GRM is totally to blame for this- SPEC E46 content

codrus (Forum Supporter) said:

jgrewe said:

In reply to Somebeach (Forum Supporter) :

In this case the E46 330 is the only car in the class. You can also use the sedan version with success, I think I read that you have to work a little harder to get it down to the minimum weight.

The chassis has some issues when put on track but the rules allow for known fixes to be applied.

FWIW, I believe you can use the E46 323/325/328 chassis if you swap in the 3.0L drivetrain from the 330.

 

Yes, this chassis is a 328ci automatic. I pulled everything off the wrecked 330. The parts that caught me off guard that need to be swapped are the trailing arms! I knew the brakes, axles and driveshaft had to go. I had to swap the diff flange to the 330 CV joint style. The master cylinder is a mm or two bigger on the 330 too.

The throttle pedal is different between the auto and manual cars as well. The auto pedal is harder to push the last bit to keep you from making the trans kick down a gear too easily.

I had to make a junkyard run to get a trailing arm and brake caliper since the original parts from the wrecked car are lost in some woods in eastern Florida.

So, I ran out of tubing. I stuffed about 95ft into the car and with the door bar design and front intrusion bars I need about 6 more feet. TW Metals in Orlando did me a solid and I have one stick on the way for the same price per foot they sold me 5 sticks for.

In the mean time I looked for a seat. I have sat in a few halo style seats and none of them fit me very well. I'm built like a turtle. Short legs, long torso, broad shoulders. My legs barely reach the ground, if it wasn't for all my upper body mass I would float about 4" off the ground. Since none that I've tried from the big euro names fit anyway I went with a Racequip and saved about $300. It meets the same FIA 8855-1999 standard and I can use the few bucks to buy the 2 part foam I use to perfect the fit.

I'm going to make the seat mount attach to the cage and cross over to the tunnel. First I needed to figure out where the seat will fit.

I have to have the bottom of the seat so far forward none of the base plates that are offered will work.

I will need to notch the tunnel right by the shifter to move the seat as far as I can toward the middle. The next issue is when I sit down I'm basically as tall as someone 6'4"( I have a friend that I see eye to eye with when we are on bar stools) so I have to lean the seat back to keep my head off the roof.

Once I get the stick of DOM in hand I can make the seat mount.

I worked on one of the chassis weak points and made some plates to reinforce the front sway bar mounts. I think I'm going to order the rear sway bar reinforcements, they are a little more complex.

That thing was still smoking when I took the shot, need to clean it up and get some paint on it.

I have the same problem with seats as you, I consistently fit in Recaro SPG XL's...

Consider running bars side to side from door bars to the tunnel in front of and behind the seat, and then drop the seat and mounts in between.  You would run two bars/mounts front to rear that your actual seat mounts attach to.  This way you could, if desired, drop the seat to the floor so you don't have to recline to get headroom, unless you are more comfortable that way 

docwyte said:

I have the same problem with seats as you, I consistently fit in Recaro SPG XL's...

I looked at those but IIRC they had about the same dimensions, maybe a 1/2 narrower in the shoulders than the Racequip. They are nice but I couldn't justify the price. I have to remove the bottom padding in the Racequip to get a half way comfortable fit in the shoulders. I'm going to have to make a foam pad to keep my shoulder blades supported, my shoulders still don't curl enough to get the needed backing for the belts.

At the bottom of the seat I have almost 2" of width to fill to feel snug. I have a 33-34" waist and 44+" shoulders.

More 2 part foam!

jfryjfry, I'm going to go from the door bars to the tunnel, like you say. I was going to run some angle between them front to back for the FIA seat mounts to ride on. I'm so used to feeling like I'm sitting in a tea cup I would be comfortable in an F1 car. I won't know if I got it right until I drive it on track,lol. Seat mounting is in my top two hated things when building a car, the other is exhaust. The car has the class specified exhaust system so that was a win for me.

OK, back to the build. I got in a fight with my welder while trying to finish up the door bars and seat mount. I had to end up grinding a section of weld clean off and redo it. I threw a bunch of parts at the welder to fix a wire feed problem. New drive wheel, new liner in the gun, new tip and it feeds smooth again.

