- If you want to ruffle the feathers of BMW purists all around the world,
a surefire way to do that is to dump a thousand horsepower 10000 RPM
RB28 into and E92 M3.
We're here at World Time Attack and we're taking the opportunity to have a tech tour
of Jake Jones, the Driftsquid's E92 M3 drift car.
Now at least on this side of the world, a BMW E92 probably isn't the chassis
of choice if you wanna be competitive drifting.
And Jake has come from a background where he's had a lot of success using the popular
Nissan S chassis.
Asking Jake about his motives behind the BMW M3 swap, it was really just
to wow the crowds and have something that really stood out both visually
with that wide body M3 shape, along with the distinctive sound from his
10000 RPM, 1000 horsepower RB28.
Now the heart of the car obviously is that Nissan RB28 engine swap.
And while the RB26, the base of this engine, is incredibly popular,
it's also not without its idiosyncrasies and holding one together at that sort of
RPM and that sort of power level, has its problems.
And this is where Jake got Powertune Australia involved.
They're no strangers to the RB26 platform and have extensive experience
and great results with the RB26 in a drag application.
It wasn't too hard to put what they'd learned in the drag arena to work
and make a reliable RB28 that's suitable for drifting.
The build began with a brand new N1 block.
Now that N1 block is quite popular for a performance build.
It's made out of a slightly different material although it is still a cast iron,
and it's slightly stronger, particularly as the RB26 blocks are known for cracking
at high RPM levels.
The stroker kit itself is an off the shelf Tomei kit consisting of a crankshaft,
rods, and pistons.
The bottom end of the engine however is really just there to support the power
and it's the cylinder head and the turbocharger that really is the key to making that power.
Again Powertune started with a brand new casting from Nissan.
It's fitted with a suite of aftermarket oversize valves, along with a set of
larger cams, although I'm not quite privy to the exact specifications of those cams.
The fact that they are able to make power up at 10000 RPM suggests that they've
got a lot more lift and a lot more duration than stock.
Now that's actually one of the problems with the RB26 head however.
As that if you want to increase the lift significantly above stock,
you actually have to machine the head to clearance the cam lobe.
Obviously that's something that Powertune have done and this has also gone along
with a full CNC porting job of that head and the valve seats have also been CNC cut
to ensure absolute accuracy.
Another novel modification that Powertune have applied here is to swap out
the factory underbucket shim valve actuation for a single piece bucket.
Now this adds a layer of complexity because adjusting the valve lash now
requires a complete new bucket assembly to be fitted.
However it ensures that at very high RPM, there is absolute reliability
of the valve actuation system, there's no chance of the shim falling
out and affecting the valve actuation.
The turbocharger fitted to this engine is the BorgWarner 9174 turbo.
Now there's actually a very slightly larger turbo in the line up,
the 9180, and the 9174 was chosen because the team knew that they
would be pushing this turbo to the absolute maximum in order to achieve
Jake's target of 1000 horsepower.
As those familiar with the EFR series of turbos know,
they are very fragile if you push them to a turbine speed that's too high.
There is a critical speed, and if you go beyond that, you can expect the
turbocharger to fail.
The 9174 actually has a very slightly higher critical speed limit than the
9180, and this is why the team have gone in that direction.
While we're still talking about the engine mechanical system, one of the common
reasons for failure with any Nissan RB engine, particularly those that are being
used in a circuit application, is with the oiling system.
The factory wet sump oiling system just isn't up to task,
there's numerous problems with oil surge, along with the reliability of the
factory oil pump.
Jake and the Powertune team completely got rid of the factory oiling system,
going for a dry sump system right from the start.
That dry sump system relies on an external oil pump that's driven
directly from the crankshaft.
This scavenges the oil out of the dry sump, and then returns it into a remote
oil reservoir mounted in the boot.
From here a constant supply of oil can be drawn forward by the pressure stage
of that dry sump pump, and then it can be forced through the engine.
This ensures that regardless what Jake's doing, and regardless what the acceleration,
the braking or the lateral G forces are doing, the engine is always going
to be supplied a reliable, high pressure stream of oil, with no chance of oil
starvation.
The intake side of the engine is fitted with a Hypertune plenum chamber.
