Spec 3: 1995 BMW 325i NASA Race Car Build

Nah, the stresses of racing and the stresses of a street car are way different. None of these engine failures would ever happen on a street car in a million years. We are pushing these engines to the limits of their operations 25+ years into their service life. The E36 is the best "old" BMW to get your feet wet with. The E46 has a lot of computer controlled things that are tough to handle if you don't know them and the E30 is just "too old" at this point.

 

Another great event!

July was a crossover NASA Great Lakes and NASA Mid Atlantic event at my now "home town" track of Pittsburgh International Raceplex. It's a 50 minute tow from my house so I strolled up Thursday night to hang out and relax with my now establish camping setup of enclosed trailer, nice little cot, TV mounted on the wall, coffee maker at the ready, and some nice camping chairs and a big canopy. I'm trying to save money so I didn't sign up for test and tune and instead was hoping to rely on a few hours in Assetto Corsa on a Pitt Race mod track. The weather was decent and all was well until a fellow racer finally fell victim to the rattly transmission he had been ignoring for a year (I blame his fancy chassis mount shifter). We rounded up a transmission to get transported from Richmond, VA to Pitt Race and it arrived after 9PM. We got it installed by 12:30 at which point I left him to his own devices to wrap up and he was in bed by 1:30 AM after tidying it up.

Warm and Qualifying saw me running a 2:09 while the pole sitter ran a 2:03. This put me in 6th out of 8 on grid for the race, qualifying a few tenths out of 4th. I was really disappointed in myself since I ran a 2:07 last year with a tired motor and knew I should have been faster. I adjusted tire pressures and got my head right for the race where I jumped to 3rd on the standing start and was fighting for 2nd until halfway through the race when the series leader (who spun on the start) came rocketing through and passed us both to grab 2nd. I finished 4th while running low 2:06s on a hot day, which I was pleased with.

Sunday saw more of the same with me qualifying 4th and battling for third the entire race, even passing Joey Thomas for third a few times and then giving it right back. We both ran very low 2:06s and almost broke 2:05. We ran within ONE THOUSANDTH of a second of each other for our best lap. Truly a great battle.

Now on to VIR and NJMP in back to back weekends in August where I hope to work on smoothness on input to upset the car less and hopefully get some new personal bests. I only need a few tenths to start snagging third place consistently.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9ppl0C_52Q&t=84s&ab_channel=TaylorJohnson

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8m0UsuxFjis&t=11s&ab_channel=TaylorJohnson

 

Okay be honest, did you take the door cards off or did the car take them off for you?

 

Surprisingly this car didn't have door card issues when I tore it apart. I was robbed of my E36 experience of opening the door to the door card still in place.

 

Sounds like you got a good one then, especially if you changed the water pump before the impeller melted. If you can tell I've had a couple bimmers and all of mine weren't good ones haha

 

August VIR! Good and relatively uneventful weekend. My previous best was a 2:16 something at VIR and I got it down to a 2:14.7 over the weekend. We had 8 racers and I qualified and finished 4th both days with some battling with Joey Thomas. Power Steering line failed Saturday morning and I knew it was bad, so that's my fault for not replacing it sooner. Patched it up and it help together fine. On to NJMP with NASA NE this weekend!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeANpBvRmyk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLFtQ6vbUIY

 

NASA Northeast! NJMP!

Thunderbolt is amazing. Such a fun and unique track and the facilities are superb. I wasn't expecting everything to be as nice as it is, but everything was top notch. The timing tower view is crazy cool, the officer's club is nice, and that's the best pro shop I've ever seen. So many garages and villas and power poles at every paddock spot! The course itself is very tricky but also very rewarding when you get it right. Hard braking into T1 with a near flat footed run through T2-T4 is really neat, then a very slow turn 5 with a high speed turn at 6 with a lot of run off begs you to push it harder and harder... then the octopus! Such a cool turn. So low speed and so long! Fighting for grip the whole time and if you get it right, it gives you a chance for a run down the front stretch to pass.

