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Thread: klodkrawler05's Gridlife, One Lap of America, Track Day, Autox e46 m3 build

  1. #1
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    klodkrawler05's Gridlife, One Lap of America, Track Day, Autox e46 m3 build

    I never started a thread here so the first handful of these posts will just be me catching up to current but I thought some of you guys might like seeing my build

    Instead of posting little bits and pieces all over various threads here I thought perhaps I should make a condensed build thread of my car in case the hive was interested (and the weather is finally such that it's bearable to be outside messing with cars)


    I bought this car like this:





    It was kind of higher miles but seemed well cared for and had every single part Dinan has ever offered for the car, which was perfect for me. Turning a stock car into a racecar means I wind up with a pile of parts nobody wants to buy that I feel bad about throwing away.
    Starting with a Pile of dinan parts means i've got a pile of parts I can turn into cash for racecar parts.


    On that note the car did come with lots of spares, we drove my TDI jetta 10 hours away to pick up the car and then had to figure out fitting all this into the m3 and the tdi.



    All the stock parts for the car as well as 4 snow tires and 4 used Michelin super sports. Between MI and MN I found a set of 18x10 apex ec7 wheels for sale on craigslist, I arranged for picking those up on our return trip as well because the 19" dinans on the car were heavy, expensive, and staggered


    The Dinan savvy will be waiting for pictures of the supercharger, this car doesn't have that. instead it has an ESSTuning V550 kit. A fair trade off IMO, This kit has a massive intercooler and ESS tests the kits by doing hot laps at the Nurburgring so it should be fairly reliable.


    It seems I don't yet actually have a picture of the engine bay so, here is a photo from autocrossing it last fall, the 18x10's work great with 255 hoosier A7's and are plenty quick enough to contend for FTD at our local auto-x events:



    I only got 1 auto-x and 2 lapping days on the car before winter hit, but that was enough to at least start a list of changes.


    Step 1, replace the rubber rear bushings with bimmerworld sphericals, additionally while the Dinan 3.92 lsd was probably pretty nice for a stock power m3 the shorter gearing just meant you arrive at redline that much earlier for Auto-x and track days, traded for a stock diff 3.62 differential plus enough cash to cover the spherical upgrades!



    Next, the car was already fairly heavy as far as e46 m3's go, it had about every option, plus I added a roll bar which was even more weight. Note: factory seat replaced with OMP saved a few lbs:



    So I canceled the roll bar weight gain by replacing the dinan exhaust with a bimmerworld race exhaust! this cost nothing as the dinan systems are fairly sought after and I found the bimmerworld used for cheap and didn't have to ship:



    Alright, now how to make the car lighter? also, I need to paint the roll bar before it rusts.....Oh! I know:o)


    (:o)(:o)




    That project was scary, once you drill the first spot weld out there is no going back, it's actually not very difficult in hindsight just time consuming and nerve wracking. The various e46 forums have some pretty detailed how to's for this. I lost about 55lbs off the highest part of the car after adding up sunroof and all associated bits. Bonus, I gained an extra inch of helmet room after switching to a non sunroof headliner.


    It certainly does give you a better angle for painting the roll bar though!



    The trickiest part of gluing in the new roof was finding enough clamps....and figuring out how to hold the sides down, we had to improvise with a 2x8:



    This was about the moment in the process where it started looking like a complete car again and I had confidence it would run again:



    One last winter upgrade before the maiden spring voyage. My friend Matt (who competed in One Lap with me) decided to upgrade to Remote Reservoir shocks so I purchased his MCS 2 way non remote reservoir shocks to replace my dinan JRZ suspension setup:





    I got those on my car just before we went to One Lap, dropped the car off for alignment and then ran out of time for a test drive! DOH!


    The day after we returned home I took it on a maiden voyage to visit our local clubs first auto-x of the season. The bimmerworld exhaust is too loud for me to run at this particular venue so shakedown would have to wait until a bit later but it made the trip to-from the track just fine:


    All back together in 1 piece!



    This past weekend was the 2nd local auto-x of the year at a venue with no noise concerns, the event was held at our local amusement park which makes for a cool back drop. I haven't seen any pictures of the car in action yet but hopefully some surface soon. So far I'm pretty happy with the changes, the car feels much like it did last year but a bit tighter and more responsive/agile.


    Our next event is in 2.5 weeks at Gingerman Raceway. Gridlife time attack. with over 130 cars signed up for time attack it's one of the biggest time trial events in the midwest. This event also includes exhibition drifting, a car show, hpde sessions and a music festival in the evenings. Over 5000 people turn up and it's pretty surreal at the grassroots level to have turns/straights filled with cheering spectators while you're driving.


    I've got a few things I want to finish on the car before then and now that I've officially started a build thread hopefully that reminds/motivates me to take more/better photos.


    I have some more photos of the above projects but was trying to condense as much as possible as I know I have a tendency to ramble on.
    - Brad


  2. #2
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    Spent the memorial day weekend working on something entirely new to me. It's refreshing to mess around with new clean things, after banging away in the garage I was hardly any dirtier than when I started.


    Step 1: find large cardboard (with an enthusiastic helper):





    Step 2: put cardboard under car and plot points using plumb bob:





    Step 3: (this was invaluable later) make square corners of known measurement:



    note: in my case class rules state the splitter must extend no more than 5" from bodywork as viewed from above. I wanted straight ends on the splitter so I arbitrarily chose 3" wide from the rear corner of the bumper and then went straight forward from there until I hit the 5" mark, that resulted in the square corners seen above.


