Lucifer's Hammer Part 2
Posted: Dec 09, 2006 1:43 PM
Lucifer's Hammer Series Index: Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 • Part 5 • Part 6 • Part 7 • Part 8 • Part 9 • Part 10 • Part 11 • Part 12 • Part 13 • Part 14 • Photos
OK. The CD with 400 MB of pics got sent off to graphite yesterday, so hopefully in the coming week we can look at this stuff. This chapter deals with the process and events I went through in arriving at the decision to first stroke the engine and then to go FI.
Stroking. I live in Denver. Actually a ways out of town at an altitude of about 6200 feet. This automatically means air pressure is down about 20% from sea level, and reduces power by about the same amount. This means a stock S38 which gives 256 fwhp at sea level is doing about 205 fwhp at best. Given the fact that I do a fair amount of driving up and over Colorado's passes --10500 to 12000 feet, the additional power shortfalls are very apparent. Since the opportunities to run up top on the power band are fairly limited, I wanted to look at how I could increase torque lower down. I do get chances to take the rig out to Cali, as I still have business there. This lets me do some autobahn-type activities on some of the lesser-used roads in Nevada and Utah.
So upper-end performance was definitely on the agenda.
In the spring of 2002, a routine Inspection 2 identified a number of items needing attention. These were the result of normal wear and tear and aging , rather than abuse or neglect. The cat was definitely on its way out, and the cat back section of the exhaust was beginning to rust out after 125,000 miles. Note here: Once back home in Colo the '5 was and is parked during the winter to avoid the mix of pea gravel salt and mag chloride that CDOT spews on our roads.
Car "came home" with no rust and I'll keep it that way, thank you.
The leakdown test showed 14-20% losses. Nothing individually bad on rings, guides or seals; just a motor showing it's age and use. OIl consumption had begun to creep up from nil to a bit less than a quart in 3000 miles.
Engine options. First approach was looking for a new crate long block, or a BMW factory reman. Dealer inquiries revealed both options were NLA. The second approach was to locate a long block through Maximillian or a similar source. Same story. Part of the idea at this time was to put the replacement long block on the shelf and refresh the current unit. This led to the third avenue which was to rebuild the present motor, but look at getting more out of it. In doing research on dealers and indies, I found that the BMW dealers in the Frunt Wrange have NO interest in having anything to do with engine rebuilds, or rebuilds of anything else for that matter. They have become parts-swappers pure and simple. Similarly, most of the indie shops are not oriented to major drivetrain projects.
I looked at getting a crate S38B38, which was available at the time, but hugely expensive and would require mucho rework on the electricals, ECU and God knows what else. I was trying to do this with as little pain as possible.
With little or no interest locally, the next step was to reestablish contact with Jeff Hecox and Declan Doyle at Dinan. My relationship with Dinan's went back to 1989 when they had installed a Stage IV suspension and chip in the car. My relationship with Jeff and Declan had always been cordial. In 1999 I had DE do some maintenance work on the car while in Silicon Valley on business. At that time I asked Declan about turboing a 3.9 stroker. This out of idle curiosity.
The answer wasn't encouraging, and would have been frighteningly expensive. Little did I know . . . Declan indicated DE was out of the engine modification business as far as non-current production motors were concerned.
The reason for this is fairly straightforward. CARB has granted Dinan Engineering certification as a Manufacturer. This means items they sell or modify in their business all must meet CARB emissions standards and receive certification. Reworking a customer's engine falls under this rubric. Granted they did turbos on M30s and S38s in the past, but those engines are now regarded as obsolete. The number of S38s sold in the US was never very large. Since Dinan is first and foremost, a business, putting effort, dollars and manpower into supporting a small and decreasing market made no sense. We may not like it, but them's is the realities, folks.
In the late summer of 2002, I was not plugged into the M5 boards and had very little in the way of a network for finding anyone who had expertise in the M5 or its drivetrain. I had kept copies of the early 90s "M-Register," anewsletter devoted to M-cars. I pulled these and came up with Frank Fahey's ads and phone #. Thus in August 2002 I called FF regarding an engine rebuild. This led into conversations about stroking and a 4-liter crankshaft. More of this anon.
I remembered Korman Autoworks had done a lot of racing and reworking of BMWs back in the 70s and 80s; a friend in Cali had used some of Korman's bits and pieces on a heavily-tweaked 2002. Thus I got in touch with Korman's people and did some intensive research into having KAW do a rebuild. Cost were high when compared to Metric Mechanic. Jim Rowe sent his literature and we had a couple of conversations about specifics, but a lot of the answers got pretty vague. Unsettling.
