Despite the saying, there is such a thing as Free Lunch – at least in our pits from 12-1… There will also be a limited supply of MW3 schwag. If you’re brave enough, we’ll smack a helmet on your head, strap you in and take you for a spin around the track too! Come on out. We’ll be there from 8-5.

Other new additions this year are external GPS units made by Qstarz, and a fancy Android app which logs valuable lap data and in-car laptimes that really help improve the car and driver. If you have an Android, be sure to check out the Trackmaster app by Trackaroo, you can save quite a bit of money going this route and get a good amount of data for the price.

Thus far this season the MW3 Evo has set 2 lap records, three 1st place finishes, a 2nd place finish and sits in the points lead going into the last two events. With some stiff competition beginning to mount in A-class, the second half of the season should shape up to be a great one. Hopefully with some good luck and some consistent driving the MW3 Evo can continue to get quicker this season, notch another record and possibly the TTA championship.

As we mentioned in the last post, come join MW3 at High Plains Raceway on August 5th for an open lapping day!

Stay tuned for more updates, results and product reviews this season.

Friday was particularly exciting because, well, I have a new track car. Before you ask, rest assured nothing has happened to The Beast (the 2008 E90 M3). In fact, it’s been a tremendous joy to drive at the track, not mention learn to drive on a track in. But there’s this adage: Less is More. (Well More is More too, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make) The Beast has lots of driver assists that help me look good. Horsepower and the M button come to mind. My goal is to be a great driver and it’s time to branch out to make sure I have the basics nailed. So I looked for something more pure. I ended up with a very nicely prepped and well maintained 1998 Arctic Silver E36 M3 with a mere 86K miles on it from a fellow NASA time-trialer, John. And I got to take it out for my first track laps in it Friday.

After the first session, all I could think was “WOW.” This car is planted. It may have a back seat but that didn’t stop me from boogying my way to a 2:10.8 lap time. Not bad for my first time in the car! John holds the NASA TT track record at 2:07.0 in this very same car. The day ended when I cracked the front passenger rotor. It seems slowing the E36 and The Beast are two entirely different exercises. I have much to learn and am eagerly awaiting my next turn at it. Pending new rotors, of course. I’m thinking slotted…

So it turns out, it’s a good thing I have a “spare” car for the track now! (I’ll be honest. I had already planned to take The Beast out for one last day of playing.)  I mounted a new set of Conti scrubs from Turner on the APEX ARC-8s earlier in the week in preparation for a good time. Was it ever… Driving on a track full of women in The Beast with sticky tires and the S65 V8 roar made me happy. There’s no other way to put it. It was 100-degrees but I was first to grid. Because there is nothing better. Gents, trust me here. There’s nothing quite like seeing a woman get excited about turn-ins and apexing and track-outs. This event is the perfect place to get her hooked. Many thanks, again, to PCA for putting this event together!

Rest assured MW3 won’t go so long between track-time. All three of us will be out at HPR on August 5th. As a way to say Thank You to our fans and sponsors, we invite you to join us! If we haven’t already, we’d love to meet you and drive with you. We’ll even be giving rides to those brave enough to put a helmet on & strap in.

Saturday morning started relatively early (5:30am) and started with an hour-long drive down south. Our buddy John joined the MW3 train.  Once we got there, the activity of getting set up before our instructor meeting kept my mind off the track itself. Our session time crept closer and closer… it was all I could do to keep the butterflies out of the belly.  It took 2.5 sessions, about 60 minutes of track time to start really driving again, even if at 70%.  Some people told me to “just go for it”.  But I couldn’t push it out of my head – this track took my first 95 E36 M3. I rebuilt an entire car and really didn’t feel like putting into a wall!

Before I knew it day one was behind me: day two loomed.  Sunday started off with a few more butterflies. But I was instructing a model student and things seemed to get into the groove a little sooner.   I was able to enjoy the day!

I feel great knowing I survived my first weekend back at PPIR. For me, this was a big step in moving past the “incident” that widened my view on things and, with any luck, helps make me a better driver in the future. I’m sure my partners have their own take on the weekend… I just had to get this out!

- Jeff

It took him a while to commit, but he finally decided to start over. Good ole CraigsList searching uncovered a fabulous 325is car that was looking for a new home.  After some negotiation (whereby MW3 scored the deal of the century!), the seller accepted the offer and Jeff began the track rebuild.

And so the challenges began.  You may have heard that between 1992-96 the E36 chassis was unchanged.  Turns out this statement is close… but not completely accurate. It is different in a few, key ways.  Because we want to provide you with the shortcuts so you can go about this sport and save money, here are a few key items to keep in mind should you decide to undertake a similar project:

1. A non-M chassis does not have x-brace holes pre-drilled. This is an easy fix from Turner Motor Sports (TMS) or your local home depot for 5 bucks.

2. There aren’t reinforcement plates anywhere in the car. Anywhere. To amend this, you’ll need to buy the Rear control arm reinforcement kit, Sub frame kit (all 4 mounting points and the sub-frame reinforcement), along with the front cross member reinforcement kit.  All of this can be found on TMS’ site and is relatively inexpensive for the gain. We’ll share the installation process with you in a moment.

3. The last item is one that caught everyone off guard. The 325is drive line is not the same length, size, or mounting configuration as the E36 M3. Again, we’ll get to why this was such a PITA shortly…

Installation of the reinforcement plates

This process reads as if it’s relatively simple. High level directions were as follows: Take out rear end, weld in plates, reinstall rear end. Easy breezy, right? Well, sort of.