    Step 4: cutout cardboard template:





    Step 5: transfer cardboard template to large sheet of paper and find center based off square edges:





    Step 6: fold in half, pick the side you like better, cutout template while folded in half, then transfer to your plywood:



    Step 7: cutout plywood, sand edges etc:



    Step 8: scratch head, how to attach, under the car we go! the stock undertray attaches to a pretty beefy aluminum plate, it uses those stupid speed clips for threads but there must be a better way, there is! enter rivnuts, this was my first time using them successfully (proper install tool helps a ton here) here you can see the rivnut conversion in progress, so rear of splitter will be held on with 3 M8 bolts:





    Step 9: bolt back of splitter on and use jackstands plus wood scraps to set front height you can also see the pockets I had to notch out to allow the brake rotors to clear the splitter:



    I'm adding an ebay lip to the car to make for a flat surface for the splitter, so how that lined up basically set the nose height of the splitter:



    Step 10: With splitter in place roughly, trace wheel well openings, remove splitter and cut out here you see the final shape, My first set of holes for rear attachment wound up having the splitter more than 5" forward so I made a 2nd set and notched the splitter to clear the jacking pad:



    Step 11: time to start working on the front mount, I'm skipping lots of cardboard aided design, head scratching and failed ideas for working around the intercooler piping here and moving straight to what I decided to do which is similar to some off the shelf options but with a twist. The OEM crash beam bolts to the frame horns and has these funky metal spacers glued to the back of it, perfect lots chop some of that off:






    Step 12: Vertical support fab: The shape of the crash beam gives me some space to work with but not quite as much space as my 2" aluminum angle takes up, a little trimming and a couple holes drilled later I have this:




    Step 13: Put crash beam back in place and check clearances and fitment several more times, then create mirror image for the other side:



    With the extra angle leftover you can start to see where I'm heading here:



    Step 14: After lots more head scratching it was decided to modify the bumper slightly:



    Peeking through the bumper opening you can get an idea of why the bumper was modified (I ultimately wound up cutting a notch with the circular saw for the bumper to slide into the vertical upright as well but forgot to grab a picture of that. This turned out to be surprisingly helpful as the bumper lines up into the splitter frame before it engages any of the spots where it clips into the crash beam so now I can simply line those up and clip the bumper into place



    Step 15: Not shown is the process of adding 3 1/2" diameter carriage bolts through the splitter and framework.


    Step 16: This according to the internet is the most critical step, if someone can't stand on the splitter your work was for naught. I'm not sure I buy that a plywood plank can generate so much force that it will have over 100lbs in a downforce point load as this simulates but regardless, I tried it, for science. my wife graciously posed as ballast while I photographed. Test Success!



    Step 17: I called the splitter done and decided to do one more final test fit before removing splitter for sealing/painting. This also shows order of install/removal should service be needed:


    Crash beam in place:



    Bumper clipped onto crash beam:



    Lip clipped onto bumper: (still need to sort how to attach this)



    Checking angle, there is a 1" per 3" rake to the splitter so hopefully some meaningful downforce will be generated from below:
    Last edited by klodkrawler05; 10-04-2017 at 11:29 AM.
    - Brad


  3. #3
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    Alright, moving onto the rear of the car.

    I bought a used bimmerworld race wing that was pretty well abused for what I thought was a good deal. What arrived was simply a carbon wing element.

    Alright, well the helpful folks at bimmerworld were happy to sell me a new pair of the brackets that mount to the bottom of the wing, some new rivets had those installed quickly.



    Next was tackling the end plates. I figured since I was already going to have to cut chips, might as well make something fancy. I found a picture of the newest Bimmerworld Ultralight GT wing, and roughly copied those (photo shows further along in process.

    After that I moved back to my favorite kind of CAD, these turned out far nicer looking than my first revision metal bits will. This is partially due to time constraints, partially due to rule restraints, this swooped back design I wanted to utilize wrapping down the back of the trunk mounts the wing too far rearward to meet the "all aero within 5" of original silhouette as viewed from above" rule. Fortunately, many event's don't have such a rule so I will likely fab a set of this style anyways for those events.




    Then was time to cut some metal and stack it on the car to see how everything fit, overall it looked pretty good, the shape is simple and likely far overkill for the force this wing will generate but I'd rather go that route than have a wing come loose on track.






    A friend welded them together for me since that is a skill I sorely lack. I think they came out nice:








    Doh! I was reminded why I typically try not to work on cars late at night after a long day of work, silly things get overlooked. during the above mockup it seemed like things fit all hunky dory. But I hadn't peered down the wing uprights, once welded that resulted in the uprights being about 7 degrees off from sitting flush on the trunk!




    So that's where we got last night, I did some reading, checked some reference books and the all knowing google, armed with 5 minutes of research we now plan to delve into the world of bending 6061-t6 aluminum. Thankfully I still have a fair bit of scrap left over from the uprights as the pieces I ordered where about 10" longer than needed but not quite so long that I could make 2 from one piece. I'm planning to test several methods from bending over a large radius to heating and then bending in a friends brake. I'm hopeful since I need very little angle that I can get something to work well enough to use these uprights for the first event next weekend.
    Last edited by klodkrawler05; 10-04-2017 at 11:38 AM.
    - Brad


  4. #4
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    This post catches up on 2 weeks worth of going's on with the car and brings us up to current/today.


