Single turbo'd LS2 swapped into a Z3

[DrewP]

Downpipe in, and right up-pipe tacked:








Left up-pipe merged in. Turned out really nice:







View from the left front wheel arch, the flex joint is welded straight to the flange coming out of the manifold:

[DrewP]

Long time since last update!

We've gotten a ton of things done on the car, it's coming together really nicely.



Once I had all of the exhaust tacked together I pulled it out for seam welding. I had really good luck back-purging the whole thing to keep the weld on the inside of the tubes clean, with no carbide 'sugar' like you get on the back side of thing stainless parts.

I taped a second argon bottle line into one end, and taped up the seams between tube joints away from where I was welding to minimize leakage.










2nd argon bottle:








And you end up with this:









And here's the whole thing:







I made hangers that use the factory BMW mounts and hangers, the two hooks on the muffler, and the center hook on the rear cross-member. I just chopped that one off the stock exhaust and transplanted it:










The tip is just a piece if 4" tube polished up and angled so that it's flush with the rear bumper cover.

Tidy.











The front up-pipe was a little hard to photograph, but here's how everything turned out. The upward pointing flanges attach to the exhaust manifolds (which are flipped around to point forwards and down) feeds into the turbine inlet with a tube joined into the collector for the external wastegage, which merges back into the downpipe from below.

I had the turbo out and bolted everything to the turbine flange to seam weld and stress relieve so it can come back apart without too much crowbar action from everything warping.














View from rear, looking down:






From the front:








And the whole thing:

[SwedeSport]

You are quite the artist!

[squaab99t]

Looks very nice. Suggestion, I did not see a bellow between the wastegate and the main pipe. The joint may eventually crack due to thermal expansion and contraction.

[DrewP]

Looks very nice. Suggestion, I did not see a bellow between the wastegate and the main pipe. The joint may eventually crack due to thermal expansion and contraction.

Correct, there was no room, and not an easy way to route things otherwise to make room for a flex joint, unless you know about smaller footprint flex joints than I do. Those are 2.5" tubes for the wastegate inlet and outlet.

The 2.5" joints on the up-pipes are the shortest ones I could fine, they're from Vibrant and I think they're 4.5" long.

[squaab99t]

Looks very nice. Suggestion, I did not see a bellow between the wastegate and the main pipe. The joint may eventually crack due to thermal expansion and contraction.

Correct, there was no room, and not an easy way to route things otherwise to make room for a flex joint, unless you know about smaller footprint flex joints than I do. Those are 2.5" tubes for the wastegate inlet and outlet.

The 2.5" joints on the up-pipes are the shortest ones I could fine, they're from Vibrant and I think they're 4.5" long.

2.5" diameter. OMG.
Shortest I found is 3".

http://reidwashbon.com/racing_parts_rac ... llows.aspx Inconel when you play with the big boys.



http://www.pacificp.com/store/index.php ... cts_id=409 Stainless steel. You will have to give them a call for their specs. Their parts caught my eye at SEMA. Not directly Saab related but some applcablity like inconel heat shields for the turbine side of turbos and their exhaust fab components

[DrewP]

I think I've seen some of that before, pretty sexy.

Yeah. The up-pipes off each manifold and the wastegate is all 2.5" tubing, the downpipe and rest of the exhaust is 4".... I was working on my '85 yesterday with a 3" downpipe and it looked comically small....

It's got a 60mm wastegate for God's sake, the whole car is a monster.

[DrewP]

Then it was time to put the engine back in. Easy to see the orientation of the exhaust manifolds like this:










We had engine mounts waterjet cut from steel plate and rolled caps to box them in. The engine mounts sit on the factory Z3 rubbers.







They are curved for clearance. The downpipe passes through here, pointed right at the starter before it turns down:








...And clearance for the steering shaft on the left side.








Turbo bolted in, and exhaust going on:




Tight fit on the right side, downpipe passes through the loop of the up-pipe and squeezes past the block, the lower crossmember, and the engine mount.
















Then induction went in. The guy I am working with did this in tandem while I was building exhaust and was also pretty choice bits of artwork.

He made the intercooler end tanks here to take the most advantage of the minimal amount of real estate in the front bumper area. The left side mounts right off the compressor housing, right side curls up through a notch in the inner fender and up to the throttle body.



















While that went together I tackled the wiring.

Most of what I needed to tap in to was already in the right side inner fender where the engine fuse/relay box and DME sat. A few other leads I ran over from the big X100(?) round diagnostic connector on the left side, like switched +12v from the ignition that I used to close the ECU relays.

Wiring for the cluster was a little tricky. I ended up using a cluster from a '96 318i which does not have the CANbus wiring to drive the tach, engine coolant temp, check engine light, and a few other things.

We are set up to build industrial electrical installations so we have a really nice labeller that prints on heat shrink tube to be able to identify everything. Made hooking things up really quick once I was done staring at wiring diagrams and matching everything up.














I made an electrical center panel that pops into some of the studs that the factory relay box sits on. This way the whole power supply and fuse block can be easily pulled up to add or repair wiring and add more functionality later.

I salvaged one of the fuse blocks out of the old BMW box, and made a little strap clamp to hold it fixed to the plate. The two relays both close at ignition key on and each 40A relay supplies 4 circuits of switched power, and there are two circuits of constant battery +12v power for things like the radiator fan speed controller.

That gives me a total of 10 fused circuits (8 switched and 2 constant) for each branch of power for the GM ECU (injector/coil power by bank, O2 sensor heaters, MAF supply power, etc.) so the power supply scheme is the same as it would be in the GTO to make troubleshooting easier down the road.














With everything labelled up ready for connections:








All of the connections are double heat-shrink, with adhesive lined heat-shrinkable butt splices for weather proofing, and strain relief:






Panel removed for wiring:





The labelling scheme matches the GM wiring diagrams, C1, C2, and C3 are the large connectors going to the ECU. The other sides of the junction is labelled to match the BMW diagrams.







Here's the electrical center finished with standalone radiator fan controller visible to the left, mounted to the inner fender:

[gmreider]

After seeing the complexity in your project here, It is no wonder that you enjoy fooling around with old SAAB's. Old SAABS look so simple , when you compare to that crazy thing you guys are building.
Wonderful job !!!!

[Geoff]

I want one of those heat shrink label machines. I think Tom used one of those when he built the wiring in the 99 I bought from him.

Are you working on this during the day or after hours?

[DrewP]

This has been going during the day. We've been a little slow at work the last few months waiting for a few big jobs that are out for quote, and the work we did have didn't need too many extra people.

The joy of a privately held company, where the owner sits amongst the rest of the mere mortals he employs.

And yes - I definitely enjoy the simplicity of my classic cars as well as all of the new fancy electronics.


----------------------


The label printer we have is a Brady ID-Expert, the labeller is about $400, and $30-$50 per cartridge for refills. You average 80-125 labels per cartridge depending on how long they are for the continuous rolls, and the pre-cut rolls are 100 labels.

[Geoff]

Cool, it looks like you can pick up a used or older Dymo Rhino label printer for $40-$50 and then buy heat shrink label from Newegg for ~$30 for 5 feet. I'll have to try to remember that.

[DrewP]

^^^ Yeah, I'd get me one of those for my shop.

[DrewP]

This is before we got a turbo map loaded, not actually getting into the boost as it throws the car into limp mode when the ECM sees positive pressure from the turbo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hkM3tdt9Oc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5MkAqVG_8c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Snt5mC1VNQo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCiD0tF1NHY

[squaab99t]

That thing looks like a hand full. Good luck to the owner not stuffing it.