Race car resurrection | There is always more work than you think!

[PenguinScotty]

Things work out in weird ways sometimes.

As i was prepping my C5, which was rebuilt from the ground up two years ago, for another season of Gridlife GLTC competition, a friend of a friend reached out, asking if i were interested in selling the car. Now, it really wasn't on my radar to sell the car, however i never really was in love with it and to be honest, the price ended up being fair (Although still a loss because race car, lol), so away went the race car.

At this point i honestly wasn't sure what to do. Do i build something from scratch? Do i see about getting a "ready" car and see about making some events this year? Should i be a proper adult and invest my money like a sane person?
Psh, NO!

A few weeks in, a E46 M3 popped up for sale. The car was prepped and competed in ST3/TT3 on the west coast for quite a few years. Reached out to the owner and we got talking and, in the end, came to an agreement!
Now, the car was in Nevada and i'm in Georgia...

So in April, my loyal tow rig and i, headed out towards Nevada!


Even fought off some Dinosaurs on the way.


Once i got to Nevada, i met up with the PO at his place. At this time, the only thing to go off of were a few pictures (bad quality), some videos (also bad quality) and a few calls, hah.

The car was definitely well used and not well taken care of. On the other hand, it had a lot of really good parts on it.
We talked a little bit, he showed me around the car, started it, but i didn't drive it (It was on the trailer) and ended up just committing cause why not, it's another adventure at the very least!

He had purchased the car new in 2005, street drove it, then got into HPDEs. Then in 2014, he wrote a large check and had a shop cage and race prep it. Since then, he had been competing in ST3/TT3 with it, however is retiring soon, so decided to step back from the competition and just do DEs with his 2 series.

Due to him getting out of competition, i ended up with his trailer and a ton of other random parts, hah. Some good, most useless, and in the end just was more work for me xD. The tires on the trailer were so bad that i decided to just replace them before i start the trip back cause i have zero desire to do work on the roadside! Pushed as much grease in the bearings as possible and off we went.

At the hotel, i took a few minutes to look it over some more. As mentioned, it's been pretty neglected maintenance wise and the Nevada sun has not been kind to a lot of parts. On the other hand, there is zero rust, so i got that going for me, lol.



Little did i know how much work is ahead of me, once again

[PenguinScotty]

Once home, it was time to get unloaded and drive her for the first time!

Some immediate things that stood out:

• Horrendous oil leak - PO had mentioned his, but neglected to mention it was never cleaned up
• The driveshaft was contacting the heat-shield - figured it's the CSB, but OHBOY was there more to that
• Once warm, it started idle hunting

Otherwise it felt pretty good, so first things first, get it on jack stands and give it a once over!

Dear baby jesus, so much oil everywhere


Probably the worst collapsed rear jack points i've ever seen. Additionally, somebody definitely messed up and jacked the car up in the wrong spots in the front, so the floor has taken some damage there too...


Alright, that was more than enough, time to start getting it cleaned up to get to work!


About 9 cans of Gunk off hardcore engine degreaser later, we finally got to a decent point with the oil situation under the car! The biggest positive is definitely that there is zero, lol.


After the clean-up, the goal was to get it reasonable reliable to take to Road Atlanta for a shake-down, to figure out what else the car needs. One of the big ticket items was the driveshaft. The car has a 5-speed conversion, seemingly from Bimmerworld, probably in there since 2014 :P. After noticing the loose bolts on the CV joint and grease remnants there, off came the whole thing.
This is how the CV greeted me

One fresh CSB, U-Joint and CV later, back in it went.

Turns out, this will be the running theme of the car from now on, lol.

[PenguinScotty]

The trackday was approaching quickly and while the main focus was basic maintenance, there were a few things i wanted to hop on "while i'm there".

Pet peeve of mine in race cars is the shifter. In my other M3, i've been running the CAE shifter for many years, which was probably my favorite mod in that car. Even compared to the S2000, which is often touted to be one of the best shifting experiences, i'd take the CAE over it any day. People get very upset when i say that, lol.
This time around, due to time constraints as well and due to recommendations from others, the Kinematic Speed shifter went in instead.


Will give an update/comparison on it vs the CAE once i can actually lean on the car. First glance, it's not as precise and the adjustment due the lack of lockout for 1-2 gate is iffy, but we'll see!

Some fresh wheel bearings went on the front as well as brake lines (These must've been on since the car was built in 2014), the rebuilt driveshaft went in and we were somewhat ready for the shakedown


Off we went to Road Atlanta! Threw the Zebulon splitter on (Very nice piece) as well as the very well used APR wing (Not the best piece) and just ran the ECFs instead of the slicks.


