ILC gets an E46 Mfwee

[Jdesign]

Sweet! Black cars are the best track cars.

[i_love_cars]

So I'm leaving for vacation in Tennessee this weekend and my first track day is August 13th at blackhawk. I ordered a lot of stuff that will be getting installed, and also having the subframe reinforced. 

The mod list is as follows:
GC coilovers, camber plates, and swaybars with adjustable endlinks 
GC rear camber arms 
solid aluminum RSFBs
poly diff bushings 
RCABS
FCABs
RTabs
PFC direct drive rotors and 08 pads up front
PFC 332 pads in the rear 
Apex ARC8  265 square on hankook RS-4

Some parts have arrived, and here is a comical test fitment of the apex wheel prior to having camber plates installed (it will require -3.5 in order to not rub):

One of the main issues the seller had with this car was that he didn't want to pay $560 for a new passenger shadowline trim. The weatherstripping at the rear window was disintegrated so basically the car can't get wet, and BMW doesn't sell it separately. You have to blow 500 bucks on a whole goddamn new trim piece which is fucking absurd to me. 
So with an $18 weatherstripping kit from 3M and about an hour of my time, I pulled the liner and ripped out the old weatherstripping and just replaced it. The trim that sits along the bottom of the rear window is also crumbling but that's only like $25 per side for new weatherstripping as an OE part so I ordered those to finish the job tomorrow. 

[i_love_cars]

Got the car back today with all the go turn-fast parts on, subframe reinforced, and aligned at least well enough to get me home. Tomorrow I am dropping the car off at Big Bear for corner balancing and proper damper adjustments, but in the meantime it looks pretty mean with -3.5 camber in front. Will have to see how it is after adjustment but the spring rates are like 650/600 definitely a bit bouncy on the street but still the car handles 1000x better than it did before. There was a lot of tired suspension on that bitch. 

Had to deal with a couple unknown things because the guibo was totally fucked and looked like it had maybe 30 miles left before it completely fell apart. Also had a stock mid section welded back in because what was on there was completely fucked, so now the car sounds normal again without excessive levels of e46 rasp. 

and my personal favorite - my shop guy rips all the warning labels off his equipment and replaces them with this:

[KaiserRolls]

How did you end up at the RS4?

[i_love_cars]

KaiserRolls said:

How did you end up at the RS4?

First and foremost I want to learn the car on street tires before moving to slicks. 

Beyond that, these tires have a stiff sidewall which I definitely want while I'm learning the E46 on track. I am quite sure that to begin with I'll be pushing the car harder into the corners than it likes because I'm going to be still thinking like I have the E30 which was so light and easy to brake and corner with that the tires never really overheated or scrubbed.

[KaiserRolls]

i_love_cars said:

First and foremost I want to learn the car on street tires before moving to slicks. 

Beyond that, these tires have a stiff sidewall which I definitely want while I'm learning the E46 on track. I am quite sure that to begin with I'll be pushing the car harder into the corners than it likes because I'm going to be still thinking like I have the E30 which was so light and easy to brake and corner with that the tires never really overheated or scrubbed. 

I just meant out of the 200tw tires, why the rs4 over a 615k+ etc etc. I’ll be really interested to see how they last on track! Please let us know!!

[i_love_cars]

KaiserRolls said:

I just meant out of the 200tw tires, why the rs4 over a 615k+ etc etc. I’ll be really interested to see how they last on track! Please let us know!!

They didn't last. RS4 was a bad decision. They greased badly after 7 laps and I wasn't even driving hard. I'm man enough to admit when I've made a mistake.

[MPW3RLee]

Nice find on the M3!

I loved the RS4 on my E30 for autoX, but I did notice after about 20 min on track they started to get greasy. Same thing when I had an E46 M3. I imagine the heavier car works it that much harder. What’s next on the list for tires? I remember there was a point in time where bimmerworld sold gently used 18” slicks for a decent price, I’ve been tempted to try those.

[i_love_cars]

MPW3RLee said:

Nice find on the M3!

I loved the RS4 on my E30 for autoX, but I did notice after about 20 min on track they started to get greasy. Same thing when I had an E46 M3. I imagine the heavier car works it that much harder. What’s next on the list for tires? I remember there was a point in time where bimmerworld sold gently used 18” slicks for a decent price, I’ve been tempted to try those.

Probably RE-71r. I'm at least going to run those for a few events before upgrading to the track candy. I ran slicks on my E30 and you just carry way too much speed around the track with them if you don't yet know how to drive your car. In my case, the E46 is still new and I need to get all my standard turn-in points and braking zones figured out on Blackhawk and RA where I usually frequent, and then I will probably look to slicks. I always use Jon Berget Racing Tires in Delavan for lightly used slicks since they are local and the price is right.

[i_love_cars]

Updates: track repairs after brake failure are done. I bought standard (see: non-competition) caliper carriers so that I could fit my PFC rotors, since nobody in the E46 world actually uses the ZCP brakes. New calipers, stainless lines, new wheel bearings, all was well. 

Then came my Blackstone analysis. Rod bearings completely toasted

So now I have new rod bearings. As luck would have it, when I went to test drive the car after bearing install, my cooling system started to take a shit. Temp needle quickly started to peg at the 3/4 mark and discovered my fan was dead. I took this as an opportunity to replace the radiator, water pump/tstat, and have an electric fan wired in to get rid of the factory mechanical fan. 

I took the car in to my body shop today for an estimate on both patching up the dings/dents, and repainting the entire car. I am for sure going to repair the dents that were on the car when I bought it, but I am still up in the air on repainting it and throwing on a CSL front bumper shroud. I dunno. I love driving the car on the street and like having a full interior despite some track-oriented suspension. It would be nice to clean the car up a bit more and make it more presentable since I think I'm going to be driving it more than just only on track days. Still noodling on that one.