vtl's Alpine White 135i

[Pete.J]

Originally Posted by vtl

This is a datalog of a session at Winton:

https://datazap.me/u/vtl/ppk-track-runs-ii

Temps go to insane levels. As you can see MHD cooling targets basically do nothing, not sure why people said it would lol. I've got a stock radiator and stock oil cooler with the AD Eng thermostat blockoff. I have a CSF radiator waiting to go on the car so next time at Winton itll be a good before/after comparison.

Worth noting that the ambient temp at Winton was around 16 and dry, very ideal conditions yet the cooling system was at its limits. In 10 minutes the oil is already close to 140 degrees C

Intercooler wise, I have a Wagner EVO1 performance which is adequate for street driving, but gets quite toasty on track. Winton you have a lot of slow long corners at high rpms so its not getting much airflow.

Hmmm.. just a had a look at your logs at the track, 60 degrees IATs are indeed high. Possibly knocking territory having intake air temps that high, this could be an explanation to the constant pulling of timing action by the DME.

What tune and petrol were you running on that day?

I know you're one of the few people here, that are determined not to cut their radiator support to fit a bigger FMIC, but do you still hold the same thought after this last experience at the track? lol

[vtl]

Originally Posted by PeterY

Hmmm.. just a had a look at your logs at the track, 60 degrees IATs are indeed high. Possibly knocking territory having intake air temps that high, this could be an explanation to the constant pulling of timing action by the DME.

What tune and petrol were you running on that day?

I know you're one of the few people here, that are determined not to cut their radiator support to fit a bigger FMIC, but do you still hold the same thought after this last experience at the track? lol

Custom tune, 98 fuel.

Not interested in cutting up the radiator support. Given that the car only sees a few track days a year its not really worth cutting up the car for it.

[T1M]

Originally Posted by PeterY

Hmmm.. just a had a look at your logs at the track, 60 degrees IATs are indeed high. Possibly knocking territory having intake air temps that high, this could be an explanation to the constant pulling of timing action by the DME.

What tune and petrol were you running on that day?

I know you're one of the few people here, that are determined not to cut their radiator support to fit a bigger FMIC, but do you still hold the same thought after this last experience at the track? lol

The high IAT's are definitely the cause of the timing corrections. It pulls 100% clean on the street with sub 38*c IAT's. Adding 20+ degrees to that changes things significantly.

[vtl]

Pics from the track day

[T1M]

Gotta love a track action shot

[BMW2C135]

Nice driving Vtl…like the inside tyre starting lift, so your trying!!

[vtl]

As part of preventative maintenence I threw in a set of index 12 injectors and coded them up. As these were second hand (under 10k kms on them) I replaced the seals and decoupling elements. This is quite a tedious process of replacing all the seals and the special tools are not easy to get. Basically you need to stretch out the seals to get them to go onto the injectors, then use the protective cap to squish the seal back to its original size.

At the same time, I replaced the PCV vent hose which tends to leak on high km cars.

The new injectors seem to have fixed my wierd fuel trims issue where the bank 1 would have high fuel trim vs bank 2. Good to know that was the cause.

[vtl]

Last weekend I did quite a lot:

CSF radiator install
New lower radiator hose
Belt tensioner and pulleys
Billet cylinder head -> thermostat coolant hose fitting + new hose
Whiteline polyurethane rear toe bushings

BMW performance short shifter
Rebuilt shifter with new c clips and foam piece for gearshift rod joint
Installed poly bushing for shift carrier (rear bushing)

The CSF radiator was a bit of a pain to install, the old radiator was quite difficult to remove, as the lower radiator hose was stuck on. The oring has welded itself to the plastic basically. I tried removing the radiator with the hose attached, but no luck. I ended up having to saw the old radiator flange off. Once that was taken care of, the radiator came out easy. I highly recommend removing the oil cooler lines as they just get in the way.

The CSF radiator fit very well actually, the fan went in very easy and there is still space between the fan and the front intake inlet. The CSF radiator is approximately 4mm thicker than the stock one.

Unfortunately my intercooler interferes with the radiator drain plug. The drain plug is quite thick and sticks out a bit, preventing the intercooler from being mounted properly. I have 2 options, one is to install a lower profile drain plug and the other is to install studs and a spacer to mount the intercooler lower down. I dont want to mount the cooler any lower than it already is, the charge piping doesnt fit that well anymore with the intercooler sitting lower.

