Ah Yes, Yet Another ST Build

[SJ_1989]

Hood exhaust.......✔️

[SJ_1989]

Starting to get all the little things buttoned up. Finished mounting the driver seat to the cage for added safety. Ended up adding an additional bar to the main hoop to do it, which added weight, but it was the best way to do it in our opinion.





Another area we tackled was rear tire clearance. As you can see in the picture below, the 28x10 Hoosier bias ply interfere's with this subframe brace and makes it difficult to put the tire on. Preloading the suspension was the only way to mount the wheel to the car, even with a spacer.



It's a decent size tire for this car really.



One approach is to just remove this subframe brace altogether and run without it. In our minds we didn't want to remove this piece as it's structural and ties the subframe in with the chassis. So, the shop made a custom brace. Not only should this stiffen the car up even more, should have no problem fitting this tire or even a 10.5".

[Torgus]

jesus

[SJ_1989]

**** LONG UPDATE ****

Well, the car is officially home and I can now say phase 1 of the build is complete! It took a lot longer to get to this point than originally expected but plans had drastically changed over the 8 months it was there. When I dropped the car off in March of this year I was only getting a roll cage, that's it. Then as we started getting into fabrication of the cage, and after many phone calls, texts, and visits to the shop, we really took a step back and asked ourselves "what is our ultimate goal for this car?"

Here is a throwback to the day I dropped it off back in March.



And here she is at the end of phase 1.



Now that all the fab work is done the car was weighed and is coming in at 2570 lbs! That's WITH a 10 point cage, unibody, and factory body panels. I started a separate weight reduction thread here where I'll be posting more updates to the weight as time goes on. Here is a pic of the scale that reflects what you see in the above picture.



To answer my "what is our ultimate goal for this car?" question above. Reason why it's taken 8 months instead of a few months as originally planned is because we worked hard to develop a good foundation to build off of in the future. No cutting corners, following the KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) method, and "do it right or don't do it at all" approach. The goal originally started out as 9's with a manual trans and IRS using BMW drivetrain. I'm confident the car will meet that without a hiccup. Next year we will hopefully push this stock motor and trans as far into the 9's as possible until something gives. Once this is done we will be keeping the N54 but ditching the BMW manual trans and rear end in favor of something else that's a bit more 8's friendly . All I will say at this point until things are a bit more clear is the intent is to stay manual trans and IRS. With discussions I've already had with companies of interest things are looking promising.

Racing season is done for 2019 here in Illinois. We've had single digit temps already and a few snow storms which is a bit weird for this time of year. So, next steps....there are a ton of things left to button up over the winter before the car is even able to make a pass down the track next year. Fuel system needs plumbed, intercooler piping needs plumbed, more weight reduction, paint, but most importantly the standalone needs installed.

I've previously shown a pic of the DME area in the engine bay being cut out and hinted at a standalone but never really discussed what I will actually be running. I've spent hours upon hours researching all the standalone systems, poking around in their tuning software, discussing with my shop, discussing with other shops, discussing with tuners outside of the BMW community, etc. After processing all the info I had absorbed it became clear that MoTeC is going to help get this car into the 8's.

Hope everyone has enjoyed all the updates up to this point. It's been a lot of fun building this car and planning out the next phases. It's even caught the attention of a few companies *cough* sponsorship *cough* so feel free to follow my Instagram @waffles_bmw for more announcements regarding that!

[Sticky]

Hope everyone has enjoyed all the updates up to this point. It's been a lot of fun building this car and planning out the next phases. It's even caught the attention of a few companies *cough* sponsorship *cough* so feel

You deserve them, congrats.

Absolutely amazing build and project!

[SJ_1989]

Thought it was about time for an update to the build. It's finally been somewhat nice weather here recently so decided to go get the trailer out and do a bit of cleaning. Come to find out the roof vent had flown off at some point over the winter (we had some crazy winds) so had to take care of that. Moisture had got in but thankfully nothing of value was damaged.



Been working on the car lately getting it ready for paint. Started by pulling the engine and trans out so I can work on the engine bay.





I've stripped most of the seam sealer (sucks), cut off more unnecessary brackets, bosses, etc. Almost done so I can start painting.



