30 September 2009

FORZA 3



I can't wait

20 September 2009

Long trip, rad boom, drive back

Yeah so on labor day weekend I decided to drive back down to Florida to see my friends again before I deploy. Wouldn't you know it there was an event in Orlando on Friday night. So I got some tires ready on some wheels and other misc crap, then headed down there. Drive was about 6-1/2 hours to the track including picking a few of my friends up on the way down.

The track is called Central Florida Race Center, it was built not too long ago it includes a 1/8 mile drag stip, go kart track, a skid pad for drifting and somewhat of a road course. We were drifting on part of the go kart track. Track setup was sorta like a smaller version of the balcony events at willow springs (straight into a figure eight into a straight into the back turn). So I parked threw all of my crap out of the car and pulled into line.

My first run I drifted most of the course, not an awesome run but not bad for first run on that layout since I didnt spin and drifted all the main parts of the course. My second run I feel was the best I almost linked the entire track on my second run I straightened out on one of the straights but other wise pretty close.



ok so maybe I lied about that almost linking the track deal. So then I went up for my third run and was feeling pretty good. Went out and pushed harder than my second run annnnd spun twice lol. But I did this sick slide into the back turn.



well about 5 mins later driving through the parking lot my radiator exploded. Like literally EXPLODED! BOOM! Blew the fuck up. Like someone threw a hand grenade under my hood. The plastic end tank on it just went BOOM.

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so that ended me drifting that night and started my quest for another radiator. Fortunately there were a few other E36 guys there that night and one of them (Fellow from Bimmer forums) was there and said he had a radiator I could buy off of him. We ran down to his house and got it drove back installed it and got it all back together right around the time the track was closing up.

I spent the rest of the weekend in Daytona with my friends.

07 August 2009

Updates: My assuming that you care lol

Well I have been pretty short on cash lately so no recent recorded hoonage, but I am planning on going up and watching the redline time attack event that is being run about 30 mins west of where I live. It will be held at the carolina motorsports complex. So far I have driven by the track never actually been to the facility. It looks like a really nice place and I just want to go out and watch some built time attack monsters go at it. Plus I have nothing better to do that day.


There is a drift event this sunday as well in charlotte and well I don't have the cash or the will power to get my car ready to go drive. I should still be going up there to watch/network/instruct and such whatever ratio of each ends up happening.

also I realized that I never posted a breakdown of what has been done to the car so far so I'll try to make a list since I get asked all the time

Chassis - 1998 BMW 328is coupe
Engine - 1997 BMW M3 US spec S52B32

Engine upgrades
- Eurosport carbon intake
- M50 Intake manifold
- Clutch fan delete
- Jim Conforti Shark injector
- Bimmerhaus 3" auto-x exhaust
- so maybe around 230whp (haven't dyno'ed it with the M50 manifold yet)

Suspension upgrades
- Ground control/Koni Track/school coilovers
- Front spring rate eibach 550lb/in (10kg/mm) Rear Swift 780lb/in (14kg/mm)
- UUC swaybars
- Treehouseracing Eyeball arms
- Ground control camber caster plates
- Turner motorsport full aluminum differential bushings
- Factory steering angle limiting tie rod lock washers replaced with flat.
- Polyurethane Rear trailing arm bushings
- BMW motorsport Front under X-Brace

Drivetrain Upgrades
- M3 3.23 rear differential rebuilt for 50% lock
- UUC Transmission mounts with enforcers
- M3 Guibo
- Rogue Short shifter
- F1 racing stage 3 clutch
- F1 racing 16lb LWT flywheel

Interior
- Full factory interior
- Sunroof removed
- Powered By Max Hydraulic Hand brake
- Stock crappy leather electric seats which adjustments are broken
- stock steering wheel (falling apart)

Exterior
- smoked clear stuff
- Ebay Headlights with built in weak halo's
- Various Body mods courtesy of walls (dents, bumps, scrapes, completely ziptied on rear bumper, etc)

thats all I can remember

15 July 2009

mmmmm.... mustang?

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yeah so the event went awesome, I didn't have much time to actually do a full update before, so here it goes. So woke up early in the morning and rounded everyone up and headed out on the 2 hour drive to Charlotte for the event and for like the first time in 2 years I showed up early, and I remembered why being early sucks. Well with that out of the way we set up shop there by the fence by getting the grill ready and grilling up some delicious meat in the form of burgers. The little pop up awning I bought was a cheap POS that wouldn't stay up without being tied to every heavy object in our disposal but it gave us the shade we needed for the long wait to drive that is normal at these events.

