LOVE this thread! Quick questions is that video you posted, do you have stock headers? Is that res or non res?
Have you tracked the car yet with the condor rear window? Curious if support brackets are needed?
I also have the Samsonas but have not installed it yet...any tips?
Started out with making a remote pull for the kill switch. I can kinda reach it strapped in, but figured why not add a pull when I can. Kinda hard to see in the pics, but if I ever need to I can pull both cables at once and be super safe. Had to get some clips from work to hold the cable but it works perfectly now. Trying to keep the cables neat and tidy inside so routed it back to the bottle well. Sucks I cant test the fire pull per say...but really hope I never have to. Once I get the seat back in itll look even better.
IMG_5579 by minthinrich, on Flickr
IMG_5580 by minthinrich, on Flickr
Started to route the under hood nozzles as well. Will hopefully finish that up tonight and Ill have better pictures of it all. I wish I had some more fittings, but working with what I have. If it wasnt metric tubing, I have everything I would need at work.
IMG_5598 by minthinrich, on Flickr
IMG_5599 by minthinrich, on Flickr
Got a little more tubing work done last night. finally got the under hood nozzles connected up to the rest of the system. Wanted a little race car bling so half ass polished up the tubing. Also ditched the zip ties for safety wire on the injector nozzle. Tonight I will tackle the dash nozzles and then I can throw the seat back in and start packing up the garage.
IMG_5613 by minthinrich, on Flickr
At the alignment shop. Learned a few things and will be back for sure. Mike was an awesome guy and really knows his car setups. He and his friend Co-drive an old 1977 honda civic. I went to grab the car when he was working on the back, nothing strange other than he had to heat up my rear camber arms. I will end up changing those this winter when I do all the subframe bushings. They are ebay specials anyway. I am not happy with the rear height, but I put the adjusters back in the car after some spring slop I wasnt happy with either. Might try some 4" height springs and see what happens since I have a lot of adjustment in the perches.
Ended on -2 camber and 1/8 total toe in, or a hair more.
IMG_5656 by minthinrich, on Flickr
Then we made it up front. Well that was an interesting one. Camber plates maxed out, driver side was at -4 camber 2.9 caster, passenger side -2.7 camber .8 caster. The camber didnt make sense but it is what it is. We adjusted both sides to be -2.7 which really isnt enough but oh well. I will get the slr upper plates over winter (wanted them but kept pushing it off). The caster however, I am not sure what I will do yet on that one. I have an idea I might try to. I do want to get new lower control arms from bimmerworld since I think my amazon specials are part of the problem.
Settled on -2.7 camber 0 total toe
IMG_5657 by minthinrich, on Flickr
Then I got home and noticed that my driver side tire sticks out a lot more than the passenger. I am running 5mm spacers but that is just to clear the strut on both sides. Eventually I feel I will be dropping to a 275 slick since these 285s are wide and hard to fit. Thinking its the control arms here again. Terrible pictures to try and show it.
IMG_5659 by minthinrich, on Flickr
IMG_5660 by minthinrich, on Flickr
Nice job on keeping the cabin neat and clean. That's my goal too. I know I won't get a full on professional high dollar look, but using quality hardware and neat routing goes a long way.
There's something crazy going on with your caster if it's really less than 5 deg.
I put the lower glovebox modded piece back in which really ties it all in together with the seat back in. I will get some better pics of that. I know someday I will end up with a lot less in the cabin, but I want it to look decent.
I think I narrowed my issue down to the super cheap control arms, and running centered mounts. I was talking to bimmerworld about it and a few other people. I ended up ordering new control arms and offset solid mounts from them being their package. I really have no idea what Im actually running and I will save the arms I have on now just incase I ever need them. I thought about just swapping the mounts, but I could still have the same problem. I have another alignment setup for next thursday so I will report back with what they can get from it.
Spent my friday night working on the control arms since the GF was working her closing shift at the vet. Figured it would take a lot longer but it went really well surprisingly.
Wanted to stick with the control lolipops, but switched to bimmerworld offering since they had a package and I was told it would work. I think all I really needed was the mounts, but I got new german made arms as well. I hope I can sell them to recoup a little money. Condor are rusty mainly due to install mistakes the first time around. I plan to blast them if they sell so someone can paint them. Pulled the arms out, compared them, and installed the new ones back in.
