83 320is GRM Challenge/XP build

[captain awesome]

This thread is going to be a quick dump of info from the past handful of months. I'll try to date each post accordingly to show when and where progress or posts were made.


06-25-2018


My first attempt at e21 ownership was aborted due to an overabundance of rust. Last week a local 320is popped up on CL for a price I couldn't pass up. Looking at the pics, I figured it was no more than a parts car. After driving it home and inspecting for rust, I've decided this one is worth saving. The driver side floor board is rusty from the jacking pad almost to the seat mount, and the passenger side is mostly just in the jacking pad but that's it for rust. The hood has a large dent, and the driver side fender is crumpled up pretty good, but there is a 78 320i at the local yard I can snatch some body parts from. The seller mentioned that he thought the rear driver wheel bearing was on the way out, and after an hour of highway it started to make some noise. The good news is that I have a spare set of trailing arms, subframe, and axles, so I can just get that all swapped out quickly. The sunroof is sagging at the rear passenger corner allow water in, and the interior is just crap all around.

At this point, I'm not sure what direction I'm going to go. I have a spare m42/trans and just about everything needed for a swap, but I don't know if it's a worthy candidate. I pulled it from my 318is and swapped it with a known good motor/trans last year. It was left in a field for 11 years and it shows, all rubber parts will need replaced, but I don't think that will be too costly. I'm thinking a little digging is necessary before committing though. If anything it will be a dedicated autocross/track car since my 318is has become more of a daily driver than expected. I've got a set of 14" e30 basketweaves, but they require 15mm spacers. If I go full dedicated racer, 15x7 or 15x8 with some fender work or possibly flares may be in order. Just thinking out loud....

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- - - Updated - - -

Just for reference, here is the m42 before it was pulled:

1AF4AC5B-FA41-401C-8F60-C8227631CA54 by hatchethairy, on Flickr

DF46BCD5-14E4-4791-9F7B-D4F7070B17F5 by hatchethairy, on Flickr

CFDA6FBF-6DCB-4444-9D5A-0F10F269DDB2 by hatchethairy, on Flickr

85BF72F9-098B-4708-AFD2-428E023840E8 by hatchethairy, on Flickr

[captain awesome]

06-27-2018


After some short deliberation, I have decided to build the car as a potential $2019 Grassroots Motorsports Challenge car. I have the potential to recoup my purchase price of $1000 with the transmission, motor, stock weaves, and Recaros. I don't think I'll be winning by any measure, but it's something I've wanted to do for a few years now and I never really had a good base to start with. I'll spend most of my budget focusing on suspension and tires as I feel like that will be my best return with autocross times. Can anyone suggest budget friendly shocks other than Bilstein sports or Koni SA? I'll potentially spend $700 alone on a full poly bushing kit and the Bilsteins, so I'm hoping there may be another option that could work instead.



I pulled the old scuzzlebutt m42 from the corner of my garage to assess it's ability to function properly in the newly acquired e21. Spark plugs are all platinum with 4 electrodes, which from what I gather isn't an upgrade, possibly the opposite. Anyway, cylinder 1 at the front of the car was dry, 2 had a smidge of oil on it, 3 more oil than number two, and 4 was dry. Nothing looks out of the ordinary though. After removing the plug cover there was still a ton of crap sitting in that valley.

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#1
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#2
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#3
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#4
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I popped the valve cover to inspect the cams and timing gears. Honestly I wanted to put this off as the motor, if original to the chassis, had 225k miles BEFORE the odometer gear broke. Much to my surprise the cams look good as well as the upper gear teeth.

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Upper and lower time case covers were pulled to check plastic guides. Everything looks tip top and normal, even the profile gasket looks okay with a slight bit of squish. I should have powerwashed this before taking it apart though.

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Profile gasket
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This is how I left things for the evening. I pulled the oil filter and drained the oil as well, nothing special going on there, just old oil and no metal particles. I'm smitten with the condition of everything I see at this point.
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I'm going to order some gaskets and such, but need to get a full list together so I can save on shipping. FCP Euro has been the best source price wise and the warranty can't be beat, so I'll probably go with them for the first round of parts.

[captain awesome]

06-27-2018


Almost forgot I took an early lunch to grab the hood and fender off the 78 in the yard.