Some history on the stroker crank project. The discussions with Hecox, Doyle and Fahey provided a bit of background on the stroker cranks. On the S38B35, the factory 90 mm cranks are usable, but require reworking the front cover plates. The 90 mm will give 3.7 liters, using the stock 93.4 mm bore. Increase the stroke to 92 mm and open the bores up to 95 mm and displacement gets to 3912 cc. Dinan kept the displacement at 3880 by leaving a bit more material in the cylinder walls and keeping the bores around 94.6 mm.
Fahey and Dinan cooperated on having SCAT do a run of billet cranks wit a 92 mm throw. Fahey indicated there were a total of about 48 made. Dinan took the lion's share of these. Frank did a QC once-over on the run. There was a significant number of rejects, a fact that did not please anyone, thus running up the original cost and making SCAT less than enthusiastic about repeating the exercise. SCAT concentrates on cranks for the drag and stock car crowd. The S38 crank run was a fill-in job for them; they regarded it as too small to make any kind of profit.
During the early 90s, Racing Dynamics S.p.A. (the Italian company, not the US outfit), also did a very limited number of S38 billet stroker cranks. I think these were made by one of the race car component shops in England. Don't recall who. I spoke to RD about getting one. NLA, but I did locate one in the hands of a third party who wanted waaay too much for it.
Fahey and I hadn't connected on the stroker crank avenue. He wanted me to fund the $$$ to do a run at SCAT. Frank thought that SCAT could be approached about doing a very small run if the entire order was prepaid and that delivery wasn't time-critical. A dozen or so units at around $4,000 each. Front 50 Large. I would take one of the run, and when all had sold I would recover my investment. Phat Chance. This led to my introducing myself to the Roadfly board and putting out the possibility of a run of 92 or 94 mm cranks. Responses were not encouraging. People want the cranks for junkyard prices.
As far as the the cost of Fahey doing a motor, "Send me 25 grand. When it's gone, I'll let you know." Rowe was being less than forthcoming on how MM tuned their motors. "We don't use a dyno. We do it in the car with a multimeter in series between the ECU and the O2 sensor." Further third party conversations raised some unsettling information about the internals. Thus, MM was out of the picture, and FF seemed like a money pit. Korman's pricing was high, knowing what certain parts cost, comparing them to the Korman catalog and looking at labor charges. For whatever reason, which I've forgotten, I didn't pursue looking at some of the builders in the Northeast US.
Somewhere along in here--late 2002--I began lurking on the myE28.com board, which was just picking up speed. References therein identified an engine builder as THE wizard on S38 and S70 motors. Further digging on Roadfly yielded an extensive set of posts regarding this guy. Reading through these, the sentiments expressed were glowing. So phone calls were made. I outlined what I wanted to do. Refresh the S38 and see what could be done to deliver more power. I was thinking I wanted to get sea-level performance at Denver's altitude. In other words, looking for around 320 fwhp at sea level. The engine builder (EB for the rest of this story) was at first noncommital, but agreed to work up a bid sheet and go over some options.
Around the first of the year 2003, I got the estimate. EB's numbers were about in line with Korman and Fahey. Metric Mechanic (Jim Rowe) was being evasive about details on their 4-liter stroker motors. I was having little results on finding a stroker crank through Racing Dynamics or anyone else for that matter--new, used or whatever. Being pig-headed, I didn't want to use a factory 90 mm. Meanwhile, EB said "I can do that. I have a source which builds stroker cranks for my 6-liter V12 conversions." Time frames laid out sounded reasonable, numbers had some validity, references checked out through the web.
So in early February 2003, $ got sent for a parts deposit, delivery estimated in about 4 months. Which, in fact, happened. It was to be the last on-time event. Between February and June, further phone conversations modified the original "refresh, but at 4 liters" concept to include a dual VANOS timing setup. EB said he had worked through the engineering for another client (who had decided to go in a different direction due to time issues). Not cheap--cost would add about $2500--but a good way to push toward the 4 liters/400fwhp target I wanted to achieve. So in mid-June 2003 the car was delivered to EB's shop.
My first impression was a bit of a letdown. The writeups on myE28.com and Roadfly led me to expect a very sophisticated albeit small operation. Reality was something less. No hoists or engine clean room, parts piled more or less randomly. No flow bench, no machine tools, etc. But there was an engine dyno! One sees what one wants to see. EB said he jobbed out a lot of his work. "This area is a hotbed of shops who do stuff for racing teams, so I draw on their expertise." Numerous cars/projects in various stages of completion. Many collecting dust (literally). "This guy ran out of money. This guy is going through a divorce." Etc. All plausible explanations.
