Making a Race Car

Making a Race Car

If my friends and family members didn't already doubt my sanity, when I told them I intended to go racing in 2002 there was no question in their minds. Going racing is ultimately not a rational decision – it's expensive, time consuming and frustrating – and certainly not profitable. People race because they really, really, really want to race – more than anything else. Racing is a lot like climbing Rainier: people say they want to do it, are almost ready to do it, are practicing to do it, or will do it soon, but never quite do it. In other words, I'm too much of a wimp to climb Mt. Rainier – therefore, racing.

After deciding to turn my eighteen-year-old 318i into an ICSCC (aka "Conference") G Production race car for 2002 I came up with a list of realistic goals to keep myself focused:

1) I wanted the car to be raceable for the first race of the season. Not necessarily fast – but legal and safe.

2) I wanted to pass the three required novice races to upgrade to an intermediate ("area") license without incident. If you don't finish the race, or do something stupid, the race doesn't count.

3) I didn't want to have any "Did Not Finish" results for the season, due to mechanical difficulties or driving mistakes. This meant making sure that my car was prepared to a high level of reliability, and being careful when approaching the car's limits as well as my own.

4) Finally, by the last races of the year I wanted to be able to at least keep up with my class, GP. This meant improving my car and my driving sufficiently to be able to do a lap in about 1:50 - 1:51 at Pacific Raceways, the local track. This was a big goal, and the one I was least likely to make.

For the winter before, I decided to focus my efforts on meeting the safety requirements and increasing the reliability of my car. In the first three races as a novice, the only goal is to finish (and not do something dumb) so I decided that go-fast improvements such as a race suspension and race exhaust could wait. This would help spread the costs of building the car out over a wider period of time. This also fit nicely with my plan to make changes as progressively as possible to my car, and thus learn to feel the effects of each modification. Even small changes from the baseline can have a significant effect on the handling dynamics of a car, and these changes are only exaggerated by pushing the car to the limits of adhesion.

In order to meet my first goal of having a legal car in time for the first race of the season, I had to start thinking about getting the roll cage in, right away. Based on a recommendation from Greg Hinkel, another E30 racer, I contacted Ken and Wes Hill in November. Ken and Wes both have an extensive knowledge of racing and BMW technical know-how that is surpassed only by their enthusiasm for sharing it.

To make the car ready for cage installation, it had to be completely stripped. This meant removing every last bit of sound deadening that I could reach, including the nasty, heavy tar that coats much of the sheet metal. This stuff was just evil! Eventually, based on Michael Lord's suggestion, I discovered that dry ice (available from your local supermarket) is just the thing. You lay a chunk of dry ice over the piece of sound deadening you want to work on. When it's nice and cold, you use a hammer and a chisel to wang it off in pieces for several minutes until it warms up and you have to start over again. Wear ear plugs – this can be very loud. In several places I also used a butane torch to soften other materials in order to scrape them off. The goal was to have nothing but bare metal in the car when the time came to put the roll cage in. As I’ve mentioned before, making a car light is absolutely the easiest way to make it fast – the lighter a car, the better its ability to corner, brake and accelerate. I decided, however, to remove nothing that would significantly impact the car's reliability, drivability or safety. For example, I could save close to a hundred pounds by converting the car from the 5 mph bumpers that the pre-1988 E30 cars had to the smaller, lighter 2.5 mph bumpers on later cars – but after soliciting opinions, I came to the conclusion that big, tough bumpers would be a valuable asset on the race track

Once I had the car stripped, I drove up to the truck scales on I-90 and surreptitiously weighed the car. Even though the scales were closed, I could still look back through the office window to see the car's weight. With me in the car, the car weighed 2260 lbs, about what I had expected, but more than I had hoped. One thing that I noticed right away was just how loud the interior of the car had become with the sound deadening removed.

I chatted with Ken and Wes regarding roll cage design and what we could do to lighten the cage. As I was going to be racing with slower, lighter cars, and the tubing we were using was significantly stronger than required by the rules, we decided to keep the weight down by not welding in a few common but not required reinforcements tubes. At some time in the future, if I turn the car into a faster, heavier 325i, I may add those reinforcements back to the cage.

It was also time to start thinking about meeting the requirements for the novice race liscense necessary for Conference. I decided to attend both the local IRDC school, and a little over a week later, the professional Proformance Racing School's SCCA racing class, on the “more is better” principal. The Proformance Racing School's two-day class came highly recommended from many of the most successful Conference racers – and it ends with a wheel to wheel race in the school's Dodge Neon ACRs. Unfortunately, three days before the Seattle IRDC school, I had a midnight trip to the hospital to have my appendix removed. Between the lingering affects of the appendectomy and the general anaesthetic (as well as a night spent in the hospital later that week due to complications), I was unfit for any kind of high proformance driving for about six weeks. The anaesthetic, I found, caused lingering vertigo and spells of strong disorientation – not what you want when screaming through turn 2 at 80 mph! At least you can only have your appendix yanked once. I think I already mentioned that I’m a wimp.

I regret not being able to attend the Proformance Racing School's SCCA class, and would highly recommend it to anyone considering racing – the thorough curiculum will definitely give a significant advantage over other racers. Due to the missed classes, and desperately not wanting to miss the first races of the season due to something trivial like abdominal surgery, I called the Cascade Sports Car Club last minute regarding their Portland class, and was able to attend and meet the primary lisence requirement.

Concurrently, the car was finally ready to have the roll cage installed. As a part of this, Ken and Wes installed a 5 panel wink mirror that stretched across the entire windshield, created brackets for a window safety net, and removed all sun roof mechanicals and tack welded the sunroof shut. Ken fabricated a seat bracket that would fit the fiberglass OMP seat I had purchased, although brackets can also be purchased from OMP and other manufacturers. Finally, the interior of the car was painted a dull-black to reduce the amount of glare and distraction (as I am an easily distracted person). It didn't look "trick," but it kept reflection on the inside of the windshield to a minimum.

With the racing seat, five point-harness, dull black interior, roll cage and the oil temperature gauge I glued on to the dash for good measure, it was starting to look like a real race car – ugly. It took a bit of wriggling to get into the seat, but I definitely found that I was far more snug then a vinyl seat and three point belt had ever held me. Due to the high lateral and longitudal forces that track driving exposes the driver to, a lot of concentration and effort went into simply keeping myself in the slick vinyl seat – which was extremely counterproductive when I was trying to feel tiny messages expressed by the chassis and steering rack.

I received the car back on a Tuesday night. My first race was Saturday. Which would have been fine, except that the engine coolant was overheating, badly, and there was still a lot that needed to be done before the race in British Columbia that weekend. It was going to be a tough week. If I had any idea how many more tough weeks were to come, I might not have been so cheerfully optimistic about my chances of making it through a season.