My E90 M3 Dedicated Track build (with pix!)

[roastbeef]

When you had your rear wing, but no front aero, what was it like lifting in a corner to get more turn-in? Was that even an option?

[dogbone]

Originally Posted by roastbeef

When you had your rear wing, but no front aero, what was kit like lifting in a corner to get more turn-in? Was that even an option?

If driving a front engine car with a big wing and no front aero, and traction control is off:

In a high speed situation (like Riverside), the big wing will generally prevent a spin if you lift because there is a lot of downforce.

In a lower speed situation (like Sweeper), the wing isn't doing much so you can easily spin.

I know you run with MDM on. MDM will also step in and help prevent the spin in most cases as well, so if you lift for whatever reason, MDM will cover you.

But I think most would say that lifting in the middle of a maintenance throttle situation is the beginning part of a spin--or at the very least, the beginnings of rotating the car. Now, in slower turns like Sweeper (65mph), the rotation could be welcome. So, if you know what to do with a rotating rear, then by all means, go ahead. But rotating a car at 100mph is a whole other experience and I would say that most are not ready for that adventure.

I am guilty of brief lifts in places like Riverside at Buttonwillow. You can see it in my videos. The AIM data shows it quite plainly. I have been trying to reduce that behavior. But I enter that turn at 110mph and it's just damn hard to stay on it even with a little maintenance throttle because my car still understeers at the limit. The damn car is going sideways and understeering at the same time toward the edge of the track while going over 100mph! It's definitely an adventurous spot. The aero is producing a lot of downforce at that moment and covers the forward-shift in weight. The nose of the car doesn't change direction at all.

I have said in the past that a big rear wing FEELS like traction control. It works QUITE effectively at keeping the rear of the car in the rear. BUT, it can only do that at a certain minimum speed. So, you really have to be cognizant of your speed to know what driving characteristic you should be using in that moment.

[M3 Number 86]

Originally Posted by dogbone

Racewerkz Engineering recommended the 67" width. As far as I know, it is not a special width. (My friend has a wing of the same width (on a sedan).)

But this 67" recommendation was based on the ultimate overall strategy that front aero would be going on the car some day. I believe that if I had an M3 that was still closer to stock weight and still generally still had the OEM weight distribution and was never planning on running front aero, I would most likely run a smaller wing.

(I've talked about this before) In my case, I was trying to fix a problem. Prior to the car being gutted and caged, I had a nicely balanced M3. Then, we went and gutted the car and the car's balance went to shit. Most of the weight comes out of the rear, and it was a HANDFUL to drive without aero. I was not used to the car being so nervous in the rear. I didn't find it much fun to drive like that to be honest. The rear was BEGGING to step out. Even traction control was struggling to control it at times. My Porsche buddy drove it at Laguna Seca without aero after it was gutted. He came back in the pits and the FIRST thing he said was "this thing needs a wing." If a PORSCHE guy tells you the rear wants to step out too much.........you need a fricking wing.

So, I no longer had a refined car with good balance that I was trying to mildly improve. No....I had a strange unbalanced beast that needed help. And my ultimate goal was full aero, but I didn't want front aero right away, and I didn't want to buy two wings---a small one now and a big one later. So I bought the 67", and yay, the rear was planted, but boy did the front understeer in high speed rounders when going fast----like 80+mph in Riverside at Buttonwillow. Ultimately, it took putting front aero on to finally regain balance.


Regarding R1S, I'm guessing that vehicle weight must affect their life. (I'm not overly surprised.) I don't know what your car weighs, but you get 7 heat cycles. I get 16 before a cord shows up. Joe at Trinity claims he gets 23. His car is 400 lbs lighter than mine.

The fastest I ever went on R1S was on their 8th heat cycle. I believe they are faster when new, but they are NOT slow by the 8th heat cycle. I've said before, I think they are quite fast up to 10 heat cycles. And still pretty darn quick up to 16. After that, when I assemble scrub sets after one of the cords, then they slow down a bit, but are still quite fun to drive.