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[captain awesome]

07-06-2018


I know it's a bit early for cosmetic upgrades, but this story needs told. The previous e21 that was too rusty happened to have a pile of parts go with it that I collected. One major item of note was the fiberglass Motorsport/euro bumpers I had shipped all the way from Latvia for a little over $400 IIRC. I lost my shorts on them when selling off the car, but figured it would be easier to send them on with the car/parts car than try to ship. Much to my surprise when this current challenge car came up for sale, those bumpers and the cars I sold the kid shows up on Facebook Marketplace. His mom listed them for $400 and I figured I would try to pay no more than $200. She agreed to the $200 price, but we just haven't been able to meet up until today. So, basically I bought them twice, but the second time around was budget friendly. I split the purchase with bill of sale receipts to $100 per bumper just in case I can't fit the rear into the budget. I can always install them post challenge. She still wants way too much for the cars I sold, and is currently unwilling to part them out piecemeal.


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Oh, I also got in my one $57ish dollar GTI Bilstein front damper in the mail. That's right, a brandy new one for a little over $57 shipped from Amazon. It was the last one in stock, so I guess they thought it needed marked down? Either way, I have another on order, hoping it rolls in soon, however it was $150 shipped so there's that. I managed to snag OLD MAN's rear Bilsteins he put up for sale and a pair of e46 camber plates for $35 that I'm hoping will fit with some work.


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[captain awesome]

07-26-2018


I'm still here. Nothing has been done so far other than parts collecting and budgeting properly so I can still stay within the challenge budget. I now have a complete set of front GTI Bilstein sports. I also ordered and received a pair of $35 camber plates originally intended for an e46 from ebay. Is it the best quality? Not sure yet, but doesn't look too bad considering the price point. The brand is Maxpeedingrods and I think if I flip the direction and drill new strut tower holes they should do the trick as the bolt pattern is incompatible. As of right now, the parts collecting phase will continue and all work will be held off until after the 31st of August. Our current house has been sold, and our new house should be finished by the builder hopefully on time. We shall see.

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[captain awesome]

08-21-2018


A week or so ago Ebay had a 15% off deal. Like any other budget minded person I immediately depleted my watchlist and pushed it into the purchase history. Last Monday they all flooded in, and today after 3 weeks of waiting, my rear springs finally showed up as well. On top of that I took my phone with a broken screen to Batteries Plus. While there, I had a chat with the associate about a lawn battery I had been eyeballing, but was curious about why they wanted a core charge on it. He said that the core charge will be waived, and because it was for the GRM Challenge, he knocked a few bucks off the 300 cca matching the price of the 230 cca. SCORE! It's physically the same size as the 230, so I'm not losing any space for the extra cranking power.


A couple years ago I found a pdf file to create a home brew coil on plug bracket. I work in a blueprint shop, so I printed a few sets to scale for free and glue or tape it to the aluminum. Some cutting and drilling should yield a fancy bracket to hold some coils.


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Rear 300# springs are in, I may have to move the snap ring to the lower setting. OLD MAN had a groove cut lower on the shocks so 10" springs could be used which is a nice bonus. I guess we will see if that's needed in my case or not. These are assembled from cheap ebay coilover kit sleeves with aluminum top hats. I had to drill the top hat holes to the Bilstein shaft diameter, but that's it.


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Front 364# springs about 7 3/4" length.


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M20 HD motor mounts. They are shorter than the stock m42 mounts, so I may have to raise them up for bellhousing clearance.


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4x100 15mm hubcentric spacers to fit the e30 14" weaves.


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Poly steering rack bushings. These are cheap ones from ebay. I really wanted to use Eurometric, but with the tight budget for the Challenge it just had to go this way.


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Wheel studs and nuts.


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I think this battery should do the trick. Dimensionally it is fairly small, and from my measurements keeps me from having to move the battery to the trunk requiring an expensive amount of wire and a cutoff switch. GRM rules require a cutoff switch on relocated batteries, so for now it will find it's home in the engine bay. It may eventually get relocated to the trunk post Challenge.


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There are ton of parts I need to order soon, mostly suspension stuff so I can get it to roller status. I found some Dorman control arms for a good price, and reviews don't appear to be too terrible on them. If anyone has a late pair of control arms with good ball joints for super cheap I would gladly scoop them up to save a few bucks! I'm also looking for a pair of 23.5mm front sway bushings that are budget friendly.

I officially move into a new house next week, so HOPEFULLY I can start to strip the car down to sell off parts and install what I have now. I'm ready to actually do some work.