    After the faux pas with the wing mounts we got to learn all about how to bend 5/16 thick 6061 aluminum without cracking it, took the approach of making 3 small bends per upright as there was no tooling readily available to put a large radius bend. it worked well but I didn't take pictures.


    Next up was making things look pretty before final assembly. I wanted to powdercoat the aluminum bits so they'd hold up better but we didn't have time so black rattle can it is:



    for the splitter I copied a buddy and used truck bed liner. I sealed the wood first using some random deck sealer we had left over at the house from previous owners. That turned out to be a mistake as it left a waxy residue and the bed liner is already chipping off.



    While I was waiting for paint to dry I started messing around with the Race Capture Pro mk3. So far this thing has been nothing but a headache. lap timing wise it seems to work ok but my whole goal was to be able to log CANBUS stuff and despite it recognizing channels it won't let me add them and then display them. To be fair electronics aren't my strong suit, I'm an apple user normally and I've not spent more than 10 minutes on this at any one time. It's certainly not plug and drive like my old traqmate was though.



    After paint was dry it was time to mount everything and make sure I was below level and legal for Gridlife on my wing, yup!



    I liked this sticker placement:



    Splitter Mounted:



    Haven't bled the brakes since last year, nothing exciting but I figured I'd show my setup, this makes brakes such an easy mess free 1 person job:



    This Schwaben brake fluid bottle is really the key, the special nipple on the end fits over the bleeder screw snuggly and makes for hands free fluid capture:



    When the racecar is done ahead of time might as well start putting some street miles on it to prepare for One lap right? Parked next to my coworkers schoolbus wrx:



    And now off to Gridlife! Reunited with my buddy Matt's M3 (that we took on One Lap this year)



    Started off with shocks set as they were last year and had some terminal understeer. Knocked a bunch of the front compression out and the car was superb for Friday Practice. Coming into the pits for a shock adjustment:





    Saturday morning was clear and cool low 70's and looked to be the ideal session for fast laps as the rest of the weekend was supposed to be 90+ degrees. Unfortunately this is where I learned about boost leak testing. The couplers holding the intake manifold on popped off the ITB's. Upon fixing this issue we learned the previous owner had mix and matched various size clamps and some of them didn't get tight enough, they were snug but not tight. Why this became an issue this morning instead instead of the previous 2 track days and 3 auto-x event's I've done so far I don't know.


    All fixed and ready to go:



    except we forgot to plug the TPMS sensor back in after we finished tightening the clamps....and we learned that the linkage hits the stud of the T-Bolt clamps if they aren't situated exactly just so. Thankfully there was a BMW whiz there to help us sort through those issues Saturday afternoon in time for the final session on Saturday.



    Track conditions still seemed to be quite poor. During One Lap Matt and I were both able to turn 1:40 lap times at Gingerman, in his car Matt was stuck in the 1:42's on the Conti's so he switched to sticker re71's and managed to drop down to a low 1:41. In my car I was able to run a 1:40.9 before the car started getting dangerously hot and I called it good.

    Sunday morning was about the last chance to go fast but probably not as fast as the missed Saturday morning session. Double checked all the boost connections were attached and headed out! I managed to slightly better my time with a 1:40.4 which is almost exactly 2 seconds faster than I went in this car last fall with much better conditions. So I'd say the modifications have helped although it's still tough to get a great barometer of how much they've helped as the track felt quite dusty.


    Since the weather continued getting warmer I knew that my driving wasn't going to be able to get me any faster lap time. So I opted to try to learn something and put Tom O'Gorman in the car (:o)



    Timing him by stopwatch on his warm up lap he appeared to be on pace to run with my best lap time "feeling out the car" on a track he'd never been to until the day before.
    He crossed the start line and began his hot lap and it was pretty awesome to see, my wife and brother in law both said he was carrying noticeably more speed through corners. As he turned onto the long back straight we could suddenly tell something was wrong, his speed dropped dramatically and he let several cars pull past him before exiting the track. When he got to us he said the car felt like it suddenly stopped making power so he brought it in. The manifold had once again popped off and this time there was a small tear in one of the boots. With no spare boots I had no choice but to call it a day. I knew I wouldn't go faster but I was disappointed I wouldn't get to see a lap time from Tom in the car. (note to self, bring extra couplers and clamps to one lap)


    All said and done the car drove itself onto the trailer (albeit without boost) and was faster than last time I was at the track so I called that a success. It turns out my time was good enough for 2nd place in class and 25th overall! So I'm calling this event a great success.



    The next Gridlife takes place at Autobahn Country club in 3 weeks so I've got a few issues to fix before then!


    1) The brakes were pretty soft, the stoptech street pads certainly aren't up to the speed this car can generate so I'll replace those with some PFC08's like we ran on Matt's car.


    2) The car can only do 2 laps at best before oil temps approach 300 and coolant starts climbing past the halfway mark so I've ordered a bigger oil cooler and radiator stack to hopefully alleviate that.


