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Thread: 95 325is HPDE Build

  1. #26
    mslevin's Avatar
    mslevin is offline Have you checked RealOEM? BMW CCA Member
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    Quote Originally Posted by SamE30e View Post
    Got my wheel studs and titan nuts from Motorsports Hardware.

    May order wheels and tires soon, also need seats and a cage.

    What is everyone running for bolt-in cages?
    Ben's are the best you can buy. The only cages I've seen that fit better are custom, welded cages.

    https://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/s...36-M3-Roll-Bar

  2. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by mslevin View Post
    Ben's are the best you can buy. The only cages I've seen that fit better are custom, welded cages.

    https://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/s...36-M3-Roll-Bar
    I've seen those and am seriously considering one. Just need to decide if I want to install a sunroof delete or not.

  3. #28
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    I was looking for a bolt in and found an e36 m3 that had been rolled at barber motorsports. It had a kirk racing bar. The looks like it took the brunt after the b-pillar curled.




  4. #29
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    Thank you for finding that!

    A little bit of an update. We're selling our house, so we had showings all day Sunday. I took the time to shoot up and hang out with my buddy and wrench on the car.

    I put the Motorsport Hardware studs in with the Titan nuts. They look weird on the wheels I have, but the wheels aren't staying so it doesn't matter. Super simple install, I've done tons of them before and these were not different, I just had to double nut them because they're bullet nose. Now I can drive the car, because there is more than 2 threads holding each wheel on.

    54410672_393236321519231_4430361033290285056_n.jpg

    I then went onto installing the AKG Engine and trans mounts. Fairly simple with the engine brace my friend bought for when we did the trans in his FG2 Civic race car. I still had to lower the subframe a bit to slip the driver side mount out.

    54731215_2280529672015438_3425865846017228800_n.jpg

    55441203_370463063681770_8745453038505820160_n.jpg

    Turns out I need a battery from it being 1. A pile of shit Ecopower battery and 2. Being discharged and charged so much. I had every intention of taking the car around the block on a maiden voyage, but the battery started boiling over when I charged it. So that idea got killed fast. I got the car started on a booster pack to see how the mounts are, they're stiff to say the least. I assumed they may be a bit forgiving, but at idle the NVH is shaking every interior piece. It seems to go away around 900rpm, so I may have to burn a chip with a higher RPM set, otherwise I'll go insane. They seem ok at any higher RPM than idle. But race car right?

    I hope the rest of the 75D suspension bushings aren't as bad.. I'm genuinely scared haha.

    Once we close on our house I'm going to order wheels, tires a seat and roll bar. Then I should be good to go lapping shake down.

    I think I've decided to go with Anthracite Apex Arc-8 17x9.5 ET35. Two reasons 1. I don't think the silver will be easy to keep clean 2. They are out of stock in silver.

    Lattteerrr

    Sam

  5. #30
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    Small update.

    It's been busy with work. I was at VIR for warm weather testing and 2 of our 3 cars down there had incidents with tire walls. So that along with normal work has kept me busy.

    - I've been in contact with Ben about a roll bar and will be going ahead with that next week. I'm doing the set back harness bar and rear X bars.
    - Ordered my Apex wheels and they should be here in the next week or two.
    - I need to order my VAC seat mounts and my Sparco seat.

    There should be a big update once I move into my new house and all the parts show up. Almost there!!

    Sam

  6. #31
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    Small update.

    I ordered a roll-bar from Ben (Bay Side Fabrications) about a week and a half ago and it showed up in Buffalo yesterday. Amazing service from Ben, great guidance awesome quality and fast turn around.

    I chose to order the rear X and the set back harness bar (I'm a bit taller). I picked it up this morning and dropped it right off at powder coating. They have a powder that is very close to Daytona Violet.

    60161400_441476816606904_3914539120352821248_n.jpg60468650_632555963890999_2486279275422941184_n.jpg

    My wheels also arrived. Apex Arc-8 17x9.5 in Anthracite, I'll get them wrapped in rubber next week.

    I also ordered the VAC seat mounting kit with the side mount, sub harness plate and lap belt mounting kit, all to go with my Sparco Pro 2000 II seat and Sparco 5 point harness.

    I'm very busy the next few weeks. Our Porsche GT3 Cup team has it's first race at Mosport for Victoria Day Speed Fest this coming weekend. We've been busy prepping the 2 cars and getting equipment ready, but it should be a good time. The Tuesday after that we move into our new house and once that is done, it should slow down a bit and hopefully I can get the parts into the car and hopefully ready for a shake down.

    I'm going to try and do a video of the cage install. I'm planning to try and cut the rear seats so I can fit them back in and keep it looking clean. I also think I'm going to order M3 bumpers and send them out for paint.

