"Jaywatch" Lemons E30

[kronus]

Some rear ballast would be a good idea. Did you already ditch the trunk tar? If so, consider putting some sandbags in the wheel wells or in the spare tire well. It may make you 100+lbs heavier but I bet you'll still be faster around any track.

We kept the tar, being aware of this issue. Our spare tire well is currently occupied by a cool suit reservoir, but once we go full pickup, probably will put ballast in there.

[CorvallisBMW]

Some rear ballast would be a good idea. Did you already ditch the trunk tar? If so, consider putting some sandbags in the wheel wells or in the spare tire well. It may make you 100+lbs heavier but I bet you'll still be faster around any track.

[kronus]

Guys, a motor with more power will always be more difficult to control than a motor with less power. That's pretty much obvious.

Of course, there are arguments against putting in an M30 - weight, inexperience of our drivers (although we took it easy and only had one black flag when we were forced off, no spins at all!), too much powa to an already lightened rear end. It may be wise to just find an I motor and a manual trans. (did I mention we were auto?)

The only problem is that i motor + manual trans would probably run us about as much as M30 + manual trans, and it feels bad wasting our residual on a motor that other e30s in the race got stock. Seems sort of pointless, if we're going to do all that work.

The white chop-top car was an e28.

[CorvallisBMW]

hmmm, I don't remember that car. What team/theme was it? or did you mean the chopped white e28?

I can imagine a b35 being a handful in the wet, absolutely. But with a right gearing, an LSD and a patient driver I'm sure it is more competitive than a stock b25, just a little trickier to learn. I've never found my b35 swap car to be more difficult to drive than an m20, but it's never been on the track either.

[XvillainousX]

Well I'm not sure if you noticed a 4 door chop top e30 at the event. He has a b35. He has to gingerly accelerate out of corners even in the dry. He had monstrous torque on the straights but in the rain he was useless. Also consider your weight bias going into turn 3 and down the hill at T-hill. Your rear end is going to be everywhere but straight.

Keep it m20 since you have a 2.7 eta already just put on a 731 head and lighten flywheel and I ecu. It easy to find m20 spares in the paddock unlike m30 in case something breaks. So consider that as well. A couple years back there was an e30 that made it through the judges and tech with an s50 swap. This was at T-hill. He ended the race on his roof.

[CorvallisBMW]

^ Good point, fuel is something to consider too.

We got about 4 hours out of our eta motor before needing refueling, though 1/2 that time was either in the rain or under full-track yellow :(

My b35 swap car sucks down fuel like you wouldn't believe. However you could easily run a 3.25 or 2.93 diff and just ride the torque curve. It would mean a lot less time shifting and more time on the ppoowwaaaaa!!!

[XvillainousX]

That seems more correct.
In other news, we got an awesome residual! It's sort of feasible to do a manual M30 swap!

I guess I have it mixed up in my post "late vs early". Yes metal bumpers do take an impact better than plastics. The older chassis do have higher rear wheel arches and is a lighter chassis. Whereas the plastic bumpers have the better fuel tanks.

m30s is a torque monster.. I just dont like it being that heavy in the front. B34 is like an 2.7 ETA m20. You want a b35.
That much torque will only increase your likelihood of spinning in the wet. And require more finesse with small 205 tires. I prefer a lighter engine so I'll have less weight to push around. The goal is to stay on track as much as possible. Fuel consumption is my main concern.

[CorvallisBMW]

b34 would be tits! (I think) it would hook right in to your existing 1.1 setup too. How much residual did they give you?

[kronus]

I was always under the impression that metal bumpers take hits better than plastics.

That seems more correct.


In other news, we got an awesome residual! It's sort of feasible to do a manual M30 swap!

[CorvallisBMW]

I was always under the impression that metal bumpers take hits better than plastics.

[Kershaw]

Maybe its time for an I conversion and motronic 1.3 in your car. Just for the simplicity of finding parts at the track. Also the late model will cut out of gas after you reach 1/4 tank. Thus your on track time is 30min less than someone with a early model. So do a gas tank conversion while you're at it. The big benefit of the late model chassis are the bumpers and taller rear tire arches. The bumpers can take more of an impact than early models. All the years I have been doing lemons I have never heard of so many e30 trannys going out at the same time.

dont you mean early model?

[XvillainousX]

Maybe its time for an I conversion and motronic 1.3 in your car. Just for the simplicity of finding parts at the track. Also the late model will cut out of gas after you reach 1/4 tank. Thus your on track time is 30min less than someone with a early model. So do a gas tank conversion while you're at it. The big benefit of the late model chassis are the bumpers and taller rear tire arches. The bumpers can take more of an impact than early models. All the years I have been doing lemons I have never heard of so many e30 trannys going out at the same time.

[CorvallisBMW]

writeups!

KenC wrote this up:

Our e30 tank (which was quickly converted to a "gay tank" overnight in the rain) took the Most Heroic Fix award.
The car ran flawlessly during the test session on Friday and all day Saturday.
After an hour on the track Sunday, our driver radioed in that we lost all gears after the chicane. Luckily it had enough speed to roll off the exit.

We got it back to the pit and determined, after smashing it with a hammer, that our selector rod was jammed. We were able to find a tranny off of a 325i... that was stuck in reverse (big thanks to Caffeine e30!). Our next problem was that an "i" transmission has a different bell-housing than our "e" transmission.

After the 16-hour drive down from Portland, we sure as hell weren't packing up. Luckily one of our teammates brought a Bentley Manual (Chilton manual has one sentence on transmission repair: "Take to BMW transmission specialist"). At this point I should mention that none of us had ever worked on a transmission.

We had tools and hands so we just started tearing both of our mismatched broken trannies apart in hopes of creating one semi-functional Franken-tranny. After several hours of head-scratching at cursing, we had them both apart. For future reference, the BMW Special Tool to press the input shaft out of the bell-housing can be substituted by a big f@&$ing hammer. After several minutes of standing in awe/confusion, we began to look for obvious broken parts. The donor tranny had a horribly broken selector fork (a term added to my vocabulary this weekend). It took us another hour or so to to swap a good selector fork from our tranny to the donor. After more cursing, we got out bell housing to bolt up to the donor. More cursing ensued when neither the input nor output shafts would turn! We ripped it apart again, and got it back together. This time we were able to spin the shafts! Success! First, good. Second, good. Third, noisy. Fourth, gravel in a blender. Fifth... don't use fifth.

Since it was nearly 4pm by the time we finished up, we decided that the four large trans bolts and one starter bolt would suffice.
There were many jubilant cheers when the car actually moved!

We were on the track Sunday for the first hour and the last 40min. The happiness of getting that thing through the checker on Sunday was priceless.


It was our first LeMons event, and we've been bit by the bug.

[Danny]

I enjoyed the arm flailing immensely.

[Justin B]

Sounds like fun!