M30 Swapped ChumpCar: starts first crank thanks to Frank!

[trukk]

R3V,

I joined up to give Frank and the Gargastic guys their due, and to hopefully save anyone thinking about doing this swap a lot of grief.

I'll post up the gory details below, but for you ADHD TL; DR types:

Our ChumpCar race team swapped an M30B35 into an 88SETA. Fit like a glove with the gargastic motormounts, and started up very first try because we used Frank's swap guide.




We just got done running it in a 12 hour endurance race and it ran the entire 12 hours. Our only issues where some fueling problems associated with a fuel accumulator/swirl tank we installed (nothing to do with Frank or Gargastic)

We turned the key exactly 3 times to get the car started:
1) Check the gauges would turn on, and no smoke or blown fuses
2) See if it will crank
3) turn the key to fill the fuel lines; crank till it starts

Here is the first start video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKsVzkh_FqE

I can't even begin to say what a valuable tool that guide was for this swap. It allowed us to plan out every detail ahead of time. This allowed us to:

a) make sure we could do the swap legally within the ChumpCar rules
b) buy everything we needed ahead of time and money (and over time to save.)


Details below.

-Chris

[trukk]

Our Chumpcar Team has campaigned an 87'e30 in chumpcar for 2 years. We've had some success with two top 10 finishes (one 10 and one 8 ). In 2014 the rulebook changed and made it tougher for an M20B25 E30 to reach the podium. While it's not impossible, it is harder, and our car hadn't made a podium yet, so.....we decided to build a 2nd car.

We loved our primary e30, and wanted to stick with that platform. We have beat that car to hell and back and it still keeps racing (over 97% on track performance, which is absolutley KEY for endurance racing.) So we really wanted to stick with an e30 if possible, but new we'd need to up our power game if we want to try and make a podium in the very competitive ChumpCar eastern region.

Many e30 teams have done M50 swaps, which gains them about 20hjp/20tq, while adding about 50 lbs to the front of the car. We didn't want to do a 'been there done that swap'. We looked at many BMW and non BMW engines as candidates for our swap. Some criteria:
1) had to work with the chumpcar swap math valuation
2) had to be more powerful than an M50 swap
3) had to be reliable
4) had to be something we felt we could reasonably accomplish
5) had to come as close as possible to a 2 hour run time with the largest e30 gas tank (with option to move to fuel cell 1 liter swirl tank per chumpcar rules)
6) had to not absolutely ruin the e30's handling

After a lot of research we had a handful of candidates, one of which was the M30B35. Our research led us to Franks Swap guide:

http://www.macalent.com/products.html

I figured it was worth the price to just noodle out #1 criteria above, as I really had to know all the bits and pieces needed to really make the entire swap work, and then have the valuation work within the ChumpCar rules. After reading that guide many times, I because convinced that the M30 was the swap of choice and met 5 of 6 requirements. #6 is still an open issue, as we have not finished suspension tuning on our new car. Roughly speaking the M30 swap adds about 30ish lbs over the M50 swap, and many teams run the snot out of their M50 powered E30's in chumpcar, and they handle damned well, so we thought we'd give it a shot.

-Chris

[trukk]

Based on Frank's guide, and Chump Math, we decided the only real way to make this work from a competitive chumpcar perspective was to go with an 88 SETA (M20B27 Super ETA) perspective.

We searched around and found a beater up in New Jersey last November, that we bought for $1200. We talked the guy down from 1800, because he thought it was cool that his daily beater was going to be turned into a racecar. The car was already 'pre-lightended' (rust) for racing:


We stripped it all down, and then started hunting for a donor M30B35, which we found for $600 in a junked out E34. We followed Franks guide, and accumulated all the parts we needed (e28 radiator, 260/6 e28 tranny, etc.) We ended up dropping the (actually we put it in from underneath) motor into the car, and got it all connected (wiring, cooling, fuel) in a 3 day span.

Here is the huge M30 and 260/6 going in:




Plenty of room to spare! (not at all, we are in trouble if we get in a front end collision in this car on the track....that's a price we have to pay)




With the gargastic engine mounts, it fit perfectly. About a half an inch front and rear:


We followed Franks guide, and with a bit of harness splicing, a lot of attention to detail (this is the key right here!) and some sweat, we got the driveline in. The e30 seta driveshaft fit like a champ, as did the E28 radiator just like Frank said. Like I indicated up above, we went to fire it up at 1:30 in the morning for the first time: Gauges worked, it cranked, and then one the fuel lines were files it fired right up. FIRST TIME. While I was impressed with the detail in Frank's guide, the first time fire surprised me. SWAPs are supposed to be hard right? If you are prepared they are not. Frank prepared us.

More to come.

-Chris

[trukk]

We got the exhaust fabbed up, and we literally drove the car up onto a trailer and hit the road for the track. Who needs to road test a swap....TRACK TEST IT FIRST! :D We went to VIR (a chin event) to shake the car down and do some initial testing.

