Quote:
Originally Posted by swamp2
..from my perspective it is a bit like polishing a turd. The OEM system is far too heavy and far too ugly to have such fine and detailed customization thrown at it.
|
Polishing a turd. Haha, I like that. For me, there were a few big advantages to using the stock exhaust, such as:
- I didnt have to spend $2500+ on an aftermarket one (or the parts to make one) then another $700 on the valve parts
- It retains some of the stock appearance (sleeper)
- I know exactly what I'm going to get when the valves are closed, because thats what was on before.
- It would seem to me that the service department would give me less of an issue than if I had a totally aftermarket exhaust, although when I spoke to my service department about that, they didnt seem to really care what I do to my car, so I guess this point is mute.
- Also, remember that the oem system was tuned by BMW to eliminate drone with the Helmholtz chamber. Now, I don't know if I've seriously affected the tuning of it with my mods, but there seems to be a good chance I haven't. I wont know till I fire it up, open the valves and drive, but it seems likely to me that apparent drone should be very minimal to nonexistant.
Quote:
Originally Posted by McLuVan
damn that's some nice welding
|
He was actually pretty upset with how they came out. Sam has pretty high standards for his work, but I think the welds are awesome considering the gap he had to fill. He didnt even want me to posts pics of them!
You know, in the end, they are just welds and who the hell is going to look under my car and say wow those welds arent perfect?!?!
The reality is they are strong as hell and certainly wont break/leak.
--------------------------------------------------
[Long Term Valve update] For anyone considering buying Race Ready Valves, you should read this first:
http://www.m3post.com/forums/showthr...40#post9589740
Changing gears, I spent some time tonight messing with the switch section of this project. My plan was to embed the wireless receiver inside of the oem headlight assembly, but there was not a lot of room and the buttons didn't line up that great. Also, it would have been hard to retain a good button feel (you know, sort of long throw and squishy). So, I was forced to put the wireless remote externally. When I took a good look at the BMW circuit board, I realized that with a couple mods, I could actually use the switch assembly to activate my wireless controller. Onto the pics!
This shows the three soldering points I had to make. I tested the pads with a multimeter first to make sure that I was hitting the right pads for each button (open and close). I drilled a small hole in the enclosure for the exiting wires.
This shot shows all of the internals of the oem headlight assembly and my parts. Yes, those are legos.
I've soldered on the other end of the leads to the oem circuit board now. I'm pressing one of the button pads to illuminate the led (left edge of the remote as shown). Interestingly, there are two pads for each button - the one to the right of my finger is identical in its operation. Oh, btw careful when removing the stock parts from the car, I sliced the hell out of my finger - the edges are really sharp.
These are two lego parts that I assembled. I didn't create this idea, its fairly common with the fog light mod guys, but I used different parts than them to get the right feel. I've epoxied them together so they dont fall apart [UPDATE: after 1.5 years, still holding strong and feels great!].
This is showing a step that was necessary so that my fog lights didnt come on when I press the buttons. I snipped the pins correlating to the two buttons so that they did not make contact to the car's wiring harness. I didn't snip the third common pin because it was shared with the center dial as well. So far, the car doesn't seem to mind!
Everything is in its place now ready for snapping back together.Note that I filled the backside of the lego blocks. I found that after a lot of button presses, the rubber pad things from the circuit board tended to wander into the middle of the lego block. This also gave the button a better feel, perhaps because its using both pads now instead of maybe one.
Testing the buttons, all is well. The top button will open the valves, the bottom will close them.
I hooked up the wiring to test the assembly and check the range. I was able to go a decent 40 feet and still make it work. This is a decent remote setup. It will loose some range when installed in the dash, but not much probably, and it will certainly be strong enough to reach the controller box in the trunk.
Valve open..
The rest of the surrounds and the left button blank are on now. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.
I just used industrial velcro to attach it to the back of the headlight switch assembly. the batteries in these remotes are pretty good, so I'm not too worried about having to remove the switch to put a new one in. I didnt take any tools to remove the dash panels, just grippy fingers.
The dash pieces are just held into place with those blue resistance pegs. A gently slow tug is all you need to get them off, or push them on. You can see the connector here for the headlight switch. You slide that lighter gray bit left to right to release the connector.
The headlight switch has a lip there so you have to take the vent piece off first.
Looking stock! I may design and cut some vinyl stickers of little tail pipes to go over the buttons later.
Thanks for watching and the comments!