TheCrazyDIYengineer

3D scanning of Alpina parts and twin-screw supercharger

Hello guys,

I’ve been on holiday yesterday and today so decided to make as much progress on my builds as possible. Today we’ve 3D scanned the N62 engine, various Alpina parts, and a twin-screw supercharger for my build. Enjoy the pictures and let me know if you have any question! Btw, I’m considering selling some of the 3D scans.

And why was this step important? Because:

I’ll use the scanned pulleys to measure the dimensions, design a larger crankshaft pulley for the Supercharger Upgrade 1 and 2 to achieve higher rpm and higher boost level.
To create a package with pulleys and drawings for the fellow hobbists who’d like to make their own measurement, design, or could simply reproduce the parts. Will be later available for purchase only.
Analyse, compare stock N62 pistons to Alpina boost pistons and create a compression reducing tech writeup for the DIY people. Will be later available for purchase only.
Scanning of the engine and twin-screw supercharger to desing and produce the needed parts for usage.

Alpina B7 supercharger rebuild with upgrade 1 parts

Hello guys,

In the previous weeks I received an Alpina B7 supercharger for rebuild and the owner’s request was to use the upgrade 1 parts because it has a damaged compressor wheel. I’ve been off work, on holiday yesterday and today so I’ve spent my time seful. 🙂

As the shaft had a hughe play of course the supercharger leaked oil heavily.

The supercharger showed some strange issues…

After removing the compressor housing it was clearly visible that someone made an improper repair previously. I asked the owner and he confirmed my theory and noted he also found other additional improper repairs on the cylinder head gaskets made by the previous owner of the car…

After analysing the parts of the supercharger I couldn’t find any parts which could be reused… Everything was toast, heavily damaged, and extremely worn… But fortunately I have some spare uperchargers and could offer new parts to rebuild the SC.

After a short discussion with the owner we agreed to proceed the build. So the supercharger got the new sealings designed by TheCrazyDIYengineer, the uprated hybrid ceramic bearings and the high strength improved billett compressor wheel. I’d like to just mention that I’m not reusing any seals, bolts, etc, but I’m using new o-rings from high temperature resistant (200°C) material and new stainless steel bolts properly glued in.

And this is how a properly rebuilt, upgraded Alpina supercharger looks like with the properly set clearances. 0 play! 🙂

After I completed the compressor side I proceeded with the gear side, but here I found also some additional unexpected surprise…

The basket of the bearings at the side gears has been cracked, and the input shaft bearings was also grinding… These sat back the project for an additional 350 euro… I’ve ordered the parts and complete the build next week.

This is how a worn input shaft bearing sounds like

Development of relay board for piggybacks and standalone ECU-s

Hello guys,

This weekend I did a bit different than mechanical design. I’ve started designing the electronic components for our projects. For less experianced users it could be quite challanging to do the electric design, relay and wiring loom build. I wanted to have something whith which the less experianced users could easily create a fully working wiring loom for the engine, or supply PNP wiring loom for my projects. Therefore I started designing a relay board for the DET3 piggyback and later on I’ll modify it slightly for the low cost standalone engine managements like Megasquirt, Speeduino, etc… Here you’ll see the basic block diagram for the board. Let me know if you have any idea about it! Thanks!

BMW N62 X5, 545, 645, 745 twin-screw supercharger arrived

Hello guys,

Today I’ve received a new toy, this twin-screw supercharger. This will be used to construct a supercharger kit for the N62 engine family. Some adapters, pulleys, wiring, ecu programming must be done, and you can also order this DIY supercharger kit. 🙂

Thanks for sourcing it for me Mikey and John!

Big HP Alpina parts for sale!!!

Hello guys,

I’ve some big HP Alpina parts for sale. Let me know if you need something.

