Re: McCall's Z3 M Roadtser LS1 Project
Project Update for December 2010: McCall has been traveling a lot for work over the past year, and he burned most of the summer working on our $2010 GRM project E38 V8, but he has managed to get some good parts ordered as well as knock out some work on the Z3M LS1 project. I've got pictures here from the last 3 times I've been by to help him wrench on the Z3 in the last month, and the fuel system is finally wrapped up (well, 99% wrapped up). We're going to cover the December work in this update.
So the aftermarket fuel rails were installed back in Jan 2010 (yikes!). This was a "FAST" branded fuel rail kit that's affordable, but it comes without any crossover lines - just the bare rails and the mounting brackets. We managed to finish off the crossover line with a short -6 braided line with 90° ends. These connect to the ORB-to-AN fittings that go into the ends of this fuel rail (and also into the regulator). That's what we tackled one night in early December... and we played around with the fuel pick-up assembly and lines, trying to get into the cabin with AN fittings safely. You see running lines on the underside of the track car is sometimes a bad idea, as they can get snagged during an "off" and rip lines apart, spilling fuel everywhere. Many times routing the fuel lines for a race car through the cabin is the safest route, as crazy as that sounds. Of course you want to run them out of the way of the driver, passenger, their feet, etc. So attempt #1 (failure) was the set-up chronicled in the Jan 26th, 2010 update. I wasn't there for that one, just snapped some pics.
So I took a look with McCall for attempt #2 in early December. This time he had a few feet of 1/4" high pressure fuel line, which was small enough that it had to be heated up slightly to slip over the barbed fittings on the factory pick-up assembly. That sounds bad, but its done sometimes when you're adapting aftermarket flex lines to factory barbs on fuel tank pick-ups. The plastic lines the factories use are often installed with heat, too. Anyway, once we got them terminated inside this small cavity at the fuel tank/rear bulkhead, it was too tight of a fit behind this black oval steel cover plate to fit real bulkhead adapters to this plate. Not enough room in this small cavity for the hose end + fitting + bulkhead adapter. Punt!
So we drilled some holes in a huge rubber grommet there and pushed these hoses through (bad idea) and terminated them with barb-to-AN adapter ends. Then we used AN style adapters on the hose ends sticking thru the grommet to get to -6 (return line) and -8 (feed line) and make a 90° turn. It was a poor idea that looked even worse once installed - we knew this would never fly as soon as we finished.
In addition to the ghetto/unsafe nature of this set-up above, the stacked up lengths of all of the fittings and adapters and 90's on the passenger side were going to be so tall that they would be inside of the passenger seat. This double-whammy would never pass any sort of tech (needed bulkhead fittings and only braided or hard lines inside the passenger compartment) so this attempt was aborted for another, better thought out attempt. We tackled attempt #3 this past Saturday.
We really needed to move the bulkhead fittings away from this black overal fuel pick-up cover, maybe to a spot lower and as far away from the seat as possible. It's just the Z3 has a tiny passenger compartment - race seats have to mount right up against he bulkhead. We found one small location low on the rear bulkhead behind the passenger seat that was open on the backside (the one spot the fuel tank isn't in the way on this side), perfect place for the bulkhead fittings to go. Well, there was a spot welded bracket for a grounding strap we had to remove, but we'll reattach that at a different spot later. This prime piece of real estate was then marked, drilled, and the bulkhead fittings were installed, stacked vertically with a slight lateral offset. This placement will make sense once the lines are installed.
As you can see, these bulkhead adapters were custom made pieces, as seen above. These started life as simple -4 bulkhead fittings but then adapters and 90° ends were welded to them, to make a one piece fitting with the smallest installed height. McCall had a friend TIG-weld these aluminum fittings together so that it was more compact than the -4 bulkheads and multiple size adapters and 90° ends would have been screwed together (also fewer places to leak). This kept the installed length to a minimum and allowed them to fit down low behind the passenger seat, and adapted from the -4 size on the fuel tank size to the -6 or -8 sizes on the passenger compartment side. Trust me, if you would have seen the 3 fittings before they were welded together, it looked ridiculously tall.
