Fuel Injectors

The fuel system on an E-30 325i is adequate for day to day driving and stock
motor. If you start to improve other things, the fuel system will quickly show its
weakness. The most glaring weakness is the injector flow rate. Address this first
because running an overly lean mixture is bad, and potentially expensive, news.

First, you will need a way to measure your air/fuel ratio (AFR). All of the popular
gauges do the same thing, so let price and size be your guide. I bought a
Cyberdyne unit from Jegs (PN 280-7009, 1-800-345-4545 or www.jegs.com) for
only $30. It is standard 2.125î size and comes complete with excellent
instructions. If your O2 sensor is old put in a new one. I got a single wire Bosch
from AutoZone for less than $20 and it came with a crimp connector and heat
shrink tubing. The headers I have transmit plenty of heat to the sensor, so a three
or four wire was a waste for me. Plus, I donít give a crap how the car runs while
warming up.

The stock 325i has Bosch 715 injectors. All pulsed Bosch injectors are PN 0 280
150 XXX, so the last three digits are commonly used to identify the injector. BMW
part numbers, as usual, are different and useless to us since they are not printed
on the injector. The problem with the Bosch 715 injector is in the flow rate: only
149cc/minute.

Why is this bad? Well, for the real answer, go to sdsefi.com (go there for the real
answers to questions you may not even know you had and a lot of other really
cool stuff) but suffice it to say we're running out of fuel. At stock fuel pressure
levels, a 149cc/min injector can only support 29.8hp per cylinder, or 178.8 hp.
Now, this is assuming a 14.7:1 AFR, a 100%duty cycle and NO clogging or dirt.
Bad news.

#1 At full throttle you want to run around 13:1 AFR for best power.

#2 You don't want to run your injectors over 85% duty cycle or they will over heat.

#3 Your injectors are clogged 5% or more if they have over 20000 miles on them.

#4 With a shaved head, BIG headers, a chip and a 284 cam, I should be making
more than 178.8 hp.

Testing with the mixture meter confirmed the bad news. The car started leaning
out at about 6000rpm and was off the chart lean by 6300. That left 600rpm of AFR
higher than 17:1. Not the recipe for longevity or power.

The solution is not as simple as expected. Be warned, you can spend a whole lot
of cash trying to solve this problem, so do it once. Custom chips will not help, as
they cannot magically make an injector flow more fuel. Adjustable regulators and
bigger injectors can, and I feel that the larger injector is a better long-term
solution. The difficulty lies in the ECU. It will be unable to adapt to a really large
injector. In order to ease the transition of any injector swap borrow a 325e fuel
pressure regulator, rated at 2.5 bar versus 3.0 bar, and it will drop fuel flow by
approximately 9%.

I took Bosch 203 injectors from an 85-86 535i and dropped them in. Every
dimension is identical. They are high impedence, so they will work with the ECU
and represent a significant jump in flow. At the stock 3 bar they are rated at
185cc/min, and are capable of 37 hp per cylinder or 222 hp, total.. More
importantly, run at 85% duty cycle they will support 188.7hp. All told it is the
perfect injector for my application. The computer adapted to the injectors quite
easily with the eta fuel pressure regulator and is now happily backing down the
duty cycles again with the 3.0 bar regulator back in action. The only difficulty is
that the computer bypasses the O2 sensor input during full throttle, so some
touring laps were needed to give it time to adjust. This is obviously not so much of
a concern for dual-purpose cars.

Source & credits:

Author: Rich
Url: http://www.teamdfl.com/bmw/e30/e30home.html
Where to get the necessary parts:
Search: Various online BMW parts dealers
USA: http://www.performancemotorcars.com