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Tech went smooth and soon we were set up in run groups, I was in group C and Alan was in group D ( which was nice since I had a vynal "D" on my windshield from the last event. First runs were great aside from a spin or two since the tires I was running were worn down to steel even before I made a run on them ( NOO grip at all) And I was told those runs were the best first runs by anyone there, Idk if this is true or not but yeah. The set of tires I was on only lasted 3 runs and on the 3rd run the passengers side blew up and popped my rear bumper halfway off (LOL) people seemed to enjoy that. Went in and changed tires then it was Alan's turn. This was his first serious time trying to drift in a car (Instead of a truck on dirt der'her) so its understandable that he was a little cautious. He spun most every run but made good progress throughout the day and managed to pull off a few nice transitions at the end of the day and completed some decent slides. More seat time and he'll be set.
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Then it was my turn again and this time I actually had a set of tires on the back that had grip. Plus they are my favorite slide tires of all time (Continental sportcontact 2's) so this time I had alot more control over the car and proceeded to rip the tracks face off, with linking every one of my 5 runs in my run group and blowing up the passenger side tire in the middle of run 5. The tire blew on the second corner of the last run but I still held control over the car and completed linking the course with a flat tire (VIDEO BELOW).



Threw on my next set of tires to drive home on and then went out for one run on them to see that they were like. I had never driven on these brand and model tires before (Dunlop direzza DZ101) before so I was excited to see if they were as good as Chelsea used to say they were. They were very good first run on them I linked the course again and felt very confident on them even though one tire had 30psi in it and the other had 40psi (Oops..)





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Then actually the highlight of my day. I got to drive a bone stock '08 ford mustang GT manual. When I say drive I mean slide that bitch around like it owed me money. The young man who let me drive it was cool as hell for letting me take a spin in it. I was amazed at how good it was straight out of the factory, it understeered a little bit but nothing you couldn't drive around. I linked the entire course first time out in it no problem (sorry no video :( ). I used to hate mustangs and ford but after driving that car I have had thoughts about buying one lol, don't worry though in too broke to do that anyway.

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09 July 2009

Having fun, going broke

soo I installed the eyeball arms, front control arms, swaybar endlinks, and tie rods like 2 days ago and got it aligned yesterday and well. I can't really tell much of a difference to be honest... I mean its feels a bit tighter but other than that its not too different or so I thought. Well turns out you can't tell the difference until the car is traveling in a lateral motion lol. Big difference when sliding the car. I went out in the rain yesterday and slid some off ramps with like total control. Much better feedback through the wheel and overall more predictable well worth the money.


Now the next thing is that I am driving in another event this Sunday and its a practice event so I thought I would use it to coach the other members of my team. Really we don't even have a name for it yet, and currently I am the best driver out of the bunch and thats not saying much. Well anyway Alan is going to be driving my car and trying to learn how to drift. The car is a decent setup so he really shouldnt have to much trouble.

Now I just have to survive on like 10 bucks till next wed.

01 July 2009

YES...... wait

well I installed the intake mani only because I didnt have any money for an alignment and the manifold I already had all the parts for.

Yeah that shit wasn't as easy as it sounded. I mean I took the old one off and put all the adapter stuff on the new manifold then tried to hook it all up. It took me like 45 mins to take apart and like 3 hours to put back together. Getting everything lined up was a BITCH! Also after I started it, it ran like shit, wouldn't idle worth a damn. So then I figured I'll drive it and let it learn in the new manifold, yeah that didn't work. It would die at every stop light. So I looked at it again and I had a harness on my fuel rail that wasnt plugged in. Hmmm what did that go to? I looked for like an hour and couldnt figure out what it plugged into and since I was a ways away from my computer I just simply drove home without hooking it up.

The next day I figured it out and all was well. The car is faster but for some reason my rev limiter is cutting in 300 rpm sooner and not exactly in the smoothest fashion. I am now getting backfires when I hit the limiter. sounds kinda cool but im a tad bit worried about it. IDK mercedes benz certified tech doesn't mean jack, I still can't diagnose a problem in less than a damn week.

