RedRocketTi

This sounds like a fantastic project! I do know that there is a Benson & Hedges E30 M3 group A car that I have seen tucked away in a workshop in Invercargill a few times! Some awesome cars tucked away in sheds down there! Are they a true coil-over for the rear? Are you going to reinforce the rear strut towers? I'm just running the separate coil & spring in the back but went with the option of adding in 5mm SS strut top reinforcement plates to prevent the strut from ripping the top of the tower apart. Build looks awesome, if I ever get my 328Ti back down that way it would be good to see them side by side!

So... its been a while since I have been here and I guess I should provide some updates! So another year or so passed with the car just sitting in the garage most of the time, and being bought out for the occasional show or cruise. After 4's and Rotors 2018 I decided the car needed a bit of a change up.... and hence the process of beginning a wrap came to mind. Now, 90's touring cars are amazing looking machines in my mind, and most are sponsored by cigarettes or alcohol. The only thing that I could think that would work well with the red would of course be the classic white and red Marlboro livery!!! I do have to say that putting the wrap on took a hell of a lot more time than I ever thought! Wrapping around the door handles was tricky and we didn't get the job perfect, however it looks great in photos and definitely turns some heads! I managed to pickup some ratty old rims, that I quickly gave a coating of white paint to and chucked my semi slicks onto. I do have to say they turned out far better than I could have imagined! Then came the day of Chrome Expression Sessions, and the car ran perfectly! Not a drop of oil used, and it handled fantastically all weekend! Was interesting to see that the car wasnt as slow as I expected against everything else that was there down the straight too!

Just cleaned it up with a waterblaster, scrubbing brush and a good amount of degreaser!!! I also gave the rocker cover a fresh lick of silver to tidy it up as it had some discoloration going on!

Did an engine swap on my nugget... now to trace down the water leak behind the air con bracket....

I guess its never too late for a weekend post.... I picked up a new sedan, 318i NZ New and factory manual! It still has the original ownership book and keyring from Christchurch BMW!!!! $200 was too good to pass up with a fresh wof a little over a week ago and rego! A couple of new engine mounts and a clean and she runs mint! Its got a bit of a nasty repair job on the rear panel that hopefully I can tidy up, also a good excuse for a respray! After a through wash... Then I thought, I will use this as my daily and decided to swap the rims from my old daily onto this, improving it a hell of a lot! Im not the biggest fan of the SAMOABLU and I feel that respraying it in Yas Marina Blue (Same as the M4) would be pretty awesome!

Thanks man! Yeah my brain wasnt too engaged at the time I shot it and I didnt think of stopping the lens down more! I ended up photoshopping out the boot badge as my one is a bit messy and I couldnt manage to tidy it up so it was easier to just remove it Yeah the polymer paint sealant worked really well! Alltho I tried some Valet Pro and Gyeon products before the show and shine and I will be definitly getting some of that! The Valet Pro Black to the Future is amazing on trims and tires! At this stage the supercharger build has been called off, its still sitting in my garage but I have kinda given up on fitting it. The costs for actually doing it propperly with a link or megasquirt and then brackets etc I may as well save and put an S54 in... but then again the car is more than fast enough for what I use it for so maybe I might replace my daily Ti with a 335....

So I decided to enter into 4's and Rotors down in Timaru... that meant that I really needed to respray my front bumper to get rid of stone chips along with a few other bits and pieces. While I was at it I couldn't deal with having a sagging headlining any more! My dad gave me a hand and we wrapped the whole thing in some nice faux suede for that alcantara look! I still have the black sun visors to put in, however I will never ever do another sunroof headlining! The sunroof was in and out about 6 times to get it working correctly with the sunshade pulling back correctly! This was all followed by a good cut and polish! The missus even lent a hand to help with the wheels! After cleaning everything and giving it a good cut and polish here are some glamour shots from after 4's and Rotors in Timaru!

The tow bar is soooo handy, I actually love having it on there! Here are a few shots from recently! 4's and Rotors was over the weekend down in Timaru, so I decided to enter as I had never been before! Here are a few snaps from a shoot afterwards!

Took the girlfriend to Kaikoura for a day trip. Also gave the wee red best a wash both before and after . Had an attempt at drifting on tarmac at the drift track, however being precious about breaking the car and open diff life resulted in not too much sideways action but still good fun! Photos to come from more recent updates too!

Gave it a good wash and wax Also took it out for a nice wee spin since shifting house last weekend!

Okay so the wing took quite a bit more to fit up then I originally anticipated. The paint will need redone at some stage too, however I am stoked with how it looks, and the height of it means I dont loose any rear visibility! Excuse the filth! The car was pretty dirty from the roadtrip to Queenstown and back with nowhere to clean it properly along the way! Also I made more poor life decisions this week and ended up buying an SC14 supercharger.... Thoughts at the moment are to bottom mount it where my air conditioning compressor was and then run a small front mount intercooler. I will get under the car this weekend to have a proper look and see where I can make it fit nicely! This bit of the project however will take quite a while as I know it will cost a lot to implement and I kinda need to start saving a little bit of money! Keep your eyes peeled for more to come... I will try get some better photos of the wing and might do a little breakdown of how it was all fitted up and trimmed if people want to know more!

I did Wang Thangs

More test fitting and trimming this weekend. Its off for paint this week and should be fitted up when Im down in Queenstown next Sunday!

M3 Lightweight rear wing (Technically its the GT Class II Wing), as seen in one of the previous posts Might eventually go to the M3 Lightweight front splitter too.

