Das Race: My '97 M3/4/5

[navin]

Gen 3 > 2.5...

Actually i have no first hand experience, but I like the 'wings' on the Gen3. Surprised at the quality of NRG QR's actually haha. amazon prime ftw.

[Beej]

Samesies on digging the contrasting and crazy yellow/green. Looks great! :thumbup: I'd imagine painting those things inside the car is a proper pain in the ass. It's probably easier to use a roller than a spray, eh?

I know precious little about cage design. At what point is it worth it to get the door bars that go "out" into a hollow door assembly? Those look sorta close, but it may just be the angle of the shot.

[D_Eclipse9916]

Samesies on digging the contrasting and crazy yellow/green. Looks great! :thumbup: I'd imagine painting those things inside the car is a proper pain in the ass. It's probably easier to use a roller than a spray, eh?

Its a bitch

I know precious little about cage design. At what point is it worth it to get the door bars that go "out" into a hollow door assembly? Those look sorta close, but it may just be the angle of the shot.

His are X-bars, a different cage design than a "nascar bar". Both have their advantages and disadvantages and possibly has been argued to the same point as "what is the best oil?"

[Jake]

Yes, painting is a total bitch. I got overspray EVERYWHERE inside the car and had a big jug of paint thinner and shop towels so I could remove it while waiting for the various chunks of the cage to dry. Did the whole thing in a day though. Used a small paintbrush to touch up the spots where spray can't reach (like where the front bars face out to the windshield).

Mine are X-bars because I wanted the option (for now) to keep the front power windows. NASCAR bars require gutting the doors. Mine are very close to the seats, but my cage builder assured me that was okay. My friend Christina's car is set up the same way and in both cars, the seats almost touch the side bars in places. I think the thought is the cage will dissipate the energy in a crash, and not come in/deform toward you, so very close tolerances are okay.

I could be totally wrong, too.

[D_Eclipse9916]

Mine are X-bars because I wanted the option (for now) to keep the front power windows. NASCAR bars require gutting the doors. Mine are very close to the seats, but my cage builder assured me that was okay. My friend Christina's car is set up the same way and in both cars, the seats almost touch the side bars in places. I think the thought is the cage will dissipate the energy in a crash, and not come in/deform toward you, so very close tolerances are okay.

I could be totally wrong, too.

[rherold9]

I have no idea about safety but I would think you would want the impact absorption as far away from you as possible.

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[Jake]

Yeah, ideally so. I was able to move the passenger seat more inboard and a bit lower (to get more head clearance) but to do that with the driver's seat, I will need to perform some percussive maintenance on the transmission tunnel, as the shape of my side mounts require about an inch of clearance that isn't there right now.

Fortunately, looking at photos, there is a lot of clearance there so I can wail away and not get into trouble with hitting drivetrain components.

[D_Eclipse9916]

Want to know why I spent a lot of good money on cage...and halo...and hans...and everything? This happened right about the time I was debating getting my car caged.

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hock:

[Senor_Taylor]

I don't know much, but that looked like great awareness on the driver's part.

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[rherold9]

Holy flying cars. That's some sketchy shit

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[Jake]

Spent my Saturday and part of last night getting more things prepped for Atlanta. She's finally coming together!

Saturday
Got the driver's seat moved over a bit more and down a bit more. I would still like it farther right but it's pretty good as-is.

Installed the Active Autowerke catback I got from my buddy Kyle. It sounds pretty good and should be a great help on track. Bonus: I did not snap/break any exhaust hardware during removal of the old stock catback, and every nut and bolt came off with minimal PB Blaster and hassle. Great success!

Tuesday
Went out in the garage after dinner and futzed around, ended up getting a lot of important but piddly things done.

Re-wired up my fan switch. I had been blowing fuses because silly me couldn't remember how to wire the damn thing. Yay, it works now.

Mounted and wired my Aim Solo. I purchased a blank "radio delete" plate from Turner for $5, and screwed the Aim bracket to it. Had to space it away from the faceplate with some sticky pads that you put on the legs of chairs so they don't scratch your hardwood floors. Always fun to look around the garage, wonder why you have something like that, and use it for some other purpose. The Aim is hard-wired for power behind the dash and will power on whenever you turn the car on.



Finally, used some "automotive adhesive remover" that we had kicking around to get all the old vinyl residue off of the car. She needs a bath now but should be ready for new stuff from Trevor soon.

