E30 Racecar (Warsteiner)
E30 EIP racecar, which I built from the ground up and have since sold. Pete from Cascade Autosport in Redmond, WA fabricated the cage; Ricky at Showcase Auto Rebuild in Kirkland, WA painted the car; Graphics by Kim Hiskey. All other work performed by me in my garage over 10 month period (lots of late nights and weekends grinding, welding, wrenching, and wiring). Probably the last car I’ll ever built because been there and done that a few times now, and it’s a real time sink.
See it in here in action.
I pole positioned first time out w/ no setup work except for stringing in the alignment from my garage and an hour of dyno time to rough in the ECU tune for the Motec M600 ECU. In other words, with a lot of potential waiting to be claimed.
See how it was built.
Below are a bunch of pictures documenting the development of the car (will add more caption detail over time as I need a break from real work, etc.). Sadly, I lost a bunch of photos to a home server file corruption issue so there’s a lot of missing detail that would have otherwise been present.
Battery cut-off and electronically triggered fire suppression button integrated into RHS top cowl vent.
Motec dash and AMB lap timer provide me with everything I need to know with minimal gauge clutter. Motec shift light also incorporated into cluster.
On track at Pacific Raceways, Turn 8/9. ATL fuel cell clearly in view. Fender flares provide added clearance for Hoosier race slicks mounted to Panasport race wheels.
Full sequential fuel injection and coil-over ignition replace batch injection and wasted spark system. Motec M600 ECU is used. Milspec bulkhead connectors (visible in background) ensure good connections and facilitate fast repairs.
All buttoned up and ready to go racing.
Air filter tucked into custom fabricated cold air intake behind LHS headlight trim. Leads to air pressure and temperature gauges inside intake box also visible.
Custom fabricated air inlet tube feeds intake manifold. Mass air measurement replaces air flow meter.
Adjustable fuel pressure regulator and fire suppression nozzle in view. High pressure fuel lines (blue) feed fuel routed through interior of car and through firewall via bulkhead fittings. I chose to route fuel through cabin alongside drive tunnel to protect lines from any offs figuring if the car got bent so bad that the fuel lines were compromised I’d be already be on my way to the other side.
Another engine view.
One of my favorite shots of the car. Also visible are pinned fiberglass hood, tow hook, and NACA brake ducts integrated into the front fascia. Bottom of oil pan is also visible which was modified to make deeper and incorporated a windage tray to keep oil pressure up. Maintaining oil pressure was a constant battle after switching to slicks the season prior, even with the Accusump and I had gone through two engines.
In my driveway roughing in a tune so that the car is driveable enough to get on the trailer for the dyno where I programmed in a “good enough” but safe tune for my first race weekend.
Custom fabricating a bushing for my suspension. This part has no part number and I needed to get creative to get my new Bilsteins to work fit with my Ground Control camber plates.
I needed to take about an inch out of the strut housings to get the car to setup properly. A section is cut out mid-way and then I weld the two halves back together.
Custom fabricated cold air intake box.
EIP allowed 10.5:1 compression at the time for e30, which has since been bumped to 12:1. 10:5:1 pistons in clear view.
Engine getting ready to drop in car. Taro dog in background view. He is missed but not forgotten.
Loading up FR wheel to get suspension runouts for suspension geometry analysis.
Coil over spark replaces the wasted spark design, but I epoxied a rare earth magnet into the rotor assembly so I can detect engine cycle (exhaust vs intake stroke). A crank position sensor (not shown here) provides the crank position so this need not be very accurate (within 10 degrees is good enough).
