Sorta Sketchy Racing - E30 and Jeep shenanigans inside!

Sonoma is where it's at for slow car fast! You're making me miss SoCal. Fun thread!

accordionfolder said:

Sonoma is where it's at for slow car fast! You're making me miss SoCal. Fun thread!

Never been to Sonoma actually, was going to go this year before COVID hit. Hopefully I can remedy that soon though.

Thanks for the positive feedback you guys.

We're going through another heat wave here in NorCal and it's slated to be around 115 this weekend which does not make for great working on the car weather. I waited until tonight at around 7 PM to go swap out the ignition switch in the M3 and ended up being immediately drenched in sweat.Not hard to do this job, just kind of annoying and fiddly. Undo some trim pieces and get the switch out from where its screwed in. Then vacuum up everything because this car is the gift that keeps on giving.

Fight with the big steel knee bolster until you realize there are three 10mm bolts which, once undone, give you access to everything.

That was easy. Also, it did not fix my issues with the gas gauge and speedometer which is just a real pain in my ass. I guess I'm going to email the dude who rebuilds these and ask his opinion.

Since I was already sweaty I figured I would repaint the window trim because it was in sorry shape.

I got this this point and realized that the three cans of SEM trim black I thought I had was actually about 1/3 can of SEM trim black I actually had. So I just did this real quick with some 400 grit and a quick wipe down with a rag. My rule for painting stuff is always 50/50 (50 feet, 50 miles per hour).

Before:

How did it turn out? Okay I guess. Not my best work for sure. Plus it was dark by the time I was finishing so the last coat was completely blind.

Not bad for a couple hours in the hot hot heat. At least the trim is back to being black.

I am currently frustrated at ECS tuning. I have never liked that company and strongly prefer FCP Euro. However, ECS was one of the only vendors which had a certain part I was for my red E30. I ordered the part from them on 8/27 and didn't even receive word from them until I called them on Wed the 2nd when they told me the part had "landed" and would be shipped out that day. I also submitted an inquiry through their system on the 2nd. On the 4th I get an email from them saying they had picked my order and it would be packed and shipped, with an expected delivery date of September 14th. Maybe this is the Amazon getting to me but 2 and a half weeks for a set of brake rotors seems a little excessive to me. Plus, I finally received a "your order has shipped" notification on the 5th but the tracking number only shows that FedEx has receievd the information aka the label has been created. Frustrating.

No real updates this week. Still waiting for the discs in the mail. Sent out the cluster for the M3 to Bavarian Restorations. So we wait.

First thing, I crossed over 8000 miles (omg so many) on my S3. I really really like this car. I am so on the fence about throwing a tune on it. It sure cleans up nice.

(I don't know why that picture is so JPEG'd.)

Also tackled putting a big brake kit on my red E30. With the extra power of the S50 I found myself braking way early before corners last time I was out at Thunderhill and I figured since I'm taking about the braking system to put a new hub/bearing in, why not upgrade? I went with the Massive "street kit" from Massive Brakes. I've had this setup before on this car when I was younger and I had to sell it and go back to stock years ago when I fell on some hard times. I like the kit and I like that it uses 4 piston Wilwood calipers which are a common upgrade in the Miata world and VW G60 Corrado rotors which are easily sourced.

Here's the stock stuff, complete with stud that backed out when I took it out at the track.

That wheel bearing was totally borked and took a tremendous effort to remove. I even broke my breaker bar.

So I had to run to Harbor Freight for a replacement, might as well upgrade.

This took care of the issue quickly and easily (once my compressor finally aired up)

Here's the stock rotor versus the G60 rotor. Pretty nice upgrade. Massive Brakes will tell you the inner diameter of the rotor needs to be machined 1mm larger to sit correctly on the hub. I just took a dremel with a grinding stone to the inner diameter until it popped on easily.

Yeah, I would say this thing is borked.

Here's the Massive machined bracket for the Wilwood calipers. Nice looking piece. I had to reuse my caliper bolts instead of the supplied ones because the supplied ones hit the rotor and wouldn't install all the way. The stock bolts were shorter and even then were still too close to the rotors for my comfort. A single washer on each caliper bracket bolt solved that.

And here's one side all done.

The driver's side was not dramatic at all and was no more involved than doing a hub/brake job. Easy peasy.

Here's how it looks with the wheel on. I ordered (or was sent) the wrong stud kit from Motorsport Hardware so I had to order a new kit and use wheel bolts for now.

And I think it still cleans up pretty nice.

Been a while since the last update but...

Greg at BavRest says the M3's cluster is all good which is a bummer because I'll have to do some more wiring diagnostics which I hate. Greg is going to refurb the cluster anyway and clean up some stuff before he sends it back so maybe we'll both be surprised. Who knows?

Picked up a whole Ground Control setup on Facebook marketplace for super cheap. Seems weird to be upgrading a car I'm planning to sell but, these were a killer deal and I think it ups the value (or at least the attractiveness to potential buyers) nicely.

