Black & Tan 332iT

[0-60motorsports]

Yesterday driving over the mountain to/from Santa Cruz in the heat, the car started to creep up half way between center and the 3/4 dot on the gauge at 60mph in sixth. I wasn’t quick enough to think of turning on the datalogger, but I was able to reproduce it a couple times. Interestingly, I’ve never had a cooling issue at idle or low speed, only above 40-50mph or so on sustained uphill in the heat with AC on. I frequently see 10-15 C across the radiator at idle and closer to 7-10 C on the highway, both with AC on.

I’ve also been doing more research on aero and cooling and have convinced myself that the engine air duct is hurting cooling system efficiency when combined with the CSL intake. In a stock M3, the air intake routes to the air filter box and can only go to two places: 1) the engine or 2) the brake duct. Notably, neither of those two locations are connected to the low pressure zone behind the radiator. When you remove the stock airbox and leave that duct open, you’re effectively giving a path of least resistance for the high pressure air in front of the radiator to route straight behind to the low pressure zone behind. This means that all that air is not only not cooling your radiator coolant, but it’s also slowing down the remaining air that does cool the coolant. So I used some firm closed cell neoprene foam to block up the space and some soft open cell foam to make sure the gap stays well sealed. My first test drive hit two of the routes that are almost guaranteed to tick up the temps (it was 85F ambient) and the needle stayed dead center. So far so good.

Before:


Blocked up:


With softer foam layers:


Some photos of the seal against the radiator support:

Interesting, i'll have to give this a go, Once the car is ready, in our horrendous heat LOL

[karter16]

Unless I'm misunderstanding the flip side is potentially higher IATs when the flap is open? Although in practice when you're moving then it's probably negligible given the ram effect of the snorkel feed?


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[Bry5on]

Unless I'm misunderstanding the flip side is potentially higher IATs when the flap is open? Although in practice when you're moving then it's probably negligible given the ram effect of the snorkel feed?


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I’ve routed the main snorkel feed with the ram air duct and I also have the post-flap ducting routed behind the bumper. According to my data logs, there is no downside in sport mode. I haven’t tested comfort mode yet but I’d expect it to be similar. No downside as far as I can tell..

[karter16]

I've routed the main snorkel feed with the ram air duct and I also have the post-flap ducting routed behind the bumper. According to my data logs, there is no downside in sport mode. I haven't tested comfort mode yet but I'd expect it to be similar. No downside as far as I can tell..

Good stuff - that's awesome!


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[dirtyrider0]

Nice interior.

[Albino09]

And the EQ settings:

Plus a little rear bass bump (not included in any of the EQ plots above) because the woofers in the wagon are on the rear channel, facing the tailgate:


Overall happy with the XTRONs unit now, and I prefer all of the response tweaks that the HK system adds even after EQing with it off - it really does appear pretty well tuned to the e46 cabin and speaker placements.

I am so happy you of all people published this. I've had the Xtrons unit for about a year but lack the knowledge on how to tune the EQ properly. The result is my audio performance is terrible, it felt like a huge downgrade vs. my stock HK system. I am going to start with your EQ settings as a baseline and see if I can tune it slightly to my speakers vs. your BAVsound versions.

[Bry5on]

I am so happy you of all people published this. I've had the Xtrons unit for about a year but lack the knowledge on how to tune the EQ properly. The result is my audio performance is terrible, it felt like a huge downgrade vs. my stock HK system. I am going to start with your EQ settings as a baseline and see if I can tune it slightly to my speakers vs. your BAVsound versions.

I think the coupe and sedan/touring have different speakers, and low frequency resonances will be different due to the longer touring cabin, so the settings might not work super well for you. Welcome to give them a shot though!

[usdmej]

Antigravity battery measured exactly 30lbs less than the Bosch battery that came out on the bathroom scale. H7/94R size, 60Ah capacity. Currently 3550lb and 48.5/51.5% F/R
]

any chance you remember the exact weight of the antigravity battery?

just picked up an H6 60AH battery from antigravity. their website says it should weigh 19.5lbs but i weighed mine at 15.7 lbs and am scratching my head as to why

[Bry5on]

any chance you remember the exact weight of the antigravity battery?

just picked up an H6 60AH battery from antigravity. their website says it should weigh 19.5lbs but i weighed mine at 15.7 lbs and am scratching my head as to why

I used a home scale to measure myself with each battery so I didn’t get a perfect number but I believe it mathed out to 19lb

[usdmej]

ah ok thanks, the antigravity website lists your battery at 20.75lbs so pretty close to what you weighed

[Bry5on]

No pictures but today I had two of my Mullet tune beta testers over with euro and SSv1 headers (thanks guys) to test the latest iteration of the mullet tune for non-US headers. A Euro Mullet if you will. I brought over and blended in some select cam timing and fuel timing changes from the euro M3 map and we tuned a few areas under 3k RPM to make throttle even smoother and more responsive than the original American Mullet.

Interestingly, heinzboehmer car (with identical mods, but no flap) and mine responded slightly differently to the tune under 1500rpm at mid and heavy throttle, so we ended up with two different files for us to spend time playing with before settling on what works best or if there is one to rule them all. It seems that the 1000-1500 and 2400-2900 rpm ranges are the hardest to get perfectly dialed in as each motor’s subtle differences shine in these areas.

