The 325e Becomes a Race Car!

For the last couple off years, I’ve been trying to figure out what I was going to begin my meteoric rise through the ranks of motor sport to finally reach my goal of being an F1 driver! LOL

I knew that open wheel cars were the key and in my dreams this evolved from a Formula Vee to eventually a Formula Ford, but then that damn financial reality kicked in...

I quickly came to the realization that IT was more for me and my budget (cheap, relatively speaking)! The choice was also made because I wanted to buy/build something that I could run with the BMW club (competitively or not). At first it seemed obvious. A 2002 would be the perfect fun car, but finding one locally that wasn't a total rust-bucket was next to impossible. eBay was a good resource, but only if you wanted to drive to California to get it… so again, I bit the bullet and broadened my horizons into the E30 line. Friends had tried to talk me out of the 2002 idea to begin with and I’ve been told more than once that a good E30 will be a lot more fun and easier to find parts for than any 2002 out there.

One day, while browsing through the St. Louis BMW CCA web site I found an ad for an ’87 BMW 325e and immediately emailed the seller, Bryan Cohn to see if was still available. Bryan, who has been a good friend in the SCCA for years, said that he did & that he would hold onto the car until I could come up with the money! The next time I saw him was at the St. Louis Region’s year-end banquet.

Bryan had recently become the Director of Club Racing for the SCCA and had moved to Kansas to be near the new headquarters in Topeka. So instead of driving out there right away to pick up car, I waited.. I was going to be there for the SCCA's National Convention in a few weeks anyway.

When the time came, another SCCA buddy, Miranda, drove us out there and we stayed with Bryan while in KC. It was a great time, and on the last day, Miranda and I broke away from the typical seminars and other convention type stuff to finally go pick up the 325e!! It wasn’t far from the hotel, but we still managed to get lost in the strange grid-like place that is KC.

Other than the minor front end damage and the bad struts, the car was in pretty good shape overall. The interior was perfect and the whole way back from KC I was thinking two things. "This interior is in such good condition, it'll be a shame to rip it out" and "I wonder how much this stuff will fetch on eBay".

I knew of the car. It was Bryan’s daily driver, but I had never looked at it as if I was going to actually BUY it... until now.

We finally found our way to the place where it was waiting and I saw it for the first time through these new eyes; sitting at one of those old gas stations whose pumps were long gone... these days, serving duty as a used car lot.

It was February and sunny, but a very cold morning with some recent snow and ice melting everywhere.

The car was unlocked and the keys were under the mat (trusting souls in KC), just as Bryan said they would be, so I immediately jumped in to fire it up! I was amazed that it started on the first try after sitting for who-knows-how-long and it had a rock solid idle. While it was warming up I got out and walked around to inspect the new purchase.. thinking of it’s potential as a club racer. Everything was there and it looked pretty solid. The only problems I noticed were that the driver’s side front fender was pretty crunched and the bumper shock on the same side was collapsed. The windshield was full of cracks and the paint was severely spidered, but that didn’t matter, it was mine! Before heading back, I quickly checked the fluids, just to be sure… and then, “Release the chocks, we’re taking off!”

Driving the car back to the hotel was a wonderful experience! The gas pedal was stiffer than I was used too, it shifted smoothly and had a surprising amount of torque! In fact, the first stoplight I came to had a slight incline and I promptly broke the rear wheels loose when the light turned green. Of course the wet street helped a little too.

It was a short drive and when I pulled up to the hotel valet I quickly explained to the poor guy that it was just purchased and I had nothing to do with the years worth of Wendy’s and McDonalds wrappers all over the place! He smiled and said, “You just bought this! Cool!”.

That brought a smile to my face.

Bright and early the next morning (5:30), Miranda and I left to drive back to St. Louis. She followed me all the way back to make sure that nothing fell off, but especially to stay between me and any potential cop that would notice the expired plates. I loved every minute. The interior was in perfect condition and I kept thinking two things. “It’s a shame that I’m going to be ripping it out.” and “I wonder how much this stuff will go for on eBay!”

The car ran beautifully all the way home and the only bad things I noticed were that the driver’s side rear suspension was pretty shot and as if in denial of the increasing wear on the engine, the tripometer refused to go past 99.9 miles.

While working October SCCA race at Gateway (2002) and being the social butterfly that I can be (inside joke), I met Jude and Jennifer Rudder of PFM Racing. They had a team consisting of Jude driving a Fiat 124 Spyder and Scott Rhea driving an RX-7, while Jennifer and Stephanie Rhea crewed for the guys. The team's cars are very identifiable by the unusual color scheme of White, (Plumb Crazy) Purple and (Go-Mango) Orange.

