This is my E30 track car that I got for $300 in May. A coworker had dreams of building a SpecE30 race car, but didn't have the time or space to do it. So it just sat in his garage for 8 years until he got married and he wife made him sell it :) I already have way too many cars but I couldn't turn down an almost free E30, so I got it. My plan is to build a fun track car that while not super fast, will handle well enough to be fun and most importantly be dead reliable. Once I finish it, the goal is to let friends use it at the track and teach them how to drive.
It's an 87 325is with 253k miles on a broken odometer. Who knows what the actual mileage is. When I picked it up it was all stock, but was missing some things. It had completely stripped interior and was missing a few other important parts. There was no radiator, exhaust system, oil cooler, sunroof, and some other things I'm forgetting.
For about 2 months this summer I busted ass, got it running and then passing California smog so I could actually drive it on the street. After that I had to get it track worthy. Doing everything as inexpensively as possible while still doing it reliably and properly. I built it well enough to track in July and my friend and I did a two day day/night track event at Willow Springs. It was a long hot weekend, but the car held up beautifully to a shitload of abuse and ran solidly--even in back-to-back runs in 100+ degrees. There were a few hiccups though.
The main issue was a fuel starvation problem on left hand corners with anything below a totally full tank that started happening the second session of the first day. The cause of the starvation was a dead in-tank transfer pump, but I didn't have a spare pump on hand at the track. Our solution was to top off the tank after every session (pain in the ass).
On the second day we started smelling fuel in the engine bay. We couldn't figure out where the smell was coming from so we tightened some dodgy looking fuel line clamps and went out again hoping that the clamps were the problem. Unfortunately we smelled fuel again and came back in. We finally pinpointed a wet charcoal canister with fuel leaking out of it. It's not supposed to do that.
The canister had fuel in it because we were topping off the fuel tank so much and so high--we were filling the tank until gas spilled out the filler neck. Because of that, fuel was getting into the emissions vapor lines and filling up the charcoal canister in the engine bay until it started spilled out.
Other than that the only other issue was on Sunday when we were driving back-to-back 30 minute sessions. At the end of the last few sessions the car would start sputtering when accelerating and eventually died altogether. Back in the pits after it cooled down it would start up and run fine. This happened twice. We didn't get a chance to properly diagnose it because the motor started running again each time, but I'm pretty sure the cause was the old stock coil overheating. The coil is located right above the exhaust manifold and it only happened during the hottest part of the day and after being on track for nearly an hour. I've since replaced it with an MSD Blaster SS coil ($42.95).
As for the good parts, the best things about the car for me are the great chassis balance (even with shitty stock suspension), the surprising amount of power (again , totally stock motor), and the great brakes. I have DOT4 synthetic fluid, Hawk HT-10 pads on the front ($107.99), some crap stock pads are on the back, and Home Depot brake ducts on the front ($20). The brakes worked awesome and never once hiccuped in the heat.
So the track was fun but it highlighted a few problems that need fixing in order of priority:
-Ignition cutting out (hopefully fixed with new coil)
-Fuel starvation (already replaced transfer pump ($107.79), gonna install a swirl pot)
-No gauges except a tach, so no idea what the engine is doing (already installed oil/h2o temp and oil press gauges)
-Oil starvation, I don't know if it was starving, but I need something preventative here
-Totally blown stock suspension and wasted bushings
Anyway I want to go to the track again hopefully Sept 22nd/23rd http://www.speedventures.com/events/...il.aspx?id=386 , so I need to get some work done.
Last week I dropped the oil pan so I can install an oil pan baffle
, windage tray 
, and replace the rod and main bearings. I got the oil pan removed
All of this junk was caught in the oil pump strainer. I'm going to assume this oil pump is original and this is 250,000 miles of shit. There's bits of casting, plastic pieces, RTV gasket, and a cut zip tie lol
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