Vorshlag $2010 GRM Challenge car - BMW E30 V8

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Re: Vorshlag $2010 GRM Challenge car - BMW E30 V8

Update for Aug 17, 2010: Final update before we fire it up! I swear, no more mundane, boring brackets or nonsense. The next one after this - It goes VROOM, or I will refund your price of admission!


Objects on screen are closer than they appear

OK, where were we? Last time I detailed the seat bracket/slider, radiator relocation is done (nape: yep, the lower brackets do need more meat to them, I agree), exhaust fab was shown in painful detail, and the gauge cluster was fixed. Plus a lot of other stuff I didn't show on the motor. Since then we've knocked out some more bullet points, thanks to a LONG Saturday at the shop last weekend - big thanks to Costas and McCall, and to Chris for coming Monday night. Amy and I raced on Sunday (the repaired oil pump on the E46 did great!) and I'm going to tackle some solo work tonight on the E30.



The giant hole in the trunk floor (long ago we cut out the rusty spare tire well) is finally covered up with some aluminum sheet. I went to Garland Steel and Scrap Yard and traded 56 pounds of old E30 exhaust and 30 pounds of aluminum bumpers for this small piece of relatively clean sheet, that was in a pile of drops/scraps there. It fit trunk floor's hole nearly perfectly without cutting - sometimes you get lucky! I'll drill some holes and put Clecos in place until I decide weather to screw or rivet that down.



Above you can see the 7000 rpm gauge cluster (from a 318is) in the car (I hope it works now!) as well as the V6 Camaro shifter in place. You can see the repairs we had to do to the BMW trans tunnel, mostly from a giant hole a previous owner put in there (for some weird reason?) and then fiberglassed over (facepalm!). The new sheet metal is cut to fit around the V6 trans location and our motor placement, and its not the stock hole. The shifter angle/placement itself is a bit odd but the price was right! (it came with the trans) The normal V6 Camaro trans is at a 15° tilt but it is no longer, so its angled a bit to the right. If it feels weird we'll make a new shift handle. We're going to put the giant "8 ball" leather Camaro knob on there, too. Speaking of brakes...



We have some goodies mocked up and ready to go in place of the E30 ABS pump, but I'll talk about more of that when its done. The E36 master cylinder is being used, since we have E36 non-M brakes on both ends of the car. Why mess with the proportioning/balance? We're now using a complete E36 braking system, sans power booster. The booster got in the way of the V8, so I laid out two patterns - the E30 firewall holes and the E36 master cylinder, and managed to scoot the MC up and to the driver's side, sharing the top right hole.



Check out the high tech equipment in the Vorshlag shop! Yep, that's an old $40 table top drill press. I have a big $900 beast of a drill press, but its a paint to remove the spring perch fixtures from it we use on a weekly basis, so half the time the $40 hoopty gets used. The extra hole drilled into the firewall was done with the engine in place, using a regular drill and a 90° adapter. Worked like a charm - especially when wielded by a left-hander like McCall. Sorry, some of that photo was redacted by order of the president (National Security concerns, of course), plus parts of the next two.



OK, what else? We finished the throttle bracket and cable and tested that. The power steering pump was pulled, the pulley removed, a different bracket installed, and all that put back together. Some other hydraulic lines were mangled/remade. Serpentine belt installed, plus all fluids in the motor/trans/diff. We nearly burned up the donor battery cable, but we got part of it shortened and attached to the starter and another to the alternator. The power steering cooler (cheap swap-meet trans cooler) kit was installed. The old cooling fan is remounted and ready. I was wasting hours trying to design/cut crazy F1 style mounts for the cooler, and Costas knocked some sense into me - it was installed with 1 bolt and 2 roofing screws in 5 minutes, done his way. Yes, its vertical now, and not behind the fan (which was making my layout nearly impossible without moving the fan - again!) but the cooler lines are far from the lowest part on the car. Sometimes I over-complicate things...



We're still doing a lot of recycle/reuse/save the planet/save a buck tricks. More re-purposed hoses from various sources (old cars, old projects, old washing machines!) were installed and buttoned up, plus lots more used clamps from the old motor were cleaned up and installed. We've gotten good at cleaning up old crap! So much extra time is being burned to save $1 here, $5 there, but that's the nature of this contest. We found a set of throw-away 275 Hoosierss this week, plus a set we bought for cheap, so we can do some testing on the correct 15x10" steel wheels and tires soon and save the throw-aways for the GRM event.



I'm really, honestly hoping we can fire it up this week. Two small pieces of fuel line are left, two radiator hoses need to be cobbled together, and the air inlet piping. Chris is finishing up the engine harness this week - just a few more wires to extend and terminate! We've got all of the pieces and parts here to do that. This week we wrapped up a custom exhaust for Hanchey's ex/future World Challenge Subaru race car and the DSP E46 was completed enough with prep for Nationals (no more additional projects on that until winter), and the 2011 Mustang GT we ordered in early JUNE won't get here in time to do our last minute sneak attack F Stock entry at Nats, damn it. That's probably good news for my sleep deprived brain - getting this E30 cleaned up and running and sorted and do bodywork and paint will gobble up every hour after work between now and Sept 30th, as it is.

Next up - videos from "first crank" and exhaust sound tests!

