docwyte wrote: Street pads are totally inadequate for your car. You're nuts for going on track with them. I had the 355 Stoptech BBK all the way round on my VF Supercharged E46 M3, with Hawk DTC70 pads. Phenomenal braking. Truly outstanding, I highly recommend it.
I've never had much luck with any of the hawk compounds I've tried for previous cars but I'll keep that setup in mind should this one not work out.
I've got new stoptech bbk rotors and PFC 11's coming for all 4 corners.
The Santa Claus with the brown suit has been busy this week. I have not, next weekend is the next round of Gridlife so I really need to start busting my hump. We're going on a family vacation this weekend instead. next week should be quite hectic 
Cooling upgrades arrived, at Bimmerworlds recommendation I'm installing a oil cooler diverter valve to force 100% of the oil to go through the cooler, upgrading to a far more efficient C&R oil cooler and installing a larger CSF radiator. Hopefully this will give me the option to run full sessions if my tires can handle it and complete 3 back to back hot laps as required for OLOA.
Additionally, brake fade will hopefully be a thing of the past now! it took some work to track down rear pads as my car uses an odd setup of Brembo caliper and stock rotor. That turned out to be the brembo lotus/gran turismo caliper. So now, PFC 11 pads all around, new stoptech rotors up front and centric high carbon cryo treated rotors for the rear.
I also ordered new couplers for the intake plenum to ITB's the original hoses were 2" long and used various wrong sized t-bolts and whatever hose clamps the shop that installed it must've had laying around (kit was bought second hand and then PO paid a shop to install it)
After consulting folks with far more boost experience than me (RS Motors) I ordered these trick Breeze hose clamps that have a liner inside to not cut into the boot and ordered 1" longer couplers so that even if the connection does loosen or slide a little bit I will at least maintain some sort of seal and hopefully not have the entire session rendered useless.
Picture of the clamp because I'd never seen these before, they're rated to 45 in/lbs so I figure that should hold, if not, they make a more expensive high torque version rated to 150 in/lbs!:
Didn't have a ton of time last night so I tackled something easy and did pads/rotors. There's something therapeutic about the process of replacing 2 piece rotors for me:
The stoptech rotor instructions say to wash the rotor with soap and water before brake cleaning them so that's what I did:
One corner done!
So that's pretty much where I'm at, I did pull the intake plenum, old radiator and oil cooler off the car as well but neglected to take photos of that. In order to get the oil filter housing off I pretty much have to take the entire supercharger kit off the car so I'll try to snap a few photos as I dig into that project next week.
I just installed a CSF radiator in my E36 M3 today.
You'll like the PFC11 pads, they work well.
you've been newsified! (congrats!)
Well the breaking of photobucket is obnoxious! shame too as I had some decent results this weekend to share.
I'll do the cliffs notes now and come back with a more thorough recap once I get picture hosting sorted.
Overall the new brakes are fantastic, I simply can't work up the bravery yet to stop as late/hard as they allow, which is a much better problem to have.
The cooling issues are moving the right direction, while previously I could only do 1 lap in traffic or 2 in clear air I can now do 2-3 laps easily in clean air and 2 laps in traffic (or 2 full hot laps on the 4.3 mile full course configuation) I'm not up to OLOA levels of cooling capacity yet but I think we have some steps to help get closer. This weekend we noted that the oil cooler shroud butts up against the intercooler pipe, normally I assume the air would exit below the intercooler pipe on a more factory car but in my case the splitter rests against the intercooler pipe so air entering the oil cooler has exactly 0 paths to travel.
Took the car to Autobahn Country Club this past weekend with Gridlife. It's a unique event that runs all 3 track configurations and then combines your times from all 3 tracks to give the overall weekend finishing results (not unlike another event we enjoy)
Saturday we ran North and Full configurations. I managed to beat the gridlife class records for both configurations by multiple seconds while securing 2 first place finishes in class.
