Nick's Auto-Sprint BMW Race-Car

It turns out Nick, our new workshop manager at work, is an old hand on the amateur racing circuit and [as we've quickly learned] he doesn't do things by halves. For his semi-pro rally-cross efforts he has an ex Hannu Mikkola Audi Sport Quattro [like this], blimey, but for fear of 'getting it dirty' he is now building a new car at work to use for auto-sprint racing next year.

The car he's picked is an old BMW 318is Coupe, which has sat in the corner of our workshop since May, but lately its moved up onto the ramps and work on it has really started to come along, so I'm devoting a thread to the Beemer to cover the ongoing conversion from road car

to all out auto-sprint machine and hopefully chronicle some of its racing efforts. Stay tuned!

As you can see from yesterday's pictures, she won't be racing anytime soon and has long missed her intended debut at the New Brighton Rally in September, but its not as far off completion as it looks. The engine is only a 1.8 and still in stock form for now and I'm dying to see what he will eventually do to it, but probably not much, as for short distance auto-sprint events the pace is generated by an ultra-high ratio gearbox, which probably cost a bit and will be the last thing to go on the beemer.

So here's a list of what has been done to the car so far:

Stripped to the shell - everything except the dashboard out, red + white paintjob, 'Network Q Rally' number-placards on doors.

M3 wing-mirrors.

Battery moved into the boot for weight-balance with new high-power wiring and Elec. + Engine cut-off switches in the dashboard and outside the car in a flat recess in the passenger front wing.

Alloy racing fuel filler-nozzle. No idea how this was done because all E36 BMWs have a body-flush flap, so this one must have been welded into place and a hole cut to mount the alloy-nozzle. It was on the car as Nick got it, so it looks like it was destined for the racetrack anyway.

Fixed-height 'auto-sprint' dampers and lower, uprated springs.

100% custom 'sway-bars' on the back, manufactured at work.

Single Corbeau bucket-seat.

Custom side-exit exhaust system with a tiny sports-cat, motorbike silencer and a curved tailpipe coming out just in front of the rear-wheel. It needed the whole driver's footwell cutting out to fit [you can just see in the bottom-left of the third photo where it's been put back in] and is one of the coolest things I've seen.

COMING UP:

Fully-customisable L.S.D!

Hydraulic hand-brake, made from a scrapped Leyland DAF brake master-cylinder, ha.