E91 Toupe

[counteract]

Touring/Coupe

I had planned to do this to a 330CI E46 coupe I bought a couple of years ago, though things changed and I ended up breaking it for a lot more than it cost me.

I eventually ended up with this 318D LCI E91 as a spares car for my daily with no intention of turning it into a stupid project, but circumstances changed, stars aligned, all that stuff and here we are.

Where I started:

It seemed an alright car. The N47 chain had gone and it only cost me £500, so I was happy to use ot for subframes for my daily. After selling most of the stuff off it, it basically cost me nothing, if not negative. Winner.

I was using a small garage with a leaky roof to break it and had great fun trying to strip it with next to no working space:

As I said at the start, my circumstances changed and I ended up moving to an amazing place that had a decent garage, so we got it trailered to the new place, where I could finish stripping it:

I mentioned the stars aligning, story time!

A few years back I bought half an E92 M3 shell for next to nothing and sold the roof for more than it cost me. After advertising the rest of the shell for the quarters for ages with no luck, I chopped it up to save some space.

Eventually a guy in Ireland bought them off me and arranged his own transport for them. His courier royally fucked them up.

I ended up buying them back for less than I paid when this idea was going round in my head, would they fit a touring?

Thankfully I have access to a lot of cool shit at work, 3D scanners, CAD, essentially all the tools I could need to do this project justice. Cue the custom rear subframe, utilizing all Z33 components but still E92 bolt-in compatible…:

…The custom front subframe to house a purple tag E36 rack and custom arms for my S chassis derived front knuckles:

This has since been revised, though it’s still not final:

I’ve decided to only use the front four subframe points on the chassis to hold the front subframe. This is because it’s only taking the steering rack and arms and will be much beefier than the OEM aluminium unit. Notice I didn’t mention it holding the engine? If you look closely above, you’ll see the mid frame located off the rear two subframe points. But me being me, a design nerd, I’ve decided against a mid plate. Instead, I’ll utilise the turret tops and chassis leg end plates to brace the engine with the original chassis leg engine mount, which will now be at the front:

 

[counteract]

Oh, yeah, it’s a turbo K24 by the way, with a custom dry sump pan and bespoke exhaust planned to boot.

So the procurement continued with loads of bits and pieces I knew I wanted, such as an S15 dashboard, which coincidentally I used to own when I had my first S14 about ten years ago:

I wasn’t happy with the flocked finish; I sold it to a good friend who ran it in his RB25 S14 and changed it to suit his requirements. Cue selling it on to fund another from YAJ:

Yes, the seating position is very far back! I decided to go full send on this build, part of that being the weight distribution:

If I get 50/50 I’ll be happy, I’m fully expecting to with how far back the engine and seating will end up being. To achieve this, I’ve had to remove all of the original seat mounting bracketry from within the car, which was my first attempt at any kind of metal work. A lot of holes were made by mistake, giving me the chance to improve my welding skills I guess.

More of that stupid seating position. Good thing I’m doing away with those B pillars completely.

Another story time I suppose:

My mrs is from East London and every time we went to visit her family, I’d see this silver Z33 on bronze TE37s abandoned on someone’s driveway not far from the in-law’s house. After a few years, I decided to knock on the door and find out the story. Fast forward a few years (Jan 2023) and I bought the entire car just to claim ownership of the wheels. After selling the car on, I had a cool set of OG bronze TEs in poor shape, for not a lot of money. After trading the 8.5J fronts for some mega 12.5J CR2P (which are for sale by the way) I needed some chunky TEs for the rear. Some stupid (see that word being used a lot?) OTT YAJ bids later and I was the semi-regretful owner of some 18x11ET18 TE37SL in silver, which I promptly had coated white and wrapped with 275/35 and 315/30 AR1s:

The day I got the tyres mounted was the day I did my first physical mock up. It helped cement the idea in my head and give me some motivation:

I think I’ll leave it there for now as this is a majority of what I’ve been up to the last year or so. I have some further stuff to post but I’ll try to keep a margin between what I do and post so that I always have some ammunition.

Hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I suffered with crippling anxiety typing it up x)