The life of Ryan's 2003 ZHP

[bcleaver]

sweet ride! So you noticed a difference by switching out the tie rods? I wouldn't have guess that would create that much play, so that's pretty interesting. Also, m3 fuel baffle FTW. That would be on my 'top 5' best bang for the buck mod for these cars.

[rkneeshaw]

Na, the tie rods probably didn't make that big of a difference, turns out my alignment was off, so that helped the most That fuel baffle was super easy. Someone said if you ask your self "was it really that easy?", yes, yes it is.

Dyno appointment didn't happen. Frustrating experience. Drove 2 out of the 3 hours to get there just to find out the guy went into the hospital with back pain the day before, and nobody called me. I'll have to reschedule, but I dont know if that will happen before it snows and this thing goes into winter hibernation

[rkneeshaw]

I finally got a dyno completed, but I knew it wasn't going to be right because I already knew I was running extremely rich during WOT (about 9:1 AFR). Apparently the TS2 tune lengthens the injector pulse widths to compensate for what I think is a tapering off of fuel pressure at WOT with the stock fuel pump. That is how they keep the AFR right even though the stock pump is fully taxed. When I installed the M3 fuel pump I went very rich at WOT because, well, the m3 pump can keep up properly and the injector pulse widths need to be adjusted accordingly. That's my theory anyway. Here are the results on the stock ESS tune, but with the M3 fuel pump, you can see how how rich it gets and how the power is off.





AJ at ESS has been working with me on an updated tune and the car is really feeling a lot stronger! So now I need to schedule another dyno, but it's about to snow so that probably won't happen until the spring.

In other news it looks like my balancer has slipped.



I'm not sure what I'll replace it with. The ATI damper is like $1000 which is crazy, and a stock part will just fail again eventually. I've got some inquiries into BHJ to see if they could make a balancer and sell it at an affordable price point. I guess we'll see. I'll probably end up with another stock damper if that doesn't pan out.

And because you can never have enough power I upgraded from the 85mm TS2 pulley to the 83mm pulley that ESS originally included in the TS2 kits. Requires I run 93 AKI gasoline instead of 91, and should net me about 10hp according to AJ

[slater]

look at that torque curve! dang!! (not much of a curve )

i would love a ride in your car.

[johnrando]

Sweet

[BMWCurves]

look at that torque curve! dang!! (not much of a curve )

i would love a ride in your car.

Seriously flat. That's impressive. The want for the ESS kit is strong

Sorry to hear about the balancer slipping/failing. This part, specifically: 11237513862?

[Vas]

Man that A/F Ratio drops soo quickly.

Do you what the duty cycle of the injectors? Maxing out a pump is not a good idea either way.

[rkneeshaw]

Thanks guys, the torque is yummy. I'm eager to see what the dyno graph looks like with a healthier tune.

Sorry to hear about the balancer slipping/failing. This part, specifically: 11237513862?

Yep, that's the OEM part number. You can get a Febi or Gates brand replacement for like $160, but they maintain the stock design and materials. A BMW branded part is like $400. I'm also looking at a Dayco that runs about $270, and while it is the same exact design, Dayco claims they use OEM+ type materials, not sure exactly what that means though.

Man that A/F Ratio drops soo quickly.

Do you what the duty cycle of the injectors? Maxing out a pump is not a good idea either way.

Yeah it dropped off fast and was basically bottoming out the lower limits of the O2 sensors range through the whole RPM range. I believe we have 24lb/hr injectors in our cars from the factory, and the ESS TS2 kit comes with red bosch injectors that I think are 30lb/hr. Fuel pressure at WOT should be about 60psi at the rail based on my calculations (Our FPR runs 50psi at atmosphere plus the 10psi boost). I'm having a hard time finding any specs on our stock fuel pump or the M3 fuel pump for that matter, so I'm not sure how they compare, except that I know in stock form our fuel pump only needs to feed about 50psi or so while the M3 pump feeds something like 70psi for the S54 motors. So the M3 pump should be more than up to the task now.

AJ made a comment once that the AFR at higher RPM's is limited by fuel on these kits. That kind of makes me think the extra fuel requirements push the stock pump to its limits.

[rkneeshaw]

Its Spring, and the car is filthy, and its still too cold to do too much work out in the garage, but I've got some plans. However, I spent a few minutes and fixed the annoying HK tweeter rattle I've had for a while now. It sounded like the tweeter was blown and was driving me nuts.

Note to self: next time you reinstall the door cards make sure you have all of these installed, along with the round black rubber insulator, and that none are broken

[BMWCurves]

Yup, I just purchased a bunch of those that have foam washers and a handful with rubber washers to try and eliminate some door rattle. Did they solve your tweeter rattle?