Vorshlag $2010 GRM Challenge car - BMW E30 V8

[Fair!]

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. :D

More updates Friday...

[DTM190]

Why is it you ditched the VH45 Terry?

[Fair!]

Why is it you ditched the VH45 Terry?

Several reasons...

1. Didn't fit. Not even close. HUUUUUGE motor (28" + wide)
2. Oilpan was going to have to be custom
3. Manual transmission options were NILL
4. Power output was only 278 hp
5. Aftermarket support was almost zero
6. It was a heavy motor!

Oh well, we tried...

[JoeyBones]

what a beast...thats insane

[ForcedFirebird]

WOW! I have motor sitting in my shop that will make 270+whp mated a manual, and only weighs 340lbs at 3.5liters lol.

[Fair!]

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.

[camaroz1985]

I'm going to join the crowd and say definitely a 302. The T5, and now seeing the equally spaced header primary tubes makes me almost certain.

Nice work. Not looking forward to competing with you at the challenge.

[Hick]

those header fab parts [orange 'legos'] are a great idea! wish i had thought of something like that

[silence]

Not looking forward to competing with you at the challenge.

We are! ;)

[ForcedFirebird]

We are! ;)

For sure! :D

[Fair!]

We are! ;)

hehe... yea, I'm sure we'll get punished by some of the more experienced teams - nobody on our team has ever even been to a GRM Challenge, so I'm sure we'll be overwhelmed by the format, rules, and/or fierce competition. We're not even thinking that far ahead - just thrashing to get the car running for the GRM Challenge in 2 weeks... its going to be close, but I think we can finish it enough to not completely embarrass ourselves. If there was ever a bigger underdog at the UTCC, or a cheaper built car entered, I'd be surprised. :p



Finished tacking up the driver's side header last night (above), but there's still SO much to do. Getting the four primaries snaked around the bellhousing, block and steering shaft was a biiiitch. About to weigh the car with everything in it later today, so expect an update shortly.

[Jean]

Nice!

So what are these "the OEM M3 Cabriolet strut tower-to-fender brace" ? Are you talking about regular e30 cabrio part OR are there also e30m3 ones that are different?

Thanks!

[Fair!]

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.

[JoeyBones]

dump miracle mystery oil in the cylinders, let it sit for a day...turn it over, re-ring....blamo running motor temporarily...

edit: Not to mention Ford 302's are a dime a dozen...you should be able to find a replacement and just dump it in...

[Fair!]

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... :D Good luck Costas!



Have a nice weekend, folks!