Vorshlag 1991 BMW 318is

[GotCone?]

Re: Vorshlag 1991 BMW 318is

Springs: 750#/in Rear changed mid-day to 570 #/in

So you went from 750 to 570 rear rate, what are you running up front?

Jon

[hancheyb]

Re: Vorshlag 1991 BMW 318is

So you went from 750 to 570 rear rate, what are you running up front?

Jon

He's everywhere! Yes, 570/570. I probably need to reverify that. I installed them in November. I've slept since then.

[Fair!]

Re: Vorshlag 1991 BMW 318is

what wheel are you going to run for the 16s and what size tire? I am going to need to buy wheels and tires for the 325 soonish

I'll post pics of them when they arrive. 16x7.5", $550/set delivered. Some Honda wheel, silver mesh. Weight is "we think 16 pounds", so not very light, but I will weigh them.

[GotCone?]

Re: Vorshlag 1991 BMW 318is

should be interesting. I'll bet you'll like them w/ the 16" stones better than 15" kooks... or even the stones in their crappy 15" size.

Here's some light 16x7's for you if you like honda wheels: http://mokanmotorsports.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=2753
Not ideal for width, but super light, if you find the 16's work best.

If you want to off-load your 225/50-15 RS2's... let me know, seriously.

[Fair!]

Re: Vorshlag 1991 BMW 318is

I'll post pics of them when they arrive. 16x7.5", $550/set delivered. Some Honda wheel, silver mesh. Weight is "we think 16 pounds", so not very light, but I will weigh them.

Ugh, what a fiasco! "Only $550 a set shipped, and they claim 16 pounds, how bad could they be?" Well, for one they were about 20% heavier than advertised...


These Maxxim LeMons 16x7.5" wheels were claimed at 16 pounds, but really weighed 19.1 pounds. That's fine for a street car, but not so good on a gutless 4 banger BMW. I was disappointed of course, and never even mounted a tire on them. Luckily I was able to get the vendor to take them back and refund everything but the shipping. Lesson learned: cheap wheels are never light


As a comparison, our 15x7 wheels are only 13.9 pounds. The new 16x7" OZ UltraLagerra wheels weighed in at 15.0 pounds last night. The 15" and 16" tires are almost exactly the same weight, so we're gaining 1.1 pounds going from 15" to 16" wheels & tires. Not a bad compromise, me thinks.



The 2 sets of shaved RE01Rs that Bridgestone gave Amy (she's contracted to drive on these for '08 ) showed up a few weeks back:

http://www.vorshlag.smugmug.com/phot...68_yVFx5-S.jpg

The 205/45/16's are marginally wider than the 195/50/15s, but roughly the same height. The 195s were run on our 15x7 Kazara wheels at the last SCCA (Pennington Field, concrete) event, and she was off of the top Civic (Atkins) by about .9 sec on her first outing on the new tires & rear spring set-up. Tires weren't scrubbed in by the 3rd and final run, with all of the shaving marks still clearly visible, so that probably didn't help. Still some set-up work to test and the stock swaybars aren't doing it any good.



We're getting Tommy Regan to co-drive it with her at the Dallas Tour on May 2-4, and are lining up a driver for it on the April 27th TMS "Pre-Tour" regional for more testing (Amy and I are going to be at the Long Beach GrandPrix and then Hawaii), while Hanchey runs the XP car on its all new set-up and Hankook (?!) tires, before the Tour. By then we should have the new seats in place, harnesses, the 16x7" wheels, and the 205mm RE01Rs on the E30.

We had ordered two Sparco Spring 5 seats back in JANUARY but they are still MIA, so we cancelled that order and got two UltraShield aluminum seats coming to us instead.


Left: Sparco "Sprint 5" steel framed seat (19-20 pounds)
Right: UltraShield RallySport aluminum seat (16-17 pounds)

(2) UltraShield RallySport seats, 15" (drivers) and 17" (pass) widths, 20° layback angle ($249 each from Solo Performance, Thanks Dave!). Going to bolt these to a pair of Sparco Sliders we already bought and they should get close to the 25 pound minimum (I'll make the adapter brackets "extra heavy duty" to be safe).

Been street driving it a bit - it rides pretty well on the stock 195/60/14 M&S junko street tires. We already have new LF fender and a grill insert ready to go on it. When we get a few hours to work on the exterior we'll get these on, wet sand the paint, and buff areas necessary for the PDR man to get a few hail dings out. Then its off to our painter to get a big dent repaired and shot it with a fresh coat of the original BMW "diamondschwartz-metallic" charcoal metallic (gotta love the uber long goofy German paint names!).

