S54 Widebody e30 race car build

[Iain]

That's a little narrow minded. ;) but hey being in Africa has it's perks like the Global Economic Recession hasn't hit us nearly as hard as most of the world.

We have some stupidly fast race cars here, and a testament to that is the Nissan Dakar off road cars are designed and built here in South Africa by Nissan Motorsport SA.

I love South Africa for:

333i
Peranas
XR8 Sierras

[kishg]

OP, in case you didn't have EMS sorted out for the motor:

http://www.r3vlimited.com/board/showthread.php?t=155862

[SA E30]

Thanks for the link!

We are going to run a locally made engine management in the car. Gotech it can supposedly control the vanos on the car. It's pretty much the only part of the build we will not be tackling ourselves.


I shall start working on the car again this weekend. Can't wait.

[triggrhaapi]

Dude, this build is godly. I want your arches. It's just so completely sick.

[SA E30]

Haha, I actually am not really all that fond of them but they allow the tyres I wanted to run so they will work.

Tomorrow I shall be re fitting the entire rear suspension. Fun times.

[triggrhaapi]

They remind me of the E46 M3 GTR arches.

[triggrhaapi]

You South Africans do some cool stuff.

There's a guy on BFC who was doing an E36 320 with an S42 replica build. Cool stuff.

[SA E30]

Oh, teh Gizmo... aka Warren. S42, depends what your definition of an S42 is ;) We have 3 Caterham race cars running bonafida S42's with Hollinger sequential boxes.

Soem news Got the rear suspesion back into the car. Pictures to come soon. Now to finish up the front wheel wells and get that suspension into the car.

[SA E30]

So finally something to post up.

Over the last few weeks this is all I have managed to get done.

I installed the rear suspension everything bar the differential and correct springs (which we are still waiting to arrive). I also left the mockup dics on the car until it's time for the car to be put onto it wheels again.





I also got cracking at closing up all the various holes in the car. This being the biggest the hole where the spare wheel well used to be.



Then I also finalized the pedal box, which I had to move all the pedals over to the left and I also changed the accelerator to a hanging type rather than hinged.



Dash is also installed, and I did linkage to convert the brakes to a manual setup rather than boosted.







I noticed in this picture I have mounted the master cylinder mounting plate 180° out. I will rectify this as it's only a matter of roatating and re bolting.

Then my pet project. I have been working on the front chassis legs. I have removed the seams and the lip from the chassis leg itself. I have not completed this project yet as it still needs to be re welded together and the rear section still needs some smoothing out.



Hopefully I can get some parts from our engineer this week and start on more assembly.

Another problem we ran into with this car is the front sway bar mount. Our struts don't have a provision for them as they are 328i Group N struts. We also have tubular arms which isn't a problem in itself but rather the sway bar in it's stock position is too close to the arm and you can't connect them.

What we are going to do is tilt the bar upwards kind of like if the bar is pre loaded but on both sides. This gives us the clearance we need and by my understanding will theoretically increase the stiffness of the bar as the leverage is increasing. It's the only solution we can come up with right now rather than getting new struts or going to a DTM setup... both of which we don't want to do now.

[Be30mer]

They remind me of the E46 M3 GTR arches.

Its appropriate since that car has the same engine that this insane build will have

[MikeDE]

Its appropriate since that car has the same engine that this insane build will have

M3 GTR had a V8....

[karimMsalama]

great work in this car

[newman]

While I assume it's as straightforward as I think, did converting the pedal to hanging prove to be difficult? Any snags or setback?

[SA E30]

No, no real big snags. Just took heating, bending and some welding. Although it seems much more sensative now with only having the one pivot point. I still need to find a stronger return spring. As currently I have 2 stock ones in place and the pedal still feels kinda light.

I will work more on that one the engine is in and throttle cable is connected.

On another note. I haven't been able to get as much work done on the car as I would have liked due to the torrential rain we seem to be having. Kinda frustrating.

[Be30mer]

M3 GTR had a V8....

damn i did not know that. learn somin new everyday