brillomaster Posted March 21, 2015 Share Posted March 21, 2015 (edited) Right, been meaning to start a thread on here for some time about our track car antics, but finally got around to doing it... so, as most of you will know, this isnt our first track car... the first was a dark green BMW e36 328, which we had for £410 off ebay. Lasted 12 trackdays until we had an unfortunate coming together with a wall at Rockingham. So, scrapped that one, and bought a E46 330ci for £1030. which lasted 5 and a half trackdays until we ran the oil dry, and lunched the engine. got it towed home and sold it on ebay, got £530 which was pretty good going! So, that takes us to track car number three - this time its a BMW E46 328i saloon, bought for the sum of £775 She's done 177,000 miles, but wouldnt be able to tell... the engine is strong and quiet, the gearbox is good, clutch is light, brakes are strong. As you can see its also been lowered a fair way, however when i bought it i wast sure if it was lowered on springs or full coilovers (hoping for coilovers). and already running on 18" wheels, plus the interior has poverty spec manually adjustable cloth seats, rather than the heavier electric leather seats. The car had 5 small niggles when we bought it, which were: front right had a slow puncture steering wheel shakes a bit at 65mph - suspect wheel imbalance exhaust back box has a hole in it throttle pedal is quite sticky and stiff seats were damp from being steam cleaned nothing major to worry about - just needed to air the car out and swap on some old wheels. So, onto the track readiness - nothing too serious as at this stage, if the car is a dud on track we'll need to put all the interior back in to sell it again. So easy stuff came out - rear seats, spare wheel and some boot trim, and thats it for now. just enough to put in our harnesses: unfortunately these things are never straightforward - managed to cross thread one of the front seat bolts immediately after taking it out and trying to put it back in again - most annoying. how can a bolt immediately cross thread? bmw must have made the thread out of cheese, clearly. the other straightforward mod was swapping in my steering wheel - the old wheel had an airbag, but it wasnt connected, didnt even have any connectors on (!) so that was an easy swap. last bit of prep was in the engine bay - first off, top up the oil and the water (clever idea to check the oil... ) and last mod is a great free one you can do to bmw E46s - the three nuts at the top of the front struts are in slotted holes, so you can loosen the nuts, move the struts inward and retighten, and get instant negative camber with no effect on toe. from far left to far right it adds about -1 degree. since the previous owner had lowered the car, he'd moved the struts all the way out to try and correct the camber drop from lowering - however since we're running purely as a track car, i moved them all the way in . front wheels now have very noticeable camber, should be good for front end grip (at the expense of tyre wear when driving to the track). unfortunately no coilovers, just lowering springs. but better than standard. Annoyingly the wheels we kept from the 330ci dont fit on the 328i! they're identical on width, diameter, offset, bolt diameter... but not wheel bore (!) - the 330ci wheel bores are a couple of mm smaller than the 328i wheels . so going to have to flog them since they're worthless to us now, and ideally find a set that fit, or just run 8" front and rear - or maybe find a set of staggered 8" fronts, 9" rears, so we can run 245 front 255 rears, at the moment it will have to be 245s all round, which might make the car a bit oversteery, especially with so much front camber. So thats that for now - once we know for sure that car is good on track then i'll do a full interior strip from the front seats back, then we'll look to get some decent tyres, and decent brake pads - the car currently has drilled discs and a good amount of brake pad material, but i dont trust cheap drilled discs on track in case they crack, so would replace with solid discs and yellowstuff pads, along with a rebleed - our preferred set up. If anyone is interested, our first shakedown session is next saturday, 28th March at the slightly amended Bedford Autodrome. Booking through MSV Trackdays, if anyone wants to join us. after that I hope to do one a month, over the summer i've seen weekend dates at rockingham, donnington, croft, cadwell... all excellent tracks! Will try and keep this posted updated with upgrades as and when they go on, and this is also where trackday videos will go Edited October 20, 2015 by brillomaster 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Will370z Posted March 21, 2015 Share Posted March 21, 2015 Good luck with this one chaps. Looks like a lot of motor for the money. Keep checking that oil Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stutopia Posted March 21, 2015 Share Posted March 21, 2015 Third time lucky! Should be fun to follow, get some footage from the shakedown Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alexwitham Posted March 21, 2015 Share Posted March 21, 2015 Love a bargain track car Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