[Fair!]

Re: Vorshlag 1991 BMW 318is

Snapped some pics with the new OZ 16x7" wheels and Bridgestones mounted. They will be run for the Tour this weekend by Tommy in STS and Amy in STS-L:




This is with our 5mm spacers at each corner.

It could use 10-15mm spacers and "look better". When we make production 4x100 bolt circle E30 BMW wheel spacers in 10mm and 15mm thicknesses we'll test them with these. We might even make up some custom wheel spacers that convert a BMW hub size to the more popular Miata wheel hub bore (what these particular wheels are made to) so they are truly hubcentric. We mentioned this offhand on a forum once and had several folks reply that they would be interested in us making these spacers as a product, because there are SO many Miata wheels that would work on an E30 if these "conversion" spacers were offered...


Vorshlag 75mm wheel studs, lug nuts and 5mm spacers. 205/45/16 Bridgestone RE01Rs (thanks Bridgestone!)

Several more pictures located here.

[Fair!]

Re: Vorshlag 1991 BMW 318is

Update: We received the Ultra-Shield seats less than 24 hours after they were built at UltraShield! Awesome shipping. Thanks SoloPerformance.com! Even better news: they are considerably lighter than we had hoped.

That right there deserves the happy dance.

We were initially content with using a pair of 19# steel framed fixed back seats (Sparco) for $300/each but after we completely struck out with SparcoUSA (and after waiting 3 months and still not receiving them yet, nor our long overdue refund) we did some research and found these UltraShield Rally Sport seats to be a really good option, and only $249 each. There were so many style, width and layback options as to be confusing, but we got good advice from some autocrossers and Solo Performance and I think we ended up with a really kickass pair of seats for $498.

First thing we did after opening the box was to weigh them. Wow!


Passenger's seat: UltraShield Rally Sport, 20° layback, 17" width, "the Big Boy" that can fit damn near anyone. 15.8 pounds!


Driver's seat: UltraShield Rally Sport, 20° layback, 15" width, "the Skinny seat" that is roughly similar to a Sparco EVO width. 14.9 pounds!


UltraShield Rally Sport, 20° layback, 15" width, without upholstered/foam cover is only 12.7 pounds!

There are seats costing upwards of $1500/each that aren't as light as these seats (most composite FRC or Kevlar fixed back big name seats are 18-21 pounds). The best part about aluminum seats are the additional mounting options: being metal you can drill thru the sides or bottom for side mount or bottom mounting. For a typical fixed back racing seat this just isn't an option. Fabrication quality is top notch.

Bottom mounting options allows us to more easily use Sparcos affordable low-profile sliders and bolt them to the bottom for a compact, lightweight slider set-up. Others just bolt these seats directly to the floorpan, or onto small brackets that align to the factory seat mounting points. Of course they suggest bolt and washer size for proper mounting. I'll post more when they are mounted in the E30, hopefully tonight.

Link to these seats is here.

[GotCone?]

Re: Vorshlag 1991 BMW 318is

Nice seats... good place to buy them from too. Make sure to post up pics once installed and feel free to offer seat brackets for these for E30's.

I too would like to see the miata hub centric spacer. The 6UL's from 949racing would work nicely for anyone looking to run a wide range of width 15" wheels. Even... 15x7.5"

[Tommy R]

Re: Vorshlag 1991 BMW 318is

Woo hoo! Can't wait to drive it and thanks again to the Vorshlag boys for the opportunity! I won't really get out of work early on Friday, but I'll be at the site around 6 or 7 pm.

T

[Fair!]

Re: Vorshlag 1991 BMW 318is

Of course mounting the U.S. seat in the E30 took longer than it should have. I've blown too many hours before doing custom brackets, and this was no exception. I started at about 1:30 am the night before a National Tour event... brilliant! I got done with the first seat (passenger's side, non-adjustable) at 5:30 am and bagged the driver's side. And up again at 7:30 am.... brilliant! Measuring, marking and mock-up took as long as cutting and welding, of course.