I measured the drain plug and it is an M12x1.25mm plug. I have ordered a low profile hex style drain plug:

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/AEROFLOW-...53.m2749.l2649
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Speedflow...53.m2749.l2649

Have ordered these two plugs and will see which one is better.

The CSF I doubt will make any difference on the street, track use will be needed to test out its capabilities. In any case, a full aluminium radiator instead of the crappy one with the weak plastic end tanks should be more reliable and never cause any issues in the future

[vtl]

One of the weak points for these cars I see all the time but never discussed is the cylinder head to thermostat coolant hose.

Around 100k+ kms is when you are vulnerable, the heat just makes the plastic brittle and tends to crumble when you remove it. As you need to remove this hose to do the oil filter housing gasket, it is a real pain when you discover its broken. In my case, 2 years ago this hose let go at Winton Raceway and luckily was able to drive the 3 hours home. The flange is quite high up in the cooling system so you will not lose all your coolant. I have already replaced this hose with a stock one but I want a more robust solution.

Luckily there are billet fitting available on ebay. There used to only be 1 available on the market, now theres many of them on ebay from taiwan. I ordered it over a year ago from the original source here:

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/BMW-335i...MAAOSwuMFUdSD-

The biggest hassle is that the hose is crimped on the plastic fitting and you have to salvage a hose to put on the new fitting. You can cut the crimp clamp off but that always results in damage to the rubber hose. I found the best way is to cut the flange off the plastic hose, crush it (i used a hydraulic press but you could use a vice) and the plastic will crack and you can fit the new fitting.

I dont like worm clamps, especially in this case where you would never undo it. The fitting is supplied with a decent worm clamp, that wont cut into the hose. Some of the cheaper fittings come with crappy worm clamps which will tend to extrude the hose rubber thru the small holes in the clamp.
A crimp clamp is a much better idea so I purchased this:

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/B12-00704...53.m2749.l2649

[drjekl]

Suscribed for engine rebuild pics (aint much left to change out by now!)

[vtl]

Sourced a BMW performance short shifter off ebay, these are quite rare these days. The kit includes a new gear lever and shifter carrier. The bottom of the gearstick is longer so the shifter carrier raises the ball joint upwards, otherwise the gearstick may contact the transmission.

I installed my delrin carrier bushings and and upgraded the rear carrier bushing to a polyurethane one:

https://store.garagistic.com/BMW-Per...39-25111222015

This piece requires you to remove the rubber from the stock carrier bushing and reuse the shell. Soaking it in acetone for a week makes the job easy.

I also replaced all the wear items in the shifter:
Ball joint
C clips
foam piece for gearshift rod joint

All of the above wear items I put in March, but already the gearshift rod joint is not as tight as a brand new one. Its really a poor design that needs an upgrade.

My initial impressions are that the gearshift is very very solid with no play at all. The shorter shifts I haven't decided whether I like it yet. After owning the car for 3 years its a bit of an adjustment going to the shorter throws. Also the shift effort is definitely increased, especially when the gearbox is cold. I have noticed Redline MTL requires more shift effort when cold vs the stock fluid. The shorter shifts I am not sure if it has improved the driving experience or not. I may end up removing it in the future, will see if I warm up to it

[RJ019]

I had a short shifter for a while at first I didn't like it. Especially since reverse was a pain to get into, I did get use to it and started to enjoy it... but after 3 months I removed it and went back to stock. I love the nice easy throws of the stock shifter and a ZHP knob.

[vtl]

Unforuntately my custom made toe arms ended up failing shortly after installing them. The ball joints from FEBEST were low quality and develeped significant play.

Got some hardrace toe arms installed. These were supposed to be local stock but took 3 weeks to arrive. Was a real pain getting any response from Hardrace too, not particularly happy with the service considering these were local stock and took longer than just buying it from the USA.

While I was waiting for the toe arms to arrive I ended up buying a set of whiteline poly toe bushings from MRT. This upgrade was only $60 and actually performed very well for the very small investment. The hardrace arms cost $350 and while the ball jointed arms do perform better, these poly ones offer 80% of the performance at a fraction of the cost. Well worth doing the poly bushes if you want some stability without breaking the bank.

I have limited time before the upcoming Tasmania Trip where we will be doing over 2000km of hard driving so I really wanted the arms quickly. They arrived with just 1 week to spare before I leave for the trip so all worked out in the end at least

These arms are very well made, although I am not a big fan of the colour. Also worth putting some tape over the arms when adjusting them, as the finish is very easy to mark up and scratch the paint when tightening down the bolts. These arms should be exactly the same as the Megan racing arms, which I believe all use the same supplier with different stickers. These are good because of the ball jointed contruction which are sealed for long life.

