BMW 357is

[lowside67]

Winter project... take my championship DSP car, and RUIN IT!



The idea is to go from DSP to F-prepared... basically gut the car, keep the stock drivetrain, lose about 500lbs, and switch to slicks. Faster, more fun to drive, but same reliability as currently.

THE CALM BEFORE THE STORM:



Look at all these things that don't make my racecar any faster...



After a long day's work:

[lowside67]

Darn. Lost these photos

[roastpuff]

Whoa... nice. Is it hard to corner-balance DIY?

[lowside67]

It's not that hard but it is certainly time consuming.

We arent corner balancing at this point, just using the scales to see how heavy the car is and how the F/R balance has been changing.

In DSP trim the car was 2880lbs +/- 5lbs with the rollbar.

My goal for 2011 is 2400lbs including the rollcage.

[lowside67]

Wtf? Missing half of my engine bay... weird.





Also found an early Xmas present hiding...

[JMac]

Mark, the front of your car is missing.

[thephotonerd]

Ya you better be careful, that engine looks like it may fall out

[Behnam]

Are those machine gun tubes? Should we be watching out?

[lowside67]

The bottom of the fuse box was UGLY...



So I cut it out.

While I had the wire snippers out, removed the rest of the engine



Obligatory scale shot (no drivetrain except driveshaft & rear diff)



The car is just about ready for the cage builder now which unfortunately isnt until February!

-Mark

[lowside67]

Ok... cat is out the bag...

New arrival to my garage: 99 Camaro LS1

[Behnam]

are you building a dragster?? 2200 lbs and plenty of mods out there to make it a 9 sec car....

[Zedzag]

Ok... cat is out the bag...

New arrival to my garage: 99 Camaro LS1

I like the direction this is going! Who's doing your cage?

[lowside67]

Ha, Ben, have I even been a drag racing guy? I am building an autocross, hillclimb, solo 1, and general shenanigans car!

The cage and chassis work are being done by Lowe Group Racing in Carnation, WA
Their shop car is a tube framed A-arm conversion widebody E36... /drool

For my car we wont be going that far, simply not in the budget, but we will be doing a complete 10pt GT cage coupled with some floor plan, rear seat, rear parcel shelf, and trunk removal, replacement with sheetmetal.





-Mark

[crazycanadian]

hey mark did you get a hold of kiesler to answer some of your transmission questions about their TKO transmissions?

If you get tired of trying to figure out what to do about putting a standard in their you can always go back to an auto.. I have done some really fun things with TCI stand alone computers for the 4L60E auto transmissions... we can get you all set up with paddle shifters and everything.. lol...

[andre4444]

hahaha, that's funny.

when you first posted the pictures with the engine pulled i thought you just pulled it for the cage install or for some other reason and i was actually going to suggest an LS1

this car is going to be nuts....

[roastpuff]

That's going to be a beast of a car, haha.

Quick question - does camber plates bump me into a specific class? With my "winter projects" I'm ending up in DSP, but are camber plates allowed there?

[some_punk]

we know one thing for sure is that we know that LS1 was never raced. I looked for awhile to get this engine.

[lowside67]

Re: transmission

Decision has all but been made that I will source the best used T56 I can and simply use that. I dont want to re-engineer a bunch of stuff to accommodate a different transmission, for 2011, the goal is just to get the car up and running.

Re: camber plates

Camber plates are specifically legal in any street touring, street prepared, street modified, prepared, or mod classes.

[Lateapex]

Good thing to start with a 99 LS1, the 98's have a different PCM that make tuning next to impossible, the 99-up in the hands of a top LS1 tuner like FROST can run 8 Sec boosted drag cars with 800hp on a remapped PCM. The 98 also have a different intake manifold and PCV system that nobody, even GM makes replacement hose for so the factory fix is a 2002 intake that also gains 10-12hp (and stock legal mod)
If you are going stand alone, as good as the SDS systems are, I'd get HP tuners, for LS1's you don't need to guess, everything has been done and dyno proven with maps on download.

Thier are a few E36 racecars running LS1's in thunderhill 25hr race, be careful as car with High G-load can cause oil issue with stock pans, check out the roadrace section of LS1tech.com, their is a guy with the same car with full aero that has a write-up on it. Solo races are fairly short though and I haven't seen any issue with my 98 on Motul yet, but my car is certainly not a high-G slick tire car.

[lowside67]

Thanks for all the info, much appreciated. I have an LS6 intake that will be going on the car and I am definitely going to run the reflashed 99 PCM to try and keep costs down as much as possible.

I am going to run a baffled oil pan from ImprovedRacing, while you are right that Maynard (the guy with that crazy LS2 based E36) has had lots of issues with the oiling, the solo events and what not that the car is being built for wont see that type of sustained cornering as there arent many sustained high speed corners. With that said, this motor is the "test bed" so it is a bit of a sacrificial lamb, hopefully lasting me a few years while I save up for an LS6.

Looking forward to getting started on it when I get back!\

-Mark