EB pulled out the parts for my car. Crank was described as one of a run which had come in from Moldex--both 6 cyl and 12 cyl units. Pistons frome Wiseco, valves from the BMW store.
For a brief few minutes I considered simply taking delivery on my parts, thanking EB for his efforts and heading home. The quandary I was facing was trying to find a shop in the Front Range who would take on the S38 rebuild. At the time, the only indie shop who had anything close to a dedicated engine shop was Autowerks in Broomfield. Autowerks had a very heavy Porsche and E46M3 focus. Not a lot of interest in doing an S38 which they regarded as something out of the Paleolithic. Shop had a genuine attitude.
The detailed conversations with EB in mid-June 2003 worked around looking at how to accomplish three objectives. 1. Getting the maximum amount of power out of the S38B35 block. 2. Doing so while maintaining driveability and longevity at least equal to a stock motor and 3. meeting Colorado's IM-240 emissions requirements. The latter from a practical perspective rather than any environmental sensitivities on my part.
Those parameters being given, trying to go to extremes on cams or very high compression would make emissions compliance a very near thing. At the same time altitude was taking a 20% bite on delivered power outputs. The possibility of a turbo was discussed early on in the spring of 2003, but set aside, due to uncertainties regarding reliability, component availability (primarily the manifold) and possible emissions concerns. In retrospect, I realize just how much I had to do to come up the learning curve. . . .
That being said, I raised the possibility with EB, who responded with alacrity. At this point , EB was working on turbocharging another M5, this one using a number of ex-Dinan parts. This project was presented to me as being several months further along, thus providing a test bed/guinea pig for a turbo on my car.
Working with limited levels of boost, the turbo offered a way to eliminate the 20% altitude penalty and get power-to-weight levels which offered some really remarkable performance. Some price to be paid in terms of ultimate motor longevity, but worth the tradeoff. Cost would add 20-30% to the project plus a couple of months added time. EB was of the opinion that fabricating the exhaust manifold would pace the project, but wouldn't add more than a month or so to the timeline. the Dinan manifolds being NLA. So turbo it was to be.
OK. The CD with 400 MB of pics got sent off to graphite yesterday, so hopefully in the coming week we can look at this stuff. This chapter deals with the process and events I went through in arriving at the decision to first stroke the engine and then to go FI.
Stroking. I live in Denver. Actually a ways out of town at an altitude of about 6200 feet. This automatically means air pressure is down about 20% from sea level, and reduces power by about the same amount. This means a stock S38 which gives 256 fwhp at sea level is doing about 205 fwhp at best. Given the fact that I do a fair amount of driving up and over Colorado's passes --10500 to 12000 feet, the additional power shortfalls are very apparent. Since the opportunities to run up top on the power band are fairly limited, I wanted to look at how I could increase torque lower down. I do get chances to take the rig out to Cali, as I still have business there. This lets me do some autobahn-type activities on some of the lesser-used roads in Nevada and Utah.
So upper-end performance was definitely on the agenda.In the spring of 2002, a routine Inspection 2 identified a number of items needing attention. These were the result of normal wear and tear and aging , rather than abuse or neglect. The cat was definitely on its way out, and the cat back section of the exhaust was beginning to rust out after 125,000 miles. Note here: Once back home in Colo the '5 was and is parked during the winter to avoid the mix of pea gravel salt and mag chloride that CDOT spews on our roads.
Car "came home" with no rust and I'll keep it that way, thank you.The leakdown test showed 14-20% losses. Nothing individually bad on rings, guides or seals; just a motor showing it's age and use. OIl consumption had begun to creep up from nil to a bit less than a quart in 3000 miles.
Engine options. First approach was looking for a new crate long block, or a BMW factory reman. Dealer inquiries revealed both options were NLA. The second approach was to locate a long block through Maximillian or a similar source. Same story. Part of the idea at this time was to put the replacement long block on the shelf and refresh the current unit. This led to the third avenue which was to rebuild the present motor, but look at getting more out of it. In doing research on dealers and indies, I found that the BMW dealers in the Frunt Wrange have NO interest in having anything to do with engine rebuilds, or rebuilds of anything else for that matter. They have become parts-swappers pure and simple. Similarly, most of the indie shops are not oriented to major drivetrain projects.
I looked at getting a crate S38B38, which was available at the time, but hugely expensive and would require mucho rework on the electricals, ECU and God knows what else. I was trying to do this with as little pain as possible.