While i had low hopes that the car will make the weekend, i definitely did not expect to (almost) catch on fire (again). During the warm-up session, on the back straight, the car started to smoke a ton (oil), so i turned it off and pulled off at a cutout. Turns out the valve cover gasket had pushed out and was dumping oil on the headers. Definitely lucky that nothing ignited there and that would definitely explain the state of the car oil-drenched wise, . So much for cleaning the damn thing up

Pulling the cover off at the track to take a look, i was at least able to confirm that the engine was recently rebuilt and had all the Beisan goodies! Albeit stock cams and such, everything looked solid so that's a positive at least!


While doing this, the oil-return line stood out to me. Seems like it was kinked during installation and is a restriction/not allowing the oil to return to the pan fast enough. My working theory is that because of this, it built pressure in the valve cover due to the PCV getting clogged and popped the gasket out. The catch can was dry and i'm not seeing signs of blow-by but we'll dive into that proper.


Due to that though, the weekend was pretty much done. Definitely was hoping to do at least one or two session with a few push laps, however even with the little time i had, the car felt pretty good overall. The most surprising thing was the turn-in and general feel of the nose with the Bimmerworld LCAs when compared to my stock M3.

Back home we went and that's when the real work started

[PenguinScotty]

The most dangerous saying when working on a project is "While i'm in there i might as well..."

After the event, it became apparent that i'll need to go fairly deep on this project. While it may not be as bad as the C5 was, since it actually DOES run and drive, it definitely will take a lot of time and money for the car to be up to what i want it to be.

First things first, out came the oil to be sent off to get checked in the lab, for peace of mind, and another round of cleaning began

Off came the headers as well, to throw some fresh O2s into it as well as to clean them up, after being drenched in oil. Wasn't sure what they are, haven't really seen them before, however it appears they are old Evosport headers. Not sure about the Section 1 thru back, almost looks custom, definitely not something from 10 years ago, hah.

The more parts i took off, the more things that irked me came to light. Radiator mount on driver side had some damage, so off it came. The intake was oily, so off it came for a clean-up and ICV check. Wiring wise was also rough, so i started cleaning up the remaining OEM ends in the engine bay.


The state of the interior as well as the wiring started to really annoy me, so out came the dash. The routing of the fire extinguisher was also not great so that needs to be fully redone...
While the shop who did the initial build definitely did a solid job, over the years, components were added and changed and those were definitely not done by a shop. Wiring runs were wonky, random crimps, just not pretty at all and nothing properly labeled or color coded!


At this stage, the idea was to simply clean things up and put it back together... buuuuut...

The deeper i dove, especially wiring wise, there were just too many things that annoyed me and i would define as unsafe. So what were my options?

Either tear out the OEM harness, clean it up and rebuild it as necessary, or try something completely new and go with a PDM.

Having never dabbled in PDMs or similar, i reached out to Brett Strom at Strom Motorsports in California. They build some really amazing E46s with B48 swaps and use ECU Master components.
While having done research on various manufacturers, the biggest reason why i went with ECUMaster is because of Brett. He was happy to answer any and all of my questions and very quick at that, so we put together a "Body" package for the car, consisting of the ADU7 dash, CAN Keypad and a PMU-16 to manage all the body controls! Ended up getting some other goodies from him such as the dash mount, sensors and their fantastic race mirror, which i would highly recommend for any track guy!


Funnily enough, while talking to him, he actually had worked on this car before! He did say that he was "Surprised the thing didn't break more often" based on the neglected state of it, haha. Yay i buy the best cars...

While all the above components come with connectors and such, the wiring is up to the user. As i've done this before on the C5, albeit more traditional breakers and switches, it was time to step it up some!
In my travels a company called YourSpec caught my eyes. They are located in Texas and offer custom harness services. Their online project tool lets you define type of cable, size, length and they even offer crimping and labeling services. Additionally, they have several pre-populated projects for various aftermarket ECUs, PDMs and Dashes, so i simply went, made some changes for my need, and off we went!
Just a few days later, the flying lead harness arrived. Decided to go with TXL over Tefzel for now, both due to price and probably having to redo the harness some. It was extremely reasonable and probably cheaper than me buying several spools of wires for this project.
If you are building your own harness of some sort, definitely check them out!


While we're going deep already, we haven't even scratched the surface

[PenguinScotty]

Next up, out came the suspension!

Initially just wanting to get things cleaned up, it again became apparent that there was a lot of neglect.

The only real "major" damage the car endured from wheel to wheel racing, was the passenger front. With the fender being crinkled and some other damage visible on the remote reservoir of the shock, it was obvious that there was more damage underneath. The Vorshlag camber plate showed deformation, subsequently my concerned bells were ringing regarding the strut at as well.


Out went a call to MCS. Talking to them, they were able to see when the suspension was serviced last, which appears to have been in 2022. While that isn't TOO long, since it's all apart and with the damage there, as well as them being just down the road from me, off they went to get serviced.

