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The Buchka 242 Daily Driver

Standard valves still. The shop that rebuilt the head looked everything over and said it was fine, also it doesn't have a whole lot of miles on it so it should be ok.:e-shrug:

I think the standard valves are fine, they just need to get replaced after a while (they tend to crack and have a portion break off)

If its low mileage it will hopefully be fine.
 
you really have an eye for clean packaging and design. I like that cooler duct/scoop quite a bit, is that ABS plastic?

what's that fancy pants vacuum line?

I believe it's ABS. The duct was something that Homer cooked up, I just rode his coattails to success.

The vacuum line on the wastegates is just plain red silicone hose covered with Insultherm fiberglass sleeving to make it less of an eyesore.

My bad; it's easy to overlook the fact that there are two different shrouds in use for the GTX28/30/35 product lines. Next time I'll think about whether or not I should have been born at all.

You are bad and should feel bad.

Awesome as usual! Do you have that r53 pump running at a set speed or does the rpm change with load?

The pump is kinda dumb in that you can't actively control the speed but it has enough brains to make it useful. It's triggered by the alternator exciter wire so it won't start running until the alternator is actually charging the battery. Normally it just idles and consumes something like 8A. When it detects a drop in outlet pressure it ramps up to peak speed and draws about 60A. Dead simple wiring along with the external reservoir made it very easy to package and integrate. The factory high pressure line is this o-ring sealed plate dongus, i just cut the tube off and welded a -6 AN fitting to it.
 
Normally it just idles and consumes something like 8A. When it detects a drop in outlet pressure it ramps up to peak speed and draws about 60A. .

Funny I'd been looking at the v50/s40/c30 pumps for kind of the same reason. They have 2 extra wires that I'm thinking might be a PWM control for it. I'm not sure.

Either way, looks like a great option where a normal PS pump wont fit or work. Been thinking about it for the truck actually :rofl:
 
Did a little more digging on the issues with them: the fans are the weak spots on the R53 pump. Pulled up the records for my Mini and each time it's been the pump fan dying (no sensor or signal)
 
I like your use of the V8 aux belt tensioner. Creative and clean.

Funny I'd been looking at the v50/s40/c30 pumps for kind of the same reason. They have 2 extra wires that I'm thinking might be a PWM control for it. I'm not sure.

Either way, looks like a great option where a normal PS pump wont fit or work. Been thinking about it for the truck actually :rofl:

The two extra wires on the P1 pump is a CAN connection.

jordan
 
Did a little more digging on the issues with them: the fans are the weak spots on the R53 pump. Pulled up the records for my Mini and each time it's been the pump fan dying (no sensor or signal)

Good thing I mitigated that failure by never even installing a fan.

I like your use of the V8 aux belt tensioner. Creative and clean.


jordan

Sharp eye. I actually stole the whole thing off the engine for the Fake Race Car, including the turnbuckle that tensions it.
 
Had a bunch of initial problems with vacuum leaks around the lower injector o-rings. The ID1000 injectors I'm running are a tad longer than the factory S54 injectors and the o-rings weren't seating properly in the bores. I ended up making new brackets for the fuel rail and replaced the o-rings with ones that have a larger rope diameter.

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Here's a shot of the oil pooling inside the intake ports that I mentioned in the last update. This kicked off a headache of epic proportions.

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Every single port was soaked in oil and four out of six had pools of oil on the valves. The intake manifold, charge plumbing, and PCV system were all dry so it was definitely coming from the valve stem seals. Long story boring the first shop screwed the head up completely and all the work they did was suspect. I ended up dropping it off at Ed Pink Racing Engines and just asked them to fix everything. Got the head back after about two weeks ready to go. They did a kick-ass job and I won't let anyone else but them touch engine machine work from now on.

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Got everything bolted back together and running smoothly. Karl and I struggled a bit with the fuel calibration, turns out a turbo and ITB's is a bit more complex than either of us are used to. Our calibration expert friend Neel came out and dropped some knowledge bombs on us, with his help we had the fuel map pretty damn solid in a matter of 20 minutes. Still tons of driveability work left but I can chip away at that pretty easily myself over the next few weeks.

Made a simple bracket that wedges in place into the lower cubby that holds a couple of auxiliary oil pressure and temperature gauges.

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Last night Karl and I were out tuning around the shop when the ECU suddenly started tripping a bunch of e-throttle plausability checks. Realized pretty quickly that the e-throttle actuator wasn't working. We figured it was some roached wires inside the actuator or burned up motor windings but upon disassembly noticed that one of the intermediate gears was cracked.