When was the last time you saw Italian and Japanese cars painted in MOPAR colors? Haha...

The Rudders and I talked all winter about the BMW project and it was decided that all the work would be done at their shop as soon as they finished up a Spec Miata that they were in the middle of building.

For a couple of weeks the car sat in front of my house while the Miata was being finished up. During that time I found a new fender at the salvage (don't call it junk) yard and I was extremely anxious to get to work. Finally the time came to drive it out to the PFM shop and I smiled all the way there. Over a few beers, Jude and I kicked the tires and discussed the battle plan. We went over the steps and costs involved in making this car as competitive as is could be, but quickly decided that apart from the required safety modifications, we would just stick to suspension work for the first season. Next year we would focus on the engine since I would probably blowup it’s 156,000-mile butt the first weekend out anyway.

The following Saturday I was out at PFM bright and early... and we brought the car into the shop to immediately start tearing into it.

The first things to come out were the seats and carpet, which revealed about 15 years worth of sand, dirt, miscellaneous crayons, parts of toys and a little medallion from Mt. Rushmore. Oh, and about five bucks in spare change! Right on! My first contribution to the plus side of the racing budget.

Somewhere along the way, I removed the trim pieces and everything else inside the trunk.. the only thing safe was the battery.

Then came the evil soundproofing material.

For those of you that don’t know, there are sheets of some sort of tar-like material that cover almost every square inch of interior metal. These sheets do a great job of deadening the sound, but in a race car, it's basically just dead weight. So it had to go. With the aid of an pneumatic chisel, Jude went to work removing what was under the rear seat. On a BMW this stuff is a little thicker than on most, making the removal actually pretty easy! The chisel could get a better “grip” on the thicker stuff and it popped right out!.

While Jude was in the car vibrating the stuff away, I removed the damaged front fender and checked the replacement for fit. Perfect! I had been worried that the wonky fender had been hiding more serious structural damage to the frame, but now that it was off, everything looked relatively square and unaffected. There was one small problem. The “new” fender was actually pretty used and was rusted out on the bottom. The fender that was on the car had the opposite problem.. it was crunched pretty badly in the front, but was rust free on the bottom. We decided to do a little cut-n-pasting, but that would have to wait.. it was getting late.

The last thing I did on the first day was to remove the fog lights that hung below the front bumper. The plastic spoiler that attaches to the front air dam was missing and of course the driver’s side bumper shock had collapsed in the impact causing the fender damage. So my homework was to track down those parts and have them ready for next time.

For some reason, since my last visit, there had been a huge drain on the battery and the thing was dead as a doornail when I tried to start it. My guess was that it was probably due to the fact that I had all of the doors opened for about 8 hours while removing the interior the week before. Oops.

Since I had really gone out to PFM for a party, not much was done today. I did manage to remove the remaining bits from the damaged front area in order to get better access to the mooshed parts that needed to be straightened. The headlight trim, headlights and a few plastic pieces that were hidden behind the lights all came out and I was able to get all of the mounting points hammered back into relatively the same place they were when it came from the factory.

I also removed the mounting brackets that held the fog lights in place in order to get the front bumper off. They were pretty stubborn and didn’t come off without a fight, but by the time I finally got them off, the other people at the shop had already started drinking. So that’s about all I was able to get done before I finally succumbed to the pressure to put the tools down and back away slowly from the car.. and join them.

Today, I picked up Tim Blythe from the East-side race shop before heading out to PFM. His car (the Miata) was finished and he needed a ride out there to pick it up.

As soon as we got there, the noise began. I started in right away with the pneumatic chisel and attacked the rest of the sound dampening material. I hate this stuff.. it's a huge mess, but I chiseled for over two hours before it was all out. My arms totally hurt from the constant pressure and vibration... it was well worth it though. I threw all of it into a heavy-duty trash bag and we had a bet to see who could guess the weight of this crap! It was almost 100 lbs. according to the people-scale borrowed from the bathroom. Whoa! Jude wins.

After chiseling out all of that crap, I removed the front bumper and the collapsed bumper shock. That’s when Jude and Scott started to point and laugh. Of course I had to see what was so funny. Apparently with all of the sound proofing material and battery removed (it was on the charger) the rear of the car was now a good 6 inches higher than it was, giving the impression that it was mooning you!

After some laughs (jerks), I went back to work replacing the head light, trim and new fender to see if all of the straightening I did paid off. It looked pretty good. Well, pretty good for an amateur.

My homework last time was to track down some of the large list of parts, and I came prepared with a new windshield and front spoiler.