That said, I had never been here before, so it was a lot to learn quickly. The other folks did test and tune Friday and warm up Saturday was my first shot at the track. I ran a 1:37 to start, which is 4 seconds off the SE30 track record of 1:34 something, which was my goal all weekend. I got down to a 1:36 in the race Saturday and snagged my first win!

Sunday was very interesting. Northeast does a qualifying race with a rolling start, and I started in the wrong gear. Ed pulled past me and I followed him with the plan to keep just enough pressure to make him make a mistake and capitalize. I snuck by him a few laps in and then focused on pushing my lap times down. I was dropping a few tenths every lap until I ran a couple 1:35s and then pushed off track and through the grass. I checked my mirrors and realized no one was around me anymore so I backed it down by a lot and cruised to the finish. The whole weekend, I had been nursing 4 completely bald tires, crossing my fingers they wouldn't cord in the race, and I certainly didn't want to burn them in a qual race. I'm very confident a 1:34 or 1:33 was in the works with a little more time and some tires that had rubber.

Then the torrential rain came. It rained for at least two hours and completely flooded the place. Water flowing through the paddock and the track was under water. The race approached and the sun came out, causing us all to debate whether rain tires were the move. We all opted for the drys and went to grid. When we went out on track, there was standing water everywhere so we all were crawling around the track just trying to keep the cars pointing forward. Edward got passed me on the start (again I was in third gear when I should have been in second for the rolling start) but then he pushed wide in T1 and I passed. We fought back and forth for the whole race as the track dried but I had mentally decided this was not the race to push the car or bin it in a wall, so when I saw Ed go for a late pass on the inside into the Octopus, I gave him a wide berth and decided it was best to live to fight another day. Plus, it'd be fun to try to get around him again. I bided my time waiting for the white flag for one final push and I got a run on him coming down the front straight on the last lap to go across the finish line door to door. Official timing shows me one tenth of a second behind at the finish.

Overall, a very fun weekend at a great track. Hoping to get a field for Watkins Glen in October.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWErfvzh4SM

 

Watkins Glen!

Unfortunately, the freshly formed Spec3 Northeast contingent all had other obligations and couldn't make it to this event. I, however, would not miss an event at WGI unless I was dead. WGI is a world class track full of rich history and is a BLAST to drive. Luckily, someone that was eyeing joining us in NE bought a turn key Spec3 and wanted to join me at WGI a week after purchasing the car, but the licensing from SCCA didn't come together like we had hoped, so they ended up running HPDE and I switched to ST5. A Spec3 slots into ST5 fine, but when going up to completely min/max'd E36 M3s and BRZs, there's no shot.

The first day I finished 4th after battling for third and running up on a great Spec Miata battle. I knew I wasn't racing for anything, so I backed off and just followed the Spec Miatas for the last 3 laps as to not interrupt them. However, on Sunday, I was battling for second place, so I kept the hammer down until the same Miata traffic separated me and P2, at which point he pulled away in the final laps. I brought my girlfriend and my dog, and also discovered that my trailer AC unit DOES HAVE HEAT! It was a great time all around and I had the best sandwich I've ever eaten at Nickel's BBQ Pit.

I beat my personal best from April (2:17) with a 2:15.3 or so. Shooting for low 2:14 next year and hoping to beat the track record of 2:13.8 or so eventually.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZ0hgxwdlwo&ab_channel=TaylorJohnson

 

October VIR 2022 and Mid Atlantic Season Finale. Personal Best 2:14.138 so close to 2:13!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ckC4_bHPcXA

I came into the weekend in 4th place for the season championship. I snagged a P2 finish in the first race Saturday and a P3 in the second race to close the season. This brought me within a race's points of 3rd and 2nd for the season. So many things I could have done to make up those points during the season!

On to NJMP next weekend for the closing of the Northeast season and then Road Atlanta in September for my first Southeast event!

 

The busy year stays busy! Final event of the NASA Northeast season. Unfortunately we only had two Spec3s (we are a full year ahead of when I expected to have a NE field!). This was my first time at NJMP Lightning so I did the test and tune on Friday to get my bearings. I was aiming to beat the SpecE30 track record (That was set a lot time ago on much better pavement!) and I managed to do that in my second session out Friday with a 2:17.8. However, our track records only count if they are in a race. I was trying to run down this time all weekend and was never able to consistently run sub 2:18 after that. I was still faster than any other class in Lightning except some of Honda Challenge, so I knew I was doing alright.

