1996 BMW 318ti - Fun Driver/Track Toy

Jon, I read back through your thread and saw that. No wonder it was in such good shape!

Weekend recap

This was the first race outing for the car, and the first time two of my teammates had seen - let alone driven the car. One of the guys had raced the SHO with me for years, and the other had run a Lemons race several years ago, but in another car. They didn't know eachother before the weekend, either. 

Going into the weekend, we had levelset our expectations. None of us predicted that we would be toward the top of the timing and scoring, based on what we knew about our car and the others on the entry list. We set out to have a fun weekend, drive as much as possible, but drive conservatively and take care of the equipment. None of us cared about running the fastest lap, or being quicker than the other teammates. As the weekend progressed and we continued to climb up the leaderboard, our strategy talks continued - we would drive within our own and the car's limits, and have as much low stress fun as possible.

We ran the test day on Friday, mainly to let them get comfortable in the car. One of the drivers had never heel-toe/rev match downshifted before, and spun the car once practicing that. I think it was good that he spun when he did, becuase he learned the limit, and got it out of his system. Otherwise, the test was uneventful, and we passed tech the first try.

On Saturday, I started the race, and drove for 2:45 finishing my stint in 15th place. I knew that there were at least that many cars that had passed me, as the car was capable of about a 1:55 pace, but in traffic averaged about a 2:00. The newest driver to the team took over for the second stint, and ran for 3 hours, pitting from 5th place. At this point, we were shocked at how well we were doing, but tried not to get too excited. The car was still unproven, and there was a lot that could happen. The third driver got in the car, and drove the remaining 2:15, taking the checker on Saturday in 6th place.

Typically with our SHO, we added a couple quarts of oil, changed wheel bearings, control arms, brake pads and rotors, and tires overnight between Saturday and Sunday. This car was great. It didn't use oil, the tires were great with plenty of life left, as were the brakes. We noticed that one of the splitter supports had pulled through the plywood, but I didn't have big enough washers or material on hand. We considered a drive to Tractor Supply, then a beer walk around the paddock looking for material, then settled on cutting a small piece out of the spare tire well in the hatch to just get it done quickly. That's all the work on the car we did all weekend.

The splitter is just a tad low - it scraped the ground in a couple corners if we were really pushing. I plan to add some sacrificial sliders to the bottomside leading edge in the future, or raise the blade slightly.

Sunday, I started again, and only had to drive 2 hours to the church quiet hour break. I had a great battle with this Corvette pretty much the whole time. I was a little faster in laptime, but he had power on the straights. So every few laps, he'd get by and I'd have to work to reel him in and pass. Then a couple laps later, I'd get balked into a turn and he would motor past on the straight again. It was a lot of fun working through traffic together and trying to make passes stick.

The other two guys split the remaining 4 hours in half, each driving clean stints, and we took the checker one position off the podium in 4th place. It's the best that I've ever finished, the cleanest race I've ever run, and the least wrenching in the paddock as well. It will be hard to top, but we'll certainly try.

Based on some lap time analytics, we had the 30th fastest lap, but finished in 4th place. The 5th place car was charging hard at the end of the race, averaging about 8-10 seconds a lap faster than us, but had just gotten a lap back right before the checker and finished on the same lap.

Here is the video from my Sunday stint, with the others available on my youtube channel if you're interested.

Awesome result. Great job!

This is exactly how we ended up in fourth one time.  Go out to have fun, realize you are in the top 5, then protect.  Your lack of driver changes and pit stops really put you on top.  We rarely go over an hour per driver, just so we all get a chance before something bad happens.   

Nice work out there.

In reply to collinskl1 :

Building a lemons car, too. What do you use for black front spoiler material? We are trying garden edging but it is flimsy.

In reply to edmknapp :

P.S. We are the Civic in front of you on Sunday. Loved watching our car from your view. Team Non Sequitur (Cincinnati)

I haven't been checking this thread regularly, so I missed the front airdam question. I used 1/8" ABS plastic sheet from Speeway Motors. It came in a 2 foot wide 25 foot long roll for like $20, and was easy to cut with a razor blade. It is supported along the bottom edge with some aluminum angle (riveted plastic to aluminum) and sits against the factory bumper.

One of the off season tasks for the car was re-vamping the splitter. The original threaded rod supports would bend during the race, and the blade scraped on the ground occasionally. I cut a new blade out of plywood using the old one as a template, and mounted it with Professional Awesome mounting struts. They're a composite rod that has some allowance for bending without yielding. The rear mount supports are still threaded rod, but I have materials to upgrade them as well if I ever get around to it.

