BMW Compact Track Car - 172k & no history

[grahamgraham]

So the track day was booked for yesterday evening, but I hadnt had the chance to test the car since oil, coolant or brake work and a drop link still needed replacing.

I cracked on yesterday morning - tested cooling again, checked oil and looked around for leaks - all seemed fine so I replaced the drop link, got the wheels on and went for a (very nervous) test drive.

Jubilation! Brake pedal feel was spot on, car got up to temp and held, some squeaking from the brakes but I expected that. So I got my tools and a spare wheel packed and headed off on the 2 hour journey to the track.

About 10 miles in there was still a lot of squeaking so stopped, had a look around, checked the wheel but torque and carried on.

Squeaking didn’t fully stop, but I had a few good chances to do some relatively aggressive stops to bed the new pads in, braked sharply and in a straight line, I was a happy boy.

Made it to the track, woo!

Edited by grahamgraham on Thursday 17th June 19:53

[grahamgraham]

Track session was open pit Lane, so a few sighting laps behind a pace car and then you could just go on track whenever and for however long you wanted.

I found a spot in the paddock and offloaded tools and the spare



Turned the car on the sighting laps and engine management light came on, FFS!

After a few moments of ARGH, I decided that the car seemed fine with no nasty noises, temp was holding and I knew oil level was good so went for it. Also, if it was going to go pop then probably better at the circuit than on the way home.

Sighting laps felt surprisingly quick in a relatively unfamiliar car on an unfamiliar track, but I was very happy with how the car felt. Brakes were good, turn in was good, engine felt strong and it sounded great.

I realised at this point that I hadn’t filled the car up since the night I bought it - purchase to track day in less than 1 tank

After the sighting laps I headed straight back out and did a few laps, Snetterton is a cool track, quite technical, 2 slow hairpins, some very fast corners and a loooooong 2nd to last sweeper. Nice run off areas all over which felt reassuring. I was so glad I’d done the brakes, having confidence in them was key to enjoying the evening.

Track mpg was 13.3 so I paused to fill the tank…

I had booked an instruction session so Stuart the instructor hopped in with me after a few laps on my own. Cannot recommend this enough, he was brilliant, made me so much quicker and more confident. I didn’t believe his braking points & turn on speeds to begin with, i was amazed at what speeds the old Goodyear road tyres were clinging on at!

Natural habitat of a pit garage





The rest of the evening was brilliant, I didn’t run any timing stuff but felt like I was getting quicker and quicker. I had one off onto the grass after missing an apex but got it back onto the tarmac ok. Learnt a huge amount about the car & it’s limits but overall had a wicked time whatever car you have, can’t recommend a track session enough.

Grabbed a cheeky golden hour shot on the way home

[grahamgraham]

SturdyHSV said:

The partner is learning to drive in an E36 316i compact, and you can bet we'll be tracking that once she passes.

Standard suspension it already scraps the front mud flaps on cornering so at a track day it should be hilarious

Look forward to hearing how you get on

Very cool learner car

Hilarious that the mud flaps scrape, the track might claim those if you don’t remove them before lol. I can’t recommend doing one enough, a lot of fun and a safe environment to explore car and driver limits

[AndrewGP]

Good read, glad the track day went well I agree with you on getting tuition, it's a great way to build confidence and get closer to the limits!

Any idea what the engine light came on for?

[grahamgraham]

AndrewGP said:

Good read, glad the track day went well I agree with you on getting tuition, it's a great way to build confidence and get closer to the limits!

Any idea what the engine light came on for?

Thanks

I think the light is for o2 sensors, there were some codes in there previously and the sensors look original. I’ll scan the car tomorrow to check. Need to find out ahead of next track day on Sunday!

[Jonny-Jimbo]

grahamgraham said:

That looks awesome, very nice esp with those wheels and do I spy a spoiler??

Hilarious apple shelf - 90’s BMW designers looking after everyone’s health ey

Yes, our 318Ti has the full M-Sport pack I think - front bumper, splitter, rear bumper, door trims and boot spoiler.

I fully agree with the sentiment of getting on a track day, no matter the car. I'm building a Fiat Seicento track car with one of my mates (theres a thread on here about it). At first it was just a bit of a laugh whilst we were both furloughed last year, but we've ended up taking it seriously, buying donor cars with the 1.4 16V engine etc, looking at roll cage fabrication etc... So yes, it doesn't matter if the car is inherently sporty or not, a track day is fun in anything. I've also found I drive more sensibly on the road too now I'm doing more track sessions.

