316ti Race Car

[Gaz 1042]

Looks mean! Where did you get the front spilter from?

[Jamez 2147483647]

Bought off ebay, came from Latvia.

[Michael. 2312]

Good stuff, should be a lot of fun!

[francoisv 466]

Love that front, look aggressive

[Jamez 2147483647]

Before I get a proper race seat, I really wanted to get rid of the crappy stained standard seats. Managed to source some M-Cloth Motorsport seats thanks to the Dave ( SilverFox ) and they finish off the interior nicely.

[hybrid 1039]

Looks awesome man ... was quite a good hoon the other day ... its not sh*t thats for sure.

[Jamez 2147483647]

Bought these wheels off trademe for $250 and they came with 215 Ling Long tyres, should be a laugh.

Happy this car has finally come together and I can't wait to give it a go at my private twilight trackday on the 15th.

I can lower the front so that the splitter sits on the ground, but for obvious reason I won't do this, I like having a splitter.

[hybrid 1039]

Youve done bloody well man .. specially we you see what it came from

[qube 3568]

wow genuine acs type 3s for $250?

[Jamez 2147483647]

Reps

[Jamez 2147483647]

Took the old interior to the dump and found the interior weighs ~110kg (front and rear seats)

The 316ti weighs in at 1240KG wet + driver. In basic race trim it will be 1140KG + driver which is only 20kg more than the E30, but in saying that the wheels I have on the compact are 16KG heavier than the ones that were on the e30......so the weights are pretty much the same even though the compact will have a near complete interior.

Stuff that I could remove if I wanted to go crazy,

-16kg Lighter wheels

-20kg fiberglass hatch

-15kg fiberglass bonnet

-5kg fiberglass fenders

-10kg Heater and aircon crap

-20kg fiberglass doors

-20kg for all the misc plastic trim and crap.

So another ~100kg lost would put it near 1040kg + driver, but probably not worth it unless I want a car made of fiberglass.

I also put it on the dyno today, number was low and you can't really compare dyno's, but it was making 6kw more than a E46 with CSL tune (stock car) and 10kw more than standard E46 M3. Funny thing is I have 2" restrictor plate in the rear muffler to quiet the engine down for road, turns out it made more HP with it in on the dyno (4kw)

Got a wheel alignment yesterday and found I had 20mm toe in, fixed now. To be fair when putting it together I only adjusted it until it tracked in a straight line, now it also likes to turn corners

So all done and dusted in terms of the initial build. Half cage and tune to come in the new year, but before that I am giving it a shakedown at Hampton on the 15th, aiming for a 1:14.0 with road tires.

[westy 614]

Yeah all right, so it's not completely sh*t. It's actually pretty cool, must be a hoot to drive.

[BM WORLD 1258]

good work

my mate who has a e36 328Ti stripped out , no cage , no aircon still has window regs and some sort of dash etc

I think he had his weighed in at about 1050kg too

and its quick with a std 328i engine 325i manifold , e30 3.64 lsd , getrag box etc, stock headers and free flow exhaust

[Jamez 2147483647]

First tank of gas and I managed 11.9 L/100km. This was 160km highway and rest was hooning for a total of 420km on 50L.

Pretty surprised how good it is, going for a factory ECU set up rather than a after-market set up shouldn't take long to pay for itself. Still need to get Gavin to tune the car to get it a bit more midrange power.

[E30 325i Rag-Top 2914]

You have failed to mention that you decided to do your oil change on my drive.

And that it is literally, on my drive! Still by previous Watson Engineering efforts it was relatively clean and painless!!

[Jamez 2147483647]

I also forgot to mention that thanks to John the car now has working ABS(was missing the abs half shafts), even in the wet at decent road speeds I found it non invasive and soft when it kicked in. Will be interesting to see how it does at the track.

Johns oil change shop was much appreciated, given the look of what came out it was well worth pissing John off.

[E30 325i Rag-Top 2914]

You got those shafts in already? Good work!! And glad it fixed the ABS issue..

[hybrid 1039]

You have failed to mention that you decided to do your oil change on my drive.

And that it is literally, on my drive! Still by previous Watson Engineering efforts it was relatively clean and painless!!

hahaha you should see my garage after my efforts ... nothing some degreaser and a scrub didnt fix.

[Jamez 2147483647]

Since the BMW series were at Hampton today I took the liberty to have a corner weight done twice. You will see on the below table the E30 actually has a better F/R split, but it doesn't matter as the longer wheel base of the E36 chassis shits on E30 for handling and braking.

The 316ti had next to no fuel, so given that the majority of the fuel sits on the right rear side, it should even out the F/R and L/R splits a bit when full.

Following the first weigh, I tried a slight adjustment on the front coilvers to see how weight would more around, was quite surprised by the result as I ended up doing the opposite of what was intended. All weights done with driver in car (102KG), without driver the cars were both pretty square.

Also worth noting the E36 is full interior minus passenger seat and rear seat backings.

[Jamez 2147483647]

First outing in E36 was a success.

Started with 1:18's with the street tyres, then fitted slicks and started doing 1:14's. Then took passengers and was doing 1:15's. Top speed was only 205km/h (1340kg) without passengers and 198km/h (1420kg) with passengers. With an actual tune (currently got an ebay one that runs rich) I expect to gain a lot of power through the middrange to bring it back to where it was before the rebuild (swapped ECU's), plus removing all the trim and cutting some weight out should drop ~150kg, this should see a top speed of ~225km/h and use of 6th gear down the straight.

What a mission it was to drive with slicks without a harness and a race seat, there was probably another second or two to gain from being thrown all over the place. Best sectors had me doing a 1:13.0 but I was unable to string a perfect lap together.

The car is way to stiff, it was lifting both inside wheels coming out of the sweeper, on one lap I even managed to take it with a minimum speed of 115km/h around the sweeper and turn one.

Don't have a video of when using slicks as the camara kept getting torn off the mount, but it was ok with road tyres

Bonus for the evening was that I stood on it all evening and the water temp stayed at 80c, no oil leaks or anything went wrong.

[qube 3568]

Great success!

[BreakMyWindow 1870]

This thing is truly a weapon.

Would not recommend eating lunch just before going in it with James around Hampton.

[hybrid 1039]

After being bailed into the passenger seat and enthusiatically being taken around the track for a 1:15 laptime with James at the wheel. James chuck me the keys and I went out at the end of the session. It felt like a natural change from my e30/s50 to this so my learning curve wasnt too steep... not quite having the same confidence as james' 160kph power slide around turn 6 I can say this thing allows you to reaaaaly push it and still feel like your safely doing what you want.

Its a really amazing chassis. With some race seats + suspension tweaks and lightening up .. I cant see much touching it on the handling vs power front

[E30 325i Rag-Top 2914]

^^ What they said.

Harness and proper seat for the passengers would be a good idea too, stop you banging your head against the windows - front and side!

[Jamez 2147483647]

Here it is, the first ever race in the newly put together BMW M Compact.

Started 9th and finished 8th. Two cars in front were .3 faster at the start, but I was catching them at the end, so it's good to see the compact doesn't slow during the race like the others.

From the telemetry I am down .4 of a second on what I would consider a perfect lap, I am also going to test a new unconventional line on the hairpin as that gave me another .2 of a second when passing a slower car in qualifying.

My goal of a 1:13.0 by weekends end still stands, but to help give it a bit more power I am going to try removing the viscous fan and shroud today and see what sort of gain that gives. Funnily enough I found due to having the predictive lap timer that having the headlights and electric fan on were sapping .2 of a second just going up the front straight and about .3 on the infield, suffice to say they were turned off mid race once I figured this out