M3 Aero

[SAABmw]

Hi guys,

It's been a while since i last mentioned anything about this car, but i hope you'll find the wait worthwile

For the time being, i'm just copying the text for the Photostory of the car at www.e30.de - car is featured there on 13.3 2009. Hope you have some questions ready

The car was started as a salvage project for a nearly destroyed engineless M3 chassis I bought, that had no engine at the time. The idea was to use a SAAB engine, which is a very reliable choice and able to cope with bad fuel quality we have in Serbia, and to build a car that will be used on occasion, for track, etc.. In the meantime I decided to built an all-round car with no corner left untouched, so this project was started, and took 2 years to finish. The result is the car shown here.

Car was built by members of 011 Racing Team in Belgrade, Serbia, with lots of ideas, help, input and advices from Presho, guys at Maptun, Cannonball Forum, and lots of other people too numerous to mention that were invloved in the Project. Thanks to all!

Regards
Aleksandar a.k.a. 206


Engine:

- Concept by Presho a.k.a. BOOST @ www.cbc.rs, built by 011 Racing Team: SAAB B234 2.3l, Trionic T5
engine management featuring automatic ion knock and boost control, individual Stage X tune by Fredrik @
Maptun Performance – www.maptun.com
- Garrett GT35xxR hybrid @ 1.9bar
- RC Engineering 1000cc injectors, Intercooler with CO2 spray, fuel CO2 cooler, Mocal water/oil heat
exchanger, TIAL 44mm wastegate, Turbosmart 38mm Blow-off valve, Turbosmart adjustable fuel pressure
regulator, 2xBosch Motorsport fuel pumps, ATL Fuel Cell, Wizard of Nos direct port nitrous system with
progressive controller
- Power measured by Rototest: Wheel power - 472PS / 573Nm; Engine power ~550PS / 670Nm on 93
octane fuel. Power with 102 octane fuel: 650PS / 750Nm

Chassis/body:

- E30 M3 Evo chassis
- Sparco full weld-in roll cage
- Front strut brace
- Rear floorpan, diff mounts and subframe additionally cross-braced and strengthened
- Candy Red paint

Transmission:

- E36 M3 6-speed gearbox coupled to SAAB engine block
- SPEC full cerametallic clutch plate
- Carbonfibre propshaft by ACPT
- E28 M535 rear diff 3.07 ratio
- Quaife ATB limited slip
- PPF driveshafts

Brakes:

- Front: Compbrake 6-pot calipers, 340mm Powervane floating 2-piece rotors
- Rear: Compbrake 4-pot calipers, 315mm rotors from E36 M3 3.2
- Tilton hydraulic pedal box 6.2:1, non-servo
- Tilton Hydraulic handbrake
- Tilton brake bias adjuster
- Electrohydraulic linelock

Suspension:

- H&R Coilovers height adjustable
- KMAC adjustable camber/caster plates front
- KMAC adjustable camber/toe ki
- Aluminium rear shock mounts
- Aluminium control arms
- Polyrethane bushings front & rear

Interior

- Sparco Pro 2000 seats
- Sparco 6 point harness
- Custom made alcantara upholstery + Dynamat sound and thermal insulation

Electronics & electrics

- OMP electric fire extinguisher boot/cockpit/engine
- Power kill switch
- Defi Link BF computer controlled gauges: boost, EGT, fuel pressure, oil pressure, oil temperature
- Innovate A/F gauge
- Innovate datalogger
- Intercooler cold / hot charge temperature
- Wizard of Nos nitrous controller with nitrous-based turbo antilag system
- Custom made central panel – fan, nitrous, linelock, N2O, CO2, antilag
- Custom made dashboard
- Electronic cooling fan control
- 5000k HID headlights
- Engine oil pressurizing system for cold starts
- Oil & water recirculation system after engine shutdown to prevent turbo damage

Tires & wheels

- BMW forged 18”
- Front: 8J/18 + 15mm spacers, Toyo R888 225/40/18
- Rear: 9.5J/18 + 10mm spacers. Toyo R888 255/35/18 or Mickey Thompson ET Street Radial 245/40/18 or
Mickey Thompson ET Street drag 26x10.5-15

Performance:

- 0-100: ~4.5s
- 100-200: 7s
- Max speed: over 320 km/h

I've got about 1000 pictures of the whole build, but for the moment just a few pics of the car we started with and the finished ride :

BEFORE:




AFTER:














I' open to questions, comments, critics, anything, so fire away Also, got MANY more pictures, so if anybody's interested in anything in particular, ask. It would be WAY to much to post all the pics, as virtually EVERYTHING on the car has been modified in some way, but i'm sure you'll be interested in some stuff i did on the car.

regards
Aleksandar

[digitalsolo]

Love the color/wheel combo, stance is great too.

