My E28 535is Turbo Buildup Thread by Brad D.

7 minute(s) of a 53 minute read

Manifolds installed, turbo bolted in with the DEI turbine blanket and downpipe all wrapped up. I should have all of the exhaust bolted in tonight. It's coming together now! 

11/4/2007

Well, I got more done this weekend. Had fun putting in new parts. The exhaust is installed and looks great. I've almost wrapped up everything under the hood. Only a few clamps here and there, a little wiring and some extra heat wrap on the exhaust side. 

Intake and BPV installed. 

Wastegate installed. You can also see the oil return line mounted up. 

Custom catch can I made up - its baffled inside and is packed with stainless coily cleaning pads. It has a drain on the bottom. Now I just need to make a mount for it. 

Megasquirt and my adapter box. It has the Glen's Garage idle board inside it. The pink wire is for my WB o2 input. 

Injectors are in and all of the IC piping back on. 

Only the pipe and the connector were from a Volvo (740 turbo IIRC). I have a giant box of hoses, pipes, brackets and random crap I have collected over the years. I have the valve from the Volvo somewhere and it probably would have worked but it was kind of large.The BPV im using is a new billet aluminum Bosch replacement.

12/31/2007

A few little update pics: 

Gauge pod install. I think I am going to swap out the water temp for oil pressure, I just had the temp gauge when my stock gauge stopped working but its all good now. For now though it will work. 

Updated engine bay pics from this evening. Still need to do a bit of cleaning though and add the rest of my thermal wrap on the wiring harness now that all of the MS stuff is working. 

The car is running and driving however, my cheapo laptop died so I haven't been able to drive the car since last week. Fortunately today I was able to borrow a laptop for a while so I should be able to get some more tuning done this weekend. Closed loop idle is nice and I have some of the low kPa/low rpm map sorted out. Megalogviewer is awesome!

12/23/2007

The manifold adapter was made out of Sch40 1.5"ID mild steel weld-els. 

The actual collector were just weld els carefully cut and the wastegate was added after it was completed but torching out a hole. 

Here is another angle of the completed adapter. 

1/9/2008

A little update - after acquiring another laptop for tuning I have been plagued with a major misfire issue that basically makes the car undriveable. As of tonight I figured out what the problem was. For anyone who cares or for future reference for those building their own MS2/extra setup. 

The problem - 

I have been getting severe ignition breakup and replaced my coil. Well, it seems as though that was not the issue. I am beginning to think it is something internal to MS itself. I am running a 330ohm pull up resistor on the ignition driver, dwell is set at 2.1 sec.The car starts and idles great but if revved up to any rpm and allowed to sit there it begins to break up and misfires terribly, even revving the engine with no load. While this is occuring the VB921 is getting extremely hot (~130F). If allowed to return to idle and cool off, it will idle fine but any constant rpm or significant load and it repeats the misfire all over. I am not sure if it is a hardware problem on the board(incorrect pull up ckt, bad vb921, etc), or something else. I should also note that my tach, driven off JS11 has gotten very jumpy also. 

Also, can a vb921 be dying, but still run the car at idle? 

The solution - 

I think have solved my problem and I do feel like somewhat of a doofus. I wired my ignition driver as per the MS2 manual here in the internal board wiring section, only I used a 330ohm resistor. However, I seemed to have missed one seemingly critical piece of information - D14 needs to be set as spark output A in Megatune if using this ignition configuration. I had mine set to js10 and removed its jumper and once switched to D14 all of my issues have seemingly gone away. Also, the vb921 stays cool to the touch during operation with no ignition breakup at all. I haven't driven the car around other than in and out of the garage, but I could not reproduce the symptoms that I have been having just free revving in the driveway. I really do hope this is the end of one problem so I can get on with the whole process of actually tuning the car!

1/16/2008

Well, I actually got to drive the car for about an hour tonight and I have the <90kpa region reasonably sorted out. The car runs very well and is super smooth with the exception of acceleration enrichment which is currently "disabled" for early tuning purposes. I forayed into a bit of boost and saw about 5 psi by 3200rpm with only 50% throttle and it felt great. I have my AFRs in this region around 12.3:1 which is good. I haven't even gone to WOT so I can't imagine how fast this thing is going to be when it is totally sorted. I am so excited now that I am past the initial gremlins which caused me so much grief. It feels good to finally drive my creation.