joel142
Member
- Joined
- May 15, 2003
- Location
- Seattle, WA
A brief timeline to date
- 2002-ish: purchase the car, installed iPd bars, lowering springs, rebuild the brake system, put in some race seats, and drove it all over the west coast. The B20E was a huge amount of fun running 91 octane cut 50/50 with toluene.
- 2004-ish: buy a 1989 740T and begin to (naively) pull all the parts off that for an OHC-turbo conversion.
- 2008: after a few fits and starts more or less get it running. Has some issues but it’s kind of fun. I discovered I’d built a not particularly trustworthy vehicle.
- 2010: move to a house with a garage and bring it along with me.
- 2012: take various things apart but mostly ignore it.
- 2014-2019: Slow progress that continues to result in a non-running car: upgrade the fuel system to be all AN fittings, replace all the bushing with poly, take a lot of the front end apart.
- 2020: where we are now - project v2.0
High level goals
The general theme of the project is to improve the packaging, fix some obvious screwups, and decide after 12-ish years of languishing if I’ve built a car I want, if I haven’t how to fix that, and if that’s not fixable what to do next. Perhaps tellingly, I drove the original OHV version 1000s of miles and then put about 500 miles on it in the last 12yrs.
- completely rethought alternator mount.
In the original I added an idler wheel as the tensioning element. This was over on the drivers side of the motor and reduced the belt overlap at the crank and the water pump. It consistently squeaked even after tightening it close to yield. - pushed radiator forward
With the radiator in the original location and with the longer snout of the water pump there was no space to run an electric fan and the mechanical fan came within 1/8” of the radiator and 1/4” of the alternator belt. - flipped intercooler
Bottom inlet and outlet worked well but the air filter ended up over by the right hinge spring directly above the downpipe. Would like to eliminate hot-air-injection. - turbo upgrade
It’s always fun to buy new parts and I managed to score a 90+ manifold and a flat flange 18t. Rotate the turbo and swap out the manifold. It’s also nice to have an integrate CBV and the opportunity for water-cooling the center section. - eliminate oil filter/cooler line disaster
In the original the oil cooler pancake stayed on the block and lines ran to a remote oil filter and oil cooler. These were a disjointed mess that I always worried would foul the waste gate actuator as it came under the turbo. - fix weeping brake block
This is probably non-negotiable as it’s on the high pressure side. Will need to learn how to flare things as I've already determined it's not something fixable through more tightening.
“While I’m in there” and other nice-to-haves
- Upgraded brakes. The solid fronts were a little marginal with the B20 (on Highway 1) and not at all adequate with the B230
- Improved throttle pedal placement. v1.0 felt too far forward and too high.
- Return of the IAC. This got dropped for space and expedience in round one. Holding the throttle a little open when it’s dead cold is’t that big of a deal
- Complete re-alignment of the drivetrain as I have some curious vibrations.
In broad strokes, I’ve found myself completely reworking everything from the bare block out minus the relocated brake booster. A bit more of a restart than anyone might want, but, it is great to be able to try new paths.
As a project overall it’s meant to just be a fun weekend car. It still has the M41 (I do have a spare…) and a block with the early narrow rods so it’s not going to be anything radical power wise. From the time it was running with either engine it was pretty fun.
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