BuildaBeemer: Building a BMW E46 Track Car

[Captain_Stealth]

Pics ?


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[Carbonic135]

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[Carbonic135]

The first of our “How did we do that” videos;:
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[Bernard///M3]

Well Done Craig and Nick!

Great to see all the work and effort involved

Looking forward to you guys joining us this year!!

 

[Stephanv]

Love this Series. Great learning experience

 

[Zound]

So everyone enjoys a good before and after comparison?!

Here's a before and after of the E36 M3 oil filter we found - a common upgrade for M54 track cars in order to accommodate an oil cooler.

A swift wave of the wand and she looks like this:

 

[Zound]

So the race car is still quite a fatty. Need to shed some (more) weight.

Craig got busy with the doors and gutted them some more.

And Ta Da!

 

[Zound]

Alrighty then...

Here's some pics of the drilled and wire secured oil pump nut, as well as the chain tensioner for the oil pump drive.

Oh, and here's the custom oil sump baffle!

Next up: Taking on the M50 intake manifold conversion!

 

[Jive_E46]

Nice stuff bro, I'm assuming you have the 3.0L because of the oil drive nut fastened down. Keen to see what other mechanical mods you're gonna do.

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[Bernard///M3]

Craig and Nick have entered for Passion for Speed at Zwartkops on 1 Feb, they will be sharing the car, Craig in Race 1 and Nick in Race 2.

Rules of series requires them to start at the back of the Grid because it’s their 1st race. Wishing u guys all the best

 

[Carbonic135]

Thanks, Bernard, will try and keep out of everyone’s way https://www.bmwfanatics.co.za/images/smilies/Top24/fencelook.gif

Finished the M50 manifold swap and had the car at Dastek for tuning today, but we haven’t got the results we were hoping for, so back to the drawing board.

Nick will post some info / questions here for comment, hopefully we can get to the bottom of it.

Need to chase Kriss tomorrow to see if our diff is ready - if we run the 2.93 open diff at Zwartkops we’re going to get murdered...

 

[Captain_Stealth]

I might have missed it but did you put in poly windows ?

Also maybe look into some reproduced cams from van Der Linde


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[Carbonic135]

Yes, side windows have been replaced with polycarbonate. We have the sheet for the rear window but haven’t done that yet as we need to build a rig to drape mold it or find someone could vacuum form it.

Getting mixed opinions on cams: sure they will make some power but they’re not cheap and reliability may suffer.

 

[Bernard///M3]

Speak to Shane about ur motor, He runs a stock standard 330i motor in his race car and his quick running is Class C

 

[Zound]

So here is the dyno result from last week Thursday (23 January 2020):

And here is the dyno result from the 12th of November last year (2019):

As you can see, we're making less power (throughout the rpm range) and there's a much sharper drop off in power between 6000 rpm and 6500 rpm.

This is wholly counter intuitive with respect to the modifications performed.

Quite a disappointment after spending a lot of time and money implementing an assortment of "tried and tested" modifications.

While we are very aware that absolute figures from a dyno are all relative, we're quite certain that the motor is not producing what it could/should. Here is a comparative torque curve of the strongest BMW M54B30 that they had on their dyno, versus our current torque delivery profile:

Again, significant disparity between the power (torque) output of 2 similarly modified engines. The "strong" M54B30 car referenced above did have upgraded camshafts though, besides that, both vehicles were of similar composition.

We'll be tackling the tuning of our M54 equipped race car in a separate thread, as I believe this topic will attract its own detailed discussion. I'll post a link to that.

To conclude, and as is evident from the results, we are disappointed in the performance/results achieved by the Unichip & Dastek team combo and will be seeking improvement (or simply a 2nd opinion) through other vendors/tuners.

 

[Fordkoppie]

I dont mean it in any derogatory way, but why did you change the intake to an M50 item?

The b30 intake from the M54 is probably as good as one can get, and the M50 intake is a popular mod for the M52 engines..... Take note - Not the "TU" M52 engines, and certainly not for the M54 engine.

I am of the opinion that those who experienced any sort of gain with an M50 intake on an M54b30 had a malfunctioning DISA flap or some other masked issue, and now they are proclaiming it as an "Upgrade"

 

[Captain_Stealth]

I dont mean it in any derogatory way, but why did you change the intake to an M50 item?

The b30 intake from the M54 is probably as good as one can get, and the M50 intake is a popular mod for the M52 engines..... Take note - Not the "TU" M52 engines, and certainly not for the M54 engine.

I am of the opinion that those who experienced any sort of gain with an M50 intake on an M54b30 had a malfunctioning DISA flap or some other masked issue, and now they are proclaiming it as an "Upgrade"

I would like to know but to be honest I never knew about this mod.

The areas I would do work on is to increase power is

M3 exhaust manifolds
Performance exhaust
Reprofiled Cams
Induction
Filter box with cone
Custom dyno tune



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[Zound]

I dont mean it in any derogatory way, but why did you change the intake to an M50 item?

The b30 intake from the M54 is probably as good as one can get, and the M50 intake is a popular mod for the M52 engines..... Take note - Not the "TU" M52 engines, and certainly not for the M54 engine.

I am of the opinion that those who experienced any sort of gain with an M50 intake on an M54b30 had a malfunctioning DISA flap or some other masked issue, and now they are proclaiming it as an "Upgrade"

Motivation for the M50 manifold upgrade is derived from this thread: https://forum.e46fanatics.com/showthread.php?t=1030015

Beyond that, it's quite intuitive to expect some power improvement from the efficient shape (oval) and length of the M50 intake manifold when considering the predominant operating region of a dedicated track car - WOT (Wide Open Throttle) and High RPM. There's certainly a valid debate to expect drive-ability to worsen and for low RPM torque to be compromised, but the results in the aforementioned thread appear to indicate that effective tuning (Specifically with regards to exhaust cam tuning) mitigates, if not improves, any discrepancy in torque delivery.

 

[individj]

did you port match it?

 

[Zound]

did you port match it?

Yes indeed.