    Till next time,

    Sam

  7. #32
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    UPDATE!!!

    So after racing at Mosport, then moving and then racing at Canadian Formula 1 GP. I had some time to work on the car.

    I got my Potenza RE71-R's mounted and installed on the car. I rolled the rear fenders to clear them and then set the ride height, took the car for a road test and it's actually not as terrible as I thought it would be. NVH wise I mean.

    A few things that needed addressing after I drove it.
    - Alignment
    - Fenders are still rubbing in the back but I wanted to align it first, as it was close
    - ASC light is still on causing the ABS to not work. ( I removed it so I needed a resistor in the actuator wiring)


    64286460_384277202213317_121220495537340416_n.jpg


    So today I went back with some of the tools from work to align the car the best I could until I got it on a actual rack. And I say best I could, because I did it on a 4 post hoist which was on 2/10th of a degree slanted with string bars meant for a GT3 Cup car.

    62590799_1373064752858724_6747272649967140864_n.jpg64300374_2494528923890788_8192837386284040192_n.jpg

    It worked out pretty well. I went 3.2 degrees of camber in the front and 2.2 in the rear, and then set the toe to -3mm in the front and +3mm in the rear. (1/8" for those of you to the south.)

    I set the ride height all around, but didn't corner balance it. I'll wait till it's at the shop and the roll bar is in and it's at it's track weight.

    Driving the car in the street the small amount I did, it feels a bit lazy on turn-in. It could be the new tires or not super accurate alignment. Or it could also need some more rake. I'll figure it out.

    That being said, I got the roll bar back from powder coating, it's rather awkward to transport, especially on E90 roof racks. So I'm going to bring the car home and install it to avoid moving it around. The colour match is pretty decent, although it may be a bit closer to techno. I think it's called prismatic purple.

    62601314_198540511040842_6585468664852512768_n.jpg64231752_621755378303345_6214279861507194880_n.jpg


    I put the resistor in the ASC connector and made sure the ABS works.

    I also picked up a Sparco QRT-R seat and VAC seat mounts. Along with a set of Racequip 2" harnesses (for hans).

    I also picked up a helmet and Han's device for all the safety.

    I still have to put in the cage, Z3M rad, oil cooler, spark plugs and oil change then it should be good to go for a shake down.

    I bought Hawk DTC60 rear pads, but accidentally ordered fronts not rears, so I need to re-ordered that to get rid of the incorrect sized 325is pads in the back. I'm also waiting on bimmerworld to ship my silicone rad hoses which should be this week.

    Till next update,

    Sam

  8. #33
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    Oh, and a picture for attention.

    These are our two cars in the pit for practice last weekend. Super cool event and very hectic.

    62482119_2051982428247075_6093691499256479744_n.jpg

  9. #34
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    So I guess I should do an update.

    It's been a while and I've gotten lots done so far.

    I installed the S54 rad, aluminum thermostat housing and bimmerworld rad hoses and then got the car home. It was a good first drive with no issues.

    67354276_402246427071683_2092993449455255552_n.jpg
    This is when I first got it home from my buddies place

    I drove it to work a few times and then eventually got around to getting the Ben Sipson roll bar in. Install was super easy and really only took maybe 2 hours. I had a question about location of the cage and gave him a call. I would recommend one of his roll bars to anyone.

    67721435_654239988406757_2977802045811064832_n.jpg67732819_357948204877031_4112878596958191616_n.jpg68427200_2972038986171896_5846031049175334912_n.jpg

    I ended up putting the back seats in for now, till I get a proper rear seat delete.

    I did a proper alignment on the car this time. I set front camber to -3.2 and rear to -2.5. Front toe is 0 and rear toe is in 2mm. I'm having a few issues, one the camber plates aren't equal side to side which annoys me. Either something isn't straight like one of the knuckles, or subframe. Or I just need to shim it. It's not a big deal but it bothers me. The more annoying thing is that I can't get caster above 6 degrees, I think it's a combination of the AKG lower brackets and the camber plates. Ground control recommends 8-9 degrees. I'm not overly bothered by it, but on the track the steering is a bit heavy and I would like it to self centre a bit more.
    Last edited by SamE30e; 08-05-2019 at 10:02 AM.

  10. #35
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    I put my Sparco QRT-R seat in with my VAC floor mounts. Which to be honest, for what I paid, aren't worth it.

    I can only put the seat in one position height and angle wise and getting the lap belts on was a pain in the ass. If I didn't get the VAC side mounts with the kit, it may make it better. I'm also not happy with where the anti-sub plate mounts. VAC basically wants you to mount it behind the seat, which makes it wayyyy more than the recommended 20 degree angle.

