BuildaBeemer: Building a BMW E46 Track Car

Zound

///Member
Did you know that the E46 325Ti (Compact) came with a thicker anti-roll bar than the 330i?

A cost effective upgrade to improve the stiffness at the front of your BMW E46 Sedan (Non-M).

Here's a short video illustrating the differences between the two anti-roll bars.

[video=youtube]
 

Jive_E46

Active member
Zound said:
Did you know that the E46 325Ti (Compact) came with a thicker anti-roll bar than the 330i?

A cost effective upgrade to improve the stiffness at the front of your BMW E46 Sedan (Non-M).

Here's a short video illustrating the differences between the two anti-roll bars.

[video=youtube]
Awesome spot, BMW are good at making their cars modular. Do you have the part numbers by any chance ?

Sent from my SM-G975F using Tapatalk
 

Peter@AEW

BMWFanatics Advertiser
Official Advertiser
If you do the conversion you shall need to get the retainers as well as the bushes to fit so buy as a set.
 

Zound

///Member
So with the RomRaider Logging suite installed we took the car out for a couple of pulls to see what kind of data could be collected. After trawling a few different forums it appears that Engine load, measured in mg/stroke, and Mass Airflow, measured in kg/h, were the most indicative of the torque and power produced by the car.

Here is a graph of 4 pulls performed. At this stage, the vehicle still had the Unichip installed.

f8e042ad-eb32-48d0-8057-51adb7bea786_544212745.jpg
 

Zound

///Member
Here's a quick video to share the sound of the car from the interior.

[video=youtube]


P.s. New exhaust system coming!
 

Zound

///Member
So we've done some road tuning and here are the results in comparison to the best run with the Unichip.

I'll go into more detail with what we've done to the tune in a different post. Nonetheless, happy with the improvements we are seeing and we're certainly not done.

road tuning results_1851752130.jpg


Sorry, the graph is missing the label for the right hand side vertical axis which is Mass Airflow (kg/h).

As soon as the lockdown ends, we'll get her on a new dyno and see what the power and torque profiles are really looking like.

What I'll do is load a completely stock 330 tune for a base run and then load the current tune to validate any improvements illustrated by the "road tuning" exercise.

Any recommendations for a dyno near to Centurion, Pretoria?
 

Zound

///Member
As encouraging and rewarding as the car currently sounds, a race car needs a race car exhaust.

We wanted to achieve the following:
1) Reduce the weight of the entire system (The rear silencer is incredibly heavy)
2) Improve the exhaust flow by eliminating any unnecessary restrictions (After removing the CAT's the stock silencer was the last restriction we could deal with)
3) Improve the welds/connections, specifically that of the poor job done by the company that removed the secondary CAT's.
4) Improve the sound emitted by that glorious 6 cylinder, specifically because we have introduced a number of hardware modifications that should allow it to process more air (i.e. be a better air pump!)

So, here's how we did it!


[video=youtube]


Next video we'll let you hear what she sounds like.

P.s. She sounds like a race car!
 

individj

Well-known member
how satisfying...i was actually comparing my 330i & E36 M3's exhausts side by side and was surprised at how much bigger the piping is. Cant wait to hear it.
 
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="
" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
 

Zound

///Member
So part of the new exhaust system is the integration of our new wide-band oxygen sensor. As mentioned previously, we've gone with the Innovate Motorsports LC-2.

Here's the oxygen sensor installed:
e7d79641-3d55-4fa5-86cf-3bd84f46551b_8243736520.jpg


And the rest of the exhaust, in case you didn't watch the exhaust build video:
b2505c9d-b03b-4f63-9cb3-6b10a094a4b4_5842083408.jpg


Here's a quick video showing you the Gauge for the Innovate LC2 Wideband Oxygen Sensor and the controller during warm-up / start-up:
[video=youtube]
 
Top