I also may have accidentally left a paper towel with remnants of paint thinner on it, on my self-painted hood. Got a little spot that could use a touchup now...

She goes for an alignment on Saturday and will get fresh trans/diff fluids whenever I feel like doing them. Past that, I think we're about ready to get back out there.

[Jake]

In the spirit of Joey's thread, which was updated after he was talking to Matthew about old BMWs, I am updating this after talking to Joey about how he talked to Matthew about old BMWs.

Managed to find the ad for the M3 when I bought it in 2013, and the guy who sold it to me bought it from another Bimmerforums member in 2008. So, traced things back to that guy's posts and found some glamor shots back in her (first) heyday.

These are all from 2007, the car was a North Jersey car for a pretty long while, which I guess explains why it got rusty in parts.







The next few photos are from the For Sale ad in which Wisky sold the car to PG123, who later sold it to me. The car was advertised on these HRE wheels, which Pierce didn't buy with the car. He only got the DSII's.

The car had 106k miles on it at this point:





Wild.

[SlimKlim]

In the spirit of Joey's thread, which was updated after he was talking to Matthew about old BMWs, I am updating this after talking to Joey about how he talked to Matthew about old BMWs.

Bimception

[*insertusernamehere*]

Fuck. God dammit. I need another one NOW. Sigh.

In the spirit of Joey's thread, which was updated after he was talking to Matthew about old BMWs, I am updating this after talking to Joey about how he talked to Matthew about old BMWs.

Bimception

Look at me instigating shit for my own entertainment, your turn DJ.

[ScottyB]

i think the car's lucky it found you. just think, it could have been doomed to a life of cruising and hard parking and now it gets to run free

[Jake]

i think the car's lucky it found you. just think, it could have been doomed to a life of cruising and hard parking and now it gets to run free

Aww now you're just making me have feelings and stuff.

[Jake]

So I know I said the driver's seat was "pretty good" where I had it positioned, but I had to make a trip to OG Racing anyway on Friday, and managed to figure out a better solution.

The Sparco seat mounts I was using were shaped like upside-down 7's, so they kinked out at the bottom. I bought a set of Planted seat mounts at OG, which are just a basic "L" shape, with no flare. They were kind of a bitch to get positioned with my Bimmerworld floor mounts (holes didn't 100% line up, but I have a drill for a reason) but I ended up moving the seat over by about an inch, toward the middle of the car, and after way too much time adjusting and re-adjusting, got it back/low enough that I'm happy with it.

Put some padding on the roll cage to make things safer (and pass inspection). Gave the car a bath on Sunday morning and installed my super-sweet paint-matched tow hooks:



I have a 12V-to-5V adapter that just showed up, may take a few minutes tonight to wire that in. The goal there is to provide constant power for my GoPro, as the battery only lasts one day and I never remember to charge it overnight when I'm at the track.

Now I just need to do those fluid changes and stick on the new vinyls from Trevor (still in transit) and I'll be good to go.

[SlimKlim]

a life of cruising and hard parking

If that's wrong I don't want to be right.

[Jake]

Road Atlanta - NASA Southeast "Race For The Pi"

I was pretty excited to go back to Road Atlanta after my first foray south in December of last year. Unfortunately, my friend Tom couldn't join for another round of road tripping, but I worked something out with a few other MMers and it made the trip pretty fun.

Paul came to my place in his newly-purchased C5 Corvette Z06 on Thursday night. He had a LOT of issues registering the car (illegal tint that had to be removed, DMV lost the "proof" paperwork, wouldn't give him tags) but showed up anyway after getting the previous owner's permission to drive it on the old tags. Previous owner is an enthusiast who replaced the Vette with a CTS-V, so I guess he thought us road tripping to Atlanta was a cool thing. The car had no front plate, either, so I told Paul to stick behind my trailer and we mutually agreed to engage in no jackassery that would lend to getting pulled over.



We left very early Friday morning as we had to pick up my trailer and load the M3 still. Our "straps tightened, time to roll" time ended up being about 7:45 AM.

Stop one: Henrico/Richmond area to pick up Zach and their friend Tyler. Zach rode with me and Tyler hopped in the Vette. Thanks to the Corvette's tall 6th gear and my truck's 36 gallon fuel tank, we both had some pretty serious cruising range and agreed to keep stops to a minimum.