That weekend I also removed the driver’s side door panel, vacuumed out all of the left over sound proofing stuff and tracked down that bizarre-o battery drain.

To do this, we pulled out the good 'ole circuit tester and discovered that the drain was caused by whatever was connected to fuse 21. Of course I didn’t have an owner’s manual and of course BMW doesn’t include that useful bit of info on the fuse box.

By checking out the wiring diagram in the Haynes manual, it all became clear. Fuse 21 is for the interior lights. Yahooo! We had ripped those out already. I felt lucky!

I went down to the shop today mainly to grab the old ‘bottle cap” style wheels to trade for a great set of light-weight Viking wheels from a gray market ’86 Baur 323.

I also installed the new bumper shock (after some caressing with a BFH) and removed the exterior trim from the sides of the car.

I didn’t want to leave, but I didn’t get out there until late in the day, so I left the car wheel-less and up on jack stands.

Today, I became very friendly with a tool that had a wire wheel brush thing rotating (at what felt like Mach 10) at the end of it! This beast was very intimidating as I used it to clean away all of the rust protection stuff from within the driver’s side wheel well. This stuff is a lot less messy than the tar-like sounds proofing stuff inside the car and it looked almost like someone had melted a huge pencil eraser and smeared it all over the underside of the car!

I started by removing both of the front fenders since all four tires were off all ready and I had easy access to get that crap off. Using the wire wheel, it came off in what can only be described as off-white silly string! It got everywhere as the tool screamed it off, right down to bare metal. I love this thing! It cleans away the soft tissue of the car as well as rust; paint and the little plastic pieces that were used for attaching discarded body parts. Yes sir, this thing quickly became my favorite tool!

Things were going well, when a good friend, came out to offer a hand. I didn’t have an extra whirly power tool on hand, so I asked him to remove anything else from the body of the car that wasn’t going to get painted. He started by taking off the plastic bumper trim that connects the lines between the rear chrome bumper and the rest of the car. As these things typically go, one side came off easily while the other offered a lot more resistance. Nothing that a good hot-wrench and a little torque couldn’t handle though.

When we tried to remove the bumper... the two outside bolts came right out, but the two inside wouldn’t budge. Well, one actually did, but it just spun in defiance, as some unseen connection was surely stripped. After a lot of hammering, oiling and colorful language, he decided to let it sit as the penetrating oil did its job.

Next he attacked the taillights. The passenger side was a piece of cake; four nuts and pop came the light. The driver’s side however was holding as if it were welded to the car! The rubber gasket was more like hardened glue these days.

I had gone back to work on the wheel well when I heard a crash and Jeff say “Whoa!” I looked over to see the bumper off the car and Jeff staring at it with a puzzled look on his face. “Good job man, you got the bumper off!” I said. “Kinda”, he replied. I walked over to see what he meant and noticed that the two stubborn bolts had pulled right through the chrome of the inside of the bumper! “No problem, at least it’s off the car. We’ll worry about reattaching it when that time comes.”

Back to the power tool. While the stuff came off pretty easily, but there was a lot of it! Most of it being in some pretty inaccessible places.. especially since the front suspension was still in place. The tool that I was using was about a foot long and at least eight inches wider than the remaining places I needed it to get into. It came down to spending about five hours on one damn wheel well! I must admit, it looks pretty cool seeing the shiny, bare metal that was left. I felt like an archeologist uncovering a previously unknown metal object that hadn’t seen the light of day for 1500 years! Well... 15 at least.

Jeff, in the meantime was back to the other taillight that still refused to budge. We tried pounding on it from inside that trunk with a BFH and prying it from the outside with some nifty bent screwdrivers of various sizes and it finally came off! Apparently the seal had fused to the light and body as if it were glued with a glue more powerful than any previously encountered.

Before calling it quits for the day, I used my new friend to clean away the rest of the black crud from the interior and the trunk while Jeff removed the remaining door panels. Finally, I vacuumed all of the stuff that the power tool chewed up and spit out.

As I walked around the car, admiring how much it was starting to look like a speed machine waiting to attack the track, I had to do one more thing.

The night before, a guy came by the house who was willing to trade what was formerly the interior of the car and it’s five bottle cap style wheels for a set of Vikings that came from a gray market Baur 323 donor. Even though the car was up on jack stands, I had to put one on just to see how much meaner the car was going to look.

The only disappointment was that they were two inches larger in diameter than stock wheels, so they wouldn’t be legal in IT. No problem I thought, I’ll just mount auto-crossing tires to them and only use them when running in DSP.

I’d need a separate set for autocrossing the car anyway.