E30 Race Car wreck, time for major surgery

[Lance Racing]

4:30pm

Before we can set the donor clip in place, Peng needs to straighten the saddles that the frame rail will set in. Notice how the saddle is scewed to the right, it should align with the horizontal steel pad right in front of it.



So the hydraulics are brought in to pull on the saddle:







He does small tugs to bring the saddle into alignment step by step.

[Lance Racing]

1:30pm

Here's the blue car that had contact with me loading out. It was repaired first, before our car. Normally i'd help push, but they had plenty of bodies and I needed to get our car done! Notice they are loading it without the front suspension.



Here the final bit of old material from the frame rail is taken out of the "saddle" that holds the frame rail. All of those circles were welds.



Shot shows the saddle on each side. The orange horizontal line reminded us to only drill out welds above that line.



This is a monumental moment, we are done tearing old stuff of the existing car!



Here you can see we saved the battery tray, working that area removing welds was a bitch.



Here I'm pointing to a little piece that holds the back bracket that the hood wheel slides back into. Note how far back we've peeled back the car, all the way to the base of the A-pillar. Honestly I didn't realize when we agreed to do this that we'd have torn back so far into the existing car.

[Lance Racing]

8:00am and our surgeon Peng arrives that we're helping out for the day. Great guy Peng is, thanks Peng for letting us work in your area and use your tools!



Here Peng is pulling the firewall out a little bit. We left some of the old front end on to have things to pull on. As we didn't need parts, we'd cut them off little by little



Stephanie looking for more welds to drill out.



A rare picture of me, LOL.



Once the firewall was pulled, Peng used the sawzall to eliminate more of the old car:

[Lance Racing]

The goal is to make a local race on August 4.

I got a call from the body shop asking if I could come down the next morning at 6am to get some work done on the car prior to the Celette rack technician coming in at 8:30am. I had requested the car by the end of the day Friday, and the shop wanted to deliver. It was going to be a long day.

So myself, Stephanie, friend Alan James and shop owner Jeff Butler were there at 6am to work on the car. 19 hours later at 1:15am Saturday we had the donor front end welded to the car.

Here's the car on the Celette rack and Alan is already working at 6:15am:



Alan and Stephanie each take a side of the car, drilling out spot welds as we work on detaching the bad from the good, Jeff's in the foreground working on the donor clip.





Wife Stephanie learning the joys of air tools;

[PiercedE30]

Nice work!

[MR 325]

That valance and metal bumper have totally been in my E30 trailer before!

[Lance Racing]

More progress

We had a work party to prep the donor front clip that will be grafted onto the E30. Here's the donor at the body shop:



First step is to remove the seam filler so we can see where the weld points are. Seam filler is slathered onto the joints to keep moisture out of them.





Here's Scott starting work removing one of the covering plates on the frame. Until you take a fender off, you would not know these covering plates exist. They help stiffen the frame above the wheel well. They need to be taken off to have access to weld points below them. It took a lot of time to get these off.



Here's Jeff giving Scott some pointers. The covering plate is outlined in orange.



Depending on the type of weld, Scott had a couple of tools to bust the weld. Rick is lighting up the work area.







So here's the covering plate in the original location:



and off the frame:



Here is an area cleaned up of joint sealant. The shop will release the frame rail from the back portion. Notice the tow hook as a point of reference. The clip is standing straight up.





And 7 hours later, the portion of the front clip we'll use, seperated from the portion we don't need.







Many thanks to Scott, Ryan and Rick for coming down and helping. We all thought it was going to be a couple of hour project that stretched all day long.

It was interesting to see how the front end is designed for crumple zones. Little bends in the sheet metal at various locations are designed to control the crumple of the front end during a collision. You don't get a chance to see these little details until you have an E30 torn down to the bare frame.

[Yakinho]

Sorry to see that wreck, but it's great to see you making that much progress. What wheels are those in the first set of pictures? They look like the ones i've seen on some old school toyotas and datsuns.

[Massive Lee]

Hi Lance. Nice track but lousy ending. Feel sorry for you. From the beginning of the clip, I couldn't help noticing that the other guy had two wheels in the grass in most corners. Maybe that time he was one inch too far.

Anyway, I received you great Spa Francorchamp DVD and I find it to be one of the best DVD from the whole collection. Obviously, I also speak French, which helps understand the Belgian commentators...

[Lance Racing]

Thanks JP! And JP and I are on the same page re. E30 bumpers on race cars.

IMO, with a race car form follows function. The big aluminum bumpers are much stronger in a crash versus the plastic bumpers. We also have to run 2,650 pounds with driver so weight savings is not an issue. I've laid down a couple of big hits on other cars that spun in front of me, and the big alum. bumper held up.

Even this hit, the bumper took a lot of the impact. The car that hit me was an E30 so we had bumper to bumper contact. The more we have looked at the car, we think if the other E30 was traveling 5mph faster, it would have been enough extra energy that we would have had to write off the car.

I know the plastic bumpers are the look for the street, but I always suggest from first hand experience that a big hefty alum bumper will spare potential damage to more vital parts of the car.

Withdrawal shakes are minor so far, but the rest of my group raced in Portland OR this past weekend. Shakes got a little worse. LOL

Working towards being back on track in early August. We're also rebuilding the engine while it is out. So that is taking time and $$$ too.

[155///MPH]

Big metal bumpers are great in the bump draft. ;)

We are getting close to 3.5" negative camber with our set up. I'd be very curious to see comparison laptimes one day. Maybe some of the NorCal SE30 guys will come up your way one day.

I'm actually starting to appreciate our "soft" set-up cars. They're very forgiving.

These cars will take a hit pretty well. Two of the Beertech cars have already taken some good shots this year. One of them was alot like you impact except it was with an innocent armco.

BeerWreck Pics

Hope it gets back on track SOON. I don't want the withdrawl shakes to set in.

JP

[PУCCKAЯ_e30ka]

why not get euro bumpers... or plastic? it will clean up the look so much!

[mtechnik]

sorry to see

[Dave]

Good eye!

This is not a SpecE30 car. We run up here in Seattle in an E30 spec class called PRO-3. PRO-3 is very similar to SpecE30 but the suspension package is open in the rule book (compared to SpecE30 which has a specific spring/shock combo, right?). We are not allowed to use remote reservoir shocks however. So the Ground Control ADs are legal.

Those fancy headers would be a no-no in SE30 as well. ;)

[Lance Racing]

Got the car picked up from AFC, and ready to drop at Haury's in Seattle:



Getting all of the body pieces sourced:



Here's Jeff on the phone with BMW AG getting a special airlift of parts from the Motorsport Division LOL:



Looking good from the A-pillar back :) !



Here's the trick Celette rack that will be used to do the work: