'88 325is M30 street car-->S54 -->S50 -->M54 Enduro Race car

[Jb325is]

245/40R17's?

Sorry, 15's. 245/40/17 will fit on my car but definitely would not work on track.

[moatilliatta]

Miata guys love the 245/40r15

If you can do 17's, Tire choice is about unlimited.

Trying to keep under the stock fenders?

[Jb325is]

Been on r3v a lot lately for an e30 street car purchase and figured I should update this thread.

We had the car out at Roebling Road in Savannah two weeks ago, first time out on the new 225/45/17 RS4's. Ended up doing a ton of shock tuning and learning a lot about the shock package we have while developing a pretty good baseline setup for this track, which is a lot of really fast steady-state stuff. To me, the RS4's felt really close to the ZII Star Specs that just came off the car. I think the sidewall may be slightly stiffer- the car was exhibiting some bouncing/skipping from apex-off with the same shock settings we were running at this track previously with the ZII's. We were able to mitigate the skipping by doing some 0/0 shock sweeps and working our way back up to the skip, but we ended up very low on the rear shocks. With that in mind, the RS4's are still very easy to drive at the limit of adhesion... maybe even easier than the ZII. I have a little ways to go on pace/confidence, but definitely getting there and these tires seem to be pretty good for that purpose. Overall the car is pretty close to being sorted, but we really need to do the same sort of shock testing at a different track, preferably one with more transitions and elevation, I think we'll end up in a different range on the damper adjustments.

A side note, had to change the first hub on the NASIEG 5-lug sleeve kit at the racetrack. It wasn't that bad, but certainly requires patience and care- not something I'd want to do in a thrash. The risk is galling, mostly @ the fit between the threaded on outer nut of the sleeve. I elected to first shrink fit it into the outer race of the new hub (threw the sleeve/nut in the cooler before fitting into hub) before warming the hub back up to carefully install back onto the spindle. The fits are good with this kit, but it's easy to get things bound up if you aren't careful. Overall, I still don't recommend it for a track only setup.

[url=https://flic.kr/p/2bKgS8t]

Not a great pic but good for ride height reference- someone was asking about rake on here the other day. I think we're at about 15mm (higher in the rear). I'd like to try it a bit flatter

[url=https://flic.kr/p/PnK2Zv]2

[Digitalwave]

Glad to see an update!

[Digitalwave]

It's been almost a year. What's new? I keep coming to this thread to drool over your MCS's.

[moatilliatta]

Bump!

[2mAn]

Jb325is Dammit got excited to see this thread bumped and was hoping we’d get an update.

[Digitalwave]

He sold the car late last year/early this year.

[MX339]

Ah, this car is still alive and well. Neither JB or I own the car anymore, but I'm still its caretaker. I've currently got it taken pretty far apart right now, but we're doing some pretty cool stuff to it. I'll get an update going when I find some time. I'd say it's only fair to keep the history of this R3V legend going.

[amcp]

MX339 updates?

[Jb325is]

MX339 updates?

He sent me this pic today. Too cool to align the car with wheels on it I guess

[MX339]

Yea, sorry everyone, really been slackin' on updates for this staple of OG R3V. We were at the track last weekend after a whole host of updates, and JB is now hounding me to keep this thread alive which he's pretty justified in doing.

So let's see, it looks like the last update was when we swapped to the true rear coil-over setup. I think I actually installed that over at my dad's shop and I did manage to find some of the pictures of that. Seems that was around Dec 2017, so a little before JB's last update of our last track day with the car.

First I did some mock ups without the springs just to check clearances and what not. Also tied up the can lines carefully.
IMG_2973 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr

IMG_2977 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr

And finally checking clearances with the springs in and the perches set. Close, but no issues.
IMG_2975 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr

IMG_2976 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr

We also made some cockpit upgrades. Jonathan had originally built the car with a Momo Lesmo seat and while I'd say we were both on the very slim side, those slim Italian bois must just be built differently because that seat was always a squeeze for both of us. I randomly happened upon an old Recaro SPG Halo for stupid cheap on the E30 M3 SIG of all places. It was a 2003 date code, but was originally purchased as a sim-rig seat and then did one event in an M3 track car before it was retired. Pretty minty, and super comfy.
IMG_2990 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr

Note the insane height of the steering wheel which I would address much later...
IMG_2991 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr

A few months later (early 2018) we decided on getting some actual data in the car. Up to that point we had been using an AiM SOLO DL tapped into the M54's CANBUS, but for whatever reason I really wanted to upgrade to a full dash even though the functionality for our purposes at the time weren't that useful. The only real benefit I can think of in retrospect now is the addition of alarms, but the dash did have a lot of expandibility which I did end up utilizing later.

The first idea that came to mind to mount the MXL2 was the one I ended up persuing. Just gutted a dead cluster and bolted the MXL2 to the face of it and then painted the backside of the cluster face.
IMG_3164 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr

Guess I didn't end up taking any pictures of the wiring side or copious amounts of dremeling I had to do to the housing to get the AiM harness to fit inside of it. Oh well, finished product came out quite tidy on the outside.
IMG_3173 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr

IMG_3188 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr
And that basically gets us to the last update and track day we did.

From that point on the car was just sitting around. Life had kind of gotten in the way for both of us and going racing with the car was definitely not in the cards so we didn't really have a plan of what to do next. Poor thing had been evicted from a few homes, but fortunately I had just bought a house that had an unusually large garage for the area and it just so happened there was a perfect little corner for an unused car to slot into on dollies. At the very least is was a damn fine looking piece of garage art.
IMG_1062 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr

IMG_1063 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr
At this point it was early 2020 and the car was being highly underutilized with no real plans for the future, so it was time for it to move on to someone who would actually use it.

I had a good friend who offered to let me store it for a time at his shop before the above pictures, and when the time came to sell he was super interested. He had started seriously getting into track days about a decade ago, and it just so happened he had been running an E30 at that time so he was eager to relive those days with a really sorted car.

I took the car out to Barber with him in October of 2020. We still didn't have a thermostat in the car, and it was really chilly out so I ended up having to tape up the radiator and the oil cooler quite a bit to get any reasonable temps in the car.
IMG_1545 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr

IMG_1548 by Alex Barroso, on Flickr

We were still running those same RS4's from a few years ago, just to shake the car down again and get him acclimated to it. They surprisingly weren't that bad, a bit edgy, but still fast as demonstrated by the first laps of the first session of the weekend:

Car wasn't significantly mechanically different at this point compared to the last onboard video I'd posted, but it was a fun lap.

Next update will have quite a bit of evolution, stay tuned!

[Digitalwave]

WOOOOO an update! Is that you behind the wheel at Barber, or the current owner? It was hustling!

[moatilliatta]

Hub stands work well, it rules out any bent wheels if doing a string alignment.

How did you reroute your gas vent on the rear coil over?

What spring rates are you running?

[Jb325is]

Yeah hub stands are great for repeatability in a few ways-

• eliminating wheel/tire factors (bends, pressure)
• allowing the car to settle more easily when going up and down (better than greasy slip plates or trash bags)
• accuracy and ease of adjustment- wheel/tire out of the way, no tire squirm or binding during adjustments

Added plus- hub stands make it look like you know what you're doing

I don't have an answer for you on the gas vent, I don't remember doing anything with that.

Spring rates were 750/450, and I don't believe they've been changed. Last discussion we had after they took the car to Rd Atl was that the front roll stiffness may be a bit high now after going to the e30 m3 front struts and changing the front ARB end-link geom. There is some more in-car I've seen from that but not sure Alex will post it because it's def not as cool looking as the Barber vids, car looks pushy