Hey guys, my name is Chuck and I am working on a 95 M3 track day/HPDE build. I wanted to start a thread to share some pictures/progress and maybe get suggestions and tips from other members for my build. I've been a long time lurker and a long time BMW enthusiast. I've owned a few e30's an E90 and now my 1995 Daytona Violet M3 coupe. It has 170k miles on it and has spent the majority of its life being tracked and thrashed in California. It now resides in Virginia outside of Washington DC with me.
Progress has been a bit slow, I've actually owned it for close to 2 years now. In all that time it's been driven but I've yet to get it to a track day. This year is the year! I've had a few setbacks but I'm close and I plan to hit both Summit Point and Dominion raceway this spring!
Story begins....
I had a Miata that I was autocrossing fairly heavily and wanted to start tracking to get more legit seat time for the amount of time invested. Being 6'5" i was struggling to make it work while still being safe and sitting under the roll bar etc. I decided to sell it and find an e36 for some extra room. I looked for a month or two to find the right car in budget. I found it 6 hours away in North Carolina. I borrowed a friends trailer and my grandfathers truck and headed out to pick it up. I paid right at $5k for it, it needed a little TLC but was rust free, zero rust underneath.
My miata.
picking it up in NC!
My dumb smiling face...
The car had a decent amount of mods already. Mostly poly bushings, Koni adjustable shocks, ground control coils, x brace, active autowerke exhaust, decent dunlop tires, rebuilt head 30k miles ago, UUC short shifter, etc.
Once I got it home I made a list of things I wanted to take care of but I figured I'd pay a small fee for some professionals to take a closer look before I "invested" a bunch of money. RRT put it up on a lift and told me everything they'd fix before tracking it. That's where I made a list and started ticking through it.
Safety/Track Reliability have been my goal with this build.
The very first thing I did was an oil change and a fresh set of spark plugs. Flushed the brakes and put in new pads. I also put fresh fluid in the rear diff and transmission.
I redid the cooling system including a mishimoto radiator and a SPAL fan plus the waterpump/therm etc.
Being tall I needed to sit much lower to clear the ceiling with a helmet on. Going with fixed back floor mounted buckets was the way to go, but that was a slippery slope and meant I needed a roll bar and harnesses etc.
RRT built a roll bar / rear cage for me and installed harness anchors in the floor. While building the cage they ripped the sunroof cartridge out and welded the panel in place for more head room.
I bought and installed some Corbeau Forza Sport seats and Schroth 6 point Harnesses. Attached to the car with Massive Brakes seat mounts.
Test fitting seats before cage work.
I rebuilt the shifter linkage, it was super sloppy and sometimes I couldn't get it into 5th. While in there I swapped the selector shaft seal on the top of the transmission.
It had a few oil leaks that needed to be addressed, namely the valve cover and oil filter housing. While pulling the valve cover I found a gremlin of its previous life. One of the center studs that holds the valve cover on had cracked in the past and been shottily welded back together.... Well it snapped before I could even get the light torque required. This meant I couldn't get the car back together and it had to go to RRT on a flat bed.
It took me probably 4 straight hours of cursing to get this out of the head....
They got creative and solved the issue by cutting the mount and fitting a threaded spacer. It's worked great since.
Recently I bought a narrow 4 post lift so the M3 can live in the garage above my daily driver. It's been an amazing investment so far. I spent a few hours cleaning the underside of the car to verify that there were not any leaks needing attention before the track time. As it turns out my oil pan gasket is leaking.
At 6'5" me standing under the car. Big smiles!
So my current quest is to replace the oil pan gasket, I'll be doing a bunch of other items that RRT recommended while I'm under there so I only need to get aligned hopefully once this year. The list includes front control arms, motor mounts, reinforced sub-frame, safety wire oil pump nut, inner and outer tie rods etc. Should be happening in the next week or two. I've got a newborn on the way and I'm trying to get this car sorted before he arrives and my time gets crushed for a bit.
I see a few of you guys are local to me and I hope to meet you at one of the track days I attend. Please feel free to offer some advice etc. I'd love to hear suggestions. The car runs and drives well I'm just being overly cautious, but I don't think thats a bad thing.
Thanks for reading, updates coming soon! My apologies in advance for some of the more "instagramy" looking pics, I recently got a new phone and don't have many of the original shots anymore.
Random side note... I finally got the license plate I've wanted for like 5 years!
Welcome to the madness! Where in NoVA are you?
Hopefully we'll see you at the NASA Mid-Atlantic events, there is a good group of BMW nerds who cover the gamut of HPDE, Time Trial, and W2W racing within NASA.
Love the plates, too
2011 F-150 FX4 | 1997 BMW M3 #404 GTS2 | 2006 BMW M3 Convertible
Out Motorsports
Another nova track builder. If you don't mind who installed your lift and how much did ot cost you?
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2002 M3 | ESS VT1-455 | BW Race Exhaust | Hawk Pads | Ground Control Suspension | Whiteline Swaybars
Custom Roll Bar | Stripped Interior | Bride | G-Force | SneedSpeed Adjustable Rear Wing | Front Splitter
SneedSpeed Brake Cooling Ducts | D-Force LTW5 Wheels/Hoosier R6
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Haha thanks man! I'm currently in Gainesville. So I'm about an hour from each of the two local tracks. I may venture down to VIR in the future just because I've visited for races and really want to drive it one day. My plan for now is just track day stuff and not going into any legit racing... But that's probably what everyone says when they start out!