    3) Fix the boost leaks, talking to the RS guys they dislike t-bolts because it can pinch the boot oddly vs normal hose clamps, they run Breeze brand worm drive clamps which are rated for 150 ft/lbs of torque on the worm gear so I'm going to try those out (not at that much torque) and they noted lots of oily residue on the ITB couplers and the ITB's themselves and pointed out both should be extremely clean before I reinstall to prevent slipping more easily. They also mentioned the couplers getting soft over time so either new couplers or using hairspray when putting the couplers on to help prevent sliding.
    - Brad


  5. #5
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    Tomorrow morning we leave for Road Atlanta Gridlife. After getting to do Parade laps here during OLOA and watching Matt drive it at speed I've been eagerly anticipating this event all summer.


    As I still can't get the car to do 3+ laps at speed at a time and knowing how hot it would be in GA I did a few more cooling mods which I hope, will finally solve the issue once and for all.


    First, deleted the A/C, The factory pusher fan plus ac condensor are both in front of the radiator/oil cooler hopefully a more direct shot of air will help, bonus it saved a few lbs:





    Next, I had great cooling results with Trackspec hood vents on my c5 corvette so I figured I'd give them a try on the M3, the large center vent is just behind the radiator which hopefully helps extract some air through that and then the driver side vent is directly over the top of the blower, hopefully help with a bit of radiant heat there.





    Lastly on the cooling front, factory cars have this nice little scoop on top of the core support which duct air into the factory intake, since I don't have the factory intake it just blows air roughly towards the blower, I removed the scoop, which left this little hole:





    Made a quick and dirty block off plate from some cheap circle track plastic (seriously this stuff is like $10 for a 20 foot roll)







    Then, I found a set of 18x11 Apex wheels cheap locally, these are the same wheel I already run but 1" wider. I'm about due for new tires so I stepped those up from 275 to 285, they look massive!





    Fitting the fronts proved not to be too difficult, remove the fender liner, roller the fenders, tug on the fenders, loosen all fender hardware and then pull it outward as much as the factory adjustments allow, then re-install fender liners. They don't line up at all now but hopefully they do something? I have the liner slid outward as far as possible too, all told the front fenders now sit about 1" further outward than before:





    Which allows for removing the spring and seeing that I can get full compression without touching metal! hurray!





    The backs were a bit harder and more permanent. I had to cut out the inner most layer of metal first:





    Then with the springs removed I was able to use the fender roller with a jack under it as a crude metal crimper, the idea here is to fold the inner fender upwards like most other cars and also the fronts on this car.







    Once the whole thing is crimped upwards you can roll as normal and ultimately wind up with something like this, Ideally you would cut straighter than I did and not have an area of no overlap. To the left of the image/wheel well you can see how they look from the factory, middle is how I want them to look, right is when you cut off too much and leave yourself nothing to crimp.







    Test again with the ole, no spring full compression, it's close but it fits!










    Lastly, I've been farting around with a race capture system and think I've finally got it working to the point that I wanted to hard mount it in my car. The previous owner installed a Dynavin touch screen head unit which had some pretty cool features, but also 20 million wires. The entire mess on the left is replaced with the tablet to the right:





    I made a quick and dirty block off plate from some scrap aluminum which you can see the test fit of here:







    then I bolted a RAM Tab Tite onto the plate, this mount is spring loaded so I can easily install/remove the tablet which is perfect for reviewing data etc.







    I also figured I'd utilize the extra space to mount my electric fan override switch, A quick coat of black paint and it looks decent for how little effort I spent on it:





    The last bit of this Install is hooking up the power/CAN and GPS, presently I'm just passing the gps through the interior from the trunk but I spent a few extra minutes and routed the red CAN/power wire through the dash and into the center console. From the factory BMW provided one of the most stout arm rests ever. It's great for long trips but gets in the way on track, the key to it's strength is the massive trunk which bolts to the chassis, I took a sawzall and removed most of it leaving just the mounting tabs for the console. Bent up a simple aluminum U bracket to hold the race capture too and viola, hopefully this is sufficiently out of the way while also still accessible:










    So those are the updates! I start evening classes for completing a degree the night after we get home from Atlanta so I don't expect to do any major changes between now and winter other than just drive it at the events I hope to attend!
    Last edited by klodkrawler05; 10-04-2017 at 12:44 PM.
    - Brad


  6. #6
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    Nice progress as always!

    -Zach
    -Zach
    2013 NASA Midwest Time Trials "B" Champion and Rookie of the Year

    EFFEKTIV Motorsport #188 TTB - E-fab / Motorsport Hardware / NOS Energy Drink
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  7. #7
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    Catching this back up,


    Not a whole lot of changes to the car, Atlanta went pretty well, the track was an absolute blast! I'm glad we made the decision to go visit it during Gridlife and that I had a whole weekend to warm up to the track vs trying to learn it on the fly at One Lap of America.


    My favorite part about this event is we only used the main paddock area which left the entire support paddock open for a Maxxis Tire sponsored autocross event. I wound up having a time good enough to win me a set of tires! so that was awesome.


    On the final session of the event my transmission stuck into 4th gear as I tried to shift into 5th, I managed to get the car into neutral but then couldn't go into another gear, thankfully I was on the long straight heading to 10a-b so I just coasted through the turns, up the hill and was able to roll down into the pits.


    All told I managed to place 1st in the Street Mod RWD class with a laptime of 1:34. and 4th overall out of all street modified cars with 0.6 of a second separating 1st through 4th! and 2nd through 4th separated by 0.1!! I love a close battle!







    And here's some video from my fastest lap at ATL:






    Road Atlanta Gridlife Supercharged E46 M3 - YouTube


    With only a few weeks to go before the next event I had to work quick! Which is partially why I'm just getting to the update from ATL.


    Getting the car home I was fairly certain the issue was inside the transmission/clutch as the hydraulic system seemed fine. Pulling the transmission I found a broken tab on the clutch disc had allowed one of the springs to come out! Thankfully a friend had a spare clutch setup he sold me cheap to get through the final 2 races of the season. Thankful for an easy to spot issue I bolted the the car back together and tried to go for a test drive.





    Except the car still wouldn't go into gear.....it was no better than before and the clutch felt a little spongy, hmm maybe hydraulics after all?


    Ordered a new Slave/Master and got those installed, spent a lot of time bleeding to be certain the air was out of the system.


    Nope.......no improvement.......hmm ok, what did I miss? now 3 days away from the event I have to pull the trans back out and see what is wrong.


    Things always go faster the 2nd time and thankfully I had a spare 5 speed trans to swap in. But I didn't want to put anything back together until I was 100% certain I'd found the issue as I didn't have time to do this work a 3rd time.
    Once I had the trans out it still took a few hours of investigative work, measuring the stack height of the old vs new clutch, the throw of the slave cylinder etc before I finally noticed.....The throwout bearing on my current transmission doesn't move nearly as far towards the engine as the one on the spare transmission, Eureka! bent clutch fork.





    Since I knew my current in car transmission was working I opted to reinstall that with the clutch fork from the donor trans. 2nd time's the charm and we're good to go!


    Now off to M1 Concourse in Detroit for the speedring. This event was pretty crazy as there was $35,000 in cash prizes on the line for the 60 time attack cars entered. Big names like the Lyfe Motorsports GTR and the CAN JAM STi came out for their chance to bring home the $20,000 top prize. Amongst the usual midwest fast guys like RS Motors and Professional Awesome.


    Unfortunately I could never get comfortable on the narrow tight track, there were multiple turns with speeds below 30mph which required downshifting into 2nd gear, something I've never done on a road course and messed up more than I got right. With Walls mere feet off the track there was no space for error and I just never got into a rhythm.
    That aside, it was awesome seeing how fast some of the top time attack cars are and the event had a "bracket race" on Sunday which was so much fun to compete in and almost more fun to watch.





    2 cars would be sent out on track for a lead follow warm up lap, time starts as the cars cross the start/finish line, If the car behind closes the gap to the car in front they win the battle, if the gap grows then they lose. after 1 hot lap the cars switch positions on a cool down lap and repeat. After 2 laps you come off the track, you must win 2 battles to advance to the next round so if each car won a lap they were sent out for a 3rd sudden death lap. If you went 4 wheels off the track or passed the lead car you were automatically disqualified.
    This was a ton of fun, I managed to advance through the first round only to get knocked out on sudden death in the next round. I really hope to see more events adopt this for exhibition or as their format. It's a ton of fun and every lap counts so you have to be consistently on your game!





    The last major stop of the season was back to my home track at Gingerman Raceway for the final Gridlife event of the season. I was pretty excited to find out how much the improvements I’d made to the car would effect lap times as this exact event in 2016 was the first event I entered the car in exactly as I had purchased it.
    Saturday mornings weather was a bit wet but with no precipitation we figured it’d dry out in short order, I headed out for the 8:30am session keen to just shake down the car and warm up.


    In the wet the car turned a 1:41.3, not a fast time by any means but still a full second faster than my best time with the car as it sat when I purchased it last year! So that was promising.





    The next session out with dry track I clicked off a 1:39.27 woah sweet! Now a full 3 seconds faster than my baseline when I bought the car, and 1 second faster than I had gone this summer during the festival event. Reviewing data we could tell there were a few corners I was entering too hot and pushing scrubbing speed. I switched from my 18x10 275 re71 combo to the 18x11 285 re71 combo and resolved to drive the whole session with the goal of not pushing through the corner and instead let the front tires bite.


    The first lap around the AIM solo read 1:37.298 and I nearly yelled out loud from excitement! Now 5 full seconds faster than my baseline, and almost a full 2 seconds faster than my own personal best in any car. That lap was also fast enough to secure the class record of any drivetrain for the street modified class! I had to do a cool down lap at that point and decided to wait until Sunday morning to attempt any improvement on that. Saturday night brought thunderstorms and rain that let up early morning. When we arrived at the track we found conditions damp but quickly drying. I suited up for a damp session and headed out. The track really didn’t feel too bad after a couple laps so I started pushing a bit harder, to my amazement the AIM showed another 1:37.2 in the rapidly drying damp track! Alright well I’ve at least backed up my time!
    The next (and what would be the last fast session of the weekend) I tried my best to just do everything a little cleaner and better, 2 laps in I managed to click off a 1:36.98 despite a massive drift in the final turn. This wound up being my fastest time of the weekend and good for 1st place overall in the class for the weekend!
    With this event closing out the season for Gridlife they did the season long awards as well where I found out that my class record had earned me just enough bonus points to move into 2nd place overall for the season!





