BMW E30 CAM Upgrade & Dyno Run

[Music] foxy we are back at brintec today working on our mad ls3 for our mad e30 now the heads have been sent away and also the rust repair has been taking place as well i can tell you welding some panels into some rusty floor of a bmw is very very difficult yeah i blasted some holes in there man that's right there's plenty in there already but they were made by rust and oxidization so today we're going to be uh buttoning our ls3 back up and we should have a finished engine ready to go back in the car when the car arrives here oh man we're getting so close to these cam enhanced skids aren't we absolutely so engine back together car should be here in the next couple of days hopefully and then it's when that happens engine back in car dyno skids boom let's get to it man all right heads have been serviced old valve springs are gone shiny new ones are in there and now we are going to be able to put our mad ls3 back together our heads have had the upgraded valve springs installed and the head checked over and now they're ready to slap back onto our block we've also got new lifter trays and head gaskets and of course new lifters these can be installed into the plastic trays and then oiled up and inserted into the block [Music] [Music] [Music] it gasket [Music] our new head gaskets are in place so the heads can be refitted we've got some new bolts to hold the heads down which need to be tightened using a torque wrench they are lubed up with grease and then we can wind them in either with hand tools if you've got plenty of time or you can use power tools but set them to minimum so they don't apply meaningful torque to the bolts the bolts are tightened to a specified torque setting to seat them and then the torque wrench mode is changed to angle and we can have two more cracks at it this is a fancy workshop grade torque wrench with torque and angle mode but you can buy angle adapters to convert simpler torque wrenches or just use air mats it's a good idea to mark each bolt once you've tightened it to make sure you don't lose track of where you're up to and most importantly remember to put on your favorite song with a mad 80s guitar solo [Music] so this is the factory push rod that we removed from the ls and that is getting replaced with these which are some upgraded aftermarket um push rods they are stronger lighter and it is possible to bend these things i've seen it they go up and they go really wrong this connects the cam to the top of the motor to the valve and this one here has an integrated ball joint in the top rather than being a separate thing it's made of a stronger material of which we don't know what it is but we will call it dog metal pushrodium push rodium uh and um and it's thicker wall as well so that gives it more rigidity in its erection we just we just dip each end in the greasy stuff and then install them in and away we go [Music] with our lifters push rods and heads installed we can turn the engine over by hand and make sure the valve train is moving correctly then our oil pump can go back onto the crank and the timing cover reinstalled [Music] so we can then flip the engine over and reinstall the oil pickup and sump [Music] the rocker covers can go on and then we can drop the intake manifold back into [Music] place our ls is back together and now upgraded with a performance cam for bigger better skids so next we've got to get our little car back here so we can slap this back in we've got this is a little car it is a little car it is a little yeah with a big engine which is the best combo ever so we've got to put our water pump and balancer and stuff back on but then goes back on the table and back into the vehicle yep but our cam upgrade is done our rocker covers are back on our intake's back on it's looking like an ls again it's a fairly detailed process really when you think of a cam you think pull an old one out put anyone in but it's actually getting access to that that kind of takes the time and doing the appropriate upgrades on the way so you've got the right supporting mod so that the cam can do its thing so next time you see us car back here engineer our cars arrived back from the panel shop and it's time to dump this fat engine back into the engine bay [Music] [Music] we're getting the subframe out onto the rolly trolley wheelie thing and slapping the engine back into its mouse [Music] then we can install the flywheel and clutch using a torque wrench and yes some thread locker is a good idea too [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] our exhaust headers can go back on and the head studs tighten with a torque [Music] wrench [Music] the gearbox can then be delicately placed onto the back of the engine and the bell housing bolts re-tightened [Music] the rust repairs that were done down here uh are absolutely beautiful it looks amazing and no longer will you be doing the freddy flintstone on the dyno by putting your feet actually through the footwell of the car it looks fantastic all getting a toasted foot from the dyno and the header that's right near there uh the engine bay is looking really good um we are just about ready to put our engine back in with its mad cam and its gear box has been installed so we're going to uh lift the car up put the engine on the trolley thing and then lower the car back down same as what we did before if you feel like you've seen it before it's because you have so we're going to snap through this super quick and get it done the moral of the story potentially is that if you're ella's swapping your car throw the game in first because the rest of this is exactly the same isn't it but see if it weren't for our rusty floor we might have a