I couldn't bring myself to mess with the green car. Got as far as putting it in the shed, then chickened out! Did fit the E46 17" wheels to it, which made me even less keen to turn it into a race car...
So the blue 316i was the obvious candidate.
I paid $250 for it a few months back, with a dead auto. Had been smoked in, so was predictably stinky.
And the body is sound without being amazing. Apart from the extra work to swap the twin cam manual in, it was pretty much the perfect starting point.
The goals are:
Be a competitive, legal Cheap Car (noting that the fast cars are just getting faster - the pace at the front is way up compared to when we were plodding around in the Laser)*;
Total budget around $5k (not including anything that was already in my shed);
Be "not embarrassing" at some of the endurance races like the Wakefield 300;
Be legal for the Improved Production class (although it will be significantly outclassed as an IP car, this keeps the car legal for virtually everything);
Have a decent upgrade path if we move away from Cheap Car.
First step was to strip the interior. Finding an opened condom wrapper added to the 'excitement' until enough of the the interior was stripped out that I was confident that I wasn't going to find the used condom.
Unlike the silver rally car, I removed the entire heater/AC setup. Total weight is somewhere between 22 and 25kg (depending on how much coolant and gas is in the system), which vindicated my decision to leave all that in the rally car.
Fitted the old Momo race seat that I had hanging around. Decided to make El Wifeo use a booster cushion rather than mount the seat on rails, because it was going to add a massive amount of work to give an inferior result.
Then made the dash fill panel and the false floor.
I probably mentioned earlier that I had bought a set of cheap and nasty coil overs for the strut tops (complete set of coil overs = $210, four tops = $230).
They failed the bounce test (far too much compression dampening, too little rebound dampening), so I was never going to use them, but my curiosity got the better of me.
I fiddled with the shims and now they feel like they might not be utterly terrible. So they went in, along with the matching springs.
Ride height is down by about 30mm compared to the road car, and about 35mm compared to the rally car which has had similar weight loss.
If nothing else, the body length adjustment of the cheapy coil overs is useful for helping me work out lengths and travel and stuff.
I have a strong suspicion that I will be buying a set of Bilstein B12s(?) and matching Eibach springs from Germany in the longer term - I don't have the $1300 spare to do it now!
The outer ball joints are rubber mounted, for NVH reasons.
These arms are the originals from the green car that I removed because a RWC inspector didn't like the flex in the rubber - although the new Chinabay replacements feel identical to drive on...
The actual ball joints are still in excellent condition, after 20 years and 297,000km.
Meyle make "heavy duty" outer ball joints without the rubber. I paid about $40 each for them from the UK - and bought another pair for the rally car.
Anyhow, smoko was productive today.
/\This photo shows the rubber flexing under not much load.
The rear bushes in the front control arm are known as "lollypops", for obvious reasons. I have a pair of new, urethane bushes with offset holes (to increase castor/reduce camber) that are earmarked for the rally car.
But here's an experiment that will be completed "not today":
If it works, then the commercial bushes will go into the blue car, and the DIY bushes will go into the rally car. My DIY bushes won't be legal for Improved Production, which is why I want the softer/IP legal bushes in the race car.
