E46 M3 Track car mega build & development

[alclark]

Well I thought I'd put up my full development thread here as I figure some people might find it interesting. Or not! Who knows.





So winding back to February 2011 I had been looking for the right car for a month or so and when a car that I knew had been looked after and fitted with a couple of choice parts owned by Daniel, who was a member on here I think.







The very first thing to to was do a trackday, or four.






Bodyroll was good, brakes worked, it was all in all a decent car. I had no plans to modify it any further. :roflmao::roflmao::roflmao:

Went to the Germany to give it a test and it was brilliant.







Did more and more trackdays...







But then the tinkering bug started to set in. I changed the alignment to a far more agressive track biased setup, and lowered the car a bit more, and did the corner weights.






After a Bedford trackday I tweaked the settings a little more again to get the balance of the car right.


And then my day job is filming cars for adverts on tracks and roads etc, so I had a go with the M3:


It was time for a mega service and I went over the car with a fine tooth comb. I had a minor oil weep from the oil cooler which I replaced with a new one, and just generally went round finding bolts that needed nuts and holes that needed bolts all together.





And then and went and did around 85 laps in it over the course of a weeks trip to the Nordschleife.











And then it all started falling downhill. When I bought the car from Daniel, the car was fitted with KW v3's with it's normal soggy progressive springs which are around 84N/mm all round which whilst sort of comfortable never really offered the proper on track performance the dampers can offer. Fortunately, the car came also with KW spherical bearing top mounts (the car had non TuV Simpson motorsport rubber top mounts) and club sport front springs which are a linear 120N/mm spring.

However after a trip to Tom Schirmers in Kelberg and a decent chat (I say chat, more of a friendly one way lesson) I left with a set of proper springs - 160N/mm linears all round and some 20N/mm helpers. Basically nearly twice the spring rate as it had on before. Will it leave the car bone shatteringly stiff? Apparently not. I had to take Tom's word for it.

So three weeks after coming home from the 'Ring and umming and erring about ruining the perfectly acceptable ride on the car, I took advantage of a Monday bank holiday and Bon's free time.

The front springs are long conical jobbies, and we always knew they were too sloppy as the car was bottoming out in the foxhole at circa. 150mph through the compression, and leaving ever deeper grooves in the tyres. Raising the car wouldn't have necessarily solved this either apparently.



Wheel arch liner Nut damage to the tyre from the compression:


We fitted all the new springs and helpers and adjusters, and re-used a few parts from the original kit that we needed...


Set a basic geometry to get started with...


And then started dialling in a Schirmer alignment as best we could with the alignment gear we had (which unfortunately didn't quite work on a car that was now this low), so it needs a bit of tweaking at another alignment centre.


Once we did that, we started looking around at the corner weights. The car had a full tank of fuel, and with all that onboard and me not sat in the car we had a wet weight of 1580kg on the money:


So we began fiddling, and we found 15kg's straight away in the battery, which we swapped for a gorgeous Braile long life motorsport battery - 15kg's!!


Which took the car down to 1565kg.


Some more fiddling later we set up the corner weights properly based on the car with a driver and a front passenger, as my car almost never had an empty passenger seat on track these days.


So finally with two regular humans on board, we managed to tweak and nudge everything so that it was spot on 50:50. Final weight with passengers on board was 1724kg. We reckon straight away there is 50-55kg's to lose just in the front seats, and maybe 20-30kg's in the wheels alone, so those really are next on the project list. Slippery slope? Yes.


So how did it ride? The answer is extremely well - Tom was adamant that BMW's want stiffer springs as long as the dampers can keep up which the KW's can do no problem. The low speed 10-20mph ride is a little bumpy as you'd expect from any car running this sort of setup, but as soon as you hit 30mph and carry on to whatever speed you like the car is stable, quiet, rides perfectly (PERFECTLY) and I am nothing short of really really impressed.

[alclark]

And so this was the format I drove the car in for quite a while.





Including some mega fun wet days...




And I promise I do actually drive it fast sometimes too instead of sideways.










And then what I never intended to happen inevitably happened.





And then I bought some wheels and fitted the car with a set of Khumop V70A's.