I've been waiting for the temperature to cooperate and stay above 60F so i can prime and paint the interior. I've even experimented with one of those oil filled radiator looking electric heaters. I put one in the car and threw a blanket over the greenhouse and it got the temp of the metal up to 80F with no problem. Worst case scenario I heat up the chassis, paint, ventilate it well and put the heater back in it for the day.

I had to come up with a way to hold the steering wheel quick release. I picked up some DOM tubing with an ID close to the quick release spline mount. I had to bore it to two different ID's to adapt to the column and the weld on mount.

My concern was how far the thing would stick into the car and be in the way of trying to crawl out. I need to put the seat in and try to get passed it.

I have some room to trim the assembly about 1/2" by cutting the coupler and the quick release stud a little bit. I'd rather put a spacer between the steering wheel and QR to put the wheel where I want it. As it is right now the wheel is 2" closer to the driver than the stock location. The column tilts and telescopes so I have that going for me.

Hopefully priming the interior tomorrow!

Primer day! At a certain point you have to just go for it. It is just the interior of a race car... I had some friends that spent all winter building a new car for the TransAm series back in the 80's. They took the car up to Mosport for its first event and the car came back in a ball. So, I have the attitude of the car being written off in my mind as soon as its done.

The temperature is going to drop to the high 50's tonight, Florida problems, I know. How can I keep the temps up in the shop that doesn't have a furnace??

"Hey honey, do you have anything that needs to be fired?"

I loaded up a kiln and set it as close to the car I dared. With the shop closed up I have found a cone 6(about 2250F) firing will keep the temps quite comfortable overnight.

Color and clear coat tomorrow and another firing!

That's definitely a way to heat up the garage that i had never thought of.

Lack of a Kiln - and currently a garage - might have something to do with it.

The kiln kept the edge off the temp drop. Body metal was above 65F when I checked on it this morning. I got the color and clear on it tonight but didn't get pics because my phone died.

I did get a Haribo delivery from Bimmerworld. They threw a few of these in boxes.

Paint reveal day. There are a couple thin color spots, a couple dry clear spots. Oh well, I can fix little areas later.

Next I can install some covers I made for the big holes in the back seat area.

Since the last episode I moved my shop. Long story, kind of funny. I will save a lot of money but I have 1000 less sqft.

I've been spoiled. It sucks.

No more room for project parkour with space to roller skate around the cars. Only two cars in the shop at a time, one on the 4 post lift and one on the floor under it. I still have my racks that hold 6 cars but something has to live in the trailer now. The trailer dweller has been the E46.

I'm working on getting my Bugeye ready to sell. It needs a little paint work and the engine resealed. Once that is done it will go to the trailer.

In the mean time I've been gathering parts for the E46. The latest boxes to show up had an Mfactory LSD and some diff bearings in them.

I'm going to try the Mfactory version 2 plate diff in the car and see how the car feels and what the dataq tells me. I like that it is user serviceable and adjustable. Its a 1.5 or 2 way with 20 plates. It comes with some thicker plates and different springs for fine tuning. It all sounds good on paper. If I don't like it I can always set it up as a 2 way and sell it to a drifter.

The problem is there is almost no data out there on setting up this version of the 188 diff. BMW doesn't publish anything. I have all the specs for the E36 188 diff but it uses a different bearing retaining system.

My plan is to check the pattern on the crown gear and measure everything before I pull it apart. I'm hoping the pinion bearings are in good shape because that will take a variable out of reassembly. Replace the crush tube and torque it to the right amount of resistance.

If I get that far, lash and pattern should be pretty easy. BMW only shows pattern images with "bad" and "good". Its the same pattern you look for on every diff I ever built. I just need to find my tube of GM gear marking paste. I got a kit with shims that move the diff side to side. The factory uses different thickness snap rings. I can get a kit with a range of snap rings for a few hundred bucks, if I do any more diffs, I'll spring for that.

If anybody has any secret squirrel info on setting up the E46 version of the 188, please post it!

