2020 build, 1995 BMW 325i sedan

here from Mud....

build still progressing?

In reply to onemanarmy :

Hey man! Yeah it is. Slight delay because I took three weeks to drive my FJ62 cross country to Colorado, wheel there for two weeks then went to Tahoe and ran the Rubicon. Been back for about two weeks now and making progess on the car. Nothing really exciting, just plugging away at it. 

Cage is 80% done, seat is mounted, steering is done, motor is built, transmission/converter are ready to go, fuel system is 80% done, working on engine wiring currently. Still aiming for a drag win at 2020 Challenge. 

guess I should put some pics up. We got the cage and seat mount tacked in and started welding, still need to run the door bars, dash cross bar, seat braces to the cage and the transmission tunnel braces.  Not pictured are the down bars, but those are in. 

This was a universal demolition derby cage (I think Allstar #ALL22107) I got locally for only $170, and the main hoop, halo and front bars fit the car perfectly. It's all 1.75x0.95" DOM so it's light and strong. The seat was $20 locally. Unfortunately the dash bar and door bars were too short for this car and the kit didn't come with down bars so the door bars were repourposed for those and transmission tunnel bracing and I'll dig into my own supply for the other pieces. Other then that, easiest cage build ever. 

We did the normal holes in the floor, drop it through, weld the top, and plate the holes with 1/8" leftover from a dump trailer I built

You can also see my quick steering column mount since we deleted all the dash structure that previously held the column 

Finally got a cheap deal on a good cam so I was able to get the motor put back together. Cam is a LJMS Stage 3 turbo cam that I hope isn't too aggressive for the converter and turbo. It has some seriously messed up lobes so it was cheap. Perfect to match with some mystery junkyard 250k mile stock lifters. 

All put back together with some new Riverdale Speed Valve springs, and everything else re-used, re-used oil pump, used stock head bolts, re-used every gasket  and seal, Sloppy Mechanics style

Put together with the mud-filled TH400 and $250 Summit 3500-stall converter, and $22 lokar knock-off dipstick that really doesn't fit well at all. 

Ready to go in the car once we get the tractor running again. 

Junkyard engine harness stripped down to run stand-alone. Need to swap different plugs for the injectors we're going to run and add the flex fuel sensor but done otherwise.

Thanks to Calvin for taking the time to flash one of his high-power E85 tunes to our PCM. 

07 Express van P59 computer, cable drive and flex enabled.

The rag joint in our steering column was worn out and they're no good for handling anyways. There's a $300 kit available to convert it to a regular joint but that obviously doesn't fit the budget. I found a later model 3-series (not sure what series, like 07 or 08, I'm not a BMW guy) at the junkyard and it's steering shaft was a bit different but the joint that connects to the rack had the same splines. So it got sawzalled off and fell into an intake manifold, along with the injectors, bolts, relays, etc.

E36 rag joint 

Late model joint after being drilled out to the OD of the BMW splines. This gets slipped over the steering shaft splines and welded to the steering shaft. Both are aluminum

Drilled for 1/4" bolt to act as a safety pin.

Installed on the car. One less source of compliance.

... and it fell into an intake ... had me LOL

our beautiful disaster of a race car is taking shape. 

Tip, make sure to drag the tailhousing of the transmission 20ft so you get a bunch dirt inside it because you didn't have a slip yoke installed. 

And yes, we are running the intake backwards for now as the BMW throttle cable is short and hooks right up to the LS throttle, and there's a bunch of room under the BMW cowl to run a 180 bend to the intercooler since we deleted HVAC. this will also allow a much less dramatic cowl hood. Contemplated finding a LS1 or LS6 intake and being cable to run the stock hood but would rather have the power. The car will have 275 MT's sticking out past the sides of the rear wheel wells and a 4" turbo dump out the front bumper so it wont be much of a sleeper anyways. I'd rather have the extra 4ft of intake piping then a 8" cowl hood 

Got the injectors decapped, have the $30 PQY regulator, have the flex fuel content sensor from the junkyard and almost done with fuel rail mods. Just need the correct harness clips for these injectors and hook up a few more wires, run fuel lines and should should be able to get it fired up. hopefully in a few days. Then the list to drive it isn't much longer. 

We also have about $500 completely free in the budget so there may be a turbo upgrade. Will probably just run it with the Ebay special and see how it does first since it looks like we are going to have some decent testing time. 

We also got a deal we couldn't pass up on a pair of drag tires.  ET streets in 275/60/15 mounted on cheap 15x10 Jeg's wheels. The tire is a little bit taller then ideal but this is about as small as it gets for a 275. Wheels are 6" BS and the inner sidewall barely clears the inner wheel tub after a bit of hammering. Had to trim the front of the wheel well opening as well. Now that the motor/trans are back in we'll put it on the ground and see how much of the upper wheel well we have to cut, or if we can get away with just smashing them, to get it to sit at ride height. There's about 1.5" more up travel to go from what's pictured. May do a slight subframe drop. 1st priority for now is engine running obviously. 

Fun stuff! 

Do we need a external battery/electrical shutoff? Racecar logic says yes, but required for this event? 

I believe that it is only required if the battery is relocated from its original location...

what if the battery is only slightly relocated

Have you read the $2000 Challenge Rules?