And did another trackday.


The car is so poised it flew past the slower cars in the way...




The car is gutted to 'club sport' spec, so everything in front of the seats is stock including carpets. I brimmed the tank and it was time to get a weigh in.




The car started it's life at 1610kg with a full tank of fuel... and now... it's 1465kg. Huge weight loss, and there is still a lot more to come out if I want to. The scales show the weight with the heavier road battery in, and daft as it sounds, the owners handbook weighs 1.7kg which was in the glovebox.




So in it's plainest and un-finished form, it's looking bare...





And the boot. The Braille battery will be located to the centre of the car in the wheel well where it should fit perfectly without a lot of work.


So with 144kg lost, and more to come, things are looking good. Already feels much much faster, although in the wet you can't put your foot down anymore without it spinning up - the corner weights were not favourable...

Then, just shy of my 1000th lap, I went out last weekend to the 'Ring for work, and decided to take out the M3. The car is ready for a roll cage, but as the weather looked good for a whole Saturday afternoon of lapping I decided to take it out, so I threw the dashboard back in and off I went.

Sunday evening, it was raining so I thought I'll go out and have a play as I had two laps left on my ticket, and it was business as usual right up to Breidscheide where I unfortunately had my first crash.



However fortunately, this was a light glance and could have been a lot of worse. Damage initially appeared to be simply cosmetic.



So what happened? Pretty simple really, I was cocking about drifting. I went into BS and found it surprisingly grippy, so I tried to tweak the back end out, it held, tried again where the tarmac changes and it started sailing nicely, then suddenly hit a completely dry patch about the size of a parking space with the rear tyres which turned the car on the spot, and before I could do enough flapping at the wheel to correct it we were travelling at 90 degrees to the track. A bit more flapping prevented a much bigger crash, but I still glanced the barrier with the nearside of the front end.



As you can see - literally a brush. The barrier had barely any damage, but still £430 for the privilege. Thank fully, the marshall was a decent guy, and even he struggled to find any damage, but he did. Swine. :lol:



So the amazing Tim lent me his ex-AA van to tow the car back up the hill.



So whilst it's not ideal, it's not actually that bad. The headlight, wing, bonnet bore the brunt of it, but the chassis is straight - the suspension is still straight - and it's only a bit of metal and plastic.







A pesky viscous fan blade burst the rad, so I had to make a quick trip to Schirmer where he relieved me of euros in exchange for a second hand radiator, and after two and a half hours the new radiator was back in, I bodged the headlight back together and set off home.

So I bought some stuff including CSL front bumper and bootlid to get rid of the some lift that the M3 gets at 130mph+ from Ray at CA Automotive:






The front bumper went on.




And then the wings did.




And then I ordered a Carbonetics LSD after seeing how good the one in Phil's V10 car felt and put the power down (if you want one, speak to Driftworks!)



And then the carbon roof arrived from Geoff Steel


And then my T45 Custom Cages roll cage arrived to be installed.

Beautifully cut I must say. Even comes with full instructions.





So I spent the afternoon at DynoTorque next door with Blair getting the car ready for cages and stuff. I say we - I actually mean Blair spent most of the day telling to 'Get out the way Al, I'll do that', but I like to think I made a bloody good cup of tea for everyone and I unbolted the HECK out of some stuff too.


Rear windows out (rear glass and windscreeen is coming out as the roofs being cut off)


Blair with his spaz face. We also took all the carpet out for now.


One of five boxes of stuff. Will be selling all the A/V equipment. Dibs if you want.


Tom Schirmer made a good point about E46 lower wishbones randomly exploding, and as a precaution he changes his every 100 laps. As this car has done at least 100 laps in my hands and god knows how many in Daniels ownership, plus 120k miles on the orginal parts, it seems crazy not to get a set.


Hmmm.


Proving that it really does all 'add up', this is just the speaker wiring.


And that alone is 3.8kg... without the amps, speakers, av, headunit...


16.2kg in door cards alone!?!


So yea, all ready for caging now. Hopefully Craig can get started soon. Yippee.



People that I need to mention who have helped.