I also added some of these slick little sliders to the bottom, and yeah the bolts are too long.

I noticed that the passenger front strut tower had been deformed, so I ordered and installed reinforcement plates to both sides, with some hammering to the mushroomed passenger side. There was no cracking, which was nice, but I'll keep an eye on them and may do a more permanent fix.

Other than that, it's pretty much just been general maintenance. I changed the engine oil, flushed brake fluid and installed new rotors. Nut and bolted the suspension, etc. The transmission and differential fluids both look brand new still after 17.5 hours of run time - so I left them and will monitor after the next race.

We'll have the car at the 24 Hours of Lemons event at Pitt Race in a week and a half. I don't expect the same strong finish as Gingerman, as the longer straights at Pitt will be our weakness.

We had a good weekend racing overall.

The test day Friday started off a bit shaky, as the first session was scubbed due to a car in the previous run group oiling down the track, and Pitt Race not wanting us out there until it was cleaned up. The second session found our car spilling some coolant upon return to the pits, which I assumed was due to an overfill from flushing the antifreeze and replacing it with water. The third session showed boiling in the overflow tank - oh no. We replaced the radiator cap, refilled the water, and did a quick bleed on the system and it was fixed. Crisis averted. I was mostly concerned with getting my two teammates some seat time on the track. One of them had never been to Pitt, and the other only had a couple hours there in another car a couple years ago. We cruised through tech inspection later in the afternoon, and were ready to race.

Saturday found us picking through the field slowly, being slow on the straights and passing in the braking zones and turns just as we'd expected. We ran as high as 4th place at one point, and ended the day in 8th.

On Sunday we were running in 8th most of the day and predicted that the 9th place car (the saturn sky/chevy colorado mashup) would pass us on outright pace before the checker. One of our drivers got squeezed off the track at T1, which ripped the splitter off and brought us in for a black flag. After a quick chat with the judges, they sent us to the paddock to remove the dangly bits of bumper, trim out the rear wing, inspect the car, and rejoin the race. That took us 17 minutes, and sure enough we got passed. At that point we were interested in saving our top 10 finish - and we were able to. We finished 9th out of 100 entered cars... with 90-something cars turning a lap.

There were some last lap shenanigans between the 4th and 5th place cars racing for position running to the checker. A squeeze caused contact between those cars, ending up with one car in the grass then spinning across the track towards the wall, and pushing the other car into us. The contact with our car was a wheel to wheel hit, trashing our wheel and cutting down the other car's tire. As upset as I am about the totally avoidable contact from those two cars, it could have been MUCH worse. Metal is replaceable, but my friends that I drive with are not.

All in all, we had a great weekend and ended up exceeding expectations and overachieving again. We'll fix some stuff and have the car ready for Gingerman in October.

We run 245/40R17 Hankook RS4 tires, and may end up running a narrower size or a faster tire in the future. I know there is speed to pick up using a different tire at the expense of some life. These tires have now run 30 hours of racing - last fall at Gingerman and this weekend at Pitt. Each race rotating front to back between Saturday and Sunday, and flipping the tires on the wheel between events. There is still life for practice or track days - likely enough for some racing too, but the shoulders are starting to show their age. These are the tires from the left side at Pitt, which have the worse shoulder wear. The right sides are similar depth, but look better on the outside edges.

Among my considerations are Goodyear's Supercar 3, which unfortunately is only offered in a 245/45R17 being an inch larger diameter, Falken RT660, and the new Continental Extreme Contact Force.

I don't like the feel of the BFG Rival and its pattern is not good in wet conditions, Bridgestone's RE71R is on the way out, and Yokohama A052 is likely too fast wearing to get a full weekend out of a set. I'm not interested in a set of tires each day - but we might be able to get a weekend out of 6 tires.

Top 10 is pretty good for a 4 cylinder BMW, although being the best BMW ever made helps a little.

I'm amazed by your tire wear. We've been running the RS4 and kill at least 2 each race(moving the fronts to the rear for day 2).

buzzboy said:

Top 10 is pretty good for a 4 cylinder BMW, although being the best BMW ever made helps a little.

I'm amazed by your tire wear. We've been running the RS4 and kill at least 2 each race(moving the fronts to the rear for day 2).