    67671569_699551610471202_5260614040224268288_n.jpg67660462_2454807914806295_8853055635856556032_n.jpg67708598_370035783595199_8394782238826299392_n.jpg

    I had a set of RaceQuip harnesses that I got off a friend. But I found when I was on the track the shoulder harness adjustment would rub my left bicep on right hand corners. Eventually it caused marks. So I ordered a set of Schroth 2x2's which are a lot more comfortable.

    I took the car out to the local small track on a week night to test it out. Overall it was a good experience, I found a few things though.
    - The tires were still rubbing on high speed corners
    - My harness issue
    - The car has no mid range power to get it out of a corner
    - The car won't rotate under power like I would want it to.

    I re-rolled the fenders more which fixed the issue. The 255 RE71r's are a tight fit, I couldn't see going any wider without fender flares or serious pulling.

    As for the power issue. I've always suspected the VANOS to be lazy. I do have a VANOS rattle when cold and revving the engine and I've tried actuating it manually and it seems to react very slowly which makes me believe the piston seal is leaking, but not the to point of where it will throw a fault. So I've ordered the Beisan repair kit which is in the mail now.

    I also live fairly close to Mark D'sylva and know him fairly well over the years. So I got him to burn me one of his M50 tunes with a modified idle (The reason for that is, when the A/C is on, the mounts shake the car pretty good. A bump in the idle of 100rpm made it more manageable). I also picked up a used ActiveAutowerks cat back which was a not so great experience; I asked before I left on the 2 hour drive if it was in good condition, and he said "good as new". Which I assumed meant that it wasn't previously welded to another pipe and then cut, and the tips weren't cracked. I ended up getting it anyways and fixing most of it. But I was less than pleased about the whole thing.

    The car rotating under power; I think it is the lack of power contributing to not being able to get it to come around and settle in the corner. I added a bit of rake to the car (about 3mm) and it helped a bit. I have since put the factory sway bar back in to see if that helps a bit more.

    Overall I'm pleased with the way the car is. I wish it had a bit more power. I had a guy who was supposed to drop off an S54 and 6 speed for a decent deal. But backed out at the last second. I think it may have been too much to spend on the car at this point, given all the money I've put into it to date. So I may try and do something a bit more reasonable to get some power. Tossing around ideas like, M50 3.0 stroker, or a M54 swap, or even a M52B28. But I think this winter I just want to iron out the little things and maybe do some cosmetics, like M3 bumpers and some paint fixes.

    I do have one issue that is driving me nuts though. On deceleration between 3500 and 2500 RPM I have a driveline vibration intermittently. I've re-rebuilt the rear axles and everything seems fine. I've replaced the Guibo and CSB (Because it feels exactly like a CSB would). Whatever it is, its amplified by the poly mounts. I've loosened and re-torqued the entire driveline.

    I think I've narrowed it down to the rear u-joints. When I took the shaft out to change the CSB they felt notchy. I picked up a used shaft and they feel the same. I'm going to send the used shaft out to get rebuilt and hopefully that fixes the issue.

    Till next time,

    Sam

    67827336_898082080569542_3153264821495922688_n.jpg

    67894835_1021604541366383_3424418751276122112_n.jpg

  11. #36
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    Nice work.
    Re VAC and sub belts. 6-point or 5 point? Some 6 point folks will tell you to mount them under the seat, well over 20 degrees.

  12. #37
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    Thank you!

    Schroth 6 point. Instructions said 20 degrees, but I will re-read them.

    Also, in car video.

    Last edited by SamE30e; 08-05-2019 at 07:06 PM.

  13. #38
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    Yea, obviously you should go by manufacturers directions. I've found a few dependencies in Schroth directions.

    Here are SFI 16.1 and 16.5 guidelines on 6-point.

    SFI-belts.png

  14. #39
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    Quote Originally Posted by aeronaut View Post
    Yea, obviously you should go by manufacturers directions. I've found a few dependencies in Schroth directions.

    Here are SFI 16.1 and 16.5 guidelines on 6-point.

    SFI-belts.png
    Shell type seat says -20 degree angle. But Containment seat says mounted rearward under the butt.

    I think my seat would be considered shell type.

  15. #40
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    Love the roll bar. Ben did mine for my e30 build. Great quality for the price.

  16. #41
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    Long time since I've made an update, I've been super busy with life.


    I've put the car away for the winter. But before then I did take it out for one more track day, and it was a big boy track and not my local Toronto Motorsports Park.

    The week before going I was in Mt Tremblant for the championship round of Porsche GT3 Cup Canada. Our team took 3rd and 5th for the season which was amazing, and the long days and nights at the track paid off. The Team manager, drivers and I went to a banquet the Sunday night, but I had a plan to make a track day at Mosport (Canadian tire motorsports park) on the Monday. So once the banquet ended we turned and burned for the 7 hour drive back home. I drove the first leg so I could sleep for the second half. I had pre-prepped the car the previous week before leaving so all I had to do was wake up, hop in and make the hour and a half drive to Mosport for 730am Drivers meeting.