I moved the E46 into the shop to give me a fun car to work on. My new shop situation doesn't give me the space to set up my inflatable paint booth outside so I started looking at wraps. I found a good yellow that fits with my personal race car builds. I watched a bunch of videos and went with some cheap wrap that is all over ebay, the seller has over 200K reviews. I figured if I wasted $250 of materials learning I'd be happier than wasting $900 on the good 3M stuff, also, race car, I'll have a chance to try again when it gets smudged.

I thought I'd see just how good the surface needs to be. The car has been painted and the top surfaces are dead. I wet sanded a section of hood with 600 and another with 1200. I chose a spot with some gatoring in the paint too. The front area is the dead paint, then the 600 section and the 1200 is near the cowl vents.

The cheaper wrap doesn't have the really good bubble release texture like the more expensive stuff. I got this piece down without too much trouble though. Experience tinting windows on cars over the years helped. You can spot trouble before you get a crease. Wrap is way easier than tint.

They call it "high gloss", I compare it to late 80's Dodge orange peel. I guess it will be OK...for a race car. I'm used to ending up with paint that looks like glass. The sanding didn't matter to the finish but it did help the wrap stick. It was a little tougher to pull off the 600 and 1200 sanded areas.

I will break out my favorite tool for wet sanding large areas and go over the whole car to knock off any fuzz.

I worked on wrapping the hood first. Large flat area with some curves at the front, I thought it would be a good place to practice a few tricks. I laid out a piece and peeled the backing and protective top sheet off. As I'm trying to adjust it and "glass out" the hood I remember a comment a guy on a video made, "This one sticks more at first compared to the others, might be good or bad." The others being 3M and Vvivid. The stuff I have is Autogoody and it is all over the bay site. Look for the grid printed on the backer.

I watched a guy wrap a hood in 7 minutes in one video, I think he was using 3M. He had the hood on a folding stand and could peel the wrap up and pull it to get the most wrinkles out before even starting with the squeegee. That wasn't happening. I couldn't pull more than 25% of the hood up from any side and would lift the hood on its hinges.

I was going to see what I could do with the squeegee and then probably re-do the hood with someone to help place it the first time.

As I was playing/learning, I noticed how opaque the film was. I could see the color change as I pressed it down over the dark colored hood. You can see the difference in color over the hole for the hood pins.

That kind of wrecks one of the reasons I wanted to wrap it. I was hoping to be able to grab any color body panel and throw it on the car with a quick wrap job. I found that only the most expensive wraps won't show color through.

Here is the hood with the finished wrap job.

I realized that I'm fighting this stuff to end up with a gloss finish that isn't to my liking and it won't let me grab a fender from the junk yard and put it on quickly. The cost of the good wrap vinyl makes the job more expensive than I can paint the car for. I talked to the property manager of the warehouse complex and she had no problem with me setting up my bounce house/spray booth in the parking lot. She knows I'm not trying to be a body shop painting cars every week. The place empties out at 5pm anyway, I have any evening and all weekends when nobody is around.

I pulled the rest of the trim, lights and handles off the car and sanding begins tonight.

Ever have a month when it seems like everything you own breaks? My truck ate another VP44 injection pump, they seem to last about 125K miles so it was due. This is the 4th one on the truck.

Then my son's 528iT needed the coolant pipes under the manifold done. No fun.

I finally get to sand on the car and I thought I let the smoke out of the motor of my small compressor. After some poking at it with a multi meter it was the pressure switch that melted. I decided to hook up my big compressor that I haven't needed since I bought a battery powered impact. I bought a VFD to run the 3 phase motor and had to figure out the right settings to make it work.

Then one of the clothes dryers and an AC system at my apartments took a crap.

In three weeks I finally got the 5 hours to get 95% of the car sanded. I hit it with an air file and 180 grit paper to knock a lot of paint off and see just how wavy the panels are. It looks pretty good. Then two trips around the car with the DA and 180 grit followed by 320.

I still need to do the bumpers and some trim pieces.

The final step before sealer and painting is wet sanding it with 400. If I was going with a metallic paint I would sand it with 600 because the scratches would show through.

If the weather cooperates I should be able to spray this weekend.

This is what non-cooperative weather looks like. It looks like I'll use this weekend to fine tooth comb the little blemishes that I would normally just cover with strategic sticker placement.

