BuildaBeemer: Building a BMW E46 Track Car

Clint@MMS AUTO

BMWFanatics Advertiser
Official Advertiser
Its coming along nicely guys...

The BC's are good value for money and work really well... I've been running BR's for over a year now and no complaints... Street or track, they performed a hundred times better than the stock suspension.
 

Nürburgring'R_ZA

Active member
Big Mac burger under "important conditions" :biglol::roflol: gets one thinking what else can be fit through there. Great progress update:thumbs:
 

Rayzor

Well-known member
Great progress guys, keep it up... really looking forward to see the final product and most importantly some race videos :praise::bravo:
 

Zound

///Member
We're overdue (again) for a video update, but we're working hard to get the car ready for this weekends Kyalami Track day event.

Really looking forward to experiencing the cars abilities on the track for the first time.

I'll post a couple pictures to give you an idea of the current form.
 

Zound

///Member
I completely forgot to post the last episode, so here’s episode 8.

[video=youtube]


And here’s episode 9. We’re going to Kyalami tomorrow!

[video=youtube]


1b1758e8-89a9-46dd-9a4f-58786d33fd91_2367539206.jpeg
e9f20820-d076-464e-9ff0-ba5622249313_510105234.jpeg
1e900d79-44d4-45c9-8c38-c8bd6adcdaa3_9705317253.jpeg
109abdda-06df-4c74-8393-9c9347b0f2f6_6110946188.jpeg
 

FiRi@Rennzport

Well-known member
Official Advertiser
Job well done guys. Brilliant conversion.

How did Kyalami go?

Sent from my SM-N975F using Tapatalk
 

TBP88

Well-known member
No possibility if a nice big wing? :p

Looks great, tell your old man that movember suits him! :p
 
So guys, once again we’ve neglected you all as far as updates are concerned. Our parting note last time was that we were off to Kyalami for our final Time Trial event, and we were as excited as a pair of eight-year-olds on Christmas Eve...
Long story short: Kyalami was a catastrophic failure. OK, perhaps that’s a little melodramatic, but the bottom line is we managed an out-lap, a “start to feel your way around the track” lap, and a “get back to the pits, there’s an awful noise” lap.
The headers came loose, and blew there baskets, which saw me driving half way round Gauteng looking for a spares shop with exhaust manifold gaskets. Eventually got a full engine gasket set, got back to the track an bolted everything up, but she was still blowing like a tractor. Decided to call it a day.
It was only when we got the car ho e that we found that 2 of the plugs in the header plates had also disappeared. No idea how or why. We can only guess that the header bolts were tightened while there was still a lot of interference with the block and / or lower brace, and that addressing those lost us the clamping force, and allowed everything to vibrate loose...

Since then we’ve got that sorted, and done a bunch more on the car. We’ve installed an E36 M3 oil filter housing, which allowed us to fit an oil cooler, dropped the sump and fabricated a baffle plate, wired the oil pump nut, installed an oil pump chain tensioner (using VW parts), fitted an oil catch can and done a M50 intake manifold conversion. We’ve also fitted adjustable rear camber arms, and installed a set of billet wheel spacers with studs.

For those of you who are interested in how we did these, and not just what we did, we’ve made a few “How we did that” videos...
 

Crash_Nemesis

///Member
Nice. Time to slap and S54 in there.

I get a 1:15 laptime on Swartkops in my e46 m3. You should easily beat that once your setup is solid and got the brake markers down. Good luck.
 

Salt

///Member
Carbonic135 said:
So guys, once again we’ve neglected you all as far as updates are concerned.

Well I must say I think its an awesome project to do as a father and son and it is something you two will always remember and something that can be passed down to the grandchildren. I also want to say I admire your glass half full attitudes. You both must have felt gutted at Kyalami but not only did you go trying to find replacement parts on the day to carry on, since then you've done a heap load of other upgrades. That is awesome. I am not very technical on cars but it seems you've spent the majority of your time and money up to now on the suspension, weight reduction and interior. I guess that is to get the car to firstly be compliant and to make sure it will sit on the road. I know you've done the intake and exhaust and you name a few other upgrades done now, what else are you planning on doing in terms of power upgrades - and how far can you take that and still comply to the class regulations? Again I am not very familiar here. All in all - very cool, I always lookout for your updates please keep the videos coming!
 
Thank you for the kind words, Salt - you’ve really hit the nail on the head. Luckily for both Nick and me we get a huge kick out of the technical side of things, so it’s so much more for us than just the racing. We scour the web for tips & ideas, debate them, and then tackle the challenge ourselves. It’s very rewarding.

The next mod is exhaust. This is something of a black art, but we think we’ve got our heads around the theory, and won’t be making some of the more common mistakes. The difference here though is that instead of getting an exhaust shop to make the changes to our specification, we’ve bought a Tig welder, and will be tackling this ourselves. We have an X-pipe currently being held for ransom at Customs, but should get it shortly. Given the time pressure though before the Zwartkops race we’ll only start that after the 1st event.

We’ll definitely make a video of the hows and whys of that
 
Top