    Here's a little video of my fastest lap at Gingerman (yes a new camera mount is on the list for this off season) hard:






    Gridlife Round 5, Gingerman Raceway Supercharged E46 M3 - YouTube


    So now we move into the long off season, I have a few projects planned over the winter in terms of improving aero and weight savings but I don’t want to mess with the drivetrain too much as it’s been pretty solid this year and we’ll need that dependability if we intend to compete in One Lap of America 2018.


    Here's a little bit of a preview for some of the rear aero changes (GoodAero Raptor Wing, 68" wide, 14" chord)


    Last edited by klodkrawler05; 10-11-2017 at 01:43 PM.
    - Brad


  8. #8
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    Quick note:

    For everyone pm'ing me, I have already sold the bimmerworld wing
    - Brad


  9. #9
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    5 month bump back from the dead:
    Well, the weather has finally turned for the better near us, it's time to revive this thread.


    First up was working on a new wing mount for the GoodAero wing, since I was already seeing evidence of dents in the trunk from the old wing I will have to brace this wing to the chassis.


    First up was a little CAD:





    This design had some little swivel feet on top and the idea was when the trunk was shut the wing would be mounted directly above these feet so the load would transfer to the chassis, It should work but I decided it was overcomplicating a somewhat easy problem, since the only time I need to get into the trunk is to access the battery.


    So revision 2 was born, it's a bit less fancy and has the area which will be in the airstream solid for better aerodynamics.*





    I printed some 1:1 scale copies of these and transposed that into wood so that I could check my measurements and verify the wing was going to be below the roof (per class rules)



    [IMG]https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UIbIjOhrut8/Wq_8xrNBShI/AAAAAAAABAQ/gD1dSGOMwSwt3yg_6dEbrZ5tw-aKp****CEwYBhgL/s400/29386238_10212239686048166_8416586121340780544_n.j pg[/IMG]




    I had alloted myself the entire day to mess with the car so once that was done I started brainstorming some other "free" improvements I could make to the car. I decided saving weight costs nothing but time, lets see what we can remove.


    First to go was the trunk support structure. A tidy 7.5lb savings:








    I found a bit of trim in the trunk and an additional amplifier that had somehow escaped removal last year, that netted me 3.9lbs


    I pulled the door panels off to remove the last exploding bags, since I don't have a radio anyways, it seemed silly to leave 3 speakers behind each panel. another 4.7lbs!







    The panel by itself still seemed rather portly so off with it's handle, I'd like to re-trim this at some point to make it more intentional but for now the 5.5lbs it shaved is the reward.*








    Next up was the EVAP system, this massive box near the rear of the car houses 10lbs worth of emissions equipment plus a large bit of heat shield which is no longer needed. it also frees up a bunch of space under the car for a diffuser.*





    The last thing I did was swap out the power heated fancy M3 passenger seat with a base model manual no option seat, this was good for 19lbs worth of savings. It's still nearly a 50lb seat but $/lb it was a more attractive option for my budget.*


    Here's a photo of most of the junk that's no longer on the car. A few hours were good for 55 lbs worth of weight savings!


    ​​​​​​​

    - - - Updated - - -

    Got a bit more work done this weekend. Only 2 weekends until the first Gridlife event of the season at Mid Ohio.


    The wing mounts I drew up got laser cut by a friend:





    They fit really well, mocking them up in the trunk they're pretty much perfect for maximum height allowed by the class. One unconsidered advantage to this setup is I could simply remake the top plate if I ever wanted to position the wing higher or further back for other classes/events.








    I couldn't find any aluminum U-channel with the interior dimensions I needed but I did find some rectangle tube that would work, I used a bandsaw to cut the length and then a circular saw with a metal blade to cut off one end......unfortunately despite measuring and writing down the correct dimensions, I still managed to order the wrong size material. DOH!





    So I re-ordered the correct size and will have to try this again.


    I purchased the N15designs fender vents and worked on installing those. The fit is pretty good although it's definitely harder to put these on the compound curve of the fenders than the flat hood vents. I think they turned out pretty good and match the hood vent style pretty well despite the slight coating difference:







    There was still a little daylight left so I spent some time playing with the 3D printed diffuser tunnels I'm working on. I'll be making some tweaks to those hopefully this week.


    You can also see the splitter after a season of abuse, most of the exposed truck bed coating has flaked off but overall it's held up quite well.


    This is approximately 15 days on track, a half dozen autocross events and 3,000 street miles later. I think most of the coating is coming off due to the sealant I put on before painting (it has a waxy residue once dry) and the square edge results in the bed liner chipping easily.


    I'm going to make a new one this week and will spray the bed liner onto the new one without any coating. I'm also going to borrow a friends router to see if a smoother corner edge will help rev2 last longer.


    - Brad


  10. #10
    Join Date
    Feb 2015
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    Nevada City, CA
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    E60 550i 6MT
    Awesome build, and thanks for the aero DIYs!

    Also, I spied a Mk2 GTI.... my first, and favorite car.

  11. #11
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    Of course! hopefully they're helpful for someone! I'm not great at taking pretty pictures but I think I at least captured most of the critical steps! I bought that GTI at the start of last summer from the original owners with 72,000 miles on it as a fun summer cruiser!

    Finally got the correct size rectangle tubing, Cut the bottom edge off and it seems like it'll work great!