    I was put in the beginner group, which was small with only about 15 cars. The first session I was to drive with an instructor in the passenger seat to evaluate me. Having done a few thousand laps in iRacing, doing track walks with drivers, listening to post session engineering meetings, customer support days all summer and generally being around the track helped a ton. Knowing the track and car placement made me a bit more confident and it showed, as the instructor signed me off and had good feedback.

    I went out all 6 sessions which were 20 minutes each, it took about 2 of them to get the pressures dialed in and feeling confident in the car set up. I started off the day running in the mid 1:4x.xx's. I was asked if I wanted to bump up to intermediate group after lunch, but declined there were some considerably more powerful cars in the group and I didn't want to have to wave 5 cars past every time I went up the Andretti straight. Plus the 15 cars thinned out to about 8 after lunch so there was plenty of room to just work on gaining time.

    Pretty uneventful, the car was on rails and no matter what I threw at it, it was predictable and controllable. One of our sales people at the dealership is also a driver coach who raced in the 24hr of Daytona, told me the car was picking up the front right tire about 6" through most of Turn-3 which I found awesome.

    I took my instructor for a few laps in the middle of the afternoon and he was impressed. Small amounts of feedback, but no real concerns.

    The last session of the day I was fairly tired, but there was only 3 cars including myself. A Super 7 replica, a BRZ and myself. I was feeling confident and had broken into the 1:39's and knew I would have tons of open track to make it better. But I was skeptical of my Racecrono lap timer on my iPhone, so I borrowed a Aim Solo 2 off someone. I ended up sending it to put down a best of 1:38.07. Breaking into the 1:3x's for me was big, I know its difficult in a low HP car. My friend CASC Championship NA Spec Miata does 1:40.xx and 1:39.xx with a tail wind lol.

    The big bummer was my GoPro card got corrupted, I had 20gb of in car video from every session and would have loved to see it. I tried for a week to recover it, and all I could get is one single frame from the pit.

    I did get a few photos

    48827237093_abc57b5609_o.jpg48827620676_3cec8a1264_o.jpg

    I did get another seat for the passenger side. I picked up a Sparco EVO 2 QRT. I couldn't get it mounted in time, as the mount I got put it into the door panel and set it too high. So for now it's on my iRacing rig.

    Over the winter I have plans.

    Rear diff carrier bolts need to get upgraded and possibly add another clutch to the LSD. (It's a factory Porsche part from a 928 I believe)
    Drive shaft rebuilt and balanced
    M3 front and rear bumpers
    Oil cooler (E36 Euro cooler or S54)
    Passenger seat
    Mid pipe of some sort
    Some sort of power (Possibly a set of cams)

    I will update with winter stuff as it happens.

    Sam

  17. #42
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    Pulled my drive shaft out and had it rebuilt.

    Also pulled the rear diff out and pulled it apart. I did find one of the LSD carrier bolts broken. I didn't find the head, although it seems to be smashed up and didn't cause any damage internally.

    The clutches and dog plates look good, so I'll just order one disk and one dog plate and some M8x1.25x16 12.9 Socket head cap screws.

    Porsche Part number 928 332 551 00 is a 2.0mm clutch (8)
    and 917 332 552 11 is a 2.0mm Dog plate (9)

    011030505.png

    There are different thickness spacers, I'm using a total of 4.0mm thickness to replace the 4.0mm spacer at the bottom, this should keep the same pre-load.

  18. #43
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    Little bit of an update:

    I've rebuilt the diff with the 3rd clutch, and put it all together with a rebuilt drive shaft.

    Car is currently in paint, well... It's in primer as of today. I sent it in to get the front and rear M3 bumpers painted along with the front end. Ended up respraying the whole car after digging into it. I also picked up a Hamann LTW Low-rise rear spoiler.

    I pulled the headliner and all the pillars out to get rewrapped in black. (They were sagging pretty bad)

    Heres some photos, I'm super excited to get it back. But also realize I may be an idiot for painting my track car. It is getting PPF done on the front end at the very least.

    106479359_1534555620039848_3083149739132636530_n.jpg107001998_755364885202888_4069697531278569108_n.jpg106571269_259028502059617_2548711511729516934_n.jpg101181754_388631315395442_5141723530085269504_n.jpg

  19. #44
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    I'll update this soon.


    Car is painted, tracked, S52 cams, 6 speed.

    M50 was pulled last week and S54 bolted in.

  20. #45
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    Great work Sam!
    Subscribed for S54 updates.

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