Barn Built Turbo M42 drift car

[ccsdo5]

So been super busy with school and stuff sorta forgot to update this thread.

I broke my manifold at some point (this is actually the second time, the dude with the lsx turbo e30 Dirk fixed it for me once already) but it cracked along the welds to the flange and the larger piece itself used to angle the flange. I ended up welding it the second time before another event when I found these cracks. After this past weekend is is cracked AGAIN. I've tried resolving this with poly engine mounts, two flex pipes in the exhaust more exhaust hanger, ect. I think having the turbo so far forward just acts like a lever causing the manifold a lot of stress.





Regardless drove a couple more events this year at englishtown. Did stuffed moves and it was a blast probably some of the best driving I've personally done. but sadly didn't end to well for my car. I sorta put the rear quarter into the bank since I was taking the high line all day











The rear is tweaked really hard. Honestly based off of insurance it's totaled since the uni-body is damaged, but the rear frame rails kinked after all the suspension parts in the car so it still drives completely fine. I guess I am going to bang it out and try and pull the frame rails as straight as I can with my friend and some heavy equipment this winter. I'll most likely end up cutting the tail light section out and welding in another one so a light can fit back in nicely. as for the damaged quarters I think I might end up purchasing those odp/gruppebarvian over fenders for the rear of the car since I want to start running a bigger wheel and tire in the back anyway.





I like how they look on the purple car above, but I'm not sure how it'll look with just rear over fenders and no fronts. Think it'll look funny? Should I think about getting fronts too since my control arms are already 50mm extended?

reference picture to where my front wheel is right now with stock metal fenders. Think I can just roll the metal fenders or go wider?



So I mended my taillight and drove one more event this year, slay ride. The track was snowy for the first day and really fun since it was tricky to drift. Funny haha is a car setup to go drifting doesn't work well in the snow go figure.





Only found two pictures of my car from this event so far but I'm sure I'll see more. This car did 5x as many drift events this year than last year and to be honest it took it like a champ. I drove to every single event most over an hour away thrashed the car and it never left me stranded. I did grenade an engine mid season since it had detonation and eventually cracked a piston ring causing serious blow by. I think this is because of the extended time in boost on limiter with 10:1 compression. But even with tons of blow by the car drove amazing. I still want to build another 8.5:1 engine so I can run more boost and be safer in general but that's not really an option right now it can wait.

I'm seriously debating about putting a roll cage in the car this winter so I can drive with my friends next season. Everyone wants me to do it but I don't know if it is worth it to do on this shell or not. It is a little rusty like the tranny tunnel and floor boards aren't amazing but it has solid frame rails. Also now that I tweaked the rear of the car I don't know if I should even bother fixing it or just look for another car to cage. The downside to finding another car to cage is it will probably be another ruined e30 and blah blah blah. Also they aren't cheap now a days like I don't want to spend $1500 on a rolling shell that's also going to be rusty it's insane.

This winter the car needs A LOT of work. I want to try and do the following:
- fix crashed rear (overfenders?)
- camber / toe adjust in rear
- new seat brackets
- fix rust
- get exhaust manifold fixed
- make a new exhaust with 3" oval tubing for clearance
- caster plates so I don't have like 10* of caster anymore
- 900# rear springs
- swap to a non-m3 steering rack
- make better intercooler pipe
- bigger M20 radiator (make a custom shroud too so I can still run a clutch fan)
- chassis harness? (been thinking about making a bare chassis harness for a while now)
- front / rear valances and side skirts
- roll cage (I'm not sure if I want to cage this chassis or not because of the damage in the rear. But I know if I cage another shell I'll end up destroying that one too so maybe I should just use this one until it is completely dead.)

[ccsdo5]

Same thing happened to me. The belt came off my 318is as well and I was letting my brother drive. We did atleast 2 laps with no water pump. It must have boiled the coolant. The temp gauge is where the obc should be and vertical is about 220 F measured off the top hose from the radiator. You can see it pegged to the right.

The hose must have come off somewhere around 3:40 as you can see the gauge climb temp when the sun hits it. It wasn't noticed until 8:30, two laps later and almost another full lap before we made it into the pits

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0Mgvu-aQCo&lc

After bleeding the system, it drove home just fine, no problems since.

wow yours got way hotter than mine and probably for much longer too. These are tough little engines I don't care what anyone says. I told a couple guys how hot mine has gotten and they can't believe it hasn't popped a HG or something. I did however find a little coolant in my cylinder 1 hole on the last engine that experienced detonation, so the head could have been warped but I'm not sure.

