Sunroof Delete Dec 13, 2006
Weight up high is a bad thing in a race car, so we decided to completely remove the sunroof cartridge and replace it with a riveted steel sheet. The sunroof came out with little fuss, and all we needed to do to get the sheet metal to fit nicely was clip off the corners.
We then measured the positioning, taped it in place, drilled holes every few inches, put down some seam sealer and used pop rivets to make sure it doesn't go anywhere. We're going to paint the car once the cage is installed, so it will get a fresh coat at that point.
Cage Match Dec 21, 2006
Our trip up to Kirk Racing went very well. Mark Stewart, the owner, is a true craftsmen. The entire cage installation took about 20 hours of work, over two days. We had very few setbacks, as Mark had already figured out how he wanted to build the cage, as he's also building a Spec E30.
The final bill on the cage is somewhere in the 1600-1800 range, but this represents an incredible value. Mark wastes no time and builds some of the nicest cages we've ever seen.
Get Down on Your Knees and Spray Feb 8, 2007
This past Sunday we donned our DuPont masks and put some paint on the Spec E30. Tech Editor Per has become quite fond of the ease of use and good results obtained by painting with Nason Fill-In Cans, so we once again headed down the road to Higgs Auto Paint & Body Supplies to order our paint.
We made a very rookie mistake by not checking the name of the color that's printed in big easy-to-read letters on the left front strut tower of every BMW E30. How many greyish colors could there be? The answer is two, a darker looking Delphin Grey and the very bright Salmon Silver. Per and I both could swear up and down than our car must have been the darker hue, so we had Higgs mix up a quart of Delphin Grey and inject four cans of catalyzed paint into the Fill-In spray cans. Naturally, with a 50/50 chance of getting it wrong, we were not surprised when we opened the hood to see "Lachssilber Metallic" (Salmon Silver) printed proudly on the strut tower.
Unwilling to let perfectly good paint go to waste, we decided to attack some trim items first. Our E30 came with a nice set of BBS 3-piece wheels, so we cleaned 'em up and sprayed them in the attracive Delphin Grey, which would nicely compliment the car's lighter silver hue. Our Team Dynamic wheels were an interesting copper color, nice for a white or red car but pretty horrible for silver. So we sprayed those too.
Higgs is closed on Sundays, so we'd have to wait until the week to do the cage, roof, trunk and hood. We then masked off the windows and trim in preparation, then sat down to watch the fumble bowl, expensive commercials and Prince.
On Tuesday we went back to Higgs and got a quart of the proper color mixed and injected into spray cans. When spraying something like a cage in a closed area with no circulation, a good mask is absolutely necessary. Spend 20 bucks on one of the nice dual-cartridge ones.
With the masking work already done, we were able to put a good coat on the cage in very little time. Remvoing the latches for the pop-out rear windows made it easier to get to the tricky spots on the back. The Salmon Silver didn't flow as well as the Delphin Grey for some reason, but we were pretty happy with the end result.
Finally, we still had some Delphin Grey left over, so we decided to make the car faster by adding a racing stripe. We masked off the stripe and ended up with a very handsome end result, reminiscent in some ways of the Lotus Cortina and a few of Per's old Volkswagens.
We'll let the paint dry for a few days and then put down some Lamin-x in high wear areas to protect the paint. Stickers will follow in due time.
That’s Foul Mar 4, 2007
Ever since we bought it, our BMW 325is has been a reluctant starter. It's fine once it warms up, but it likes to hit snooze on the alarm clock a couple of times and it really needs its coffee before it gets going. It runs rich from the get go, too.
Because we're in the build phase, most of the recent engine activity has been to move the car around in the driveway. Start, move a few feet, stop, sit, start again, move a few more feet, stop for a few days, repeat. The brief run periods combined with the fat fuel curve when cold combined to make it progressively more reluctant each time we turned the key. Then one day it was obvious we were a few cylinders down. The next day, I think we had one cylinder; it sounded like the old-fashioned ice-cream mixer thing that shows up every year at the Mitty at Road Atlanta.
A quick glance and we saw one of the breather hoses had disconnected. Did that do the trick? No. But we put it back on anyway.
We know it's getting fuel, so how about spark? The wires looked fine, but when we yanked the spark plugs we were greeted by glossy black ickiness on the electrodes. These plugs were extra fouled. Fortunately, we had a set of recently arrived E3 Spark Plugs on our to-be-tested shelf. The E3 plugs feature DiamondFIRE technology, which is an exciting way of saying the center electrode is surrounded by a diamond-shaped side electrode.
We installed the E3 plugs and the Spec E30 fired right up; it seems to be running better just about everywhere, and it might have even helped to lean out the idle (less of that fuel smell and black smoke). We'll watch them closely to see if that was our problem or merely a symptom of something else.
Ain’t She a Beaut? Mar 14, 2007
Every racer knows that stickers are the key to a successful race car. They add horsepower, cover up those inconvenient blemishes and give street cars the bare sheet metal blues. After the application of fresh paint inside and out--including our cool Lotus Cortina-like racing stripe--we were ready to throw decals on the Spec E30. Now it looks like a proper race car.
The addition of our seat and harnesses mean we can drive the car as well, and that means better photo locations than our driveway. Check out the May 2007 issue of GRM for details on our cage installation as well as the rest of the safety gear.