Vorshlag $2010 GRM Challenge car - BMW E30 V8

[325ix]

I think I love it! How do I put this in my iX?!?

By spending way too much time and money!

[Fair!]

Update for Sept 22, 2010: We've been working damn near around the clock since we got the 5.3L V8 running and driving, thrashing to finish the bodywork and to iron out a few unfinished details on the fuel system and some other aspects. Let's start with where we are today, then I'll back up and go over how we got here...



We've been busy for the last week and Paul, Jason and I have knocked out the work required to custom make new rear fenders/flares. We've never done something like this before, so we were flying blind on several fabrication techniques we had only read about or seen done on TV.

Jason and Paul M worked their flare magic last Friday night after adding the 3 Dzus fasteners to the gutted trunk (Matt played "Trunk Monkey" and marked the inside locations on the underside of the trunk). We worked until almost 2 am last Friday night so my memory is a bit sketchy on all of the details...





Here's how we did the rear box flares - the first step was to make cardboard versions. We are making the flares fit the larger 18x11" wheels, as the 15x10" steel wheels are only being used for the GRM event.



The cardboard looked so good I was dying to get to work on the steel versions, but that was just finished in cardboard (many iterations) done at about 1:30 am Friday night. Costas and I had been making the "de-castered" camber plates all night, which came out pretty good for about $5 in scrap steel and 2 hours of work.





The finished result took us from +15° front caster to around +7°, which is more reasonable. The weight jacking that +15° of caster causes with steering input was horrendous! 7 degrees is livable. The camber is still "adjustable", but its pretty ghetto and only has 3 stepped camber settings (-4.7°, -3.5°, and one less than that). We'll test with the -3.5 setting and hope for the best. We hacked up the strut tower pretty bad to make this work - moving the top of the strut forward 1.7" to dump all of that caster. This excessive caster situation was due to the E36 front suspension swap we performed on this poor E30.





OK, so Saturday Paul M and I burned the whole day making the wooden buck for the left rear flare, which you can see in the above pictures. Then we hammer formed the 14" radius for the top flare piece by clamping the sheet steel to the buck and hammering it over the routed bend in the wood. The flimsy 20 gauge steel now was super rigid, with the formed radius along the outer edge. This was welded to the fender and two braces were added, tilting the top flare piece down at 24.1° from level.



We then traced the cardboard mock-up onto the steel, cut that out, and hung it from the top piece. Once the fit was tweaked and the lower bodyline was marked, we added a slight ~30*° bend in the lower section, then lined this up with the bodyline at the bottom edge of the door. It flows nicely there, visually.





We used Paul's pneumatic "crud buster" to remove the paint on each body panel edge that the flare would be welded to. Great tool! That work above burned the entire day and well into the night on Saturday. Again, we didn't know what we were doing, so there was a lot of trial and error, but we stumbled upon a good method (thanks to Greg for the hammer forming/buck tips!). I spent Sunday making two lower wedge sheet pieces that braced up the bottom of the side of the left rear flare, and welded them to the body. Now the flare is welded on all edges and is rigid as hell - it can take a cone hit at any speed, no worries, but its all fairly lightweight (20 gauge) steel.



I spent all day Sunday finishing the left rear flare and started finished the second buck, cut the steel, and hammer formed the top for the right rear flare. I welded it on Monday, but made some mistakes trying to do this work solo. Always have some extra hands (and eyes) when welding on big, long bodywork pieces! I have a "dip" on the top section of the RR flare that will need some serious mud.



We spent this past Monday night finishing up odds and ends on the flares, and Costas made this antenna hole plug which we welded in place flush with the fender. Tuesday night was spent grinding welds and such, and Chris worked on the custom ABS wiring harness (with parts stolen from an E36). Somewhere in there we got the used 275mm Hoosiers mounted to the 15x10" steel wheels, tried to get a dyno run in (but the fuel filter imploded), and worked on the brakes and clutch a bit more (finally getting them more reliable and "right").





I'm not going to spill the beans about the dyno numbers... but its somewhere between 300 and 400 whp. If its too high people will call BS, and if its too low, well... it would be embarrassing. Its in the believable range, but its not embarrassing or stellar. The GRM event is in a week so we'll share more after that (and then go back and fix SO many ghetto shortcuts we've had to make for cost reasons!).



We've also added the used E36 sedan front bumper cover to the front as well as laid out the front fender in cardboard (Paul M worked on that last night). I am out of room for pictures in this post so I'll show that after the first front flare is done in steel. Costas just rolled up with a smoking deal on a used E36 rear bumper cover, so we'll get that mounted and lined up with the flares (I hope that fits what we've built!). Paul M has already started on the wooden bucks for the front fender flare and Costas is putting the new fuel filter on (this one was fuel injection rated, and we ghetto-ized it pretty good to work with our weirdly-sized/used/existing E30 fuel lines). We have put the E30 KYB rear shocks back on that came with the car, and we're just adding some more fluid to the leaky and very rusty (and locked up adjuster) $10 pair of E36 Koni front struts we bought many moons ago. Those will go on the car probably tomorrow and we'll try to make some autocross runs Sunday out at Mineral Wells with the local BMWCCA chapter.