With little or no interest locally, the next step was to reestablish contact with Jeff Hecox and Declan Doyle at Dinan. My relationship with Dinan's went back to 1989 when they had installed a Stage IV suspension and chip in the car. My relationship with Jeff and Declan had always been cordial. In 1999 I had DE do some maintenance work on the car while in Silicon Valley on business. At that time I asked Declan about turboing a 3.9 stroker. This out of idle curiosity.
The answer wasn't encouraging, and would have been frighteningly expensive. Little did I know . . . Declan indicated DE was out of the engine modification business as far as non-current production motors were concerned.The reason for this is fairly straightforward. CARB has granted Dinan Engineering certification as a Manufacturer. This means items they sell or modify in their business all must meet CARB emissions standards and receive certification. Reworking a customer's engine falls under this rubric. Granted they did turbos on M30s and S38s in the past, but those engines are now regarded as obsolete. The number of S38s sold in the US was never very large. Since Dinan is first and foremost, a business, putting effort, dollars and manpower into supporting a small and decreasing market made no sense. We may not like it, but them's is the realities, folks.
In the late summer of 2002, I was not plugged into the M5 boards and had very little in the way of a network for finding anyone who had expertise in the M5 or its drivetrain. I had kept copies of the early 90s "M-Register," anewsletter devoted to M-cars. I pulled these and came up with Frank Fahey's ads and phone #. Thus in August 2002 I called FF regarding an engine rebuild. This led into conversations about stroking and a 4-liter crankshaft. More of this anon.
I remembered Korman Autoworks had done a lot of racing and reworking of BMWs back in the 70s and 80s; a friend in Cali had used some of Korman's bits and pieces on a heavily-tweaked 2002. Thus I got in touch with Korman's people and did some intensive research into having KAW do a rebuild. Cost were high when compared to Metric Mechanic. Jim Rowe sent his literature and we had a couple of conversations about specifics, but a lot of the answers got pretty vague. Unsettling.
Some history on the stroker crank project. The discussions with Hecox, Doyle and Fahey provided a bit of background on the stroker cranks. On the S38B35, the factory 90 mm cranks are usable, but require reworking the front cover plates. The 90 mm will give 3.7 liters, using the stock 93.4 mm bore. Increase the stroke to 92 mm and open the bores up to 95 mm and displacement gets to 3912 cc. Dinan kept the displacement at 3880 by leaving a bit more material in the cylinder walls and keeping the bores around 94.6 mm.
Fahey and Dinan cooperated on having SCAT do a run of billet cranks wit a 92 mm throw. Fahey indicated there were a total of about 48 made. Dinan took the lion's share of these. Frank did a QC once-over on the run. There was a significant number of rejects, a fact that did not please anyone, thus running up the original cost and making SCAT less than enthusiastic about repeating the exercise. SCAT concentrates on cranks for the drag and stock car crowd. The S38 crank run was a fill-in job for them; they regarded it as too small to make any kind of profit.
During the early 90s, Racing Dynamics S.p.A. (the Italian company, not the US outfit), also did a very limited number of S38 billet stroker cranks. I think these were made by one of the race car component shops in England. Don't recall who. I spoke to RD about getting one. NLA, but I did locate one in the hands of a third party who wanted waaay too much for it.
Fahey and I hadn't connected on the stroker crank avenue. He wanted me to fund the $$$ to do a run at SCAT. Frank thought that SCAT could be approached about doing a very small run if the entire order was prepaid and that delivery wasn't time-critical. A dozen or so units at around $4,000 each. Front 50 Large. I would take one of the run, and when all had sold I would recover my investment. Phat Chance. This led to my introducing myself to the Roadfly board and putting out the possibility of a run of 92 or 94 mm cranks. Responses were not encouraging. People want the cranks for junkyard prices.
As far as the the cost of Fahey doing a motor, "Send me 25 grand. When it's gone, I'll let you know." Rowe was being less than forthcoming on how MM tuned their motors. "We don't use a dyno. We do it in the car with a multimeter in series between the ECU and the O2 sensor." Further third party conversations raised some unsettling information about the internals. Thus, MM was out of the picture, and FF seemed like a money pit. Korman's pricing was high, knowing what certain parts cost, comparing them to the Korman catalog and looking at labor charges. For whatever reason, which I've forgotten, I didn't pursue looking at some of the builders in the Northeast US.
Somewhere along in here--late 2002--I began lurking on the myE28.com board, which was just picking up speed. References therein identified an engine builder as THE wizard on S38 and S70 motors. Further digging on Roadfly yielded an extensive set of posts regarding this guy. Reading through these, the sentiments expressed were glowing. So phone calls were made. I outlined what I wanted to do. Refresh the S38 and see what could be done to deliver more power. I was thinking I wanted to get sea-level performance at Denver's altitude. In other words, looking for around 320 fwhp at sea level. The engine builder (EB for the rest of this story) was at first noncommital, but agreed to work up a bid sheet and go over some options.