[grahamgraham]

Sorry for the slow update... busy weekend!

The engine management light turned out to be o2 sensor as suspected, I've cleared the code a few times now and it comes back when it feels like it. The car seems to be running a bit rich, power still seems ok but worth changing it for sure. o2 sensor replacement added to the list! I've also got a code for fuel tank vent valve, need to look into this a bit further - any ideas anyone?

Second trackday of the week completed on Sunday, this time at Donnington. My dad joined me for the day which was great, we both drove the car & so had the chance to do some passenger laps too. Definitely less scary than i thought it would be!

Arrived nice and early after an eventless drive up and pulled up in a garage alongside some nice gents in this...



Started the day with some instruction again, very worthwhile. Donnington is a very different track to Snetterton, the whole first half of the lap at Donnington is constantly changing direction, one corner leading right into the next. When i got it right it was great, but get the first corner wrong and you're trying to get back on the right line for a long time. I found Snetterton much more of corner-straight-corner straight-corner, giving you time to reset after each corner and get ready for the next. They were challenging in different ways.

Antonio Margaretti (that's the car), performed really well again. Hammered round for 3 hours with not too many breaks, engine temp always fine, no brake fade and barely used any oil. A bit of brake judder under really heavy braking, warping on the front discs i think - they don't look that new to be honest. EBC yellowstuff pads & motul RBF 600 brake fluid working very well.



Then drove two hours home with the CD changer pumping out the tunes haha.

Having done two track days with only minimal work to the car i'm happy that it's a strong base so going to kick off the project in earnest. Suspension, seats, more brake work, tyres & weight reduction (not even the spare wheels was removed for last weeks' sessions) to come...

I've got a spare set of style 44 wheels for the car, they'll become the track wheels, but need to decide on a colour - i'm thinking red, maybe blue (inverse subaru!?) thoughts??

not my car but the wheel style & colour is like so:

[grahamgraham]

Jonny-Jimbo said:

grahamgraham said:

That looks awesome, very nice esp with those wheels and do I spy a spoiler??

Hilarious apple shelf - 90’s BMW designers looking after everyone’s health ey

Yes, our 318Ti has the full M-Sport pack I think - front bumper, splitter, rear bumper, door trims and boot spoiler.

I fully agree with the sentiment of getting on a track day, no matter the car. I'm building a Fiat Seicento track car with one of my mates (theres a thread on here about it). At first it was just a bit of a laugh whilst we were both furloughed last year, but we've ended up taking it seriously, buying donor cars with the 1.4 16V engine etc, looking at roll cage fabrication etc... So yes, it doesn't matter if the car is inherently sporty or not, a track day is fun in anything. I've also found I drive more sensibly on the road too now I'm doing more track sessions.

That's a nice spec'd 318Ti, definitely appreciating at the moment too.

Your Seicento sounds like a brilliant project, thread link please?? totally agree that its all about the fun and learning more about driving and car control. doesn't matter what you're driving. I've found everyone has the same attitude - shared a garage with an AMG GTR & and a new RS6 at Donnington, both absolutely incredible cars - all of us there just to enjoy our cars and have a good day :-)

[Jonny-Jimbo]

It sounds like you had a good day at Donington! I've not been there as a driver for a very long time. I'm not sure the Seicento would be much fun though given the elevation changes are so huge. I think we'd be far too slow going away from the Old Hairpin. You seem to have bought very well though, no major problems in two track days on a huge mileage car and no service history.

This is the thread for the Seicento; it's maybe a little lengthy, I tend to go into far too much detail so every one of my posts should have a TLDR at the top haha. https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

We're off to Mallory in it on the 15th July with a few other mates; Hyundai Coupe race car, Mini R53 etc.

[grahamgraham]

Time for a bit of an update on this one...

Recap:

I bought the car in June to be a track project - 172k, no history.
Changed fluids & front pads & then did a couple of track days a week after purchase
Car ran like a treat, big smiles from me!

Following the successful track days I was happy the car was a good base, so decision made to commit more effort & money, the list of mods as follows.

