Where does time go? Where? I've found it incredibly hard to get this build finished, update the build thread, run a business, be a husband and a dad, run a second business and stay healthy. f*^k!
BUT, no complaining here, we're here to build something special and, maybe I'm biased, but I think the goal has been achieved.
Main career work (commercial photography & directing) has been off to a painfully slow start this year. Understandably, there's a lot going on that can impact this stuff, and while I'd love to be on the road shooting a project, I'm trying to be optimistic here and make the best of the quiet. So, I've spent Monday-Friday, for the last few months, working on this car almost every single day. I've never taken a project on like this, and at times, it's been pretty overwhelming.
When you get so far in the build that you think you're almost done, you make a list. So, I made a list. The list was long, but seemed achievable. Then, the craziest thing happens. You cross off everything, and hey, the car doesn't look close to drivable, so you make a new list. And a new list. And one more list. And then you don't have it in you to make a final list, so you just take a break, or threaten your friend Steve at EAS that you're just going to tow the car there and not see it again till it's done. Steve is a friend because for some reason, he believed in me, and told me not to drop the car off with a bunch of issues and unfinished items. He told me I could do it. It worked.
I've made this update really hard on myself because we have to essentially go from a completely torn down, painted, caged, naked car, to something complete. It was tremendous. Lots of thought. Lots of time. Lots of patience. I don't think I'll ever build something like this again, so I'm glad I did it.
It felt amazing to pick the car up at King's Auto Body in Huntington Beach all fresh in white. I towed it back to my house, and to make it easier to get into the garage, since it doesn't run, I somehow backed the Futura trailer straight into my single car-width driveway. It was hilarious, but it worked and was a huge help. My amazing wife, who is now 17 weeks pregnant with our second kiddo, was so happy to help me get the car situated and see it home after all this time. She's the best.
Straight to work getting the newly thinned harness back in the car from Martyn at Project Rogue.
Occasionally, friends would stop by to check in on me and make sure I wasn't actually losing my mind. Here's me not losing my mind.
Antigravity ATX-30HD in a beautiful box from Mele Design Firm.
CarTek Kill Switch all wired up
Lifeline Zero 360 2.25kg electric fire supression. Whole kit only weighs about 6.5lbs. Incredible.
At this point, I plugged in the stock gauge cluster in and connected everything for power. The headlights turned on, the gauges turned on. It was the best feeling! And then, I realized my clutch switch was missing. Poof. Who knows. I wanted to bypass it anyway so I can install a clutch stop at some point, so I reached out to a buddy and he told me the wires to cross. It worked! I then made an aux switch so I can get the car to auxilary key position for fuel pump priming and ECU flashing. It wasn't without its issues... I think two coilpacks weren't plugged in fully, and neither was a throttle actuator, and of course I had already put the whole engine bay together, but who cares, that feeling was untouchable!
Fixed the coil pack connections and the throttle actuator connection, confirmed we were firing on all cylinders and throttle bodies. What a fucking sounds this thing makes. Pretty fun not having a windshield at this stage...
This day really lit a fire under my ass. I was so ecstatic, that I somewhat blindly agreed that I'd cross something off my bucket list this year. I was going to go to COTA for GTA Super Lap Battle. Have some friends going out from Socal Drivers Club.. there's enough of us to be a team and share costs on sending the cars out and they had one spot left for me. Who doesn't love a good deadline? Well, this has become a major stressor for me but I'm committed and I can't wait to drive that track in this car. We must continue.
Time for a feel-good mod... aero! I've been waiting months to put on the Zebulon goodies and they are really gorgeous. Beautifully made. Light. Ryan made a splitter shape just for me on this one and it is KILLER. I opted for a hinge-mounted swan neck wing, which hadn't been done at the time of my ordering but I know there's a few out there now!
I trimmed the bumper, mounted the splitter rods, and added a pretty awesome lip as an air dam solution. Thanks to Alex Goodrich for the recco here. I then sealed the lower portion of the air dam with some foam adhesive to really close any gap between air dam and splitter. Fitment is amazing all around.
And the wing.... ! Looks so, so good. My vision for this car has always been some kind of homage to a factory GT3/GT4 car. Naked in white, pre livery, emphasis on minimalism, function and form becoming one. I chose the small standard endplates for this reason too, as much as I want some of the 2D or 3D ones, I just feel this looks more "factory". Maybe I'll change them in the future.