Around the first of the year 2003, I got the estimate. EB's numbers were about in line with Korman and Fahey. Metric Mechanic (Jim Rowe) was being evasive about details on their 4-liter stroker motors. I was having little results on finding a stroker crank through Racing Dynamics or anyone else for that matter--new, used or whatever. Being pig-headed, I didn't want to use a factory 90 mm. Meanwhile, EB said "I can do that. I have a source which builds stroker cranks for my 6-liter V12 conversions." Time frames laid out sounded reasonable, numbers had some validity, references checked out through the web.
So in early February 2003, $ got sent for a parts deposit, delivery estimated in about 4 months. Which, in fact, happened. It was to be the last on-time event. Between February and June, further phone conversations modified the original "refresh, but at 4 liters" concept to include a dual VANOS timing setup. EB said he had worked through the engineering for another client (who had decided to go in a different direction due to time issues). Not cheap--cost would add about $2500--but a good way to push toward the 4 liters/400fwhp target I wanted to achieve. So in mid-June 2003 the car was delivered to EB's shop.
My first impression was a bit of a letdown. The writeups on myE28.com and Roadfly led me to expect a very sophisticated albeit small operation. Reality was something less. No hoists or engine clean room, parts piled more or less randomly. No flow bench, no machine tools, etc. But there was an engine dyno! One sees what one wants to see. EB said he jobbed out a lot of his work. "This area is a hotbed of shops who do stuff for racing teams, so I draw on their expertise." Numerous cars/projects in various stages of completion. Many collecting dust (literally). "This guy ran out of money. This guy is going through a divorce." Etc. All plausible explanations.
EB pulled out the parts for my car. Crank was described as one of a run which had come in from Moldex--both 6 cyl and 12 cyl units. Pistons frome Wiseco, valves from the BMW store.
For a brief few minutes I considered simply taking delivery on my parts, thanking EB for his efforts and heading home. The quandary I was facing was trying to find a shop in the Front Range who would take on the S38 rebuild. At the time, the only indie shop who had anything close to a dedicated engine shop was Autowerks in Broomfield. Autowerks had a very heavy Porsche and E46M3 focus. Not a lot of interest in doing an S38 which they regarded as something out of the Paleolithic. Shop had a genuine attitude.
The detailed conversations with EB in mid-June 2003 worked around looking at how to accomplish three objectives. 1. Getting the maximum amount of power out of the S38B35 block. 2. Doing so while maintaining driveability and longevity at least equal to a stock motor and 3. meeting Colorado's IM-240 emissions requirements. The latter from a practical perspective rather than any environmental sensitivities on my part.
Those parameters being given, trying to go to extremes on cams or very high compression would make emissions compliance a very near thing. At the same time altitude was taking a 20% bite on delivered power outputs. The possibility of a turbo was discussed early on in the spring of 2003, but set aside, due to uncertainties regarding reliability, component availability (primarily the manifold) and possible emissions concerns. In retrospect, I realize just how much I had to do to come up the learning curve. . . .
That being said, I raised the possibility with EB, who responded with alacrity. At this point , EB was working on turbocharging another M5, this one using a number of ex-Dinan parts. This project was presented to me as being several months further along, thus providing a test bed/guinea pig for a turbo on my car.
Working with limited levels of boost, the turbo offered a way to eliminate the 20% altitude penalty and get power-to-weight levels which offered some really remarkable performance. Some price to be paid in terms of ultimate motor longevity, but worth the tradeoff. Cost would add 20-30% to the project plus a couple of months added time. EB was of the opinion that fabricating the exhaust manifold would pace the project, but wouldn't add more than a month or so to the timeline. the Dinan manifolds being NLA. So turbo it was to be.
You and I and a few other of his victims, excuse me, customers, are "speading the good news." 
IMHO, you're probably being charitable.
Next major additions will be a tailhook off of an F-18A and a Mark 2 flux capacitor (aka Mr. Fusion) 8)
but Jeff and Declan were being candid about the fact that the business was going in different directions than being an engine modification shop. Some WAG numbers got thrown around as to cost; these were insane. Like have a one-off on the crank and manifold. Dedicate a couple of top-dollar "prototype" employees to the job full time. Which would have impacted any number of things related to getting products into the retail sales pipeline. MmmmmmnNo. Don't think so.
More on the turbo info search as the story progresses. Stay tuned . . .
. . . LOL.