Best thing about ball jointed toe arms during the install is that they are fully articulating and do not require torquing at ride height


Worth replacing the outboard bolts to the knuckle, last time I installed the custom toe arms, the bolts looked fine but would not torque to 100Nm and woulod just spin. New bolts sorted that out.

[vtl]

The CSF comes with a silly drain plug that interferes with even the stock intercooler. Such a poor oversight from an otherwise great product. This resulted in rubbing up against my Wagner intercooler, which unlike the stock one can't be trimmed back.

I borrowed a friends CSF radiator that he had yet to fit so I could measure the size of the drain plug. It was a M12x1.25 plug and I thought it'd be a good idea to purchase a low profile allen drive style drain plug. I ordered a speedflow one and it arrived and fit great.

When I went to install it on my car, the threads wouldnt engage

Turns out it was a different thread pitch despite the two radiators being exactly the same part number. I measured (wrongly) that my drain plug was M12x1.75

As I need this car sorted before my upcoming tasmania trip, I decided to make my own drain bolt. I started off with a BMW M12x1.75 aluminium transmission bellhousing bolt. Making the allen drive was tricky:

- Machine shape of drain plug
- Drill 5mm hole through drain plug
- Cut 5mm allen key and sharpen the ends
- Use hydraulic pressto force the allen key through the drain plug

The drain plug can now be driven via an allen socket but now theres a hole in it that needs to be sealed

- Drill out back side of the drain plug with 6mm drill
- Machine out an oversized plug for interference fit (6.3mm)
- Press in plug with hydraulic press
- Bandsaw off the excess material
- Machine off remaining excess material
- Polish part

I went to fit the awesome drain plug and yet agian, would not go in! Turns out it was actually an M12*1.5mm drain plug after all Could have just bought one in the first place! As I am short on time I can't wait for ebay parts to come in, so I spent another 2 hours making one from scratch from Aluminium bar stock. Unfortunately the die did not start squarely so the threads are not that concentric, although it does work.

Really frustrating that the 2nd part didnt turn out as good as the first one. I fitted up the new drain plug which does seal and fix the clearance for the intercooler. Ordered an Aeroflow M12*1.5mm metric port plug since I wasn't happy wit hthe quality of the plug that I made. Will be fine temporarily until I get the Aeroflow plug in

[T1M]

Great work, pity about the mis-measure but you can now tick making a drain plug put of a transmission bolt off your life's bucket list items.

[vtl]

Car is almost Tasmania ready, only a few detail items to go:

- Transmission fluid (seems a bit too notchy if this doesn't fix it ill use a different fluid)
- DSC bleed the front calipers. When doing the seals o nthe calipers I rebled them but still the pedal dosn't feel 100%
- All 4 o2 sensors. After the Winton day with the O2 sensor issues I decided to just change out all 4 O2 sensors as preventative maintenance. I will actually drop the subframe out of the way to get good access to the O2 sensors. Also I will remove and inspect the custom engine mounts to make sure they are still holding
- Wheel alignment, need another alignmnet after doing the hardrace toe arms.

[vtl]

Did all the O2 sensors and transmission fluid on the weekend.

I dropped the front subframe as I knew I'd have no chance of removing the o2 sensors in the tight space. The O2 sensors were quite tight and required quite a bit of leverage to remove, so the extra space helped. It is still shit with the steering rack in the way but not too bad getting the primary O2 sensors out. Secondary O2 sensors are quite easy with my downpipes, I don't even need to remove the exhaust. Other downpipes will probably require the Bank1 downpipe to be loosened.

Dropping the subframe is very easy with the engine brace and had all the sensors done in around 2.5 hours. I also inspected the custom engine mounts, which were 100% perfect with no cracking on the welds or anything

Transmission fluid was changed with Redline MTL, as I found the gears were quite hard to engage and very notchy. After the fluid change, the gears are still notchy but the shift effort has been reduced. The old Redline MTL fluid has only done around 13,000km but already was quite dirty. Happy with the shift quality now, no longer feels like a truck!

[vtl]

I have previously been using a Kenu Airframe for a phone mount. It is very easy to use and works quite well. For most phones it holds it great, especially when the phone's volume and power buttons arent directly on the side of the phone where the mount would clip onto it.



Unfortunately with my Nexus 6 the buttons are right on the middle and the phone has to be held slightly offset. The Kenu mount rotates but does not have enough resistance to securely hold the heavy 6" phone.