- Weight saving
- New discs & pads all round
- Lighter wheels & better tyres
- Suspension refresh (replace all main bushes with polybushes, coilovers & a good alignment)
- Smaller steering wheel
- Fix saggy front bumper

I've decided to go for more of a Clubsport vibe rather than full on track car, losing a little bit of on track performance to make it enjoyable for a road blast is worth it for me.

With all that in mind, it was time to cue the music & break out the spanners!

[grahamgraham]

As Colin Chapman said "Simplify, then add lightness". I can't do a lot about the simplification, but I can certainly add lightness. Obvious benefits are that removing stuff is free & it should improve acceleration, braking and cornering (and fuel economy!).

I decided to focus on removing stuff for now, rather than going for replacing parts with lighter weight versions, maybe we'll come to that in the future...

I started by de-badging the car, every gram counts right!!



Next was removing the spare wheel - yes, i'd done two trackdays lugging a spare wheel around under the car

On the compact, the spare hangs underneath the boot in a plastic cradle thing - the wheel came out easy - 12.0 kg saved
The hanger was more of a pain, but got that off for another 3.4 kg

The spare was a little rusty had clearly never been used, but was still fully inflated which was pretty impressive.

|https://thumbsnap.com/WjW2Si2g[/url]

After that, I set to work on the interior proper, from this:



to this:



to this:

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Everything was easy to remove apart from one bolt on the rear backrest (there's always one), classic BMW deciding to use a torx bolt, it was very tight & i ended up stripping the head so it got the drill treatment. cue metal savings everywhere inside the car. doh.



Byeeee!



I decided to weigh everything so i knew what i'd saved - 73.6 kg in total - pretty significant for a c. 1300 kg car.



The rear seat backs, spare wheel & front undertray were over half of this and were probably some of the easiest bits to get out - so if you need quick & easy weight saving, do those first.

In the spirit of the clubsport vibe - i'm keeping everything in the cabin for now. I replaced the tape headunit with a CD unit so i can keep the tunes pumping without the CD changer. It's only got front speakers but they work fine on their own.

There was more I could've taken out of the rear - rear wash & wipe + boot trim were the next obvious candidates, but i'm conscious that all the weight is coming out of the rear and I don't want to destroy the balance of the car so left it there for now.... apart from the wheels, which we'll come onto later...

[MrC986]

That’s a nice bit of weight saving....I should have done that when I did a partial strip out of ours. I’ve left all the side/boot panels in place and the boot floor cover, but taken everything else out re the seats front/rear and the spare wheel and wheel holder (carpets still in).

BMWCC are doing a track day at Anglesey at the end of March (Saturday 26th) if you fancy coming along & there are normally a good few Compacts being used (in varying states of modification).

[grahamgraham]

MrC986 said:

That’s a nice bit of weight saving....I should have done that when I did a partial strip out of ours. I’ve left all the side/boot panels in place and the boot floor cover, but taken everything else out re the seats front/rear and the spare wheel and wheel holder (carpets still in).

BMWCC are doing a track day at Anglesey at the end of March (Saturday 26th) if you fancy coming along & there are normally a good few Compacts being used (in varying states of modification).

Yea, the weight saving tot up was interesting. I imagine the front seats save a good chunk more so yours should be under mine. I generally put the boot floor back in tbh, don't want to rest wheels/tools directly on the battery when en route to the track.

Thanks for the heads up re Anglesey, sounds tempting, but 5 hrs each way for me. Will have a think. When did you last have yours on track MrC?

My next day is booked for 26th Feb @ Bedford, woop woop!

[MrC986]

We last used our Compact at the Oulton Park day in November with BMWCC although its been put away in a friend's garage until next month. Anglesey is worth the trek IMO as we stay the night before at one of the local hotels & everyone has a good catch up & then it's less than 20 minutes to the circuit in the morning.

We'll just do an oil and brake fluid service & replace the rear pads as the DS2500s on the front are less than 50% worn - it's likely well only do 4 event this year due to work commitments and going to the LM Classic.

[DanG355]

Nice write up. Looking forward to the wheels update - always exciting to see a new set of wheels on a car and be interested to see what option you go with.

[grahamgraham]

Next up was the suspension refresh. Sorry, this turned into a long write up…

TLDR: New bushes and coilovers fitted, some bits were a proper fu**ing pain in the botty, but I eventually got it sorted.