Yeah they're damn ugly (came from an east coast car) but they work and certainly make the car look a lot better.

New coilovers left the front tires a little sucked in.

So I grabbed some cheap 12mm spacers (hubcentric) from Amazon that are way better quality than they have any business being for how cheap they were.

Tough to see in the pictures but it definitely looks better.

12mm might not end up being enough and I may do a 20mm spacer. I think I have stud length needed.

I finally got the new studs installed on the front of the E30 also. I was tired of having bolts on the front and studs on the rear.

And I replaced the throttle cable on the green racecar. No pics of that however.

i dig the copper wheels against black. i also dig e36 coupe without rear spoiler.

Thanks man! I am liking this car a lot and it'll be pretty nice ones all the weird kinks are worked out. Shame I have to sell it but I need the cash to fund some other projects.

r3vhappy said:

And I think it still cleans up pretty nice.

I want this. 

AxeHealey said:

I want this. 

Thanks man! I still really like this car even if it gives me constant troubles.

Took a four day vacation to a lake house with a few buddies. We drove the Audi up the 101 through Oregon to the place we stayed. It made for some really nice pictures even if I only had my iPhone.

This one is probably my favorite.

Hopefully some more updates on the other cars soon.

Okay, long overdue update with lots to catch up on.

Sorta Sketchy Racing continues on!

The M3 got sold to a kid about an hour away. He's making it into a track car too, I hope I'll see him out there!

Early in 2021 we picked up a trailer which was a real game changer. Having the ability to go to the track and not have to worry (too much anyway) about how you're gonna get the car home in the wake of a minor break down is such a wonderful thing. Of course to go with it I would have to have something I could tow with. So, the Audi had to go. I picked up a 2005 Toyota Sequoia with 155k miles on it for a really good deal locally, thanks to irish44j for the inspiration!

Of course I couldn't leave well enough alone and I put on some 33 inch 10 ply Falken Wildpeaks (285/70/17 but close enough) on some 17x9 TRD Pro replicas with an Old Man Emu 2.5" lift.

Tows the E30 very well, especially with the Air Lift 1000s I installed in the rear later on.

I added a roof rack from Sherpa Equipment and the sticker collection continued to grow.

Then I got a check engine light for secondary air valve issues. I did the work myself and boy was it difficult. I did not enjoy it but at least its done. Other than that, the Sequoia has been great. I did some preventative maintance like the timing belt, water pump, radiator and hoses, thermostat and spark plugs but besides that its just oil changes. I love this thing. Highly recommended.

Now for the E30s.

Early in 2021 we broke a rocker arm on the unknown mileage engine that was in the green car.

We took the head off, got it to a machine shop and installed a Bimmerheads 274 and their heavy duty rockers, plus some ARP headstuds and a new tuning chip from SSSQuid. Some custom paint (my dad loves doing little things like this in his spare time) and it was good to go.

We ran it at Sears Point and Thunderhill and it was doing great.

Then, while I was driving (of course), there was a large bang while accelerating and the car started to lose power. I was able to limp it to the pits and got a tow back to our parking spot. Initial inspection showed there was nothing wrong in the valve train. We loaded the car up on the trailer and went home. We began tearing it down and found zero compression on cylinder two. Hmm... there was no hole in the block and the valve train looked fine. Well, it broke a connecting rod.

So that was bad. I called and talked to my machine shop guy and told him we were considering adding a turbo and he recommended we beef up the bottom end while its out. Well, $4,000 for a hobby car's bottom end doesn't sound very appealing. So we declined that option. We found a used engine for 400 bucks and slapped our built head (with now fixed bent valves) onto the used block.

We added a sunroof delete panel and some hood venting also.

We're turboing it now along with adding some oil coolingand other gauges. Hopefully it'll be good.

The gray car is still sitting in the garage, I got the suspension out of it and did some stuff with it but it's on the back burner with the track season coming up and my dad and brother-in-law wanting to get the green car on the track with the new horse power.

The red car is awesome, passed smog with no issues and continues to tear up the track. Need to get that ABS working though...

That's it for now! Until the next update!

Green car is up and running and making boost! I have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to tuning so it was pretty lean under boost. Only drove it up and down the street last night a few times to confirm we weren't going to blow out any couplers or anything. Dyno tuning is next week! Very exciting.

Should have thrown the S52 in the E30.

Had a friend who swapped an S54 in his E30 M3 track car.  That car hauled.

maj75 (Forum Supporter) said:

Should have thrown the S52 in the E30.

Had a friend who swapped an S54 in his E30 M3 track car.  That car hauled.

Oh for sure, I already have an S50 in one of my E30s (the maroon one) and its a really fun car. 

Dyno day did not go as expected. Couldn't get the boost low enough and was consitently hitting 15+ psi. Not ideal. Testing of the internal wastegate actuator showed it was opening at 14 psi which is way more than we want. I ordered a garrett 7 psi actuator and hopefully that fixes our issue.