So now that the bulkhead adapters were installed we had to connect the rubber lines from the tank to the bulkhead, behind the passengers. McCall got 6 feet of 5/16" Goodyear high pressure fuel line, so we wouldn't end up short. This step up to a larger size (essentially "-5") line actually fit the barbed fittings on the tank a LOT better (snug but not so tight that we had to heat the lines to get them to fit!), and they fit the barb-to-AN fittings made for -4 lines perfectly. So this part was a lot on attempt #3 easier using 5/16" line. This Goodyear line was even available at AutoZone, of all places (they didn't know they had it - McCall dug around and found lots of sizes in boxes).
With the ends/fittings/routing sorted for the back of the bulkhead, we had to fish them under and into the small cavity at the fuel tank / pick-up area. This area is pretty tight on the Z3, but the 5/16" lines just snaked in the gap between the tank and the bulkhead. We did them one at a time, cut them to length, and attached them to the barb fittings at the pick-up. I routed them so that they wouldn't be kinked and covered the sharp edge of the oval bulkhead opening with surgical tubing, so it wouldn't chafe the lines. Then the oval factory fuel pick-up cover plate was reinstalled.
One thing we're still missing is part of the "connector cage" for the factory wiring harness. This connects the wiring harness to the fuel pump, through the top of the pick-up assembly. If anyone has an extra junk E36 laying around and wants to cut off the factory wiring connector end shown, we'd be happy to pay for that. Shoot me a PM!
This 3rd attempt was an all-around better solution for the tricky tank to bulkhead hoses. That took entirely too much time, but sometimes weird little stuff like this does. I'll discuss the rest of the fuel system and a few other items in the next post, but this was by far the hardest part. There was some tricky packaging of parts under the hood but we made it all fit very cleanly.
Thanks,
Project Update for December 2010: McCall has been traveling a lot for work over the past year, and he burned most of the summer working on our $2010 GRM project E38 V8, but he has managed to get some good parts ordered as well as knock out some work on the Z3M LS1 project. I've got pictures here from the last 3 times I've been by to help him wrench on the Z3 in the last month, and the fuel system is finally wrapped up (well, 99% wrapped up). We're going to cover the December work in this update.
So the aftermarket fuel rails were installed back in Jan 2010 (yikes!). This was a "FAST" branded fuel rail kit that's affordable, but it comes without any crossover lines - just the bare rails and the mounting brackets. We managed to finish off the crossover line with a short -6 braided line with 90° ends. These connect to the ORB-to-AN fittings that go into the ends of this fuel rail (and also into the regulator). That's what we tackled one night in early December... and we played around with the fuel pick-up assembly and lines, trying to get into the cabin with AN fittings safely. You see running lines on the underside of the track car is sometimes a bad idea, as they can get snagged during an "off" and rip lines apart, spilling fuel everywhere. Many times routing the fuel lines for a race car through the cabin is the safest route, as crazy as that sounds. Of course you want to run them out of the way of the driver, passenger, their feet, etc. So attempt #1 (failure) was the set-up chronicled in the Jan 26th, 2010 update. I wasn't there for that one, just snapped some pics.
So I took a look with McCall for attempt #2 in early December. This time he had a few feet of 1/4" high pressure fuel line, which was small enough that it had to be heated up slightly to slip over the barbed fittings on the factory pick-up assembly. That sounds bad, but its done sometimes when you're adapting aftermarket flex lines to factory barbs on fuel tank pick-ups. The plastic lines the factories use are often installed with heat, too. Anyway, once we got them terminated inside this small cavity at the fuel tank/rear bulkhead, it was too tight of a fit behind this black oval steel cover plate to fit real bulkhead adapters to this plate. Not enough room in this small cavity for the hose end + fitting + bulkhead adapter. Punt!