I decided to go with much polybushing and also to fit coilovers, I recon it needed new springs & dampers anyway and I liked the option of being able to adjust ride height & camber that coilovers offered. The springs & dampers on the car looked pretty ropey, 20 years had taken their toll.
I knew one rear damper was replaced because it blew when the previous owner was on a spirited charity drive in Wales, he’d replaced the damper on one side, but not the other. The other rear damper came with the car when I bought it and I’d intended to change it before my first track days but hadn’t due to the brake calliper debacle… Probably not advisable to track a car with mismatched dampers but all’s well that ends well...

I went for BC Racing coilovers – internet opinions seem split on BC, but most people I actually talked to who had them on their cars liked them, you can also adjust camber without removing the unit from the car, unlike some £1k coilovers, so that swung it for me.

I ordered a load of powerflex bushes, rear control arms & front wishbones from C3BMW (would deffo recommend them for parts, very friendly and offered me a lot of advice).



I find the powerflex bush diagrams really helpful for understanding what bushes are on a car and where everything is and makes it real easy to order their parts, here’s the one for my car…



On my list was:
1 – front wishbone rear bush
2 – front ARB
3 – Rear trailing arm bush
4 – rear ARB
17 – upper inner rear control arm
18 – lower outer rear control arm
18 & 19 - inner & outer lower control arms + new adjustable control arms

I decided to leave the subframe & diff bushes for now as I’ve got a vague future plan for the diff…

There was more on my list for the back end so started there (I did whip off the front ARB though so I could paint them both).

I read a lot online about uprated ARBs being a must do mod, but in a performance and handling book that I have, it laboured the point of not unbalancing the car by disproportionately stiffening one end of the car vs the other. Uprating the front ARB and not the rear can mean more understeer because the front end increased stiffness isn’t matched by the rear. The e46 325ti has a 26.5mm front ARB. The largest diameter ARB on any E46 is the M3 Convertible at 27mm. The compact has a 19mm rear ARB. With a thick front bar already in place, I couldn’t find an option that gave me a matching front & rear percentage increase. So I stuck with standard – probably something I’ll come back to in time. Anyone got any opinions / experience on this?

I got the rear shocks off using the rugga dugga gun without too much drama, 1 bolt at the bottom and two in the boot, which – thanks for my interior removal – were very easy to access. The springs then came out easily with a bit of pressure on the control arms.



Rear ARB off and gave both ARBs a coat of hammerite. I thought green would go nice with the gold haha.



The old bushes were very past it, vulcanised rubber. I scraped and filed out the old brackets and the new bushes went in fine.

On the rear, there are two ARB links that connect the bar to the upper control arm. I drilled the old bushes out of the links, smothered the new ones in grease and pressed them in with the vice.







In hindsight I should’ve got new brackets & ARB links as they’re pretty cheap parts but they weren’t easily available once I’d realised I should’ve replaced them, so here’s hoping they don’t fail…

ARB ready:

|https://thumbsnap.com/ZSKwsAgr[/url]

Next up was the control arm bushes & lower control arms. What fun this turned out to be

Outer arm bolts for both the upper and lower arms came out easily enough with the rugga dugga gun, but the inner bolts for the upper & lower control arms are not easy to get to. Upper ringed in orange and lower in green.



At this point I decided to bin off changing the upper bushes – I’ll do them when the subframe is out. Even the lower control arms bolt were a pain to get out. As you can see the bolts hit the diff/driveshaft. With much wiggling I got the drivers side out. New (powerflex adjustable camber arms) vs old:



but the passenger side was a different story, after I bit of reading I found that I needed to move the diff out of the way to get the bolt out.

Process was – support diff on a jack, remove subframe brace bolts, remove front subframe bolts, remove the subframe brace, replace the subframe bolts, loosen the front diff bolts, remove the rear diff bolt, move the diff out of the way on a jack, get the control arm bolt out, new control arm in. Phew.



