Project Update for April 1, 2010: Well after getting snowed out on our SCCA region's first event of the year March 21st, we finally got to get the E46 DSP car to an autocross event last weekend - at the
2010 SCCA Texas National Tour and Test-N-Tune. But first, here's what we did to the 330 last week...
Vorshlag was a sponsor of this event (the Friday night food, beer, drinks and festivities) so we had to be there all weekend - Friday through Sunday. It was good, though, as Friday had hours of testing available on a small ~30 second Andy Hollis prepared course, where we made upwards of 14 runs. Amy and I had never autocrossed the 330 yet so we used this time to get familiar with the car, make some shock and tire pressure adjustments, and see where the performance was compared to other cars testing. The car came out of the trailer quick, and we were happy with the overall feel of the car straight away.
The Texas Tour had more BMW E46 models than I've ever seen at one SCCA event
From driving it the handling on the E46 felt great, but after looking at photos I can see a lot more body roll than I like. The GTR spring rates (600F/750R) we started with worked great on the 265mm Yokohamas on track, but now seem a tad soft for the 285mm Hoosier A6 grip levels, so we'll likely be stepping up the spring rates both front and rear and playing with the front bar settings.
Once again I left the event battered and sore from hanging on - the slick leather seats and old 3-point belts do nothing to hold my butt in place. My seating position just flat out SUCKED and really made it a challenge to drive and look ahead. My tall torso (6'3") coupled with the stock seat, a new helmet purchased at the event (thanks SPS!) and the stock sunroof headliner jammed my head squarely into the roof. I ended up sitting with the seat leaned WAAAY back and my head cocked sideways to fit inside the sunroof pocket, now moving the COBRA seat install way up the priority list.
The 330 slalomed very well, and the new OS Giken diff and 3.38 rear gearing were a huge improvement, not to mention the now functional dual VANOS system, after some quick repairs back at the shop last week. The tires and diff were working SO well in fact that I smoked the stock 100K mile clutch. 4000 rpm launches and it was
hooking up hard! It got pretty bad on Day 1 and we had to lower our launch to 2500 rpm, and baby the (many) 2-3 shifts. The stock "CDV" (clutch delay valve) is still in place (doh!), so that's causing more clutch slip than necessary. Oh well, we were going to slip in this Aluminum Fidanza flywheel soon, as well as a new shifter and clutch/pp. Tire rub was nonexistent, so I guess our extra testing in the shop paid off.
The course was long and hard... wow, that sounded too graphic. 90 second course with tons of slaloms and tricky offsets, but these played well to the strengths of the ASTs and BMW overall. We did outrun the power steering a couple of times (mostly during the tighter slalom at Friday's TNT), and could use more power of course. My driving was "meh" and I PAXed poorly as a result, but we were glad just to get through this monster course with minimal cone carnage. The larger course put our straight away speeds right beyond the limit of 2nd gear and the engine rpm limit (7000), so Amy spent a lot of time on the limiter, and I spent a lot of time shifting (like a lot of racers, she's still hit-or-miss on busy heel-toe downshifts). On my fastest runs I did a total of 6 up and down shifts between 2nd and 3rd.
Busy busy! Made for a lot of fancy footwork, switching between left foot braking and right foot braking/heel-toe downshifting.
There's still some suspension tuning to do, at a proper all day autox test session, but overall we were happy. My poor PAX result means I have a lot of work left to do, on the car and on the driver. The 330 passed the sound regs with flying colors, only registering 78 dB - one of the lowest at the event! I guess the stock exhaust is choking both sound levels and power potential. There were several ST cars in the 101 dB range.
With 2 drivers pounding on the car for 3 days at
THE absolute most abrasive event site in all of Dallas/Ft. Worth, the new set of sticker Hoosier A6s took a massive beating. We might get 2-3 more "little site" autox events out of this set, but they're pretty used up. We did a lot of Test runs Friday, which we needed to learn the car, but it was a costly event. Luckily we had 3 in class so I won 2 new Hoosiers for the weekend (Amy would have won another tire for 2nd place if we would have had 5). I'll probably get some 285 R6 tires coming for use at the April 24-25th NASA TT event at Texas World Speedway, and get some more A6s coming later in April. I have a feeling I'll be doing a lot of tire purchasing.... this ain't as cheap as STU, that's for sure!
The new BMW roof and headliner are flying here from Germany now, and the 4-point Kirk Racing roll bar are inbound on a freight truck. I'll order some stainless mandrel 3" bends for the exhaust and slap the headers in at the same time. Lots to do in the coming weeks.
Still pondering 3" (quiet) muffler and single disc clutch choices -
any suggestions are appreciated. We'll add a 3" catalyst to cut down on the sound, and to keep it a little more earth friendly.
Until next time...