E30 Race car build from South Africa.

[SA E30]

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.

[SA E30]

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.

[///M3Augy]

OOO Subscribed for more!

[odortiz]

very nice.

[SA E30]

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.

[osborni]

Very nice!

[vdshenoy]

Very cool.

[jayhudson]

Interesting that the main hoop diagonal brace runs from top left to bottom right just like our LH drive cars. I'd have thought it would be reversed for a driver sitting on the right. Any reason for that?

Jay

[Gleb]

Good luck!

subscribed

[n2bimmer]

nice work.

[odortiz]

move the fuel tank as far forward as you can. IMO, the polar moment of inertia and balance of the car will change less with fuel load the closer it is to the center of mass to the car. fuel is heavy.

[SA E30]

Interesting that the main hoop diagonal brace runs from top left to bottom right just like our LH drive cars. I'd have thought it would be reversed for a driver sitting on the right. Any reason for that?

Jay

That was an oversight by our cage builder, and is one of the things I wasn't happy with. It will get changed in the future but not right at this point in time.

[TIATO]

That was an oversight by our cage builder, and is one of the things I wasn't happy with. It will get changed in the future but not right at this point in time.

Wow, some oversight. You must have been upset. Quick fix would be to weld another diagnoal in and be done with it.

[Hugo D]

Nice car

[SA E30]

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

[lughed]

You have some wickedl ooking competition but you have an E30 so you'll alright. Good luck

[clopez95m3]

It's all about the fender flares.

BTW does Sansossio have a long lost brother in South Africa (the flat black E36)?

Carlos.

[SA E30]

It is all about fender flares, haha. Then u have a car like that e90 330i with stock bodywork running 225 45 17 R Comps being one of the quickest in class.

That black e36 is a crazy car. It started out life as a red 4dr 325i, now it's got a boosted s50b30euro motor, 2 doors, fibreglass roof fenders, and quarters.

I would say currently he is 2nd quickest out of the regulars with the blue opel reckord way quicker than anyone. The scary thing is he is only running his low power motor ATM. From what I could get out of him his other motor is a Chevrolet Nascar motor.

Thank god I'm not in his class... not yet anyways.

[SA E30]

Seems like the panelbeater is finally doing some work on the car, but he's bitching like you can't believe.

From the pictures the fenders have been pulled around 2cm already and the wheels still stick out the well by around 2cm.

Although he seems incredibly confident in being able to pull out the rear fenders a bit squarer to give more inner wheel well clearance for the wider rubber that will be on the car a bit later. The front well those fenders are just resting on the wheels atm, The front should still go down about 1-2cm.

Currently the front track is 4cm wider than the rear (or 2cm each side). This is due to e36 stuff in the front and e30 stuff in the rear. This gives the ability for wider rims in the rear.





With the arms set to max positive camber and the camber plates set to max you get this, crazy amounts of camber. We were shooting for around 5deg neg camber adjustment (due to the bridgestone semi's liking massive amounts of camber) guess we got a little bit more



This is the arms and plates set to max pos camber. Also note the fender resting on the tyre.



Tubular arms, spare subframe is being modified as we speak, but to be just like the proper DTM ones. As this stands the current roll centre is 3cm lower than standard, but with the other sub frame that will be increased to 5cm.

We need to figure out a solution to the tie rod ends, as now they are going to induce bump steer in this setup, and they are too short for the wheel track. Seems like we will use a threaded rod and rod end, ala eary DTM and as can also be seen in many space frame and open wheel cars.

[skylinenegro]

subbed!

[lughed]

That black e36 is a crazy car. It started out life as a red 4dr 325i, now it's got a boosted s50b30euro motor, 2 doors, fibreglass roof fenders, and quarters.

.

Sounds like an E30 335i i know of

[stealthbeam]

Looks like your in need of a E36 M3 R&P

[SA E30]

R&p ?

[IWannaBMW]

rack and pinion

[SA E30]

Ahh, ok.

Well we're using an e46 M3 rack, with BMW Motorsport style rack ends, as can be seen in that picture the standard ones just aren't long enough and they will create bump steer in the standard position.

A bit of an update on the car our panelbeater has gone and chopped the fender lips off front and back and is in the process of building new fenders lips. Something along the lines of this.



We should be recieving the car next week with completed body work and paint.