Count Down

Count Down!

Despite having spent the winter of ‘01-‘02 preparing my 318i, I found myself with a great deal of work that needed to be done, and less than three days to do it before my first race.

Rewind a few months: due to an unfortunate incident involving a box of wood, appendicitis and the ability to start an E30 in gear, I had to replace the radiator, mechanical fan and water pump. No, I will not provide any more details. Replacing a radiator is as simple as draining the engine coolant, undoing a mounting bolt or two and a few hose clamps, and then swapping old for new.

The water pump on the 318i is also simple – much easier then on the E30 325i. There is a single rubber belt, powered by the main crank pulley at the front of the engine, that runs to the electricity-producing alternator and then to the water pump. I loosened the alternator mounting bolts to slacken the belt and then slipped the belt off the pulleys. Then, using a thin 32 mm crescent wrench and a special tool to immobilize the pulley I loosened the large nut that holds the fan and fan clutch in place. As a note, this nut is reverse thread – it loosens clockwise. Then, I removed the four small bolts that hold the pulley in place.

With the pulley and the fan out of the way, it was easy to remove the eight small bolts that fasten the water pump to the engine block. The pump appeared ancient – the little propeller-like impeller was badly corroded, significantly reducing its ability to efficiently circulate coolant from the radiator through the engine. I scraped the old gasket off the block, being careful not to mar the metal, and then sanded lightly to smooth it as much as possible. Mounting the new water pump was a simple matter of putting the new gasket in place and then carefully torqueing the new water pump into place. Torqueing the water pump bolts into place by carefully following the torque specs is important in order to create an even seal between the pump and the block.

During reassembly, I decided to leave the mechanical cooling fan off of the engine. It creates drag on the crankshaft, resisting the movement of the pistons. This can be significant on a low horsepower engine like the M10. Anything helps! I planned to replace the cooling fan with an electrical fan when the car returned from having its roll cage installed.

Fast forward a few months – 72 hours until my first race.

The first thing I did was start work on an electrical cooling fan as a replacement for the mechanical fan I had removed. I purchased an 11" electrical cooling fan at Shucks. Other than diagnosing an electrical problem with the distributor just after I purchased the 318i, my experience with electrical stuff was non-existent. In theory it seemed like it should be pretty easy – power source, ground, on/off switch. I mean, like, duh! Only an idiot could mess that up.

I confidently mounted the fan to the radiator, tapped into a positive battery cable annnnd... nothing. No juice. Nada. I tried several different grounds, just in case that was the problem, but it wasn't. The light on the switch I mounted inline lit up just fine, but the fan didn't spin. I scratched my head and wired it all over again, just in case I had missed something stupid. It still didn't work. I was on the verge of simply returning the "defective" fan. To be sure, I touched the leads from the fan directly to the negative and positive battery terminals. It sparked a bit, but fan whirred happily. What the – ?!

This was supposed to be easy! I rang up Ken Hill, and he explained that, "Many irritating electrical problems are related to insufficient ground.” He suggested I find a ground for the headlights and try that. I did, and, sure enough, it solved the problem. I now had a fan that would spin when I turned on a switch. Not exactly master electrician stuff, but I grinned like an idiot as I flipped the fan on and off and listened to it whir. Simple pleasures for simple minds.

All that success went to my head, because I then wired up a fuse box (screwed into the side of my dashboard for easy access and that cool retro look) with a main power switch, then wired the fan in serial to that with a second power switch. I ran the wires through the firewall hole used previously for the A/C hoses and wrapped them neatly in plastic tubing. It worked like a charm, and I now had TWO switches to play with, and easy expandability for future "enhancements" such as an in-car pit radio, transponder or kickin’ stereo. On second thought, maybe no stereo.

48 hours and counting.

Unfortunately, on brief test drives the car was overheating, badly and randomly. At first I couldn't see any rhyme or reason to it – then I realized that I would go over a sharp bump, and the engine temperature would immediately climb until I went over another bump and it would just as quickly drop. I wasn't quite sure what to make of it. I inspected all of the hoses, and didn't see any sign of a leak. The water pump seemed to turn freely and without any noise. When I rev'd the engine, the belt didn't appear to slip. My new radiator wasn't the culprit, and the electrical cooling fan seemed to push plenty of air through the radiator – plus, I wouldn't expect the engine to overheat erratically if the problem were the fan, rather I would expect it to slowly overheat, and just as slowly cool. Finally, unlike the 6 cylinder E30s, there is no bleed screw to let air out of the coolant system. I let the engine slowly idle in my carport, until, quite suddenly the heat began to rapidly climb. I reached down with a wrench and wrapped on the thermostat – and just as suddenly watched the heat drop. Ah ha!

The coolant thermostat is a very simple mechanical (at least on older engines) contraption that prohibits coolant from circulating through the radiator below certain temperatures. This helps the engine warm up faster. Once the engine coolant has reached the desired operating temperature, the thermostat regulates the flow to keep the temperature within the desirable range. In the case of the M10 engine in my 318i, it looks like a small, three way hose connector. Replacing it is as simple as undoing the hose clamps, and swapping in the new $20 part. And that was all it took – over-heating problem solved.

24 hours and counting.

There were still a number of tasks that had to be done before the car was ready to race, and I had been up until 2 or 3 am every night that week getting the car ready. Among other things, I installed my first set of "real" racing brake pads for the front brakes. Racing pads don't work well when cold, but do a great job of stopping the car when hot. I chose the Pagid Orange pads. These racing pads don't have clips on the backing plates to hold them in place. This was eventually going to cause problems. That is, Problems with a capital P.

I also changed the oil, thoroughly bled the brake hydraulic fluid, drilled a small hole in my roll cage so it could be inspected and stamped by the race stewards, found a place for a fire extinguisher, mounted a junkyard differential with a 7% shorter ratio (although it was still an open differential), and moved the radiator drop hose to a holding tank to avoid dropping any coolant on the track and numerous other small things that had to be done. While I was doing this, my girlfriend and crew-chief-in-training helped out by making numbers for my car. I had requested, fittingly, number 318. With the numbers on the car, it looked a little bit more like a race car.

Very, very early Friday morning, I finally made it to bed. There was just time to catch a brief nap before driving up to Mission, British Columbia. Many unknowns confronted me: a long drive, a new track, a significantly modified car that I hadn't driven for almost five months, the chance that the car might not pass tech at the track for something I hadn't found – and my first race ever. I was anxious and excited as a I began the drive up to Mission.