Took the beemer out for a spin in the glorious weather....

shoes · 28 May 2012 at 08:33

Took the car to blyton park yesterday (near gainsborough) for a blast with a few mates.

The weather was glorious, track temps were high and not a cloud in the sky for most of the day. The car performed as well as ever, only let down (as usual) by the driver.

My friend tim came along too in his mx-5 which I had a go in, lots of fun that car!

Anyway - here's one of the videos I took, you may want to fast forward to around a minute in as I'm sat waiting to be released before this.

chad116 · 28 May 2012 at 18:33

Looks like you had a great day :cool:

Matt82 · 28 May 2012 at 18:47

Any details on what the car is? V8 m3?

InvaderGIR · 28 May 2012 at 20:10

Matt82 said:
Any details on what the car is? V8 m3?

E36 328i.

Camera mount position is annoying to be honest especially given it fires in loads of vibration noise.

It looks like you're not using much track though, quite wide on some of the corners and nowhere near the apex?

shoes · 28 May 2012 at 21:09

chad116 said:
Looks like you had a great day

Definitely did, loads of track time and lots of fun had for sure!

Matt82 said:
Any details on what the car is? V8 m3?

E36 328i completely stripped out, coilovers, m3 evo top mounts, full custom alignment, poly bushes at the rear, 325 inlet manifold, scorpian cat back exhaust.

Dyno'd at 230bhp and weighed in at 1200kg, although since then I've replaced the seats and shed another 30-40kg.

InvaderGIR said:
E36 328i.

EDIT: On lap 4 at the second chicane I missed the first left apex as I was overspeeding in and understeering - bad driving basically!

Camera mount position is annoying to be honest especially given it fires in loads of vibration noise.

It looks like you're not using much track though, quite wide on some of the corners and nowhere near the apex?

Unfortunately I had to bodge a mount together on the bonnet using the vents as javelin won't allow suction mounts in or on the cars

I was experimenting with different lines all day, some of the corners are best taken wide in and then clipping the second apex i found - although different cars were taking all kinds of lines.

In all fairness I was going to have fun so on some turns I was deliberately taking an odd line to try to unsettle the car with braking on the way in and with the throttle on the way out.

I have lots of footage, i will eventually sift through it and cut the 'best' bits into a video. Also got footage of a saxo losing it completely in front of me (no damage or injury thankfully).

Matt82 · 28 May 2012 at 23:08

Oh dear at my guess. When you did poly rear bushes, did that include upper and lower inner and outer control arms?

shoes · 29 May 2012 at 09:47

No, I probably should have done and may well do those in the future, although probably when they need doing as opposed to being a planned upgrade as I'm more than happy with the car at the moment.

The bushes I did were the subframe bushes and the rear trailing arm bushes. I am planning on doing the ARB bushes front and rear, although going to be looking into the effects of a stiffer ARB first.

I'm still not completely happy with the front end of the car although it's certainly not bed, although there isn't a great deal left to be adjusted there without buying adjustable top mounts (and I only put in the M3 evo ones a couple of weeks ago).

Clarkey has suggested raising the ride height a little so that at standstill the front lower wishbones are parallel to the ground, currently the incline from the centre of the car towards the outside.

In the future I'd like to have a play with some better tyres, AD08 or R888s or similar. I wouldn't mind putting the M3 diff on too as top speed is irrelevant as far as I'm concerned - more acceleration is what I'm after.

Matt82 · 29 May 2012 at 14:57

brilliant, im currently restoring a 94 3.0 M3. ive re done the front ball joints, bushes and top mounts

im doing the rear bushes and thinking about diff mounts too but ive not done enough miles in the car to be sure yet.

buy a worn out m3 lsd, i found the part numbers for the clutch plates required to completely renew it

shoes · 29 May 2012 at 16:12

I have an M3 Evo Diff and the prop sat in my garage, although you need the whole axle really - carrier, drive shafts etc. so may as well purchase that as a single unit.

Did you use the standard m3 mounts or the evo mounts? I am using the evo mounts and have a whopping 7deg of caster

Got any photos of your M3 in progress? I'd be very interested to see them

Matt82 · 29 May 2012 at 18:08

i used evo top mounts. my car, with about 10 previous owners and angel eye headlights, obviously has a shady past. it had m3 arms on the front, evo springs and dampers and evo top mounts. obviously, without the right arms, i had almost postive camber.

i renewed all the ball joints, lolly pop bush and top mounts. i thought about m3 ones but decided to go evo for the additional camber. from reading about others who have done so, i should have about -2.5* to -2.8* ish which is plenty

isnt the evo diff quick tall for you? in an ideal world id put a shorter diff on mine but there arnt any simple choices if you want to keep the lsd

shoes · 29 May 2012 at 19:14

Sounding good so far - you will have a very similar setup to me but on higher quality dampers.

With regard to the diff, the diff in mine is 2.9 and the M3 Evo is 3.23 I believe.

Clarkey · 29 May 2012 at 19:28

Evo diff is lower ratio than the 3.0, needs a bunch of stuff in the rear changing though to accommodate the large casing diff. E46 M3 diff is lower again, 3.64 I believe, think that's also a large casing.
Medium casing diff is a bit of a pain. I feel the 2.93 in mine is super long and would be more lively with a lower ratio. That's the opinion of a lot of people who have changed it to 3.15 (325i open/M3 3.0 LSD). I have the view of going to 3.15 by sourcing a 325i diff, swapping the crown ring and pinion onto my LSD and also restoring the LSD. I'd be very interested in the part numbers for the clutches.