August 2010 – Build Update

No track days in August, a) it’s been very hot here, b) my car spent most of the month at RRT Racing.

The goal for August was to get the car built prepared in NASA GTS3 race trim (sans some minor race required/specific items like fire system, kill switch & window nets). This included an aFe Intake, SuperSprint Headers, a customer RRT Racing single exhaust, Shark Flash (to re-tune the car for the bolt-ons and 93 Octane guel, raise the rev limiter a bit, and disable the rear O2 sensors to work w/out catalytic converters).

SuperSprint Headers

In addition the AST5100 single adjustable suspension was upgraded to AST5200 double adjustables, added front and rear Ground Control Adjustable Race Sway Bars, a custom racing differential built by Dan from DiffsOnline, AIM EVO4 CAN bus data logging and MyCron3 display.

Ground Control Rear Sway Bar

To top it all off the first phase of an aero package including an Aeromotions R2.static wing and custom front splitter.

Wing (Pre-Mounting)

Wing In-trunk Mounting Brackets (the wing is so solid you can literally push the car around by the uprights)

Front Splitter

Gregory Mark one of the engineers responsible for designing the Aeromotions wing flew down from Cambridge, MA to assist us in tuning the wing and determining the maximum angle of attack before stall. He taped short pieces of yarn under the wing, attached his portable USB camera and watched as we drove the car up and down the street, adjusting the angle of the wing.

Preparing for initial wing stall angle testing

Spring 2010 – Facelift

Both cars went to visit Fuzzy @ Norton Sign in Purcellville, they are home now with their completed facelifts. Just need to add driver names on the windows and racing class specs on the doors around the numbers.

Black M3 – Front

Black M3 – Rear

Silver M3 – Front

Silver M3 – Rear

Together at Home

Pics from 6Speed Online Meet

2009/2010 Winter Season – GoPro HD

A couple other goodies that came too late to be used during the 2009 season. GoPro released an HD version of their camera. Picked up two of these and added the roll bar mounts.

Camera with Various Mounts

Additional RollCage Mounting Hardware

Got to take the cameras for a test run at Dayton in January, mounted two of them in the RRT Racing Grand-Am Continental Tire Series #18 E90 BMW. Freaking awesome!!!

2009/2010 Winter Season – Vinyl

Between visits to the shop while I couldn’t be working on the car itself I started searching the interwebs for color scheme ideas. Lots of white race cars, not so many black ones…

Here are my initial final mock-ups ready to be sent to Norton Sign. Hopefully good enough to give Fuzzy what he need for a complete design. Yes, Fuzzy Norton is the owner of Fuzzy Sign, he is Bruce Norton’s (who works at RRT Racing) brother.

Front

Side

Rear
no that isn’t my EU plate/rear, I didn’t have a good rear pic of my car to use for mock up

you can stop laughing at my weak photoshop skillz now

2009/2010 Winter Season – Feb – Build Update II

A couple updates for a Feb end of the month. Got a set of the 275x35x18 Toyo R888 scrubs mounted up on the new ARC8 wheels.

Couldn’t fit my finger between the tire and the front spring and was afraid of the tire rubbing the spring when cornering forces were in affect so I ordered a set of 5mm spacers from Bimmerworld for the fronts.

5mm spacers

To make wheel/tire changes easier and quicker I also got a set of 75mm Bulletnose wheel studs and nuts (in black).

75mm Bulletnose Wheel Studs & Nuts

A few pics of the car in the shop with wheels mounted, no negative camber added yet, will start with at least 3 degrees in the front and 1.5 – 1.8 degrees in the rear. In these pictures the rears have a 12mm spacer just to push the wheel out for cosmetic purposes in the pics. If I want to run the 12mm spacers for a wider track we will need to do some fender rolling.

Pop’d the black & white center caps into the wheels as well (which match the black & white roundels I added to the car in 2009).

Wheels, Studs & CenterCaps
Front Wheel

Rear Wheel

Also had time Wednesday night to test fit the driver seat & harness and prepare for installing the harness mounting hardware.

2009/2010 Winter Season – Feb – Build Update

I had been wavering between doing a simple 4pt rear only cage or full blown 8pt.

After several long discussions with Barry from RRTRacing, I decided to go with the 8pt cage, do it once and get it over with.

Step 1 was to gut the interior and measure for the cage:

Then weld in mounting plates, you don’t want your cage pipe punching through the chassis!

Test fit

finally weld in and paint

2009/2010 Winter Season – Jan – Build Update

The BMW chassis has been prone to cracking front and rear subframes (search BMW subframe class action). Knowing the chassis was going to be exposed to higher forces than a stock car on the street I made these a priority.

Without reinforcement plates you could end up with cracks in your subframe

or worse it could tear out completely like this poor souls did

Here are the subframe re-enforcement kit components from Turner Motorsports

Front

Rear

and here they are welded into place. RRT Racing did the work, beautiful!

2009/2010 Winter Season – Dec – Build Update

Having done what I felt were the minimal safety, braking and handling mods during the 2009 season, the 2009/2010 winter was going to be first year offseason major mods.

Suspension
Time to ditch the street capable but “too soft for the track” M3 suspension.

I chose the fully upgradeable AST 5100′s (upgradeable to double adjustable 5200′s or triple adjustable 5300′s) and Vorshlag camber-caster plates. These will keep the tires on the ground where they can GRIP!

(For those of you who know your BMW’s, you’ll recognize these as 5100′s for an E36 because I couldn’t find a good picture of the E46 5100′s)

Wanted adjustable camber in the rear to complement the suspension, Turner Motorsports had race developed, highly recommended Adjustable Rear Camber Arm Kit.