And this removes the factory Nissan six independent throttle bodies,
in favour of a single plenum with one single throttle body.
Now there is some argument that the individual throttle bodies can improve
throttle response, but in this particular application with 1000 horsepower,
and the relatively high RPM range that Jake's using,
while competing in a drift event, the individual throttle bodies really
aren't an advantage.
You can also see that that plenum is fitted with a set of 12, 1000cc
Bosch injectors.
These are run in a staged fashion, with only six being used at idle
and low load, while the second set of six injectors are staged in,
when the fuel demands of the engine are increased under high load and high RPM
operation.
Now this also brings us to the electronics package controlling the BMW M3,
and that RB28 engine.
And the heart of this really is the Motec M150 ECU.
So this controls all of the operation of the engine, including that staged
injection, as well as boost control and a number of safety features
that are designed to ensure that that engine is gonna remain healthy for
a long reliable life.
Now when it comes to fitting an aftermarket ECU to an RB engine,
one of the common problems is around the Nissan 360 degree optical trigger
that's normally fitted to the intake cam.
This can be a source of triggering problems that results in inconsistent
fuelling and inconsistent ignition.
That's obviously not what we want when you're trying to push out
1000 horsepower at 10000 RPM.
The fix for this has been a Powertune crank trigger system which takes an RPM
signal direct from the nose of the crankshaft.
This is also backed up with a synchronisation pulse that comes from the camshaft,
and this tells the ECU which cylinder is firing at any particular time.
The M150 ECU is monitoring a number of sensors that allow it to control certain
safety aspects on the engine.
And in fact there's over 40 sensors fitted to the engine.
One of these sensors is a flex fuel sensor and despite the fact the engine is tuned
on a dedicated E85 mix, the flex fuel sensor allows the variability of the pump
E85 fuel to be taken into account with the tune and this allows the tune to
automatically compensate if the mix of E85 isn't exactly correct.
On top of this, the ECU also monitors aspects such as intake air temperature
and engine coolant temperature, and safety functions can be brought in
to prevent any damage if either of these aspects go outside of the range that the
tuner is happy with.
Other aspects that the ECU is monitoring include individual exhaust gas temperature,
and this allows any flow distribution between the six cylinders to be accounted for,
and the fuel delivery to each of those six cylinders can be adjusted to make sure
essentially that the air fuel ratio in all six cylinders is accurate and consistent.
This becomes much more important when you're really pushing an engine
to the limits such as what the team at Powertune are doing here.
Backing up the M150 ECU is a Motec C127 dash logger.
Now this doubles as a driver display so that Jake knows exactly what's going
on in the heat of battle.
Now most times he's really only going to be taking notice of the shift light there
to tell him when to shift into the next gear, however if anything goes outside
of the realms of normal operation, this can also be used to bring up
a driver warning, bringing Jake's attention to the fact that something
isn't right and allowing him to potentially abandon a battle.
The dash also doubles as a logger and this logs all of the parameters from the
M150 as well as a range of other sensors on the chassis which can be used for data
analysis and improving the state of tune of both the engine and the chassis
at a later point.
The engine is backed up by what is one of the most popular gearboxes
for drifting, which is the G Force four speed dog engagement transmission.
Now these aren't the most refined transmission in the world,
however they are incredibly strong.
That's one of the key features that's so critical if you want a reliable drift car.
All of the power is then fed from that G Force transmission back to another
staple of a drift car, which is the Winters quick change rear end.
This allows the final drive to be quickly changed to suit the requriements
of specific tracks.
One of the problems Jake faced when transitioning from the popular
Nissan S chassis across to the E92 BMW M3, was setting up the suspension for drifting.
Now this isn't a case of just dropping in some coil overs and calling it job done.
Drifting requires a significant amount more steering lock in order to be able to be
competitive.
Fortunately for Jake though, he did start this project at the same time that Wisefab
in the UK brought out a complete drift setup for the E92 chassis.
This consists of Wisefab uprights, front and rear, this is a full bolt in kit,
ensuring that the car was gonna be competitive straight out of the gate.
The Wisefab setup is also coupled to a set of Australian made MCA coil overs.
So there you go, there's the inside scoop on Driftsquid's BMW M3.
And while it might not be for the purist, we personally think he's done a great job.
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