brianstj

I just went the gnarly route. I wanted a nice performance oriented distributor and couldn't stomach the price of 30 year old used Tii distributors with who knows how much wear and tear on them. So I went a step beyond - Terry Tinney modifies MSD pro billet distributors to fit the M10. They are originally made for VW engines, so the shaft has to be modified. They come with different springs and advance stop bushings so you can set up any kind of advance profile you could possibly want. You have to run a MSD box for the magnetic pickup so that is another cost adder you would have to factor in.

Hi, I am in need of speedometer repair, and I figured I would get it recalibrated for the diff gears and tire size I am running - but I don't know the rear end ratio. The diff I am running is out of a 1980 320i 5-speed non-LSD. Anyone know what I am looking at?

Yeah...I was going to replace my water pump a few months ago as standard preventative maintenance. For me, it snowballed in to a full engine rebuild There are a couple different lenght bolts. MAKE SURE YOU GET THEM IN THE RIGHT LOCATIONS. When I took my pump out, someone had run the wrong length bolt in to the block and ripped the threads out. I got in to a major "while I am in there, I may as well..." sort of situation, but I ended up with a really nice, fresh engine Good luck!

You should have at least 2 wires going over there - one key-on power and one for the tach. If the car is equipped with a ballast resistor (which could be the relay looking thing you pointed out), then you should also have a wire that is hot when the engine is cranking. During cranking the ballast resistor is bypassed and full battery voltage is provided to the coil. Once the car lights up, the ballast resistor comes in to play and the voltage to the coil is reduced. For the electronic ignition conversion you are talking about you would not need any of the ballast resistor related components or wiring. If you have already located the tach wire, you should also find the key-on power wire - this may be needed there depending on where you have things located, or it should be insulated if it is not needed in that location.

Thank you!

Hi all, I want to kill the little feature that leaves the blinker bulbs stuck on if the stalk is in an active position with the key off. I will never use this as a "parking light" - not to mention that nobody in the US would know what the hell it meant if they saw a car with one blinker stuck on. Plus I currently do not have an operational "auto shut-off" on the steering wheel, and I have bumped the stalk one too many times when working in the interior and totally drained my battery - even managed to kill my Optima red top...won't hold a charge too long anymore I did a forum search and checked the FAQ's, but no luck. Anyone have a procedure for this?

I have a 228mm flywheel available, would be shipping from the Sacramento, CA area. Make offer if interested.

I rebuilt ne of my calipers. There was a lot of gunk around the lip of the piston bore that was a pain to get cleaned off, but it was making my piston stick which is why I got in there in the first place. The whole process is not that difficult. I found some inexpensive rebuild kits at some place in Arizona - can't recall the name but you might be able to find them on Google. Once I got everything back in place I was putting in new bleeder screws and found the hole in the caliper was stripped Not worth trying to repair IMO, so I went searching for full rebuilt calipers online. Most of the vendors will have them, but I actually found the best price through Kragen.

Ireland's new Mahle reproduction pistons for the E12 head have reliefs cut for high lift cams. I think the standard is 9.5:1, but I believe you can also do custom compression ratio. FWIW I am running them with a 292 cam - no issues.

I put in some "hot rod" H4's. You may or may not like the look, but I am kinda diggin' it - and I have yet to see them on another car. I had to modify the headlight buckets because the H4 indexing tabs are in a different location than the stock lights, but nothing a dremel can't fix. I also rewired the lights to run off a relay. The are nice and bright, and don't even change a bit at idle.

My favorite part of my car.