    For anyone who may be considering this style mount for an e46 I'll save you the legwork,


    I used 3"x3" square tube with 1/8" thick wall.
    Inside width is 2.75" (that's the important one that I messed up last time)
    I cut these down to around 12" but any length longer than the upright is wide should work.


    I did have to make some notches to clear the battery cable and the bracket, I'm not crazy about this so far because it means I'll have to unbolt the upright to get the battery bracket off. But I would likely have to remove the upright to get the battery out of the car anyways so perhaps it's not a big deal.


    I'm hoping to get a friend to weld the uprights tonight and then I can finish the wing setup this weekend!



    - Brad


  12. #12
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    Looking good Brad! I'll be at Mid-Oh with the DMN guys but don't have a car this season!

  13. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by Inflame View Post
    Looking good Brad! I'll be at Mid-Oh with the DMN guys but don't have a car this season!
    Thanks! I'll be sure to stop by and say hi! still have the techno e36?
    - Brad


  14. #14
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    Quote Originally Posted by klodkrawler05 View Post
    Thanks! I'll be sure to stop by and say hi! still have the techno e36?
    Yup, still have it but pulled the motor and trans... Not sure what i'll be doing next, thinking E46M or C5.

  15. #15
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    Can't go wrong with either of those choices!

    Well, wrapped up the wing this weekend, no point posting a wall of text since it was mostly just drilling holes and bolting things together.


    Now that we're all sick of seeing photos of the wing system (i'm sick of building it) here are finished photos.


    The upper braces are 8mm threaded rod with 12mm OD carbon tube to hold the space:












    - Brad


  16. #16
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    Nov 2013
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    Car looks very well balanced. Do you have a background in aerodynamics or is this strictly DIY? Regardless, good work!

  17. #17
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    Quote Originally Posted by bmw328m52 View Post
    Car looks very well balanced. Do you have a background in aerodynamics or is this strictly DIY? Regardless, good work!
    Thanks! I'm a mechanical engineer, no real aerodynamics background other than what I learned in school and from the internet. The guys at GoodAero have been helping with suggestions on the aero mods and I plan to get some better datalogging equipment this summer so that I can do some actual testing and prove the parts work the way they're supposed too!
    - Brad


  18. #18
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    Nice, a fellow ME. I look forward to seeing the real time data.

  19. #19
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    Got the splitter ducts on the car. They turned out pretty awesome I think (whether they do anything remains to be seen)


    My previous splitter was looking fairly rough so I cut a new one, this was much faster since I still had the template from last year:



    Test fit turned out nice, I was pretty pleased since I just traced the duct and cut.






    After test fitting the parts I realized I only needed to install the 4 rear rivets since my aluminum angle does a great job of sandwiching the front of the duct to the splitter:



    Nice and flush on the bottom side:



    The finished product:





    Installed:I had to do a bit of trimming on the fender liner:




    Our first event this weekend was pretty soggy, I may be reading too much into this but at least the half of the duct on the left side of this photos seems like the water/mud trails have decent attachment to the surface?



    I did mess around a bit more with some ideas for making a spat to cover the amount of front tire which sticks out, but haven't gotten to the mounting phase yet:

    Attached Images Attached Images
    - Brad


  20. #20
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    Bump! I was hoping to have all sorts of tuft testing or proof that the new aero stuff is awesome. Instead, it's mostly been scramble in free time to make adjustments and sort issues as they arise.

    Since my last post we've run 2 gridlife events and 2 local autocross events. Overall the car has been good, after the first gridlife we decided to lower the car a bit to try to get more front bite.

    This is the amount we lowered the car (about .75"):



    This ultimately acheived our goal but we way overshot, the front edge of the splitter would dig in under heavy braking zones and cause a shudder throughout the car, which would trigger ABS, the solution was to raise the car back up .25" and then raise the front mount of the splitter by .25"



    I'm working on some splitter skids as well for rougher tracks as the splitter still sits about .5" lower than previously thanks to the increased rake.

    The other thing was this made the car incredibly loose in the back, we wound up having to not only dial out some compression in the rear but also wound up removing the rear sway bar.

    During one of our sessions after lowering the car Matt wound up oversteering and sliding off the track backwards into some grass. He was able to drive back onto the track and pulled into the pit to be checked over. When he stopped moving the lack of airflow under the car caused some of the still stuck grass to ignite on the hot exhaust which quickly caught some of the oily bits below on fire. Thankfully the fire crew was nearby and the only real damage was a melted wideband o2 and some reverse light wiring.



    That prompted the install of this, which was probably something that should've been in the car long ago:



    We've been dealing with some heat soak issues also, previously we'd do 2 laps, cool down, 1 more hot lap then the session would be over. For this year we're really targeting doing 3 hot laps back to back to back in preparation for the 2019 One Lap of America where you have to do that twice a day for a week. Water temps have never been an issue since installing the CSF radiator, however the C&R oil cooler didn't seem to be able to keep up with the heat. So, enter this massive piece from Setrab, oil capacity is now up by a full 2 quarts, and it's rated for 50% more hp than I'm making!



    We learned as it turns, out, all that extra blockage in front of the radiator means that now the radiator isn't getting the airflow it was before which caused coolant temps to go up. After 2 laps water and oil temps were high enough to worry us into back down, sometimes even midway through the 2nd lap. Great, money spent and we made the car worse.