Sunday we ran South configuration. I seemed to have 1st place locked up. Additionally I broke the south track class record by a bit over 2 seconds (which I previously set in a c5z06) Matt was next closest to me in his e46m3 (the car we took to one lap) and was approx 1.5 seconds behind me. I'd been bugging him all weekend to drive my car. he finally relented the final session of the day after his front wheel bearing started failing. On his first lap out he beat me by .5 seconds so stole the win and class record away for the south track.
Our friends thought I'd be mad/sad/disappointed but honestly I'm happy as can be that the car still has even more time in it. I'm also pretty happy that thus far it's proving out that my car is around 2 seconds per lap faster.
Still haven't signed up for a new photo hosting site yet so I'll try using facetubes (this picture is public so anyone should be able to see it)
Both sides look pretty identical but if you stare hard you will notice the wheels in the top photo are more concave. I'm messing around with fitting 18x11 wheels instead of the 18x10 shown in the bottom photo.
Current tire size with both is 275/35/18 RE71's but I have some 285/30/18 (the max allowed in our class rules) on order, and have friends loaning me some 305/315 to experiment with how much tire can really fit.
https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/19875370_10210329773501546_7528882880003306854_n.jpg?oh=dcde0e888cd4503bf87f0f2329980621&oe=5A09E4F0
sleepyhead wrote:klodkrawler05 wrote: Step 16: This according to the internet is the most critical step, if someone can't stand on the splitter your work was for naught. I'm not sure I buy that a plywood plank can generate so much force that it will have over 100lbs in a downforce point load as this simulates but regardless, I tried it, for science. SWMBO graciously posed as ballast while I photographed. Test Success!Rough napkin calculation (assuming my link before as a ballpark for Cl of 0.3): 1/2 * rho * S * Cl * V^2 = L Guesses: Top speed of 140mph (205ft/sec), Splitter dimensions of 5.5ft width, 2ft depth, say 60%taper thus, 'splitter area' of 8.8sqft. L = 0.5 * .002377 * 8.8 * 0.3 * (205^2) = 132lbf so, 70lbs in the center isn't... out of the realm, which means you've got an factor of safety of nearly 2. I might be wrong, have to think through the FBD/force vectors (not my strong suit), but the extra "depth" of the vertical "L" bracket below the part you trimmed back for the crash beam is 'dead weight'. The minimum height of the trimmed section will be your 'moment'/bending limitation. Although, cutting holes in the webbing towards the bottom might be easier/safer way of trimming that weight, if you are so inclined.
so, I was checking this out in my FB feed, and passing it along to mazdeuce & codriver... and I was thinking about the fact that Nurburgring TF is one of the few other examples of "run what you've brung in a street car"... and then it was a hop-skip-and-a-jump to realizing that there's another calculation that I'll need to attempt to work up for all of us:
the "longitudinal front edge road debris impact" calculation
any car taken to OneLap, with front aero, needs to consider what happens when their splitter impacts a truck-tire at {cough} 75. It might be a little while before I can futz around with simulating this one... going to have to pull up some books I've packed away.
I suspect with our plywood renditions the likely outcome is exploding wood shrapnel.
Although both Matt and I have subjected our splitters to 1 off a piece and they've been fine thus far although that was mostly agricultural exploration and not impact with a solid object at speed.
I had the idea the other day when I dug my splitter into the trailer ramp during a less than ideal loading situation that I should replace the vertical aluminum angle with cables while keeping the lower horizontal aluminum backbone for structure.
That would still transmit downforce from the splitter directly to the chassis but in the case of an impact with say a tire gator, kerbing or trailer ramps it would allow for deflection upwards.
I wonder if that upward deflection would be enough to throw off the aero balance enough to noticeably affect handling dynamics at the limit?
Of course, durability and ease of loading on trailers are important - but I'm curious if that convenience could cause other issues.
.
klodkrawler05 wrote:I suspect with our plywood renditions the likely outcome is exploding wood shrapnel.
Although both Matt and I have subjected our splitters to 1 off a piece and they've been fine thus far although that was mostly agricultural exploration and not impact with a solid object at speed.
I had the idea the other day when I dug my splitter into the trailer ramp during a less than ideal loading situation that I should replace the vertical aluminum angle with cables while keeping the lower horizontal aluminum backbone for structure.