My experience with the 38/38 is a bit different regarding the real world driving, idling, etc. I started with a single barel solex and moved to the 32/36 - dramatic improvement all around, and a noticeable extra kick when the secondary opened up. Moved up to the 38/38 - night and day difference. The low end pulled significantly stronger and the upper end was also improved. Smooth response at any RPM, idled great, mileage was "good" - not sure of the exact numbers, but massively better than my V6 Nissan Xterra. I have since rebuilt the engine, mildly hopping it up in the process. I am still running the 38/38 and have come to find in the tuning process that the out-of-the-box jetting was running very lean for my setup, and looking back was probably still too lean when the motor was more stock. I don't think I am 100% dialed in on the jetting yet, but I have a very smooth running car that idles well and pulls great at just about any RPM - even with the bigger cam the idle and low end power is great. I think there may be more to be had in the upper end, but right now it is still running very strong and is very smmoth and pleasent to drive even in traffic. The mileage is still a little early to tell since I have been tweaking with it som much lately (and my odometer doesn't work), but there is still no comparison between this car and the SUV. My recommendation would be to go with the 38/38 for sure.

...sigh of relief...I also thought I remember seeing something about stacking the o-rings in the BMW engine rebuild articles I found on this site. Since I am not running an oil pressure gauge I am in the dark, so this is bringing on a little excessive paranoia.

So, the handwritten notes on the oil pump diagram in the thred about the excessive oil pressure has got me a bit freaked out right now. The notes say to use 2 o-rings in both locations. When I assembled my engine I used 1 in each location. What is the deal with this?

I threw in some 150 mains this morning and it seemed to feel a little bit stronger on the hard pulls. But now I have to back off playing with the car too much since I got popped for speeding this morning while trying out all these changes I guess I built the thing too damn fast...

Further update - So far with just the idle jets changed on the 38/38...drove the car to work today AND - there was no more "surging" at freeway speed, no more exhaust popping when coasting down hill, and no more dieseling when I shut the engine off. Still some room for improvement - especially for the sticking idle - but things are getting better

I live at 1800 ft., will see regular driving between 100-2500 ft. I am curious on the recommendation of a minimum 60 idle jet and reducing the size of the mains. What is this based on? I was actually expecting to have to increase the mains. What I am currently running is: 185 Air 142 Main 55 Idle <2500 RPM operation is smooth and strong, idle is smooth, and the idle adjustments are close to the Redline baseline settings. I don't seem to be having any transition stutters and I am pulling pretty good in the upper RPMs - though I haven't flogged it too hard yet since the motor is pretty fresh. I am planning on giving it some hard pulls and playing around with the mains to see where I will end up. I am still having an issue with the idle sticking at around 1500 when I come to a stop. I am still confident the linkage is closing fully, so I am thinking I need to make another pass at searching for vacuum leaks. My other suspicion is the distributor since I am just running what I had before and the history is unknown. Do these respond well to disssembly and cleaning? Any other suggestions where to look for issues?

I was having idle issues on my new motor running more compression/displacement/cam/exhaust with a 38 DGES Weber. I set the timing to 25 degrees BTDC @ 1500 RPM per recommendations, then I bought a jet kit from Redline. Since my carb settings were indicating really lean running, I went up 2 steps on te idel jet to start with - went from 45 to 55. Now my idle mixture and speed setings are much closer to ideal, and the car is running MUCH smoother - especially below 2500 RPM. Before the car was pretty much useless below 2500 and I thought this was just life with the bigger 292 cam, but as it turns out it is possible to get a really smooth idle and good low end power with this setup. I still need to do a little fine tuning and complete the whole jetting process, but so far things are starting to look much better already.

I just built an M10 with the IE pistons, 9.5:1 with an E12 head. My machinist was partial to custom JE forged pistons, but he said these looked pretty good - though he suspected they were produced in China. He also had a bias against Deves rings, so I bought the pistons without and went for a set from Total Seal.

OK - so what number of degrees does the "ball in the hole" @ 1500 RPM correspond to? Just in case the 5 speed trans/flywheel combination is not compatible with the 2002 timing marks, I can use the adjustable timing light on the crank pulley to get the right setting if I know the number to shoot for. Thanks!

I decided to start a new thread so the interesting discussions on the carb function is not diverted in the original... So on the timing - I have the little sticker under the hood (not Tii) that instructs to set at 25 BTDC @ 2700 RPM, with vacuum advance disconnected and plugged of course. I am all for setting up the "ball in the hole" at 1500 RPM and giving it a go, but I have a couple questions on that. 1. Curious on how this spec superceeded the spec on the underhood sticker? 2. Is this a "catch all" setting for all carb'd cars, regardless of modification? 3. I have a Getrag 245 with 215mm flywheel from a 1980 320i - are the marks in the hole going to be the same? Thanks!

