My Garage Imaginarium

The Tank is done and installed. Too bad no one will see it. Next to button up the driveline and move on to the front end body work.

The driveline is back together and ready to rock. Picked up a bunch of 3/16" rod and going to start on the front fender tomorrow. Spitballing the design

Wheel well clearanced and reinforced. Ready to start the fender

Getting there. Tucked the diving board and clearanced it for the IC and oil cooler - worked as I imagined, conceals them well. I think I have a pretty good idea for what I will do with the front - cut down the iS airdam to fit under the tucked bumper and blend it with the fender flare. Then there is the splitter...

My SLR arms are shipping tomorrow, they will place the wheels 1" further out so I made the flare with that in mind.

Been too busy with other things this past week so I continued thinking up giggle worthy things to do and I've got another one. I finally figured out what I want to do for the grill that makes me happy. Going to put in an in-set plexiglass instead of the side grills, blacked out except around the perimeter where I will have a trip of super bright LEDs. I was also informed that my experimental picture looks like General Lee, which lead down a train of thought which ended with putting a big hammer and sickle on the doors.

These are the LEDs, 880 lumen per foot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0qNWox1HIg

The SLR kit arrived, looks amazing! The quality is first class and it's beefy enough for a jumbo jet. Machining is excellent and the spacers are made out of 7075-T6. They're pretty f'en far from "just aluminum". Installing this weekend.

Wow, those control arms look like a nice setup.

The tank on the diff carrier is also hilarious.

Carry on!

Thanks! Too bad it will never be seen by anyone but I know it's there and thinking about it will make me laugh.

Clawing ahead... got the news that my shocks should ship on Monday. Just waiting on the sway bar brackets.

Front fenders almost ready for finishing and paint. Just making the splitter now. Simon McBeath who designed the wing, said that I should make a 25-30mm splitter if possible, so I'm starting with 30. Cutting is easier than adding. It looks a bit ridiculous but so does the rest of the car. It'll require some serious bracing.

I will need to make a fence to close the gap under the air dam. Any suggestions for material to use? I was thinking angle aluminum and cut it into petals for the radii...

More awesome.

Old school hidden headlights would be amazing on a BMW. Why has nobody thought of that before?

The aluminum might work. But how about the garden edging all the ricer kids use to make lips?

Dusterbd13 wrote: The aluminum might work. But how about the garden edging all the ricer kids use to make lips?

I haven't gone to see options but do you think it'd be strong enough? Not that it really needs to be especially strong. Do you know what it's made of?

Shocks and injectors arrived last week, in time for the long weekend here.

UPS usually delivers after 5pm so I went to work thinking I wouldn't miss anything. They delivered before noon and I had to stare at this picture from my wife all freaking day. Barely got anything done.

Finally home...

My electronics geek wizard dad came by and repinned the injector harness for the ID1700s

This is why ID is worth every penny. Changing fuel type, injector size and car has been sitting all year. Put in some E98, using the parameters on their site, did some math to adjust fuelling and it fired right up and ran better than ever.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYRQ0a748H4

Installed the shocks along with the SLR suspension kit, everything went smoothly. Ran out of time to do the last rear corner but now that I know what I want to do with it, it'll be quick this weekend, along with the GC swaybar links which should be here today.

Nice to see the "office" lit up and ready for work again

The fat Penskes interfered with the shock mount on the trailing arm. Swapped the bearings top to bottom and inverted the shocks. I like it better this way anyway, with the shock body and oil line stationary.

All canisters mounted and shocks installed!

Next to mount the splitter and then off to the rollers and track. Making the mounting stanchions for the splitter. Love how ace MIG welding makes me look

The SLR kit looks awesome. I thought this was a track car? Wouldn't the increased steering angle from the bump spacer/tie rod relocation be more for drifting? Maybe you're more after the improved steering ratio.

It would definitely help drifters but I've always thought BMW steering is too slow, and I have one of the faster BMW racks, 95 M3. Granted much of it is probably due to my immobility being a big guy but I end up having to regrip the wheel for turn in for too many turns in BMWs compared to other cars like the FT86 twins. So the faster steering is definitely welcome, in addition to the fixed bump steer, roll center and wider track (and geeky sexiness).

Got 'er buttoned up and off to the dyno.

It was largely a success, we maxed out the turbo with 814whp. We couldn't get enough heat in the slicks to make them hook, so it slipped every time at peak torque.

The not so good news is that towards the end I noticed a bunch of coolant sprayed around the overflow cap and a trickle on the ground. This usually means an overheat or a blown headgasket. I did have the coolant overfilled and the cap sprayed which it should not do by design, so those two factors could have just meant that the cap was failing and the system pushed out the excess coolant. The level did stabilize.

I'm paranoid about these things so we'll see. I got a new cap and put the overflow hose into a bottle. I ran it up and down the block at around 16psi and there was no overflow. Nothing sprayed, nothing flowed into the bottle and after an hour or two, the hoses were back to normal and there was no pressure hiss opening the cap. I also borrowed a friend's combustion gas coolant tester, the blue fluid stuff you jam into the cap opening and when hot, the steaming gasses bubble through the fluid and CO2 turns it yellow. The test was negative.

The pessimist in me still says that I'm not out of the woods, the track will tell the tale. But at least now I'm satisfied enough that it is at least not bad enough to go to the track with. There we'll really see if it's truly happy.

Pretty much ready to go now. Splitter made and mounted. It goes all the way back to the firewall, with 2 1" square tubing braces holding it to the engine cross member, 2 to the frame rails, and the heim joint struts to the bumper. Got my wife to stand on it, didn't move at all, suspension just compressed a bit.

814 at the wheels

That might be a handful coming out of the sharper turns.

However, should be fun on the straights.

And the car is looking really good.

Thanks! I've got racelogic traction control on it, works great! I can put the hammer down in any gear and it just goes. The rear dances just a little but it uses all the grip available.

Ok. I autocross with 425 horse and no traction control. It's a handful. Couldn't imagine that much more power and no traction control.

One of these days I will turn it off and see what happens, I've yet to do that since I turbocharged the car :) One thing the dyno taught me is that these slicks don't grip for E36 M3 when they're cold or even warm. And spinning them up is a sure way to get some heat in there. The RL is just magic though. It's funny you can actually see in the logs how much boost you can actually use in each gear because the system cuts fuel until the axle speed differential is at the desired level, which slows down the turbo. 16psi worth of power is the most I can put down in 2nd gear even with the huge wing. I'm curious to try it at the track after a few laps with proper tire heat, hopefully if the engine holds up.

One headlight done. Even with a weak mini battery, it's like staring at the sun. You can't really see it in the third pic but there's a lexan panel over the lights, with translucent film on both sides. I think the next guy who says they didn't point by because they didn't see me can officially be reported to have their driver's license revoked due to medical conditions

Ready to go in. Just waiting on my dad to make me voltage controllers and I'll hook them into the highbeam circuit. Poor battery is dying but the brightness still made the iphone camera go mental. I want to say masking off each LED was a pain in the ass but it was actually fun.

Very impressive. Keep up the great work, this project is above and beyond!

Wow! This is very inspirational!

this is the craziest build I've ever seen.

bravo.