Finished product:



Construction:









More pics here. Notes: I used 1.25" ERW square tubing, I forget the wall thickness but its was heavier than needed - over 5 pounds of steel. The class this car runs in (SCCA STS) requires a 25 pound seat+bracket, and with a 15.8 pound seat and only a 5 pound bracket I've got to add ~4 pounds of ballast to this bracket to meet the minimum. But that's fine - its down low and centrally mounted weight. Please excuse the filthy carpet under the seat (it was a $350 car, by the way - looks like someone died in there!) and since its raw steel I'll just zinc plate the whole assembly once I finish the driver's side mount. The joints for the tubes to each other were fully perimeter welded, but it was extremely late so they are far from picture perfect welds.

The mount ended up being 2.5" tall total, but it was all just enough to clear a huge hump in the floor in between the side rails and leave barely enough room to fish the nuts/washers onto the thru-bolts for the seat-to-bracket mounting, from above. I kept the passenger seat as low and as far back as possible. Tons of headroom for 6'+ riders, and shorter passengers can just see over the dash mounted like this. Width was fine - tons of room to the door and tunnel for this 17" wide UltraShield Rally Pro (they make 14-18" widths, and we used a 15" for driver's side). I'll tackle the driver's side mount with the Sparco slider later, which should still make it under the minimum 25# weight with ease.

Used M10 Grade 10.9 Zinc Plated bolts and nylock nuts throughout, as well as over-sized hardened washers to spread the load into the aluminum seat bottom. I kept the washers on the flat area of the bottom of the seat, to avoid the bends. Hex bolt heads are covered by much padding so no worries about comfort - I couldn't feel them unless I stuck my hand under the padding/cover. Front floor mounting holes used the factory M10 floor studs, and I hole sawed an access hole in the tubing there just big enough for a thin walled socket to tighten the M10 nylocks in the front mounting area.

I need to go back and add floor reinforcement/mounts for the lap and and sub belts for the harnesses. The sub belts can mount right to the front of bracket I built, and in fact I might add diagonal tubing to spread that load into the main assembly - and for that much needed ballast weight. For now (and to meet class rules which state we must maintain the factory seat belt functionality; a harness is of course optional and encouraged with race seats) I added the factory lower seat belt receptacle to the bracket and fished the factory 3-point belt though the side opening for the seat and upholstered cover. Works great and is easy to use for street use (this car is still daily driven).


Left: Note low sitting height of a 6' tall passenger (TommyR). Perfect. Right: Amy running the car in STS-L

With this one lightweight seat in place the car weighed 2423 pounds soaking wet on the SCCA's scales (same model scales as ours'). Factory manual cloth seat + bracket was 48 pounds/each (light for BMWs; E36 seats we've weighed were 62-78 pounds/each). We calculated that we have another 100-130 pounds we can lose from the car, legally and easily. And to compete against the Honduhs, we need to lose all the weight we can...

[GotCone?]

Re: Vorshlag 1991 BMW 318is

Jesse Caudill is quick... but I was surprised at the class winning time. STS really took it to STS2 at the tour it appears.

I don't miss running in STS w/ the Honda's at all.

Good luck!! I really hope you guys can put on a good show at Topeka this year with the E30.

Jon

[Tommy R]

Re: Vorshlag 1991 BMW 318is

It'll definitely be an uphill battle agains the Civics, but the car definitely will get lots faster. Bigger tires will help and tweaking it to plant power coming out of the corners will both yield huge dividends. It was really tough to get the car to pull out of the corners last weekend.

The handling felt really good, though. The turn-in was maybe a bit slow, but that's easily tweaked. Also, I'm rusty so I was likely quite "jerkier" with the wheel and late on inputs which wouldn't help.

Terry, let us know when the vids are posted. Would love to check those out...

Tommy

[Miatamoto]

Re: Vorshlag 1991 BMW 318is

Jesse Caudill is quick... but I was surprised at the class winning time. STS really took it to STS2 at the tour it appears.

I don't miss running in STS w/ the Honda's at all.

Good luck!! I really hope you guys can put on a good show at Topeka this year with the E30.

Jon

STS2 was running in the first heat at a big disadvantage due to the temperatures.

[Fair!]

Re: Vorshlag 1991 BMW 318is

Terry, let us know when the vids are posted. Would love to check those out...

Tommy

You got it - here's one of Amy's: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/gallery/...93004960_LCHBB

We'll get some of yours up soon.

And here's me driving like crap in the XP car: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/gallery/...92465005_fBMA9

STS2 was running in the first heat at a big disadvantage due to the temperatures.