DynoTorque - One of the best fabricators in the country, very very high quality motorsport / road car preparation and custom work. Craig, Blair and Adam.

Driftworks - Awesome supplier of car parts including the wheels.

Spires - A BMW specialist chassis company run by some of the UK's geekiest suspension engineers who will be working on the car.

BonBon - Helped me do so much of the early work and helped setup the car.

Mark - Stole my alternator and helped me with the wings.

[alclark]

Waiting for the window guy to arrive, who never did, so I had to find someone else who could do it.


The front and rear screens were pulled out:


And then Craig and Adam cut the roof off.


Tadaa!


So I got all mucky and stripped out the sound deadening material. The OEM stuff slipped off fine with a heat gun but the later additions added by BMW when the boot floor was replaced was cracked and generally to balls, so that had to be chipped off. That sucked. But, it was ready....



Next began the unenviable task of lining up the cage so that it fits perfectly. Very very tricky.


With the roof off, the cage can be welded properly through 360 degrees without the need to cut the floor out. Much nicer.


The cage will be tied into the front crossbeam, and although I do have a couple of other pictures I can't be arsed to unload them from the iphone so this will have to do for now.

[alclark]

Good progress. Huge hole in the boot of the car, ready to tie the subframe and differential properly into the cage.



BMW replaced the boot floor on this car under warranty. In the 'fix', they're supposed to use a proper special 'concrete' to support the subframe mounts etc, but what appears to happen is BMW GMBH send out the 'How to fix it' in bad German English, and then they don't get it quite right. This expanding foam was found in the wrong place. I need to get the guys to explain it really to me, but yea, they didn't weld it back up properly, and did a fairly shoddy job. If you've had it done, get it checked. This car was done at a reputable dealer too.



The hole in the floor is nearly gone - the first bits of the reinforcment is in for the rear of the subframe and the same will be done for the front too.



You can see where it's mounted to in this picture, the remaining gaps will be plated.



I'm very much of the opinion that if you're going to do something, you may as well do it properly, so I'm extremely happy with what the DynoTorque guys have done so far.
Updates will slow down a bit now as I'm off to LA for a week but I'll try and get some pictures from Craig as often as possible!

Craig has done some more magic! Rear cage looking very very good. The cage was apparently MM perfect, he says by luck rather than good judgement but I think he's being modest. The quality of the steel is also excellent, really nice to weld.










Few more bars to do then it's off for paint.

Car is going in for paint tomorrow morning! Interior will be arctic silver.







SO CLOSE now. Back from paint. Arctic silver, thanks very much.



I left a bit bare. Looks cool in the flesh, should work when the bumpers back on to fill in the details.



Today the Carbonetics carbon LSD goes in, 3.9 ring gear (so shorter gearing), lightweight single piece flywheel, new OEM clutch, new front lower wishbones and new rear polybushes.

Whilst it's there I'll ask Craig to investigate a possible slight blow from the exhaust manifold, and if possible TIG it up.

It's so close my face hurts.

[alclark]

Oh and to answer yours/chavs question the centre consol is here



So...... light flywheel fitted, new clutch, new arms, etc all fitted. Also...



The bumper isn't actually fitted properly yet, but yea, it's coming together.



You can see where this is going.



Blairs done a stunning job on the dash - I want the car to retain the proper dash, as race car dashes look generally crap, and the dash really doesn't weight anything significant. I've also opted to still run front carpets. All the vents still work. :thumbsup:

Carbon roof gets bonded tomorrow, then all glass is refitted on Friday.

Blair sent me some updates from the UK. Car runs properly. They even made the decent OEM door cards fit. YES.





Back from the US! Had a chance to see the car. It's so close I can smell the 100 Octane.














Differential is being shimmed up at the moment, maybe a day or so, but whilst that's out being done they've done a bloody marvellous job on the car!

I have a non-armrest poverty spec centre console coming which is nice, plus a new viscous clutch and fan assembly, plus some new Carbon Lorraine RC6E's to go in, and then Senor Dave Pookus will be fitting some shiny bits that make it bounce less.