Rewarding myself with a beer after an 8 hour day stripping seam sealer.



VTT billet valve cover showed up the other day. This is the new design that is suppose to clear the doc race kit, which is why I got it. But.....while removing the engine I realized how much I hate the serviceability of the turbo when it's in the car. So, we'll be making a custom manifold and move the turbo in front of the engine.

[Sticky]

Rewarding myself with a beer after an 8 hour day stripping seam sealer.

How many hour until you actually finish this thing?

Respect on the dedication.

[SJ_1989]

How many hour until you actually finish this thing?

With COVID going on right now and who knows where it continues to go....especially with Illinois's fantastic Governor ....not a whole lot will be done this year most likely. The plans I have for the car require a lot of $$$, and well, I don't have bottomless pockets. If it takes me a year or two longer to get it completed then so be it, I'm not going to settle for something I don't want and have a similar setup to someone else. The whole purpose of this build is to be different and do things the right way (my opinion, of course).

With that said, progress will still be had this year!

2-3 weeks ago I worked on prepping the engine bay and underneath of the car for paint. This included stripping out ALL the seam sealer. Yes, ALL. I was curious how much weight I could remove. If I ever build a race car again I will still remove the seam sealer but will for sure get it acid dipped as the weight savings was not worth my labor involved. It was messy as hell and shrapnel from the wire wheel gets EVERYWHERE lol.

This is after wire wheeling all the seam sealer and rust, scotch brighting everything, and wiping down with lacquer thinner (for the most part....some pics were in process pics).

[PHOTO DUMP]











It was rattle canned with VHT roll bar and chassis paint in flat black. Even though this can isn't meant for spraying large area's because it has a smaller nozzle meant for roll bars (so you waste less paint), and took awhile to do, it turned out fantastic! One light coat followed by 2 medium coats.





Yes I missed the bottom corner of the battery box. It doesn't matter because it's getting cut out anyway to match the drivers side.





Went up to the shop to get a bit of welding done on the cage before I paint it. This was the first time I was able to see it in good sunlight.



Another goodie arrived as well a few weeks ago

[Brule]

Looking good.
Nice manifold.

[Sticky]

Another goodie arrived as well a few weeks ago

Agreed that manifold looks awesome...

[SJ_1989]

Figured I'd post a little update. I decided to pull the trigger on the standalone. After a lot of time spent researching all the options, downloading various software packages so I can see what I liked and what I didn't, going back and forth between DI and PI, and comparing the costs of everything (eventually this build has to get done) I came to the conclusion that deleting DI is the best option for me. I don't disagree with the benefits of DI, I just feel that the benefits and cost of running DI for a purpose built drag car on this platform isn't worth it.

With that I settled on the new Haltech Nexus R5. I saw this revealed at PRI when I was there in 2019 and it's pretty impressive. This is an ECU and PDM built into one device so it eliminates the fuse box and simplifies the wiring significantly. The software is super easy to use and I've been working on creating a basemap and setting up the I/O's. Goal is to get the engine idling only this year since the car isn't drivable at the moment.



With the Nexus I also picked up their iC-7 display and 15 button CAN keypad.





I went ahead and got the universal wiring harness as well.

[Mhouse]

So happy to see you revive this thread

[Sticky]

I decided to pull the trigger on the standalone

Update us @SJ_1989

[SJ_1989]

A little update. Been messing around with the Nexus learning the software and playing with the I/O's. I bought a bench power supply so I can test a few things out before I start the physical wiring process. I got the dash and CAN keypad communicating with the ECU via CAN and I'm able to turn on and off the line lock solenoid with the keypad and start a datalog which is pretty cool. I have the wiring diagram about 75% of the way done so once that's complete I'll start laying the harness in the car and figure out how I'm going to route everything. I need to look at getting another PDM (preferred to put in the trunk) or an I/O expander as I've used up all the 8 amp and 25 amp outputs along with all the analog inputs. I have more sensors I'd like to add because you can never have too much data.

Here's the hot mess on my dining room table with it up and running taking a datalog (second row first button) of me with the line lock on (first row 5th button).



Here's a datalog of me turning the line lock on and off.