1997 m3 sedan with s54 swap

[3staxontheradio]

I'm doing fuel and spark refresh before I do a dyno tuning day at the end of August. I use the car a lot so I don't have the downtime available to send my injectors out for service. That has me looking for a a second set I can get cleaned up and swap. Is there any reason not to look for a stock injector? Duty cycle on tuned stock long blocks with 93 have enough overhead? Anything offer a better spray pattern or performance?

This set on ebay is cheap and they claim flow testing/cleaning.. Cheap stuff on ebay makes me uncomfortable:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/283565363269

[3staxontheradio]

Did a scan of the outer bumper surface at the fog light opening and sent off a file for the first section to do a test print in nylon. I was out of developer spray which I normally use for a surface treatment so I ended up using painters tape.

The two ears on this piece will receive a small screw through the back of the fog light mounting holes

[3staxontheradio]

Getting a crankshaft position sensor code and googling suggests these don't fail that often. Going to look at the wiring today buy I also have a replacement sensor coming. Has anyone else here had those code and did it end up being the sensor?

[3staxontheradio]

Ordered a new window regulator.. strong motor in these and it bent itself up. I also found this rubber piece in the door. Should I get anything else while I'm in there? I got the window back in place after popping one of the guides back into the regulator track but it still comes out (I assume because bent) I straighted it as best as I could with pliers. I managed to get the window rolled up directly with my fiance putting pressure on it into the right direction .

[3staxontheradio]

Awesome i'll send you a DM and we can figure something out.

I had an exciting moment on I40 today while doing 75. The car hasn't been driven that much for the last few years and I'm driving it at least 3 days a week right now so its going through a little shakedown phase. Hopefully I don't find too many more little issues. Also I have owned 3 BMWs now- an e46 330i, briefly had an r53 mini, and now this. All three cars have had window regulators fail on me pretty quickly...

[stephen]

I have done a few more design iterations on the ducting. I'm going to make it in 3 pieces that slip fit and tab together. Section 1 is a bell mouth and about an inch of flange for the first main section to fit into. This will be mounted directly to the bumper itself. Section two will run up to sit level with the top of the frame rails. And then section 3 will run to whatever intake use case. This makes the design more flexible and it becomes a general purpose high flow duct for a e36 m3s by changing out the section 3 piece. I plan to run the first two sections just feeding my afe intake until I decide what I'm doing for an air box. It's looking more like I'll do a karbonius CSL box. Also if anyone is local to me (NC) with a CSL box I can scan their installed intake to come up with a section 3 that will fit their car.

I’m local-ish with a Karbonius box if you want measurements

[3staxontheradio]

I have done a few more design iterations on the ducting. I'm going to make it in 3 pieces that slip fit and tab together. Section 1 is a bell mouth and about an inch of flange for the first main section to fit into. This will be mounted directly to the bumper itself. Section two will run up to sit level with the top of the frame rails. And then section 3 will run to whatever intake use case. This makes the design more flexible and it becomes a general purpose high flow duct for a e36 m3s by changing out the section 3 piece. I plan to run the first two sections just feeding my afe intake until I decide what I'm doing for an air box. It's looking more like I'll do a karbonius CSL box. Also if anyone is local to me (NC) with a CSL box I can scan their installed intake to come up with a section 3 that will fit their car.

I also think I'm going to print the intake parts in nylon12 either sls or hp mjf. Getting quotes for both. I eventually want to pull some carbon parts but I'm not attempting to design around easy parting lines/draft angles so a split mold might need to be made from something flexible like silicone.

I have a lot of little things in the car I have been taking care of. Cluster mileage fixed by JBanzhaf. I replaced a hid ballast with the cheapest next day delivery option on Amazon. For now this is just 3m dual lock mounted where I can move it easily. I don't love having my passenger side ballast in the bumper since it makes bumper removal a pain in the ass. Looking for recommendations for who makes good hid stuff. It would be good to stop tripping the low beam failure error.



Euro lights take up so much space and my googling suggests they are adding 11lb to the front end. They work really well and look nice though so I'm split on what I want to do. It would also open up more space at the most restrictive area of the duct path but I think so many people have euro lights that I should design this with them in mind. I did remove and trim the headlight pin piece because it was in the way. Probably not too much to ask for people to cut a little plastic. Putting it back in place without much to hold onto was a challenge but doable.


I'm waiting on oil analysis from my first oil change and Blackstone appears to have long wait times so it's going to be a few weeks. My first change had some magnetic crap stuck to the plug + a fair bit of grey sludgy stuff in the first part of the stream. This is the first change since the bearings were done though so I will wait to see what they say.