Despite this, the mount still holds the phone securely even on track days, but the mount still moves a bit especially when you have the tug of a charging cable plugged in.

I really just wanted a mount that would clip onto the dash somehow, but options are limited. In the end I found a vent clip which is a great solution:



http://www.dsldevelopments.com/brodi...81-E82-E87-E88


It wasn't particularly cheap but arrived just in time for my Tasmania trip. I drilled a hole in the middle and mounted a ball swivel mount (cheapo ebay thing) with a screw.

The mount is very strong and can be oriented towards the driver. The last pic shows my old Samsung Galaxy S3 mounted (not my Nexus 6)

[vtl]

Also did a DSC bleed on the front brakes, this purged out all the remaining air in the calipers and now I have a very positive and sensitive brake pedal.

While I had the front wheels in the air, I decided to modify the brake pad wear sensor, as I have always been annoyed they do not fit the Ferodo DS2500 pads.

I wanted to just a plug that bypasses the sensor instead of having the extraneous wiring ziptied to the bleeder nipple. I cut and discarded the brake sensor cable and kept the plug. I then stripped and twisted the sensor wires together and soldered them, then cut off the excess. Also heatshrunk the end so its nice and neat.

The plug and wire fits entirely in the cable holder and is completely hidden and neatens up the wheel well and just one less wire to work around when doing maintenence in that area.

[totti84]

Great idea with the brake sensor! On my to do list next time my wheels come off

[vtl]

Took the car on a trip to Tasmania with a bunch of great guys from the forum. We did the trip last year and it was so brilliant we wanted to do it again.

The 135i held up great, was the lead car in the event and had no issues on the trip. The recent modifications/maintenence to the car was in preparation for this trip and it was well worth it.

The suspension setup worked very well. i think KW spring rates are a bit soft for ultimate handling, the rates allow the body to roll and lift the inside rear under cornering. But usually not an issue except for certain low speed corners and these coilovers shine on high speed driving where the softer rates really absorb the bumps. Straight line high speed these coilovers really help the car being stable over the bumps. The road to Gordon dam in Tasmania is breataking and very high speed, more corners can be taken at 120-140kph+ if you wanted to. Despite how many big bumps we encountered I never had any issue. The underside of the front bumper has no scrapes on it at all and the diff cover didn't have any new scratches on it. I was impressed with the car.

There's only a few things i'd change with the car:

- Low speed tight turns or on very fast transitions the body roll can cause the inside rear wheels to unload, can result in poor traction out of corners as the LSD is slow to react. Stiffer springs would certainly help. When I got the KW V2s I always thought that if I didn't like the springs I could always change them. I can convert my Kws to linear race springs

- The front rims are too narrow for the tyre (225/40/18 on a 7.5"), resulting in the tyre to roll over and cause understeer. I really need a wider rim, 8-8.5" rim. I could stick with the 225 front or upgrade to a 235 or 245 up front eventually. A AD08R 255 rear seems to be adequate in the dry with enough tyre temperature, its quite hard to break traction

Ultimately I'd love a 245 front and 265 rear, but that would be a challenge with the stock fenders. Hopefully a 235 front on a wider rim will give me enough front end grip to keep me happy. I could potentially mount a 8.5" et 52 stock rear wheel on the fronts and run a wheel spacer up front, and run a 235 or 245. Would be a bit tricky finding the rear 313" 18" rims but I have seen them pop up cheaply in single rims from time to time.

[vtl]

The CSF radiator strikes again!

The CSF radiator is quite a bit thicker than the the stock unit (around 4-5mm)

This means the fan sits a bit further back, which in itself is not an issue

The lower charge pipe however, has a bracket which mounts onto the fan, this pushes the charge pipe back and makes contact with the airconditioning hard pipe. I noticed this on installation so I removed the rubber grommet and wrapped the aircon line with felt tape.

Unfortunately this wasnt enough and the charge pipe has rubbed through, I came back to the car with a small puddle of oil underneath it. This is the oil from the AC compressor to keep it from running dry.

The solution to this was to cut off the bracket for the lower charge pipe so it doesn't touch. Now it seems to have adequate clearance and should not be an issue.

New AC pipe has been ordered, wasn't cheap Will fit the pipe and refill the oil and R134a refrigerant. The oil quantity must be filled according to the service instructions. There is no oil level gauge in the system so BMW give you a list of oil quantities based on what parts are replaced. e.g 35ml for a damaged line, or 50ml if the AC compressor is replaced. I will fit the line myself and organise an AC specialist to refill the system.