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Re: Vorshlag $2010 GRM Challenge car - BMW E30 V8

Update for August 12, 2010 - Part 2: I've been farting around this week at night making new radiator brackets. We had to lower the used E36 radiator 3" to clear some stuff on the front of the motor so I had to yank off the brackets I had built and scratch build new upper and lower brackets, after Sean cut a slot in the lower radiator support to clear the lower part of the rad.



I used some 1" strap steel and some bushings from an old and discarded rear shock mount, which gives a nice cushion to the lower radiator mounts. To attached the brackets to the radiator support I pre-drilled some holes in the brackets and used some self-tapping roofing screws to zing them home. Cheap and fast.



The upper mounts were a bit trickier, but they start by going down into the E36 rad's upper mounting slots. We lost the OEM rubber inserts for those so we used some cut lengths of old heater hose for the upper rubber isolators; they slid down into the plastic tank slots fine. The brackets are made from .10" thick strap steel, cut and bent to shape and welded together.



So the radiator is now held in place in its new lower location, and isolated from metal-to-metal contact. Last Tuesday Chris and I worked on the fuel pump assembly and I worked a bit on the throttle cable and a custom bracket for that.



We had a discarded Subaru fuel pump assembly to scavenge and source the pump (the stock OEM in-tank pump was a low pressure "pusher" feeding an external pump; we ditched the external and used the Subaru unit for the in-tank portion), fuel pump strainer/sock and part of the Subaru's in-tank wiring/harness. Chris soldered the harness wires from the pump to the stock E30's wiring plug, so it will be a plug-in deal.



So that's the past two weeks on the E30 project. We've gotten a bit of work done but I've been so slammed that I was tardy on the updates.

More soon!

[Fair!]

Re: Vorshlag $2010 GRM Challenge car - BMW E30 V8

Update for August 12, 2010 - part 1: Holy crap, no update since July?? Well we've been working furiously on my DSP E46 a lot (Nationals is in 3 weeks), and the "oil pressure problem" suffered on that car last weekend has gobbled up more time this week. We got Matt's 95 E36 M3 in the shop and cleaned up, ready for another LS1 install and some more kit part development. Some other cars have been in the shop, too. Anyway, we did work manage to get in some night work on the E30 including last Thursday, this past Sunday, this past Monday, Tuesday and we're going to attack it again tonight. This is all we've been able to manage due to the other projects on the front burner right now, and its put us a bit behind. The high temperatures in August (its still 100°F at night in the shop) here have also made the number of volunteers... thin out considerably.



OK, the exhaust was finish welded and completed a week ago. Sean and Matt worked on the rear section without me one night and the routing went over the driver's side halfshaft in the rear, necessitating a tight bend there and a 3rd V-band (to be able to remove the system without dropping a half shaft). Maybe they could have tucked the 3" pipe under the halfshaft near the diff housing with a straighter section, which would have allowed the entire exhaust to come off without another V-band... but oh well. It looks good and should still flow plenty well.



By the time I saw the routing it was tacked up so I just made sure they pulled a spring and compressed a tire to check clearance to the halfshaft at full bump travel. Looked good, so I asked Sean MIG weld up all of the seems with the exhaust off the car. We looked at the pile of scrap left over from the old/used/scrapped EVO X exhaust and there was only one old bend left. Its SO much more work making an exhaust out of used scraps than from new bends (as we noted when building the 3" E46's exhaust last week; it took 1/4 the time!). Proof once again that "building on the cheap" can add LOTS of extra work.





Since we were using the World's Cheapest 3" V-Bands (that don't fir over 3" tubing!) I asked Paul to re-machine yet another one for the rear section, and he test fit each tube into each flange again. Then we welded that on the next night and finished the exhaust system. You can see the rear exhaust hanger/mount we added from using an old end link bushing, bolt and piece of strap steel.



With the exhaust being wrapped up, Chris spent that evening doing some repairs to the non-ETA E30 gauge cluster (7000 rpm tach) we bought, and it should work correctly now. Complete with cheesy smile picture.



Last Thursday night McCall and I worked on a seat bracket floor brace to mount below the (purchased half-complete and cheap) Sparco slider. We found this old discarded piece from a tire trailer I built 5 years earlier (that I later sold to Chris, who still has it) that didn't fit when it was finished welded for that trailer, but it donated all the material we needed for the seat bracket. McCall cut off two sides and mocked it up for me to tack weld, then Sean TIG welded the "square".



The next Sunday Matt and I spent a few hours marking, drilling, clearancing, changing the design, welding on extra parts for the slider to land on, drilling some more, and finally got the seat bracket wrapped up and the slider mounted.



Due to some sketchy measurements and a partial re-design midway through fabrication, its not the prettiest seat bracket I've made, but plenty strong and the slider mechanism and fore/aft seat range works great for this car and roll bar. On this past Monday night I made a adjustment handle (these sliders usually come with this, but it was missing and hence VERY cheap on CraigsList) out of more of the scrap tubing from the old trailer piece - never once using a measurement device. It is a little ugly, but functional.





Getting the seat in felt like a big step... I don't know why, it just makes it seem more like a real "car" now instead of a hulk of metal we've been pushing in and out of the shop for the past 10 months. We got started on the harness mounting, and now have the sub's mounted as well as the shoulder harnesses. Once we get the clip-in ends for the lap belts (ordered today) we'll have our seat and harness 100% complete.



more below...

