Firstly, I had an issue with oil. The crankcase breather was spewing out an awful lot of oil vapour. This should be taken care of by the CCV which is supposed to separate oil from air and return the oil to the sump, but unfortunately my CCV (which was brand new) failed and started returning oil to the engine bay instead, with a fair bit going back into the inlet manifold...
Oil being returned to the engine bay...
... and to the inlet manifold. That's a big puddle of oil.
After a bit of umming and ahing, I decided to try replacing the CCV again on the assumption that the previous one was faulty from new. The other potential explanation is that it failed because of the quantity of oil coming from the engine, due to blow by (a compression test suggests that there is more blow by than I would like). Replacing the CCV is cheaper than replacing the engine, so I'm trying that first. It's too early to say if it's the right choice, but so far it seems to be working; there is a lot less oil in the manifold now.
I took the rocker cover off and had a look for oil leaks...
... everything looks normal.
Around this time, I also decided to replace the inlet manifold with an 325 manifold. The 328 produces 190 bhp, whereas the 325 produces 189 bhp with 0.3 L less capacity... the reason being that the 328 had a restrictive inlet manifold in order to satisfy German emissions regulations. So, sticking a 325 manifold onto a 328 is supposed to rectify this and release another 20 bhp or so.
The swap was straightforward. The only issue is that the 328 has more holes in the manifold to plug bits into, so with a 325 it's necessary to get creative with plumbing to get everything attached. It's a bit easier for me than for most people who do this swap as there are a couple of hoses that are on a proper 328 that I don't use. It's hard to say if performance has improved, as I didn't have many miles under my belt with the old setup, but certainly it feels extremely fast now, which is what I'm after really.
I installed a big bore throttle body at the same time, which apparently is the thing to do with this manifold as it flows a lot more air than the standard throttle body.
Installing the new manifold...
...there is a lot of gubbins under here...
Making an adaptor plate to fit the M52 throttle body to the M50 manifold.
This all done, I got some driving in but quickly discovered that I was hitting a limiter somewhere in the 5200 - 5500 rpm region. Given that the limiter is supposed to be at 6200 (which is already too low in my opinion) this is pretty unacceptable.
I tried swapping over the cam position sensor, which seemed to work with the car on the drive, but as soon as I went for a drive, the limiter came back - obviously it didn't kick in until the car was under load. Some more internet searching and eventually I figured it out (this took me at least a week from discovering the problem to fixing it) - Peter's wiring diagram is for a Bosch ECU, which is used on most E36 cars, but not the 328, which has a Siemens ECU. The wiring is almost the same, but the ECU requires a signal for vehicle speed (from the speed sensor in the diff), which feeds into the large X20 connector on pin 14 for the Bosch ECU, but pin 9 on the Siemens. Without it, it sets a 5200ish limiter. Adjusting the wiring solved the problem. Once I have the fueling issue sorted, I'll look into a remap to get the limiter raised again to around 7000, which I think is the safe limit for an unmodified 328 - possibly at some point I'll fettle it (stronger valve springs, etc) with the aim of getting it higher again.
The remaining engine issue is that it is still getting below 20 mpg. A real 328 will get around 30, and I'd expect this car to do significantly better, being so much lighter. I noticed that the ECU (#4, if you're counting) was complaining about the post-cat lambda sensors being missing (which they are). The ECU is off a 528, which has these extra lambda sensors. I don't think they should affect fuelling, but it's possible. To try and rule this out, I caved in and bought ECU #5, this time off a 328. It's in and working, but I have yet to get enough miles to see if it's solved the problem. Alternatively, the 528 ECU might have had a bad map - again, a new ECU would solve this, though I think this scenario is unlikely. Still, I need to rule out the ECU as a possible source of the problem, so it's a necessary step.
Last weekend, along with the ECU, I also got hold of 6 m of vinyl wrap. After getting a quote for painting (£800ish) I was keen to explore other options, and having seen Jason's wrapped car, which looks fantastic, I decided to go that route instead, as it's only £300 for the vinyl, and I can apply it myself.
I left Emily in charge of deciding how to chop it up so as to cover all the panels with 6 m of vinyl... sadly she got it a little bit wrong, resulting in two extra joins. They'll be almost totally covered by the boot cover though, so it's not the end of the world. The 3M Di-Noc wrap proved pretty easy to apply, although there is a definite knack to it. The panels I did last look much better than the first ones, even though I left the harder shapes to the end. Still, I'm very pleased with the end result.
Cleaning the bonnet in preparation.
Fitting the wrap around the exhaust primaries.
One side of the car mostly done.
Looking good. Needs stripes.
The result looks good, but clearly needs some stripes... the only question is, what colour? One option is the BMW colours; I'm also tempted by a couple of plain black stripes. The plan is also that the car will have black wheels. Your ideas / suggestions welcome?
This was the original plan, but now I'm not so sure...
Currently thinking about something like this.
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