cam well we wouldn't even have a car would we well maybe not um anyway let's put the car up let's get the engine mad i'm getting excited let's do it skids we've given our brake booster a cosmetic birthday and will replace the master cylinder also the accessory belt can then be puzzled back together and the tensioner released back into place [Music] then it's a delicate dance of hoisty uppy and car downey until the subframe and engine line up with the chassis rails then the subframe can be bolted back in and the gearbox crossmember reattached [Music] we noticed last time we're putting the engine in that some of the bolts that connect the crossmember up to the chassis just a bit old and a bit scungy and like some of them were wet from where the we had the issue with the brake fluid and all that so i actually just went and got some genuine replacement bmw bolts so we're putting brand new ones in um we'll wind them into the car and we'll have nice new stuff martin while we're at it we're doing a brake upgrade we are doing a break will break upgrade front and back so while you guys are fan dangling with the engine um i'm getting rid of these uh brakes ready for an epic upgrade why are we doing a brake upgrade because v8 that's why stock brakes are not going to hack it bigger brakes are always a good idea when you've got a more powerful engine we haven't added any significant weight to the car but we are way more likely to drive it fast especially on the track we're also going to replace the master cylinder so that's the old one we think our leak problems came from back here somewhere so it is easier a lot of time you can rebuild them but it's easy a lot of the time just to get a new one which is that so i'm just going to transfer the tank across and then whack it onto our booster hey martin where should we put that in the recycling con receptacle sorry mate so the brakes that actually come on the e30 for the factory are perfectly fine and suitable for the kind of power that the car was originally designed to make but of course now it's making more power we've been saying for years if you're going to make your car faster you've got to enhance the other supporting parts of the car as well that of course includes the brakes so laurence these here are off-the-shelf components so this is a wilwood brake kit so we've got the front caliper nice and big and black and rear caliper rotors but we've also got some custom bits over here so can you run through what's going on over here yeah so this is a we call it a rotor hat so that's a front one that we make to suit the e30 hub profile yep so that's got our four stud holes in it and we bolt that to a rotor outer which is in here so we'll rip this out of the box real quick so we've prepared that earlier just to save a bit of time but yeah nice that's really just a slot straight on the car um and on the caliper if we pull that out of the box i believe yeah so this one's what we call a uh radial mount i believe that's got the ears on it and then you can get axial amount where the bolts go through and that's just a difference that you can buy yeah again it's just a generic six-pack caliper uh or six-piston caliper um and we've got a bracket which is heaps heaps for this kind of peeps yeah so we've gone to a 300 mil rotor up from a 260. so it's all about leverage if you're further away from the hub center and you're less forced to stop the wheel and that's the idea of the brake upgrade really do you think this would fit a honda we've gone for this aftermarket option so we can leave the rest of the drivetrain and hubs as they are [Music] so these rotors are directional there's arrows on them pointing to which way they're meant to go it is not this way so that one is for the other side another solid option for brake upgrades is items from a better or newer version of the model there aren't a great deal of choices for this model of car unless we change the hubs and stud pattern which also means changing a bunch of other parts like the drive shafts and this may end up being less economical than the setup we've got even though the parts themselves may be cheaper the front discs fit without having to cut the dust shields but the back needs to be modified they can be removed completely but we've chosen to trim the lip off with an angle grinder then the rear discs fit straight on the hub and using the adapters the calipers can be installed and then we can throw on some braided lines [Music] so for the wilwood brake kit to fit on our e30 it does need these brackets to convert the calipers so there's a larger bracket for the front and a smaller bracket for the back uh lawrence can you tell us a little bit about the brackets and how they work yeah sure so as i was saying before these are just an off-the-shelf generic caliper so all we need to do is make a profile bracket that picks up these generic log holes and converts it back to the factory studs that are on the hubs up here and that allows us just to pop this straight on like this and then we just put the two factory bolts in and it's on and it's done yeah and you've got the front one there so we'll do that one next and yeah that's easy we've gone around the whole car now and changed uh to new braided lines there were some braided lines on there from last time except oh they're slightly different lengths now because the calipers are different sizes so um i would call that a complete brake upgrade the mods on the e30 are done everything we're doing now is stuff we have done before plumbing everything back in just basically restoring it back to how it was uh new master cylinders in there everything is tightened up put the new booster plumb that all in um so we're