Vorshlag $2010 GRM Challenge car - BMW E30 V8

[Bmwman528e]

That engine bay is so fresh and so clean clean.

[BimmerDawg]

Ahhh!!! Need an update!!!

[Fair]

Yea, I was curious about your damper choice, you're going to be SO limited by budget. Koni SA are what $600 total? Even the cheap Bilsteins are going to be like $400.

Yea, we can't afford new anything on the suspension, not hardly. The car came with KYB shocks on the back, which will likely stay, and I think I can find a couple of used E36 Bilstein struts for cheap. We're just stuck with used junk... $2010 goes away very very fast. We're also making a lot of little stuff from scratch, some things that you'd normally just buy, due to the budget.


The E30 already has KYB rear shocks and some random lowering springs (need to test the rate). Probably stock struts.

This is the main thing I want to change on the E30 after the GRM Challenge event - the shocks. Just spent the day at an AST Track Test Day at ECR, where almost every car in attendance had AST shocks. I got to drive several AST equipped cars on track, including my own M3, and there's simply no substitute for good shocks. But with $50-75 budgeted on the shocks for this project, our hands are extremely tied.


The best way to spend the Monday after a long holiday weekend is... AT THE TRACK!

I run Chevy bolt pattern wheels on my old E28. You need to make a removable spacer, used just for mounting the wheels, so they are held dead centrally when bolting them up. The Chevy bolt pattern is actually 120.65mm, not 120, and the big wheels will cause horrific vibrations, even at low speeds, without the spacer. Took a couple tries, and a couple of hours on a lathe, to make mine. It's a steel sleeve, with the BMW hub dimension on the inside, the Chevy wheel hub circle (taken from the wheel) on the outside. You'll have no problems at all if they're bolted in place correctly, the sleeve just moves from wheel to wheel as you mount the wheels each time.

Yea, we're aware of the differing bolt pattern. Its hardly ideal but its what we're forced to do because of this crazy budget. We are building custom hub-centric spacers from scratch, just like you describe, to help center the wheels and hubs. Its about $10 in materials, just a lot of lathe time... but that's part of the fun of this Challenge.

PS: Diamond Racing Wheels sells 1" nuts for those wheels with a BMW thread. I guess studs are beyond your budget though, huh?

We're scrounging up some used wheel studs and lug nuts (stuff that's 2-3 seasons old that a racer retired, but is still safe for our little budget auto-x car) - we'll take a small hit in our budget to buy the studs, rather than jacking around with ghetto factory wheel bolts. Of course we can't just grab some new Vorshlag studs sitting in a bin on a nearby shelf, because our own wheel studs cost too much, heh. But they are nice - its the first mod I did to my E46 330 last week. I took the 330's wheels off and on one time, and after fiddling with the ridiculous wheel bolts to remount the stock wheels for 10 minutes, I tossed them right into the trash. It took no time to install the studs; I just don't have the patience for freagin' wheel bolts.


Wheel Studs + Lug Nuts > Wheel Bolts. Took me 6 minutes to install all 20 studs... time & money well spent

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Project Update # 7: Here's the Q45 motor test fits that Chris and I did last Saturday. We got the motor dropped in and we're moving on to the transmission next.



The big vacuum brake booster has to go, but the motor will fit.


Going in....


VH45DE in place on the K-member.

Motor will move back several more inches when the brake booster is removed (manual brakes - here we go). Lots of little stuff left to do, but that's all we're going to bore you with on the motor for a while. We'll post more pics once we've got a running motor in the car.

Between some junkyard trips on Saturday, some other distractions on Friday, and completely losing Sunday, we didn't have time get to the 5-lug/E36 non-M front suspension swap done, but we should be able to tackle that later this week. Two more sets of free/used 15" tires should be arriving later this week from a corner carvers member, and we had another free set of E36 spindles/brakes/rack get dropped off from a bimmerforums member cleaning out his storage unit - another "its going in the dumpster if you don't want it" offer. Once we get these bits installed we can finally move forward on proper fitting of the wheels & tires, and then make the hub-centric spacers/adapters.

