Black & Tan 332iT

[kaiv]

Progress continues..


After that insert as practice, I turned to the real project. A ZHP bumper brake duct to CSL airbox inlet duct and accordion flex boot. First I masked off the area to get some good measurements and a 3D scan with the iPhone faceid lidar sensor, which gave me the local area and surfaces I needed to route a duct:


Then off to the 3D printer for a first iteration. I used the entire build height of the printer, and actually needed a few mm more, so I nipped the top 5mm off of the printed part of the duct. You'll see below why this didn't really matter after installing the TPU printed flexible accordion boot. This is actually version 2:



It helped having an extra CSL flap to get dimensions, as this is an odd shape:


And after adding some mounting points to V3, we're in business. This piece uses two factory mounting points to secure in place along with the bumper opening to locate itself in 3D space. From there, the CSL airbox is installed from the top just as it is on the factory CSL. The flexible TPU piece in between has a groove that locks into the CSL flap just like stock, and is flexible enough to snap/pop in place on install. It also has double walls to locate on the duct itself to make sure it stays positioned, even as the engine vibrates at high revs. So, here it is:



You can see here how the flexible boot fully encompasses the section of print I had to notch out:

Incredible work Bryson! Can't wait to get mine! 😄

[Bry5on]

Well well well, it appears those BMW engineers really were on to something with that flap ducting.

Background: I have both the pre-and post-flap ducting connected (ie: with the flap closed I'm drawing air from behind the left side of the bumper, but not with any sort of ram effect). You can see the termination of the post-flap intake duct in some of the photos above.

Tonight, on my drive home, I datalogged at a reasonably constant speed and rpm (~3500rpm, 5th gear, ~65mph) a drive with the flap open (briefly), then closed, then open again. At this constant speed and engine load, I saw an 8*C (14*F) in 1 minute, 15 seconds, with most of the drop happening in the first 15-20 seconds. This is a rather impactful change! Definitely more than I expected, as I already had a low temperature air source and I didn't see this behavior before doing the duct.

In the stock CSL firmware in sport mode the flap opens at 3300rpm in gears 1, 2, 3 (41mph) and at 40mph in gears 4, 5, 6. Seems logical.

Vertical yellow bars in the datalog below are when the flap opened/closed.

[Will]

Amazing work! Thanks for documenting and sharing with us.

[Projecte46m3]

Doing god's work in here!!

[Bry5on]

Progress continues..

First, I picked up the isofix cover that I had retrimmed in some e46 natural brown leather that heinzboehmer and I came across a few months back, finally:


Up next, we move back to 3D printing. I managed to fit the bigger screen into the ash tray dimensions, as above, and added some USB-C CarPlay and charge ports while I was at it. I tried to capture a bunch of photos to give a sense of the lighting match. It's actually pretty damn good, but the camera really struggles to capture it the same way as your eyes.

Open:

Closed:





After that insert as practice, I turned to the real project. A ZHP bumper brake duct to CSL airbox inlet duct and accordion flex boot. First I masked off the area to get some good measurements and a 3D scan with the iPhone faceid lidar sensor, which gave me the local area and surfaces I needed to route a duct:


Then off to the 3D printer for a first iteration. I used the entire build height of the printer, and actually needed a few mm more, so I nipped the top 5mm off of the printed part of the duct. You'll see below why this didn't really matter after installing the TPU printed flexible accordion boot. This is actually version 2:



It helped having an extra CSL flap to get dimensions, as this is an odd shape:


And after adding some mounting points to V3, we're in business. This piece uses two factory mounting points to secure in place along with the bumper opening to locate itself in 3D space. From there, the CSL airbox is installed from the top just as it is on the factory CSL. The flexible TPU piece in between has a groove that locks into the CSL flap just like stock, and is flexible enough to snap/pop in place on install. It also has double walls to locate on the duct itself to make sure it stays positioned, even as the engine vibrates at high revs. So, here it is:



You can see here how the flexible boot fully encompasses the section of print I had to notch out:


And lastly, a bit less exciting, the bracket for the PDC and trailer modules showed up from Europe, so I dropped that in:


All in all, a solid update I think.

[Bry5on]

So I recently bought a 3D printer and I’ve been practicing by making smaller things to learn the ropes before I jump into printing the ZHP-CSL duct and isolator boot.

So far I’ve experimented with TPA, ASA and ABS. I expect ABS will be my most popular material, and to that end, here’s an ash tray insert that I designed to hold a smaller 1.54” screen, along with gauge.s circuit board and GPS receiver. A print just finished for the bigger screen version (which clears to the half millimeter basically everywhere) that might replace this one, but here’s how it looks so far:



Here’s the big one:

[Bry5on]

On to the next project - does anyone have a 3D scanner in the Bay Area so I can get these dimensions right?