26 June 2009

New parts YO!

yeah so I bought a few more items to go on the car. I hope this shit is worth it since im such a cheap guy. Plus because of these im broke till next wed.

First up is these
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Treehouse racing eyeball arms. I have had a set of new front control arms, tierods and sway bar endlinks sitting in my closet for about 4 months now but I didnt install them because I wanted to get these first. These make the install much smoother (no use of a press) and they will give me some awesome caster, a slightly wider front track and virtually no flex like the stock rubber bushings do. I literally can not wait to get these on since my front end has been feeling as tight as a soggy boner for over a year now.

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Now this is the first power upgrade I have done to the car in going on 2 years now, I never felt I needed it but this is just to simple and is far too effective for me not to do. The picture above is of the bimmerworld kit to fit a older OBD 1 M50 intake manifold to a newer M52/S52 OBD 2 engine (I have that S52 doohicky)




The one on the left is the M50 Manifold that I am installing vs. the factory S52 manifold. Yeah can you believe they put the manifold on the left on a 2.5L and the one on the right on a 3.2L. Its like making the engine breathe through a straw.

another example is the port sizes



Check that out! the ports on the M50 are massive compared to the tiny tubes on my stock intake. No wonder this is supposed to be worth almost 30whp on a S52 n/a
Crazy I cant wait to get it on the car this weekend.

21 June 2009

Just screwing around

Didn't do much this weekend mostly relaxing from a hectic week at work (ORI week) but Alan and I went out and just kind of made this video for the hell of it, just happened to have the camera and said well why not.

13 June 2009

Ha I fail again :3

So I barely slept saturday night and got up to leave for the event at like 7 am since it was 2 hours away and opened up at 9 am. Went met up with ryan and picked up my buddy Alan. we wrived at the track kinda late and went through tech pretty smoothly found out there was no tire machine and were bummed about that. it was almost 2 pm before we were able to start driving since we were in the last run group of the day.


First I went and ran the time attack course and I was leaking some coolent from my rad cap... shit, well I'll just keep running, started leaking more and more FUCK!...

well the caps seals broke and not any normal rad cap fits its bimmer specific. So I tried letting it cool down and putting more water in it and sealing the cap with electrical tape but no dice, did about 30 other things till finnally a very nice man named Sean (Thanks man) let me barrow his rad cap from his E30 and I finnally got out on the track missed my entire run group. So I decided that I was just going to get the track time I missed and drove in another group, they didnt seem to mind or more likely didnt notice. The whole time im like pounding down Monsters and getting sun baked.

The course was pretty challenging, I think I linked it clean a total of 2 times meh. I didnt make it to the eliminations and pretty much sucked in general. complete off day for me. well anyway here are some videos. I made it home at about 3 am to wake up at 5 am for work, I was hating life lol





05 June 2009



Well I am entered to drive in an event this sunday and should be a blast. HUGE parking lot, so hopefully it will have a pretty fast entry as I have been wanting to do more 3rd gear clutch kick entries and really pour out the smoke.

My buddy Ryan will be out in his first event driving and im stoked to see what his FC turbo can do. Plus I really want to drive it, he hasn't said I could yet but here's hoping.

Its at the Zmax dragway and we are using their parking lot. Supposed to be doing some sort of time attack, drag racing, and drifting. I think I may swap back and forth between the time attack an drifting durring the day.

I should have some video after its all over so wish me luck.

27 May 2009

Tested the fail brake today

Well its still not bled out right but it sorta works, got some video from a local proving ground. Im still not comfortable using it yet.


E36+Hydro+handbrake+test+

ohh and here is another video for shits and giggles


BMW+e36+drifting+

26 May 2009

First post and fail-brake

Sup, I thought it was about time that I started a blog up about me and my adventures trying to turn my E36 BMW into a daily drifter. I mean everybody and their mother is blogging why am I not on this train of attention seeking and self gratification. Anyways the blog is a little late considering the things that have already been done to the car but I'll start with my latest addition.

The Fail-brake:

I just "finished" it today and im not happy with it yet I don't think its bled out properly yet since my cable ebrake works better and thats not saying much. Im sure its not Powered by MAX's fault just more of me failing at doing things the right way.

Anyhow here are some pics of how it sits right now
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I'll bleed it out a few more times and hopefully have video of it in action in the next few days