Whats the deal with 4 of them? Just keep upgrading or does each have a specific purpose for what you like to do?
I've just started and am ready for something more than the cheap starter level clone of a clone I have.
N54/E90 6MT Daily Turned Dedicated Drag Build
- Thread starter SJ_1989
- Start date
I've just started and am ready for something more than the cheap starter level clone of a clone I have.
I'll start another thread. It's fun but it does take a lot of time.
It's my own fault. I have a hard time drawing the line. I start working on something and I get to the point where I'm like "well, if I'm in here doing X I might as well do Y at the same time" and the cost really starts to add up. It'll get done eventually lol.This thread bums me out. We have our drag car about 80% built, and there is a good chance we will never finish it. Just not enough time these days, and going fast in the N54 really doesn't move the needle as far as product sales as it used to. No one really cares anymore, except a small group. Will prob list it up for sale soon so someone can get some use out of it.
I'm sure there are better ones but I'm really happy with my Prusa MK3. I've had 0 problems with it and I have 12 days of print time on it lol.
Just got luck as two were given to me.
Started with an Ender3 then bought a Tevo Tornado.
We had a Zortrax M200 at work that sat in a closet for a year so I took it home to use. This was a $2K printer.
Then a buddy gave me a MK3.
So I have each one setup with different materials so I don't have to calibrate every time I want to print a separate material.
This build actually inspired me to purchase a e90 335i 6mt 2 months ago. I wanted to do a gutted build for highway cruises/mountain drives with the friends, and looked through the different forums for different platforms to do one on, civic k20s, g35, miata turbo/k20, etc. Through this build, I realized just how light these e90 can get down to even compared to a civic, and to pair it with a factory turbo motor and costing under $6000CAD, it was a no brainer. I'm studying the pictures you took and am taking so many notes on how to achieve 2500lb myself, and I dont even plan on getting a roll cage.
Hi! Just found out this thread and honestly you build is amazing! I’m so happy to see people try to push even more the limits of our car, especially staying with bmw irs and chassis. How do you guys are able to get the weight down to sub-2500lbs? I own a 128i I will gut soon for track/time attack and of all my research i found that it seems hard to only get to 3000lbs, even on the smaller e82 chassis. Do you some advises for me and others who want to do the same? Obviously I will remove all the interior except the dash, i will remove sound deadening but would like to keep almost all stock wiring if possible. What other part is it possible to remove, like in doors etc? Thank you a lot! I’ll follow this thread for sure!
Hi, welcome! I'm glad you were able to find my thread!
When you decide to build a purpose built race car it's not that hard to get rid of a lot of weight honestly. It's all about how much of the comfort options you want to keep and the intent of the car. My thought was if it's not needed it gets deleted. Don't mess with the wiring or various modules if you aren't going standalone IMO. Getting it to run correctly is a hassle, it can and has been done, but it's a pain. Removing as much interior as you can is a good start. If you like the dash for aesthetics that's fine but replacing it with an aluminum dash or no dash at all even saves weight. Sound deadening is around 15-20 lbs if I remember. Seats are heavy so get some light weight seats like Kirkey or something similar, replace the sunroof with a delete panel, get rid of the OEM wheels as they are heavy and it's rotating mass, there are lighter brake rotor options IIRC and it's also rotating mass, aluminum or carbon driveshaft, replace the dual mass flywheel with a lightweight flywheel, remove the exhaust for a hood or side exit are all examples where it adds up in the end. I'd keep the OEM doors because the carbon options are expensive and I've heard they don't fit nicely without modifications of some sort. You could even go as far and get lexan windows if you wanted. There is a place in the UK that sells them. I have a spreadsheet that I started that shows the various weights of components....I'll have to try and find it and update this post.
This thread is kinda dead in regards to updates until I get back to the car. Not spending any more money on it until I can buy everything at once and finish it. Been spending too much money lately on guns and ammo and that's not helping lol.
Hope this helps!
