Guess it's time to put this up as progress is gently being made: This has now gone to it's new owner in Malta and hopefully will be getting finished to the standard and rough spec that I wanted to get it sorted to. Either way I'm sure it's going to continue to be used properly which is exactly as it should be! Through competing at Wembley I made a few discoveries about myself and the car. Firstly I've not had enough seat time recently to be as competitive as I'd like and this is due to money being spent on constantly refining a car that, in reality, I wasn't driving enough. Before going to Wembley the SX had been used in anger only twice in all of 2011, once at Mallory and once at Essex Arena. I don't even do streeto as I can't afford to risk pranging stuff so you can imagine that I wasn't exactly blowing people away with my high standard of driving . The other issue that I discovered is that, by doing more practice days and wet drifting than anything else, I'd created a car that wasn't really suited to twinning (as was pointed out by a number of people at Wembley, I'd genuinely not got my head around this so thanks folks). It was very fast (considering the power) when driving for practice or qualifying but totally unforgiving and, coupled to my lack of seat time, meant that I was either going very quickly and linking things up nicely or spinning. The car was basically one tiny error away from catastrophe at all times and, as soon as I was chasing someone in a real comp, had absolutely nothing available to correct with at the level I currently drive to (which clearly isn't as high as it should be). This in mind the plan I decided on was to build a new car that's both cheap, easy to drive and simple to work on while giving me as much seat time as possible before the start of the 2012 season. If it's competitive next year then bonus, if it's not then I'll take the season to improve and then up the power and grip accordingly when I'm ready. My budget was constricted by what I got for the SX and I wanted it to just be a few bits of safety gear away from being complete inside that set amount. After looking around for a while and considering a few s13's and a 1jz Supra that were available this suddenly appeared: E36 328i with M3 engine, M3 transmission including Diff, poly-bushed arms, Piper-X panel filter, chip-tune, Whiteline front ARB and uprated springs and shocks all around. 2 days after the advert went up I jumped on a plane from Manston to Edinburgh to collect it and, thanks to Scott, 3 hours later left a happy man with very little spent. Didn't get the style 19's with it in the end as one of them was leaking air badly and, considering the drive back spanned the entire length of England I didn't really fancy risking it. I'd forgotten how nice M3's are to drive, you don't notice the fact that it's accelerating so fast because it's so smooth and yet it just keeps on going. 3rd Gear is probably the only gear you'd ever need. You can pull away in it and still be accelerating at 100mph. Ordered some useful parts the moment I got home: This little lot Which contained This lovely box Containing And finally a couple of boxes from Driftworks Full of and I also went over to Ashford to collect an M3 Evo front splitter from the breakers over there and to replace the boot with one that didn't have an M-tech spoiler on as I think they really spoil the lines of the car. Fortunately they had one in the same colour and agreed to do a straight swap. I didn't realise how bloody heavy the boots are on these until I took it off, easily 20kg just on the boot alone so when I can I'm going to put the thing on a serious diet. SO: Went to (the legendary) Garage Southern Style to spend the afternoon fitting some bits with Jack. Got the HSD's out of the box and took them apart to check everything was ok. Found a small area in one of the cups that's not covered by the coating but doubt it'll be an issue as the shock itself will be covering it while on the car. Did the rears first but, due to neither of us having fitted these to a BM before, clearly made a mistake fitting them as they were set as low as they could go and still had an inch between tyre and arch. Couldn't be bothered to sort that at the time so added it to a little list to address later. The fronts, however, went the other way completely. Following some kind of crazy logic at the time we set them at a nice, middle of the range height only to discover: that it was practically tucking rim. Seeing as these were brand new and not bedded in yet we figured it probably needed to go up a bit. Glad we did as it settled the inch we raised it back to this height after driving home. As I don't have anywhere to work on the car and Garage SS no longer exists, as well as the fact that it was going to