Very true, as well as Amy's STS-L runs - also in the first heat. It was 58°F and wind was bitter cold until late int he day Saturday; even Sunday had big temp improvements from first to forth heats. 2 driver cars had a big advantage, as I noted.

[Fair!]

Re: Vorshlag 1991 BMW 318is

Woot! Just finished the driver's seat install, after putting it off for weeks...

Finished last night around 1:30 am. We used a slider on the driver's side due to 4 different drivers racing this car at various times, with vastly different heights.

I used 3/8" dia bolts for most everything; the 3/8" bolts' hex heads just slide between the Sparco rails but I had to enlarge the semi-slotted holes in the sliders just a hair for these. Anything larger would have meant the Sparco rail sides would have been notched/weakened. I don't know what bolt size these are made to use (8mm by the look of it - that was the biggest metric bolt diameter that would fit the Sparco holes) but that looked too puny, so 3/8" bolts (.375") were chosen for strength. The OEM floor studs and bolts for the main bracket are OEM 10mm diameter (.393") and the seat belt is mounted also with an OEM 12mm diameter bolt (.472"). On the front of the floor-to-Sparco bracket holes I used two 3/8" Socket Head Cap Screws (SHCS - the kind with an Allen hex drive, and a round instead of hex shaped head) since I couldn't access the nut underneath enough to turn it (too close to the floor). This way I could hold the nut on bottom and turn the bolt on top with an Allen wrench. The other 6 holes for the rails and seat mounting used the normal 3/8" dia Grade 8 hex headed bolt, as it fits between the recessed Sparco rails and those hold the hex head of the bolt still while you tighten a nut from underneath.

Ended up with the bolt spacing into the seat on the driver's side to match the Sparco slider holes (which can't really be moved all that safely). This puts the seat-to-slider bolts right near the edges of the seat and "over the bend" at the front, which meant some funky shaped or bent washers.


Left: Washers custom fitted to cover as much area as possible. Right: Finish welded part (prior to bead blasting and powder coat)


Left: Lower bracket bolted into chassis. OEM seat belt buckle added for street use. Right: Bracket with Sparco Slider attached



Left: Seat bolted to bracket. To access bolts the slider is slid fore and aft during installation. Easy.
Right: Finished seat in place, with seat belt buckled. It doesn't look like it but it does fit snugly against your hip bone, like it should.

Four different drivers, all with different builds and heights, sat in the finished seats with sliders and all of us fit comfortably in the seats and to the controls. Height was an issue... any higher and I'd not have enough room with a helmet, but lower and Amy couldn't see over the steering wheel. We used the aluminum fixed back UltraShield 15" wide Rally Pro 20° layback model. On retrospect the 10° layback would have been a better choice (and yes, many of you here told me that. doh!) as my wife had trouble reaching the pedals in my first iteration of the slider brackets, with no forward tilt in the brackets. I did a little trigonometry, some measuring, some cursing, cut the hell out of the lower bracket and changed the design to knock about 5° of layback out of the finished seat set-up.

Its nearly perfect for Amy (this car was built to be "her race car" after all) and feels great to the rest of us, too. Of course we centered the seat with the steering wheel, which would have been offset about 2" to the left (and the seat would touch the door panel; as it is there's over 1.5" of clearance to the door) if I had used the OEM floor seat holes without an offset in the brackets. Leaves plenty of room for a cage's door bars. The matching passenger seat is fixed in place, lower and further back for better CG with a passenger, just like we wanted.



Here's me (6'3") in the driver's seat at full forward position ("Mr. Magoo") and slid back to where I "fit", which isn't even the full rearward adjustment. The forward position shown is how Tommy R and I have both raced it, as the OEM slider was broken/stuck in this position. The seat install was long overdue! There's so much fore-aft adjustment range that I can actually get into and out of the back seat relatively easily. To sit back there. I know, that's not supposed to be possible with fixed back seats, but I fit in back with my wife sitting in front.

Total time for driver's side? Way too many hours, once again. I chipped away at it over 3 different days or nights, with help from 3 different people (Chris L, Matt P, and Jason M). Making custom seat brackets with sliders is a pain in the rear. Lots of time spent measuring, mocking up, test fitting before you can do the actual fab work. So when you see custom brackets made for your car that cost $200-400 each... trust me, its worth it if they fit you/the car/the seat. Having to compensate for ordering the wrong layback was my own fault. Luckily I had ample hardware on hand so no trips to the steel supply or hardware store needed.

Cheers,