[captain awesome]

08-31-2018


Pre/post Challenge plans have always been somewhat of a driving force on what this car will eventually be. My 318is is fun in autocross, but I have been held back on how far I can prepare it since it's my daily driver. The e21 gives me the opportunity to build to the rule book and not worry about comfort. Unfortunately after reading the SCCA rule book for the SM class 300+ times, it looks like I'm limited on what can be removed for weight, and the minimum weight allowed for my displacement is 1959.2 pounds. I was hoping to just gut the whole car, but I don't think I want to jump in the Prepared class for now at least until a turbo is added. Rear seats, a/c system, stereo equipment, headliner, sunroof cassette and controls, passenger side gas tank, spare tire, etc. can be removed. I'm thinking lighter front seats, fiberglass bumpers, and the previously mentioned stuff should put me close to minimum weight. If I can put together a rear disc setup that gives a proper brake bias there could be some pounds shaved there since brakes are wide open for SM. I "believe" the m42 is slightly less in weight than the m10, but won't know officially until I pull the m10/trans to see. I'll weigh the new lawn battery to compare to my existing one, but I'd guess it's quite a few pounds lighter. All of this is strictly related to pre/post Challenge stuff, but things I need to consider when modifying so everything is reversible. I'm also considering a lighter weight set of 13" or 14" wheels to reduce unsprung weight and only run the 14" weaves for the Challenge.

Anyway, my closing date on the house got bumped to the 13th. I couldn't sit around anymore, so I chose to do a little parts swapping and weight reduction. The hood and fender were swapped for the better ones I got from the local U Pull It. The front bumper and shocks were removed, and now I can take some time to fit the fiberglass one.

The hood first. I plan to use the sheet metal from the bent up one to patch the floor pan or anything else that requires sheet metal.

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Then the fender.

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It's got a decent bump that I may or may not try to lessen later on.

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With all the bumper stuff removed it's got quite the ugly overbite.
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And then a pic of all the parts I just got in from FCP Euro and CarID. I've got one more shipment coming in from ECS Tuning.

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[captain awesome]

09-11-2018


So Sunday morning I came to the realization that I ordered B6 GTI struts, which happen to be the HD version, not the B8 sports I was intending. It looks like I could still use these, just they won't be an optimal performance choice for dampening. I'm hoping someone has some used B8s they want to part with, and I can just sell these off to stay flush on cost. Anyone.....??

Anyway, Sunday I had to spend a few minutes putting the e21 nose back together. I move to the new casa in a few days, so it has to be road worthy. I figured it made sense to do a quick fit up of the motorsport bumper to get some visual motivation as well as planning the necessary modifications to make it a permanent fixture. The side "wings that meet the bumper will require a captive nut bracket epoxied in place, and the lower valence area will need some sort of brace. That's about it. Future plans include some sort of splitter, but at the moment it's on the back burner.








I have a new set of 225 50 14 A7s rolling in today, with the plans of running them on my e30 this Sunday at the next SCCA autocross. It's my first time running on real race rubber, so I'm excited to see how well my times improve overall. These tires will probably be my "free" set if I can manage to not use them all next season, but I highly doubt that's how things will shake out. I really want to develop a set of 13x8 wheels and 225 45 13 A7s, specifically because I lose 10-25 pounds depending on which wheels I choose and drop 1" without upsetting suspension geometry. The possibility of a sticky tire wheel package weighing only 106 pounds makes me giddy since it's only 2 pounds heavier than the stock 13x5.5 wheel and tire package.


Speaking of weight, I have been weighing everything I plan to take off, and everything that makes it's way back on with a cheap bathroom scale. There are some losses and tiny gains so far, but just with the front bumper stuff, rear seat, front seats, and the lawn battery I shed ~130.25 pounds. SM minimum weight is 1959.2 lbs for my motor size, and I think I can get into the 2200 range without too much fuss. If I can employ some patience before tearing the car apart, a trip to the local dump would give me a good starting place as I see stock weight ranging in the 2500-2600 depending on who you ask. Removing the carpet padding/floor tar, sunroof cassette, rear bumper, lighter flywheel, rear sway bar, driver side gas tank, and a lighter exhaust could get me in the right place. I think. Unfortunately the m42 weighs ~30 pounds more than the m10 from my research. With all the accessories minus the alternator removed, I think I can get back to less than m10 weight.

