DirtE30 - 1990 BMW 325i

[Senor_Taylor]

Drove the car around Friday and Sunday enjoying having a car that actually functioned like a regular vehicle. Something just seems right about driving an E30 in the snow. Me, Matthew, Zach, Paul, and a few others went out to a vineyard on route 50 for Castro's birthday it was a beautiful locale. I snagged some photos while we were there.



Sunday morning I work up early and drove it to Summit for Rounds 3 and 4 of the Refrigerator bowl series. I didn't need to tow this time since my lights worked, which was very nice to not worry about. The car handled much better than I expected. The previous event, the car was really tail happy and would step out decently bad under heavy braking. Since then, I got the new shocks and stiffer springs installed in the front (among other things) and this really tied the car together. Firm, planted, predictable; it was a blast to drive. The car goes where you tell it to and you can get just the right amount of rotation coming into a turn with decent pedal play. My lines were bad, my inputs were sloppy, whatever, that's not the point. The car feels great, and it's only going to fell better with new bushings and a better alignment in the rear.



The morning sessions were a lot of fun and between runs, Jake, Matt, Ryan, and I would all hop out and compare times. It was a lot of fun, and the evening sessions looked to be even more exciting with more high speed sections of track. While we are off getting lunch, it seems someone "found" the GoPro I had attached to my car, but luckily it ended up in the classroom. I didn't know this until the end of the day, so I don't have any video of the evening sessions. The sucks tremendously because I really wanted shots of the flying through the carousel, which is a concrete, highly cambered turn similar to the famous one at the Nurburgring. My runs were getting better each time and the car was handling fantastically. What really holds me back is my aversion to really pushing the car. Handling a vehicle past 2nd gear is a new world to me, and so is prolonged braking from high speed. I road with Ryan Allen and saw just how late he braked and how hard he pushed the car and it made me realize how much I was leaving on the table.

The next run, I went out and was balls to the wall. Into third gear from the start to the carousel, hard on the brakes and dive in, hard throttle all the way through and feel the Gs. It turns out, it was too many Gs for my exhaust. As I exited the turn, I heard something dragging the ground and figured it was a piece of plastic so I stayed on it. The noise didn't go away and I started to realize it was metallic, so I backed off and babied it to the end of the course. Hopped out of the car and saw this.



The previous owner had replaced the entire exhaust right before he sold it and installed it with hose clamps instead of hangers. I had to drop the exhaust recently, and I guess I missed the lesson on how to properly hang an exhaust with the incorrect pieces, but somehow it came apart. I didn't really get a good grasp of what happened since I could barely get under the car at the time, but either the hanger broke off of the exhaust side from the hose clamp being too tight, or it wasn't tight enough and the exhaust bounced up and slid off the clamp. Either way, I got home and went to buy some rubber hangers and realized I have all of the stock ones from the car in a box in the garage. They are little weird rubber donuts that look nothing like any exhaust hanger I've seen before. Whoops.

At the end of the day, the car ran flawlessly, didn't hiccup, and surprised me every run at how well it handled. Officially the best handling car I've owned, as sad as that is. Really excited to get a few more things sorted out and shake her down at Summit again in January!


(Early run, since my GoPro went missing after this. Don't worry, they got better!)