Getting close. Diff is back together, new cover is done. Vibrant finally got a shipment of titanium vbands so the exhaust is done. Suspension's in. My dad modified my ECU to add 8 analog inputs via a multiplexer. MORE INPUT!
Getting close. Diff is back together, new cover is done. Vibrant finally got a shipment of titanium vbands so the exhaust is done. Suspension's in. My dad modified my ECU to add 8 analog inputs via a multiplexer. MORE INPUT!
Ok...so I somehow missed this thread till I clicked on the final page. The level of detail shown above mandates the next half hour or so of reading the previous 12.
TGMF said:Ok...so I somehow missed this thread till I clicked on the final page. The level of detail shown above mandates the next half hour or so of reading the previous 12.
There is a lot of detail missing that I plan to catch up on once everything is back together and working. Right now I'm hoping to get it on track for the June 10th weekend but if I do get it done in time, I likely won't have time to get it on the dyno so the boost control won't be set up. But I'd be fine with just going on the wastegate spring. At the big track I'm more interested to see how the car handles the higher speed corners than the power, I know that part works already.
June 9 and 10th at Mosport with the Trillium club? I'll be there for my first driving school with the club in my E28. Hope you get it back together in time, it'll be cool to see it on track again.
Adam
adam525i said:June 9 and 10th at Mosport with the Trillium club? I'll be there for my first driving school with the club in my E28. Hope you get it back together in time, it'll be cool to see it on track again.
Adam
Very cool! I'll be there instructing regardless. But hopefully with the E30 for a change. I'll be running around a lot so if I don't stop by, come find me, I'll take you out for a good lunch Sat or Sun instead of the E36 M3 they serve on track. I'll definitely see you at the skidpad.
Awesome, I've been wanting to do this school for over ten years so I'm pretty excited.
See you at the skidpad.
adam525i said:Awesome, I've been wanting to do this school for over ten years so I'm pretty excited.
See you at the skidpad.
Good call, stick to it. Move up the ranks to the solo group and then you'll have access to the best Mosport lapping events around. 280 bucks for all day lapping Friday, your choice of 3 run groups on the weekend, and bonus events like lapping with the PCA/BMW joint race weekend (500 bucks for all weekend lapping and get to watch some cool club racing inbetween).
Holy E36 M3 this is so awesome.
Thanks for sharing this- I'm crazy impressed by literally all of it.
Hope to see some more track video!
damen
badwaytolive said:Holy E36 M3 this is so awesome.
Thanks for sharing this- I'm crazy impressed by literally all of it.
Hope to see some more track video!
damen
Thank you! Hopefully coming soon! Going to try to get it running in the next week or two and if everything works, take it for a test derp around Mosport on low boost. Then I'd like to catch up with the details of all that's been done over the winter, not just photos.
It's technically an automobile again. Goal is to try to test-drive it this weekend.
Diff is in, will do the cooler pump and lines after the blitz to make it to next week's trackday.
No choice with the transmission as it has a mechanical pump, so cooler mounted and lines routed.
One line comes off the list, 2 go back on... FML
The amount of great fabrication in this build continues to make my head hurt :)
Thank you, you're too kind! It gives me impostor syndrome as I see the extent other people go to with polishing out everything they do and I sometimes wish I had the time and patience to do that but by the time I'm satisfied that I've pulled off what I was trying to learn how to do, I'm anxious to try the next thing. Friends and family ask me all the time, when the car will be done - when I run out of ideas.
BTW for anyone interested, I wrote a couple of stories for the Speed Academy guys, with more coming (including a series on welding):
http://speed.academy/how-to-fabricate-a-custom-intake-manifold/
I've got nothin right now, completely pooped and absolutely over the moon thrilled. The car felt amazing around the big track. 11 years later, it was all worth it.
i'm drooling a little bit at the levels of unfathomable awesome oozing from that car. I can't imagine what that much power in such a light car would be like.
Rufledt said:i'm drooling a little bit at the levels of unfathomable awesome oozing from that car. I can't imagine what that much power in such a light car would be like.
Thank you sir!
It's still hard to believe that it happened finally. And it worked to well! I didn't push it but the test laps I got felt terrific! The car is rock solid stable, I haven't driven a real racecar on this track before and I'm used to having to be very gentle and waiting for the car to take a set, being ready to correct for slides as the car moves over bumps but this car feels like I'm riding around on a train. The only real issue that came up was that once in power, the exhaust got hot enough that I started seeing smoke in the passenger footwell. I pulled over to check and it was cooking the rustproofing in the rocker panel that I never thought to check for (west coast car).
The transmission is an absolute dream! I couldn't believe how easy it is to learn! After one lap I was shifting up and down without the clutch. Quick lift or blip and SLAM! Now I need to learn how to left foot brake.
My gopros let me down again so I only got my very first out lap but it's the moment I wanted to capture anyway. So many years and calories leading up to this moment.
Keep trying to embed the video, forum says can't fetch the content
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Qr9ZwbgGdUY
Took it back to Mosport, continuing to inch up the pace. Ran a pretty easy 1:26 and then my left rear tire went. Not sure yet what happened, other guys said they got nails in their tires this weekend, might be related to all the roofs being repaired all over the city this year. Thankfully it happened in the slowest part of the track so it was an easy save and I could limp it back. Anywhere else and it could have been very ugly. I am still over the moon though. I've now officially built a GT1 car and watching the video over and over makes me remember all the people who said what I'm doing won't work (E30 has crap suspension, too short coupled, power is unusable, blah friggin blah).