Are you running them square? And are you careful about rotating them? I always rotate them after 2 sessions. Every 2 sessions, they move. If you don't rotate them, then they'll cord more quickly.

Josh Haddox has a nicely setup E90 M3 (by Racewerkz) with basically stock power. The car is pretty well gutted and has full aero. He ran a 1:54 on NT01 at Buttonwillow.

My car is somewhat lightened but still pretty heavy. Recaros, remove rear seats, cf sunroof panel, removed carpet with a bar. But still amazingly fat lol. I should have it reweighed.

Aero plus nt01 to achieve similar times are more cost effective so I think I'll have to go that route. I already have an apr splitter that I've since removed so I might as well get the rear even though I already do (a high kick spoiler haha).

Looks like your wing width matches the widest point of the car at the fender flares.

[///Mobbin]

Originally Posted by dogbone

The next thing to look at is the small Yellow circle in the middle of the picture. This chart shows the gear that the car is in. To the left of the yellow circle, you can see that ALL laps are in 3rd gear as I finish Sweeper. Then at slightly different times on all the laps in the Yellow circle, I shift to 4th gear. But then on the Red lap, you can see the DCT shifts again to 5th gear. ARGH! It does this on it's own sometimes. I am QUITE certain that I am not pulling the shifter twice. You just never know when it will happen. It is quite maddening. So then you see I try to get it back into 4th, and then I finally go up to 5th.

Have you tried topping off the DCT fluid? It's an interesting fill procedure because you fill it like a differential but it also has a pump, lines, and the intercooler so you need to cycle it a bit and top it off a few times to get to full. There is also a known recurring leak issue, see this thread: DCT Leak Recurring Problem?

I noticed a leak on my car when I swapped the rod bearings, observed by a greasy DCT bottom pan, and am having it repaired now. I ordered the higher spec SSP viton gasket and stainless bolt kit as well as folks believe the OE gaskets and aluminum screws are contributing to the issue.

[lemanszcpm3]

Originally Posted by dogbone

Racewerkz Engineering recommended the 67" width. As far as I know, it is not a special width. (My friend has a wing of the same width (on a sedan).)

But this 67" recommendation was based on the ultimate overall strategy that front aero would be going on the car some day. I believe that if I had an M3 that was still closer to stock weight and still generally still had the OEM weight distribution and was never planning on running front aero, I would most likely run a smaller wing.

(I've talked about this before) In my case, I was trying to fix a problem. Prior to the car being gutted and caged, I had a nicely balanced M3. Then, we went and gutted the car and the car's balance went to shit. Most of the weight comes out of the rear, and it was a HANDFUL to drive without aero. I was not used to the car being so nervous in the rear. I didn't find it much fun to drive like that to be honest. The rear was BEGGING to step out. Even traction control was struggling to control it at times. My Porsche buddy drove it at Laguna Seca without aero after it was gutted. He came back in the pits and the FIRST thing he said was "this thing needs a wing." If a PORSCHE guy tells you the rear wants to step out too much.........you need a fricking wing.

So, I no longer had a refined car with good balance that I was trying to mildly improve. No....I had a strange unbalanced beast that needed help. And my ultimate goal was full aero, but I didn't want front aero right away, and I didn't want to buy two wings---a small one now and a big one later. So I bought the 67", and yay, the rear was planted, but boy did the front understeer in high speed rounders when going fast----like 80+mph in Riverside at Buttonwillow. Ultimately, it took putting front aero on to finally regain balance.


Regarding R1S, I'm guessing that vehicle weight must affect their life. (I'm not overly surprised.) I don't know what your car weighs, but you get 7 heat cycles. I get 16 before a cord shows up. Joe at Trinity claims he gets 23. His car is 400 lbs lighter than mine.

The fastest I ever went on R1S was on their 8th heat cycle. I believe they are faster when new, but they are NOT slow by the 8th heat cycle. I've said before, I think they are quite fast up to 10 heat cycles. And still pretty darn quick up to 16. After that, when I assemble scrub sets after one of the cords, then they slow down a bit, but are still quite fun to drive.

