318Ti track cars.

[Massive Lee]

I wonder how many people here use their Ti as a track car. Either for occasional HPDE or dedicated track car. A local shop is currently building one with US S52 motor for BMWCCA Club Racing. Shell was bead blasted last week and the cage has started this weekend.

Anyone here has pictures of their own track-prepped Ti? How is the weight distribution with an M50 motor?

[thesk8nmidget]

i just started tracking mine.

its not fl out track pretty much justba few little things and have a blast doing it! the car runs GREAT on the track!

[mohaughn]

Mine is a track only car. I don't race wheel to wheel, just track events with PBOC and PCA in Florida.

I would imagine with a fully prepped car you will have to put some ballast in the rear to get a perfect balance back. You lose a lot of weight stripping the rear of things like the tools, spare tires, sound deadening, etc... Figure that you are adding 50-100# to the front. Losing the AC, heater core, etc.. will offset a lot of the added engine weight vs. a street car.

newly repainted interior awaiting seats, harnesses, roll bar-


stripped headliner/sunroof-


relocated window controls/emergency flasher-


Coming through start/finish at Sebring-



I still have the m42 in my car. Once I have the interior finished I will get the car corner balanced, re-aligned. So I'm not really sure where I stand right now weight wise.

[mohaughn]

Wheel/rims/brakes-



Full TcKline DA coilovers, tckline rear shock mounts, and tckline camber plates. Also have all fresh aftermarket bushings, IrelandEngineering or powerflex.

[DustenT]

Very nice mohaughn! That's inspiring...

[mohaughn]

One of my other current interior projects is to take the complete glovebox and passenger side knee panel cover and cut the glovebox away from the front of that piece. This will also allow me to remove the glovebox door. The door and the actual plastic piece for the glovebox seem to have the most weight.

I'll take a piece of aluminum and crease it to follow the bend of the glovebox panel, and then paint it black, just like the radio replacement panel, and screw it all back together, and mount it back up.. This will allow me to remove most of the weight from the glovebox panel, but still have something that looks decent. It looks like crap with the glovebox removed because you can see the different relays and wiring behind it, and the knee bar is this ugly metal color...

Also need to remove all of the airbags and airbag relays once the seats and harnesses are installed. Along with an aftermarket steering wheel.

[cooljess76]

Swapping a 6cyl into the Ti would add about 80lbs to the front. If you don't want to remove 80lbs of stuff to compensate, simply relocate the battery to the rear and install a carbon hood. All you really have to offset is about 40 lbs to retain the factory balance. however, as mohaughn said, if you remove the toolkit and spare tire, you'll need to displace more weight from the front end. Perhaps an aftermarket exhaust would help even things out since the factory exhaust has a resonator and weighs a ton.

[Marv17]

wow mohaughn ... your ti... looks pretty cool. awesome job on ur tracking mods. ur light switch panel looks neat, never seen that done b4. good idea. bet it is fun driving that ti on the track. do you have any plans on mounting a camera while you race??
anyway, it looks great.

[mohaughn]

awesome job on ur tracking mods. ur light switch panel looks neat, never seen that done b4. good idea.

I got tired of the switches just sitting between the seats... It was a real pain in the butt, and they would disconnect, plus it probably wasn't that safe just having switches and loose wiring laying in the car. Almost everything I've done has been inspired by either the track section of bimmerforums, or by reading through SCCA and NASA forums and looking at pictures of other builds.

do you have any plans on mounting a camera while you race??

Once I have the rollbar in I will probably look at getting a good data aq. system as well as a camera and the proper mounts for it. The organizations I run with won't let you run a camera with out a mount designed for motorsport.. The easiest way to mount a camera safely is to use the harness bar on a roll cage/bar.

I really need a camera to step my driving up to the next level. It is a great tool for fixing mistakes, and finding speed.

[thesk8nmidget]

a bunch of the guys i race with use a hero camera its made specifically for motorsports and its tiny, and its in a nice hard clear plastic protective case! they go for like 160 with a bunch of mounting brackets!

[StealthBimmer]

Good start on your way to a full-time track ti. Which class or bracket do you race in?

[dahamler]

Here is one of my girls

[mohaughn]

I'm not doing any racing, just restricted passing type DE events. I've been at it for 2 years now, and have been running in the solo, no-instructor group since August of 2007. I need a few more years and I need more experience on different tracks before I would even consider running wheel to wheel races.

I've pretty much been following the BMW CR rule book, and my car would fall right into the prepared class. I'd have to go look at the rulebook to know which exact class in prepared. Maybe KP, not completely sure... It would basically be other 4 cylinder BMW cars that have minimum engine preparation done to them.

The car could not be raced in a competitive series right now as it lacks some important safety equipment, such as emergency shut offs, full roll cage, tow hooks, window nets, and certified seats/harnesses.

I've read through the BMW CR rule book as well as the NASA and SCCA rule books just to make sure that I don't do something to the car that would be considered illegal in the series that are intended to be more affordable. And I've only been doing that to make sure that if at some point I sell my car, I have a wider range of people that would be interested in it.

For instance, if I were to flip the car over and strip all of the underbody coating off of the car(like massivelee shows in that second picture) that would push the car into the classes that are for highly prepared, and usually very expensive cars. You normally have to have all the components of the car at the same level of prep. If you spend $15k on suspension, you are going to need a really expensive motor, etc.. to keep up with the cars that are in a similar class.

There is no way an autocrosser would want this car. It would be classed in XM and it would get crushed at any regional level.

[thesk8nmidget]

i was just talking about this with my girlfriend on sunday and if i come across an isetta again i wanna put a hyabusa motor in it and track it for fun at the local bmwcca events!

that would be sweet! and kinda scary lol

[cooljess76]

If you do, you gotta use the hayabusa muffler so it'll sound like one. Seen a Smart car and a lil old VW with busa motors, freakin ridiculous!