[captain awesome]

09-18-2018


Last week I got my first set of Hoosier a7s in for $415 shipped in 225 50 14. I got them mounted up before moving into the new house Friday, and had enough time to still make it to the local SCCA autocross on Sunday.


Daddy like!


I'm hooked. So much so that I ordered another set for the same $415 shipped price so I have a backup set for the Challenge. I figure these are going to be toast by the time the Challenge rolls around and I want a set of fresh tires for that event. If they still have some in a month or two I may get a third set. From my math they knocked about 4 seconds off my time, with room for more I think.



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[captain awesome]

09-25-2018


I finally got the new garage sorted into a more usable space over the weekend, which means it's time to do work. I spent a little bit of time last night pulling the front seats, carpet, and a/c unit stuff so I could get a good look at the floor board rust. I weighed the Recaros with brackets, and they came in considerably heavier than I expected at 45 lbs ea. The Kirkey seats should help me drop about 60 lbs. The carpet and rubber material weighed in at 33 lbs, where the new lightweight stuff I found is 18oz per yard letting me drop about 30 lbs. The A/c evaporator, blower, and console stuff was another 15 lbs. I've still got the tar sound stuff to remove for another pound or two, but I'm betting overall from those items I'm losing at least 105 lbs. Tonight I plan to start removing the headliner and sunroof cartrige stuff. Once all of that's out it's time to patch my flinstone floors.

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The glovebox is going back in, but I'm probably going to try to make a fiberglass one that should be considerably lighter.

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And all the crustyness that lay beneath! The driver side needs quite a bit of metal put back, but I'll need to drop the fuel lines first. The passenger side is mainly by the jacking pad area and shouldn't be near as much work. I hate doing rust repair and sheet metal work. Hate. So that's what I'm going to tackle first so I can just rip the bandaid off and get it over with.

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[captain awesome]

09-26-2018


Last night I started pulling the headliner to get a good look at the sunroof cassette. Hot damn! What did I get myself into? Looks like some is glued and some is welded, so it should require a bit of cutting and prying. I decided to pause on this until I could do a little research.

So I started pulling the A/C lines, condenser, aux fan, etc. and weighed it all: 14.5 lbs plus the m42 A/C compressor and bracket at 17 lbs, then the m42 power steering pump at 4 lbs, and the fan clutch at 2.5 lbs. From what I understand the m42/trans weigh around 30 lbs more than the m10/trans. I'd like to think at this point I will have lost over 30 lbs, before even including what could be another 10 lbs from the flywheel swap, and 15 lbs from the battery. Unfortunately my garage is already a mess, I've run out of room to stack parts again, so it's time to assemble the wall mounted tire racks I bought and get another parts shelf so I can get back to work.


09-27-2018


Last night I jumped in with another easy parts removal task. The rear bumper including trim and shocks weighs 39 lbs! Trunk tools and carpet around 14 lbs, with another 27 lbs for the spare. Yesterday I did a bit of research on how to remove the sunroof, and it looked less daunting than the night before. Spent a few minutes drilling spot welds in a couple spots, and then an angle grinder to cut a few tabs. The glue pulls away pretty well, but around the lip of the front of the opening it stuck really well. Best option appeared to be to just cut around the lip with an angle grinder and follow up with a sawzall.

SUCCESS!

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So the full cassette including the lid weighs a lot less than what is commonly quoted. Like 6-10 plus pounds less than expected. Anyway, the whole assembly weighs 34 lbs and the lid itself weighs 7 lbs. I'm either going to gut the one I have or try to find a cheap fiberglass insert.

[captain awesome]

10-01-2018


More parts removed, another 35 lbs lost. Going to start wire wheeling the floor pans this week, and start the process of welding in metal from the hood I pulled off. First I need to remove or drop the fuel lines directly where I need to cut it out.

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10-04-2018



Some methodical cutting of the driver side floor pan has commenced. Unfortunately I'm making too much noise, so it will wait for the weekend. Instead of sitting on my thumbs I decided to go ahead and start prepping the m10/trans to be pulled. Tonight I'll disconnect the driveshaft and have everything out.

