Sneak Peek

I bid on a fibreglass widearch kit for my BMW recently. I set myself a limit and lost the auction. Hey - Ho, nevermind. I was about ot travel up to Peter Lloyd Rallying to measure up a set of Mk2 Escort fibreglass tarmac arches to see if they could be altered to fit ther E30, when I received an email from the the guy auctioning the M3 kit. Turns out the person who won the auction was full of B.S. and didn't have any intention of buying them. A quick Sunday morning trip up to Shrewsbury and the M3 replica widebody kit is mine. A brand new one from Smith and Deakin is £1000. I didn't pay anywhere near that, but f*ck all fits as it should on the one I bought - yet! Here's couple of sneak peek pics of the NSF arch with fibreglass wide arch kit fitted (one screw holding it).

Sorry looking, but a solid shell!

Well, she's back from Brian's workshop and a shed load of cutting, fabricating and welding has been done. All in all, Brian spent a full 35 hours working on the car. I'm more than pleased with what he did for me.

She may be a little sorry looking now, but underneath she's got a solid, rust-free shell. We didn't try to save the paint as I've decided that I'm going to respray the whole car once all the body work is complete. I'm thinking works BMW touring car colours from the Warsteiner period.

Here's the roof minus it's sunroof. The motor, mechanism and rails were cut out. The metal outer skin of the sunroof was then tacked back in a skim of filler dabbed on to finish it off. Putting the outer skin of the metal suroof back in was a complete nightmare because there was a 6 mm gap all the way round its perimeter where a rubber seal used to be. A thin strip of metal had to be formed and welded all the way round to fill the gap! All in, about 7 kgs of metal and other crap were shaved off - a good weight saving high up on the car. Hopefully it'll help lower the car's centre of gravity too.

Here's pic of the roof panel from inside the car. There should be plenty of room for the roll cage now.

The holes in the scuttle panel at the bottom of both A Pillars were welded up and skimmed.

Inner door skins were cut out and the door handles repositioned into the top rear corner of the door. we didn't bin the locks as I want the car to lock securely when she's finished - extra peace of mind when she's parked up overnight on the trailer in hotel car parks/event paddocks.

These new inner door handle mounts were fabricated from scratch. The catch should be located halfway along the door.

The Warsteiner E30 BMW Touring car from the early 1990's. This is the colour scheme I'm going to go for once the body work is all done. I'm going to put this garage wall to keep my motivation high!

Progress?

Poor girl...

Before tackling the rot in the scuttle panel at the bottom of the A pillars, Brian asked me to remove the front wings and windscreen. The bumper and wings came off without too much off a fight, but I really didn't fancy taking the screen out. (Even Ed China off Wheeler Dealers gets the pros in to do that job.) Thankfully, Brian has the tools to do it at his workshop - so I'll leave that to him.

Removing the off side wing revealed another rust hole in the inner wing near the throttle pedal - so a little more welding for Brian to do. Whilst she's at his workshop, he's going to remove all the side and rear glass (to be replaced my polycarbonate), bin the sunroof and tack a plate back in it's place and cut out any metal that doesn't need to be there anymore.

Why choose an E30 318is?

Here's a pic of my mate, David Kirk, in his E30 325 Sport. Hopefully my car will resemble something similar to this when I'm done!

As I've already said, I wanted a rear wheel drive (RWD) car to prepare and compete in. I taken my Peugeot as far as I wanted to take it and managed to find it an excellent new home (I wasn't going to sell it to anyone). I settled on a 318is because it's the same size as a RWD Escort, it had the rare M42 16v engine fitted and it was described by the press at it's launch as "a junior M3". It was cheap too! A RWD Escort in similar condition would've cost ten times the amount I paid. My logic is, I can spend that money saved on making the BMW much faster than it was ever intended to go. Look on Youtube and it's really popular competion car in Germany. Only time will tell if I made the right choice.

In the meantime here are the other cars I considered buying and the reasons why I didn't go for them in the end....

Everyone wants a Mk1 or Mk2 Escort and that's reflected in the prices they sell for. Quite simply - too expensive! By the way, this is my father in law's 265bhp Cosworth powered Mk1.

I thought long and hard about getting a Ford Sierra. RWD, reasonably priced and some had Cosworth engines with lots of power from the get-go, but I think it's too big a car for hillclimbing. I did come very close to buying one mind you...

The Talbot Sunbeam is a RWD hatch that's used a lot in clubman rallying. Sone came with 2.2 Lotus engines, but an ordinary one would require an engine from another manufacturer to get the 200bhp I'd like to end up with. Again, good Sunbeam shells are expensive.

Early Toyota Starlets were RWD, but they are pretty thin on the ground. Again a Starlet would require an engine transplant from another manufacturer - possibly a Vauxhall/Ford 16v engine, gearbox, etc. £££££££££!

I looked at getting a Vauxhall Chevette with the intention of fitting a 2.0litre 16v XE engine, but finding a good one is difficult. They are either completely rotten to way too expensive.

I really like this one! The Toyota AE86 is a RWD two door Corolla. Hugely popular on the drift scene, you need at least £5k to buy a nice one. They came as 16v and 20v variants, but all were 1600cc - making big power expensive to find.

Tin worm!

So, just a few days into the BMW build and the interior is already gone. Anything of value is on eBay. I need to get some money back to pay for the welding that the shell needs. I was a little disapointed to discover two large holes at the bottom of the A pillar (a known weak spot on the E30 BMW shell) hidden by tons of body filler. Despite wanting to do as much as possible myself, I simply can't weld. So I've enlisted the help of Brian, a friend of my dad, who has years of body shop experience to do the work remidial work required. Brian's into motorbikes like me and is an ex-car racer too! Hopefully when he's done, I'll have a good stron bodyshell to base my racer on.

Here we go!

After building and sucessfully competing in an Mi16 powered Peugeot 205Gti for the past five years, I'm now going to have a go at building a sucessful rear wheel drive car.

My Peugeot has been sold on and, after considering all manner of RWD cars, a donor BMW 318is has been bought from eBay for £500.

I'm not a talented mechanic or engineer, but unlike my previous project car, I'm going to try and complete as much of this build as possible by myself. Against everyone's advice, I'm starting from scratch, so here we go...