My experience in an E30 ///M3 today

[E30 ///M3]

First of all, I'd like to thank Stan from this board in taking his time to meet me and show me his very nice zinnoberrot E30 M3 After introducing ourselves, we looked at his car. My first impression was I mean, this car was mint! I did not notice anything wrong with it, inside or out. When he asked me if we wanted to take it out for a little spin, i was like We drove around normally until the car was "hot" and then wham! He puts it in first, tires squeeling, and we take off! Later on, we were going into a turn, only to find out his foot was still planted on the accelorator! What i was thinking was "Oh my god, we are going to crash!" But that E30 was glued to the road, as we went through it so smoothly! Later on, we went to a parking lot, and he decides to floor it and cut the wheel. I could feel the back end slipping out, and it was awesome! I still can't take the smile of my face. I have never driven in one of those before, but now that i experienced one first hand, that only makes me appreciate them even more. Thanks Stan for an awesome drive and all the advice Maybe we can do it again sometime this coming spring Thanks again

[M3Pilot]

E30 M3's rule round corners!!!!
You will be hard pushed to find a better balanced/handling car and it over 10 years old too!!!
I love um thats why I bought one

[elmercc]

I hate threads that talk about how great e30 m3's are. It just makes me want one more and more.




Wait...I love thread like this, because one day, I'll be able to take part in them, when I get my e30 m3!!!

[M3Pilot]

Do it man go get one, I think I'll go for a drive in mine now

[MarkPike]

Nice! Get one, you will never regret it. I almost sold mine a year ago, but I backed out of the deal. I just couldn't part with it.

[Stan]

Thanks much Marko, I (and Conrad) had a good time too.

The M3 experience is even better behind the wheel - great steering, controls in the right positions for hard driving, and confidence inspiring / consistent reactions along with hard core sounds.

BTW with 3 aboard, I punched it while in first at around 15 MPH. Nice wheelspin, requiring throttle modulation, from a roll, thanks to ditching the AFM. My modded 2.3 is fairly fast, pushing the car to 1/4 miles in the low 14s and high 5 0-60s. At autocrosses on Toyo street tires it can do over 1 g cornering and on the hoosiers it can do as high as 1.27 g during transitions. And it feels good while doing it!! They really are great cars.

Stan

[E30 ///M3]

BTW Stan, i forgot to thank your son, Conrad, for being so patient We talked for quite a while I can't stop thanking you! I want one

[Alex Mc]

awesome, sounds like a sweet car stan.. very interested with the lack of AFM thing you're doing, i enjoyed hearing about it in the other thread

impressive times for a 2.3!

[EVOIIIM3]

Bad part is tans car is not stock. So if you drive one that you want to buy try not comparing it to his. They all drive a little differant. I have driven in about 50 M3's and drove about 15-20 and every one has it own way of driving.

Stan, you NEED to dyno your car and let us see the graph, I am VERY interested in the "Alpha-N" system. My car will not pass smog becase it idles above 1100rpm's so I need to do something.

[Stan]

>>.. very interested with the lack of AFM thing you're doing, i enjoyed hearing about it in the other thread <<

Thanks Alex. Perhaps we are doing the same thing as each other in a way.. You too are ditching the AFM in your car...by putting in a motor with no AFM!!!!! Nyuk, Nyuk, Nyuk! Before the internet caught on I used to connect online at 1200 baud. Ya just can't go back! The E30 M3 responds well to increased go-power.

Stan

[Stan]

>>My car will not pass smog becase it idles above 1100rpm's so I need to do something.<<

That's interesting. Why does it need to idle at 1100? Or why won't it adjust any lower? You need to adjust the TBs if you screw the IDLE screw all the way in and it's still not enough and all else is well.

My car has been deliberately tuned for a very wide power band since I am using the stock wide ratio US box. You can start in 2nd gear, skip shift in regular driving (1-3-5)and so forth. I could get some more go if I tuned it to be peakier and used a CR box. Presently it looks like I am in the high 180s to low 190s at the wheels. 193s a few times. But this is not on a dyno jet and is done in 2nd gear and not 4th. I can get the best numbers using unleaded race gas, especially in hot weather. I usually tune for the highest area under the curve as opposed to highest peak "spike" HP numbers.

On the power band thing I have made graphs of the acceleration g-force versus RPMs for each gear. That's the force you feel when you floor it. Basically you determine shift points by when changing up will give you more g-force than remaining in the same gear. Stock or chipped, it's basically redline in the lower gears for best shift points. As I have it tuned this is no longer the case, more like 74-7500 gives the same result as 7800 for a 1-2 shift. That's because of the much higher torque at the RPMs seen after the shift. This makes the car easier to drive. I tried a 0-60 using a self imposed 5500 RPM limit and the usual 2500 RPM launch. 7.6 seconds...which is very close to what a stock car does using the 7250 rev limit! Even at those shift points you can get rubber going into 2nd gear. Lessee that would be something near 3200 RPM into 2nd given 5500 in first. I have lots of little mods on the car tuned to work with each other given my area-under-the-curve strategy. Other than the E2 intake and adj cam gears the motor is stock internally.

Stan

[Cone]

I don't know how you can get 180-190hp at the wheels with no internal mods, what else have you done to your engine?

[Stan]

>>I don't know how you can get 180-190hp at the wheels with no internal mods, what else have you done to your engine?<<

Don't forget that an E2 noncat puts out 28 more HP than a stock US car with cat. The E2 cam is a nice mod for the car and usually gains HP in the teens to the rear wheels without killing the low and mid range. 'Course the E2s also had more compression than the US cars along with some external to the engine parts revisions.

Lotsa tuning efforts and performance testing basically helped me get some good results. Internal engine mods = an E2 intake cam and adj cam gears. I have the intake cam clearances all set identically to the tight end of the range too. Exhausts all set to the mid range. All are right on the money which required some shim tweaking.

By engine I mean the block and head and what's inside of them. Not the parts external to the engine, such as exhaust, filter, etc. One thing that is also helping out is that I am getting some useful secondary intake tuning from the plenum to the air filter. You can't get that when using an AFM and it's somewhat more difficult to use this strategy in a MAF setup. I made 4-5 different intakes and tested each to come up with a good compromise. I believe that it's advantageous to get the different parts working well together. And going for area under the curve as much as possible. Part of why I decided to do that was to help the car in autocross settings where you are down in revs in 2nd gear yet want to avoid downshifting to first gear. I can get some more max HP if I give up some low / mid.

Stan

[EVOIIIM3]

Originally posted by Stan
>>My car will not pass smog becase it idles above 1100rpm's so I need to do something.<<

That's interesting. Why does it need to idle at 1100? Or why won't it adjust any lower? You need to adjust the TBs if you screw the IDLE screw all the way in and it's still not enough and all else is well.

Stan

Jim C messed wiht the 2.5l chip for my car. Other people have the same problem. The TB's plates are PERFECT, and base co is to. The idle set screw is all the way in. It goes there and says, unless I disconnect the TPS, yea, the TPS WORKS FINE TO. I'm going to unsync the TB and force it to idle lower.

[EVOIIIM3]

Originally posted by Cone
I don't know how you can get 180-190hp at the wheels with no internal mods, what else have you done to your engine?

That figure is a little on the high side! The real E3 puts down around 200rwhp, the E2 does about 175rwhp. No way can he be putting donw 190 unless there is internal mods done. The ALHA-N doesn't add 50hp.

How ever with his system, he get really good throttle reponce and really noce low end torque. SO it might feel like a 190rwhp car.