The rest of the top 10 was a 6 cyl E30, 6 cyl E36, LS 3rd gen Camaro disguised as a Cadillac, 6 cyl 318ti, 3800 swapped FC RX7, Porsche 928, the Saturn truck thing, us,  and an E28. All of those cars except the E28 were considerably faster in a straight line than us, and were capable of up to 10 seconds a lap faster based on FTDs. We're happy doing a lot with a little.

Alignment, and the fact that we try our best not to scrub the fronts too much, likely has something to do with it.

We run -3.5° camber front, -2° rear with 1/8" total toe out up front and 1/8" total toe in rear. The rear alignment is a function of our ride height, as it is not currently adjustable. More negative camber would likely help us keep the front outside shoulders happy, but I don't want to add more shims between the strut and knuckle, and can't afford camber plates.

Wow, what a thread! I just completely binge read your entire build when I stumbled across it while doing some research on track 318tis. I have been looking around for the past couple weeks for my own and it is safe to say that you definitely inspired me to find one ASAP. Great build man! look forward to reading more as this track season progresses.

99jroach said:

Wow, what a thread! I just completely binge read your entire build when I stumbled across it while doing some research on track 318tis. I have been looking around for the past couple weeks for my own and it is safe to say that you definitely inspired me to find one ASAP. Great build man! look forward to reading more as this track season progresses.

Thanks for the kind words. These cars are a lot of fun, both in stock form and when modified. I will admit that it is frustrating at times to drive such a low powered car in modern track days, but it really isn't that big of a deal.

It's looking like I'll be at Grattan in a few weeks for a track day. I'm looking forward to that as I've never been there, but I'll need to get the exhaust and splitter fixed by then.

The Grattan track day was great. Perfect weather, and only 12 cars. The track was rented by a couple buddies of mine and they split the available time into 30 minute sessions - half the sessions were for bikes, and the other half for cars. All in all, we got 7 half hour sessions.

Ordinarily, that would have meant tons of open track, but I was actually one of two drivers that had ever been on track before, and most of the others weren't comfortable with me passing in the turns. I didn't take my camera or any timing equipment, because I had an idea that this would be the case, so I just had a fun low stress day running as many laps as I could.

There were 3 old BMWs, two NA Miatas, an FRS, a C4 corvette, an ATS coupe, two C7 Z06s and a Cayman GT4. In little 318ti that could, I was lapping faster than all of them. Coming from racing, time trials, and "normal" track days, it was very strange running down the Z06s and GT4 and hounding them for a point by.

Leading up to the event, I was able to get the front splitter reconstructed (sloppily - it'll need to be re-done before the next race) but ran out of time before I could fabricate another exhaust (another casualty of last race's off track excursion) so I ran without... it was loud.

I picked up some RE71Rs on closeout from Tire Rack while they were running a rebate deal, so all in I got 8 tires for about $750. Obviously this isn't a long term solution, as the line is being discontinued, but I wanted to see what something with more grip than an RS4 felt like on the car. MAN OH MAN - comparing totally dead RS4s to sticker RE71Rs was night and day. Even without any laptimes to compare, it was significantly quicker in the corners, and Grattan has a lot of those. Wear will be a concern, but we may try these at Gingerman in the fall, and possibly move to Falken RT660 which seems to have similar characteristics to the Bridgestone.

Another race weekend in the books - back at Pitt Race with 24 Hours of Lemons.

It was cold, wet, and even snowed before drying and warming up some on Sunday afternoon. The test day on Friday revealed a couple small issues that we quickly fixed. Saturday was miserable in the car with very poor visibility, but the conditions slowed the faster cars down and we ended the day in 4th place.

Once the track was cold, inspection showed our front tires were down to the overlay cords on the inside shoulders. We usually get two whole races out of a set of RS4's, but we'd somehow killed a pair in 7.5 hours. An alignment check told us that we had 1/4 inch of toe out, vs the 1/8 we typically want. We fixed that, but only had a set of scuffed RE71r's that I wasn't sure would last the remaining session on Sunday.

Sunday started with snow, but quickly dried out, got warmer, and we slowly got picked off by faster competitors. The left front tire had a vibration for the last hour and 15 minutes (my stint) so I had to back off some on the right turns to try to keep it alive. It barely held on - the tread base compound was starting to peek through in the outer shoulder.

In the end, we finished 7th of 110 cars - another significant over achievement for the little stock powered 318ti that could.

Here is video of the first stint on Saturday. This was the worst of the conditions, and of course I drew the short straw to drive.