Figured I'd post a little update. I decided to pull the trigger on the standalone. After a lot of time spent researching all the options, downloading various software packages so I can see what I liked and what I didn't, going back and forth between DI and PI, and comparing the costs of everything (eventually this build has to get done) I came to the conclusion that deleting DI is the best option for me. I don't disagree with the benefits of DI, I just feel that the benefits and cost of running DI for a purpose built drag car on this platform isn't worth it.
With that I settled on the new Haltech Nexus R5. I saw this revealed at PRI when I was there in 2019 and it's pretty impressive. This is an ECU and PDM built into one device so it eliminates the fuse box and simplifies the wiring significantly. The software is super easy to use and I've been working on creating a basemap and setting up the I/O's. Goal is to get the engine idling only this year since the car isn't drivable at the moment.
With the Nexus I also picked up their iC-7 display and 15 button CAN keypad.
I went ahead and got the universal wiring harness as well.
With that I settled on the new Haltech Nexus R5. I saw this revealed at PRI when I was there in 2019 and it's pretty impressive. This is an ECU and PDM built into one device so it eliminates the fuse box and simplifies the wiring significantly. The software is super easy to use and I've been working on creating a basemap and setting up the I/O's. Goal is to get the engine idling only this year since the car isn't drivable at the moment.
With the Nexus I also picked up their iC-7 display and 15 button CAN keypad.
I went ahead and got the universal wiring harness as well.
A little update. Been messing around with the Nexus learning the software and playing with the I/O's. I bought a bench power supply so I can test a few things out before I start the physical wiring process. I got the dash and CAN keypad communicating with the ECU via CAN and I'm able to turn on and off the line lock solenoid with the keypad and start a datalog which is pretty cool. I have the wiring diagram about 75% of the way done so once that's complete I'll start laying the harness in the car and figure out how I'm going to route everything. I need to look at getting another PDM (preferred to put in the trunk) or an I/O expander as I've used up all the 8 amp and 25 amp outputs along with all the analog inputs. I have more sensors I'd like to add because you can never have too much data.
Here's the hot mess on my dining room table with it up and running taking a datalog (second row first button) of me with the line lock on (first row 5th button).
Here's a datalog of me turning the line lock on and off.
Here's the hot mess on my dining room table with it up and running taking a datalog (second row first button) of me with the line lock on (first row 5th button).
Here's a datalog of me turning the line lock on and off.
@SLOWESTN54 absolutely!
First off, apologies for the lack of updates..... Not making too much progress lately but I promise this project isn't dead.
Purchased the DI delete plugs from Drift HQ to use for now until the head is removed and at that point I'll weld the injector ports.
Purchased the Haltech PD16 PDM. I ran out of inputs on the Nexus since I have various sensors placed everywhere because the engineer in me wants to collect all the data. I was looking into getting a PDM from ECU Master but I didn't want to deal setting up the Nexus to communicate with a different brand PDM. I heard rumors on the Haltech forum that they were working on a PDM so I waited until it was released, which wasn't too long ago. This will be mounted in the trunk and will run the fuel pump, A2W intercooler pump, and provide allocations for sensor inputs on the back half of the car.
One thing I've always wanted to do, again it's the engineer in me, is to design my own parts and run proper analysis on them. I purchased a Revopoint POP2 3d scanner which should be here sometime next week. This will allow me to scan various parts of the car and be able to import into SolidWorks. I hope it works as well as I think it will based on researching other car enthusiasts that use this scanner. Coupled with my 3d printer I hope it helps accelerate this project. If it works, and people here need something scanned that I don't already have, I could do try and make that happen if time allows. I may (stress may) ask for a small donation depending on the complexity of the part and what critical features you want detail of (I feel that's fair) because there could be extensive post processing of the scan required. It's something I'll get more familiar with as I use the scanner. I have dabbled in 3d scanning a bit here recently too. I sent an N54 valve cover (not the OEM one) out to a local company to get scanned and had pretty good success. I won't mention who's cover it was because it doesn't matter and I won't be sharing the .stl file either because I'm not out to reverse engineer anyone's hard work for my own or other's financial benefit. It was strictly just for testing purposes and potentially design my own valve cover down the road.
