Hey all. Gonna try not to make this too long, but no guarantees. :p
Been in the E30 scene for a year or 2 now. Bought my 89 325i as a daily driver to make into a track car and eventually racecar, but as I got to making it more of a racecar I started enjoying it less on the street and missing my old daily driver. So I started doing some research on the racing that I planned to do, and eventually came to the conclusion that an E36 318is would make a much better racecar for me while allowing me to put some creature comforts back in the E30 and take it back to full time daily driver. In the mean time, I'm currently doing NASA Time Trials in the E30 while building the E36.
Obligatory pics of the E30:
I bought a roller E36 318is that a local guy was planning to swap an S50 into but never got around to it. Bought a junkyard M42 from a 94 318is a few weeks later. Plans for the E36 are to FULLY gut it and get it as light as possible, cage it (will be building that myself very soon), then get the motor in and figure out how to make her run. I'm dreading the "make it run" part, since I'm probably going to try and remove all unnecessary wiring before putting the motor in. And while I've got a reasonable amount of automotive experience, I've never removed a motor from one of these cars or worked with an M42, so I'll have to figure out how it goes back together as I go.
Pics of the E36 project in progress:
I'll be running it with NASA in GTS1 of the German Touring Series. GTS classes are divided by power/weight ratio, and GTS1 is the slowest of them. Other than meeting the power/weight requirement for your class, the rules are pretty much open to anything. If the car is at 140whp, it will have to weigh 2390 without me in it. Should be a fun little racecar!
I'll probably run GTS1 for a year or two til I'm fully comfortable with myself and the car, and once I get bored with that I'll likely turbo the M42 and go up to GTS3 where there's some very intimidating competition.
Setup is pretty basic:
-Stock M42 with E30 intake mani and the basics- intake, exhaust, probably COP conversion
-JB Racing M20 flywheel that I bought for the E30 and never got around to installing
-lightweight unsprung 6-puck clutch
-AST 4100 shocks and Vorshlag camber plates
-a nice differential
-RTAB limiters temporarily... spherical bearing RTABs this winter
-15x7 stock E30 M3 meshes temporarily... will become rain/street wheels when race wheels get bought
-15x8 TRMotorsports wheels made for the E30 M3 later
-225/45/15 Hoosier R6
-probably a megasquirt whenever they come out with a diyPNP that works with the E36 318
-M3 front bumper
The rules for aero parts are completely open, so I plan to play around with that more than anything and try to get rid of as much drag as possible. With such low power I'm more concerned with getting rid of drag than adding downforce, but I've bought a few really good books and learned that it's possible to do both. Got some plans that should be fun. :cool:
That's about it for now. I've been trying to get started on it for a couple months now but everytime I started to bring it in the garage the E30 needed something, but thankfully the E30 seems to be pretty solid again. Will be hitting the E36 hard over the next month. A friend found this picture on bimmerforums recently which really gave me a hit of inspiration... I hadn't been that excited about the looks of the car, but turns out it's gonna look pretty amazing!
Topic: jpreston's E36 318is GTS1 build (Read 4131 times)