Are you running them square? And are you careful about rotating them? I always rotate them after 2 sessions. Every 2 sessions, they move. If you don't rotate them, then they'll cord more quickly.

Josh Haddox has a nicely setup E90 M3 (by Racewerkz) with basically stock power. The car is pretty well gutted and has full aero. He ran a 1:54 on NT01 at Buttonwillow.

Hey I did a 1:51 on R1s hahaha. But Gabe is right. If your going to put a big wing. You need more front aero to balance. Even gabe needs a bigger splitter hahaha. :] im currently sitting at 3400 lbs with half a tank of gas and driver. 400 lbs lighter than i was stock.

[dogbone]

Originally Posted by lemanszcpm3

Hey I did a 1:51 on R1s hahaha. But Gabe is right. If your going to put a big wing. You need more front aero to balance. Even gabe needs a bigger splitter hahaha. :] im currently sitting at 3400 lbs with half a tank of gas and driver. 400 lbs lighter than i was stock.

hehe---I was only mentioning your NT01 time because he was talking about wanting to run NT01. And your 1:54 on NT01 is a very very good time.

More front aero for me would be nice from a performance standpoint. But I don't think it would last on my car very long.......a couple solid trips into the desert and I'd rip that damn thing clean off. At least this one has allowed me to experiment and go off into the desert and still stay on there.

If you're at 3400 with 45 lbs of fuel and let's approximate a 170 lbs driver, that puts your car around 3185, no fuel no driver. That's lighter than my car. And that makes sense. You have rear half-cage versus a full cage and you don't have the supercharger weight. Once you get the full cage installed, you'll pick up some weight. Then you'll have to ask yourself how much $$$ you want to spend on losing weight because from here, the $$$ go up and the amount of weight you lose goes down.....From this point, the single biggest bang-for-the-buck weight loss would probably be fiberglass/carbon doors. (But you can't really do that until you have the full cage. I would not be running flimsy doors without the safety of the cage.)

[dogbone]

Originally Posted by ///Mobbin

Have you tried topping off the DCT fluid? It's an interesting fill procedure because you fill it like a differential but it also has a pump, lines, and the intercooler so you need to cycle it a bit and top it off a few times to get to full. There is also a known recurring leak issue, see this thread: DCT Leak Recurring Problem?

I noticed a leak on my car when I swapped the rod bearings, observed by a greasy DCT bottom pan, and am having it repaired now. I ordered the higher spec SSP viton gasket and stainless bolt kit as well as folks believe the OE gaskets and aluminum screws are contributing to the issue.

Yeah, since we've been dealing with installing the DCT temp gauges and the do88 cooler, we've been topping off the DCT fluid. I have seepage like everyone else. These double upshifts have been happening for years, but only in high stress situations, meaning it only happens after the car has already run some fast hot laps.

Did you already install the SSP setup? Is it working?

[///Mobbin]

Originally Posted by dogbone

Yeah, since we've been dealing with installing the DCT temp gauges and the do88 cooler, we've been topping off the DCT fluid. I have seepage like everyone else. These double upshifts have been happening for years, but only in high stress situations, meaning it only happens after the car has already run some fast hot laps.

Did you already install the SSP setup? Is it working?

All good to know and glad topping off seems to be a good temporary solution. SSP gaskets and screws arrive today and will likely go in tomorrow. Lot's to install at the moment so not getting back to the track until early September but I will report back on the SSP kit and let everyone know if that solves it (I suspect it will). I also plan to flash the GTS DCT tune after I confirm the leak has been sorted.

[M3 Number 86]

just asked my other buddy what size his wing was to compare. He was running 72" but it never looked that huge for some reason.

I"ll have to research 67 vs 72. Also look into flat bottom lip to add to my APR splitter and canards.

I just took off the splitter because it was just annoying on the street and now I'm thinking of making that even more of a pain in the ass LOL

[dogbone]

Originally Posted by M3 Number 86

just asked my other buddy what size his wing was to compare. He was running 72" but it never looked that huge for some reason.

