The Dunklenator (Poor Man's Z8 Project)

[BimmerBreaker]

The pin clicked into place, it is fully seated but the waterproofing jacket isn't seated all the way yet.

I planned on just de-pinning it and reinstalling into the new connector but the pins on those were not coming out, so I just cut and re-pinned. I have a very high quality crimping tool and the kit came with pins, so it was not an issue. I don't mind crimping pins but I avoid splicing wires whenever possible. There is also plenty of extra wire length to that connector so it wasn't an issue at all.

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edit:

think I found a good place for the camera mount,





Gotten pretty good at keeping it straight on the road even when spinning the tires. Torsen is doing good work back there!

[CoconutPete]

Jesus freaking christ! DAMN!

[IndianaRoadster]

I love it! Teasing us Northerners while we are all snowed in.

[sleeperz]

Looks like a lot of fun. Might need to get some Mickey Thompsons on that rear to get it to bite more. Your 60ft times are gonna stink as-is. My Grand National walks around like that too.
BTW, I do like the way the torsen seems to keep everything stable like a solid axle while spinning. I have an old E30 3.73 LSD in mine. Seems like it locks up pretty good, but it's getting tired.
Wish you lived closer. Would gladly furnish some beverages and pizza for a ride.

[BimmerBreaker]

Jesus freaking christ! DAMN!

Agreed.. lol

I love it! Teasing us Northerners while we are all snowed in.

Yup gotta enjoy it now, come summer the tables will have turned when it's perfect driving weather for you guys and 110F+ in my neck of the woods

Looks like a lot of fun. Might need to get some Mickey Thompsons on that rear to get it to bite more. Your 60ft times are gonna stink as-is. My Grand National walks around like that too.
BTW, I do like the way the torsen seems to keep everything stable like a solid axle while spinning. I have an old E30 3.73 LSD in mine. Seems like it locks up pretty good, but it's getting tired.
Wish you lived closer. Would gladly furnish some beverages and pizza for a ride.

I don't know how hardcore I'm going to go with the tires, the goal with the car was, and still is, a really fast and fun car capable of daily driving type duties. Putting a tire that wears out extremely fast would somewhat defeat that purpose. One thing I am considering is a set of "normal" (but still sticky) tires and a second set of rear tires with really grippy rubber to lay down some quick times with.
The Torsen is really impressing me so far. I've owned numerous Z3's with Torsens and numerous with clutch pack diffs - I always preferred the Torsens but I've never pushed one to the limits the way I am with this one and the way this thing just hooks and sort of forces it straight is really impressive to me. I don't know if a clutch pack type diff would behave the same way. It seems to just sort of lock and like you say its almost like a solid rear axle. It makes it behave very predictably even when losing traction and "pushing" to one side and it is very easy to keep in line.



Ran it against a modified C6 corvette and I don't know if I was faster or not, the runs were really close, but we talked afterwards and he said he loved how my car sounded and asked what was in it... his had a modified LS3 with custom intake, exhaust and cams so me even hanging with him made me proud of my car. The next stop was the gas station where another couple people commented on the car, "thats a big motor for such a small car!" - I don't think they even knew it wasn't the original engine lol. It definitely gets attention which really isn't usually my thing but to be honest it is nice that the work I put into this is somewhat validated.
I'd like to take it to car shows, but don't think it's worth showing off with the poor condition paint and rather crappy interior. I want to get the interior re-done and the car repainted but I just always feel like I'd rather be driving it than making it look good. And if it looks too good, I'd be afraid to drive it. At the end of the day, paint doesn't affect how it drives. I did have a vision of a "nice" car, maybe get featured in some magazines and whatnot but, I don't know.


Anyways, took it out again tonight - nothing too exciting just cruising some roads in Mexico



Took some sound clips too. Would have been a bit longer but there were some cars coming down the road so I wanted to scurry out of there quickly, lest I draw too much attention. It also seemed to hit some sort of rpm limit before the actual redline, around 6000 rpm or so. I'm not sure why, maybe need to consult my tuner about that one. Or I'll just wait a week or so for him to read the thread then text me about it

You can see a little flame shoot out... it has turn-down tips still that dump under the car just in front of the rear subframe, so you just see the flash underneath the car. It actually kind of shocked me when it happened lol



I'm really not sure what all sorts of videos people really want, but I do have people asking for more videos. I figured people would be bored of it by now but I guess to be fair, I've watched probably every video of a V8 Z3 like 30 times especially when I was doing the swap for motivation. I did try to get the camera set up once I saw that vette but couldn't get it in time. That may have been a fun one to film
So, what sort of videos do people want?

[ixlr08]

Next project.... make it 4 wheel drive so you can put more of the power to the road and less to spinning tires. Then you would really surprise your Vette buddy. I know it is impossible, but imagine the 0-60 times.

[BimmerBreaker]

Next project.... make it 4 wheel drive so you can put more of the power to the road and less to spinning tires. Then you would really surprise your Vette buddy. I know it is impossible, but imagine the 0-60 times.

Anything is possible but I wouldn't do an AWD Z3 just because I think part of the charm of the Z3 is it being RWD. Despite the pull videos and dragy stuff I post the goal really isn't outright speed, it's to build a fun car to drive and AWD would compromise some of the fun for me due to the weight and different driving characteristics. I think it's quite fun spinning the tires so easily even if that hurts the 0-60 or 1/4 mile times.

If I was building something dedicated for speed, it'd probably be an AWD B58 powered E46 or something along those lines.

[George Hill]

...I'd like to take it to car shows, but don't think it's worth showing off with the poor condition paint and rather crappy interior...

Its your car enjoy it how you like. Don't let the fear of judgement from an unfinished product keep you home. I think you'll find most people don't care especially when its a cool car being driven. If someone doesn't like it because its not "pretty" you probably don't care about their opinion anyways.

[328 Power 04]

You're making me (and all of us) like the N62 quite a lot. It's been transformed so much!

[BimmerBreaker]

Its your car enjoy it how you like. Don't let the fear of judgement from an unfinished product keep you home. I think you'll find most people don't care especially when its a cool car being driven. If someone doesn't like it because its not "pretty" you probably don't care about their opinion anyways.

I will take it and show it when I have time, I wanted to take it to an FCP Euro meetup a few weeks back but my garage door broke. Got it fixed the same day but missed the meet unfortunately

You're making me (and all of us) like the N62 quite a lot. It's been transformed so much!

Well it's in large part to your coding/tuning wizadry so big thank you once again


Haven't had a lot of time to drive it recently but took it out today for a quick little run
Speedometer couldn't even keep up for the first pull, lol

[kezug]

Wow. I dont even know what more to say other than Wow! That would be neat to see and experience!

My rough clocking had you between 5.3s and 4.85s for 0 to 60 on a couple of those pulls. How is it that you are not squeeling/spinning the rears with that much torque/power?

[Hoyt Clagwell]

That's absolutely AWESOME!!!!

I hope someday you're able to get her a worthy paint job. But really, who cares? It's awesome!!!

BTW, Mexico is nice this time of year.

[IndianaRoadster]

Oh yeah!! That's an awesome sound!

[sleeperz]

Me like!

[donutholer]

this is insane, what a project