Chassis.........

Interior Cleaning

I started by gutting what was left of the interior. Removed old stinky crumbling carpet, Headliner, door panels, dash and the one beat up 320i seat.

I was left with a very nasty looking sight. So I bought some dry ice and started the painstaking task of removing the tar-like sound deadening material. I then took a wire brush on a grinder and ground away all the way to bare metal. This also revaled some more rust which I repaired. I then quickly sprayed the entire interior with home depot’s best grey primer.

Click here to see ALL of the cleaning pictures.

I’m still debating weather to skin out the door’s guts and get rid of the door glass. To get rid of more weight...

Cage

For the cage I left it to Ireland’s experience to build for me. It’s a basic 6 point cage with door bars and a dash bar to protect my feet from a possibly intruding engine. It came out great, nice welds and I’m very happy with it.. The also fabricated the seat mounts along with the cage. I might add nascar style door bars later when I start racing and gut the doors. I figured I could always add more bars later as need be.

Click here to see ALL the cage pictures.

I recently bought a tig welder and one of the things I did before I painted the car was to tie the cage into the unibody with plates in various areas to increase chassis stiffness.

Dash

I removed the original dash and heater core. Replacing it with a basic aluminum race dash. Retaining the original buttons for the wipers and lights. I came across the VDO Xtreme tach and I had to have it. It has lots of recording time and you can set the shift light at different rpms and control the brightness of the shift light. I would of like to have autometer gauges but at $60+ each……I ended up going with the good looking and very functional Summit brand mechanical gauges ($20 each!). I added oil temperature, oil pressure and water temperature. I left one hole cut out for a future additional gauge.

Click on Image to see and Interior shots

Cockpit

Seats

I was consulting for a car accessories shop at one point in time and they were switching brand from momo to sparco and they were blowing out these 2 awesome seats so I made the owner a ridiculous offer and I walked away with some serious seats for less than junkyard recaro’s.

The drivers seat is a Momo NASCAR carbon/Kevlar with carbon fiber reinforcements. Beautiful piece of art and pretty comfy too. Of course they have amazing support. The passenger seat is a carbon/Kevlar momo acropolis evo. Slightly larger so it’s perfect for an array of passenger sizes.

Harnesses

I originally had a set of the famed Sabelt 6 point 3” competition camlock belts. Right as I finished my paint job they expired! Since I'm vintage racing now they need to be within 5 year of the date of manufacture.

I replaced the Sabelts with a 6 point Willans setup.

Steering

Right now the car has a stock steering box.

There is a rare "red" quick ratio steering box availabe that I would love to have but is hard to find and naturally is very expensive. That would probably be a great modification for auto-x use. The steering wheel itself is Momo Mod .07 wheel (70mm dish) mount on a quick release steering hub.

Fire System

In preparation for vintage racing I installed an ESS AFFF 10Lbs. Fire system. The pull handle is mounted on the dash and activates 4 nozzles. 1 nozzle in the trunk, 1 nozzle at me!, and 2 covering the engine bay.

I decided to run AFFF system since I can refill myself at the track in case of accidental discharge or small fire. All it takes is a refill kit! Also the foam doesn't damage anything and is not to bad to clean up.

I mounted the bottle in the area behind the passenger seat next to the accusump. I tought I should keep the weight close to the center of the car and to help balance the car with an empty passenger seat.....trying to do my best for weight distribution.

Click on the Image for all the Fire system install pictures!

Data Acquisition

Right now my only means of data acquisition is my io-port video camera mount and my trusty Sony hi-8 camera.

Click here to see ALL the Video clips.