kolosy build / track journal-ish

[zcp312]

wow, nice job taking on such a project yourself. thought about something similar myself, would love to check out the progress in person some time. I’m sure I’ll see you on the track next year. I hope your garage is heated!

[kolosy]

Originally Posted by zcp312

wow, nice job taking on such a project yourself. thought about something similar myself, would love to check out the progress in person some time. I’m sure I’ll see you on the track next year. I hope your garage is heated!

stop by any time! and yeah, my $600 electric bill this month says the 10KW heater is doing its job, but the new insulation isn't

[kolosy]

it's out! man what a pain in the ass. the only saving grace of this job is that it's not going back in. i don't want to think about having to put that back together if you were doing the heater core.

in other news, i spy with my little eye...



the harder to get to EGR valve. though cursory attempt at getting at the bottom bolt didn't work so i'll have to take a closer look and see if it actually makes anything easier.

[kolosy]

ok, so the cabin access didn't do anything for the EGR valve spelunking, but not having the hard AC lines, and the coolant hoses going to the heater core definitely did. i had started down the path of disconnecting the DME harness, but then stopped at just the coil packs. with those lines out of the way, i was able to get at both banks pretty easily. still involved skinned knuckles and macguyvered tools, but overall not as terrible as what others have had to deal with







oh and a possible explanation for my occasional SAP codes, since the gallery was pretty clean: a duct taped and cracked hose. sigh.

[Track/S]

Cut with a cutter where I have marked and replace it with a silicone hose, those plastic ones dry out and crack over time.

[kolosy]

Originally Posted by Track/S

Cut with a cutter where I have marked and replace it with a silicone hose, those plastic ones dry out and crack over time.

But then I’d be throwing away the broken one and some perfectly good silicone hose

I’m doing an sap delete, I was just commenting on the crappy repair job by one of the POs

[Track/S]

Ah if you're deleting it then it's okay

[kolosy]

It's gettin' close! Confirmed drop-off date with Mark McMahon in a few weeks, and I think the things I can do are just about done. So far, I've stripped the entire interior, ripped out the AC and SAP system, and found and swapped over a counter clockwise PS pump. Oh and the roof. I'm waiting on BK mounts (have been for 6 weeks now unfortunately), but finally have a tracking number and that should be here on Wednesday. Once that's here, I can put the seats in, button up a little bit under the hood, and it's off Mark for the cage. Very curious where we'll land weight-wise, but obviously won't know that for a while.

I also ended up ordering the aluminum floor plates from VAC. I talked to Mark and he figured it would be cheaper to do that than to have him custom fab one. Will need to figure out a dead pedal solution though. The OEM one is molded into the carpeting, right? I tossed it and can't remember if it was detachable.

Oh and I bought a tool cart. Because I spend 15 minutes out of every wrenching hour trying to find where I put the wrench I was using 5 seconds earlier. Maybe this'll help.

[berns]

I really like the Macht Schnell clubsport mounts but if you're doing a full cage you should have all your eyelets for harness points welded to the car anyway.

The OEM dead pedal is part of the carpet. When I first pulled the carpet out, I cut the dead pedal portion and reinstalled it but it was not pretty. Served its purpose but not meant to be used that way at all.

When I had my cage done I had my fabricator make a dead pedal and mount it to the floor & cage. Haven't driven the car yet but I think you'd want it to be further back and further from the pedal itself if possible, but things get very tight with the bars down there. We'll see how it goes. Will be better than trying to use that awful Carbon-Tec foot tray, that's for sure.

[kolosy]

Originally Posted by berns

I really like the Macht Schnell clubsport mounts but if you're doing a full cage you should have all your eyelets for harness points welded to the car anyway.

The OEM dead pedal is part of the carpet. When I first pulled the carpet out, I cut the dead pedal portion and reinstalled it but it was not pretty. Served its purpose but not meant to be used that way at all.

When I had my cage done I had my fabricator make a dead pedal and mount it to the floor & cage. Haven't driven the car yet but I think you'd want it to be further back and further from the pedal itself if possible, but things get very tight with the bars down there. We'll see how it goes. Will be better than trying to use that awful Carbon-Tec foot tray, that's for sure.

Makes sense. I should have a little more room with a dct, but yeah that looks a little cramped.

