My E28 535is Turbo Buildup Thread by Brad D.

4 minute(s) of a 53 minute read

Man, the car runs great and the wastegate spring holds a solid 5psi all the way to redline. AFR is a nice 12.2:1 under boost. The car feels so much faster, easily faster than the e28 m5s I have driven. I have been made a believer in the turbo big six - it's so much fun. However, I did have a bit of a setback. When I first got the car running I thaught I head the occasional thumping from a dying center bearing. Well, all the boost didn't help and I promptly finished it off. Here is a little sampling of the destruction. 

Once I had that sorted out it was time for more boost. I then kept blowing off IC piping so I decided to bead roll all of my piping. No more popped hoses. I think this turbo is going to systematically find all of the cars shortcomings and make them glaringly obvious, but this typically leads to cool upgrades so I'm not complaining. 8)

9/26/2008

Just thought I'd throw up a little update on the car. About a month ago I upgraded my brakes to the 540i F/R setup. The stock brakes were in desperate need of replacing and just weren't up to the task of slowing down the car with all the new power. Front calipers were reman TRW units and the rears were used pulled off of a 740il. They were painted with Duplicolor caliper spray paint. I also addes a set of Speedbleeders. These are highly recommended! I upgraded to SS lines all around. Pads are Centric Posi-Quiet semi-mets (for those that don't know, Centric is owned by Stoptech) Rotors are drilled and slotted units from R1 Concepts. Very nice pieces, maybe not quite Brembo quality but nice nonetheless. They have a nice anti rust coating and over a month later not a lick of rust in site on the hat or vanes. 

All I can say is that I am amazed by the performance of the brakes. Initial bite is fantastic and the pedal has a nice firm feel. Modulation is now much easier. I feel that the SS lines also contribute and are a great upgrade, even to a stock system. Overall stopping power is excellent, but I have no quantitative testing to report. The Centric pads are very nice and are very low dusting. The dust they do make is more of a silvery grey and is less noticealbe than "black" dust. I will give some more long term feedback on them as time passes. 

The next upgrade was to the suspension. Having ridden in LJ's (Nebraska_e28) car with Spax springs and Bilstein sports, I knew that was the setup I wanted to go with. The ride is very firm but composed and easy to live with on a daily basis. I replaced the front swaybar endlinks and reinforced the sway bar mounting tabs on the strut tubes to prevent them from failing when I upgrade bars. I also repalced the rear dogbones. The car now handles the way I feel it should. It's more fitting to the rest of the performance of the car. I only have some pics of the components but will be getting so fresh full body shots of the car, hopefully this weekend. 

Here are the plates I made to weld to the strut tube. 

And here is current engine bay shot for good measure.