Friday I helped Project Team member McCall on a Kirk 4-point roll bar install into his E30. We had a track event on Monday and he really wanted to get some harnesses installed in the car before then, and I just wanted to see how it fit. Using a lift made it so much easier but he still spent most of the day getting it all wrapped up cleanly. Lots of test fitting, trial and error, and fighting with the seats to get them back in place. I will admit that removing and installing the front race seats is a bit tiring, due to the way I built the seat brackets when we owned the car, heh. The installed bar looks so good we might add one to our Challenge car (this is one of the few safety items we can add that doesn't count against budget):


Kirk Racing 4-point bar installed. Couldn't have fit better if it was custom built on site


A before and after weight of his car, an ST prepped '91 318is

As you can see the 4-point bar added 62 pounds to the car so we'd have to see how that impacts the final weight target on the $2010 E30. During the install we weighed the back seats and the upper and lower bolsters are 29 pounds, not including the sound mat underneath. Since the back seat becomes useless with the bar installed, we could keep it out for only a net gain of about 30 pounds. (McCall has to keep the seats in place due to ST rules)

More soon...

[Bmwman528e]

This build is awesome!!

[TOOLEAN]

Update?

[AutoRotate]

It's been a week now. Please update!

[Fair]

It's been a week now. Please update!

Oh we've been busy... just nothing I can share just yet.

I'll go take some pictures in a while of things that I can show...

[84318i]

Nice progress!

Is that an e36 front bumper cover on it? Lol

[Gunnie]

I was hoping for Vorshlag to release the E30 LSx swap kit but I guess I could keep on dreaming.

[TOOLEAN]

Update?

[Fair]

Is that an e36 front bumper cover on it? Lol

Why yes, yes it is...


This E30 was our inspiration... both cars above were owned by one of our newly adopted team members

I'll post up more about the car's front end when I'm completely finished with the installation. There's a lot of trimming and mods needed to make the E36 bumper cover fit an E30. The used cover I'm installing was a free donation (from an E36 racer that went to an M3 style cover) but I can get another brand new bumper cover for a whopping $24.95 from Certifit. More soon...

I was hoping for Vorshlag to release the E30 LSx swap kit but I guess I could keep on dreaming.

Keep hope alive. Never say never. Dream the dream.

There's no way to afford an LS1 + T56 for a $2010 budget, of course, but... I'm not ever going to build a lame car with a motor swap. If the Q45 swap ends up less than inspiring, we might just do something different.

Not many updates that I can share yet. We have done a lot to the car in the last 2 weeks, but we spent much of the last week prepping my 330, M3 and Matt's 350Z for a final track event of the year. We do have some E30 project work planned over the holidays, so there will be more to share soon.

[Eddy@ApexRaceParts]

Terry,

Great build and thread. Have you considered stripping the chrome from the wheels and just rattle canning them? I know that chrome can add a few pounds to some wheels. Not sure what the process to strip it would be, but if it's just "labor" and not money, then it may be worth looking into. not that some chrome rims and meaty rubber + a V8 isn't cool

[R.R]

Awesome build man. im looking forward to the results. Keep up the good work!

[Fair]

Terry,

Great build and thread. Have you considered stripping the chrome from the wheels and just rattle canning them? I know that chrome can add a few pounds to some wheels. Not sure what the process to strip it would be, but if it's just "labor" and not money, then it may be worth looking into. not that some chrome rims and meaty rubber + a V8 isn't cool

Its a point of contention within the team, actually.... One group wants to strip the chrome off the race wheels (for weight) and rattle can "black out" the wheels. The other group wants to keep the shiny chrome goodness that we've managed to acquire at such a great price! We might just strip and paint just the wheel centers black, leaving the dish section in chrome. I'm going to do a photoshop rendering of all 3 looks and we'll vote on it. Speaking of photoshop renderings, I've done a dozen different colors of our E30 M3

Update for Dec 18, 2009: We got some hacked-up E30 M3 fenders installed last night (local BMWCCA club racer Greg Snyder gave them to us since they aren't class legal for his M3 anymore):



We won't likely use these M3 front fenders in the final build - we just wanted to see how well they fit, how much additional front tire clearance they gave us, and to use them for a template to make our more exaggerated box flares we'll need to clear the 10" wheels. Greg stopped by and shared a wealth of E30 knowledge with us, giving us all sorts of good ideas and offering up some potentially nice horse trades on parts with us, between our GRM car and the LeMons E30 he's building.


25 year old seam sealer can be pretty hard. A chisel and hammer knocked it loose




Team member David R gave us this idea and it worked great! A damn sight better than the hideous chrome bumpers that this early E30 had stock

Above are pics of the E36 non-M bumper cover that was donated. The car had been wrecked so the bumper beam was trashed. I took out the beam and just cut/trimmed/grafted the E36 bumper cover to fit the contours of the E30. It fits pretty well, as you can see below. A brand new E36 non-M bumper cover from Certifit is $24.95, so we might even spring for a new one if we have room left in the budget.