My power steering pulley has what looks to me like excessive wobble. I have had some belt squeal on startup too. Interested in what people think and also best route to replacement. New OEM pumps are like $700.

[PowerSax]

That is some nice tools, and some serious skills to use them properly!

[3staxontheradio]

Working on getting the cross sectional area dialed in before moving on to CFD. Red line in the graph represents the area of a 120mm circle. It currently transitions to a 200mm circle roughly where a CSL airbox inlet sits. I'll need to get a CSL box and install it, then scan it in the car to get the position where the two parts will need to meet. Also planning to do a test print of the bottom 2/3 that are fit critical before moving forward.

[3staxontheradio]

First rough in pass on the duct. It's going to need a lot of iteration and clean up for flow and fit. There is a lot of unnecessary waviness to clean out too. The triangular space under the headlight is pretty constrained but right now it makes a linear taper down from the inlet area at the foglight to the area of a 120mm diameter circle:

[3staxontheradio]

Finally finished processing the bigger of the two scans:

[3staxontheradio]

I'm wanting to do a carbon airbox in the future but I don't want to pull in any engine bay air so I started scanning the car to design duct from the fog light opening. Quick measure on the fog light opening says I have about 14500mm/2 of cross section to pull from and so far exploring the area near the headlights I have a similar amount to pass a duct through into the engine bay. I'm still waiting on my crash structure/engine bay scan to finish processing to measure it. I have done intake design work before and I think I can come up with something that flows really well and will verify with CFD. First iteration would be something like SLS nylon and then I can either sleeve it in carbon or make a multi part mold and pull some carbon parts from that.

Past intake project on my miata for those that are curious:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3001440

Bimmerworld (and other retailers) sell a German made CSL box that necks down to 120mm

https://www.bimmerworld.com/Intake-Fuel/Intake-Systems/Carbon-Plenum-Airbox-CSL-120MM-Kit.html

120mm is still a huge inlet and from a peak flow restriction perspective I think its a non issue. Having the panel filter inside the airbox is something I'm not sure what to make of. There is a reason you don't normally see plenums with openings this big. 200mm is going to attenuate the pressure waves forming in the plenum but then having that panel filter inside the box, I'm not sure pressure waves are significantly making it past the air filter anyway. I would be very curious to see a/b testing with and without the filter an a smaller opening to see how the torque curve responds.

I'm also deciding if instead of that bimmerworld intake I want to make the neck down from 200mm to ~130ish for the duct on my own. I could probably do it smoother and over a longer distance than the bimmerworld part. Either way the first step is to make a general purpose duct I can use for whatever end product. I could even make one that sits flush and feeds a hole I cut into the AFE intake on the car now.

Inner bumper surface scan:



Scanning setups

[3staxontheradio]

If anyone has a cosmos black sedan trunk lid they want to sell i'm looking for one.

Took a drive earlier:

[3staxontheradio]

Yeah I work from home and have no commute so I use mine for pleasure driving and when I want to run errands in something more fun. We have a v70r for kid hauling duties, and I have an 87 Toyota truck for other daily driving and truck needs. I haven't had a really fun car in years. I had a well prepped 95 miata but it's been sitting without and engine for a long time and I made it very light and very impractical - 1920lb with half a tank of gas and a welded in 3/4 cage + ast shocks , fully done suspension,. megasquirt, etc. this manages to be almost as engaging as the Miata but not slow, has ac, can put kids in it, etc.

[stephen]

Yep!

I like this car way more than I thought I would. It's such a blast to drive and manages to do all the things I want it to very well. Engaging and analog like I expect from a 90s car, power delivery is super entertaining, the noises are awesome, it feels very chuckable and more nimble than my e46, ride quality is more than comfy enough while handling well, etc. All that and I can load it up with kids when I need to. I want to do a lot of stuff with this car but its already so good. Coming from miatas where they are pretty dull stock I'm not used to having everything be very good without throwing a bunch of parts at it.

My E36 is a weekend car and because I don’t drive it that often I am constantly thinking about trading/selling it for something I would drive more. Like an E46 M3, E9X M3, E39 M5, 987.2/981 Cayman S, etc. Those thoughts quickly disappear when I am behind the wheel of my E36. Other cars may do other things better than an E36, but the level of engagement that an E36 offers on the street is hard to match. S54 swapped E36 is just the best front engine RWD street car for me. It’s an E46 M3 that’s more communicative and the lower limits make it more fun/tossable for street driving.