I'm trying to get back to this project with more regular updates....hopefully. Not only to finish this car so I can drive it but being able to design and run analysis with various simulation tools is really the fun part for me and is what I truly enjoy. I have a close friend (engineer as well) that just moved back to my area that has a lot of automotive experience through his previous job so we'll be tackling this project together.
First off, apologies for the lack of updates..... Not making too much progress lately but I promise this project isn't dead.
Purchased the DI delete plugs from Drift HQ to use for now until the head is removed and at that point I'll weld the injector ports.
Purchased the Haltech PD16 PDM. I ran out of inputs on the Nexus since I have various sensors placed everywhere because the engineer in me wants to collect all the data. I was looking into getting a PDM from ECU Master but I didn't want to deal setting up the Nexus to communicate with a different brand PDM. I heard rumors on the Haltech forum that they were working on a PDM so I waited until it was released, which wasn't too long ago. This will be mounted in the trunk and will run the fuel pump, A2W intercooler pump, and provide allocations for sensor inputs on the back half of the car.
One thing I've always wanted to do, again it's the engineer in me, is to design my own parts and run proper analysis on them. I purchased a Revopoint POP2 3d scanner which should be here sometime next week. This will allow me to scan various parts of the car and be able to import into SolidWorks. I hope it works as well as I think it will based on researching other car enthusiasts that use this scanner. Coupled with my 3d printer I hope it helps accelerate this project. If it works, and people here need something scanned that I don't already have, I could do try and make that happen if time allows. I may (stress may) ask for a small donation depending on the complexity of the part and what critical features you want detail of (I feel that's fair) because there could be extensive post processing of the scan required. It's something I'll get more familiar with as I use the scanner. I have dabbled in 3d scanning a bit here recently too. I sent an N54 valve cover (not the OEM one) out to a local company to get scanned and had pretty good success. I won't mention who's cover it was because it doesn't matter and I won't be sharing the .stl file either because I'm not out to reverse engineer anyone's hard work for my own or other's financial benefit. It was strictly just for testing purposes and potentially design my own valve cover down the road.
I'm trying to get back to this project with more regular updates....hopefully. Not only to finish this car so I can drive it but being able to design and run analysis with various simulation tools is really the fun part for me and is what I truly enjoy. I have a close friend (engineer as well) that just moved back to my area that has a lot of automotive experience through his previous job so we'll be tackling this project together.
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Played around with the scanner a bit recently. It took some trial and error and YouTube research but I got a pretty good scan of an M3 lower control arm.
Prepping the control arm for scanning. Honestly probably didn't need the markers (black and white dots) once I figured out the proper scan settings but it definitely helped the scanner know the position of the part.
Here's the scan in raw form before meshing. You can see where all the markers were located since the scanner doesn't recognize black.
After meshing and exported as an .stl file to be read in SolidWorks.
Then imported into SolidWorks to model the attachment points to the car. Not really interested at this point in reverse engineering the entire arm. The plan is to get the entire OEM rear suspension modeled so I can perform some analysis and design a few things like a caliper bracket to fit a Strange Engineering caliper.
Prepping the control arm for scanning. Honestly probably didn't need the markers (black and white dots) once I figured out the proper scan settings but it definitely helped the scanner know the position of the part.
Here's the scan in raw form before meshing. You can see where all the markers were located since the scanner doesn't recognize black.
After meshing and exported as an .stl file to be read in SolidWorks.
Then imported into SolidWorks to model the attachment points to the car. Not really interested at this point in reverse engineering the entire arm. The plan is to get the entire OEM rear suspension modeled so I can perform some analysis and design a few things like a caliper bracket to fit a Strange Engineering caliper.
@doublespaces is there a central location somewhere here that we can upload scans? I'm open to share my scans with everyone but attaching them to this thread may not be the best location I suppose.
Thanks!
Thanks!
Uploaded the camber link scan to the following location.
https://www.spoolstreet.com/resources/e90-m3-rear-camber-link-scan.96/
https://www.spoolstreet.com/resources/e90-m3-rear-camber-link-scan.96/
