And now, for the fun stuff...
Riley, of RS Motorsport, designed, fabricated and installed a full Docol roll cage. The plan was to keep the car as light as we could, within reason, and of course, to make it safe. Along the way, we'd decided to trim fat here and there, remove the rear shelf, cut up the rear bumper to get the air out and leave room for a diffuser later on as well as small details like recessing a rain light into the rear bumper.
Along with that, I wanted Riley to handle installing the carbon dash from OCT Composites. Once the cage was in the car, he scanned everything and made a plan to slice the dash in 3, using joining brackets to put it all together. Seriously incredible what Riley is capable of. At times, the possibilities seemed endless -- I'd mention an idea, and an hour later Riley had figured it out and had updates. Truly have never before experienced work and communication like this, so if you don't already get it, RS Motorsport is the place to go for this level of work. Whether you need an exhaust fabbed, a full turbo kit made, a rear cage, full cage, next level weight reduction, a full chassis... Riley can turn fabrication dreams to reality. I'll let the pictures do the rest of the talking.
With the cage work complete, and the dash in place, it was time to tackle the exhaust. My rear bumper had been through years of abuse, and with some recent exhaust tinkering, I melted a bit of it as well. Safe to say, I wasn't all that committed to keeping the stock look, and truthfully, I've always felt the E92 had all its drama up front, but was always so tame from the rear. A big part of this is the tiny rear quarter flares, which I'll probably address next year when we try to go for a more extreme wheel/tire package. Till then, I worked with Riley to decide what we could do and how far we could go. Here's the result.
The exhaust is all Ticon, and paired with my current Ticon / SUB2 x-pipe, the whole system just has these two 12" round mufflers... I'm thinking it's going to be loud! Excited to hear it. Honestly, I HATE being on track around loud cars, mostly GT3's, and not being able to hear my car. I might regret this... Hopefully that's a thing of the past. Full system weight is under 20lbs. Pretty incredible.
And a bit on weight reduction. So, I'd said the car started this phase of its build at 3030lbs. It was light for how much stuff was still left in there. I kept tabs on everything I removed so I had a somewhat accurate estimate of where we'd end up, but I have to say, it's fucking incredible how light this thing is and I cannot wait to experience it with way more aero, way less wait and some better rubber.
At the time of dropping it off at Kings Auto Body in Huntington Beach, it was 2630lbs. 2630!!!!
Don't get too excited. The car needs a glass windshield, rear 1/4 lexan, rear lexan windshield, the lightened wiring harness, the ECU, coolant and the AIM display. It will be light, for sure, and I'm hoping we can make it to 2750 race ready, but we'll see!
Here's the car at Kings during drop off. I love the dudes here, and Ayed is the reason this car went on to continue its life after the Autoclub incident years ago. He's painting the cage, cleaning up the rear bumper and getting the car all fresh for it's track debut.
https://youtube.com/shorts/qLElDm8pN...l1yPdKvJqCW37X
Waiting for the car to be finished at Kings, and then I'll bring it home one last time to reinstall the new harness, put the dash and seat back in, and finally tow it to EAS for final nut/bolt/systems check/dyno just to ensure we're all good. Still waiting on a few things from Zebulon as well, and new coilovers from Nitron... Ok, guess I have a bit to do still! Onwards.