To add some more info - Plugs are NGK BP6ES, gapped around 0.032 if I recall correctly Timing was first set statically to the first mark BTDC on the crank pully. After reaching operating temp. the timing was checked with a light (on the crank pulley), vacum advance disconnected and plugged, confirmed to be at 25 degrees BTDC @ 2700 RPM per the underhood sticker. I think I am going to try the idle jets first and go from there, since the indications seem to be those are definitely too lean. I'll let ya know how it goes.

Specs first - FRESH motor (less than 500 miles) E12 Head 9.5:1 Pistons 292 Cam Step Header w/ 2" exhaust Stock (vacuum advance) distributor with pertronix I believe the timing and valve lash is set properly I am running a 38/38 Weber DGES with the following jetting: 185 Air 142 Main 45 Idle I've been having idle issues. I set the idle by the Redline instructions, ended up at about 1-3/4 turns on the mixture screws. I set the idle speed around 1000 RPM - ran fairly rough, which I attributed to the cam at the time. Otherwise the car ran very strong and smooth above 2500 RPM. Coming to a stop the idle would stick around 1500, sometimes eventually coming down to the 1000 rough idle. I am very sure the linkage was not sticking - I could duplicate this with my head under the hood, and verified the throttle was all the way against the stop. I also hunted around for vacuum leaks with a stethoscope, but I couldn't find any strange hissing anywhere. And actually pulling the vacuum hose off of the distributor did not seem to make a noticeable change at the high idle or the lower idle. I went back to the beginning and readjusted the idle based on the Redline instructions. I found a much smoother idle at 2 to 2-1/2 turns on each idle mixture screw, and it took about 2 turns on the speed screw. The idle was MUCH smoother. The car felt much smoother below 2500 RPM - but, I was then starting to get a bit of a stumble at higher RPMs under a load. According to the Redline instructions, with 2+ turn on the mixture screws and 2 turns on the speed screw I am running lean on the idle jet. They say anything above 1-1/2 on the mix and 3/4 on the speed indicates the jet is too small. I am thinking I should go to a 55 and redo the idle adjustments again. Anyone have any other advice or similar experiences? The main thing I am feeling weirded out about at this point is the higher RPM stumble I was getting once I richened up the idle. This definitely was not there with the leaner idle setting. Any suggestions welcome!

I would like to see if I can get data on the advance curve on an 003 distributor with and without vacuum applied. Does any such data exist anywhere? So what I am trying to look in to is the feasibility of running the distributor with the vacuum advance disconnected. Why? I am having a minor idle issue with my new motor and I am taking a WAG that it could be related to the vacuum advance module. Here is my thinking - please correct me if I am out-o-whack I just built an engine with a 292 cam. Setting the idle mixture and speed on the 38/38 Weber per the instructions I have found online can get me a lopey idle at around 900, my expected results for the higher duration cam. When I actually drive the car and come up to a stop, probably more than 50% of the time the idle sticks at about 1400 RPM. I am pretty sure the linkage is not getting stuck - motor mounts are new, and even if I pull up on the gas pedal it will not drop. I can get to my lopey 900 RPM idle if I do not put the clutch in until the engine is below the ~1400 RPM mark. So what I am thinking is that when I adjust the idle mixture and speed it is at low RPM with crap for vacuum due to the cam. When I put the clutch in at a higher RPM when coming to a stop, I have a higher vacuum condition (keeping the timing more advanced), and keeping the idle higher. Is this possible? Am I crazy? Is there a simpler explanation (assuming the linkage & motor mounts are good)?

If you don't have the tool mentioned, the cam needs to go in first. You have to rotate the cam a couple of times to get everything in place - the manual details this. My machinist warned me not to smack the side of the cam follower pad on a cam lobe, as they apparently do not like to see shear forces.