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Re: Vorshlag $2010 GRM Challenge car - BMW E30 V8

Update for July 26, 2010: Worked on the car a little last week, but the scheduled Thursday work night went to Paul Costas' GT-1 car, as it is being run this coming weekend for the first time in a while at TWS (too much work was looming to make UTCC - I know how that works!). The new AST and Vorshlag sticker power will add some speed, for sure! Took a ton of pictures, so I'll start a proper thread for this car on the vomo forums when I get caught up on other pressing matters.



We also found some time to go get Matt @ Vorshlag's personal 95 M3 roller out of storage to bring to the shop here, to finally get the LS1/T56 drivetrain (which has been sitting in the shop for a year!) install done on his car. Some more little parts for our E36/LS1 swap can finally be perfected on this in-house install.

OK, back to our little $2010 GRM Challenge E30. Last weekend a week ago (?) I started the exhaust fabrication and realized quickly that it was going to be tight under the car, and installing V-band clamps - to be able to easily remove the rear exhaust from the headers - was going to take some planning. My first exhaust iteration was cut off and scrapped, and I marked all new locations for the V-bands (one pretty far forward at the collector and one downstream on the opposite side - both fitting into small clearance openings in the chassis). Wait... we're adding V-bands on a $2000 car? Well yes, thanks to our friends overseas, and sellers on fleaBay and CraigsList, there's some very inexpensive V-band options out there. But of course you get what you pay for... the pair we scrounged up didn't fit our 3" header collector or rear tubing we had scavenged for the rest of the exhaust. The I.D.'s were too small. Great...



But we do have a little lathe... so Tuesday night Paul M stopped by to fix the cheap 3" V-band flanges. He carefully opened up a bit of a step on the inner diameter of each one, and custom fitted each one to fit at each tubing or collector location. Then I tack welded each one up, then later TIG welded them in place (fusion welds). Only about an hour or two of work needed that night, but it let us finally finish the headers for the last time (I hope) out of the car, to prepare for the final (I hope) V8 install before it runs, and to move forward on the rear exhaust fab.



Another night last week we got the accessories, the valve/cam covers (hmm - guess which?), and flywheel/clutch/PP installed and torqued to the replacement junkyard V8 motor that I picked up a week ago. It was all buttoned up to the trans and ready to go in, but it sat like that until this last Saturday.

I needed more hands to get the drivetrain installed, so I burned Saturday morning jacking with/removing/modifying the holes/reinstalling the rear axle center assembly. The pinion angle was never perfect on this and causing all sorts of installation issues within the subframe assembly - the center section was not able to go in-out of the subframe without major cursing/prybars/dubious work. After I slightly opened up 2 of the 4 subframe diff mounting holes, and added small shims to all 4 axle mounting holes, it now fits properly within the subframe - with the driveshaft dead center in the opening and the pinion angle now matching the opposite trans angle. This was a nightmare 3 hour stint in 100°F heat working with a busted wrist, but now all of the custom and stock bits for the rear axle and driveshaft are totally cleaned, lined-up, installed, double-checked and torqued. Finally. I hope.



Saturday afternoon (after doing the "after" sound test on McCall's '91 E30 318is, with the new HP2 Hushpower installed - wow, what a difference!) I got some helping hands from McCall and Paul M. Together we put the drivetrtain in the car and bolted up and "the difficult header" in like 90 minutes - it helps to have 3 people for this one, as the driveshaft yoke has to be slid into the trans during the install, otherwise you have to pull the rear axle (don't ask). McCall and I also flipped and reinstalled the steering shaft we made from before, and now it clears the installed driver's side header with even more room. The steering wheel went on so the car finally steers again. Hot damn!


Left: E30 as bare as it gets. Right: The E36 is a lot easier to get drivetrains in and out of!

Not being able to pull the front radiator support off of an E30 chassis (like on an E36) makes pulling or installing the drivetrain MUCH harder than it needs to be. We've come this close to cutting that whole damn section off and making it removable via bolts... At least we managed to get the drivetrain in/out as a unit and without dropping the subframe this time - practice makes perfect! It also takes a tilting motor chain set-up.

Sunday morning I spent a good long while getting the coolant/heater hoses routed, fitted, lined-up, and clamped-up perfectly, so all of the coolant lines except the radiator hoses are done and tight. Sometimes a slight amount of OCD pays off. Can't show any of this cooling stuff yet, dammit. But I can show the exhaust work I knocked out Sunday afternoon, if I'm careful...



It ain't pretty, but the dual 3" into single 3" merge above took me hours to get lined up, marked, cut, and welded right. Yes, it looks pretty rough, but please remember - I'm building an exhaust system out of mostly recycled/old/used bends and tubing thrown away by others, or scrounged from old projects we did here long ago. Some of my slowness also comes from the fact that I've never before scratch-built custom headers + full custom exhaust for a car at the same time in my life, so I'm learning as I go!



In this exhaust there's some old stainless junk, some rusty carbon steel bits, some powder coated bends from the old EVO X exhaust, and some aluminized steel bends. Differing wall thicknesses and alloy compositions and coatings make for some interesting welding, heh. Sometimes I can't find the right bend needed and have to piece together a series of angled cut straights... its pretty ghetto, but its cheap! For the flow capacity of this V8 engine I think it'll be overkill. Its definitely something I'd want to go back after the GRM Challenge and "do right", given a couple hundred dollars of proper 18- or 20-gauge stainless 3" mandrel bends. Or, if I was smarter, just let Taylor at Dallas Performance scratch build a new set-up - his exhaust work is so damn pretty, and always makes great power. Respect.


This big bag of nasty is craptastic, but cheap!

Another used bit getting re-purposed on the E30 is the old 3" Flowmaster Series 50 muffler from my wife's M3. It has a hole in it (from my crappy mounting tabs + several years of use), has seen better days, was gong to take some work to fix, and the M3 needed to be a bit quieter, so that car got a 3" Hushpower and dropped several dB. So now the old Series 50 (which I know sounds great and makes good power behind any V8, as I've used them on Ford, Chevy and BMW V8s) is getting cleaned up, patched up, and the old tubing ends cut off to be mounted to the E30 when I get some time to finish the rest of the exhaust.



We're meeting Tuesday and Thursday nights this week, with lots of little stuff to bolt up and wire up and plumb. This week is a bit hectic, with lots of updates and upgraded parts going onto my DSP E46 330 Coupe, in preparation for a Divisional event this weekend. Pulling the trans to get at the clutch/flywheel has not been fun!

More soon,

[Fair!]

Re: Vorshlag $2010 GRM Challenge car - BMW E30 V8

Update for July 16, 2010: We've been hacking away at the GRM $2010 project car a bit this week, and worked a little both Tuesday night (me and The Two Pauls) and again Thursday night (me and Chris); Wednesday night I worked on Paul M's '95/07 Frank-Impreza, and we got a big chunk knocked out on his project car.

Anyway, here's what we've worked on:


After finishing a complete A/C system replacement on Amy's '97 M3 (a/c clutch was rattling like mad!) we started mounting the slider for the used UltraShield we got for cheap off CraigsList. The seat needed a little piece of aluminum plate welded on to line up with the sliders, but that was an easy fix on the TIG (thanks T!). We've still got to make the floor brackets but it only needs another half hour or work and we've got the seat in.



After we got everything lined up to bolt the cleaned-up E30 halfshafts to the "E30 diff" we bought from our of state, we realized that the flanges on the diff didn't match the halfshafts. We have a couple of E30 diffs now (all but one is an open diff) and all of the E30 bits used a 6 x 3.4" diameter bolt circle (86mm). The "E30 LSD diff" we bought for $100 had a 6 x 3.8" bolt circle (96mm). Hmm... that sucks!



Chris was over last night and he knew the flanges popped right out of the diff with little effort. I was dubious, but he showed me and they came right out. He bolted a length of chain to the diff flanges and gave it a yank and POP! the damn thing came right out. Hmph! We popped some out of one of the E30 diffs and cleaned everything up... under the grimy exterior the flanges looked great!



The proper E30 flanges popped right into the LSD diff and we were good to go!



We have piddled around a bit on the rear exhaust work but I'll post up on that when we have finished. Oh yea, the new OEM replacement soft rubber flex lines are also visible in the shot above - all 6 pieces came to about less than $50, but they don't count towards the budget since they are OEM replacement brake parts. Brian got those installed last week.


Never underestimate the power of our team's elbow grease and my strict cleanliness standards!

We have a replacement junkyard engine lined up that I'm picking up tomorrow, and Sunday I'm going to be out at MSR-Cresson with some of our E30 team, crewing and helping with shock set-up on Costas' GT1 car. Just got AST 5200s from us and it should be quicker with his new motor. He's taking it to UTCC and we have high hopes that he'll represent our team well, even without our E30 crapcan in attendance. I think his tube-framed race car might be a hair quicker than our E30 anyway... Good luck Costas!



Have a nice weekend, folks!

[Fair!]

Re: Vorshlag $2010 GRM Challenge car - BMW E30 V8

Update for July 13, 2010: Bah! Nothing is going right this week. Been working night and day to get ready for the July 23rd UTCC event at VIR. Spent 20+ hours in the shop all last weekend, every weeknight for weeks, etc. And we're still boned.

I'll start with the bad news first: the junkyard motor we got is locked up. We were about 4 hours from starting the thing and I hooked up the starter to get it to turn over. BRRR..... wouldn't budge. Tried a breaker bar. STUCK!??

I called some of the guys on the team... "didn't we turn this thing over on the engine stand?" Nobody remembered checking. WTF! We've had this motor for months and nobody tried to rotate the crank?! Nope. My friend - who knows these engines and was at the shop at the time - advised me that "something is seriously wrong - with the plugs out it should turn over easily. It must have rust in a bore or a part fell into a combustion chamber." Ninja, please! No way... we were so careful. We taped up every port, kept the motor under plastic, etc.

One thing leads to another... reluctantly I pulled one head and it looked fine inside. Pulled the other, and 3 bores had standing water in them and the pistons were rusted in place. FUUUUUUUUUUUUDGE!!! I felt SICK. This ensures we were not going to have the car running and ready to test at a local track within a few days. So we're scoping out a replacement engine and trying to get the salvage yard I bought it from to warranty this one.