Ok, moving right along. Like I said, form and function... I don't know that the car needs canards, hell, I don't even know if these will help or interfere with Zebulon's design, BUT, I think they look awesome and I didn't want to run the old GT4-lip style I used to have, that we see on 99% of M3 builds. These are from AJ Hartmann and I'm a fan!
Aero, done. Holy shit. We are getting there. Kind of. Are you still reading? I'm sorry.
Back to the interior. It's time to get covered in carbon dust that'll itch for over a week.
I found that the AIM MXG 1.3 logger display only got certain information when the factory cluster was still plugged in. So, I took the shroud off of it, broke it down a bit, plugged it in and zip tied it behind the dash onto the dash bar. It's not pretty. I don't even know why I'm telling you. Probably because I feel guilty about how ugly it is just sitting there like that with a microfiber stuffed behind it as a vibration softener. But whatever, it works. Racecar. I then spent days measuring, trimming and fitting the MXG, start button, key receptacle, AIM USB, manual clutch switch, kill switch and fire supression buttons to the OCT Composites dash. Not fun, but it came out exactly how I wanted.
Once I put it back in the car for the first and final time, I think I cried. Mostly because of how beautiful and satisfying it was to see it in there, but really because I felt like it was becoming a car again. This meant I could put the seat back in. And the steering wheel. It was all happening!
I even found a use for the Carbon Tech foot tray I bought last year. I really think this thing is kind of junk. It doesn't fit well and the dead pedal is next to useless unless you heavily reinforce it, but even still, it's just too close to the clutch and too close to the driver. Thankfully, Riley made me a real dead pedal, but I missed the carbon down there and wanted a clean, flat surface for my feet. So, I kept trimming and now it fits in there beautifully.
The last step at home was to get some glass and lexan in this thing. At the time I ordered windows from Plastics4Performance, GTA Limited rules still mandated that a glass windshield in place. So, I ordered rear quarter windows, rear windscreen and OEM shape door windows. The door windows were given to Mr. Roastbeef because I got lazy and didn't want to add more weight to the car. No windows for me. Then I had an awesome glass dude come by the house to do the windsheild and rear lexan. I'm in love with how it all came out as we fit some of the piano black trim around the rear quarters.
Wow, we got through a lot. And yet, still, so much more has happened. This thing runs. I took it to the track this weekend for the first time! I drove it on the street 30 miles for its first real shakedown, which was terrifying and wildly stupid of me. I left it with my friends at European Auto Source for two weeks while we did fluids, maintenance, systems check, nut & bolt, etc... and just really did any small last remaining things to get it road worthy. They never let me down and I'm grateful to call them friends. Even you
tom @ eas <3 I was down there almost every day working on something too and it just came together.
My god it feels fast. And light...
Up on the lift it goes. Nice to be out of my garage with some breathing room! And it made it there under its own power. What a trip this has been.
The biggest win was having some of the guys from Nitron Suspension pay a visit to me and the car while we were there so we could dial in the new SUB2-spec R3 package together and ensure everything fit up front with this rather massive 18x11 295/30 square setup. We did it, and the dampers are stunningly beautiful. Now this is support. Here's Guy, owner of Nitron, and Curtis, lead engineer, just out here in California from the UK, hanging with us and wrenching on the car together. Unbelievable, truly. Can't speak highly enough about these guys or the product. Interested in running Nitrons on your car? Reach out!
With everything all squared away, for the most part, it was time to get this thing on the scales. I'd kept a long list of weights, estimates and data along the way, but so much has changed and moved that I figured there was no chance I'd even be close anymore. I felt like puking from excitement and nerves. What if it was just a pig after all this work and I was wrong? What if it was actually one of the lightest ever? Sure enough... I think it might be.
2735lbs with a bit more than 1/4 tank of fuel. We have successfully removed around 800lbs from an E92 M3, and it still looks and sounds like an E92 M3! Wild.
On the scales
Outside in the sun looking complete!
ALMOST THERE, GUYS!