That would still transmit downforce from the splitter directly to the chassis but in the case of an impact with say a tire gator, kerbing or trailer ramps it would allow for deflection upwards.
That's true, re:shrapnel. hopefully it comes off in small enough pieces that it doesn't do too much more damage on the way out?
The main trouble I see with converting the uprights to cables (and not having the pics to go back and confirm) is I think you'll end up spending a lot of time fussing with the initial cable install to get the tension right... especially since you'll probably need four cables to be confident that it's not going to sway. Also, I'm not sure how much upward movement you'll get with the bumper cover there?
I spent a little time farting around with the car this weekend.
I've tried unsuccessfully to setup my race capture mk3 to log data at the track, compared to the plug and play nature of my traqmate setup I was easily frustrated and set hte project aside. After failing to get it working during OLOA, and the last 2 track events I finally figured cooler heads might prevail if I try setting it up in the garage.
Turns out reading the directions are wonderfully helpful and I had the system working the first try.
Keep in mind:
1) Unless it's a CAD software I have pretty much the same computer savvy as your grandparents.
2) I spent lots of time refusing to read the directions because "I don't need an owners manual for a phone app"
3) once I read the directions setup went smoothly although it's not as intuitive as you would hope.
Heres a little youtube clip of it logging oil temp, fuel level, coolant temp, rpm and steering angle.
I also managed to get it to log all 4 wheel speed sensors independently which might make for interesting data.
Also, I've been learning some surfacing techniques in CAD lately which have led to forward progress on re-engineering the front spindle on the e46 and with that, a new photo hosting option! I'll be going back through and updating my build with new links to hopefully bring all the pictures back online.
as I still have yet to update all the links on my photos, I recently learned that this exists for google chrome users! https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/photobucket-embed-fix/naolkcpnnlofnnghnmfegnfnflicjjgj
and just like magic the forums suddenly look fixed for me!
Tomorrow morning we leave for Road Atlanta Gridlife. After getting to do Parade laps here during OLOA and watching Matt drive it at speed I've been eagerly anticipating this event all summer.
As I still can't get the car to do 3+ laps at speed at a time and knowing how hot it would be in GA I did a few more cooling mods which I hope, will finally solve the issue once and for all.
First, deleted the A/C, The factory pusher fan plus ac condensor are both in front of the radiator/oil cooler hopefully a more direct shot of air will help, bonus it saved a few lbs:
Next, I had great cooling results with Trackspec hood vents on my c5 corvette so I figured I'd give them a try on the M3, the large center vent is just behind the radiator which hopefully helps extract some air through that and then the driver side vent is directly over the top of the blower, hopefully help with a bit of radiant heat there.
Lastly on the cooling front, factory cars have this nice little scoop on top of the core support which duct air into the factory intake, since I don't have the factory intake it just blows air roughly towards the blower, I removed the scoop, which left this little hole:
Made a quick and dirty block off plate from some cheap circle track plastic (seriously this stuff is like $10 for a 20 foot roll)
Then, I found a set of 18x11 Apex wheels cheap locally, these are the same wheel I already run but 1" wider. I'm about due for new tires so I stepped those up from 275 to 285, they look massive
Fitting the fronts proved not to be too difficult, remove the fender liner, roller the fenders, tug on the fenders, loosen all fender hardware and then pull it outward as much as the factory adjustments allow, then re-install fender liners. They don't line up at all now but hopefully they do something? I have the liner slid outward as far as possible too, all told the front fenders now sit about 1" further outward than before:
Which allows for removing the spring and seeing that I can get full compression without touching metal! hurray!
The backs were a bit harder and more permanent. I had to cut out the inner most layer of metal first:
Then with the springs removed I was able to use the fender roller with a jack under it as a crude metal crimper, the idea here is to fold the inner fender upwards like most other cars and also the fronts on this car.
Once the whole thing is crimped upwards you can roll as normal and ultimately wind up with something like this, Ideally you would cut straighter than I did and not have an area of no overlap. To the left of the image/wheel well you can see how they look from the factory, middle is how I want them to look, right is when you cut off too much and leave yourself nothing to crimp.
