Yet another, BMW E-36 LSx conversion... by BRAAPZ

5 minute(s) of a 105 minute read

The mother of all updates for this build.....
It's alive!
Tuesday night after some fiddling with the PCM, feeling brave I put the wheels on and set it on the ground. First movement under it's own power was the obligatory burnout in the shop. ;-) Drove it 100 yards down the road and back, WOO HOO! Thursday night, fiddled a little more with HP-Tuners, feeling brave again, drove the car around the lake, 3 mile jaunt. It ran, but not well, flat spots, surging, etc. Within minutes of pulling back in, the shop Tongboy pulls up with his LS1 M3 sedan for some fine tweaking of a couple parameters in his PCM, he graciously allowed me to use his tune for the "write entire" to delete the DBW programming in my PCM so I didn't have spend two more credits using another tune.
thank you Jeremiah.

Friday morning, performed write entire. TPS now registers in VCM scanner. Engine fired up, another trip around the lake with open headers, stretched it's legs from 1st through 3rd gear, Definitely quicker than it was with the S52, then Drove it 10 miles through down town to the muffler shop with open headers to tie in the M3 exhaust to the headers. *


HUGE thank you to Mike of JTR for his patience with all my crying over the past 2 years and for what I feel is a very well engineered, robust LSx E36 kit.*

The 260-Z in the background has the S52 from my M, it has been on the road for the past few months and is amazingly fun to drive.*

5-26-2011

Talked to Ryan, owner and fabricator at Mulligans custom exhaust and custom hot rods in Sandy today, he said the exhaust is done and it's a sleeper. I took that to mean it's quiet, exactly what I wanted. I gave him him free reign with the exhaust, wanting to retain as much of the stock exhaust as possible, in particular the stock M3 muffler, neck down from the 3" collectors to 2 1/2".dum
Stopped in and took a peek under the car, WOW! very nice work, Ryan is a craftsman, too bad his work under the car where isn't seen very often. All bends are mandrel, welds are beautiful, came out much nicer than I hoped. Ryan transitioned from the 3" collector immediately to 2 1/2", tidy quality 2 1/2" flex joints just aft of the V-band, 2 pair of O2 bungs per pipe pre cat, (one each for narrow band O2, other two for wide band tuning). The stock cats with their angled inlet was not worth working with so he installed a pair of tight tidy aftermarket 2 1/2" cats then added 2 post cat O2 bungs. I wanted this to be quiet as a daily driver so adding another muffler in line with the stock M3 muffler was on the list. As luck has it, the BMW tunnel is just wide enough and deep enough to fit a dual 2 1/2" In-Out dummuffler, Ryan and I both like the crisp snap and snarl of a V8 exhaust note through Spintechs. From there he continued in 2 1/2" to the stock M3 tail pipe where it necks up to just under 2 1/2" from the 2" or so.dum
He used the BMW carrier bearing mount holes for rubber isolated hangers.dum
Fabrication and installation is 1st rate, anyone in the greater Portland OR area needing custom exhaust or any custom performance fabrication work, I strongly recommend Ryan at Mulligans in Sandy. Humble, down to earth, great guy. ;-)

http://www.mulligansmuffler.com/

How does it sound? Uh.... well, it is soooo quiet there's nothing really to judge, not much of an exhaustnote. Standing behind the car about 20 feet back, someone in the car revving up the engine, you can hear the intake under the closed hood, (sans filter), over the exhaust. Total sleeper. Ryan says it's too quiet. Before he tied in the stock muffler he said with just the Spintech it sounded AWESOME!dum

Drive home was AWESOME! car is as quiet as a stock M3 if not quieter inside.dum
HUGE thank you to Mike of JTR for his use of OE GM engine/trans isolators, even with these moderately firm Vette isolators that don't allow any movement by hand, it is smooth, no buzzy-ness. Best friend drove it tonight and commented on it being so quiet and smooth, the car is deceptively quick. No aural indicator or buzz to indicate the car is working hard other than the rapidly climbing speedo needle.dum

4 day weekend for me starting Friday, will take apart the front end to properly reassemble and working out any bugs, hope to be driving it daily starting Tuesday.dum

Video to come soon.dum

Here are some pics of the exhaust work, my apologies for the poor cel phone photo quality.dum

Standing under oil pan looking back;

From behind looking up;

The Spintech and hangers;

Profile;