I can only think that the fabled MM company is experiencing some life altering changes, maybe their suppliers, management, build crew, whatever, something has changed. How can such a well regarded company have so many screw-ups on one motor, and a dam expensive one at that? They screwed up not just your motor, but your attitude, and your love for the e-30 as well. I dont know what to say, brother, except that I feel bad..
Geoff:(
I think that when I placed my order, it was during an unusually "busy" time for them. MM is a team or 4-6 people. From talking to them, they are a very close group, basically family to one another. Friends I have talked to that have had engines built for other makes of car have ALL said that almost every engine builder they have dealt with is "great at building engines, not so great at running the business." Despite the screw-ups, MM is at least 100% behind me on this. Knowing what I know now, I could have manage them a little differently. My usual "hands-off" approach to things was not appropriate here. If I send them nagging emails with bullet lists of what I need done, it gets done fine. My suspicion is that they would not have these issues any longer if they doubled their staff, but I can see how they want to keep things small so that they have tight control over their builds.
Despite the "oopses" with them, I have a hard time getting mad because they are genuinely good people. At this point, I have to assume that they have burned through their margins with my engine and are just putting money into it to make it right for me. They are going to re-burn the chip and hand-select the injectors this time around, too.
Sorry to hear that you're having all these issues! Running a larger injector is not a bad thing other than that they should all be of the same said type, make sure that they all actually flow nearly the same, and that the tuning is exactly meant for those injectors. Running too rich will wash down your cylinders and decrease your octane and cause havoc for your tune. I'll be running 24lb inj's in my set up as well. Your spring condition could be as simple as some sort of harmonics in the motor that they're not agreeing with.
One thing that you have to remember is that this is not a proven said up yet!! Yes there are 2.1L motors running around here and there BUT they are all different!! There is nothing standard about any 2.1L that I have ever read about, whether it be piston choice, inj's, to AFM or not to AFM is the question, cams, exhaust, to port the head or not, etc... etc... YOU can't expect a set of inj's and chip sent to you to be perfect for YOUR motor, UNLESS the motor was installed in a car and tuned. Then that would be your tune and your tune only. Anytime you change one parameter of the motor, it should be retuned. I'm not saying that it won't run, it just isn't optimal for that motor anymore.
When chips and/or inj. set ups are sold off the shelf they go off of a standard baseline. Usually a stock motor, or X cam on the intake an Y cam on the exhaust or what have you, OR even an upgraded this or that can be the norm but it's still off of a baseline engine. These set ups are usually in a car and tuned specifically for those upgrades within a safety range so that they can be mass produced. Let's think about that for a moment......How many 2.1L or stroked M42's are REALLY out there? Do you think that any of them are the same? I highly doubt it. I know that mine is like no other out there.
You've taken such great care of your car from add ons to changes to maintaining it for daily use for how long??? Given that you just made a major change that is not proven yet should not discourage you. You are one of the pioneers as to how and how not to do these builds. Yes it sucks because it takes time away from you and your car and puts undue stress in your life, BUT we all know that there is still lots of love in that car that YOU put into it! Don't let a measly spring get your blood pressure out of sorts. Go sit in the drivers seat and just imagine what could be......
MY suggestion is......get your head fixed and prepped with whatever spring set YOU feel comfortable with. Whether you go back to the dual set up or whatever. Put the head back on. Find a GENUINE tuner near you, or take a road trip on a trailer and have your car tuned properly. You will then have piece of mind and also your most awesomest, funnest, rad M42 daily driver back and will forget what it took to get you there.
Good Luck with whatever you decide.....
Cheers,
~Ralph
Thanks Raplh. I do wonder how many calculations BMW may have done when they initially designed the M42, in terms of spring resonances and their relationship to the cam ramp angles and duration. I can see how spring selection may be far more than just picking the pre-load and travel allowance. The weird thing is that MM said that they have never seen a failure with this spring until now. Assuming that is true, then this must be a supplier quality issue. When the first one broke, the supplier recommended that they use ~230lbs of pre-load rather than the 160lbs that MM usually uses because of "coil resonance". It sort of sounds like BS to me, and MM agreed (aside form the fact that 230lbs would wear the hell out of the lifter heads & cam lobes). From reading around, it does sound like cams with a very aggressive ramp angle can be spring-killers, but I do not believe that my cams are ramped all that aggressively.
I do agree with you that I might want to look into a custom tune. The chip MM sent with the injectors was tuned on a 2.1L M42 at some point, but not mine specifically. It does sound like their 2.1L M42 build is "standard", but I take it that you believe that no two are REALLY the same enough to use a single chip?
As of now, my wife is stressing out about this because I spent a lot of money on the car and she feels like it is a big waste since it keeps breaking. We are looking at buying a house this year, so I can understand her aversion to "wasting money." At the same time, she doesn't think I should buy another car until I fix and sell the E30...which does sort of leave open certain possibilities lol. As of now, I think that the optimal course of action is to get HER a nicer newer car than her 2003 Civic LX, then we keep the Civic as the dependable/beater car, and maybe then I can also keep the E30. Regardless of what happens with the E30, my wife and I need TWO reliable cars. The E30 will never fall into that category, and I am sort of a dummy for thinking that it ever would lol. "Reliable" to me means "going 12 months without having to pull the timing case covers", but I am starting to see that my definition has sort of been shaped by owning an E30 for 12 years haha.
Guess the 36# i have in my engine are probably a little over sized...but 25mpg average
Wow. Well, I suppose that you never have to worry about burning them up with too high of a duty cycle!
