E30 Race car build from South Africa.

[Stevin]

I thought I should finally do a post about my race car, well at the moment it's kind of half a race car.

Initial Purchase

The car was basically bought as a rolling shell. The body although not all that pretty looking was straight and mostly rust free. The two main concerns. Although the dimbulb that owned the car previously had hacked the front frame rails a bit and the transmission tunnel to fit in some American muscle. This was easily repaired though.





The first body panels arrive

So after a couple of weeks of not much happening with the car. Most of our body panels had arrived. Fiberglass M-Tech 2 front Valance and Bumper Cover, Rear Valance, and Skirts. The single skin carbonfiber bonnet (hood) and boot (trunk) finally arrived as well as the new front grills and kidneys. Of course a test fit was in order.







Roll Cage Installation

The car finally left us for it's short journey to the roll cage fabricator. It was his first e30 roll cage. I think he did a half decent job of it. There are some things I would like changed but that will have to wait.









Lets strip some paint

If ever there was a job I hated more than anything on this car. It had to be this. It took my father and myself a weekend of copious amounts of paint stripper and many chemical burns later to strip this cars entire body of paint. Although it was one of the worst damn jobs. The weight loss must have been substantial. I kid but the had 4 different colours on it. So glad we got the extra paint off of it. Once we stripped the paint down we just hit it with some self etching primer to stop rust.















First assortment of suspension goodies

Although it was nothing major it felt good. We took delivery of reinforced front subframe, had a good friend make us some solid aluminum rear subframe mounts which we later modified to raise the rear subframe up 12mm.









Pictured here is also one of our discarded projects. If you look closely you will notice that it is a standard e30 strut but with a e36 hub mounted onto it. What was done was a new sleeve was machined to press fit over the standard kingpin and then be welded at the back. These parts are still kicking around at home and I will try them out on my road e30 to see how well they work.



Rear Trailing Arms and Camber/Toe Adjustment Subframe

After doing loads of research on this point. I went and had the rear trailing arms reinforced. This goes along the lines of the early Group A and DTM cars as well as similar to what was done on the M Coupe. It incorporates added triangulation and gusseting of the hub housing to prevent camber and toe deflection under load.

We also got some custom made Poly Propelene bushes made up. Although I'm not certain as to how they will perform. The guy that made them was adamant that they work and that he uses them on his offroad cars.









We also had the rear subframe modified to all adjustment of camber and toe. This is the same concept as the kit the some vendors in the USA sell. It seems like an easy enough solution.







Here is an image of the Poly Propelene bushes. I need to get hold of another set of trailing arms though. As in the future the plan is to convert these bushes to a Spherical bearing (mono ball) setup.



Lets get rolling - Wheel talk

Ok, so after much searching about and a tip off from a friend. We came across these rims. Ac Schnitzer 17x8 rims. Very nice but they looked much better once they had been powder coated white.



The sad part though is that they are now so frigging heavy. I'm sure the guys who did the powder coating put on like 4mm of the stuff. It was so thick that the wheels no longer fit on the centre bore of the hub.

We have made some plans and will get them stripped back down and we will paint them ourselves in an even better colour.

[Stevin]

E36 328i Group N Suspension

I managed to get an incredibly amazing deal on this suspension. It was taken off of one of my friends E36 Group N cars. Had been sitting around his garage for ages. So I made him an offer and the rest is history.





We got the shocks tested out and they came in fine. I spoke to one of our our suspension guru's Mark Sax and he thinks that the valving will be perfect for the car. So that is a bonus that we don't need to revalve the shocks. He also made a sleeve on the rear shocks for us as to attach coilovers but sadly the rear shocks are far too long for my application.





In the next picture the shot is completely compressed. Not nearly low enough.



Also note due to the raised subframe look at how small the gap between the spring mounting points has become.



Front Tubular control arms and Camber Plates

These arms are a labour of love. It has taken forever to get them done. I think the final product is pretty decent. I've had a few people worried about the rear radius arm mount. I will just test and see, but I'm confident in them as they were designed by the head race engineer at Nissan Motorsport SA, and fabricated by the head off road chassis fabricator. Please note that the spherical bearings in the picture are not the ones that are going to be used and the outer bearing carrier is not complete in these pictures.







Here are the camber plates that I designed, well kind of. I used an existing design and modified it to allow a larger bearing and more camber adjustment.







Oh and of course I had to modify the front subframe to accept the new control arms. I'm not entirely happy about the pickup point. I think it is spaced to far down. I do have another subframe and I now have access to a BTCC e30 M3. So I will take some pictures and measurements up from that and get this one made like the actual DTM cars.





Test fit of front suspension

I took my road going e30 and used it as a mule to test fit the front suspension. As can be seen the car sits incredibly low to the ground. Don't mind the funky caster the control arms weren't adjusted.



Still to do

Well currently the car is standing at our panelbeater. On his to do list is:

Cut the lip from the front fenders to provide more clearance, Cut side exit exhaust, build new fenders front and rear as the rims stick out the body by around an inch, paint the car inside and out in Alpine White III, re weld the trans tunnel.

We are also still waiting for the arrival of our front brakes. They are AP Racing 5000+ callipers up front, with 330x32 discs. We have the rear setup which is E46 M3 rear discs and callipers.

The car will be run without a rear swaybar, and we are also awaiting arrival of our rear coilovers from the UK made by GAZ. They are dual adjustable, custom valved, and with custom compressed and extended lengths. The front sway bar which is also on it's way is a H&R bar.

Parts that we still need to manufacture are the front sway bar end links, bump steer and roll centre spacers, rack ends, billet diff mount, e46 to e30 steering rack spacers (we are using a new E46 M3 rack), rear diffuser and front splitter.

After all that has been done we will fit our rebuilt S50b30euro it is basically a stock motor with just and ally flywheel and s50b32 intake trumpets.

I shall update this thread as soon as we get down to final assembly when the car is back from the bodyshop.

[Stevin]

Fuel Cell Cradle

We used a RCI Rubber 48lt cell in the car. For two reasons. One that being the price of an ally tank which had to be imported was around 3 times the price of the plastic one. I our governing body allows the usage of Rubber Fuel Cells. I placed the fuel cradle as far back and to the left as possible. This is due to the fact that our cars are RHD.









Fuel Cell mounted backwards in the pictures.

[EqualizedCustoms]

wow looks very impressive. i wanna see this finished.

[BMW BUM]

so it's getting an s50b30..?

[Stevin]

Yeah it is, it's currently lying at my engine tuners place as we didn't have space in the garage.

I think that 290hp or so will be plenty to start with in a sub 1000kg car.

[smikle]

Oh The real S50..lol

[Luckysix]

Very cool! I hope to see some updates in the near future.

[Stevin]

This past weekend I went and watched the race series I'm supposed to be racing in. Some incredibly potent machinery.

[iflytii]

Looking really good! You have some good competition it appears! You car should fit nicely into that mix.