Test again with the ole, no spring full compression, it's close but it fits!
Lastly, I've been farting around with a race capture system and think I've finally got it working to the point that I wanted to hard mount it in my car. The previous owner installed a Dynavin touch screen head unit which had some pretty cool features, but also 20 million wires. The entire mess on the left is replaced with the tablet to the right:
I made a quick and dirty block off plate from some scrap aluminum which you can see the test fit of here:
then I bolted a RAM Tab Tite onto the plate, this mount is spring loaded so I can easily install/remove the tablet which is perfect for reviewing data etc.
I also figured I'd utilize the extra space to mount my electric fan override switch, A quick coat of black paint and it looks decent for how little effort I spent on it:
The last bit of this Install is hooking up the power/CAN and GPS, presently I'm just passing the gps through the interior from the trunk but I spent a few extra minutes and routed the red CAN/power wire through the dash and into the center console. From the factory BMW provided one of the most stout arm rests ever. It's great for long trips but gets in the way on track, the key to it's strength is the massive trunk which bolts to the chassis, I took a sawzall and removed most of it leaving just the mounting tabs for the console. Bent up a simple aluminum U bracket to hold the race capture too and viola, hopefully this is sufficiently out of the way while also still accessible:
So those are the updates! I start evening classes for completing a degree the night after we get home from Atlanta so I don't expect to do any major changes between now and winter other than just drive it at the events I hope to attend!
so, coolshirts for the OneLap Transits? 
How hard is it to plug the tablet in for power?
This plus a bluetooth speaker is my off-hand idea for the DirTL...although it'll be harder to package sine the radio/hvac share an info screen.
sleepyhead wrote: so, coolshirts for the OneLap Transits?
Ideally I hope to find that I've added too much cooling to the car and can re-install the AC. At this point I'm simply out of budget for the rest of the season and hoping this bandaid covers the issue well enough for now. We aren't nearly as pointy edge as the RS boys and we find A/C to be a mandatory prerequisite of OLOA.
The ends of the tab-tite are open so you can easily plug in a power cable while it's in the cradle. right now as I'm still in the beta test phase of it I'll just be powering it from the cigarette lighter to usb cable. Once I've proven out the system to a satisfactory level I plan to hard wire a charging cable into the accessory switch of the car and set it up to launch an automotive interface or race capture when the car turns on. I'm also considering doing that, but with a wireless charger so that when the car is on and running it magically charges without wires connected and would be fully charged any time you wanted to remove it from the car.
For getting audio into the car I was thinking either a bluetooth enabled amplifier wired to the factory speakers, or a bluetooth receiver wired into the factory amplifier.
So many ideas! so little time and money to implement/test them.
Catching this back up,
Not a whole lot of changes to the car, Atlanta went pretty well, the track was an absolute blast! I'm glad we made the decision to go visit it during Gridlife and that I had a whole weekend to warm up to the track vs trying to learn it on the fly at One Lap of America.
My favorite part about this event is we only used the main paddock area which left the entire support paddock open for a Maxxis Tire sponsored autocross event. I wound up having a time good enough to win me a set of tires! so that was awesome.
On the final session of the event my transmission stuck into 4th gear as I tried to shift into 5th, I managed to get the car into neutral but then couldn't go into another gear, thankfully I was on the long straight heading to 10a-b so I just coasted through the turns, up the hill and was able to roll down into the pits.
All told I managed to place 1st in the Street Mod RWD class with a laptime of 1:34. and 4th overall out of all street modified cars with 0.6 of a second separating 1st through 4th! and 2nd through 4th separated by 0.1!! I love a close battle!
And here's some video from my fastest lap at ATL:
Road Atlanta Gridlife Supercharged E46 M3 - YouTube
With only a few weeks to go before the next event I had to work quick! Which is partially why I'm just getting to the update from ATL.
Getting the car home I was fairly certain the issue was inside the transmission/clutch as the hydraulic system seemed fine. Pulling the transmission I found a broken tab on the clutch disc had allowed one of the springs to come out! Thankfully a friend had a spare clutch setup he sold me cheap to get through the final 2 races of the season. Thankful for an easy to spot issue I bolted the the car back together and tried to go for a test drive.