looking pretty good a bit of plumbing bit of wiring turn the key it should dry it'll drive right yeah should drive on the tune that's in it and then we go and put on the dyno we should see the benefits of our hard work [Music] the e30 has fuel we have bled the brakes we've put coolant in it and i've turned off the injectors so that now we can give it a crank oil pressure wasn't coming up i think it's because i actually got the fittings wrong on the oil filter good reason always check because it can be something as simple as that oh pressure happy now what i'm doing here is monitoring the oil pressure and also keeping the revs at about 1 500 that's to help pump the lifters up but as you can see a whole lot of smoke and other stuff is coming out there's a lot going on the e30 is done and ready to drive to the so that's exactly what i'm going to do just did a quick wi-fi with dave from healthtech and he just made it idle better but actually all the numbers are fine to just sort of baby it there i'm not going to drive it like an idiot it is very tempting with an ls3 powered e30 to do so but no i'm just going to take it over to the dyno get a tune in it and then consider about cleaning this car up a bit that's what i'm actually quite excited about there's just little bits and pieces of stuff that make turn a car into a nice car like put carpet in there now there's no hole in the floor sort out the seats and the door trims and just like little missing bits and pieces the car is pretty clean overall but there's still stuff that's missing um yeah and we'll have a pretty awesome cruiser of a bmw dyno time let's go aside from the idle being a little bit grumpy the car drove fine and using the haltech dash i was able to keep a close eye on important data readouts like oil pressure and coolant temp scott also known as tuning fork has offered to lend his page upping skills to get the engine management dialed in perfectly for our cam upgrade i always try and find like something little to stand on because i just don't want the comments there's a rubber thing there that's probably real dangerous to stand on yeah because then the comments are not just water walls scotty's taller than everyone it's like yes we we know hey look at that same doesn't bother you does it no i'm definitely not standing on a wheel chock no i'm just grown back with the e30 it's had a cam upgrade yeah good choice aside from that not much has changed a few little wiring things just sort out just little niggly problems uh but it drives fine it's very very bitey and towie and wants to go right like it's very snappy but that's partly gear issue i know but in terms of what we're doing today which is to retune for our new cam what happens when you put a new cam in a car and then you bring it back to a dyno well it it is going to be a retune because all the fueling and all the ignition is going to be different the idle control strategy going to be different now even the cold start stuff will be different as well yep um by putting a camshaft in an engine like this you've just let it breathe now so yeah it's as simple as that we've got more airflow so now we need to put the right amount of fuel in and free up a little bit of ignition timing so that it'll make the extra power to suit the airflow so cam whether it's a cam change in an ls or you've gone and changed your cams in your overhead cam double over cam motor basically same kind of thing same same it doesn't matter so while we're changing that cam profile if you've got dual overhead cam if you've got cord overhead cam that are fully variable or whether you've got a single one in the middle of this thing with the sticks that push on the side of it at the top with the thing they're all at the end of it yep some are more efficient than others but then at the end of it they're all doing the same thing so if we change the profile tune changes what does the haltech do to help make this easier because when we spoke about dr i was able to drive the car here which is awesome right so just checking some idle and being gentle on it what does the heltec doing in the background to make that possible so to do that when we're here i set up all the knock control stuff i set up all of the the long term learning stuff so it's looking at the air to fuel ratio coming out the tailpipe i've got a whole bunch of targets in there that are set up so i want the engine to run at a certain air to fuel ratio across all rpm points across all of the throttle positions and across all the barometric pressures and then i get the system to look at that if it's not doing what it's told or if it's not meeting those targets we can open up those bounds a little bit so that when you do put a cam in or do something at home as you're driving it to the shop it'll be doing corrections it'll coming back to those targets for us so look you wouldn't want to go and put on a race track no but awesome to be able to drive it to the truck for the dining saves hundreds of dollars in trailers or tow trucks just being able to like gently drive it and also you know break it in make sure everything's working well it's a good point to even just to start it and get it idling and get heated up make sure there's no oil leaks and stuff before you tow it across town so last time we had this car on the dyno it made 258 260 kilowatts around that number now obviously a lot of information out there an ls3 makes this amount of power at this rpm on this day in this car we have some limitations in our engine bay in terms of space and packaging so our headers have to go around steering racks and which limits the size so potentially our restriction is in our exhaust the intake is big and huge and