IMG_5695 by minthinrich, on Flickr
IMG_5699 by minthinrich, on Flickr
IMG_5696 by minthinrich, on Flickr
I should really get swaybar bushings, since its still on the stock ones which have 165k on them, but that I will do over winter. Kinda was just laying there looking at things to eventually fix....which will be a lot.
Woke up early saturday morning, and headed up to the hill for cleanup. We will do this again friday morning as well. Walked most of the course a few times while weed whacking all morning
IMG_5707 by minthinrich, on Flickr
I can't wait. Weather looking decent currently too.
Race weekend happened. I had some fitment issues Saturday which led me to race on my street tires. I was having major rubbing issues, and it ended up being a nose panel screw I missed. I will get pics of the tire damage tonight of that. Ended up only getting 2 runs Saturday along with everyone else. We had timing issues and also radio problems which delayed everything. Took the car home and sorted out the problems Saturday night, and was on the slicks the next day. Ended up dropping my time from a 107 down to a 98.888. I wasn't the fastest but I learned a lot about the car. 2 pics from the newspaper.
27947607E by minthinrich, on Flickr
27947604E by minthinrich, on Flickr
Great job man. Pagoda is a tough hill to master. Didn't realize they had pics up, I'll have to check them out.
Well....big update from this weekend. I guess its car related, not really sure. I havent gotten any of my tools moved over yet, but the Jeep (needs to go away) and the bmw made the move. Here is a picture of the new garage.
58421855675__A7C32DF0-9F2B-45CA-8EB6-80B9BFCDDBF5 by minthinrich, on Flickr
The best part....which is going to make things so easy I dont even know if I can handle it.
IMG_5911 by minthinrich, on Flickr
Last edited by Hinrichs; 07-08-2019 at 08:34 AM.
AWESOME. A lift changes everything.
One I stole from the local paper
BA8DA66C-AF29-4137-B184-796248DE46BF-1055-0000009767ABC4E8 by minthinrich, on Flickr
And a few from a good friend.
DSC_6535 2 by James, on Flickr
DSC_6422 2 by James, on Flickr
DSC_6407 2 by James, on Flickr
DSC_5985 2 by James, on Flickr
DSC_5979 2 by James, on Flickr
So Sunday morning while sitting in the pits after the drivers meeting enjoying a bacon and egg sandwich, it rained. The road was wet and I was in group 2 so I had some time to think about how to drive the car on slicks, when the road is wet and they get no heat into them. I went out and decided to just take it easy, and work on running good lines. Here is my slowest run of the whole race at 170+. My first run of the weekend was a 147...
After getting more one more semi wet run, then a 2 more dryer runs I went for my last run of the weekend. Car has a shimmy but I will be getting the ties balance this week sometime which made it feel a little scary at the end. Was clocked into turn 6 at 87 mph which was fast for me and I was happy with my improvement there. We didn't have anyone working the finish line for speeds but I know I finally broke 100mph. Here is a video of my last run of the day ending with a 136.800
Got a box
IMG_6384 by minthinrich, on Flickr
Took about 5 minutes to install. Spent a little more on an X-Brace that was powdercoated...kinda pointless since it had minor rust and wasnt properly cleaned out and rust/dirt came out of the one part. Oh well at least it looks fancy.
IMG_6385 by minthinrich, on Flickr
Totally forgot to post this beauty that was in the garage for a little while. My friends dads first car. Its mostly original and was restored fully when we were kids (Im 32 so prolly like 20 years ago?) He needed some safe storage while his garage at home was getting the floor coated. Ended up rebuilding his center console while I was bored. It was basically falling apart, and he said it was never sturdy. Well I fixed that and made a radio mount.
IMG_6317 by minthinrich, on Flickr
IMG_6324 by minthinrich, on Flickr
Made another horn blank, Im sure I will end up doing this over again. I do want to wire in a horn button sometime, since the random times this goes on the road, I have needed one.