So here is the footage from Ruapuna! First lap out was taking it a little easy to get the tires warm, still have a lot of improvements I can make with my lines and some setup things. Mainly ride height is needed as you can hear a little rubbing! All good fun and cant wait until next time out! The LTW is being bought up by my father after painting on the 15th so fingers crossed I can get it fitted with no issues! I am also planning on redoing my headlining shortly to finally fix the sagging that has been there for years! Going to go Black this time too!

Another trackday done and dusted

Thanks, my Dad does not too bad of a job considering it was done in a cold Invercargill garage back home Yeah I see what you mean about the Tow Bar, but its just so handy! I kinda want to fit a FancyWide style rear diffuser to the rear end too Took the Ti to the track today too! Only one spin, was going a bit hot in one of the sessions during my first lap out, cold tires and over estimated my grip levels. Other than that the car ran flawlessly all day! New pads went in after session 2, just before the lunch break and it all went well! Now I just need to get better at driving the thing! Might keep adding more stiffness into the front as its got plenty of grip up front but is getting a bit tail happy still, New PB around Ruapuna today too 1:51.126 and was consistently in the low 1:51's throughout the day. Apart from peeling the inside wheel when trying to floor it out of corners in 3rd she performed great! LSD is very tempting now, but I cant justify the costs just yet... Removing all the boot carpets allowed a lot more road and exhaust noise becauseracecar I will post another update when my big wang arrives back from being painted, and show how its all going to be mounted up. I will also track down the gopro footage from a mates gopro I borrowed for a session, my one is currently at the bottom of Lake Waihola after falling off the race boat last year.

No plans of ditching it yet! Its super handy! New pads were put in half way through todays trackday! 1:51.126 isnt too bad around Ruapuna, first time out with the car actually fully working. I just need a lot more seat time and maybe some adjustment to get rid of the oversteer. Peeling wheels out of corners on warm semis too in 3rd wasnt ideal either! I want an LSD but they are bloody hard to find without getting a mortgage.

Test fitted the big wang on the Ti.... it needs a big diffuser next I think

So I guess I haven't really posted up much about what has happened in the past few months! A lot of the small annoying things have been fixed up (Passengers door car clips.... 4 weekends in a row trying to get it perfect, now the drivers door is starting to come off slightly.........) I decided I wanted to actually use some of the audio gear I had lying about from when I was in high school and thought better than gathering dust why not install it into my car again, however this time in a much more professional and clean way. I had already put in a JVC Bluetooth head-unit and 6" speakers up front long ago, and I had 6" round speakers in the parcel tray. I thought I can do better than that.... So I had a Blaupunkt 500w amp, a sony 350w amp, Carbon cone Kenwood 1400w Shallow mount sub-woofer and a pair of sony 6x9's. I decided to go full out and install some pioneer 4" speakers into the rear factory mounts so I can still have 4 speakers should I ever take my parcel tray out! I wanted to still have usable space in the boot so a standard sub box wasn't going to cut it for me, so I decided to make a custom sub box that would mount into the side where the wheel arch was. I started by making up a MDF front and top to mount the sub into and amps onto, this was then wrapped in some carpet that was lying around. Next up was the ugly task of molding the back to sit in with the car. I removed the carpet from the side of the boot (Luckily it holds its shape extremely well and is quite rigid. I then used a sheet of plastic to cover it in and then proceeded to fiberglass the shape of the carpet, using the plastic as a mold release. As you can see from the photos it fits in well and means that the usable space within the boot isnt compromised as much as a normal sub box! I also used molex connectors for the 6x9's so that I can quickly unplug them if I want to remove the parcel tray for any reason! This week a special shipment also arrived from Europe! My high rise LTW wing! I am extremly impressed with the quality of the wing and cant wait to finally fit it to the car! I test fitted it as a high rise and as a low rise, I think I prefer the high rise look over the low rise option at the moment! The wing does need a little trimming down to fit around the rear window but it isnt a huge amount of work. Fitting the bolts and finding where they will pop through when drilling through the boot might be a little more problematic however. From the pic below you can see how it will need trimmed down. The back of the wing however fits perfectly with the curve in the boot. Also while running with the spacers the wing will clear the rear wiper so no need to delete it! I actually like having it because its handy when reversing if there is water all over the rear window (that is if I will be able to see out the rear window much now )! This weekend I have a track day on Saturday so that should be good fun, first time out with the new engine, suspension, gearbox and diff since the last track day! While away boat racing last weekend I thought the LTW didnt quite add enough downforce to the rear of the Ti so decided to add the boat on the back too! Who said adding a tow bar was a bad idea! My daily driver also got a fresh coat of paint so its no longer multi coloured! It will also be getting some new wheels in a weeks time when the semi slick tires get taken off the Style 97's. I should have my LTW back from being painted in about a weeks time so I will try to post a small update with some pictures of the fitment and how I bolted it all down when I get it all on!

Over the weekend I finished my audio setup and sub box! Also chucked the semi slicks on prepping for trackday on the 24th! Bigger bonus was my LTW high rise arriving today! fingers crossed its painted and fitted in time for trackday!

Begun to fibreglass up the rear of my custom fitted sub box Also picked up all the wiring I need and fitted Pioneer 4" spearkers into the rear factory mounts. Should hopefully have the full audio setup done by the end of the weekend!

Cleaned and washed it again.... also got to polishing the lips up by sanding them back to remove the pitting, I have done 2 up to 1500 grit but will keep going up to 2500 and maybe higher to try and get a nice mirror finish. A good method was putting the rear end up on jack stands, starting the car and putting it in 3rd and letting it idle using the spinning wheel kinda like a lathe to take some of the effort out of the sanding! Also my daily got its respray! 2 weeks until I pick it up!