Going hard as always, love it

HELL YEAH DUDE! I gotta drive twice as hard to show up all the V8 swapped and turbo 6 cylinder e30's. Also just need to show you don't need 4-600whp to drift well. Seat time > build time is key.

I found some more pictures though from the past few events these are from club loose haunted moves and one small parking lot event lebanon valley.

IMG_5639 by Scott Hastings, on Flickr

IMG_5637 by Scott Hastings, on Flickr

IMG_0896 by photography.B, on Flickr

IMG_0892 by photography.B, on Flickr

IMG_0889 by photography.B, on Flickr

3W6A2600 by Alex Sheldon, on Flickr





Also making some cool bmw friends at the track. Dirk has helped me before by fixing my manifold when I snapped it earlier this year and he also helped by welding my friend Andrew's subframe after he ripped his control arm tab off it at the track. He's an awesome dude and both his cars are nuts. The other e30 is some guy named Alex, also a cool dude. Everyone shreds and it's just fun.





And here is the couple pictures from that parking lot even last weekend my buddy sent me. If you look close the inside of front passenger tire is starting to de-laminate from all the extra camber the 2" extended arms create. But I think my chassis is all jacked up because that wheel looks like it has more camber than the other when I look at it on flat ground. I still need to do the rear camber and toe kit on the car then I will bring it to align on a rack again instead of just toe plates.





My friends father also came for a ride and took a video inside the car. It is sorta cool to see how calm and collective drifting actually is. The car sorta drives itself at this point lol

okay, I can't seem to get the youtube function to work for some reason so here is the direct link.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QxAfKq5EuA

[downforce22]

I am surprised how well a stock m20 clutch is taking the abuse of clutch kicks, slips, and boost from the little m42. I bumped my rev limiter up to 7000 finally as well and it makes driving the course so much easier.

I did however oops and shredded the water pump belt and the car go HOT like past 250 on my gauge hot. But somehow is still fine. turned it off swapped a new belt in and ran it and again back to like 175-180* all day. These little engine are pretty robust. I

Same thing happened to me. The belt came off my 318is as well and I was letting my brother drive. We did atleast 2 laps with no water pump. It must have boiled the coolant. The temp gauge is where the obc should be and vertical is about 220 F measured off the top hose from the radiator. You can see it pegged to the right.

The hose must have come off somewhere around 3:40 as you can see the gauge climb temp when the sun hits it. It wasn't noticed until 8:30, two laps later and almost another full lap before we made it into the pits

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0Mgvu-aQCo&lc

After bleeding the system, it drove home just fine, no problems since.

[econti]

Going hard as always, love it

[ccsdo5]

So somehow the transmission is still working and working well. I still haven't changed the fluid in it because I was sorta waiting for it to blow. I drove the car to Thompson last weekend to drive lock city and it was fast. I never used third gear before while drifting and holy crap it is FAST. I also got to tandem with my friends since this tracks allows you to do it without a cage. It's fun a lot different than just driving solo, I really like entering on my friends door it's a thrill! So I will probably be caging the car this winter....

IMG_5306 by Scott Hastings, on Flickr

IMG_5305 by Scott Hastings, on Flickr

IMG_5059 by Scott Hastings, on Flickr

IMG_4608 by Scott Hastings, on Flickr

IMG_5323 by Scott Hastings, on Flickr

IMG_5355 by Scott Hastings, on Flickr

After the Thompson / lock city event I put 50mm extended control arms and modified e36 knuckles on the the car. The car currently has so much lock it now just hits the sway bar which is better than notching the e46 control arms with stock lock on the previous setup. Also the modified control arms moved the ball joint for the knuckle about 5mm forward which is just like what 96 m3 arms do which is needed to center the wheel in the well. I think I need to run a lower offset wheel to use all the angle or add a spacer, but I don't want to poke the metal fenders because it looks silly and idk how I feel about fender flares right now. I also want to figure out a way to spin or modify my camber plate so I can use it to pull some caster out and get a flatter wheel at full lock. sorry for shitty phone pictures.







The car is soooo much easier to drive with arms and knuckles. The steering feels really fast and having all the extra angle makes it like impossible to spin I sorta wish I got them sooner, but I told myself I would learn and get good on stock angle first. Here's like one of the only pictures I found from yesterdays clubloose event.

AXX_9099+ by Johnathan Cseh, on Flickr

[ccsdo5]

Your poor car

It's fine, I'm sure my chassis is all sorts of twisted and messed up anyway lol.