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This was likely caused by me not adjusting the throttle linkage properly and letting the motor hammer the hard stop inside the actuator whenever the throttles closed. Swapped in a spare gear, adjusted the linkage, and reduced the minimum h-bridge duty cycle to reduce load a bit.

After a few more hours of farting around and fiddling with tip-in and tip-out cal the car just up and died. Had to flat-tow it back to the shop. We looked over the data logs, did some testing, and realized the cam sensor had taken a big dump and was effectively shorting the ECU's 5v rail to ground. I'm going to swap in a spare sensor tomorrow and go back out for some more tuning, working on blending in some IAC valve airflow at low throttle positions to make the car behave better from about 0%-1.5% throttle.
 
Right after fixing the e-throttle gear Karl and I were driving around doing some calibration and the car started running like absolute crap. The +5v sensor bus on the ECU was browning out badly and causing all kinds of weird symptoms. Flat towed the car back to the shop, did some troubleshooting, and found the cam sensor was bad. Luckily I had a good spare on hand to throw in. It appears that the hall effect sensor element broke free inside the sensor housing and got nice and blended by the trigger wheel:

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Went to a local cars and coffee event, just drove the car around for a while. Noticed I was getting some coolant seeping from the expansion tank barb on the radiator. When I went to tighten the hose clamp I realized the tang on the clamp had smashed into the hood and broken the barb on my brand new Nissens 940 turbo radiator. Derp. A new one was only $130 on rockauto but it still sucked.

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Been daily driving the car the last week or so, just enjoying it. The turbo comes on crazy fast with the twin scroll exhaust housing and it scoots pretty good at just 10psi of boost and conservative timing. Pretty excited to put some more timing in it and turn up the boost a bit.

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The car is in dire need of a better axle setup so I've been chipping away at my aluminum diff housing that I picked up a few years ago. I have a clutch type limited slip and a 3.73 gear set to go with it. Ended up getting a full floater conversion from Sellholm Tuning in Sweden as well. Hoping to shave 85lbs or so off the weight of the rear axle once this is all put together.

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As usual the only response to your posts is wow.

Did you get the floater kit used or does Sellholm still make them? I couldn't find them on their website, but I also can't read Swedish.

Are you going to do a Watt's linkage setup as well?
 
The amount of work that has gone into this thing so far in 2019 is staggering - and the results are awesome. It's so smooth and refined while cruising but it wakes up almost instantly when you roll into the throttle. Doesn't have that BMWesque blatty exhaust note now but I actually like the low-key stealth turbo sound even more.
 
Thanks dudes, I'm also very excited to see how the final weight of the axle comes out. Here's the short run down of the parts I'm using:

1030 aluminum center section
Dana 30 LSD
Sellholm Tuning full floater conversion
3"x.120" 4130 axle tubes
Wilwood rotors and aluminum hats
Audi B5 S4 aluminum calipers with integrated parking brake

As usual the only response to your posts is wow.

Did you get the floater kit used or does Sellholm still make them? I couldn't find them on their website, but I also can't read Swedish.

Are you going to do a Watt's linkage setup as well?

Thanks Tate. I just e-mailed sellholm and bought it. All the parts were in stock and shipped next day. No watts link on this axle. The aluminum housing is split down the middle of the bearings and won't accept a watts link diff cover. I'm pretty happy with the panhard rod anyway.

The amount of work that has gone into this thing so far in 2019 is staggering - and the results are awesome. It's so smooth and refined while cruising but it wakes up almost instantly when you roll into the throttle. Doesn't have that BMWesque blatty exhaust note now but I actually like the low-key stealth turbo sound even more.

It's been a slog for sure but I'm still excited to make it better. A+#1 turbo match on this engine though. The boost response is awesome and fills in a ton of mid range torque.

IIRC, he builds all the engines for Singer?

Yes, Ed Pink builds all the engines for Singer cars. I saw two or three complete engines ready for pickup when I was there with the cylinder head. Couldn't be happier with their service and attention to detail.
 
Thanks Tate. I just e-mailed sellholm and bought it. All the parts were in stock and shipped next day. No watts link on this axle. The aluminum housing is split down the middle of the bearings and won't accept a watts link diff cover. I'm pretty happy with the panhard rod anyway.

may I be slightly impolite and ask how much it cost all said and done? Approx numbers fine of course just trying to get a sense of the investment required.
 
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