Engine bay pictures?

[Fuel]

Looks great- how about the weight specs?

I'm diggin that color.

[SAABmw]

Weight specs, left to right: dry weight, wet weight, wet including driver. Note the weight distribution



Engine bay:

[rao]

Looks nice

[thedude60126]

pm'd

[hefftone]

I dig it

[bpeters]

Very nice. It looks awesome.

[dirtbiker245]

very nice! Its always so nice to see somebody spend that much time on building the perfect vehicle like that im very impressed!

[///M3Augy]

Car sure is quality, but why a SAAB motor?

[SAABmw]

Many reasons.

- immensely strong, even with completely stock internals. Piston upgrade = engine strong enough for at least 700BHP. Above 700, conrod change needed. Nobody ever broke the crank, the most powerful engine ran standard crank and went above 1000BHP on ethanol.
- easy to tune to high power levels with minimal hardware upgrades, which are at least 3x cheaper then upgrading BMW engine to cope with same power
- able to cope with VERY bad fuel quality because of the way ECU senses knock and abnormal engine operation parameters, and automatically compensates for them. Complete safety with bad fuel, in short
- ability to put out high power even with very bad fuel
- weight distribution, compared to a big 6-cyl. up front. Try and get 50/50 distribution in an E30 with an M5 engine under the hood...

[hefftone]

Which year/model saab is the motor out of? I did'nt even read that before,....still dig this swap!

[sjpgoalie]

Car sure is quality, but why a SAAB motor?

Great engine, notice they didn't use the trans lol. I've seen the 2.3s run 400hp+ at over 200k miles on the block AND head. This is an older saab motor, a pre-1996 one I bet.

[SAABmw]

Doesn't really matter which model year you take the parts from, as long as it's the series of engines made by SAAB, and not Opel/GM, those suck. Saab 9000 MY 94-98, SAAB 900, 9-3, 9-5, whatever you like. It's all the same basic engine in all, so you can combine parts.

The engine i have is combined from 3 different types: block and crank are from SAAB 9000 B234i (used, with some 150K miles on them), atmo version of the engine. Conrods and pistons are from SAAB 9000 B234R 2.3l Aero version. Head is from a B235R 9-5 Aero.

But if you don't want to think about combining too much, just take a complete 2.3l engine from any SAAB 9000 MY 94-98, and that's it, that engine internals bone stock will hold up safely up to about 400-450-500BHP (depending on use and fuel used, ECU map, etc...), after that you'll need to upgrade the pistons, conrods hold up to ~700BHP, crank and block have been taken over 1000, nobody has ever had a failure with those.

SAAB needs lot less hardware upgrades to enable it to cope with very high power levels than any other engine would need, and if anything IS needed, it will usually require far cheaper mods than BMW engines. And after all that, try and run boosted BMW on 1,9bar of boost with a GT35 ballbearing turbo, on 93 octane fuel, and see how long before it knocks itself to pieces, let alone put 550BHP out...

[Maverick1225]

Wow very clean! I like it!

[goob86]

what did you use transmission wise?

[SAABmw]

All the details about the car, including the transmission specs, are in the description in the first post, before the pics.

[dynamowhum]

Very nicely done and well thought out package.

[Brent 930]

You really out did yourself, that is car show quality.

Enjoy the ride, if you dare to drive it and chance getting it scuffed.

[SAABmw]

To be honest, i still hold back a little driving it, exactly for that reason

[HAVEBOOST]

Aleksandar, Very impressive...I really like the youtube videos of your car...the laughter at the end of the one test ride tells it all! So...I am working on a similar project...would love to see some details of the bell housing and adaptation...as well the motor mounts and block attachments? Do you have more pics posted somewhere? Please feel free to e-mail me directly. Thanks...
HaveBoost

[SAABmw]

Got mail

[NicoyAKinG]

is that house of kolorz candy red? looks really nice.

[SAABmw]

No, it's actually a blend of 2 different PPG motorcycle paints and bases.

[d0m]

hi i absolutly love this converstion mate!! do you have any more pictures of the build stages??

what did you use to get the correct speed signal to the saab ecu mate?