I"ll have to research 67 vs 72. Also look into flat bottom lip to add to my APR splitter and canards.

I just took off the splitter because it was just annoying on the street and now I'm thinking of making that even more of a pain in the ass LOL

I have the APR GT-250 model. On the APR website, it says it's available up to 71".

A lip plus a splitter that sticks out 5" or more is COMPLETELY impractical on the street. You would be destroying that thing everywhere. The mildest driveway ramp would scrape you something awful. Going shorter than 5" might be a tiny bit better on the street, but you won't be getting the aero effect you want. You would be better off buying a second bumper for the street. (A long time ago, when my car did both street and track duty, I wondered if someone could fabricate a quick release setup for a lip/splitter, so you could quickly put-on/take-off the front aero. No one was interested in trying to make something like that....)

When I look at mods now, I consider what is the upside versus the downside. Losing weight in the car is great, but ruining the balance, not so great. Adding power via a supercharger is great, but adding 100 lbs to the nose of the car and having a lot more heat issues, not so great if you want to run long sessions/race. Running stickier tires or better brakes is great but is harder on the engine because you can push harder and makes you overheat more quickly. Most mods have a bit of give-and-take. And of course, you also need to weigh the value of the mod versus how much it costs. You can drain a wallet very quickly on things that add marginal benefit (i.e. subframe bushings.)

Aero is another one of those give-and-take mods----you get faster in corners, but you get slower on straights. So, with aero, I guess it is tempting to go with a huge setup to "get your moneys' worth", but if you don't have the power to compensate for the drag, or you have not lightened the car enough to help offset the drag, you may find yourself lagging on the straights. I have to tell you, I've heard more than once that for some people, aero makes the car boring to drive----much harder to slide around. So, the question is: what is the right aero setup?

I can't give you the proper specific advice you seek, but I do recommend you talk to a shop that has a reputation for building fast cars. Find guys who put fast times down and find out who their shops are----that's who I would go talk to.

[roastbeef]

lips take a beating for sure. i have only had my apr on for two track days and it has taken two hits. i hit a ceramic pot or something on the freeway (lip surprisingly stayed in-tact and exploded the vase or whatever) and i ran over a side skirt from some clown's cts-v with a cheap body kit at ACS on the banking.
makes me thing twice about buying a $1k lip.

[dogbone]

Hi Everyone.

Time to talk Rod Bearings!

I have gotten the question many many times-----"are you still on original rod bearings?" The answer was yes. People were curious that my car had so many track days on it, AND was supercharged, but that it kept on going fine.

However, now with over 100+ track days during the last 5.5 years and 51000 miles on the odometer, I have swapped out the rod bearings in my M3. Blackstone Labs has been reading my oil samples for several years, and the reports came back with low Lead levels for quite a long time---they always reported 1 or 3ppm. But earlier this year, the Lead levels started to creep up. And then the last oil sample before doing the job, my Lead levels rose over Blackstone's universal average. The universal average for Lead in our engine as seen by Blackstone is 8ppm. In May, my car rose from 7 to 10. One might say that a 10 might not be cause for alarm, but the one nagging thing that was always in the back of my mind was that I'm quite certain my oil samples have FAR less miles on them than the vast majority of other people who send samples in. I change the engine oil usually after every 2-4 track days. I NEVER EVER go more than 4 track days on engine oil. (I used stock 10w-60 oil.) So, the question was----if I'm above the universal Lead average in just 2 or 3 tracks days, which means just a couple hundred miles versus other people with thousands of miles on the oil, are my rod bearings wearing more than one would normally think? And should I act now? I decided to go for it.

So, the car went to EAS for rod bearings and a few other things, including a compression test, new spark plugs, new belts, new air filter, new blower fluid, and a dyno. Over the years, anytime the supercharger has needed to be touched, EAS has dealt with it. And after almost 6 years of working with Tom, and knowing the quality of Steve and Sammy's tech work, I had no doubts about their abilities on this round of work. EAS uses tin bearings with a WPC treatment and ARP bolts.

