S54 Widebody e30 race car build

[jaye30]

beautiful build

[terible1biker57]

Had another reltivley productive weekend although majority of the work is under the skin.

My father got cracking and made side mounting brakets for the front bumper and brackets on the rockers for the side skirts. He also went about mocking up the extensions of the front fenders into the bumper. It seems like our panel beater got a little happy wit the grinder and cut too much of the front bumper back. We're still undecided on the route we will take but it seems like the 2 options are by fixing the bumper by adding raw fibreglass on the sides and then body filler then using it as a master mold , or just using the bumper with the body filler and hoping it doesn't crack when with use.



Then I got cracking by mounting and drilling the front bonnet pins which was surprisingly easy to get done. What took me quite a bit of time was that I had to re fibreglass the rear bumper where it had been cracked at the panelbeater I honestly couldn't get it straight and didn't want to add a massive chunk of bodyfiller to smooth it out.

I then went about prepping both the rear bumper and bootlid for paint. After some sanding as I had already done quite a bit of it on the parts in the past it went pretty quickly. I also painted the kidneys to white in preparation for the rest of the paint scheme ;)

Painting the car wasn't all that bad, I hit the bumper with 3 coats of MS Primer and the Bootlid with 6 as It wasn't covering as well on the black as the white. After that I wet sanded again being very careful not to cut through. I then hit the parts with 3 coats of Alpine white III. I was a bit worried when I was mixing the paint as it looked bluish but it sprayed pretty decently.

I must say the painting went pretty well for the most part. I'm sure the paint could be smoother because we don't have a water trap on our compressor but it seems decent too me.

Woah Woah, What Kind of downdraft rear spoiler is that. I Want soooo Sick. Ive been looking all over for one of those.

[SA E30]

My personal opinion on the bootlid is that a stock body e30 just doesn't pull it off. I think it's a bit too aggressive and out there. I used to run this bootlid on my old stock body e30 track car and yeah it was great for weight saving. I just never thought it looked good. Much better with a stock bootlid IMHO.

[jaye30]

man oh man.. it keeps getting better & better..

[Bishop]

I don't remember reading about it, but are you guys going to run any kind of fire suppression system?

[turbo325i]

sweet build. Not diggin the barrel cut fender flares, but hey they are functional I suppose. Great work, keep it up!

[SA E30]

Finally had some time to stop over at Mark Sax, and pick up our custom made dampers. Nothing off the shelf here! As can be seen they are extremely short compared with what you would usually see on an e30. This is due to our raised subframe and the low ride height the car has.







We used a stock DTM rear damper (thanks to Shaun Sing for lending us his ultra rare damper to measure up) and made a few changes. Mainly in the valving and on the lower mounting point as the DTM cars had their mount located above the drive shaft and not below it like the standard e30.

We are going to be using a 180mm long, 60mm ID, 650lbs rear spring (coupled with a 1000lbs front, maybe even a 1100lbs on the recommendation of Mr SAX). That equates to around 113n/mm. Which if we were running an inboard spring it would be around a 1200lbs (or 210n/mm) to be equivalent

I had to check it seems like the rear rims will clear the coilover without having to narrow them down at all, but we will see with the rims tyres mounted and the spring. So far it looks like it might just clear.



We also had a nice surprise waiting for us, a little gift from Nissan Motorsport. We now have 3 sets of front discs.



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@Bishop Here in South Africa it's not mandatory to have an on board fire suppression system, but we feel that one should be used. We just haven't had the time to shop around for one yet.

[Bishop]

That's awesome. I really really love all the track builds I can find. I have to live vicariously through you guys till I get my own act together.

[markseven]

Those discs are nice, but why are they special?

[Vethen]

Here kitty kitty.

[bergie_318is]

where the motor?!?!?!

[SA E30]

Those discs are nice, but why are they special?

The reason they are special is because they were given to us for free from Nissan Motorsport, with about 200 Track KM on them, so basically brand new. Quite a cool deal.

They are just run of the mill AP Discs though.

@bergie_318is The motor is lying at my tuners place, as we don't have space to keep it at our house.

[PaintPro21]

The reason they are special is because they were given to us for free from Nissan Motorsport, with about 200 Track KM on them, so basically brand new. Quite a cool deal.

They are just run of the mill AP Discs though.

@bergie_318is The motor is lying at my tuners place, as we don't have space to keep it at our house.

does that mean they are 5x114?

[SA E30]

Yeah, the hats are. It's just the discs that we are contemplating using. Although we do have a brand new set of discs. Just nice to have 2 spare sets.

[vlad]

great build, will be FUN when done