Even with a new steering wheel I have cruise control still. Just not sure where to mount the switches. :lol:

So the diff is in, the car is back together, and aside from needing new tyres and a bonnet release pull under the hood, she is FINISHED. Until Spires put some Nitron R3's on in a couple of weeks.

So absolutely chuffed with it. I'll be taking some proper photos and washing it next week.

[alclark]

When I embarked on the project, one of the goals was to improve the chassis as much as possible, stiffer, lighter and more control. Around the same time, Spires got in touch to say they had started developing a custom specification for the Nitron R3 Three way adjustable kit. The 3 way is very very trick, the fine tuning possibilities fly way over my head, but set up properly this was too good an opportunity to miss. So I paid my money, and a week later I got a phone call to say it was ready for installation.



I headed down early on the saturday morning as I wanted to film the install too and get Dave to say a few words as to what he was about to do and about the business. It's nice to see a group of people so dedicated to the art of real suspension setup. The research they do and the attention to detail from the perfectly laser flat corner weighting to even adjusting and re-torquing all the bushes to suit new changes - the list goes on and on, and it's frankly very very impressive.



Previously, I had (and was very happy with) a customised set of KWv3's, with Schirmer special spec springs (160Nm all round). They were great out on the circuit, but struggled a little with braking as the tyre tended to skip a little over small bumps as it was so stiff. The R3's should cure this to a large extent, but that is always a compromise you make when you run a car this stiff. Stock springs are apparently around 34Nm, and this car is now running over 5 times stiffer.



Everything they did at Spires on the car was a carefully considered process, and the re-checking was exhaustive. "Just about isn't good enough, it needs to be exact", which is just the sort of thing you want to hear when you've handed over several thousand pounds for this kit. I didn't need to worry though, because even though this is a development kit the amount of graphs and maths and spreadsheets they used during the setup to our agreed spec was impressive.



Before even starting, everything on the car was measured, and then weighed. It came out at 1442KG with a full tank of fuel and the heavy battery. Amazingly, still heavier than a stock fully loaded CSL with the same fuel! Even taking into account the roll cage, that shows how much people under-estimate the amount BMW shaves off the CSL whilst keeping it full trimmed....



Neat placement, the reservoirs stay cool and dry, but are still really easy to adjust!


You can really really notice the stiffness of the shell now too!



So there you have it - Spires Tuning Spires Tuning on Facebook is one of the most complete, nice and frankly lovely places for suspension geeks. There is no point having any suspension that's not setup properly, and whilst fitting good quality suspension always improves things, these guys can make the most out of any system, all can be made to work well.

I hope that doesn't sound too sales like, honestly the whole day was just fascinating seeing it all done to that fastidious level. I know a few people on here now have been to Spires and had awesome service and setups, so all I can say to conclude is - Well done. Marvellous. Happy.

Footnote: The Nitrons are incredible. The car rides better before we've even tuned them properly, but a lot of the adjustments will be made at Donington and on the Nordschleife.

So... it works.

[YOUTUBE]c6iNV6-0ao8[/YOUTUBE]

Aside from a clio cup car on full slicks, and a daft TVR with 600bhp, nothing touched it. Absolutely delighted! Will write up a proper report eventually. The brakes aren't where they used to be, but I'm working on that, but everything else was sublime.









I'm going to be making a few more modifications before Spa and DN7 Nurburgring in a month, but the first shakedown was badass.

So it's time for a full update. 1856 miles later, I'm back after doing Spa Francorchamps with Circuit Days, and Nurburgring GP and the VLN Nordschleife circuit with Destination Nurburgring at DN7.

After the Donington shakedown I'd made a couple of tweaks and changes, namely swapping out my CL pads for Pagid RS29's (more on this later), diff oil change, and some minor damper adjustment from Spires to improve front end rebound. Otherwise, it was business as usual, an oil change, a bleed and a wash.




Arrived at the Pitlane lodge about 3 seconds from the Spa entrance, and enjoyed lots of Duval 8.5%'s. Good beer.

Woke up, and it started snowing. Brilliant.


However thankfully the weather held off just enough to let the snow melt, and the chemical salt to start clearing the track, and at 1pm we were out!