need some aligning anyway, I made the decision to take the car over to Ian at IA Motorsport in order to get the coilovers correctly fitted and setup. The car's with him at the moment and, when it comes back, will have some modified front knuckles courtesy of Luke Deon (the man behind Smiffy's Dante Project s13's mental lock), decent ride height, coilovers that are mounted correctly and a full alignment that I'm going to test out. After that I'm going to ditch off the stupidly weak offset Contours that are on there as I've got hold of a set of 8 BBS Pitlanes in 8.5 x 17, et 13: I had wanted to go for style 5's (or the cheap eBay versions that are £400 a set) as I'd had them on the last M3 and really like them. Unfortunately the car would then end up looking like a carbon copy of Mike's M3 and that just wouldn't do so, having hunted around, was properly pleased to find the Pitlanes in the same sort of fitment so cheap. After that will be; fit an uprated rear ARB that I've got coming, put some solid rear subframe and diff mounts on it as I know they're weak from the last M3 I had, some uprated engine and gearbox mounts as the current ones are shot and fit a bucket seat. As mentioned the car's bloody heavy and, as it's mostly free, I'm going to try and do as much weight saving as possible to it; angle grind out a lot of the metal from the boot lid and bonnet, strip out all the extra stuff, maybe replace the doors with Evo doors as they're lighter all with the aim to get it down to the same sort of weight as an s14 with me in it. Then I'm going to drive the bloody thing. Lots. Hopefully that'll be it until it's time for safety gear before next season and it should be pretty good fun. We'll see soon I guess.
ill most likely meet you soon enough as ians at my mums yard... you keeping the m3 engine or other plans?
thats a pretty cool motor. i bought one last week and im in the middle of making the decision whether to keep it as a road car or for the track. what rims are the white ones in the first pic?
Going to keep the S50 for the time being. Long term plans include an S62 BUT that means having money and time. While I have plenty of the latter I have none of the former so it's a distant pipe dream at the moment. Wheels in the first pic are the Style 19's that Scott's got for sale. Wanted to keep them as they're nice rims but one of the rears is repaired so poorly that it doesn't keep air. The ones on it at the moment are the Contours that I'm selling. Just heard that the knuckles are finished and back on the car but the tie rod and end on one side has been melted together by someone trying to heat it up to undo it in the past. New rods and ends hooooooooooooooo!
Don't do diff bushes unless you uprate the front bush to a double sheer design, I fitted those solid diff bushes you gave me with the car and the diff snapped 2 back plates. Back to OEM Rubber, never a problem again. Powerflex subframe bushes do the job nicely, then you want new stock engine and gearbox mounts. I don't see the need for uprated ones, again I fitted the mounts you gave me with the car and the vibration was fucking irritating to say the least. Stock mounts hold the engine in place just fine, if they're not fucked!
Cool, cheers for that Bon, didn't think the stock stuff would hold up at the back on the diff but good to know. So just go for some new rubber in there and have it usable rather than noisy as Hell? Yeah, the ones I sold you for the engine were loooouuuud. Did the job but made it sound like I had some massive exhaust all the time. Be interested to get some alignment tips from you dude.
I like it. It's a style of car I could get used to lol. How much does your man charge to do the hubs? Mine are sat here doing shit all whilst I keep dreaming about making my own fancy kit like Sean loves.
£80 to modify just the knuckles. Think the same again to create custom extended lower arms. The guys are going to have a look at creating a complete kit at some point in the future and I'll probably end up using my car as the test bed with the way things are going.
Yeah, do it dude. I'll pass on his details to you. I was going to use e46 arms but don't want to then have to run spacers as well to stop things from rubbing with the wheels I've coming. Would rather just widen out the lower arms, brace them properly and make everything work as a set package, especially as it can then be the perfect setup for the same price.
Very nice, though I'm surprised you've got another M3 after all the trouble you had with your other one. Want some Racing Dynamics for it?
Ah Im already running 15mm spacers so hope it will be plenty with e46 arms on. Send me his details and Ill get them sent up to him. If theres any chance you could grab a pic of yours sometime that would be great.