More soon!

[Ian Bowers]

Holy shit, that looks awesome.

[Jean]

Good progress! I can't wait to see what it will look like with front fenders done as well.

[etxxz]

faaaaak i can't imagine what your competition would be with $2010 of budget... **** ***** that's right up my alley too all go no show. good job guys effortwise!

[Gnarles]

Flares look good! I'll be at the Mineral Wells auto-x saturday and sunday. Hope to see you guys out there and check this car out in person!

[Fair!]

Flares look good! I'll be at the Mineral Wells auto-x saturday and sunday. Hope to see you guys out there and check this car out in person!

We'll be racing it there hopefully Sunday with at least 2 drivers, and on multiple sets of wheels & tires. Lots of testing to do! :D

[JoeyBones]

what's the weight difference with iron vs aluminum block? Seems it could be a great option with a simple parts swap from an LS if the weight isn't incredible. Especially with the E30-LS kit that recently came to be... Possibly even cheaper than an s50 swap, or similarly priced.

[Fair!]

Update for Sept 24, 2010: We're progressing along nicely on the bodywork, and ironing out some other details. Matt has been working on the budget and build book we're putting together to show the build, and Chris finished the ABS wiring harness last night (just have to wire the sensors up tonight).



Earlier this week we hit a snag and lost fuel pressure when doing that dyno test, dropping from 65 psi to 35 psi almost at once. Hmm... no visible leaks. We chased the problem for a few days, but we think we have found the root cause - a ruptured 2" piece of fuel line inside the fuel tank that attached the fuel pump to the E30 pick-up tube. We also imploded the fuel filter, which we found out later was made for carbureted cars (and much lower fuel pressures). Everything was fine at 40 psi, but when we cranked up to 65 it only worked for about 2 dyno pulls.

We've built a new fuel filter (a cheap replacement unit for an EFI Ford truck) to fit the very tight confines of the old outboard fuel pump (we re-used that bracket) and its working fine - and actually cost us less by $4 whole dollars than the old set-up. We wasted hours custom making it, of course, and would have gladly spent $100-150 for a real fuel filter with AN fittings... but that's the nature of this bizarre build - "time is free". There's plenty of time to sleep when we're dead.



Costas spent part of Wednesday night working on the fuel pump/pressure issues and then the rest of the evening buried under the dash, extracting our custom brake master cylinder pedal pushrod/clevis. We tried to re-use the E30 clevis pin that finally showed up, but it was too short, so I drilled a bolt for a cotter pin and Costas put it all back in. We also shortened our pushrod by .040", as it was a tick too long and was leaving some residual pressure in the rear brakes when the pedal wasn't pushed. It rolls easily now with the brakes off. We'll test it for real Sunday at the BMWCCA autocross.





The past two nights I've been working on the first front fender flare, with some fits and starts. Paul M worked on it Wednesday night and finished the cardboard top layout, built the buck, hammer formed the top piece, and we got it tacked on. Last night I cut it off and fixed a bunch of things, then tacked it back in place, at the correct angle this time.



Sometime yesterday I made a pair of brackets to hold the E36 front bumper cover to our E30. I got tired of looking at the zip ties...



We had spent several hours carving up the bumper cover to fit onto the E30 a few months ago - I can't actually remember when that was. McCall's cousin gave us the idea to use E36 bumper covers on an E30, since they looked so good on his when he tried it. He was right! The brackets I made were carved from some 14 gauge sheet, some 20 gauge scraps from the fenders, two 2" pieces of 3/4" electrical conduit, and 4 M8 bolts. We gotta be cheap here.





Yes, those two side supports are made from some lengths of PVC pipe and a 4" long bolt. Nothing but class here, folks. The front bumper looks better in person than in this series of close up pics, and will make more sense once we have the front flares finished and blended into the wider bodyline. The rear bumper cover is a better looking fit, however, as it is already mated up to the flares.



Costas scored this non-M E36 rear bumper cover for us off of CraigsList Wednesday night and it was a steal. McCall spent a good 3 hours last night fitting it to the E30 body. He whittled away about an inch of plastic to get the rear fascia to line up to the trunk section tight, and the wheel arches lined up almost perfectly with the rear fenders we built. A little more trimming at the arches, and some more brackets I'll build today, and that is completed.



About to put the final touches on the fuel pressure fix, then get after the rear bumper brackets and then attack the front flares. Tonight is going to be another LATE work night, and Saturday we will slap on some mud and black primer. Sunday we race. Sounds like an easy plan, right?



More after the autocross...

[silence]

Looking good guys, were looking forward to meeting on the track next week!

[!kid]

hey silence hows your build coming along ?

[Jonny Cash]

yes definitly, im really interested in checking this car out, looks very cool. You guys make the widebody look easy over the internet. My aching arms and shoulders are proof its not!

[NickGeee]

very nice build!

[silence]

hey silence hows your build coming along ?

It's going well. We have some final things to button up this week... There will be a few late nights ;)

[freeride53]

so fucking bad ass.