Oh well - whatever we do, its still "budget neutral" - since we could buy 100 engines and only the one we use counts to the budget. At least it is cheap and these things are plentiful. Still... it sucks, and eats up more time. To top all that off I hurt my right hand working on the damn car - I can't even turn a doorknob and even typing is excruciating. And I'm supposed to race the DSP car at an SCCA Divisional this weekend - ha, I can't even row a shifter.

OK, so UTCC is out, but the GRM Challenge itself is still only 10 weeks away, so we're still under the gun and not letting up. I'm about to go build the rest of the exhaust system tonight (if I can hold the damn welding gun) and some of the guys are coming by to build a seat bracket/slider set-up for the car and start mounting the harnesses. We still have a LOT of work to do, including ALL of the bodywork and paint. Here's a small part of what went down last Tuesday & Thursday work nights and over the weekend:





The custom rear brake caliper brackets (for our E36 non-M hubs and brakes on the E30 trailing arms) were cleaned up, beveled at the mounting edge, tack welded in place (with the caliper clamped to the rotor using compressed air at the right locations), then I finish welded them. Had the largest wire in the machine with the settings turned all the way up - the weld got hot! We took our time and I had a helper cool the trailing arms with a wet towel as I welded up the brackets a little at a time. Didn't want to fry the bearings. Its all wrapped up and bolted together and looks good - the pad faces are completely over the rotors.



The gauge cluster I picked up for $10 (which has the proper 7000 rpm tach) was disassembled, cleaned up and is going back together - using the best bezel, surround, etc. There must have been 500 dead ants inside this thing. Jason and Magyar inverted all of the bolts on the roll bar, to gain ground and tire clearance.



I am so sick of welding. First thing Saturday morning I put a new muffler on my E36 and did a follow up sound test on thee new 3" Hushmaster muffler, then spent the rest of the weekend finish welding the headers. All day and all night, welding, welding, welding, and more welding. Water testing each tube, more welding. Test fitting and more welding. Too much work to even want to talk about again. Blech!



One piece of good news was a quick weight check of the car with 99% of the parts installed and its only 2240 pounds, which is way lighter than I expected. This car has all of the OEM glass and all steel panels, dash, heater, big V8 and T5, etc. Pleasantly surprised... but it doesn't make up for the dead motor. Hopefully we can find the replacement in the next few days or on the weekend. We might have lost this one battle, but we're not giving up! We'll bring the car to the GRM Challenge this year, and we'll be back for UTCC next year after its running and sorted, by damn!

More soon.

[Fair!]

Re: Vorshlag $2010 GRM Challenge car - BMW E30 V8

Update for July 6, 2010: We had a large crew here last Thursday, and I'll start with that work first. Over the 3 day holiday weekend I put in about 30 hours on header fab (and some other stuff) and had some help on Monday from 3 different folks. We'll talk about that, too.



First thing that is show-able is the hood gutting... Costas and Chris spent much of the evening plasma cutting most of the structure away from the hood skin, then used heat gun and a putty knife to get the adhesive off. They pried away the structure and then got a weight. Cut away about half the weight of the original ~51 pound hood/hinge/brackets/latches to get it to 27.3 lbs. We'll pin or Dzus on the hood and trunk instead of using the heavy stock latches and hinges.



They cleaned up the goo on the backside of the hood skin, too. Then we plopped the hood onto the fenders to check clearance over the motor - there was some doubt but I knew it would fit. It did, with room to spare. So we won't have any hood bulges or "scoops" to mar the lines of the car, at least.



The guys worked on a bunch of other stuff Thursday night that we don't have pictures of (it was too crowded and hot and bug swarmed to get many pictures), namely - removing the radiator brackets we built and cutting off the lower rad support flange. Gotta do that stuff over. This will let us lower the radiator about 3" (great idea, Costas) to clear some room to route hoses and such at the front of the motor. McCall started making the 2nd rear caliper bracket. There was some work at the back of the car (I forget now) and we all got pounded by June Bugs - there were thousands of them swarming the shop, crawling all over us, etc. The floor, open drawers, shelves, and boxes were all littered with them the next day - everywhere.



Saturday morning I scored a new gauge cluster (the 325 "eta" tachs only go to 5000 rpm; normal E30s have a 7000 rpm tech) and a LF fender (in better shape than ours) off of a CraigsList seller for nearly "couch change" as well as some fiberglass fender flares we might try to use for UTCC (temporarily) if we run out of time (which we are, rapidly). Sold the same guy the E30's old KYB shocks, strut inserts, and lowering springs. Cannot recoup anymore to the budget (once the price of the original car hits $0, we cannot reduce the hit any budget further), but it was still cash in hand. I spent much of Saturday futzing with my new bandsaw, trying to fit a proper metal cutting blade to the thing. No luck - the longest blade I found locally was 2" too short. So I ordered some custom length blades online, which should be here sometime next week. That won't help me for header fab over the weekend much! Had to use my crappy old band saw. Then I burned the rest of Saturday trying to come up with a master cylinder/booster solution, so I could design the headers around them. I looked and found I had a lot more used/junk E30 and E36 brake parts than I thought, and wiled away hours and have nothing to show for it. I did start cutting up some cheap eBay headers we bought from somebody for a song, made for a different engine and car, hoping to mine some usable collectors and bends.