Last, I softened the cam timing a bit at WOT above 5k rpm to make the car a little smoother near the top of the rev band. I think this may have given up a couple horsepower but it’s hard to tell from the butt dyno. It does sound a little more straight-six smooth instead of CSL tune raucous, but on balance I prefer the better running smoothness. If you are running a mullet tune with euro, SS or similar non-US headers, are reading this post, and we haven’t already talked, I’m happy to get you on the latest if you want to test before it’s perfectly hashed out. There’s just a little bit of fuel trimming to do but it does drive a hair better even without that complete. Overall, solid day.

[Bry5on]

More mullet work this weekend. I’m on v18 of the mullet and have converged on a euro mullet that works well for both heinzboehmer and myself, which tells me we’re on the right track. More seat time will tell if there’s more work to do, particularly in cam timing and overlap at low RPM and high loads where the US fuels don’t do as well as the euro fuels. The US M3 tune is super different than the euro in this area too, which makes sense.

Also had tlow98 over to hone in on the perfect US header mullet tune. Looks like we’ve got that one pretty dialed in at this point as well after some minor changes. There might be a few horsepower still on the table with a bit more cam retard at the top end, but we can get to that some other day where I’d rather have a wideband O2 in the loop.

Then I started the oil pan gasket and rear main seal helicoil job (stripped oil pan thread) but decided I wasn’t up to it since I wasn’t feeling so great. Settled on just doing motor mounts and the AC tensioner which had a crap bearing.

edit: Also ethan hosted the brake duct files, you can grab them here if you’re interested in printing a set for yourself. Follow the instructions and pictures earlier in the thread. http://bry5on-nam3forum.sfo2.digital...step_files.zip

[Bry5on]

Not much to write home about - thanks to some probing from karter16 I decided to get into the hardest part of the mullet tune to iterate on - cold start operation. We're on mullet v22 now for the euro tune and cold starting is pretty smooth operator from my last test, which is merely a single data point. It was previously much better than the default CSL tune, but not as smooth as a factory regular M3. More testing needed before confirmation that it's licked.

I've been working on the jag EV and man that thing makes me appreciate how easy the e46 is to work on. I replaced the coolant based heater core with a PTC resistor based core that I fabbed. I swear that car is built around the damn heater core and that they put it together with combo wrenches 1/12 of a turn at a time.

But back to the e46, I bit the bullet and ordered a new steering wheel - feels nice!

[Grke46m3]

Well gents, I've finally got it. This morning, I did e89 Z4 RTABs with outer side limiters along with the 1mm larger CSL rear sway bar. Man, this is the hot ticket. I've finally got it right! That little bit of extra rear roll stiffness made all the difference. The car is more neutral and playful in corners now, super neutral and fast if you're smooth, but it'll still understeer on entry and oversteer on exit if you're ham fisted/footed. Really nice to have that little bit of extra roll stiffness for the square tires on stock M3 springs, and it still has juuust a touch of understeer balance. The math says this should be keeping me off the bump stops and I'm inclined to agree. Just perfect, very happy over here.

What can I say about the Z4 RTABs? Well to my taste, they're 75% of the precision of solid bushings, with the same NVH as stock bushings. No more rear end wiggling on throttle, but no NVH penalty. Really fantastic trade off as the rear is very well controlled again. The reason to go with Z4 bushings is all about how much rubber they have to press against the carrier (or limiter in my case). Otherwise they're the same internal stiffness and geometry as stock e46 M3.

The bushings that came out of my car are near as new M3 parts, lemfoerder if memory serves, and had just a few thousand miles on them. You can see below that there's plenty of evidence of the bushings toeing out all the way to the edge of the carrier. This calculates To almost a full degree of toe out. Hugely destabilizing! Again, these are new bushings! A solution to the rear end wiggling under throttle was required.


I used limiters from ECS for the outside of the Z4 bushings (half of the kit of four), which have a much bigger rubber lip on the outer side (toe out under throttle side). To fit the limiters, there's just a minor trimming operation needed to make the limiter sit totally flush with the bushing. They then get installed all the way until the flanges touch the rear trailing arm. They get bottomed out, which looks a bit off, because the metal is not centered in the bushing like the e46 style, but this will place the bushing in the correct location.
By only installing outer limiters, this mitigates toe out under throttle while maintaining the factory designed toe in under braking for braking stability. I really wanted to keep that feature, and I'm happy to report that the results are great.
Other than that, install is totally normal. Make sure you set your toe correctly after or have the car realigned. Here are a bunch of pictures that might come in handy if you're doing this yourself, including my method for keeping my alignment the same before/after.


And a few shots of the CSL rear bar going in, along with the final installed washer fluid reservoir for good measure. Happy Saturday.

I'm getting the parts together for this mod. Spherical Rtabs are to jarring. Did you go with turner limiters? If so what's the point of the screws it comes with?


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[Bry5on]

I'm getting the parts together for this mod. Spherical Rtabs are to jarring. Did you go with turner limiters? If so what's the point of the screws it comes with?


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I think mine were made from delrin, no screws. Purchased from ecstuning.com. Enjoy!