One of our customers that we built an e46 for wanted a second car for a spare and for his brother to get into BMW racing also. Rather than build another e46, he went on the search for a "built" car to save some money in the budget.
Here is what he found:
This was a car from Chicago with some really nice bits. A lot of the work was done by Fall Line and the rest by the owner who worked at a BMW dealer. So there are some really nice parts and the foundation of a proper race car is there. There are just some bits that needed to be finessed as it was never raced. That is where we were asked to step in and prep the car for BMW CCA racing.
Here is the first round of modifications and upgrades:
The first step was to custom fab the seat mount to be on the floor (as low as possible). We cut out the factory cross bar seat supports and fabricated our own supports:
The new owner is very determined to maximize performance as well as aesthetics. He was not 100% happy with the look of the cage supports to the unibody, and asked us to update those. Also, we realized that the front windshield support was not legal as it was singular and the rules call for two supports. Here is what we have done:
In addition to the safety and aesthetics updates to the cage, we looked at the intake. The car had a stock Euro box and we were asked to fabricate a proper heat shield and large cone filter.
Here is the template and the raw piece:
Here is a look at the finished product that was also powder coated white to match the valve cover and plenum (this is a video of the car on the initial dyno testing):
We also re-did the radiator hoses to solid hard alum pipe using the Hargett clamps that we are a distributor for (these are the same function as wiggens but a lot less money). This eliminates a possible failure point and can help us to keep the car cool and consistent:
While inspecting the car we also found a couple of "gotcha's" that we needed to address. This was the biggest. I show these pictures so that nobody else makes this mistake. The rear sway bar was attached to tubular upper arms (which is not safe as the welding weakens the metal and the force will bend the bar, resulting in failure eventually). We replaced these with evosport lower or upper e36 and e46 arms:
This is what we put on: (WARNING: BLATANT PLUG FOR OUR PRODUCT :stickoutt)
Next the car is off to do some paint work. I will post more updates as I have them!
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