At this point, we were still running the craptastic 325e 2.93 diff, and hadn't done any suspension tuning (one front wheel had about a half degree of negative camber, the other was neutral. The rear had one neutral and one positive (about a degree, YIKES). We were running worn the F out Star Spec scrub tires that had seen about 30 hours of chump racing on them. Also it had snowed the night before and the track was very wet with a couple rivers running across it. Lastly we figured out why we got such a nice deal on the 260/6 we put behind the M30....the 3rd gear synchro was on a permanent ciesta (does anyone know where I can get a 260/6 rebuilt at a reasonable cost in the mid atlantic area?)

Even with all that going against us, the new car put down numbers just a bit better than our other E30 (which is pretty darned close to spec e30 trim). This is a car that was just a shall a week earlier, and completely not race tuned beating our dialed in mainline chumper!

Before the first race, we did manage to get a new tranny in, and swapped to a 3.73 rear diff. Beyond that we had all the other 'make it a racecar' bits to add (fire suppression, lexan, radios, nets, etc. etc. etc.) We basically ran out of time on the suspension. We managed to cut a coil and half off the OEM springs up front to stuffen that up a bit, and ground ths strut towers to get negative 2 degrees of camber. The rear was still jacked up with neutral on one side and positive on the other, along with some horrific toe out (skitich braking: CHECK, snap oversteer: CHECK....it was pretty sketchy).

We raced the car at VIR on March 29th in the VIR 12 hr endurance race. The weather was crap, raining most of the day. Due to the suspension and the new found power, the car was a handful from a handling perspective. I spun the car 5 times in the first stint, but still managed to bring it in 2 hours later in 10th place (out of 73). We hovered in the teens the next few hours. About halfway in we started having fueling issues. We think we burnt out our intank pump that feeds our fuel accumulator/swirl pot. That made us only able to go about 45 minutes on fuel, which basically knocked us out of contention (we finished in 21st). Aside from our self inflicted fueling issue, and handling issues the car mechanically ran great, and was VERY fast. Once we get those issues worked out...WATCH OUT! Our next planned race is at Watkins Glen over Memorial Day.

Here is some race pics and in car video:

A really nice rear pick from Motor Sport Media (racemsm.com) [and yes the car's number is 335 of course, along with a 335 trunklid number ;)]:


First stint (yes it's long, just fast forward a bit to get an idea of the speed of the car...or you can watch to see me spin out 5 times :D)



Here is our car getting punted around a bit later in the day. Luckily no harm to anyone:




-Chris

[trukk]

Thanks for taking a look at our build.

Anyone on the fence about an M30 swap....GO FOR IT!

Do your homework, and at the risk of sounding like a broken record....use Frank's guide and the Gargastic Motor Mounts. Worth every penny.

-Chris

[Garageaholic]

Thanks, Chris!!! I'm so happy for you and the success you've had with your swap. Not only that, but thanks for giving me the opportunity to be a pivotal part throughout your swap. Congratulations!!!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[M-technik-3]

Nice write up.

[garagistic]

Fantastic!

We are very proud to be a part of this build!

[trukk]

Fantastic!

We are very proud to be a part of this build!

We care about results. Your products saved us considerable time and money. WIN - WIN!




-Chris

[tpotter]

Great write up. At this point if you do anything differerent.. what would it be ?

[trukk]

Great write up. At this point if you do anything differerent.. what would it be ?

Great question.

Regarding the swap itself....probably not much (at least not so far, we've only done one 12 hour race). We still need to solve the handling question, and over time the reliability question.

Regarding the installation, putting the intake manifold on once the engine was installed was a pain in the ass. It might have been worth it to whip up some kind of jig to allow the engine hoist to work with the manifold attached.

Attaching the tranny to the motor, and putting it in from below (even our ghetto way of doing it (see the picture above)) is the way to go. WAY to big to try from the top.

When we swapped to the 2nd tranny because of the blown 3rd gear synchro in the original, we drilled holes in the tranny tunnel, and removed the top bolts with everything still in the car. We then loosened the mounts, and pulled the tranny out, and reinstalled with the motor in the car. It is doable, but MUCH easier with the motor out.

All in all though, using Franks guide made it pretty painless. You can tell he learned a lot of 'hard lessons', which we didn't end up repeating thanks to the guide. Best money we spent on our build. It allowed us to do all our homework up front, so once we were actually doing the build, it just fell into place.

-Chris

[CorvallisBMW]

M30 Swapped ChumpCar: starts first crank thanks to Frank!

Awesome! We (myself, jrparker, James Crivellone, and some others) run an e30m30 in ChumpCar too.

Original tank theme:


Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh-themed Rolls Royce:


Current livery:

[trukk]

Cool deal!

I know there was another group here out east that had a Mad Max V-8 interceptor themed e30 with an M30 in it. Haven't seen them in a while though.

Any advice on running the M30? Also which are you running?

-Chris

[marshallnoise]

Dude great thread! And love the Constitutionalist motif! That definitely looks like the best way to put the motor in too.

[trukk]

Dude great thread! And love the Constitutionalist motif! That definitely looks like the best way to put the motor in too.

Thanks.

Our cars are named after constitutional amendments:

TCR-1 : Free Speech
TCR-2: Bear Arms (as seen in the pic above).


The engine is a tight fit no matter what. Nothing a big hammer and few whacks couldn't make work though. Shifter mated up perfectly with ZERO modifications.

-Chris