Hey guys, i love most of the builds in this forum and i want to share my own experience when I decided to built a e30 for drift. You can learn so many things from these type of threads and I too want to contribute my work, my learnings and share ideas. So I guess i'll start at the beggining, post my way to the present state of my car and we can continue from there. My father is a car mechanic and owns a car workshop here in Cyprus. I've been working with my father from a young age and have always been fascinated with high performance modified cars. Drifting here in Cyprus hasn't been around as long as most countries. It hasn't even been a decade. So 3 years ago I decided to get into the sport and started moddifying my e30 325i to compete. There were already a lot of E30 drift cars competing, so i wanted to do something different and add a turbo setup to mine. Add some more horsepower, lose as much weight as possible, put a good suspension, a fuel tank, roll cage... The basics that I needed to not only drift, but be a serious contender. Now bear in mind that I made mistakes on my way. Who hasn't? Especially with these cars, there weren't any ready kits, most of the work was custom ... still is. Used a D2 suspension K-Sport handbrake OMP roll cage Haltech ECU Willwood brakes Sparco Seats Some pictures of the engine. The engine was stock at the time. I just added the turbo setup, intercooler, oil cooler etc. If I remember correctly the car was producing close to 350 whp @ 0.8 bar Now I know, a lot of people have different opinions on how a E30 should look. For example most British go for the stock clean look, while Swedish, Norway and Scandinavian countries don't really mind heavy mods for the looks. We all have different opinions. I was just happy to built and drift. I wasn't the kind of person that likes a sleeper look, a stock look. I like to change things, I will cut the entire fender and patch it up if it means bigger tyres or going wider. That's just how I am. Moving on to the looks This was the car I drifted with 3 years ago. Didn't get any podium wins or anything back then but it was a good start. I will continue updating this as I go. Remember this was a long time ago and a lot of things changed since then.
nice build thread. the carbon mirrors look good, did you build those? How did you find the Haltec ECU?
hey thanks for the feedback. The carbon mirrors were cheap knockoffs of the ones they use on rx7s. What can I say, I was really stupid back then The old haltech ECU was a gift from my father. He is the authorised dealer here in Cyprus and he gave me one of his old MS-DOS based ecu to work on. Some more photos of the built. I cut that car pretty bad back then. Thinking that I would lose weight from the inside of the door panels and the cars trunk. Thinking back it was a waste of time. You don't lose any significant weight. You are just hacking off functioning parts of your car and you are letting all the smoke from the tyres come in. My advise, don't do it. If you really want to do some weight reduction, you need to think big and get ready for some major surgery. A console I made for all of the switches for fans, lights, water spraying and such. More engine photos Then after a year I managed to get a couple of sponsors. Local shops from here, and I decided to change the colour. Yes I know. That wing was atrocious. But back then I liked it. I was inspired by Japanese drifters, with japanese cars, with big wings. What can I say. I'll continue my built later. If you have any opinions, please share.
So, after the paint job, I went on to work on the details so that I would have my car ready for our local championship. Engine was looking good, we had no major problems or changes to our setup. We had already O-ring the block and installed Raceware Head studs to hold up the pressure. The turbonetics T04b turbo was also holding up good. Because we were having difficulties finding rims 4 x 100 with the right size and offset, we decided to change from 4 x 100 standard bmw to 5 x 114 that is widely used and it's easier to find 9" and 10". This was done by spacer adapters. So we were provided with these Lenso rims by one of our sponsor. All I was missing was a proper front bumper that would fit my intercooler. So we made one And the car was ready for decals. So basically that's how the car ended up looking for the year 2011-2012. Got my first podium wins that year, finished twice in 3rd place. I was getting the hang of it and had the car pretty smoothed out. More pictures and then off to last years big changes were things started getting interesting.
So at the end of last years drift competition I decided to change the chassis, mostly because it was pretty banged up. So I took everything out of my current car and I started assembly in the new 4door chassis, after I had it welded and painted ready to go.
wow, it's been a while since i've been in here. Forgot all about my thread. Must have been due to the lack of interest for my build. Oh well, im just going to do a general update and see how it goes from there ... So after I went with the new 4door chassis, I decided to make an angle kit for the car and had to make a wide bodykit. With the help of a friend I used his fenders to incorporate to the bmw. This was the end result. And then off to the track for some practise. Took my first championship in 2012, and came 1st in a Drift AllStars event in Greece 2012. Then off to 2013. Made a bunch of upgrades. 1. major weight reduction to the car 2. welded a lot of the front/back end to achieve a more "solid" chassis 3. added a front bar to protect the engine from impact 4. i installed a pedal box and got rid of the original servo system 5. replaced my brake pads with brand new "Ferodos" 6. made a custom airbox 7. flipped the intercooler upside down for shorter pipes Then I took the car for some dyno time and this happened. finally found the limit of the standard connecting rods =) So I ordered new racing rods and also decided to change my turbo setup and go for a HKS TO4Z So I guess that's enough for now, things get more interesting by the end of the year catching up to the present state of the car.
I need someone to close my mouth wipe away my drool and change my underwear !!!!!!!!!!! IM IN LOVE WITH THIS CAR !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
hey man thanks for the support thanks Yes it is, im planning on going with the new Haltech Platinum 1000 next season Hey thanks, appreciate the support cheers
So moving on to 2013, I had the good fortune of partnership with Texaco Motor Oils for the Cyprus Drift Championship and some other awesome sponsors. So we took the car for new decals and ended up with this result. Some shots of the 2013 Championship Also a couple of videos [video=youtube;6qmUwr1uHRk]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qmUwr1uHRk[/video]