Except the car still wouldn't go into gear.....it was no better than before and the clutch felt a little spongy, hmm maybe hydraulics after all?
Ordered a new Slave/Master and got those installed, spent a lot of time bleeding to be certain the air was out of the system.
Nope.......no improvement.......hmm ok, what did I miss? now 3 days away from the event I have to pull the trans back out and see what is wrong.
Things always go faster the 2nd time and thankfully I had a spare 5 speed trans to swap in. But I didn't want to put anything back together until I was 100% certain I'd found the issue as I didn't have time to do this work a 3rd time.
Once I had the trans out it still took a few hours of investigative work, measuring the stack height of the old vs new clutch, the throw of the slave cylinder etc before I finally noticed.....The throwout bearing on my current transmission doesn't move nearly as far towards the engine as the one on the spare transmission, Eureka! bent clutch fork.
Since I knew my current in car transmission was working I opted to reinstall that with the clutch fork from the donor trans. 2nd time's the charm and we're good to go!
Now off to M1 Concourse in Detroit for the speedring. This event was pretty crazy as there was $35,000 in cash prizes on the line for the 60 time attack cars entered. Big names like the Lyfe Motorsports GTR and the CAN JAM STi came out for their chance to bring home the $20,000 top prize. Amongst the usual midwest fast guys like RS Motors and Professional Awesome.
Unfortunately I could never get comfortable on the narrow tight track, there were multiple turns with speeds below 30mph which required downshifting into 2nd gear, something I've never done on a road course and messed up more than I got right. With Walls mere feet off the track there was no space for error and I just never got into a rhythm.
That aside, it was awesome seeing how fast some of the top time attack cars are and the event had a "bracket race" on Sunday which was so much fun to compete in and almost more fun to watch.
2 cars would be sent out on track for a lead follow warm up lap, time starts as the cars cross the start/finish line, If the car behind closes the gap to the car in front they win the battle, if the gap grows then they lose. after 1 hot lap the cars switch positions on a cool down lap and repeat. After 2 laps you come off the track, you must win 2 battles to advance to the next round so if each car won a lap they were sent out for a 3rd sudden death lap. If you went 4 wheels off the track or passed the lead car you were automatically disqualified.
This was a ton of fun, I managed to advance through the first round only to get knocked out on sudden death in the next round. I really hope to see more events adopt this for exhibition or as their format. It's a ton of fun and every lap counts so you have to be consistently on your game!
The last major stop of the season was back to my home track at Gingerman Raceway for the final Gridlife event of the season. I was pretty excited to find out how much the improvements I’d made to the car would effect lap times as this exact event in 2016 was the first event I entered the car in exactly as I had purchased it.
Saturday mornings weather was a bit wet but with no precipitation we figured it’d dry out in short order, I headed out for the 8:30am session keen to just shake down the car and warm up.
In the wet the car turned a 1:41.3, not a fast time by any means but still a full second faster than my best time with the car as it sat when I purchased it last year! So that was promising.
The next session out with dry track I clicked off a 1:39.27 woah sweet! Now a full 3 seconds faster than my baseline when I bought the car, and 1 second faster than I had gone this summer during the festival event. Reviewing data we could tell there were a few corners I was entering too hot and pushing scrubbing speed. I switched from my 18x10 275 re71 combo to the 18x11 285 re71 combo and resolved to drive the whole session with the goal of not pushing through the corner and instead let the front tires bite.
The first lap around the AIM solo read 1:37.298 and I nearly yelled out loud from excitement! Now 5 full seconds faster than my baseline, and almost a full 2 seconds faster than my own personal best in any car. That lap was also fast enough to secure the class record of any drivetrain for the street modified class! I had to do a cool down lap at that point and decided to wait until Sunday morning to attempt any improvement on that. Saturday night brought thunderstorms and rain that let up early morning. When we arrived at the track we found conditions damp but quickly drying. I suited up for a damp session and headed out. The track really didn’t feel too bad after a couple laps so I started pushing a bit harder, to my amazement the AIM showed another 1:37.2 in the rapidly drying damp track! Alright well I’ve at least backed up my time!