Ended up stopping at a Sheetz for a quick bathroom break and to grab food, which we ate on the go. Our next stop came when we agreed it was time for another pee break. I decided to just take the next exit off of I-85, and took the first right into a truck stop for fuel... and who do I see parked there filling up? Simon and Jim.



So then, we had ourselves a proper caravan as we all left the truck stop together. Simon with his Yukon/Spec3, Jim with the F350/E46, me with the F150/E36 and Paul in the Vette. Everyone had radios and Paul did a great job "running interference" and changing lanes first to allow the rest of us to cut over.



We arrived to Road Atlanta right around 6:30 PM, after a quick stop at the Pilot nearby to fill our cars and gas jugs.

When I had been to RA in December, we used the infield "pro paddock." This time, NASA SE only rented the "outfield" paddock. Unfortunately, it was a disaster. There had been a Friday-only HPDE day with a partner group (Just Track It) and between that and no policing of how much space everyone was taking up, we found it extremely hard to find parking. We finally nabbed a spot down in the very, very back corner of the paddock, away from everything. Someone was being ridiculous and trying to save the width of two trailers for his buddy who he swore would be there Saturday by 10 AM... sorry dude, that's not how this works. We left him one width for the truck/trailer, parked Jim's rig in the other spot, and abandoned our trailers over in the grass. Simon and I parked our cars kind of wherever we could, and trucks in the grass way out. It was a pain.



Saturday's driving was great, though. The track is fantastic and was way fun. Definitely much easier to head back out there, having been once before and being more confident in the basic layout, location of curbing, knowing which is safe to jump or not, etc.

Us TTers got our warmup session in, and then the timing loop promptly broke. The organizers wasted about 30 minutes trying to fix it, decided to redo the schedule and attempt a fix over the lunch break. So, the entire morning turned into HPDEpalooza and we puttered around the paddock. Even had time to take a definitely-not-posed photo or two.



Thankfully the timing got fixed over lunch, which meant a ton of TT and racing sessions all back to back. We were all hustling but thankfully, that paid off on my end. I ran a 1:51 which was good enough for third place in TTD (in a group of six) - very pleased with that result given my second time at the track!

The day closed out with some catered BBQ and an awards party - the food was pretty good, the party was snoozy. Lots of inside jokes and too much talk, not enough action. NASA Mid-Atlantic moves things along incredibly well by comparison. I got my photo with the "NASA girls" (hint: ours are hotter) and earned a coffee mug for 3rd place. I guess NASA Southeast does beer steins for 1st, big mugs for 2nd and coffee mugs for 3rd. Kinda different and not sure how I feel about that. Part of me likes the stupid plastic trophies.





Sunday we woke up to heavy rain. Ohh great. Last time I took the M3 out in rain, I earned some surprise body work. I was really on the fence about going out, but Jim and Simon convinced me to throw my "rain tires" on the car (Hankook RS3 summer tires) and get back on the goddamn horse. I'm very glad I did. Didn't turn any super fast laps, but completed the entire session and got over the mental block of "rain = crash" so that is good. I also learned that my wipers no longer work on intermittent, only on high speed. Whatever.



The rest of Sunday was good, it dried out in time for the rest of my sessions but I left the RS3's on the car as I wanted to save my Hoosiers for Summit Point in April. Didn't set any records but focused on being consistent and definitely met that goal.

Simon and Jim did well in their races both days - Simon took 1st for both of his! - and Paul was super pumped to have completed his first weekend in DE 1. Eric Donovan and his dad were there, and Eric took 3rd in TTC, which he was happy about as well! Definitely a great weekend for all of us.





We packed up around 4 PM and headed north, hammer down. Zach, Tyler, and Zach's girlfriend (who met us in ATL and rode home in the truck) all had places to be Monday morning, so we drove from Atlanta to Richmond in one evening. That was a shitty thing to do, and I don't want to do it again.



On the plus side, I crashed at Tyler's place and was home/unpacked Monday by 11 AM. Spent the rest of the day relaxing, downloading GoPro video and Aim data, and learning how to merge the two. I'll have video ready to post soon.

Definitely a great time and I'm glad I went - but I'm also super excited to be back at events with the Mid-Atlantic family starting in April. Can't wait for what the rest of the season will bring!

[Senor_Taylor]

Wow, that seems like a lot of fun. I love to caravan with people I know. The car looks really clean now! I like the new stickers.