So----what did my rod bearings look like? Check 'em out below. I'm not an expert on this topic, but I think it's safe to say that this was a good time to do this job. The rod bearings are showing a fair amount of wear.

The Upper bearings show quite a bit of wear in the middle of their arches, and all the Uppers seem to show a solid 1/2" of wear on their edges too. The Lowers show generally less wear, but #4-Lower definitely saw some action unlike any other bearing. And several of the Lowers seem to be showing copper on the edges.

As far as the rest of the work done on the car---the compression test went well. All the cylinders are reporting consistent psi. And the dyno (which was done after all the work was completed) turned out very nicely. The ambient temps in the shop were 98ºF and the car still pulled 550whp. I'm quite happy with that.

Anyway, given the number of track days on my car, the fact that it has a supercharger, the numbers in the Blackstone reports and knowing that the S65 engine has this Achilles heal, I was not surprised with the condition of my rod bearings. I hope my results can help others to decide what to do.

[Doc Oc]

Very interesting. Why would you put in a bearing that takes away your ability to monitor through Blackstone though?

[///Mobbin]

Thanks for sharing and congrats on getting this job done! Good photos also!

[dogbone]

Originally Posted by Doc Oc

Very interesting. Why would you put in a bearing that takes away your ability to monitor through Blackstone though?

Here's what it boils down to for me (and I understand if this doesn't work for someone else): I'm just viewing this as a maintenance item every few years now. It's a track-only car and I can count the track days. If I still own it in a few years, I'll just replace them again as maintenance. This may be a band-aid, but given the amount of money I spend on the car otherwise, a rod bearing job every few years is a drop in the bucket.

Looking at the bearings, was it time for the bearings to come out? I think most would say yes. Do you think the report from Blackstone reflected the state of the bearings with a result of 10 for Lead? I think most would say no. So, while I do like Blackstone and I think they do a good job, I do think an oil report has to really be considered amongst a host of other factors---like power, usage, frequency of oil changes, etc. I changed the bearings less because of an oil report and more because my engine was supercharged and had more than 100 track days on it. I understand rod bearings are not supposed to be a consumable item, but given what others have been experiencing with rod bearings and the abuse I've put mine through, I'm comfortable that they have had a full life-cycle and I can live with the idea of just doing it every few years.

The car is awesome otherwise!

[FrostyAZ]

Your rod bearings look pretty good to me for a pedestrian car. For a supercharged track car with 100 days, they look remarkably good. I debated whether to do mine or not and finally decided to do them as insurance. Cheers to another 100 track days.

[Richbot]

What was the copper trend like?

[dogbone]

Originally Posted by Richbot

What was the copper trend like?

In the last 5 oil samples, Copper was Zero.

[Honda]

Originally Posted by dogbone

In the last 5 oil samples, Copper was Zero.

How many miles supercharged on the car?

[dogbone]

Originally Posted by Honda

How many miles supercharged on the car?

37000 miles supercharged. All 100+ track days have been supercharged.

Supercharger went on at 14000 miles. Rod bearings done a few weeks ago at 51000 miles.

[Honda]

Originally Posted by dogbone

37000 miles supercharged. All 100+ track days have been supercharged.

Supercharger went on at 14000 miles. Rod bearings done a few weeks ago at 51000 miles.

Sorry if this question has been repeated. What supercharger stage level do you have? at what PSI?

[dogbone]

Originally Posted by Honda

Sorry if this question has been repeated. What supercharger stage level do you have? at what PSI?

It's a VF620. The kit is advertised as maxing out around 6.5psi. I have not made any changes to it. My recent dyno confirms the psi rating. It showed 6.6-6.7 max at 8200rpm. Pulled 550whp in 98°F air temps. Car has 100 octane gas (but not tuned for 100), reduced cats with an Akra Evo X-pipe and a simple straight through (with resonator) custom exhaust.