You hear a zipper noise and then the gear doesn't work any more

Yeah I hope to not hear that. I ordered some MT90 to put in it in hopes it'll start to shift smoother again and the ATF I filled it with is just junk after so many miles / drift days.

Have a g240 just incase

I already have a spare and I plan on taking it to the track with me for the next couple events since they are so small anyway. But if you have another spare I would love to have another if a g240 is anything like an SR transmission (meaning they break all the time) I'll send you a PM.

[Redbone]

Have a g240 just incase


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[varg]

Your poor car

[econti]

You hear a zipper noise and then the gear doesn't work any more

[ccsdo5]

Impressed you haven't had the zipper noise yet with the little G240!

What's the zipper noise? Honestly it is amazing it still works lol


I found some more cool car pictures too

IMG_4143 by Scott Hastings, on Flickr

IMG_4145 by Scott Hastings, on Flickr

IMG_4146 by Scott Hastings, on Flickr

[econti]

Impressed you haven't had the zipper noise yet with the little G240!

[ccsdo5]

Looks like you have a hell of a good time in your e30.

Hell yeah! I like to partyyyyyy

awesome photos, keep up with the good content!

Will try and do, I also forget to update this thread.

I pulled that other engine out of my car and opened it up. I had some serious detonation happening on cylinders 1 & 2 not nearly as much on 3 & 4 but still a little bit. So I think my timing map is a little too aggressive for still having 10:1 compression and only using 92/93 octane gas. The cylinder head looked AMAZING even after the year of hard miles and drifting abuse, even the head gasket looked like it was in good shape. If the engine wasn't having such bad blow by I'm sure it would've kept on going for a while. I put in another just bone stock high mileage m42 I bought forever ago, with the intention of building with the low compression pistons, dialed the timing back a couple degrees across the whole map and drove this past weekend. I am surprised how well a stock m20 clutch is taking the abuse of clutch kicks, slips, and boost from the little m42. I bumped my rev limiter up to 7000 finally as well and it makes driving the course so much easier.

I did however oops and shredded the water pump belt and the car go HOT like past 250 on my gauge hot. But somehow is still fine. turned it off swapped a new belt in and ran it and again back to like 175-180* all day. These little engine are pretty robust. I feel I might lose this transmission though. I normally enter third gear and drop to second but at the end of the day yesterday I was having trouble down shifting into second gear and it has started to feel very notchy. I should probably change the fluid in it since I haven't done that since like 2016 and just put some junk ATF in it. What does everyone use in these getrag 240's? redline MT90 right?

Here's the only picture I found from this weekend.

AXX_7015+ by Johnathan Cseh, on Flickr

Here's a couple shoots from a couple events ago I just saw as well.

2809 edit by sutphen91910, on Flickr

3026 edit by sutphen91910, on Flickr

[krisu]

awesome photos, keep up with the good content!

[efficient]

Looks like you have a hell of a good time in your e30.

[ccsdo5]

Squirt some oil in the cyl and then do a test. If it raises up to normal then it's rings, if not then its valves or gasket

I should have done this but I am pretty confident it is piston rings due to the massive blow by and catch can filling up. I will do another compression test this week but the poor little m42 is pretty much dead at this point. The car still drives amazing and feels like it is making good power but it pukes oil way to much for me to want and still drive on track.

someone sent me a video of that parking lot event I did a few weeks ago. My car is in it a couple times, funny to think a year ago I couldn't even do a full lap without spinning out.



Last weekend I went back to clubloose and drove summer moves and it was by far one of the best events I have driven! There was almost no one there and tons of seat time.































So I also learned how to do something really cool with my car this event and that's basically how to do a wheelie / dirt drop leaving the hairpin.



Here's a video from the event and the dude caught my wheelie in it! It's at like 1:00 minute in.



So sadly after such and awesome event the car is in need of some serious work. All my dirt drops and flying off track trying to enter wayyyy to fast has caught up to me and I broke my RSI manifold that Otis built. :( So that needs to be fixed. I also am going to pull this engine out as it is done. I have another m42 laying around that is good so I will probably end up putting a thicker head gasket and ARP head studs on that one to lower the compression. I will probably end up taking this block and seeing if it is any good to be bored and honed to accept the CP pistons I still have so I can have someone build me a fully forged low compression bottom end. I mean I have the parts still...... Also plan on doing the camber toe correction to the rear subframe while the car is down because not running 0 camber or close to it in the rear is dumb for drifting.