As expected, there was a fair bit of work that they needed. Passenger front has sustained some damage to the shock body, so MCS swapped the bodies to the newer version which comes with the added benefit of more adjustment, since these were built all the way back in 2012! Additionally, they swapped out the reservoir which was dragged on the ground to a used but good one. Then just a complete change of seals, oil and more and they were back!


While not cheap, the service has been phenomenal and they will do their best to help you out. Cannot recommend the MCS crew enough!

After bending the camber plates back into shape, they received some fresh radial bearings up top.
Another thing that irked me on the setup, was the lack of helper springs and the subsequent dangling of springs at full droop. So a few hundred bucks later for springs, front and rear now have proper helper springs as well as fresh thrust bearings!


Jumping around a lot and ordering parts as i go, so things keep trickling in and more issues arise at the same time. It seems never ending

The Kevlar front bumper is in really bad shape, as is the bumper. Subsequently True Focus Fabrication had an interesting steel bumper beam for sale. While it's 13.5 lbs vs 7lbs of the OEM Kevlar bumper, it might be the better approach for w2w racing, however i'm still not 100% sold on it yet. You can spec it with different tow strap tabs as well as bumper mounting tabs, so that's pretty cool. Comes with all the hardware too! Quality of work is really good as well. Had their coolant reservoir on the C5 which i was very happy with, so they do consistently great work, even though they seem to be mostly tailored to the drifty boy crowd


Pulling off the damaged fender, which was damaged some more while the car was sitting there, exposed some more things to clean up. PO decided to cut into the fender side some more to clear the home-made fender vents. While not structural, it's definitely not clean and not something i want to leave. Guess i'll need to learn how to weld, lol.


While all this was going on, the decision was made to replace the stock DME as well.
Gridlifes GLTC series is a power to weight class, with additional modifiers, so detuning is the name of the game. After researching what is out there as well as talking to Brett Strom some more, the Emtron KV8 appears to be the ticket, so i'm currently working with some people to put together a package or that as well, to integrate everything into the ECU Master body harness and dash side of things.

Emtron offers an interesting torque management feature which would allow for significantly easier detuning, which seems a much more consistent and easier, once set up, way of doing it versus restrictors or, how the C5 was, through throttle body tuning.

My only experience with standalones was the Holley Terminator on the C5, which was about as easy as it gets, however not a true motorsports solution, so this will completely new grounds for me, yet again, hah.

[D-O]

Looks like a fun project. We are neighbors. I am in Marietta / East Cobb.

[Sharocks]

I think you know one of my good friends Kevin Z.

I recognize some of these photos lol

[bigjae46]

This is how the CV greeted me

One fresh CSB, U-Joint and CV later, back in it went.

Turns out, this will be the running theme of the car from now on, lol.

Your balls fell off...hahaha

When clean up oil leaks get something like this...

Coilhose Pneumatics Siphon Tip Blow Gun 602 | Zoro

Then industrial strength simple green diluted 1:1

Simple Green® Original - 1 Gallon Bottle S-7290 - Uline

Or maybe use a pressure washer. Much faster, easier and cheaper than using aerosols.

[PenguinScotty]

Looks like a fun project. We are neighbors. I am in Marietta / East Cobb.

Hello hello neighbor! Thank you and yeah, it'll definitely be a project, hah! Looking forward to taking it back on track soon though, it deserves a proper refresh.

I think you know one of my good friends Kevin Z.

I recognize some of these photos lol

Heyo Sha!

Yeah Kevin is a good friend, met through Gridlife and been competing together and just shooting the shit, haha. He's shown me some of your cars as well, some super cool and rare stuff!

Your balls fell off...hahaha

When clean up oil leaks get something like this...

Coilhose Pneumatics Siphon Tip Blow Gun 602 | Zoro

Then industrial strength simple green diluted 1:1

Simple Green® Original - 1 Gallon Bottle S-7290 - Uline

Or maybe use a pressure washer. Much faster, easier and cheaper than using aerosols.

Lol, i was amazed it still drove as well as it did considering how long these must've been running dry

Thanks for sharing that! Definitely would've been the way to go, i very much underestimated just HOW drenched this thing was, lol. Used up my remaining stock of gunk remover and went HAM with the pressure washer. Was dirty for days!

It's hard to convey just HOW MUCH oil there was everywhere, including the frame rails, hah

[bigjae46]

I installed the oil cooler lines incorrectly, blew an o-ring and oil everywhere. I'm still cleaning up oil...18 months later!

Forgot to say congrats! Since you sold the vette you can retire those white new balance tennis shoes.

[Bry5on]

For what it’s worth, that cut piece of sheet metal is indeed structural. It helps keep the strut tower in place during cornering and bumps. Without that section, your strut towers will be moving and changing camber a bit, unless your cage is tied well into your strut towers.