During the race, we started mixed with SpecE30 based on time since both classes were light on entries, so I started on pole. We had a rolling start (Also because so few racers on track total) and I pulled away when the green flag dropped and never looked back. I didn't have my rear facing camera on, but you can just imagine I was just by myself the whole time. Basically a TT session.

Car is still running strong. I unloaded the trailer and dropped it off at a trailer shop for some maintenance. I'll be working on the car a bit to clean it up before heading to Road Atlanta the first weekend of December.

Fast lap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X4xolslN7IE

Race: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEGyrNVtMK8&ab_channel=TaylorJohnson

 

The long slumber ends!

My offseason "To do" list was big. I didn't do all of it This was my first off season that didn't require any engine shenanigans so I took time to enjoy life, traveled a bit, picked up guitar, etc. Now it's back to the grind.

First thing was a new windshield. I've been rocking the 30 year old glass forever and it was pitted and cracked all over. Happy to finally be able to see again.

I noticed my window net had expired (I've been racing that long?) so I installed a new one and changed it from the balljoint and rod style to the "wrap around the door bar" style, so hopefully that'll make egress better. My suite would always catch on the lower bar.

My front bumper has been saggy since my meeting with a tire wall during comp school and I attribute it to bent bumper shocks or maybe a slightly tweaked frame rail. I tried to bend it back with a jack and piece of wood and ultimately settled on just drilling new holes in the bumper core bar for the bumper skin to sit higher and moving on. I also replaced the screw in tow hook with a strap style wrapped around the bumper shock.



Fresh engine oil, diff oil, and transmission oil. Everything was fine except the transmission which had a LOT of metal in it, but no chunks. It shifts fine and doesn't pop out of gear, so I'll just start changing fluid twice a season or maybe three times considering how often I race, and monitoring from there. These transmissions are cheap (yay Spec3) so I always have a spare with me in the bed of the truck and it's an easy swap regardless.



New pads and rotors along with a fresh brake bleed has the pedal feeling very nice as well.

I then set in to nut and bolt everything and I stepped up my game from a silver sharpie to a "torque paint pen". I found my rear subframe, engine mounts, and transmission mounts were all loose even though my sharpie markings indicated no movement of the bolts. Perhaps the bushings shrunk or were squished? At any rate, the clunking in the driveline is completely gone. I'm embarrassed I didn't fix this sooner. I also found my rear sway bar had completely popped out of the bracket. I wonder how long I was running like that?

My car has been leak free for a while, but developed a small drip from the power steering rack. I've been religiously checking the hoses, thinking that was my problem, but I think I finally tracked it down to the pinion seal on the rack itself. Not a huge deal for now, but I'm looking to source a new rack to have on hand for when the time comes. It seems rack doctor is no more, so a reman unit should be just fine.



Lastly, I found a shop by my house that I can just take service roads to with zero traffic so I popped by there for an alignment (first in like a year) and found that I have way more front camber than I expected. Good for me I guess?

March VIR in a week and then a busy year of 13 race weekends planned between Northeast and Mid Atlantic! Let's do it!

 

Replaced both front wheel bearings and the 30 year old units I pulled out still seemed fine, so those will be good spares.

I replaced the rear calipers as well trying to chase the PERFECT pedal feel. The rears were working fine, but there's no reason to leave the 30 year old calipers on there anymore with new stuff everywhere else.

I also finally got around the installing brass caliper bushings into the new calipers I have on the front. Due to casting defects, I wasn't able to press them in before without spending a lot of time sanding and filing to get the holes correctly sized to slide in the the new bushings.

To cap it all off, I also replaced all 4 of my 15 year old shocks. My front left was so blown that it wouldn't rebound at all and it would sink down into the shock body on its own. Hopefully having a functional suspension will help me snag another PB this next weekend at VIR.

 

I'm going to stop updating this thread here and consolidate it all here: https://community.drivenasa.com/forum/57-spec3/