Half-Life | '91 DS 318iS Slicktop | Track & Weekend Warrior

[2mAn]

Tell me more about the TypeC’s

[mike.bmw]

Love the wheels... all of them. Sorry to hear about your foot. Great thread update and work, as always!

[parkerbink]

Wow! T.J. amazing progress, I just read from page 12 (where I had last been sorry, been busy for a while)

Sorry about the foot & loss of the event/lap record, you'll get 'em next year!

[Digitalwave]

Tell me more about the TypeC’s

I got them cheap but ended up selling them, they were too far gone. These wheels are stupid light and great looking, but being cast wheels that were never strong to begin with, it's risky to run them these days IMO. The newest ones are probably 15 years old, and are very likely to crack on the lips or barrels. They were 17x8" ET40 and weighed 15.2lbs each!

Love the wheels... all of them. Sorry to hear about your foot. Great thread update and work, as always!

Thanks!

Wow! T.J. amazing progress, I just read from page 12 (where I had last been sorry, been busy for a while)

Sorry about the foot & loss of the event/lap record, you'll get 'em next year!

Appreciate it. I got my stitches out last night, and am feeling a bit better now. It will be a while before it's back to 100%, though. Just excited to be back in the E30 soon! Aiming for Road Atlanta in early December.

[Victell]

Lowkey wheel whore, I cant help myself either.

[Digitalwave]

I'm not as bad as I used to be with wheels, because now I consider how they perform as much as how good they look. So many wheels I like are heavy as hell, so I have to reluctantly pass

[Eric]

4.45, awesome! what E36 did that come out of?

[Digitalwave]

4.45, awesome! what E36 did that come out of?

I believe the 188mm 4.45 r+p are a BMW Motorsport only ratio (did not come standard in any cars like the 4.27 did). The diff felt fantastic at Daytona, although I topped it out at 135! It really woke the car up at this power level, and will be great at every other track I race at.

[Digitalwave]

Not too much to report as we wrap up the 2020 season. Overall it was a success, despite some setbacks. My foot is mostly back to normal. It took longer than I expected. I am glad I sat out the FL season finale at Sebring. About a month later, a group of friends and I trekked up to Road Atlanta for the SE Region's season finale, Santa's Toy Run at the beginning of December. It was my first time at Road Atlanta, and it is a hell of a track! Totally different than anything we have in Florida. It was a lot of fun, and my car performed admirably.

Leading up to the event, I did only a tiny bit of work on the car. The car stayed on the trailer after bring it home from corner balancing when I cut my foot. All I really did was some more weather stripping and taping of the front end. Trying to 1) make sure as much air as possible is going through the radiator, and in turn, the hood vent and 2) trying to get any small aero improvements I can within NASA's TT rulebook and given the E30's slab front end.

I did weather stripping around the grills and headlights, similar in style to the E30 M3 EVO style grills.












It took some cutting and modification, but I put headlight backing covers back in on both side's of the car. Then I taped up the gaps around the radiator again. I've done this before, but sometimes get lazy after removing and reinstalling the radiator. I hadn't had it taped off all year.










3 of us caravan'd up from South Florida, and we met 3 more friends at the track, so we had a great group to pit with. We loaded up earlier that week so we could leave early on Friday morning. It was a pretty uneventful drive, besides lots of rain and traffic in the Atlanta area. It was Friday rush-hour after all. We got to the track around 6pm and set up for the morning.
















Unfortunately my friend Matt spun out exiting turn 3 in the first session and he tapped the wall. The damage wasn't too bad. He was able to drive the rest of the weekend.


Untitled by T.J. La
throp, on Flickr

Untitled by T.J. Lathrop, on Flickr



My car only had minor issues all weekend, such as some loose bolts in my IRP shifter and some tire rubbing in the rear that I had never experienced at another track. At the bottom of the esses, my passenger's side rear tire was getting cut on compression by the foremost part of the rear fender, that was not rolled enough. I couldn't get anything to work to roll the lip back under except hitting it with a hammer. Besides chipping the paint, no ill effects. No more rubbing after that.

On Saturday evening I noticed of my X5's tires had a leak. Luckily we had a patch kit and were able to repair it in the garage of the Airbnb. 315/35-20!








Sunday morning was especially cold. The cars all had ice on them. It didn't get "warm" until around 10, 2nd and 3rd run of the day were especially nice and beautiful.