IMG_6468 by minthinrich, on Flickr
So while I had the driveshaft out, figured it was finally time to make a better shifter plate and boot setup. The last one the hole underneath was wayy to large and didnt really seal at all. Now granted this one really doesnt seal perfectly, the boot is a much better fit this time so I dont really care. I cant see my tranny anymore so that makes me happy. Started with a new cut out shifter plate itself. I used this since I moved the shifter back from the original position to get the lever closer to my seating postition. Wasnt much but maybe 2". I dont like having so many bolts for it, but if I ever get a sequential with paddle shift...well I have a tunnel cover.
IMG_6448 by minthinrich, on Flickr
Threw in the shifter which I welded some bolts to. Makes install about 100x easier now. Ignore the crap paint on it, I used some bedliner and it had some bubbles.
IMG_6463 by minthinrich, on Flickr
Now onto the semi-final product. I used a dust boot from my jeep shocks which seems to work well. I will recoat the bottom part of the shifter over winter when I pull it apart again, and prolly get the plate powder coated as well. I dont like the red boot, but it does flow well with the switches.
IMG_6464 by minthinrich, on Flickr
So a few weeks ago, I pulled out the clutch saftey switch and threw some electrical tape around it so I didnt need to depress the pedal to start the car. I know its not as safe, but I am the only one who ever really drives the car. It worked fine, made starting the car a lot easier for warming up in the pits and I was happy. Took the car to work yesterday for a shakedown for this weekends race, went to go home and the tape slipped off. Easy enough fix by depressing the plunger and off to home I went. Thought about just throwing tape on again, but figured it might fail this weekend again....so I did some wiring and bypassed it for good. I ended up using the fog light switch so I still can have it not start as a half-ass safety switch. This was temporary till I thin all the wiring over winter.
Last race of the season happened over the weekend. Kinda sad but now I have a lot to work on over the winter.
Last year, this race was my first ever. I ran street tires and didnt think much about it. Car did good, I learned a lot. I started with a 81.620 and finished with a 69.420. Forward to this year...with some much needed changes and tires I had one goal. Get as close to my best time on the first run. Road was cold, it was damp, couldnt really get any heat into the tires. Checked my time once I got to the top.....well I pulled off a 70.398. I was beyond happy and ready for the weekend. Only ended up with 3 runs due to some rain, and also someone blowing an oil line at the finish coating the course down to the turn around...took about an hour and a half to clean up. #2 - 66.767 #3 - 67.481
Sunday was a lot better, sun was shining and everyone was ready. Got 5 runs which was awesome and I ran my personal best of 63.965. That run felt like a sunday drive and was perfect. I know what I need to do for next season for sure. Clutch slipping was the major problem of the day but the car did great. #1 - 67.481 #2 - 64.103 #3- 65.293 #4-63.965 #5-64.398
Took 2 pictures, but have a video of each run.
IMG_6504 by minthinrich, on Flickr
IMG_6508 by minthinrich, on Flickr
Best run I had
Not much to update on, been working on thinning the stock harness.....starting to feel like pulling it all and starting from scratch makes the most sense. Pulled out my ABS wiring since it never really worked. Trying to figure out a brake setup has me feeling like I am banging my head against a wall. Its all over the place with that to do. The only other answer is "just put in the mk60 abs". I am sure thats ideal...but I want manual brakes on this one.
Pull it all, start from scratch. You'll thank yourself later; especially if you are removing ABS in its entirety. It's very early so you have plenty of time to plan it out on paper and build from there. Pulling the harness in whole and laying it out will also help you better visual everything.
The only things I want to keep, since I drive this to 2 events from my house (its down the road) is headlights, tailights (per class rules), turn signals, wipers, horn, and the stock cluster.
I have been trying to sort out the bently diagrams, and having a hard time with them. I am not sure if I am finding the incorrect modules or what, but they just dont make any sense.
Last edited by Hinrichs; 10-24-2019 at 09:27 AM.
Are you using the Bently or ETM? If the former, here you go: http://wedophones.com/Manuals/BMW/19...g%20Manual.pdf
It takes some getting used to but it's 100x better than the Bently. I took a copy to staples and has them print and bind one for me, very much worth it if you will doing a lot of wiring yourself.
I have been using the bently, and its not friendly. I think now however I am just going to build my own harness. I am going to use factory wiring where I can, but my own relays and whatnot. Just printed that out, thank you so much.
Yea, must have the ETM to do serious electrical work!
I like your shifter plate and boot, nice! Gonna work on one for myself.
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