[kolosy]

seats are in! though i'm embarrassed to say how long that took because of first waiting for parts, then waiting for correct parts, and then wrestling with getting everything to fit. this is isn't final final, I just got tired of fighting with them. the driver seats is too high I think, and tilted too far back, but tilting it forward will require widening the forward slots on the mount. dropping it lower is a problem also as I think it won't clear the sub mount then. we'll see.

also getting tempted to thin out part of the harness.. it looks like all the audio stuff is mostly in one loom, and I may be able to pull it without *too* much drama, but we'll see.

going to the cage builder next week!

[roastbeef]

seats are definitely more complicated than they seem.

what isi that aluminum plate up by the top of your A pillar? i didn't have that.

[M3_Legend]

Loving this build keep the updates coming.

[kolosy]

Originally Posted by roastbeef

seats are definitely more complicated than they seem.

what isi that aluminum plate up by the top of your A pillar? i didn't have that.

I think it’s some sort of backing or mounting plate for the head airbag. It’s riveted on and I was lazy.

[roastbeef]

interesting. i was talking to another e90 guy and his curtain airbags were bolted on as opposed to riveted... just an odd thing to switch up production proceedures on.

[amg6975]

You can definitely thin the audio harness very easily with little impact on anything other than the Ethernet diag interface won't work via the OBD anymore.

You know how to get ahold of me if you have any questions.

[kolosy]

Originally Posted by roastbeef

interesting. i was talking to another e90 guy and his curtain airbags were bolted on as opposed to riveted... just an odd thing to switch up production proceedures on.

So the airbag itself was completely bolt on, just this plate was riveted. I remember expecting a lot of work based on what I read about pulling those out, but then getting this nice surprise.

[kolosy]

she's off to the cage builder!



spent all of Friday round tripping Chicago -> Akron -> Chicago (that's about 12 hours round trip), but now she's in Mark McMahan's hands. When I was there, there was another guy that just brought his E36 for a cage from Connecticut and 2 others already in the shop. I think she's in good hands.



Before driving her over, I managed to pull the audio harness. It's pretty amazing how much wiring there is *just* for that. I started poking around at the other bits (airbag, seats and roof center) but all those require digging into the main loom and I just didn't have time for it. I don't think I'll have issues accessing them once the cage is in, so I just asked Mark to move any free tails to the dash area and I'll deal with them later.



Speaking of dashes, the single hump ebay special is here too.



Now I've got a 4-6 week break in car work and then we'll see how she does!

[kolosy]

Oh man … it’s gettin’ close. Cage builder has been sending me teaser pics and car should be getting picked up next week. Looking pretty awesome so far.

[kolosy]

Can’t forget those sexy sexy a pillar gussets

[kolosy]

She’s back in action! After hacking through 2 dashboards, getting ripped off by my shop for an alignment and corner balance, and rushing to get everything back together, I finally got to the start of the track season. Went to my local 2 miler, and on the first session out (after a 6 month break because the Midwest), I PR’d. Not surprising given that it’s about 350 lbs lighter now, but still a nice welcome back.

Over the winter, I ended up doing a fair bit of prep and here’s where we are now:

- CF roof conversion
- Full interior stripout
- Sparco Circuit 2 driver/QRT-R passenger with Brey Krause mounts (OE slider for driver, fixed passenger)
- Mad-trace quick disconnect wheel
- Flight eGWS
- AiM Solo 2 DL + Corsa cam
- wing logic 72” wing (still to be mounted)
- li ion battery
- Heater core delete
- AC delete
- Single hump dash conversion
- Lexan rear windows
- VAC floor plates + matching custom dead pedal
- And of course the cage

With all that, car sits at 3380 with cage and 3/4 tank of gas. I was hoping for less, but the math maths. Cage added back a solid 150 or so.

There’s a couple of easy but expensive things I can do if I decide to go further down the rabbit hole. The easiest is to go for carbon doors. That’ll probably save another 200 or so, but it’s another 4k or so and I’ll probably hold off for a bit (this was already a $20K winter). After that we get into diminishing returns. Harness thinning is prob another 30, a titanium exhaust is probably in that ballpark too (I’m running a super sprint F1 right now). CF hood, CF trunk, etc. I think at this point I’m going to run the season as is and see where I land at the end.

[F4rmost]

Originally Posted by kolosy

But then I’d be throwing away the broken one and some perfectly good silicone hose

I’m doing an sap delete, I was just commenting on the crappy repair job by one of the POs

Theoretically, with the cold start delete, could you remove the SAP, then just cap the T and the port on the intake?