700+ HP Alpina crankshaft (direct fit to the N62B44)
Camshafts for boost
Alpina transmission
etc…
Block and head damaged, not for sale

Donate me!!!! :D

Hello guys,

Several years ago I’ve spent quite much time searching tuning materials and possibility for the N62 engine but found almost nothing, just for the old M62. Than I’ve started building my first supercharger set from Alpina parts and today it looks like I’ll be able to offer you 3 different options for all chassis of the N62 engine. I’ve spent a sh*tload of time designing you supercharger kits, which were sometimes stressfull, sometimes had success, sometimes I’ve lost all of my hope, but finally I’m in the finish line and proud of my work. 🙂

In this year I’d like to finish the following:

Alpina supercharger sets for the E60, E63, E65
Twin-screw supercharger set for the X5 (or also for the other models if there’s enough interrest)
Turbocharger kit
Software modding
Manual gearbox swap kits (adapter + single mass flywheel)
Finish my BMW E46 1UZ twin-turbo

Now I’d like to ask you to donate my work and not letting me starve to death… 😀 Just kidding… I’ve a specific reason to ask you for it!

If the donations reaches around 3-4000 euros I’ll do the following:

Find the limit of the N62B44 engine by blowing it up. For your donation you’ll get:
- Videos, descriptions about engine preparation
- Videos of the dyno pulls
- And the end result, with videos, horsepowers, newtonmeters and everything. 🙂

If the donations reach higher, or there’s a specific request, I’ll also invest my time onto this:

Redesign factory pistons to achieve a lower compression ratio but keeping the same strenght by applying ceramic coating onto it.
Creating 2 standalone ECU kits for boosted application. Mostly for racing or hobby applications.
- 1 low cost with drive by cable, valvetronic deleted, basic vanos function (on-off)
- 1 higher cost with DBW, valvetronic delete
And many more things if you ask me for it…

If you are in Europe and have a spare or non working engine you could also donate it to me for this purpose.

BMW E53 X5 N62 supercharger kit

Hello guys,

Many of you asked me if my Alpina supercharger kit could also be used on an X5 N62. On the E70 4.8 yes with some mods, but unfortunatelly on the E53 not. Today I’ve checked an E53 X5 4.8is and I can happily tell you that a twin-screw setup will quite good fit to it. 🙂

I’ll start working on the kit in the coming weeks and would like to finish during the second half of the year.

Important information about the Alpina supercharger oil leak

Hello Guys,

Today I talked with an Alpina owner about the supercharger oil leak. He told me, he has recently changed the supercharger for a new one and run only 20-30.000 km until now. I was curious what oil leak he has so I asked him to check the amount of oil in the piping. This was the result.

As you see there is some cl oil in the charge pipe and also has some oil in the suction tube. But this is a genuine almost brand new supercharger, how can this be? Is it normal?

Yes, this is normal! Don’t need to refurbish or change your supercharger, just drain the charge pipe at every oil change. So around every 10-15.000 km.

Actually (unfortunatelly) this is the normal condition of the sealing system of the supercharger. The used carbon seal is a dynamic seal, and not a 0 leak seal. These kind of seals have a given leak value by the manufacturer.

The physics behind is simple. There’s vacuum at the suction side of the supercharger because of the pre-sc throttle valve and the oil circuit is running at around 4-5 bar inside the sc. The carbon seal has a sliding surface which is sliding on an oil film and leaks some oil because of these circumstances. Than the oil hits the rotating compressor wheel and because of the centrifugal force the oil mist will leave through the charge pipe. As there’s vacuum before the sc, you’ll also find some oil there.

The leaving oil mist has a temperature around 100 Celsius and reaching towards the intercooler where it cools down and “condensates”. During the usage from time to time oil will be collected at the bottom of the intercooler because of the gravity. You just need to drain it during an oil change and you’re ok. Alpina engineers also knew this “problem” so they applied a drain plug to the bottom of the IC. So that’s the purpose of it. 😉

And what is the accepted amount of oil leak? Well some centiliters like a shot glass or a cup of a spray can. But if you experiancing like the picture on the left, start texting me immediately. 🙂

Higher amount of oil leak could kill your MAF, start running knocking, damaging and killing the complete engine! Your pistons could melt down, your rods could bend, your cylinder head can crack, etc. So don’t forget to check your IC drain plug at each oil change!

And thanks again for the pictures Dom! 🙂