    Since we were at Gridlife when we learned this interesting bit of information there wasn't a ton of options or time between sessions, Thankfully Gingerman is only an hour from my house so my brother in law brought out some power tools and a beat up spare bumper from a car we parted out:





    This seemed to help a bit, oil temps were still just as bad as they were previously with the C&R cooler BUT, we could now do a 3rd lap at speed without getting into the "DANGER WILL ROBINSON" area.


    A bit of temp data from the AIM, all sessions shown were within 5-10 degrees ambient, so not a massive swing.

    2 laps in green are from last fall with the C&R oil cooler in factory location and CSF radiator
    2 laps in blue are from this summer with the new cooler in place
    2 laps in red are after we cut up the bumper



    So, we've got temps back down to where they used to be with the old setup, ie. no improvement. Not captured in this data is that oil temps would continue climbing steadily for the green laps if we started a 3rd one, meanwhile the red laps sort of plateau and hold. so we did get a bit of improvement in length of time we can push the car.


    And that brings us up to today. If some is good, more should hopefully be better?
    Adding much more comprehensive ducting to the cooler stack:








    We're also trimming up some angle to help try to get the hood vent extracting more air (and have added a massive 2600cfm radiator fan instead of the 1500cfm one on the car previously)



    Hopefully we see some improvement here and none too soon as our next track event is only a week away at Autobahn and the Optima Autocross in Grissom is this coming weekend.

    The last idea I have still in mind for cooling is a larger intercooler, get rid of the end tanks blocking so much of the lower grille and instead have it be entirely core, with the end tanks tucked behind the bumper, this should increase airflow which seems to be the best things we've done so far to heat reduction.



    You can see how much space they waste, but with how far outward the charge pipes are I think it's possible to fab something while keeping the same piping. Unfortunately I'm not a welder so I'll have to farm this work out.



    The core which comes with this kit is 20x8x3, I don't see any brand markings on it but I have my suspicions something like the 24x8x3.5 core from Garret might actually let more air through to the heat exchangers as well as cool my IAT's down more (not something that's been an issue but it can't hurt)

    I'll make sure my update is not 2 months away this time and hopefully I have some positive cooling results to share!

  21. #21
    Join Date
    Aug 2011
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    Bringing this thread back from the dead! I'm wrapping up school in 2 weeks and will begin to have some free time/money to devote to the car.


    Since my last update 6 months ago not much has changed on the car. We went to the first round of Gridlife at Mid Ohio at the beginning of April. Ultimately we wound up improving our best time there from the 1:35.4 in 2018 to a 1:34.0 :thumbsup2: That wound up being good enough for 2nd in Street mod that weekend. We were pretty excited about the result as we were using old tires from 2017!


    Next up what is arguably the "biggest" event of the year. Gridlife Midwest Festival this past weekend. I can never resist at least trying to improve the car and go faster at this event. Last year at Gingerman we always struggled with a bit of push during the high speed sweeper corners so we tried to add a bit more front aero.


    Block off plates made from circle track body plastic (like $10 per roll)

    And Bimmerworld Dive planes.

    Ultimately we had to scrap the ebay lip to work with the diveplanes, so I'll have to fab up something to seal off the center of my splitter, I just ran out of time to do so before Gridlife. The angle aluminum that supports my splitter is just behind the bumper here so air still can't just pass through, but it's not ideal.


    In practice the changes were a benefit. Reviewing data in turn 9 both events last year we would have to lift to get turn in on corner exit. But this year we could stay WOT. Additionally our top speed improved by about 2mph, I still need to overlay data to see if we were simply getting a better corner exit thanks to the ATS LSD or if the aero decreased drag a bit.

    I also replaced the fender which had gotten crunched up in Atlanta last year which was the only remaining damage from that off, it's not a perfect match, but good enough for a racecar.



    Ultimately the car was better but the weekend didn't go our way. During the "good" sessions on day 1 we were constantly in traffic and by the time we had worked up through grid to our rightful spot the drifting had started. Once drifters get on track the lap times suffer pretty drastically. Generally speaking everyone goes 1-2 seconds per lap slower. That was the case for us as well and we had to settle with a 1:37.6 as our fastest time of the weekend (the car has done 1:36.8 the previous 2 years) I think the car is capable of low 1:36's at minimum and possibly knocking on the 1:35's, but we'll have to wait until October to prove that out. With everyone else getting faster this resulted in us finishing 6th out of 35 in Street Modified. A good result, but the worst one we've ever had with the M3.


    Next up, I finish school June 19 and then we have Autobahn Country Club June 29-30 I've got a couple fun tweaks to make to the car before then and will post pictures once I have some progress!


    Thanks for following along!
    - Brad


  22. #22
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    vancouver, canada
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    1971 2002
    How was the oil and engine temp after your upgrades?

  23. #23
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    Quote Originally Posted by pondhopper View Post
    How was the oil and engine temp after your upgrades?
    Oil temps get up around 270-280 after 4-5 laps, water temps start to approach the tick mark between normal and hot. Since we only do 2-3 laps generally it has been fine.

    I can do full 20 minute HPDE sessions by shifting 500rpm before redline and the temps never get hot, the extra RPM of pushing 10/10's for time attack seems to cause the temp rise.
    - Brad


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