Its just supposed to be a rain maker, but that is enough wreck paint plans.

Good luck with the paint and the storm.

Well, Helene put 30" of water in my apartment building and Milton took a lot of shingles off my house and spread them around the neighborhood.

Dealing with two insurance claims isn't fun. I needed automotive therapy so here is where I'm at tonight. Tomorrow I'll inflate my booth and spray it before heading out for the evening to see Blues Traveler 

I'm half way through a 2hr wait after applying sealer. Color will go on quickly. Directions call for 10 min between coats so I can pretty much go around the car a few times until I have coverage.

Once I'm happy with the color I have to wait 20 min before clear can go on. I'm using Southern Polyurethane production clear. Two wet coats back to back and a 30 min wait after that if I want a third.

The weird look on the sealer is the light coming through the plastic.

Finished the job as the sun went down. I was running out of light during the first coat of clear so there is some "lace" to file off. 

I didnt have time to get shots of it in the booth because I ran out of time before the concert.

I had to shove the booth in the back of my truck because it wouldn't deflate naturally in time for me to make the show.

This was the final stop of the tour. They still put on a good show. I saw them in Vail back in '93, berkeley I'm getting old.

My dad was a big Blues Traveler fan, thus we all were growing up. I swore John Popper died, but I guess I'm just remembering a heart attack or something that almost got him (because that sure looks like him in your picture).

On the Spec car, not sure if I missed it, but I'd wholeheartedly recommend Kevin Tulay for thinning your harness. I was dead set that I was going to do it myself (felt like it was something that would take some time, but totally doable...and that's still probably accurate) and my buddy who was building his Spec car with me at same time was set that he was going to pay Kevin to do it. Luckily, I eventually acquiesced and we both sent our harnesses off. I'd have never been able to get it as neat and tidy as it ended up. Opted for Deutsch connectors on most everything, added wire drops with said connectors for future plans such as diff cooler and two different spots for cool shirt cooler. It's pretty slick. And much lighter. 

Either way, car looks great. Look forward to finished product. 

I've heard good things about Kevin's service and I think like you, I could probably pick my way through the job. I will probably end up sending mine to him because there are other things that are more fun to do. It won't happen this winter though.

I'm planning on getting the car on track the end of January to shake it down and then my son is going to do his first track day the middle of February. I'm looking to see who has the new Hoosier RCES tires in stock, can't find any yet.

jgrewe said:

I've heard good things about Kevin's service and I think like you, I could probably pick my way through the job. I will probably end up sending mine to him because there are other things that are more fun to do. It won't happen this winter though.

I'm planning on getting the car on track the end of January to shake it down and then my son is going to do his first track day the middle of February. I'm looking to see who has the new Hoosier RCES tires in stock, can't find any yet.

And I'm looking for good deals on RR's that people won't be using!

Made rear quarter windows this weekend. I'm waiting for a stock trim piece to re install the back window.

I also started on the front bumper. The parts car came with the M3 copy bumper but it got ripped off the front of the car when I unloaded it. Instead of the factory plastic slide brackets I'm using dzus fasteners. I have a rough idea of the side mounts below the fenders but I need to try to weld some 1/8" aluminum with my spool gun.  Not fun.

I installed some interior hole covers.

In reply to jgrewe :

I pulled my bumper off (well, loose) unloading at the house last time. I got it reattached reasonably to the aluminum bumper bar and feel fine using factory bolts up through bumper shocks, but side mounts are done. Be curious to see your solution there. 

I'm planning to try these: 

Spearfishin reminded me about Kevin Tulay at the perfect time. The car is now wireless and the harness is on the way to be thinned. I had cut a bunch of wires that I knew were for the stereo and it still was over 30lbs. 

I got to work on the fun stuff. I made the passenger side door interior skin in preparation for the Impaxx foam like the driver's side.

I made a little progress on the bumper mounts too. These will mount to the holes the stock plastic mounts use. I'm not really happy with the look, they may get re-made once I have proof of concept. 

The mount extends out to the bumper cover. Once I get it attached to the cover I can mark the aluminum mount for the stock bolts and holes on the inner fender.