Carnage - a true story

[Jon K]

I nicknamed this past weekend "Carnage". It all started with my friend dropping off his '90 (maybe '91) E30 M3 for tuning. The car was in pretty top shape in terms of mechanical function and the last thing I expected was headaches from part failure.

Well, Thursday night I went out to get fuel in the car for friday was to be a tuning day (road tuning). My driveway is about 1000' long, and up hill for about 50% of it, very uphill (25 - 30% grade). Well, first gear creeping up the driveway, BANG. What the hell just happened? I was part throttle in first gear < 15 mph! The load of going up the driveway must have finally took its toll on the guibo bolts launching one from the car hitting the transmission tunnel with an alarming force before it dinged its way AHEAD of me on the driveway. I never did find the nut that was supposed to be on the other end, but I have a pretty mcnasty bent guibo bolt for keeping...

John (owner) had his buddy Dwayne (friend) come over on friday to fix the car - I am off every other friday and so this worked out to be convenient. Dwayne stopped by Johns work (John does heavy machinery maintenance/calibration) and grabbed bolts about the same size as what sheered off. Turns out we got an exact match w/ shoulder and away we went, having it replaced in no time. John and Dwayne hang out for a bit, then head home, I was to tune the car on Saturday for a ~70 mile [round] trip to see my GF.

I reflashed the ECU tuned the idle as best I could in the short time allotted but most importantly I fixed the modifications to allow the MS ECU to control Johns factory tachometer. I decided I would take the car down the street before I set out, just in case. Mind you I had already driven this car maybe 5 miles around town modestly. So I depart from my driveway and go about 1/4 mi down, turn into a neighborhood and come back. No less than 150' from the U-turn point, I am in 3rd gear and go almost WOT, and BANG. WTF!!! I let off, clutch in, car making a banging noise while driving. Try and crest the hill I am going up so I can possibly push it into the driveway but no such luck. I put it on the shoulder slipping the clutch with the brake on and the car does not squat under its own power, I just hear popping/banging at the rear of the car. I call a friend who pulls me the rest of the way with his truck and tow rope. Call the owner, "Yo man you won't believe this..." and yeah, we both couldn't believe it. I look at the car with the friend who towed me just to see if I can give John some information about what it might be. Everything looks fine. Then, oh, wait, that CV boot looks.... hang on... I grab the passenger side axle and it has easily 1.5" of wiggle up and down separate of the output flange. Yeah, that's broken. I have my friend slip the clutch in first with brakes on and the output spins with the axle just banging around but not spinning the wheel.

John comes Sunday while I am at the shop working on other cars and swaps out the differential in my driveway. Car still makes whacked out noises when driving. Though, this time it's normal until he gets it up to a certain speed and then it makes a popping/clunking noise again!

The axle he swapped in was from a rear end totalled E30, so there is a decent probability that this axle is bad. Grr!

Anyway, how fun does all this sound? And, I got a total of about 15 minutes of tuning done! WHOOO!!!







So yeah there is a good chance this car is just making enough power to break stock E30 parts, that or we have bad luck. This car is an S50 3.0L low compression motor swap with a Precision 60-1 turbocharger and MS2 full standalone!

[leicesterboy15]

Sounds like one of those weekends when you think 'why did I bother?'

But from your posts I know that cars are like big mecano sets for you and you can sort anything without drama.

John comes Sunday while I am at the shop working on other cars and swaps out the differential in my driveway

I love that quote, like its the same as changing a wiper blade! My only sorrow is that I can't have someone as good as you looking after my car!

I'll stop biggin you up now as I don't want your head to swell too much

Seriously tho keep up the good work!

[Jon K]

Haha this stuff isn't as difficult as you think/dealers make it sounds We take the VWs to the dragstrip regularly and until we upgraded the axles we'd break axles 1/4 passes. Once you do it a couple times this stuff only takes ~10 mins or so for an axle, or 30 mins for a differential or so. I fully understand how it seems so "easy" to us but I remember hearing people say "Oh just swap the..." and I'd be like ugh I wish. But truthfully, once you've done it a few times, it's all cake walk!

Update -- turns out that after the diff swap and the axle swap, John had put in a bad axle as I had suspected So now, the car is "fixed" and should be ready for tuning. We hope to make good power and we'll be adding methanol injection shortly! Between the driveshaft, guibo, differential, and axles, I really hope nothing serious breaks!

[Bin_jammin]

Haha this stuff isn't as difficult as you think/dealers make it sounds We take the VWs to the dragstrip regularly and until we upgraded the axles we'd break axles 1/4 passes. Once you do it a couple times this stuff only takes ~10 mins or so for an axle, or 30 mins for a differential or so. I fully understand how it seems so "easy" to us but I remember hearing people say "Oh just swap the..." and I'd be like ugh I wish. But truthfully, once you've done it a few times, it's all cake walk!

Update -- turns out that after the diff swap and the axle swap, John had put in a bad axle as I had suspected So now, the car is "fixed" and should be ready for tuning. We hope to make good power and we'll be adding methanol injection shortly! Between the driveshaft, guibo, differential, and axles, I really hope nothing serious breaks!

My money's on a loose hose clamp next.

[Jon K]

Hose clamp?

[Turbo Ready]

The axle he swapped in was from a rear end totalled E30, so there is a decent probability that this axle is bad. Grr!

I nearly cried with excitement to see such a clean E30 M3 in my favorite color, and nearly cried for days after reading John replaced the axle with a used one from a crashed e30 I can understand the reasoning if the car was needed in a hurry but if I had a car like that I would want every defective part replaced with brand new OEM components.

I know how you feel Jon K, I tell my customers to come over when we do tuning or high speed, high revs test runs. I know John is your friend so it's a different story, but even with my friends I don't drive their cars hard, just the fear of some unlucky unfortunate circumstance occurring.

Mark D and I were tuning a customers race ready e30 last weekend and we had to do some 7k RPM pulls in 3rd and 4th gear, I was just praying that nothing went wrong while I was driving though I got full permission from the customer.

[ILoveMPower]

Not very nice to drive friend's cars like that!

Stop beating M cars and build me an M30!

[Jon K]

Not very nice to drive friend's cars like that!

Stop beating M cars and build me an M30!

I didn't really drive the car hard at all - and actually, it's nothing that the car hadn't already been subjected to. We took his and my car out a few weeks ago and won best motor of show (me) and best non vw of show (him) at a large VW car show. We beat the cars up getting there

I would never drive a car harder than it was built for though.