Sunday morning I spent 2 hours salvaging the first collector and cleaning up the inside, then I broke out the big IceEngineWorks "header legos" I bought to help with header fab. This stuff is pretty slick and supposedly cuts header fab time in half. I haven't ever built a custom header, so I figured I'd take whatever help I could get. I had the bends from this eBay set of headers as well as some rusty and not-so-rusty bends I bought at a swap meet. Well dammit if the (expensive) IEW kit had 4 different bend radius "blocks" (2", 3", 4", and 6") but all of the bends I had scavenged and found were all 2-1/2" or 2-5/8" bend radii. GRRR!!! I wasted another hour figuring that out.



That was a kick in the teeth, but oh well - I still had bends, a welder, and 2 full days to burn on headers. Surely I could figure this out on my own? I remembered from watching other fabricators (Taylor @ DP and others) that you start by getting your header flange on the heads and your collectors mounted in the location you wanted them to end up, so Sunday morning I made a little bracket that I bolted to the car and hung the collector from it.



I got pretty far (or so I thought) on the header Sunday and stopped with one side "75% complete" at 7:30 pm, and went to enjoy what remained of July 4th with some friends at the lake. Blowing up hundreds of dollars of mortars and fireworks was a nice stress release, but I still felt guilty for not working that night. Monday morning I got back at it and quickly had some help. Chris came by early and worked all day - thanks! Then Doug Worth and his son Addison stopped by for a couple of hours and buttoned up the wiper system (which was all in a box when we bought the car) and cleaned up the cowl panel and put it back on. Doug's 12 year old son could really wield air tools well and made quick work of the insulation and various studs on the cowl panel!





Chris and I went at lunch to get some fittings for the fuel pump (unsuccessfully) and got a call from another CraigsList seller who had some E36 bits we might need, so we went and completely gutted the parts from his car for a while. Then we got back at it and again worked until 7:30 pm.


Here you can see a primary tube started at both ends then "joined in the middle" with a bend

We both worked all day Monday and got the first header built and rebuilt (had to re-do two tubes I thought would fit) until it was completely tacked together and cleared everything on the passenger side. Some of the gaps between the tubes are good enough to fusion weld (TIG), some are pretty big and need the MIG, and others are so bad they'll need a patch to fill the gap. Again, these are my first set of custom headers, and I'm using cut-up-header-pieces to save money (we are definitely NOT saving any time this way - we burned a good 3-4 hours just salvaging the collectors, which aren't especially good).



It took 2 full days of work and I only had one side tacked up - yep, this is a bunch of work. Chris got the other donor header chopped up and we got the first 3 primary bends mocked up on the driver's side, but that's it. We might could have done shorties in less time, but these will ADD power to our V8 instead of choking back some. Still a LOT of work left on the driver's side (which is a lot tighter with the steering shaft and brakes in the way) so I better stop here and get back to work.

More later this week.

[Fair!]

Re: Vorshlag $2010 GRM Challenge car - BMW E30 V8

Mini update for June 30, 2010: Terry has a brain fart....

I broke the blade on my crappy band saw last Saturday (forcing me to use a cut off wheel on a die grinder to complete my E46 seat brackets - and pissing me off royally), so I picked up a new blade yesterday. Installed it last night while McCall was drilling, and something looked... wrong. Dammit, the teeth are pointing the wrong way! It cannot cut with the blade oriented backwards, and you can't flip it without cutting and re-welding the blade - gotta get a new one today....

Wow, I'm such a doofus!... before more of you send me PMs or emails, yes, I figured out the "flip the blade inside-out" trick today while standing in the store about to buy a new band saw blade. I was literally standing in line and "BING!" the light bulb went on. About 4 days too late, but oh well... :confused

I dropped the new blade where I stood, hopped back into my truck, drove back to the shop (in a rainstorm), and it was after 6 pm so Paul M was already there to help for tonight... I asked him flip the existing blade inside-out, and it worked like a charm. I used the band saw (and drill press and 12" disc sander) tonight after he left, cutting the 1/2" plate for the rear caliper bracket...





There's still a little clean up to do on this one, then we'll trial fit it and if it works, I'll make a copy then tack them in place with the calipers "air locked" to the rotors, then go to town laying the final welds. That will then button up the back brakes... finally!

I'll do a proper update after the main Thursday night - most of what Paul and I worked on tonight cannot be shared just yet.

BMWCCA racer and former auto bodyman Greg Snyder came by to pick up his loaner E30 M3 front fenders (which were a huge help in figuring out how to make the flares) and he had a lot of ideas on the big flares, bodywork suggestions, better roof repair ideas, and one more brace/bracket we need to add (the OEM M3 Cabriolet strut tower-to-fender brace). We might even have him talked into being our paint and bodywork guru... fingers crossed! The car is looking SO good with that big V8 underhood and those fat 18x11" CCWs and Hoosiers (our UTCC wheels) it was hard for Greg to look at it and NOT want to work on it.

More updates Friday...

[Paul]

Re: Vorshlag $2010 GRM Challenge car - BMW E30 V8

I picked up a new blade yesterday. Installed it last night while McCall was drilling, and something looked... wrong. Dammit, the teeth are pointing the wrong way! It cannot cut with the blade oriented backwards, and you can't flip it without cutting and re-welding the blade - gotta get a new one today.