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[captain awesome]

10-08-2018


Last week I was hoping to get the motor/trans pulled, but didn't quite make that happen. The driveshaft and exhaust were pulled, and then I noticed the K&N sticker on the airbox. I don't know how it's gone unnoticed up until then, but at least I get to throw a few bucks back in the budget, so that's nice. This Friday I have a vacation day scheduled so I can focus on patching the floor pans. All this week leading up to "patch day", I plan to focus on getting the drivetrain pulled, dropping the fuel tanks and lines, and generally anything necessary to aid in floor pan work. In a perfect world I would be dropping the m42 in place to fabricate motor mounts Friday afternoon, but I know that's not going to happen. I hate sheetmetal work, I'll be using flux core, and I really hate sheetmetal work. It's almost guaranteed I'll want to burn the car to the ground about 2 minutes into getting started.


Saturday I did get to do about 30 minutes of laps in at the Tulsa Xtreme cart place. It was fun lapping some friends and the wife. After that session it had me plotting a 4 point cage for some HPDE at Hallett, and the wife assured me it made sense. It sure is nice to have a supportive wife.


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[captain awesome]

10-09-2018


I made a mess last night. The m10/trans are out now and I've started pulling the flywheel stuff to see if I can manage to use it for a lightweight option for the m42 that's taking it's place. The internet says it should work, and yet it also says it can't. I should know for sure tonight, once I clean up my tools and mess. Either way I'll at least need a pressure plate because this one has some interesting wear marks. I'm hoping the throwout bearing from the m42 is still good, but my guess is that I'll need to order one to be on the safe side. I'll get some weights for everything later. There is some concern about the flywheel being on the small size. I've read that they will hold around 200(I think). I'll probably be in the 175 range with the smaller turbo I plan to run, so hoping it will be okay.



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[captain awesome]

10-10-2018


Last night was dedicated to making the m10 flywheel work with the m42. With the m42 dual mass flywheel/pressure plate/bolts weighing in at 38 lbs and the m10 single mass stuff at 28 lbs, it's obvious this is a great idea. It doesn't cost as much as sourcing an m20 single mass, and actually weighs less. The friction surface for both the m42 and the m10 are the same, so I have high hopes this will be able to handle the small amount of boost I plan to add in the near future.

Anyway, three of the bellhousing bolts on the m42 trans didn't let loose and the heads were rounded off. BMW decided to start using these silly 8 point type heads, so it's not difficult to screw them all up. After welding nuts to all of them, they broke free and on to flywheel land. I'm pretty sure I can use all of the m10 hardware which are standard 6 point.

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After pulling all the flywheel/clutch stuff it was time to compare the two. Just like mentioned elsewhere, it all looks doable. The difference in ring gear distance between the m10 and m42 is ~1.74mm with the m10 being closer to the block. The fork engagement with the throwout bearing is ~3mm shorter with the m10. If you try to mount the m10 flywheel directly to the m42 it immediately fouls the rear main seal housing bolts. They stick past the crank flange just ever so slightly.

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My first solution was to try using some low profile allen heads I had laying around to see if they would clear. These are stainless, so they would need anti-seize or I should consider getting hardware that won't weld itself to it's little threaded friend hole.

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I got out my feeler gauges to check bolt clearance to the flywheel and got .43mm. My first thought was that's great, but I still would like to get the m10 ring gear closer to the m42 distance. When you swap a single mass m20 flywheel, you drill a couple rivets on the m42 flywheel to remove a little spacer, and that is used as a shim for bolt clearance. So out came the drill. The spacer for this aftermarket LUK flywheel measured in at 2.79mm, which put the ring gear about 1mm past the m42 spot. I think that's a reasonable difference, and this allows me to put the stock bolts back to the rear main seal housing and skip the low profile stainless steel ones. Even better, is that the throwout bearing height ends up at the roughly the same as the m42 stuff. Yeehaw! This is going to work.

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Now the question is whether I want to try and swap the bendix on the m10 starter with the m42 one. They are slightly different tooth count and diameter. I'm half tempted to try the m42 starter as is with the m10. It's way lighter and smaller in size, making any future repairs much more manageable. The tooth engagement looks decent, but obviously not perfect. I meant to snap some pics of the differences, but it was getting late and my hands were filthy.

Does anyone have any pro tips on how to swap a starter bendix without destroying stuff? I don't see an easy way to get either one off without major surgery and I have found a couple cheap rebuilt starters that are supposed to be a drop in m10 upgrade with better starting power and lighter weight: the sr441x Bosch. With me needing to buy a full clutch kit the budget is getting thin, and the $62 starter put things too tight I think.