Starting to take the interior back apart this week to make an all new dash and remove most of the wiring because I'm switching to an AEM Infinity 7 ECU and ECUMaster solid state power management
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4EcIRmzCK4
Dang D, the last two videos are really great.
So why the switch to the Infinity? Any particular functionality you're looking to pick up? Will you integrate your traction control into the AEM or keep it independent?
Mezzanine said:Dang D, the last two videos are really great.
So why the switch to the Infinity? Any particular functionality you're looking to pick up? Will you integrate your traction control into the AEM or keep it independent?
Thank you, sir!
If you see the wiring birds nest, that's a big reason. VEMS has been able to do everything I need but it's been a lot of pulling teeth. I have a half dozen circuits my dad built for me to be able to get the signal I need into the box for things like turbo rpm, fuel level, fuel pressure differential etc. For safeties, there are hacky "anytrims" while modern high end ECUs have actual safety menus - rather than trimming redline based on a voltage curve from an arbitrary analog input, I can say, this is my oil pressure channel, and when it's below this, do that (cut boost, limit revs, set warning lights etc). The Infinity has awesome modeling of various engine parameters which allows it to default to a model when it detects that a sensor or something fails (I've seen engines stay within a hundredth of a lambda point at full boost when the MAP sensor and FPR reference line are unplugged for instance). And yeah the 7 has 4 wheel traction control so that's another box less and with the TC not being external, it's a lot better than ad hoc (which, to be fair, Racelogic did a great job but it's still limited by being an injection-only cut). The dash also being fully customizable with nicely presented gauges, I can lose all of my gauges. The VEMS display works very well for most things but most of the out of the ordinary analog channels are displayed in a limited way. I finally got them to figure out a way to at least display the calibrated value and some info from the channel descriptor but it's still not ideal while the Infinity data can be displayed properly on the dash.
Basically I've just outgrown the VEMS for my needs and to be fair, my needs exceed what most ECUs can provide (which the VEMS actually COULD provide but just in a hacky and less than ideal way, except things like 4 wheel TC and CANBUS).
And with the loss of the gauges, and through the solid state power management, the fusebox and most of the related wiring, the dash wiring will be hilariously simplified. So I'll reshape the dash around the 12 button keypad and have a friend copy it in carbon. I'm planning to basically lose everything under the center vents, just have the keypad and fire handle there, and on the left side where the vent would be, boost and TC knobs.
Well thought out as always - People so often over-buy on their ECU. It's easy to get in the trap of thinking one needs every feature out there, but in your case you actually can use most of this!
I've gotten to do a little tuning on the Infinity, and I think you'll be pretty pleased with it. My time with it was not without some frustrations, but that's tuning I guess.
Thanks! Yeah agreed. Before I knew much about this I just wanted one based on reputation and brand name (Motec got mentioned in FnF, even if it was an exhaust, but it has to be the best). Even through my time with VEMS I hesitated admitting what ECU I use because I'm vain but for a long time there was nothing missing for my needs and the developers were quick to respond when there was... for a while. Like the deadtime injector configuration strategy, that was my request since the ID injectors come fully specified. So like a boiling frog I had gotten used to finding ways to get the job done with this ECU but I hit critical mass this year, especially since they stopped replying to me when I tried asking for feature requests (although I heard through the grape vine that they're busy working on a whole new HW platform but either way that was of no help to me). So with the car going to PRI, it's the right time to redo this since I'd like to be somewhat presentable.
Yeah I've been going through the manual, everything makes sense so far. AEM has also been quite forthcoming in sharing their various computation strategies so I've got a [likely naive] feeling that I should be able to get back to par with it fairly quickly by porting over existing config/tuning.
Nah, you've got all the data in VEMS; porting it into AEM should be tedious but easy enough. You've got tons of work cut out for you in configuration work, especially around your timing and fuel cuts as you already mentioned. But you should be able to get it to a par level of tune in short order since you've got good maps currently.
I remember when you confessed to running VEMS a while back in the thread...I've learned not to judge a system based on age or reputation. There's tons of old ECUs out there today that are still getting the job done, albeit more likely on much more pedestrian builds than yours.
Have you started wiring up a new harness? Or are you just planning to clean up and re-terminate the one you've got?
Yep and I'm looking forward to learning all that stuff but it'd be nice to get the car up and running relatively quickly to be able to do some fine tuning and then get on with making the fancier stuff work well.
No for now I'm going to re-terminate the existing harness - it's a known commodity so it's one less thing to worry about. Then one day once it's all working, build a new one but no rush on that. Most of the wiring mess is due to a ton of things added ad hoc along the way, and not knowing what is and isn't needed at the time and where it'll be located, the wires are a lot longer and not well organized. The solid state power unit alone will eliminate most of it.
I have a Bussman box I was going to use to replace the E30 fusebox until I decided to go with the PMU. Now I'm thinking of maybe using it as a ground bus... I haven't really seen a clean solution that people have done for ground routing. Do you have a suggestion?
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