The next (and what would be the last fast session of the weekend) I tried my best to just do everything a little cleaner and better, 2 laps in I managed to click off a 1:36.98 despite a massive drift in the final turn. This wound up being my fastest time of the weekend and good for 1st place overall in the class for the weekend!
With this event closing out the season for Gridlife they did the season long awards as well where I found out that my class record had earned me just enough bonus points to move into 2nd place overall for the season!
Here's a little video of my fastest lap at Gingerman (yes a new camera mount is on the list for this off season) :laughhard:
Gridlife Round 5, Gingerman Raceway Supercharged E46 M3 - YouTube
So now we move into the long off season, I have a few projects planned over the winter in terms of improving aero and weight savings but I don’t want to mess with the drivetrain too much as it’s been pretty solid this year and we’ll need that dependability if we intend to compete in One Lap of America 2018.
Here's a little bit of a preview for some of the rear aero changes (GoodAero Raptor Wing, 68" wide, 14" chord)
Since we're basically almost officially into silly season a little bench racing:
We ran Road Atlanta and Gingerman during OLOA.
My car went roughly 6 seconds per lap faster at those tracks than Matt's car did during OLOA.
there are 12 road course segments, with 3 laps each twice a day. for a total of 72 laps turned during OLOA. Obviously my bench racing math won't work out perfectly on every track as our cars corner speeds are relatively similar and the tracks without long straights won't play to the extra hp advantage.
But it is an exciting mental exercise for next year.
I'm absolutely geeked to see what this car does on One Lap next year. You guys were fast this year, but six seconds a lap? That's an eternity. Since I know you already know the answer, how close were you to the pointy end this year?
Fantastic job at Gridlife btw. I'm totally going to name drop you from now on. 
The bench racing Math is not to be believed, It doesn't factor in standing start laps, but we were approximately 5 minutes off the pointy end.
I know the math doesn't work perfectly because at gingerman the RS boys registered an avg laptime of 1:35 despite flying laps of 1:32 during OLOA. Hugh Bate avg'd 1:37.
Our realistic goal would be to move up into the top 10. I'm not sure how high up the ladder we'd be able to go as we're still down a couple hundred hp and 2 driven wheels to the awd guys on the standing start. Perhaps highest finishing rwd car could be our stretch goal.
I think adding 10sec for a standing start is "believeable" to add to a average lap time... which is right in line with the RS example above.
Then, you could take the 6sec/lap and divide it by the length of the course as a estimate
{insert: resisting the urge to open up googleDocs spreadsheet}
klodkrawler05 said:Here's a little bit of a preview for some of the rear aero changes (GoodAero Raptor Wing, 68" wide, 14" chord)
what was the old wing? and, please tell me there will be swan necks?
also, awesome update! and congrats on all the success!
Drag times will tell you about how much you lose on a long straight with a standing start. If you have to brake for that first corner, then your speed advantage is done. Those times are just sitting there........
In reply to sleepyhead :
Unfortunately no swan's 
while that would be advantageous to us during OLOA with it's non existant aero restrictions it is a 50/50 trade off for Gridlife where our aero has to remain below the roofline as the added height of the mounts results in the entire element being a bit lower.
The old wing was/is a bimmerworld element with custom upgrights and end plates:
http://www.bimmerworld.com/Body-Aero/Wings-Rear-Spoilers/Tall-BimmerWorld-V3-Carbon-Race-Wing-Kit.html
It's basically your standard 68" wide 12" chord length 2d element
More silly season stuff,
Caught Brock talking on facebook in a few spots and have ascertained that Hastings Motorsports Park and MI International Speedway are on the list of tracks for next year perhaps?
This bodes well for us, Matt ran a chump car endurance race at Hastings once and I've been to MIS twice with the Optima Ultimate Street Car events so we're 2/2 on kind of at least knowing which turns are where.
Hastings is a fun track. I haven't been there in a few years tho, everytime I went, it rained! I got tired of driving 7 hours to get there and then get rained on...
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