Black & Tan 332iT

[Bry5on]

Well, I picked up myself one of these 3D scanners finally, so today was time to get my first scan and model created. The rear suspension.


Here's a link to the results, this is a scan at factory ride height, suspension compressed. You can peruse around yourself, take measurements, etc: https://s.digital3dcloud.com/space/0...0155&sharePwd=


I wanted the geometry and locations of the diff/axles for the next project, a proper multi-link rear suspension. Current plan, which looks pretty doable, is to build a custom subframe with e39 rear suspension pickup points. Then bolt in a full e39 rear suspension with some e60 wheel bearings/hubs and I should be able to just bolt my wheels back on and go. Piece of cake.

[Bry5on]

Now that the weather is cold again, I’m using the heated seats a couple times a day. And once again noticing the aftermarket-ness of the elements that were stitched in when the leather was done.

Two things bother me:
1) The stock seats heat up super quick, these take forever to get to temp
2) They don’t work when the seats are cold! Kinda defeats the purpose.

So I decided to take matters into my own hands. I purchased e39 heated seat elements a while back and decided I was going to reverse engineer the heated seat elements to make my own. Well, I took all the measurements and ended up deciding to just modify the e39 elements as they were a pretty close size match for what I wanted.

Some specs (measurements are close enough, used my fluke DMM):
AMX elements, 4.6 ohm total impedance. 9.2 ohm seat bottom and 8.1 ohm seat back
e39 elements, 1.2 ohm total impedance. 2 ohm for the bottom and 2 ohm for the back

The factory elements are rather simple, just a stranded plated copper 28-29AWG wire with a very thin, likely teflon, jacket. The seat bottom has a thermocouple that I didn’t bother measuring, but that’s it. The back and bottom heating elements are wired in parallel.

The measurements explain the slow heating story, the 4x impedance means that they heat with 1/4 the power (P=V^2/R in this case). So the math agrees with the butt.

The seat bottom mostly fit without major modification, but the back needed a bit of extra work. What started as a rectangular piece went through a transformation to an element that supports a nice warm hug. Some photos below.

Overall, works like stock now. Happy with this.

[0-60motorsports]

CSL Cams and Valves, Only thing missing from my car LOL

[Bry5on]

Finally tackled the oil pan gasket. Fun job!



Also while I was at it, I replaced the AC condenser, as a last ditch effort at helping the car cool better on steep uphills on hot days. If this doesn’t do it, the logical last thing to check would be the head gasket, but there’s no lost coolant over tens of thousands of miles, so I’m a bit stumped.



Also in the interest of getting the cooling system in line. The M3 belly pan has a plastic support bonded to its top side. This bonded piece supports the bottom of the radiator duct to prevent it from blowing air under the oil cooler. Well, the non-m belly pan sits about 3/4” too low to support this, so I blocked it up with foam to achieve the same effect as the M3. Anyone with a swap car should do the same!


And last, swung by a friend’s place and found two very clean LSB CSL replicas there. One in the middle of getting CSL cams and valves. Nice cars.

[George Hill]

Ah so let's say if you're pulling the front seats from a desirable complete interior, someone is well within their rights to swoop by and snag the rear?

The car is yours, the etiquette IMO is to ask the person pulling parts what they are getting and if its not something you want then tell them what you want and if you aren't in their way go ahead and pull them with their permission.

[usdmej]

First come, first served.

Ah so let's say if you're pulling the front seats from a desirable complete interior, someone is well within their rights to swoop by and snag the rear?

[George Hill]

curious what the "dibs" etiquette is for something like this at the junkyard?

First come, first served.

[usdmej]

And to anchor on that contrast, here's a slicktop orient blue wagon with manual, heated, sport natural brown interior at the Oakland junk yard:

curious what the "dibs" etiquette is for something like this at the junkyard? i've only pulled smaller parts but have always wondered what would happen if multiple people were hovering over a desirable spec vehicle

[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?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

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

[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?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[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!

[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]

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.

[usdmej]

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

[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