In reply to Tom Suddard :

I did now  not sure how I missed that one. Thanks. Will be installing one since this car will hopefully be kinda dangerous

In reply to cruisermatt :

I'm not going to need one since mine is still both in the original location and has the original cover. And my car will be far less dangerous than yours. :P

our battery tray was completely rusted out. Most likely going to be moving the battery forwards to the rear footwell area - haven't decided if shutoff will go on rear bumper or on the  passenger side cowl (using the big power post in the engine bay), which would be easiest

Lots of progress made this weekend. Car is nearing race-ready.

Brakes are done, steering is done, car rolls, intercooler and all intake piping is all complete, $45 Civic radiator from eBay Racing is mounted and just needs minor mods done to the outlets, fuel system is done, turbo downpipe is done, the big items are adding the wastegate, driveshaft, transmission shifter, mount the battery and hook it up, battery cutoffs, few more roll cage tubes need to go in, and maybe an hour worth of final wiring hookups, and put fluids in it.  

It actually moved from where we rolled it off the trailer for the first time yesterday! We pushed it around into the garage which was nice since it rained all day. 

It has a serious rack with stock springs in the rear with the big tires, and lowering springs up front with tiny front tires. We jacked up the front springs a bit which raised the front up about 1/2", they're kinda shot though. The upper shock bushings are starting to poke through after having weight on them for the first time in awhile. These front tires are completely shot as well, so some better front tires and maybe a set of used stock struts should help the stance a bit. 

I do not understand your last statement "help the stance a bit." That stance needs no help!

In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :

ehhhh 

Its maybe more extreme then it looks in the picture. Haven't checked the caster yet but concerned about it being low with the the rear hiked up so much. Going to start with better front tires, since we need them regardless, and see how it looks. We have the lowering rear springs that came with the car as well which might be good for the rear geometery to get the arms and axles flatter but we'll have to cut that whole flare off. 

it's official... We're registered. Trigonia Racing #69 

Car is pretty much together and running now. Driveshaft is in. No fuel or oil leaks amazingly. Just a few details like the transmission shifter, fluid, battery mount and bleeding brakes and it's pretty much ready to drive. 

I figure some might be interested in some details on some specific parts.

Here's what I did for the brakes. Ripped the ABS and booster out when we first got the car after looking and seeing pretty much everyone who swaps these cars can't fit the booster with the left cylinder head. Well, our motor is about 3" forwards of where most put them in E36 swaps because of exhaust manifold/steering clearance, and the E36 booster would probably fit fine, but I left it sitting upside down all summer and it was full of water. So decided to just run the E36 MC without the booster. It'll probably be too big but hoping that the car being a lot lighter then stock that it will work out. Backup plan is a Civic MC. 

Anyways, quick mounting plate out of scrap, cut the clevis off the booster, weld a spare LS pushrod to it, hook it up with some tee and union fittings and line all lifted from the junkyard, boom 30 minute manual brake conversion done. Finish with new stock replacement rotors from Autoplicitiy for $15 each, un budgeted of course. New front pads from the junkyard too.

Driveshaft time. I'm sure that this is an area where a lot of people run into issue, of course virtually all engine swaps need a custom one, but pretty much any driveline shop is going to charge between $100-400 depending which is a huge chunk of budget. We actually planned and still have the room in the budget for a custom ordered unit but I've built/modified a handful of driveshafts before so I decided to give this a shot first since it cost almost nothing.  

Unfortunately our free TH400 from my friend Steve didn't have a slip yoke. But he did let us crawl under his house and check out some mystery driveshafts that had been under there for "a few years". I selected a nice rusty one that had a 4-bolt flange and more then enough tubing length. Not sure what it's off of, something 60's or 70's GM I assume. 

Next I found two different 4l80e slip yokes from Express Vans at the junkyard, which of course have the same spline as Th400. Unfortunately they'd been sawzalled and only had about a foot of tubing on each. Grabbed them both and the cashier let me have them. One was a little larger then the other, at the time I wasn't sure which I would use. 

Even though I had sold the BMW driveshaft with the transmission I actually found a spare in the trunk of the car after we bought it. Initially I was wanting to sleeve the BMW shaft with a 4l80 one. The problem with this was the the BMW tube is pretty small (2.375") and the 4l80 tubings are large (3" and up). And neither pieces were very long. 

So what I did was take the mystery DS,cut it to length, and sleeve the smaller 4l80e tubing over it. The next issue is that they didn't sleeve properly, so I tried something new and shimmed the difference with 20g sheet steel. With that wrapped tight and the tacks ground down the two were now a TIGHT fit. Like, I think it could take normal road driving without being welded. Anyways, happy with that, I turned attention to making the 4-bolt mystery flange bolt to the BMW pinion. 

I had a 944 brake caliper piston I previously turned down for some other reason that I just cut a bit off of to make a stepped pilot adapter. Then it was just a matter of drilling the new pattern into the BMW pinion flange, done under the car. 

Misc pictures. 

Would anyone happen to know off hand whether E36 ABS sensors are Hall or VR? I don't have one in front of me right now and can't tell by looking at pictures if they're 2 or 3 wire, let alone find a schematic showing which wire is which. 

Wanting to use the front left ABS sensor as a VSS pulse generator if I can. 

In reply to cruisermatt :

I think that should be possible... and apparently that's what BMW did on later E36's inherently: https://www.bimmerforums.com/forum/showthread.php?2208801-E36-Vehicle-Speed-Sensor