[0-60motorsports]

I have the same rear view mirror and love it. Dont even care where i threw the oval one LOL

[Bry5on]

I was home with a cold this weekend, so I made myself useful by tackling a couple little projects.
1: I repaired my black 996 calipers with the same fix I did to the red ones by bonding in the loose pins




2: I disassembled my M3 mirrors and created a functional bench setup for auto-dimming, along with wire harnesses that will be trimmed to length




3: I pulled the roof rail trim off and double-stick taped it to mimic what the factory did. I used 1/8" (3.2mm) tape, where the factory looked like 2mm. It fit just fine as the land for the tape is 3-3.5mm, a wagon takes about 10 yards.

[Bry5on]

I love following your progress man, it’s like watching a rocket scientist lol

I really appreciate how skilled your are. Kudos.

Thank you! I really enjoy the process of learning and this project really helps keep the skills sharp (enough) because you can dig into so many different disciplines.

And I’ve got one more victory claim before the weekend is over. The front PDC retrofit is complete. It works great, but was a bit of a bear specifically to modify the bumper beam. Other than that, everything went together as planned with the wire harness routed down the passenger side of the car. Now I can give my back some rest.

[jrgatfh]

Another victory claim over here. I wired the Curt trailer module in between the car light signals and the trailer module input signals using the fused (factory slot) wire I’d just run for the euro powered trailer hitch plug. This device converts the separate brake/turn signals of euro cars into the shared brake/turn signals of US cars.

I wired the park signals direct (skipped the curt module) to the license plate lights, wired the Curt left and right turn to the signals, and wired the Curt brake light to the black/yellow third brake light wire.

Then I wired the Curt left and right turn signal outputs to the left and right turn inputs of the trailer module. I followed the X5 wiring for the park lights, which gangs together left park, right park and brake light inputs and outputs that wire to the park light trailer wire.

Following that, I tested functions with a light tester and a load dummy. Both the light tester and the load dummy were detected as a trailer connected and appropriately disabled PDC upon connection. Light tester (LEDs) reported that all bulbs work correctly - park, brake, turns - but the turn signals started fast flashing as they detected a bulb out due to the low load of the LEDs. I then wired up a couple 6 ohm resistors to the turn signals ONLY and plugged that in. The turn signals and brake lights behaved normally after that and PDC was still disabled.

This was the behavior that I was looking for!
- US trailer light behavior
- Trailer detection with automatic PDC disable
- Trailer light failure detection
- Dummy load reaction for disabling PDC with my bike rack

So that’s the ticket, just gotta wire one of those Curt modules in series.



I also started work on a roller cart to hold my most used tools instead of fishing through the toolbox. I’ll take any suggestions or tips if anyone’s got some clever solutions.

I love following your progress man, it’s like watching a rocket scientist lol

I really appreciate how skilled your are. Kudos.

[Bry5on]

Another victory claim over here. I wired the Curt trailer module in between the car light signals and the trailer module input signals using the fused (factory slot) wire I’d just run for the euro powered trailer hitch plug. This device converts the separate brake/turn signals of euro cars into the shared brake/turn signals of US cars.

I wired the park signals direct (skipped the curt module) to the license plate lights, wired the Curt left and right turn to the signals, and wired the Curt brake light to the black/yellow third brake light wire.

Then I wired the Curt left and right turn signal outputs to the left and right turn inputs of the trailer module. I followed the X5 wiring for the park lights, which gangs together left park, right park and brake light inputs and outputs that wire to the park light trailer wire.

Following that, I tested functions with a light tester and a load dummy. Both the light tester and the load dummy were detected as a trailer connected and appropriately disabled PDC upon connection. Light tester (LEDs) reported that all bulbs work correctly - park, brake, turns - but the turn signals started fast flashing as they detected a bulb out due to the low load of the LEDs. I then wired up a couple 6 ohm resistors to the turn signals ONLY and plugged that in. The turn signals and brake lights behaved normally after that and PDC was still disabled.

This was the behavior that I was looking for!
- US trailer light behavior
- Trailer detection with automatic PDC disable
- Trailer light failure detection
- Dummy load reaction for disabling PDC with my bike rack

So that’s the ticket, just gotta wire one of those Curt modules in series.



I also started work on a roller cart to hold my most used tools instead of fishing through the toolbox. I’ll take any suggestions or tips if anyone’s got some clever solutions.

[Bry5on]

For you nerds out there, here's a very interesting interactive datalog that contains a cold start and warmup period, along with a couple WOT pulls.
https://datazap.me/u/bry5on/aem-wide...olo=0-15-16-21

Interesting things in the data:
1) The warmup period of various parts of the engine, especially seeing the thermostat crack open and start regulating:


2) How clearly you can see the torque curve of the engine in the datalogs, inverted here because longitudinal accel is negative (dyno? who needs a dyno. We've got detailed mass information and a good datalog):


I'm also going to add a little bit more fuel between 4600 and 7000 RPM to target a smooth ramp down to 12.5:1 instead of the ~13.5:1 it's at now

[Bry5on]

That's awesome work!

Thank you! All in the quest for my perfect daily driver

[0-60motorsports]

That's awesome work!