Light-Weight Wheels

Light weight but strong wheels were purchased from APEX Racing, their newly designed ARC-8 in Hyper Black. 18×9.5 all around to be wrapped in 275/35/18 r-compound stickiness.

18×9.5 +35et Hyper Black

Other color Choices for the ARC-8′s
(Mary chose Hyper Silver for her Silver M3)

Tires
My first choice for an entry level R-compound tire would have been the Toyo RA-1, but since I couldn’t find any scrubs/take offs in the RA-1 compound and was able to find a good deal on a dozen Toyo R888′s I grabbed them to break my teeth in with R-Comps.

Seats, Harnesses & HANS
Pushing the car through highspeed corners with the stock 3point safety belts results in sore knees from bracing yourself against the side of the car and wasted energy, before you even consider the lack of safety a 3 point best provides during a high speed impact or rollover. Since we will frequently be going twice the speed typically done on the street, a proper harness belt setup was my desire.

You can’t just bolt in a 6point racing harness with stock seats though, nor can you get a 6 point harness w/out a harness bar or cage to attach it to. That means racing seats and ultimately a cage (See Feb Build Update for Cage Pics).

I headed off the OGRacing’s store front, remembering they have many racing seats on display so I could sit in various styles and pick one I liked but more importantly that fit me properly, width & height.

I ended up choosing the RaceTech 4009 seats, Schroth Hybrid III for HANS Belts and a lightweight (Carbon Fiber) HANs device.

RaceTech 4009

Schroth 6Pt Racing Harnesses

Carbon Fiber HANS Device

2009 Season – Build Update

During the 2009 season I forced myself to keep the M3 as stock as possible. The M3 is a great platform for the track, a very “happy” and balanced car which needs little modifications to make it ready for serious HPDE events.

My goal was to do minimal upgrades and “learn how to drive the car as it is”. 98% of going faster during your first season is DRIVER UPGRADES…those come in the form of class room instruction and seat time with an experienced instructor.

During 2009 Build Upgrades included:

Performance Friction 2Piece Rotors
These 2rotors allow you to keep the hat and simply replace the rotor when it becomes worn. Initial cost is a bit higher and buying a 1 piece rotor&hat but over the longer haul by only having to replace the rotor component and reusing the hat rotor consumable cost is lowered.

Racing pads are a must once you start going quicker on the track. Stock rotors on any production car are setup to operate with high levels of “bite” even when they are cold, but used again and again to pull a car down from high speeds stock pads overheat causing brake fade and will eventually boil your stock brake fluid.

Racing Pads operate efficiently at much higher temperatures … the kinds of temperatures you find when you are really working the brakes hard. Image the energy it takes to slow a 3000lb car down from 140Mph to 40Mph. Brakes take that energy and turn it into heat… now that’s HOT!

I have tried both the PFC01 and PFC06 compound pads. The PFC01 is a very aggressive pad with a lot of bite. The PFC06 pad is nearly aggressive but is touted as an endurance pad … The PFC06 seems to last QUITE a bit longer than the PFC01. Also with street tires I had some issues keeping enough temperature in the PFC01 to keep them in their optimal operational range, didn’t have that problem with the PFC06.

Racing Brake Fluid
With higher brake pad and rotor temperatures in a track environment upgrading your brake fluid so it won’t boil is a must. If you boil your brake fluid, air bubbles are left in your brake lines and will leave you with a soft brake pedal, or worst case a brake pedal that goes all the way to the floor w/out slowing the car at all! The reason for this, fluids don’t compress much, air compresses A LOT! The force that squeezes the pads onto the rotors requires pressure in your brake system, w/out pressure or with air that compresses in your brake lines you don’t get much squeeze on the rotors from the pads. Not a situation you want when you are headed into a low speed corner coming down the main straight on the racetrack!

I chose Castrol SRF. It’s one of the best and has one of the highest boiling points of any brake fluid. At $80 liter it better be good!

Stainless Steel Brake Lines
As you can see, keeping pressure in your brake system is critical to the operation of your brakes. Most cars come with rubber brake lines, rubber when it gets hot will stretch or bulge. Replacing the rubber brake lines with Stainless Steel lines keeps this from happening and contributes to a good performing brake system.

Square Tire Setup
The E46 M3 like most commercial cars comes from the factory setup to understeer. Manufactures do this because they believe understeer is “safer” and easier to control and correct when it occurs, it is also more predictable than overstreer.

Understeer is when the front end of the car feels like it is getting pushed to the outside of the turn. Basically the car is not turning as sharp as you have the wheel turned due to lack of traction. Understeer is easy to correct by a) slowing down a bit, or b) opening the wheel so you are turning less.

The stock setup of the E46 M3 causes the car to understeer both when entering a corner and when exiting. On the track that becomes a nuisance and a performance limiter unless something is changed.

One of the easiest ways to compensate for the undesirable and excessive understeer setup of the E46 is to replace the front wheels and tires with the same size wheels and tires you are running on the rear of the car. Trackers call this a “square setup”.

Instead of 225/45/18 sized front and 255/40/18 sized rear tire (staggered setup), you end up with a 255/40/18 sized tire setup on all four wheels. The extra grip provided by the 255 tire compared to the stock 225 does a good job of eliminating a lot of the factory understeer and really makes the car feel good on “turn in” (when turning into a corner).

–
Other than some minor cosmetic enhancements those upgrades above served me very well for my first season, I would recommend anyone new to HPDE with an M3 consider the same upgrades.