all that the rest of the engine is seems to be happy so that could be where we are going down a little bit in power but i would say even half this power in this car would be heaps yeah would be great so and remembering how much grunt it's got as well it's got heaps of torque down low so it feels like it's got more power because at two and three thousand rpm when you're normally waiting for the boost to turn up yeah it's already on already there and rear wheel drive so it's one of the fastest feeling cars i've ever driven in terms of like how aggressive it is and a lot of fun so i think today we just get the benefits of you know letting the engine breathe a bit better yes we might find some more power i hope we find a little bit more power there i don't think we're going to be breaking any records but i think we should see a nice little increase a nice little smooth power curve and this mad e30 will be ready to do some driving [Music] that's awesome crack 300. damn shaft in an ls not bad and it's it's an awesome mod to do to these motors really great from about 35 3600 rpm below about 3 600 rpm yep pretty similar to what we had hasn't really lost any grant everything's and i can see that as well in the fuel map because down there where this cam's not as efficient as the other as the factory cam was yep we've pulled had to pull a little bit of fuel out because we've got less airflow yeah but then up the top i've had to put more fuel back in because more airflow oh cool scotty is happy with the tune and the car does sound amazing but he reckons there might be a few more kilowatts hiding under that reverse bonnet up she goes is that what you're thinking yeah i reckon if it sits saying the bonnet doesn't go the other way because then it would be really good wouldn't it all right let's let's tighten it up and do a power [Applause] oh wow that's what it's supposed to make um wow um 332 so cold air intakes do work then a holder intake could be a thing on this particular car because there's not a lot of room where the air filter is because again engine bay limitation is so hot in this car that's all there is to it yeah and with the bonnet shut it's trying to draw that hot air in it cool that i mean what that tells me is i need to try and work out a way to get some nice cold air into it right now you might i wasn't maybe you might end up with one of the one headlight with the nice mesh remember that yes that was a rally datsun thing that could do it how interesting well i mean look the car just made 332 kilowatts 445 horsepower that's amazing let's go back to back no markers actually it'll be pretty heat soaked now yeah okay but it does two that's amazing yeah that's the number that's it yeah all right so now we can compare our air temp over the two runs so what we've got down here is we've started down here 33 degrees celsius is where that runs started that last one i did i really gave it a hard time before we ran it up so there's no market that was sort of making 50 and 80 kilowatts loading up and down to heat it like you'd drive it and then give it a hit then give it a hit it made 328 kilowatts or 540 horsepower the run started at 1400 rpm 33 degrees celsius yep then as we revved it we finished at 6 800 rpm 33 degrees celsius which is the air temperature in the room today yeah cool we're we're sitting up nice and high yeah and so that's that's the one that made the big power and now we'll go back and look at the basically the baseline with the engine shut in the air temperature so it didn't take where it normally is this screen exactly the same so okay so that last one oh wow started the run 1400 exactly the same yeah but it was 44 degrees when we started oh wow big difference interestingly it went down a tiny bit three and a half grand it went down to 42 degrees so i probably started pulling a bit of air through and i got a difference then it just got out of control so the in the engine bay temperatures started to skyrocket here and by the end of the run we're pulling in 50 degree inlet air temps this is one of my favorite things about putting a car on a dyno and you can't do that on the road easily ever no yeah and you can just see it like that's so cool and it gives me a good project really doesn't it to go hey do you want an extra 22 kilowatts make give it some cold air the question now is i'll just cut a hole right there no no i'll i'll drive it home with 306 all right and maybe i'll work out a way to get some cold air into the bay scotty thanks so much man that's been highly educational interesting as always and i'm excited to drive this pleasure you have got a hell of a car this thing will be a beast on the track yeah man this will be up there well skids is what you really mean isn't it for doing doughnuts oh yeah yeah but [Music] you know what for any any sort of motor racing exactly get in the dirt in this thing no no it's too clean yeah all right all right lunchtime you're the best thanks man please

Channel: Mighty Car Mods

Views: 498,948

Rating: 4.9682279 out of 5

Keywords: mighty, car, mods, mcm, MCM, moog, marty, how, to, diy, do, it, yourself, bmw, e30, black chops, VCM, cam, roller, black, chops, haltech, elite, 2500, tuning fork

Id: 8pUd1IIFeMU

Length: 27min 40sec (1660 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 16 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/ChumFum]

“Will it fit my honda?”

[u/eddyz1122]

If you're reading this MCM boys; I appreciate the technical and nerdy dyno session :)

[u/StaySharpp]

I’m so excited for the video where this races the 240z.

[u/MegaMcDazzle]

This is probably one of the cars I’ve wanted most since I started watching these guys. Along with the Mini and the 240