Cleaning up the E36 non-M suspension bits - they were somewhat rusty and the threads all had to be re-tapped


E30 bits came off and E36 parts went back on in no time

Yes, before you sharp eyed readers cry foul, we've temporarily thrown some used AST E36 struts on the front (just so we can roll it around the shop), along with some junkyard sourced E36 non-M spindles, rotors, calipers, lower control arms. The ASTs on the front won't fit within the budget, of course, so we're looking for a cheap set of E36 Bilstein Sports. Unfortunately many people selling used Bilsteins on eBay and elsewhere on forums want "crack money" for their used struts, often times more than they cost new. This does not make sense, but I guess some people are just very attached to their old things. We'll find something appropriate, eventually. We do have some old, used-up, stock Sachs E36 front struts we can use, if we have to. Whatever we use will get a cheap, home built coil-over conversion. We've already got the used coilover springs on the car we'll use in the final build, just need the right E36 struts to hack up.



Note: A straight E36 front suspension swap is not the perfect solution for an E30, however, as it moves the front wheel rearward inside the fender opening by over an inch. This makes tire clearance worse, and loses a good bit of positive caster. I am working on a tech article that will explain all of this in more detail. We're working on a solution - its not finished yet. And we can cut the fender openings however we want on this car, too. Don't take these early pictures as proof that an E36 suspension swap onto an E30 is fool proof and a perfect solution to the goofy, one-piece E30 spindle+hub+strut or an expensive 5-lug E30 M3 spindle swap - again, its not perfect.


Finally have the rear lowered. DME + harness = 8.7 lbs

We haven't tackled the 5-lug rear conversion yet, but we have a solution, and have the custom-built slide hammer hub removal tool (thanks Teucci!) needed to extract the correct rear hubs (Z3 or 318ti) at the junkyard. We did slap in some shorter springs in the rear and its finally got the right stance and spring rate to match the front. The Motronic DME for the M20B27 + the entire engine harness was removed last night (which will be sold with the old engine + trans) and now we're ready to tackle the engine install and all of that associated fun. More soon on that!

[Eddy@ApexRaceParts]

I pulled a set of old koni's out of my e30 m3 years ago when I first picked it up. I'm pretty sure one of them is dead (lifetime warranty may be able to cover this..).

I was thinking of setting them aside for a lemons car. But hey may be a better option for your project...

I forget if you're using e36 front parts, but the rears would still be the same either way.

[garretvs]

Dark, dished-centers with machined/chromed rims look sharp next to the black rubber bits on the front and rear of metal-bumper cars. See the pics in Garret's thread:

http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum....php?t=1348710

[Denwad]

i have pair of dead e36 m3 fronts that i'd be willing to ship to you, all you have to do is cover shipping?

{EDIT} never mind you already have them, i read it as "we need them" lol sorry

[JackEatsEmoKids]

Sickkkkk

[hefftone]

Do you have to factor in fair market value of something that is given to you? Or labor (cost/price) stuff that you fab if you are a shop? It's a little ambigious for sure, I would imagine there is some leeway, as being given some E36 hubs, vs. being given an S54 engine or supercharger is considerably different. Perhaps you should buy it for a penny?

5. Parts that are given to the competitor by a company or person must be figured into the budget at fair market value. Sponsorships are allowed, but the value of any product or service that is used in building the car must be figured into the $2010 budget.

9. Work that is performed at a commercial, for-profit place of business must be billed to the budget at fair market value.

I know the whole point of the contest is DIY, and not just catalog shopping, I just wonder how strict they are about junkyard parts and freebies (like a used bumper cover, hubs, etc....)

[RK-Tunes]

i have a set of bilestein front struts if you are intreasted
pm me for a price

[Fair]

Do you have to factor in fair market value of something that is given to you? Or labor (cost/price) stuff that you fab if you are a shop?

Yea, we have to figure in market value for anything donated, already owned, or whatever. We have read a bunch of old teams' budgets and have a good price list to go by for free stuff. Labor is free on anything we make or do. Lots of other $200X GRM Challenge teams have the same shop/fab equipment that we do, or more.

[EThirtySicks]

This is a sweet build! Subscribed.

[M5Hunter]

Keep up the good work guys, everything looks great.

[PhantomX]

Love the rims.... cant wait to see the widebody on that!

[Thaniel]

L: VH45DE motor from 1989-1996 Q45. R: VH45 motor with Mustang T5 attached

.

I love those VH45 motors. Can you share some details on the mods required to bolt up the Trans to the motor? What bell housing, flywheel, clutch etc. If I may be so bold, pattern for the adapter ring?

I'd love to use one of those motors in a project someday. Lack of a suitable manual has been holding me back.

Thaniel