No problem man. I got it installed by Ron at SGS Services in Manassas. He came recommended by the Bendpak website. His fee was $800 for install. But that included everything from accepting delivery at his shop, flat bedding it to your garage, included hydraulic fluid etc. I didn't do anything but order the lift and tell him where to place it in the garage.
The lift itself is a Bendpak HD9ST and it runs $2850 including shipping. I ordered it from asedeals.com.
What's the outside to outside dimension of the lift if you don't mind measuring?
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That's awesome. Dominion Raceway is another course to drive on. This will be their 2nd year. Check out Trackdaze, they have plenty events there this year. If you do go, lmk. Im about 20 min from there.
As for your lift, is it 120v or 220v?
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2002 M3 | ESS VT1-455 | BW Race Exhaust | Hawk Pads | Ground Control Suspension | Whiteline Swaybars
Custom Roll Bar | Stripped Interior | Bride | G-Force | SneedSpeed Adjustable Rear Wing | Front Splitter
SneedSpeed Brake Cooling Ducts | D-Force LTW5 Wheels/Hoosier R6
Automotive Performance Technology, APTech - Follow us on Google+ or Facebook!
No problem, its right at 100" wide including the motor and 174" long without the approach ramps installed. With the approach ramps its 200" long total. I'll include the manual if you need anything else, its the HD9ST model. http://www.bendpak.com/HD-9-Series-M...vK-BendPak.pdf
Thanks will do man! I have the 120v model, but you can get it in 220v just as easy. It speeds up the lift time by like 20-30 secs I think. Same price for the bigger motor/pump but you need the 220v outlet to run it installed. It's honestly not super slow at 120v so I have no regrets going that route.
VIR is worth the risk/stress of driving that far for a track day as soon as you get your feet wet and feel relatively competent on track... closest thing we've got to the ring, virtually every other track you'll run will pale in comparison. Good luck with the build!
James Cathers
NASA - TT4 E36 M3
SCCA Solo - STU 350Z
Check out THSCC. They run a good event at VIR with great instruction in car and in class. I don't find NASA very good for HPDEs, they have sort of a students last philosophy, but that is where the TT/racing is at later.
^VIR is awesome... Until you drive Watkins Glen.
Have you run with NASA Mid-Atlantic? I'm sorry to hear you think that's the philosophy, because within our region, it certainly is not the mission. Instructors should be working with students first, and driving second and we try to make sure that is the case.
- - - Updated - - -
I thought you had to be rich to go racing (or even TTing) when I was in college starting out with my Miata and HPDEs... yet here I am all these years later. Turns out getting into this in any capacity is a great recipe for keeping one from getting rich That purple car will have GTS stickers on it before you know it!
2011 F-150 FX4 | 1997 BMW M3 #404 GTS2 | 2006 BMW M3 Convertible
Out Motorsports
Might as well put baffles in the oil pan while you have it off the car...
'03 911 Turbo 6MT fun car
'18 Toyota Land Cruiser Daily driver/Ski Machine/Off Roader
'15 Cayenne Diesel Wife's DD
'17 KTM 690 "Adv" 2 wheeled Adventurer
2011 F-150 FX4 | 1997 BMW M3 #404 GTS2 | 2006 BMW M3 Convertible
Out Motorsports
Counterpoint re: NASA MidAtlantic is great for HPDE. Current racers bailed me out big time when my transmission blew at VIR leaving me stranded over 5 hours from home. See my post #113.
https://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/s...7#post29383707
A Daytona friend!!!! Actually have been following you on insta, thought some of the pictures looked familar! I am strating to get my mods together for track, but being in east TN autocross is the only thing close
I'm about to pull off my baffled pan and sell it if you're interested
Quick update... oil pan gasket work in progress.
Pan off, pulled the subframe completely so I could replace it with a reinforced Garagistic one. I should have just had mine welded by RRT. I'm still awaiting its arrival after almost 2 weeks.... looks like they shipped it to Oklahoma and I live in Virginia... Good times.
I decided to have RRT install the VAC baffle and do a core exchange after you guys suggested it. I'll be returning the core tomorrow!
Went ahead and safety wired the oil pump nut too.
The pan is back on, hopefully leak free. Once I get the subframe in, or have RRT reinforce mine depending on time frame it'll all be going back together. New control arms, tie rods, motor mounts etc. The lift made it tolerable but my god has it been a lot of work!
Last edited by 5spoke; 02-05-2017 at 09:05 PM.
Awesome build and so jealous of the lift!
Whats the ceiling height in your garage?
T-WRX! I've been watching since like 500 subs with your roll cage installation. You'll be at 10k soon!
Quick question for my track day friends. The car currently has the stock front and rear sway bars installed. It came with a set of eibach sway bars that I've planned to install eventually. (The previous owner said he took them off for daily driving). I'm torn... should I go ahead and install the front one while all this stuff is out and I have the space? The car will be going to get aligned after all the work is complete and it'd be nice to just get the suspension work out of the way and aligned once.
The kicker is that I don't have rear sway bar reinforcements welded in yet and I wasn't planning on doing that stuff yet.
Basically if it were your car would you...
A) install both sway bars
B) just install the front
C) leave them both stock for now
I'd install the upgraded sways now. Perhaps I was just very lucky, but I ran about a dozen HPDE events with upgraded Eibach sways on my Spec3 build and never had any issues. I also tended to not clobber curbs because it's just DE. No reason to beat up on the car unless you have a competitor to beat.
Might as well do them now since you've got the car in the air. Remind me - what suspension do you have on it?
2011 F-150 FX4 | 1997 BMW M3 #404 GTS2 | 2006 BMW M3 Convertible
Out Motorsports
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