E36 arms are about 20mm longer than the E36 arms, bit like sticking a 20mm wheel spacer on. Just need E46 arms, E46 60mm lollipop bush's and use e36 lollipop. Adjustable top mounts, on reverse to counteract the camber of e46 arms. Prob cost less than £250 for all that.
I know! I was tempted to avoid them but after the second SX turned out so well I'm hoping the second M3 will do the same. Hope's a fine mistress. I'd have gone for the racing dynamics if I hadn't just got the Pitlanes for such a good price. Sorry dude. I'll get you a pic as soon as I can but basically you need to contact Ian at IA Motorsport and tell him what you're after and he'll arrange it with Luke. Wtf is a lollipop when it's at home? I don't want to have to think about spacers at all as i don't know if I'll have the clearance in the arch itself with them on and, with the e46 arms, I'm not convinced 20mm will be enough for the amount of lock it will give and the offset of the wheels. I'm not going to make a decision on the lower arm solution until the wheels and hubs are on and we can see how much room we actually need. If e46 arms will be enough I'll do that, if we're going to need more than 20mm then we'll do that instead. As for the adjustable top mounts the HSD's should have enough adjustment built in to cope.
lollipop aka wishbone arm rear bush. BMW 3 SERIES E36 Z3 FRONT WISHBONE ARM REAR BUSH PAIR | eBay To fit E46 arms, you need to replace the bush inside the e36 lollipop with a 60mm E46 Powerflex bush. POWERFLEX PFF5-4601 BMW E46 CONTROL ARM BUSHES (PAIR) | eBay Here you can see the various "non-M" Lower Control Arms (LCA) available on the E30, E36 and E46 chassis. We've tested the E30 M3 and E36 M3 LCAs and they all look very similar, but will round up examples of these M versions (all on cars in the parking lot including Matt's '95 M3, my '97 M3 and an E30 M3 we can borrow). All of the E30 and E36 LCAs we measured were IDENTICAL. To the mm. The "A" distance was the same on all of the E30 and E36 arms we tested, with only the E46 arm having a different "B" number (1" longer). The hypotenuse (and any fore-aft offset of the spindle mount) was also the exact same between all E30 and E36 LCAs we tested too - so the differing part numbers between early and late E36 LCAs seemed to be only cosmetic in nature. The lock modifed hubs and E46 arms creates is like this:-
Wait, what? You sold the s14 because it was too quick? Because it was one tiny error away from catastrophe at all times? Nothing available to correct with? Because the car was totally unforgiving????? I'm completely lost. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You'd already done this with the S14. The s14 was cheap, easy to drive, and VERY simple to work on ESPECIALLY compared the the BMW you've bought, hell, look at the nightmare with coilovers you had on the BMW, look at the MASSIVE issues you had with your last BMW???? ? You'd already done FULL JDM/BDC safety gear in your last car?! I'm just really lost as to why you sold your perfect S14a which was perfect for drifting, and started again from scratch. You're blaming the caar, when all you need is seat time.
No I'm not Sam. I'm saying that I'd spent a lot of money on the car and had got a lot of it wrong. I'd also run out of money completely and ended up in a Phil-like situation and this gives me back enough money to both build the car and drift it. I didn't have enough left to solve the problems that the SX had, some which I'd created myself and some which were car related. For example I didn't have the spare cash to get all the rot sorted underneath to put it through the MOT it was due or to tax it again afterwards and I didn't have anywhere here where I could store it or work on it myself. I'd also made it less fun and more difficult to drive than it was the first day I took it to pod and once it's no fun then what's the point. On top of that, there was physically no way I was going to get enough seat time to get my drifting back up again if I kept the SX and I decided I'd rather have a car I can drive than a fucking ego ornament. Keeping it would have meant that I'd not have the seat time to get better enough with the set up of the car OR not have enough seat time to develop the set up of the car, depending on which way you look at it. Dude, you KNOW I loved that car. I really enjoyed driving it and it taught me a lot but the main thing it taught me was that a lot of what I'd done was unnecessary and that I needed to do more actual, bum in seat, balls out drifting than I'd been doing. That wasn't going to happen if I kept it.