Pure genius!

Yes, he did figure out how to flip the blade.

-Paul

[Fair!]

Re: Vorshlag $2010 GRM Challenge car - BMW E30 V8

Update for June 30, 2010: We had a nice sized crew last night and worked on several things. We worked on a number of things that I cannot show yet, including the hybrid power steering hose and the upper radiator hose, both of which are done and on the car. The throttle cable is as well. Here's the stuff we can show...


First off was the fuel tank - it went back in after it was removed/cleaned/painted last weekend, and some short sections of new fuel hose were added, a few things were capped off, and others were re-routed. Nice to have the tank buttoned up and checked off the list. Then Sean and Chris installed the red painted (bling!) E36 non-M calipers and checked that off the build list, and there's a gratuitous trans crossmember picture as well (painted), from underneath the car.



Chris and Sean removed the E30 tie rods I had installed a few weeks ago - as they were much too long. The car had 2" of toe out and we ran out of adjustment. So if you've got an E36 spindle, E36 struts, and E36 steering rack - stick with the E36 tie rods. We reinstalled the old ones that came on this E36 rack, and now the toe can adjust back into a usable zone. Sorry guys... I made some extra work for yall.



Brian Hanchey of AST-USA stopped by after hours to pick up some parts and got a laugh watching 5 people try to do the work of two. Eventually I found something for some idle hands to do on the front of the car, so McCall and I could mock-up the E36 caliper brackets, calipers, pads and rotors on the E30 trailing arm.



Since this is a Frankenstein rear brake creation, we knew we had to make new caliper brackets and weld them to the trailing arm. Since we went to E36 non-M rear rotors (to match the E36 non-M front rotors/calipers and master cylinder we're using), the Z3 rear calipers need to be spaced away from the trailing arm father to compensate for the slightly larger (1/2"?) rear rotor diameter. And since we have a goofy conglomeration of E36 non-M hubs, E36 rotors, and E30 trailing arms, the caliper offset is all wrong. We mocked everything up, added compressed air (see left picture, above) to the brake line, and that squeezed the caliper tight to the rotor at the correct placement. We added .050" thick shims to space the caliper bracket away from the edge of the rotor and measured the gap between the old mounting bracket and where it needed to weld to.



We painted some layup fluid onto the small piece of 1/2" plate scrap I scored last week, traced the old caliper mount brackets Chris cut off the E30 trailing arms, added the distance we needed for proper rotor spacing, then McCall started drilling the 10mm holes. Next, we'd cut it out on the band saw and tack weld it on.... but...

I broke the blade on my crappy band saw last Saturday (forcing me to use a cut off wheel on a die grinder to complete my E46 seat brackets - and pissing me off royally), so I picked up a new blade yesterday. Installed it last night while McCall was drilling, and something looked... wrong. Dammit, the teeth are pointing the wrong way! It cannot cut with the blade oriented backwards, and you can't flip it without cutting and re-welding the blade - gotta get a new one today. So we had no band saw to cut the caliper pattern out, and that ended the night at 11:30 PM. Oh well, I got an excuse to finally watch last week's European Grand Prix. What a race!

Magyar and I are working on the car tonight, wrapping up the cooling system hoses/adapters and other plumbing issues, and I'll finally mount the power steering cooler.

[Fair!]

Re: Vorshlag $2010 GRM Challenge car - BMW E30 V8

Update for June 28, 2010: Paul Magyar and Paul Costas both came by Saturday morning to work on the E30 project while I was making seat brackets for my E46 330 DSP car (I had a race the next day, of course!). They got a lot done in about 4 hours of work, then Costas stuck around another couple of hours to help me design and build the slider seat bracket for my 330 (and I worked till midnight to get them both built and harnesses in the car - and raced Sunday in 102° heat - but it was fun!). Here's where we are:



Magyar machined the little plug above that we needed for an extra oil dipstick tube we aren't using. He took a chunk of scrap round bar (that was an old tool rest for a band saw I threw out last year) and whittled out this little piece. Even added an O-ring groove and a chamfer. Pretty slick! Above he's shown shortening a piece of old fuel filler neck tubing for use on custom radiator hoses (see below).



Then they got the E36 diff cover onto the E30 LSD 2.79 rear diff that we're using in the car, made an RTV gasket, and got it bolted in the car. Then they put the driveshaft we cut/welded in the car, then the E30 half shafts and got the back of the car mostly buttoned up. I picked up the AST4100 rears from AST today, that we're using just for the UTCC event (the used Bilsteins will be on the car for the $2010 GRM Challenge) and we'll install the shocks tonight.



You can also see the custom radiator hose they built, made from two old/used radiator hoses. They spliced the various bends together using a piece of tubing that was once part of this E30's fuel filler neck (more recycled parts - I never throw anything away if I can help it!) and it worked great. Costas showed us a neat trick he learned from ThinkFast author & IndyCar engineer Neil Roberts - how to safety wire a worm gear hose clamp so it never gets loose:



That trick was so slick I had to share it. You can buy Neil's excellent book here at Vorshlag.

I bought a little piece of aluminum bar at a machine supply place today for a few bucks that Magyar will machine into various fittings and adapters for the heater hose and coolant reservoir piping (that I'd normally buy - but its all about saving budget money at this point). This car will have a functional heater/defrost, of course.