I loaded the featherweight E92 M3-TA onto the trailer and headed to Chewerks for a corner balance and alignment. And while I planned to test at Buttonwillow's open test day last week, the weather told me to eat shit. I lost my best friend, Milo, my chocolate lab pit mix of 10 years on Tuesday too, and it's been brutal. Top it off with my wife and daughter having had a trip to Hawaii with her sister and mother this weekend, and I was set to be all alone here just thinking about my dog, so I did what any car idiot would do. I planned a majorly difficult and time consuming weekend for myself that involved towing to alignment on Friday, then towing to Chuckwalla Saturday where I'd expected to sleep in the SUV since no rooms were available. I stuffed the car full of tires, tools and anything I could think of, and decided I'd be doing the first shakedown at a Bimmer Challenge event of all places.
I made it to Chuckwalla and when checking in, I asked if they by any small chance had a cabin available from a cancellation or something. I was in luck! This felt nice... This was a good sign.
I unloaded the car quickly and paid to run the last session of Saturday just to make sure the car worked. I was in. I was on track in my car. It was happening! The ABS light was flashing, the car was doing something weird... I came in right away. I suspect something is up with my clock spring, and could have something to do with me physically ripping out the cruise control stalk. Oops. More on this later, because I'm falling asleep over here and if you're still reading, I'm sure you are too.
I cleared some codes and went out for the final point-by passing free session of the day. No ABS light, yay. I did an out lap and one mild pace cruising lap that was a 1:54. Not a bad start considering my fastest CCW time was back when I ran this configuration in April of 2022 and I put down a 1:56.5 then. Fastest CW time was last year, in full anger, and was a 1:53.2 for reference. After one smooth lap, I decided to give it some more pace. I entered Turn 1 and BOOM, limp mode. I've never even experienced this in my ownership. Lucky, I guess, but I was stuck at 40mph in 3rd gear for an entire lap. It was terrible, but I made it back to the pits without needed a hot tow.
Got a throttle actuator code and cleared it, thought maybe it was a fluke. But who are we kidding.
We had KBBQ by the bonfires and looked the stars and blood moon that night. It was nice to be back with my track community. I missed this. This is the weekend I needed.
Sunday morning arrives and I decide to go out in Green Group instead of Red, because I didn't want to ruin any of the fast morning sessions for anyone like Gabe, Owen and the rest of the Bimmer Challenge, Corvette and Honda guys/girl. I was optimistic. Leaving for the out lap, the ABS light is flashing again. The car is pulling to one side occasionally like the caliper is engaging. I test the brake pedal and instantly lock up and almost go 4-off. I pit in... Restart the car and go back out. No ABS light, let's go for a lap. And... limp mode. OK! Not happening today.
I take the carbon plenum off to find something incredible. A piece of the plenum separated internally and sucked itself through a trumpet into a throttle body on bank one. This explains the throttle actuator code, but if this pieces was a few mm smaller it would have destroyed the motor. Insane. I removed a few things and stuffed the rest of the plenum back on the car enough to run without letting dirt into the engine. It wasn't perfect by any means, but it worked. I had 2 more sessions to drive the car at some kind of speed. BOTH sessions, I had ABS issues on the initial startup and outlap, Both times I had to hot pit, restart and go back out, issue gone... so strange, but really didn't give me a ton of confidence to attack. 130mph down the back straight with no ABS sounds like the worst shakedown ever, so, I took it easy. I felt out the balance of the car, I'd made some adjustments to the Nitrons to improve front-end feel and remove some body roll and was blown away at how good everything was feeling mostly out of the box.
https://youtube.com/shorts/6afvkLWVxdg
THE CAR IS FUCKING GLORIOUS. As if a 27xx lb E92 wouldn't be, but still, it is SO GOOD. I am in love, all over again. I had a chance to run 4 problem-free laps the whole day. No drama, early braking, relaxed cornering speeds. I was on year+ old RE71RS's and just having fun driving again. My first lap was a 1:50.9... The other 3 were 51's within tenths of each other. The car has some serious pace in it! With fresh tires and no worries on braking, there is an easy 3-4 seconds in it. I can't wait to find out.
This weekend wasn't about lap times, though, but somehow, I came away with 3rd place in B1 out of 5-6 people. Nice little cherry on top after weathering the week, the months and some issues. It's good to be back. Here's a lap, and if you don't follow along already, all of the updates happen way closer to real time on Instagram because it's just so much easier for me! So follow along.
Next up, we need to fix the electrical issue and decide if this car is staying NA for COTA or getting a blower... SLB is in less than 30 days so I need to act fast. Kind of feeling like go big or go home...
Thanks to all one/two of you that made it to the end of this novel. Goodnight.
-Alex