So we drilled some holes in a huge rubber grommet there and pushed these hoses through (bad idea) and terminated them with barb-to-AN adapter ends. Then we used AN style adapters on the hose ends sticking thru the grommet to get to -6 (return line) and -8 (feed line) and make a 90° turn. It was a poor idea that looked even worse once installed - we knew this would never fly as soon as we finished.
In addition to the ghetto/unsafe nature of this set-up above, the stacked up lengths of all of the fittings and adapters and 90's on the passenger side were going to be so tall that they would be inside of the passenger seat. This double-whammy would never pass any sort of tech (needed bulkhead fittings and only braided or hard lines inside the passenger compartment) so this attempt was aborted for another, better thought out attempt. We tackled attempt #3 this past Saturday.
We really needed to move the bulkhead fittings away from this black overal fuel pick-up cover, maybe to a spot lower and as far away from the seat as possible. It's just the Z3 has a tiny passenger compartment - race seats have to mount right up against he bulkhead. We found one small location low on the rear bulkhead behind the passenger seat that was open on the backside (the one spot the fuel tank isn't in the way on this side), perfect place for the bulkhead fittings to go. Well, there was a spot welded bracket for a grounding strap we had to remove, but we'll reattach that at a different spot later. This prime piece of real estate was then marked, drilled, and the bulkhead fittings were installed, stacked vertically with a slight lateral offset. This placement will make sense once the lines are installed.
As you can see, these bulkhead adapters were custom made pieces, as seen above. These started life as simple -4 bulkhead fittings but then adapters and 90° ends were welded to them, to make a one piece fitting with the smallest installed height. McCall had a friend TIG-weld these aluminum fittings together so that it was more compact than the -4 bulkheads and multiple size adapters and 90° ends would have been screwed together (also fewer places to leak). This kept the installed length to a minimum and allowed them to fit down low behind the passenger seat, and adapted from the -4 size on the fuel tank size to the -6 or -8 sizes on the passenger compartment side. Trust me, if you would have seen the 3 fittings before they were welded together, it looked ridiculously tall.
So now that the bulkhead adapters were installed we had to connect the rubber lines from the tank to the bulkhead, behind the passengers. McCall got 6 feet of 5/16" Goodyear high pressure fuel line, so we wouldn't end up short. This step up to a larger size (essentially "-5") line actually fit the barbed fittings on the tank a LOT better (snug but not so tight that we had to heat the lines to get them to fit!), and they fit the barb-to-AN fittings made for -4 lines perfectly. So this part was a lot on attempt #3 easier using 5/16" line. This Goodyear line was even available at AutoZone, of all places (they didn't know they had it - McCall dug around and found lots of sizes in boxes).
With the ends/fittings/routing sorted for the back of the bulkhead, we had to fish them under and into the small cavity at the fuel tank / pick-up area. This area is pretty tight on the Z3, but the 5/16" lines just snaked in the gap between the tank and the bulkhead. We did them one at a time, cut them to length, and attached them to the barb fittings at the pick-up. I routed them so that they wouldn't be kinked and covered the sharp edge of the oval bulkhead opening with surgical tubing, so it wouldn't chafe the lines. Then the oval factory fuel pick-up cover plate was reinstalled.
One thing we're still missing is part of the "connector cage" for the factory wiring harness. This connects the wiring harness to the fuel pump, through the top of the pick-up assembly. If anyone has an extra junk E36 laying around and wants to cut off the factory wiring connector end shown, we'd be happy to pay for that. Shoot me a PM!
This 3rd attempt was an all-around better solution for the tricky tank to bulkhead hoses. That took entirely too much time, but sometimes weird little stuff like this does. I'll discuss the rest of the fuel system and a few other items in the next post, but this was by far the hardest part. There was some tricky packaging of parts under the hood but we made it all fit very cleanly.
Thanks,
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