a metal milkshake. I once again limped the car home and when I jacked up the car I found my bell housing got blown apart.

So I replaced the transmission and the pressure plate, but resued everything else. After reinstalling everything and just driving around it still felt like it was hard to shift with excessive vibrations. So I took the transmission out yet again after maybe 50 very easy miles. When I took it off I found the clutch straps to be bent. This time I sent back the pressure plate to get the straps rebuilt and have an extra layer installed.

The only thing I could think of being an issue at this point is my flywheel is misbalanced or bent. I plan on reinstalling the stock flywheel with that rebuilt pressure plate and hoping for the best. Everyone I talked to said they only saw this on people that don't rev match on downshift, but I always do so I don't think it's that. I do have a very aggressive 2-step at 6200 rpm that I can't resist doing when no one is around, so no clue if that could somehow damage the pressure plate. Also one other thing I noticed is if I tried to downshift down to first it would make a whirring noise and just really didn't like it. It never did that before and I had no issues getting into first from neutral.

[dmytro98]

October-November 2023 - Crankshaft Pulley Issues
For the longest time, I had a noise that I thought was clutch chatter, but it turned out it was my crankshaft pulley. When I first inspected it, I noticed it had some play-in. So I took a closer look and noticed that one of the six bolts is missing and just assumed it backed out. So I tried to remove the other five and snapped all five of the remaining bolts. When I took the pulley off I could see that the crankhub capture pushed up against all the bolts, and ate away at them causing them to snap. My crankshaft pulley surface were damaged from vibrating, along with my crankhub.

I at first I though no big deal I'll just extract the bolts, clean up the crankhub a little, and toss a new crankshaft pulley. Nope. I think the bolts got stretched because when I tried to extract them I just kept snapping the extractors.

At this point I realized my crankhub was done for, which wouldn't be that much of a pain in the ass if I had a standard crankhub, but I didn't. Mine was pressed in and to remove it you need to bolt on the puller with the 6 bolts that are used to hold the crankshaft pulley. Well, that's a problem since all of mine have bolts stuck in them. I ended up welding the puller directly to the crankhub and was able to remove it without too much issue surprisingly.

After getting everything back together the car seems to be running the same as before so I don't think the vibrations did any major damage internally to the motor.

I no longer hear the noise I thought was clutch chatter, but I do still have vibrations that I can really only notice on decel above 5k rpm. I suspect it's something with the flywheel because I have no clue what else it could be.

December 2023 - Vac Damper
I threw on the vac fluid damper as more of a preventative measure, and to see if it could help with some of my vibrations. It feels like it got rid of some of the minor vibrations and the car feels slightly smoother overall, but whatever is causing my major vibrations is still doing it. Another benefit is the car seems to rev up slightly quicker after installing the fluid damper.

[PRTSB1M]

The carnage... I can't look away

[dmytro98]

February - March 2024 - Transmission Upgrade and more Boost
Well, I found the limits of the stock GS6-17bg. I was still on my larger pulley making 6-7psi and when I went to flat foot shift into 4th gear, 4th gear exploded. Figured it was time for an upgrade since I know I'm not exactly nice to my car, so the only option was GS6-53bz out of a 335i. I knew it could be done but I also new it wasn't a direct bolt on so I'm going to layout all the things you need in order to make it work.

The first thing is the clutch stack. Since the 53bz has the pilot bearing inside of the input shaft I needed a new flywheel, but I couldn't just get any 335i flywheel. It had to be a 6-bolt, with the little pilot-bearing peg that sticks out. I still don't know what car it's supposed to go in but I found spec made an aluminum single mass that would work, specifically #SB53A-4 which I weighted at 15lbs since I couldn't find that info anywhere I looked. Next was the clutch disk. Since the 53bz uses a larger input shaft, I needed a different clutch disk, and talking to clutch masters they recommended their fx400 6 puck ceramic clutch disk. For the pressure plate, I was able to reuse my fx350 pressure plate since I knew it would bolt up and was told it's the same one that would come with the fx400 kit, and since mine had less than 1k miles on it, I figured it would be fine to reuse.

Next Was the driveshaft situation. The 53bz uses a larger guibo, and is a good couple of inches longer so the stock driveshaft wasn't going to work. Talking to people, the automatic n54 135i driveshaft uses the same size splines as the 128i driveshaft so I ended up using the front portion from an automatic n54 135i, and a stock 128i rear section.

The next step was getting the bellhousing bolts to line up. I initially thought there was one bolt hole that needed to be drilled out, but there are 2 but they are both the smaller bolts on the top so in my case, I only drilled out the one on the top driver side and just didn't use one for the top.

The last part that was needed was a new shift linkage since the 53bz is longer. I was able to use the same coolerworx shifter, just with a new shift linkage from 22rpd.

Other notes from the swap is the 53bz is significantly heavier and larger. When I weighed them the 17bg weighed in at 73lbs and the 53bz was 130lbs. Also, the combination of a 6 puck and lightweight flywheel has given me a significant amount of clutch chatter. Not the end of the world since this car is far from a daily for me. Also unsurprisingly the clutch is very grabby from a stop, but racecar I guess. The 53bz also feels like it requires much less force to shift gears, and the ratios aren't too different. I attached a chart below comparing the ratios.

The moral of the story, probably don't flat-foot-shift unless you want to break your transmission, but I'm a child who likes hearing a big bang when I shift so I'm going to keep doing it and hope to not break this one.

More Boost
I finally went to a smaller pulley. I went from a 3.8in pulley down to 3.12in and that made the boost go from 6-7psi up to a consistent 10psi above 7200rpm. Elevation sucks since at sea level this pulley would make over 14psi. My initial goal with the car was 12psi, but I'm just about maxing out the supercharger, and can only go down another 4mm before the supercharger reaches it's max-rated rpm at redline.

I was initially planning on adding a front mount air-to-air intercooler and already had one I got in a trade a while back, but now that I know I'm going to be limited by my supercharger, I wasn't to maximize efficiency so I plan on getting a water to air manifold from stagefp since that should be available very soon and is going to be a lot cheaper than I initially expected. Either way in it's current state, just doing a couple of pulls on the street my iats are getting up to 180f, which is quite toasty.

The car still has a long way to go before it's dialed in but I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.