It was so slippy it was crazy! Even though the surface was bone dry the salt made it like driving on dust essentially. However, it was predictable and consistent so generally you could press on pretty well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_Dsq9pR6o4

[YOUTUBE]T_Dsq9pR6o4[/YOUTUBE]

After I got past the Ferrari, the marshals thought the 360 was trying to overtake me, and I was blue flagged... so I had to catch it all over again. Then at the very end of this video pulling out of the chicane, there was a sudden vibration from the differential of the car...

So I limped back to Nurburg that night and settled down at the Burgstube where a few of us had a go in the car and puzzled over what it could be. It wasn't a knock, it was a vibration - but the noise pointed to the differential or a centre bearing. However the LSD is brand new and the centre bearing was only changed last year by Schirmer (pretty much the only thing to ever fail on the car).



So the next morning I started looking at options - get a new differential from the UK shipped over and get my amazing friends who know far more about cars than I do to help swap it out, or avoid the trackday and limp to the UK, or strip it down and inspect it.

So we stripped the backbox off, looked round the car and tried to find things that we wrong, and everything we looked at (excluding some worn upper rear balljoints and a broken exhaust hanger) were all fine - no play, nothing. However under load we could make the entire car do the Harlem shake.

Dale very kindly let us use the Rent for Ring ramps, and Torsten and Raphael got me booked in and we took off everything that seemed likely, but everything was fine... we even played with the prop and it was fine.

So we parked the car back up and I began looking at more options - Andy, John Moffat, Spires and Schirmer all had different ideas, but they all pointed to the front of the differential, which is where I thought I could feel it from the first time it happened. I'd spoken to Craig Taylor at Dynotorque (who caged and done all the maintenance on the car) said check the rear prop CV, so that was our next plan of attack.



The next morning, it was the GP track day, so I wasn't too worried about missing it, but Craig Pollock and Rich very kindly offered to help out stripping it down again and checking it all out. So I headed down at 9:30am and by 11am we had the entire underside of the car apart. Still nothing. Until we decided to take the prop off.

The problem presented itself pretty quickly. :lol:



The culprit was a bone dry rear CV prop joint. All the bearings literally just fell out, and the runners were scored and burnt from heat and friction. Thankfully, this is a simple £150 replacement part, and Schirmer had a new one in stock so we packed it up with grease and fitted it. Problem solved!!

Headed straight out to the GP circuit where there was still three hours left, checked tyres and went for a rip!





Happy Super Fun Time.

The Pagid RS29 pads were REALLY hauling the car up well, a million miles apart from the braking setup I'd had before. I'd discussed this at some length with Paul from CL and I'd also talked to some industry pool engineers about them, and they think it's my Performance Friction discs that don't work so well with the CL RC6's or RC6E's - potentially material hardness. It's been a long topic of discussion because Pauls been really helpful and trying to help with a solution, but for my setup the Pagids and PF discs allow you to brake so late it's silly. So not necessarily a problem with the CL pads in any way, they just don't work with my setup.

So next morning on the Nordschleife, doing a lot of laps was basically the only thing that happened.


[YOUTUBE]z5Y2_nkAKyo[/YOUTUBE]

[YOUTUBE]Nk1uC5ujex4[/YOUTUBE]







It was then time to do some more fine tuning. As many may or may not know Spires (who custom specced my Nitron R3's) do chassis dynamics for a living, including major manufacturers. And one of the things we wanted to start looking at was aero - and one of the things they do to start gathering easily adjustable and cheap data before they wind tunnel and model stuff is fit cardboard wings and splitters. Just to prove a point, Dave fabricated a splitter to provide a bit of front downforce, masked the front wheels to redirect the air down the side of the car and fitted a small but incredibly effective rear spoiler to reduce lift even further. Amazingly, it worked a treat, not that I doubted him of course. :lol:



The major improvements where noticeable immediately, but I did lose 7mph on the Dottinger Hoe straight (but this was because it's a very crude high drag setup).



However it absolutely flew through the corners.


It was a simple two lap experiment, so it wasn't refined or anything like that, but it just proved the point immediately with an 8 second laptime improvement overall.

So all in all, an extremely successful trip with the usual fun.

