Hot sunday in the valley....

My moms garage is in the valley and boy was it a sauna in there.....! I managed to get alot done and only sweat out a few buckets!

I finish grinding off all the 5 layers of paint in the engine bay and frame rails. Luckily no serious rust to report....

So now I'm ready to start on the cage work....
you might notice I cut out the passenger firewall "foot bulge". This is to make it easier to install and removal the headers....might seam silly but why not! I like making my life easier...

Also finally finished welding on the subframe adjusters. Then I used the air grinder to finish cutting out the adjustment slots. The "eccentrics" required some grinding filing to ensure proper smooth operation....basically it all took some fine tunning to get just right.....

Not bad eh? I'm pretty proud of myself.

Completed subframe
Outermost pickup point adjust toe and inside (vertical slots) adjusts camber.

Completed modified rear suspension!

Reinforced trailing arms and now adjustable subframe ! (also solid subframe mount bushing not pictured)

Bimmerfest recovery....back to work!

I was working the Stealthauto booth at Bimmerfest this weekend and unfortunately did not get a good chance to look around.

I did stop by the Ireland Engineering booth and picked up some camber and toe rear adjustable weld on kit.

SO back home on Sunday I got back to work on the car abit....

Here is the Camber kit

First I clamped a piece of flat stock to serve as a backer so I may take my big F'ing hammer and make the small turned out lips flat.
Marking where to cut so that with the plate on now we have a slot so the eccentric adjuster may move back and forth....
On the Semi-trailing arm design of the 2002 (also e30 and Mcoupe). The more you lower the car or basically move th arm further up into it's travel, you gain toe-in and the tire gains negative camber. So usually a 2002 at race ride height will have too much camber and too much toe-in. This kit will allow you to dial some of that out.

Also if you ever plan on running bias ply slicks, you will want close to 0 camber so these become even more important.

Toe will move back and forth on the outermost trailing arm mount on a horizontal plane. This will give you the ability to adjust toe.

The innermost trailing arm mount (closest to the diff) will be cut so we may move the arm on a vertical plane. As we move the eccentric down we get more negative camber and more we move it up we reduce the amount of negative camber.
My first TIG weld on the adjustment plates

Oops! new headers

Next up I pulled the smashed headers from my off track excursion at buttonwillow.....

Click here for all the pics.....HERE.

For the new system I just copied what Jeff Ireland and many others on the grid are running. It a very loud but legal setup. IE stepped race headers to 3" collector to small section of 3" tubing to a downturn. Loud but effective on the dyno according to Jeff Ireland himself.

So I quickly fabricated and mounted my own.....Click here for all the pics

You can see a few shots below

new exhaust

Nice Pair of pullies!

Now the work starts to address some issues before the next race....

I fabricated a new throttle cable bracket and installed and adjusted a brand new race throttle cable from Ireland Engineering.


Bottom cable stop (goes to lever arm for gas pedal.
Top View also new return springs
I figured that besides reducing my rotating mass and free'ing up some HP it might help improve my cooling. Since the water pump will be rotating slower the water will be flowing a bit slower thru the block at 6-7000rpms and therefore soaking up more heat and then staying longer thru the radiator therefore exchanging more heat......

that's my theory anyways.....

Lets see how it works out.
The stock crank pulley is 1lbs 3oz.
The Ireland Pulley is 9.2 oz. (nice weight savings huh?)


Ireland alternator pulley 7oz.

If your going to be draining your alum. radiator alot like I do sooner or latter the threads might get damaged.

My solution was to install this cool little petcock I got from my local hardware store.

I highly recommend it ......

I saw this on the table at a race supply vendor at willow springs and picked it up.

During my first race weekend I quickly realized that paying attention to the oil pressure gauge during a race is very difficult and can be dangerous.

So i thought a simple oil idiot light would be a good important addition to my dash.....

From Longacre products
http://www.longacreracing.com/catalog/item.asp?id=785&catid=11

removed my dash drilled hole for the red light
installed the T on the back of the gauge.
voila

done!

Hopefully this idiot will see this light if it ever comes on.....