You’ll also need to remove the cat-back portion of the exhaust. After that, you’ll have to take out the shocks from the top tower. Then uninstall the brake lines (BTW: a perfect time to replace with SS braided) including the emergency cable. And doing that means you’ll need to take out the heat shield so you can disconnect the E-brake clips that holds the cable. Finally, release the final 16 bolts and voila, the rear end is ready to drop out of the car. The guys completed this task (including the front reinforcement kit) over one weekend.  If your buddy tells you he can have it done in 4 hours, he’s lying to you.  There were two competent do-it-yourselfers, they had all the right tools. Two air guns were zipping the better part of Friday night, Saturday day, and Sunday morning. Take your time on this and plan for a long weekend or many nights if you’re going at it alone. Oh and by the way, the entire rear end, including the diff and drive axles can come out all together.

How hard is this? All in all, if you know how to weld and use air tools, Jeff rates this 5-6 out of ten in terms of difficulty.

Drive Line Woes

During the rebuild Jeff decided to replace the entire drive train (Motor, Transmission, & Differential) since we had all the M3 parts and figured they could be swapped, no problem.  Jeff chose to go this route because the M3 parts (bearings, joints, bushings, mounts etc) were new. He thought doing a full swap would allow him to get back on the track and finish the 2010 season. To do so, he planned to use the 325is motor and transmission and mount them to the new rear end that was installed after the reinforcement kits were welded in.

***Warning***

This DOES NOT work.  The 325is transmission mount (connects to the guibo disk) is .5” smaller in diameter than the M3 mount/guibo disk. In addition, the drive line from the 325is is a 4-bolt to the rear end while the M3 is a 6-bolt.  After several attempts to make it work, he resigned himself to knowing he couldn’t use the 325is drive line. Nor could he use the M3 drive line because the 325is transmission mount was different… and the carrier bearing mounts are in a different location (mentioned later).  The only option left was to use the 325is diff, but that was dead. Of course!

Many of you will not have an M3 to swap parts onto another E36-type chassis to get to the track…So the point to #3 is this:   If you are doing a motor swap with a 1992 or 1993 chassis you’ll need to pay close attention to rear end and drive line. And depending on the motor, you may need to go with a different transmission too.

Stay tuned for more exciting info regarding this project…

First off, I’m proud to announce both Jeff and I passed the Instructor School Saturday. NASA was confident in our abilities and promptly hooked HPDE1 students into our chatterboxes Sunday. (You may recall Jim passed the same school last year.) We’d like to thank anyone who has shaped us as drivers via instruction and coaching to get us to this point. And now we understand why folks enjoy instructing so much. It is an incredibly rewarding experience!

Now to specifics about the weekend. In between instructing track newbies Sunday, we finally got to DRIVE.

Jeff was able to get his car out to the track 2 weekends prior, but this was really the first chance he had to put ‘Little M’ through its paces. He decided to add coolant Friday to prevent any freezing since the car was spending the night out at the track Saturday. ‘Burping’ took longer than we’d anticipated. The back end still seems a little squirmy under load going around uphill corners. But we’re not complaining. Because this car rose from the ashes and is a gleaming example of what a track-prepped E36 should be.

Jim was excited to try out some new shoes this year. He ordered and had mounted a fresh set of NT-01’s and scrubbed them in on the drive out to HPR Saturday morning. He was grinning like a little kid with a giant lollipop after feeling them out on the track later that day. Then Sunday morning… someone left a trail of shrapnel on the line heading into Turn One. Sadly, the resulting gash finished the passenger rear tire off, along with his day.

‘Big M’ was lucky to have new shoes too! I ordered a set of 18×10 APEX ARC-8 wheels for a track setup and called on our friends at Turner Motorsport for a set of Grand Am Koni Challenge Continentals (compare to a harder compound Hoosier R6) to wrap them in. My first two sessions out Sunday were with passengers so I was required to keep myself in check a bit. But the last session I was all by myself. I put the new setup through its paces. To say I was pleased is an understatement. The car felt planted in a way I’ve never felt before. So. Much. Fun.

We can only hope our first event is a precursor to a wildly successful, safe and fun 2011 season. More looks back at the E36 build are coming, along with reviews of products we’ve been thrilled to use on our cars. Cheers!

We are excited to announce Turner Motorsports as MW3 Motorsports’ premier sponsor for the 2011 season. Long before this, we had begun leveraging the R&D they’ve done on their own race cars to improve our own. Here’s an example of the work they did to prep the new E92 M3 for the 2011 Rolex Sports Car Series season (GT class). The result is a work of art to us. It’s inspiring, to say the least. Something to aspire to, yes?

• May 4: High Plains Raceway (HPR), private coaching with Ross Bentley
• May 26: BMW CCA, Golden Gate Chapter DE at Laguna Seca
• July 3: Pike’s Peak Int’l Speedway (PPIR) with NASA, backwards configuration
• July 31: Motorsports Park Hastings (MPH) with NASA
• August 21: HPR with NASA, be sure to also watch the “bonus” video where I did a little late (too late) braking
• September 25: BMW CCA,  Rocky Mountain Chatper at Pueblo Motorsports Park
• October 9: Pueblo Motorsports Park with NASA, signed off for for HPDE4 next year!

• Jeff and his brother-in-law Dennis, welded in the M3 frame reinforcement kit on the underside of the E36.
• This, among other parts, came from one of our newest sponsors: Turner Motorsports.
• Then came the cage from Micah, at Titan Specialty Metals. It has proven to be more than we all expected, the quality and structural support produced in 10 days is beyond what we all expected – thanks, Micah!
• Now the E36 is off to paint, which brings on the newest member of sponsors to the MW3 Motorsports stable.  Michael’s Auto Body started with the car last week.  We’re excited to have them join the MW3 team and after having the car for less than 30 minutes they superseded our our expectations by having the entire rear end of the car stripped to metal. That’s gettin’ it done!