A bunch of parts are going on the car tonight, so I should have another, "more meaty" update tomorrow. The 3 day weekend coming up? Its full court press time!!

[Fair!]

Re: Vorshlag $2010 GRM Challenge car - BMW E30 V8

Update for June 25, 2010: We had a crew of 5 last night and we got a bit more work knocked out.

I was looking at the back fender areas we had clearanced for the big tires, and it was a jagged mess after the plasma cutter did its thing through both layers of sheet metal. I was trying to tie the inner fender structure back to the outer fender contour, to give it strength, to keep water/fumes out of the passenger area, and to give us a sturdy structure to build the flares off of at a later date.



I started by grinding off the plasma'd edge, which was pretty nasty and had globs of molten steel that had fused into little "steelcicles". Once that was cleaned up it was time to join the two edges - the inner and outer fenders. This is usually a royal pain on an E36, as there's 3 layers and they are usually pretty far apart after you cut upwards for bigger tires, but on the E30 they weren't that far apart when cut up ~3" or so. The cut fenders started out flapping and flimsy, but by inching along with careful tack welds, hammering the inner structure into shape between tacks, I found that I could join the two structures pretty easily.



I had a little trouble on the left rear, as the guy who plasma'd that one cut too much off the inside and I had a 1" gap between the sheets for about 7" of length. I took a piece of scrap 20 gauge, cut it with the hand sheers, and tacked it to the inner structure. Then I hammered it over the edge at the same ~90° angle that the rest of the curved edge had formed, and then welded it to the outer sheet metal. Its all going to be covered up eventually. After about 2 hours both fenders were fully joined along the entire arch lengths and were mostly water tight. We'll go over the joined seams with "kitty hair putty" (fiberglass infused resin) or the seam sealer, at least.



The old E30 coolant reservoir was found in one of the big boxes of "old stuff we removed", and we found a new place to hide it - behind the passenger side strut tower. Its out of the way here but still located up high for better filling/bleeding. We even found the old coolant level sensor, which capped off the top. We made some brackets out of a few inches of bent 1/8" steel strap welded to the strut tower, drilled a couple of holes, then seam sealed and painted them. The reservoir bolts in place with the hardware from Tractor Supply Co's "buy it by the pound" super cheap 3/8" inch sized bolts and nuts. You can buy Grade 8 SAE bits there for dirt cheap - and no, they don't sell metric anything. Again, we'd normally try to keep a German car 100% metric, but at this budget we can't be that picky!



After cleaning up the jagged cut edge in the trunk floor opening, Brian P spent the evening inside the cabin installing more interior bits, like the gauge surround and the center console. Looks like we need to trim the console opening a tick to clear the shifter (doh!) but we'll try to make it look as stock as possible. The carpet will go in after UTCC, but before the GRM Challenge. No need to add fuel for the fire for the VIR event.



Next up was a caliper rebuild for the front, and our new stock brake hoses arrived Thursday as well. Oh, we could have bought new non-M E36 calipers @ $0 to the budget ("OEM brakes/parts are free"), but we got these for dirt cheap and the seal rebuild kits were like $5/each. We figured - why not paint them red? That's worth at least +15 hp. I had a can of some ancient "high heat red" engine paint, probably from the 1990s, and Sean gave the calipers a few coats of red just for fun. The paint will likely vaporize during the first lap on track, but what the hell.



Fitting the E36 non-M rear brakes are more of a challenge than the front, as we're stuck with old E30 trailing arms which were made for different caliper bolt spacings and rotor diameters. Chris spent some time and carefully cut off the old cast steel caliper mounts from the trailing arms, cooling the metal to avoid damaging the bearings or paint on the unit. He cut them off and ground the pad flat, and now we'll build some new caliper brackets. A steel shop in town gave me a 6" x 6" piece of 1/2" plate that was in there "drops pile", and we'll cut out a new bracket and weld the sucker on at the correct offset for these brakes and the unusual E36 non-M hub locations (which are 3/4" more inboard than the E30 hubs).



Matt cleaned up the greasy E30 LSD diff we purchased for this build ($100!) and shot it with some black spray paint. Its the real diff getting the E36 rear cover soon and going in the car. Hope it works. Thanks to everyone that came Thursday night - come by Saturday if you've got any time.

[Fair!]

Re: Vorshlag $2010 GRM Challenge car - BMW E30 V8

Update for June 24, 2010: I didn't get to work on the E30 or E46 last night, but worked on Paul M's Subaru instead (we got the transmission in!).

Today we had to put another car where the E30 was, so we realized its finally together enough to bolt wheels on, steer and roll around. We pushed it outside for a second and I snapped some pics, showing the current state of the car now. I've hidden the engine (which is in and being wired up/headers built) but nothing else.







More project car work tonight - people are already starting to arrive. Lots to do!

[Fair!]

Re: Vorshlag $2010 GRM Challenge car - BMW E30 V8

Only have the low pressure side... sorry

No worries... we found a fitting

[John in Houston]

Re: Vorshlag $2010 GRM Challenge car - BMW E30 V8

The cooler loop is the low pressure side - larger, with the M16 bolt.

Only have the low pressure side... sorry