1991 325i E30

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JakeP
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1991 325i E30

Post by JakeP »

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Here is my 1991 320i (with m20b25 now in its place) i have owned this car coming up a year in september, it has taken a lot of abuse from me and previous owners. Since i have owned it, it has devoured two diffs and as of today i can safely say the clutch is on its last legs due to me being in a bad mood :evil: and my house being on a very slippery hill when wet (slippery as in i can get both wheels going in fourth gear with about 150hp :o ) anyway over next few months i will be preparing this car for free ems, potentially a turbo and the power that will come with it :mrgreen: .
My orignal plan up until yesterday was to ditch the m20 in favour of an m30 but due to my budget and experience i think ill be sticking with the m20. Ill be uploading pogress photos every weekend and will probably be asking heaps of questions. :D
Last edited by JakeP on Fri Aug 08, 2014 8:35 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Fred
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Re: 1991 325i E30

Post by Fred »

Sweet! Looks like it's in pretty good shape :-)

I have a friend with an E30 with a homebuilt 2.8 mongrel engine with a holset on the side of it. I've driven that car and it's pretty quick, overall good build, despite how much I hate some of the things he did to it.

Get the 2.0 going with FreeEMS as is, then add boost. :-)

Fred.

PS, can you please reduce the resolution of that image to 1280x or so, OR, do what John did here and use thumbnails that link to the big images: viewtopic.php?f=67&t=2494
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JakeP
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Re: 1991 325i E30

Post by JakeP »

I think that's the plan get it up and running how it is now then progress from there, there are a few little things I need to address over the next two weeks before I start going full steam ahead on the ecu side of things, the main one is swapping the getrag 240 in favour of the bigger 260 gearbox i recently acquired, just need to source a few more things for that. One quick question what are your thoughts on running itbs (I can get them for free so why not) with a Map sensor, there will obviously be a plenum as I eventually want to turbo. If it's to much hassle I'll just forget about but it would be cool. Oh and this car originally came with a 2.0 but the previous owner swapped in the 2.5.
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Fred
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Re: 1991 325i E30

Post by Fred »

Save the ITBs for later too. Get it up and running with just a change of coil > coils and wiring/whatever, the minimum you can do. THEN modify.

Fred.

PS, LOL @ tiny thumbnail, that's why I linked you John's thread, his thumbnails are big enough to appreciate :-D
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JakeP
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Re: 1991 325i E30

Post by JakeP »

hahaaha when first edited and changed the size i thought it didnt change so i went to the smallest size (i was very tired). to be honest im thinking itbs wont be a go anyway just because trying to get and accurate reading for the map sensor could be a pain in the ass. Anyway with converting my car to wasted spark would this be suitable? http://www.trademe.co.nz/motors/car-par ... 650253.htm
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Fred
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Re: 1991 325i E30

Post by Fred »

Might be cheaper to go pickaparting? And can you get suitable leads for those GM coils?

With ITBs you'd use TPS for Alpha-N tuning, not MAP, or you'd blend the two together using the blend table and feature.

Fred.
DIYEFI.org - where Open Source means Open Source, and Free means Freedom
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FreeEMS dev diary and its comments thread and my turbo truck!
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JakeP
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Re: 1991 325i E30

Post by JakeP »

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So i picked this up today for free its a bosch 0221503010 coil pack from a v6 commodre im not sure if this is going to be the right thing for job. Is there anything else I'm going to need to convert to wasted spark, apart from spark plug leads I don't know what else is required???
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Also this is the gearbox im getting next week i just need to get a different transmission case (the bell housing isnt seperate) as this is from a 535i.
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Re: 1991 325i E30

Post by Fred »

JakeP wrote:So i picked this up today for free its a bosch 0221503010 coil pack from a v6 commodre im not sure if this is going to be the right thing for job. Might be a stupid question but will i need an ignitor and is the dwell time going to be correct?
4 pins = yes, you need ignitor. Dwell = specific to the coil. You can guess, try low, try high, choose one where it works.

Via did it the right way a while back: viewtopic.php?t=2367

I did it the rough way recently:
  1. Install new coil
  2. Fire up engine
  3. Check ignitor
  4. Find sizzling hot
  5. Reduce dwell to 2ms
  6. Fire up engine
  7. Allow to run for a few minutes while coil cools off
  8. Reduce dwell at idle progressively until 0.5ms and observing missfires
  9. Raise dwell and load test by stabbing throttle, find less than 1.5ms = misfires under load
  10. Raise dwell more and more until ignitor started to get warm
  11. Back off to point where it ran cool and handled WOT without misfires
  12. Build curve based around ~3ms at 13.8V Dropping to 2ms at higher unlikely voltages, raising to 7ms at 6V, or something like that, see the source.
JakeP wrote:So i picked this up today for free its a bosch 0221503010 coil pack from a v6 commodre im not sure if this is going to be the right thing for job. Is there anything else I'm going to need to convert to wasted spark, apart from spark plug leads I don't know what else is required???
coil, leads, plug for coil, ignitor and plug, wire, relay, fuse, suppression caps are optional but good.

I'd rather you made a new post than edited, or if you're going to edit, mark it as such and preferably use del tags on the out-going part.

Fred.
DIYEFI.org - where Open Source means Open Source, and Free means Freedom
FreeEMS.org - the open source engine management system
FreeEMS dev diary and its comments thread and my turbo truck!
n00bs, do NOT PM or email tech questions! Use the forum!
The ever growing list of FreeEMS success stories!
JakeP
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Re: 1991 325i E30

Post by JakeP »

Thanks for the reply I will get on to sourcing those this week. Sorry for the edit after doing some research I had answered part of my question.
JakeP
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Re: 1991 325i E30

Post by JakeP »

One part I am struggling with is the ignitors, what ones will I need and where can I get them from?
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