Mad-Machine

As some of you know, I work a LOT. Right now I am doing 12 hours day, 7 days a week. Somehow though, I managed to find time to do a sweet little cheap mod to my 318ti that made a big difference... bigger than I thought it would.

Like the Hyundai 6 cylinder, most BMW sixes are not that powerful unless your car has the letter "M" attached somewhere. As such, the smaller sixes (323, 325) are really not that much more powerful than a mildly tuned 4 cylinder car.

The 1.9 litre four in my car develops 138 hp, the 323i makes 168, roughly a 30 hp difference from the factory. In the engine in my car, the airbox is of a decent design, but the air intake "snorkle" is hedious. It loops over the back of the radiator to draw in cool air from the other side of the car. Not only that, but while the tube that goes between is of a large diameter, the "scoop" next to the radiator is small and the elbow where it goes into the airbox chokes down to about half the size of the tube.. this is why my car falls flat above 4.5 to 5 grand on the tach, it simply runs out of air to breath.

I forget the guys name, but his last name is "fogg" and he came up with a way to increase the size of the intake's snorkle to increase power. by doing so, the 1.9 he was working on developed an additional 8% more airflow (according to the OBDII port) which equals out to almost 150hp.

I went a step further and totally removed the intake snorkle and made my own, modeling it on how the six cylinder cars, they pull air from next to the radiator on the same side as the air box.

So, without further adieu:

Stock airbox with hole for the snorkle:



Parts needed for the modification:

3" PVC threaded male adaptor
3" Gutter to ground pipe adaptor



Make a big hole, but JUST big enough for the threaded male adaptor to thread in. This eleminates a need for glue to hold it in place:






With the airbox back in the car, the gutter adaptor goes onto the end of the threaded adaptor and then it rests neatly against the holes in the radiator support that would feed air to the six cylinder version of my car (yes there was a six cylinder BMW hatchback, but only in Europe)



Once I adjusted it, the adaptor fit tight agianst the holes punched into the sheetmetal.. this is before I adjusted it.



Looks almost stock:




Total cost: $7 from Lowes. Took me an hour from the time I drove to lowes, decided on what I needed, returned home, did the mods (love my dremil) and then took the car out for a run. 8% increase in power does not get better than that (might be more than 8%, I am running a more direct route to cold air)

I can say that it did make a BIG difference in how the car drives. While not noticibly more louder (slightly more throaty) the car no longer runs out of air at the top end and I have found myself deep into the revlimiter several times without trying.

And now for the shiney. Bought these from a guy on the 318ti forum. Bilstein PSS Coilovers.. 2" adjustable up or down.. $400 plus shipping, brand new. He needs a new clutch more than he needed the coilovers.



Now I just need somebody to install them once they get here

supercow

someday I think I'm going to pickup a 4 door bimmer... I'll keep the tib forever but eventually I'm going to need something else.

I like this project, super cheap yet effective. BMW is super bad for this. Purposefully restricting a car for a certain performance rating so it doesn't out perform their m series(so they can charge more for it). This allows for tons of modding on their cheaper models and getting big bang for the buck since they were being held back by design.

ScoupeLS

is that threaded male adapter made by NIBCO? looks like it, i work for NIBCO. laugh.gif oh and thats not PVC its ABS their properties are diferent, abs is more flexible than pvc. good mod btw

Mad-Machine

Yay, my coil-overs finally came in! Now I need to time to actually install them

HyundaiKitCoupe

looks really great! I'm glad ypu found a cheap solution that actually works perfectly. Once you get that badboy lowered it's really going to to stick to the road.

I think we all can relate to working all the time. Hope you get somekind of promotion soon. I can't wait for you to get that fiat up and running. Take care for now art.

Mad-Machine

What I do for a living, there are NO promotions. I am a Stage Electrician. I am an "on-call" or casual position in several of the casinos here in Atlantic City. My pay rate is established by the contract the said sasinos have with the Union that I am a part of. Currently that is $32 an hour with time and a half at anything over 8 hours in a 24 hour period (in any one casino, doing it in two casinos does not count) and of course Time and a half for anything over 40 regular hours in a week (again, only in one casino, multiple casinos does not count)

My pay is going to $34 an hour soon. Only Local 1 in NYC and the union in Chicago pay better.

And of course I am getting my business off of the ground this year.. that will be nice

Mad-Machine

Sometimes (it's rare) I get lucky.

I finally received my lowering kit late last week and only had a chance to look at it yesterday. It was sold to me as the Bilstein PSS kit, which is threaded coilovers with non-adjustable gas pressurized shocks/struts.. when I opened the box (which was labled PSS) I found that it contained the 9 way adjustable shocks/struts.. the PSS9 System.

I paised about $700 for the PSS system, which retails for about $1100, but instead for the PSS9 system.. which has a street price of $1600.

I got a reall great deal, now I am just worried about karma biting me on the arse