On Saturday, I was able to pull off a win in TT5 on the last lap of the last session. Even then, I only won by less than 2 tenths of second. On Sunday, on a good nights sleep, I went a lot faster than on Saturday. I improved over 3 seconds on Sunday, and won by a large margin.








Overall the weekend was a success and well worth the drive. I spent a few extra days in the area, and headed back very early on the Wednesday morning following the race.






That does it for 2020. Photos from Road Atlanta to follow.

[Digitalwave]

Road Atlanta Photos

[moatilliatta]

NICE!

Bummer about your buddies E36. At least it wasn't too bad.

Nasa Time trial looks interesting, something I may try.

What was your best around RA?

Have you tried taping up some squiggly's to see where the air is going? Or adding a gurney flap on the front of the hood vent?
Might be able to run a lower temp Tstat and tape up front front end more if you're efficiently getting air through the radiator.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQoXgzrRIV8

[Digitalwave]

NICE!

Bummer about your buddies E36. At least it wasn't too bad.

Nasa Time trial looks interesting, something I may try.

What was your best around RA?

Have you tried taping up some squiggly's to see where the air is going? Or adding a gurney flap on the front of the hood vent?
Might be able to run a lower temp Tstat and tape up front front end more if you're efficiently getting air through the radiator.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQoXgzrRIV8

Yeah, my friend's car is fine. No real damage, just minor cosmetics. He got lucky, but it really shook him up.

On 30+ heat cycle Hoosiers (aka: dead), I got down to a 1:43.4 on Sunday. Being a smaller track, I had to deal with traffic more than I'm used to. I think I'd get down to the very low 1:40 range with more experience at the track.

I definitely want to learn more about what the hood vent is (or isn't) doing. I'll run some experiments and put a GoPro on the hood. There is a raised section at the leading edge of the vent, but a straight vertical wicker bill might help further. For my class, there are rules for the height of the leading edge Gurney on any vent, so I'd have to keep that in mind.

I also want to try the different types of E30 grills. I currently have the Euro with smaller/less slat openings. Some of the US grills had larger/more openings. The goal would be to get as much air through the radiator and out the vent, rather than collecting on the front end, or going through any of the other nooks and crannies on the front of the car. Not for cooling, since I don't have any issues with that, but for any aero improvement I can get.

An idea and dream I've had for a while is to try and duct/route/force more of the air exiting the radiator through the vent, but with such limited space, I don't know what would be possible there. Especially since I have an electric fan mounted on the back of the radiator. That would make a K24 swap even more attractive to me, for smaller packaging in the engine bay.

[Joeyz31]

bumping this to see if there are any new updates to share.
the video on IG from Daytona looked like a blast! This thing looks like it rips with the new rear gearing!

Quick question as well-
would you mind sharing your rear camber/toe numbers after going back to non riser condor bushings?

I have roughly 3* negative camber in the front right now and just finally went condor rear bushings (non riser) and when I dropped the car down, I was shocked by how much it looked the rear was toed in.
the car is by no means what I would consider super low and though I have 15s to your 17s, I would guess we are at a similar ride height by the looks of it.

like you, i have no desire to go adjusters in the rear, as I feel like it’s one more thing to come out of adjustment at the track.

Worst case, I can raise the rear a bit and may be able to get a bit more negative camber out of the front... I was just super thrown off by being able to see it toe in and hoping it’s an optical allusion of some kind ha...

[Digitalwave]

Not much new to report but I will post a full update soon. I did set the lap record for my class (NASA TT5) at Homestead earlier this year, and then at Sebring last month I set the TT5 record there too, and then the following lap I "ran out of talent" and backed the car into a tire wall. Thankfully it's just cosmetic damage. I ran the rest of the weekend and the car is fine, just a bit banged up and worse for wear. I'll be getting it fixed some time this year, in the mean time I just pounded it out and am going to do another event at Sebring this week before our upcoming move to Charlotte, NC some time in May.

My car aligned with -2.4* camber and 1/8" overall rear toe in on the regular height rear subframe bushings. I was very happy with those number. In a perfect world, I would still want a little bit more rear camber, though.

[Digitalwave]

Check it out! NASA was covering the event in Homestead in January, and they caught my TT5 record setting lap of 1:43.5 on Saturday. I went even faster on Sunday, doing a 1.41.8, which was a record by almost 4 seconds over the previous.