350zedd Posted March 21, 2015 Share Posted March 21, 2015 I don't suppose you'll be doing any venues in S Wales will you? ie. Pembrey Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brillomaster Posted March 21, 2015 Author Share Posted March 21, 2015 havent done any in wales as yet - pembrey and llandow are a bit far away.... have considered going to anglesey but thats a good 3 hours as well! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brillomaster Posted March 21, 2015 Author Share Posted March 21, 2015 think i've worked out the wheel issue... my guess is someone put hubs from a BMW E39 5 series on, which has a centre bore of 74.1mm, whereas usual bmw 3 series centre bore is 72.6mm. might need to get some adaptors so we can run the wheels we want to, or alternatively buy a set of 5 series alloys! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GMballistic Posted March 21, 2015 Share Posted March 21, 2015 Very interesting read Brillo. In for the track day videos. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keyser Posted March 22, 2015 Share Posted March 22, 2015 Nice one guys Look forwards to watching your antics on track again this year - at a safe distance in my little open top track toy - I can hopefully get some video as well Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wasso Posted March 22, 2015 Share Posted March 22, 2015 Congrats gents You'll be entering Britcar before you know it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LRF4N Posted March 22, 2015 Share Posted March 22, 2015 Did you not fancy a change from a 3 series? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brillomaster Posted March 22, 2015 Author Share Posted March 22, 2015 haha briefly! but for us its the perfect package - big enough for me to be able to drive comfortably to and from tracks with all our spares and tools in, great bmw 3 series rwd lairiness and straight-six soundtrack, nearly 200 bhp, plus they're cheap cheap cheap, with plenty of spare parts and tuning options available. only other cars you can get for less than a grand would be an MX5 (too small and slow unless you turbocharge it) or an MR2 (too old, can have twitchy handling). but we find that a 3 series with brakes and suspension upgrades is already faster than a lot of things on track, and with some decent tyres it'll corner well as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LRF4N Posted March 22, 2015 Share Posted March 22, 2015 Fair enough. Wasn't saying it's a bad choice they are good cars. Iv got a 325 ci just now Just thought you'd want to try something different lol Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ekona Posted March 22, 2015 Share Posted March 22, 2015 My MR2 is younger than that and definitely doesn't have twitchy handling Another fine buy chaps, great job Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LRF4N Posted March 22, 2015 Share Posted March 22, 2015 But the mark 3 has zero testosterone 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ekona Posted March 22, 2015 Share Posted March 22, 2015 Why do you think I strapped a turbo to it Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LRF4N Posted March 22, 2015 Share Posted March 22, 2015 Never driven one, only heard good reviews about them. But even if it put out 500 brake and out handled an F1 car it would still look like it does No criticism of you buying one, I just have looks high up on any car requirements list 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ekona Posted March 22, 2015 Share Posted March 22, 2015 I don't, that's why I bought a 350z ragtop! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LRF4N Posted March 22, 2015 Share Posted March 22, 2015 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
brillomaster Posted March 22, 2015 Author Share Posted March 22, 2015 Hmm so wheel balancing hasn't fixed the steering wheel shudder... Gonna have to get it up on a ramp and check for play in the steering rack - suppose it could be possible there is some play somewhere having done 177,000 miles! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ken Posted March 22, 2015 Share Posted March 22, 2015 We should keep the 18in spare wheels, at the rate we change track cars they are bound to fit something we buy 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wmr1980 Posted March 22, 2015 Share Posted March 22, 2015 Cool! Look forward to seeing you at another track day! Just a quick question - I thought harnesses were supposed to be mounted higher: Any vids of the crash? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Angrybiker Posted March 22, 2015 Share Posted March 22, 2015 Why do you think I strapped a turbo to it If u don't mind me asking, how much did it cost to turbo your mr2? Has it affected the reliability much? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ekona Posted March 22, 2015 Share Posted March 22, 2015 £2k + fitting, which I coulve done myself as I've done plenty before but I'm getting lazy in my old age so got someone else to do it this time. I chose a kit based on the TTE one specifically because I know reliability wouldn't be affected to any great degree that way, it's a very solid piece of engineering. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Angrybiker Posted March 22, 2015 Share Posted March 22, 2015 Sounds reasonable, especially when u compare to going FI with a Z Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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