I now have a list of improvement to refine the car further. Next up I'm going to look at wheel offsets, some rear strut bracing, and we will look at designing the splitters and wings properly... plus ABS re-flash to a more suitable setting and removing the limiter. :D

[alclark]

So the car got back from the 'Ring unscathed after putting up a pretty awesome few laps - it was a shame I couldn't run the Spires cardboard fibre aero longer to settle into it and see what it could do.

Having watched some videos back to back, the lap was around 7 seconds quicker - now that might be a result of a placebo of stability and me pushing into corners a little faster, practice with the car, clear traffic through some key sections, plus the fact that the car definitely became more stable and tractive. Whatever reason you pick, it's clear that it works, so down the line Spires will look at building this in permanently. I did however lose about 7MPH on the straight, and as my car was hitting the limiter before, this means there is quite significant drag, so this means we need to work on striking the balance of reducing the drag whilst still giving us some down force.







But first it was time to get the car booked back into Dynotorque and give the car a full nut and bolt check over and go over it with a fine tooth comb to see what damage has been done, if any. Turns out going quicker does break stuff.

The first job was to steam clean the whole underside of the car to remove all the salt - Spa literally coated the entire car in salt like I've never seen before, my brakes were at serious risk of seizing and I wanted to protect the Nitrons plus all the other components and the bodywork.



Once on the ramp - we found:

> Both upper rear ball joints (both OEM parts)
> Front Powerflex wishbone rear bush
> Hairline fractures on 3 of the wheels
> Slight blowing manifold gasket
> Engine mounts showing signs of wear (both from the videos and the visual inspection)
> Coolant light error (suspected sensor)
> Gearchange sloppy (since purchase)


So the Powerflex was completely mangled. Not sure when it exploded, but it must have been on the 'Ring as it was fine the day before. Will not use again.



So I bought a set of eccentric Schirmer motorsport bushes which appear to dramatically increase the caster angle. He maintains these bushes are essential to his setups. They're adjustable through 360' and then lock in but they're an interesting setup. Dave will be trying to work his mathematical magic to figure out the best position for them. They're a billet solid bush with a small carrier made of I guess what is another hard bush but is very close to a balljoint without the ball or joint...






Whilst pulling the manifolds out to investigate the possible cracked manifolds (Which turned out to just be a failed gasket), we noticed the engine mounts were looking cracked and tired. 127,000 miles on this car now and these are almost certainly original. So I picked up a set of Vibratechnic competition spec engine mounts which are guaranteed failsafe.

http://www.vibra-technics.co.uk/bmw/..._engine_mount_
Blurb:

Unlike the expensive BMW Group N parts which are just standard mounts in a harder rubber compound this engine mount is purpose designed for racing applications. Our mount is designed without compromise and combines a 6082 billet aluminium housing with a high shear modulus rubber insulator at its core. It is completely fail safe making it ideal for competition car applications and overcomes all the weaknesses of the OEM design.

When we started the car up and ran it up revs, the car is smooth and vibration free as you'd expect from a silky straight six. It is noticeable straight away though that the drive-train feels taught-er. We also replaced all the bushes in the gearbox and did an oil change to improve gearbox performance.

The engine and head looked completely leak free and clean. (Bolt removed from steering column for access).


The three cracked wheels were not massively un-expected - wheels are a consumable and even though I avoid potholes with the utmost dilligence, I know I'm a fairly aggressive driver on the track and on less dangerous circuits I like to run the odd kerb and rumble strip for a better exit. These wheels have probably done around 80 laps of the 'Ring, and four track days plus 3500 road miles.





The fractures were very very small, and whilst these can be welded back up perfectly, I will be selling them and looking for a new set of forged wheels to up the strength. Suggestions on a postcard.

I also moved the harnesses anchors to the harness bar, a job I should have done ages ago. (Slaps wrists).

Another thing the internet lied about was the fast deterioration of the carbon roof - I was told it would go yellow and opaque in a few weeks. Well, it hasn't. It's absolutely fine.



So there we go, all is good, and all is happy. The car is tucked back up in my garage until I can get it back to Spires for more alignment changes, maybe some aero, and some new wheels.





Marvellous. That's actually it now!