The exhaust had to come off the hangers for some reason too, can’t quite remember why..! Not the easiest job on the driveway but doable, main issue was running out of jacks to hold things up with so I had to resort to bricks and wood chocks

The upper and lower outer control arms bushes were pretty easy once I got the right tool. Wind the cups together to push the bush out and the new powerflex ones slide in with a bit of persuasion. The condition of what came out was pretty hilarious







Rear trailing arm bushes were similar – push out the old bush with the bush tool, push in the new one by hand and bolt it back up. Again, the old RTAB bushes were in a pretty shocking condition, basically just being held together by the arms.







Because I’d removed everything at once the hubs were only attached by the driveshafts, this meant they flailed around a bit and wasn’t easy to get everything back together.
The easiest way I recon would be: Upper control arms, lower control arms, trailing arm bushes.

Final job was fitting the coilover springs & dampers. The BC stuff looks really nicely made and went in pretty easy.

Old springs - do you think these are original?



New springs:



Old vs a bit old vs new dampers



Rear end done. Woop.

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[grahamgraham]

Suspension continued...

TLDR: New bushes and coilovers fitted, some bits were a proper fu**ing pain in the botty, mainly due to my errors, but I eventually got it sorted.

Front should’ve been much easier. New wishbones, tie rods & polybush the ‘lollipops’.

After removing the wishbone from the first side all good, I royally messed up the other side.

Rather than taking the nuts fully off the top of the wishbone ball joints, I just loosened them, then split the balljoints from the subframe. This meant there was no resistance to get the nuts off the rusty shafts – trying to undo the nuts just meant the ball joint spun. Balls. I used the jack to push the balljoint back into the subframe, but still spun the balljoint, even when the jack was lifting the car off the axle stands. Oh dear.

I used an angle grinder to get the outer one off ringed in green, but couldn’t get anything to the inner one, the red one. Because of their tapered shape, I needed to cut it above the subframe to be able to get the bolt out.



Tried a nut splitter, broke it. Tried drilling the nut and then using a chisel, no joy. So I resorted to the hacksaw…



Because of the engine mount, the saw only moved about 2cm. I knew it would take a long time, but i knew it would eventually work, so i lay under the car on a damp evening, put the Cerys Matthews blues show on and started sawing! Took me 50 minutes to get through it. Lol.





You can see how little of the saw blade was used



Lesson learnt. Don’t split ball joint before you get the nut ALL the way off!

Pushed out the old bushes from the wishbone rear bush & pushed in the new ones with the vice then got them fitted.





Tie rod swap was pretty easy, I didn’t order new boots which was probably a bit of an oversight, so had to angle grid through the old tie rods to get the boots off because the threads were so smoothed with rust.



Front coilover fitting went well – only real difficulty was getting enough space to get the old spring stantion out of the top of the hub carrier – jiggling & swearing at it worked in the end.

A big difference in diameter of standard spring and the coilover.



ARB back on & the front was finished...





I had a little drive to let everything settle & see where we were ride height wise, the car looked like it was doing a downward dog, adjustments deffo needed!!



p.s: wheel spoiler alert

[grahamgraham]

DanG355 said:

Nice write up. Looking forward to the wheels update - always exciting to see a new set of wheels on a car and be interested to see what option you go with.

Thanks, hope it's not too much detail... Wheel update coming next

[grahamgraham]

MrC986 said:

We last used our Compact at the Oulton Park day in November with BMWCC although its been put away in a friend's garage until next month. Anglesey is worth the trek IMO as we stay the night before at one of the local hotels & everyone has a good catch up & then it's less than 20 minutes to the circuit in the morning.

We'll just do an oil and brake fluid service & replace the rear pads as the DS2500s on the front are less than 50% worn - it's likely well only do 4 event this year due to work commitments and going to the LM Classic.

thanks for sharing your thoughts on Anglesey, good to know, will see if i can make it. Great that you only need to do a few little bits to your car before you get it back on track, do you drive it there or trailer?

P.s: Love LM classic, wonderful event.

[MrC986]

I'm sorry I can't help you on the alignment setup for your car as ours was sorted by a motorsport specialist who I think works off the old fashioned method rather than a computer based system!! Ours wasn't set to a fully optimised position as we drive it to/from the track days (complete with a spare set of wheels in the back all ratchet strapped down!), although we could have had the rear ride height dropped slightly more according to our suspension guru.

If you want an idea of the ride height, just ask but I won't be able to assist until the start of next month when we retrieve it from its winter storage. Setting up coilovers is very much a personal thing.