the white rock mini meet pics...april 23, 06

[bmwdt]

here are some pics...

http://www.we-todd-did-racing.com/wetoddimage.wtdr/wMTIzMTE1NDZzNDEzZGZkMzF5NTQx.jpg

http://www.we-todd-did-racing.com/wetoddimage.wtdr/wMTIzMTE2MTZzNDEzZGZkMzF5NTQx.jpg

http://www.we-todd-did-racing.com/wetoddimage.wtdr/wMTIzMTE1OTZzNDEzZGZkMzF5NTQx.jpg

http://www.we-todd-did-racing.com/wetoddimage.wtdr/wMTIzMTE1NzZzNDEzZGZkMzF5NTQx.jpg

http://www.we-todd-did-racing.com/wetoddimage.wtdr/wMTIzMTE1ODZzNDEzZGZkMzF5NTQx.jpg

http://www.we-todd-did-racing.com/wetoddimage.wtdr/wMTIzMTE1NTZzNDEzZGZkMzF5NTQx.jpg

[bmwdt]

http://www.we-todd-did-racing.com/wetoddimage.wtdr/wMTIzMTE2MjZzNDEzZGZkMzF5NTQx.jpg

http://www.we-todd-did-racing.com/wetoddimage.wtdr/wMTIzMTE1MzZzNDEzZGZkMzF5NTQx.jpg

http://www.we-todd-did-racing.com/wetoddimage.wtdr/wMTIzMTE1NjZzNDEzZGZkMzF5NTQx.jpg

http://www.we-todd-did-racing.com/wetoddimage.wtdr/wMTIzMTE2MDZzNDEzZGZkMzF5NTQx.jpg

http://www.we-todd-did-racing.com/wetoddimage.wtdr/wMTIzMTE2MzZzNDEzZGZkMzF5NTQx.jpg

[FrustratedMunky]

Wow... speechless

[Initial D.oug]

M1........... :buttrock:

[motoyen]

That M1 is so badass! If you had a regular M1 how would you make it look like a pro car? Is there a kit?

[Dean]

There are two or three street cars that have been modified to look like ProCars. Frank Fahey in San Francisco has one. There are no kits that I know of.

The funny thing is that original ProCars have the extra bits like the fender flares and front air dam rivited onto a mostly stock body. The panels weren't integrated well, but they did look good on TV.

There is a German book on M1's that lists each M1 built (both street cars and ProCars), their VINs (car, chassis and engine), build dates (ItalDesign and Baur for the street cars and Motorsport for the ProCars), original colour and original destination country. So you can convert a street car to a ProCar, but the original build spec can be verified. At the end of the day you would have a cool looking, cut up M1.


Dean

[Spalding]

Forget the ProCar... Make a Warhol:

http://www.bmwworld.com/artcars/70_warhol.jpg

[Drake]

Nice pics man. Good collection of cars. Can't say enough about the M1.

[Al Canuck]

Hey, who brought that Fiero? Shame.

Al

[VtwinVince]

Hey Dean, I guess you got your car back on the road? How did you make out with those injectors?

[Mark D.]

Is the M1 your car Dean? Very, very nice. I see you have collectors plates on it. The front end reminds me a bit of an 840/850. Its mid engine correct? Whats the displacement etc.? Hopefully I will have a chance to check that car out this summer....

[Dean]

Yeah, I finally got the thing back on the road. That was my car in CG's showroom for five months as both Rudy and I looked for the NLA 2.75mm shims. That's the only size that is currently NLA, and I needed 4 (but I didn't need any other size!). We later found out that we could safely machine down 2.80mm shims, which was done for free by a car nut machinist. Five months for that...

BTW, it was in for a valve adjustment. This car has a shim-under-bucket arrangement, which means that the cams are on top, then comes the buckets, then the shims and finally the valves. So when the valves need adjusting, the cams have to come out of the car. The cams are hollow (very easy to break) and $2300, so I wasn't too keen on removing them myself. Rudy and Chris both have lots of experience removing this type of cam which is very common in the early Motorsport cars.

It ended up being 30 hours of labour, and $60 in parts. I believe that Rudy spent most of that time just trying to find shims, then trying to find out if we could just machine down larger ones. My top priority on this job was to have it done correctly, and Rudy did that. It might have been expensive, but a buggered valve is much more expensive.

I have to take my hat off to Rudy and Chris for having to deal with my paranoia over that car. I hate the idea of it being damaged by carelessness, which is common at car shows where people have a look at a car, then brush up against it and scratch it, then say "If the owner can afford the car, then he/she can afford to fix it", then move onto the next car.

Mark D., the M1 is about 4 inches *lower* than an 8 Series. I parked beside a couple at one event, and it was quite evident that the 8 Series is quite a bit bigger. Although the similarities are evident, the differences are evident, too.

The engine is an M88, a 3.5l inline 6 cylinder. It has 277bhp (DIN, not SAE) and 243 ft-lbs, with a red line of 6700 RPM. It has individual throttle bodies (like the S14 and S38). It is a mid engine car, with a dry sump lubrication system. There are two oil pumps: the high pressure pump, and a suction pump to move the oil out of the oil pan and into the oil tank which is mounted just in front of the right rear wheel. Oil changes take 8 litres.

The gearbox is a universal ZF supercar transaxle of the era with five gears and a dogleg shift pattern; it has 2.5 litres of RedLine MTL in it now. The differential is mounted inside the gearbox housing, so there's no differential fluid. The transmission is actually mounted up-side-down from the normal arrangement so that the drivetrain could be lowered another 1.5 inches. There's a drain plug on the top of the transmission!

The engine uses Kugelfischer fuel injection, which is a variation on the system installed in the 2002tii. This fuel injection system is a completely mechanical Alpha N arrangement. The pump uses throttle position and engine RPM to determine how much fuel to inject. It has a thermostat that controls extra fuel and air for a warm-up cycle, but appart from that it doesn't adjust to anything like barometric pressure (altitude) or intake air temperature. So the engine will run very rich on mountains and in very hot weather. The system is pressurized to about 35 bar, which is quite a bit more than the typical 3.0 bar of E30s.

Performance is exceptional for the era. Only two cars are comparable. The Porsche 911 Turbo (930) has about the same performance, but the Ferrari 288 GTO is faster. The M1 is by far the easiest car to drive of the three. The M1 will accelerate from 0 to 60mph in about 5.5 seconds, and it has a top speed of 262 km/h. The Owner's Manual has a graph of fuel consumption that goes up to 260 km/h! It will do 75 km/h in first gear and 115 km/h in second.


Dean

[motoyen]

Cool info. I'm so paranoid about my car I can't even imagine owning a car like that. That thing would be a blast to take on the Ring though!!

[Mark D.]

Wow Dean, thanks for the informative writeup, excellent read. The ZF tranny, isnt that the same one that was used in Panteras with the 351 Ford Cleveland engine?
Much more complicated then our E30's for sure. But absolutely gorgeous.

[Dean]

Mark D.: Yes, the tranny was used in the Pantera. It was also used in the Lancia 037 rally car that was quite dominant, IIRC.

Actually, the M1 isn't more complicated than any E30 (including the M10 ones). The problem is that the knowledge hasn't been maintained or developed. If you had a technical problem with an E30 you could easily find the answer and be able to confirm it. With the M1, it's easy to find an answer, but confirming it is almost impossible. For example, I phoned four "M1 experts" in the US about the shims, and all of them had a different answer (and one of the answers was just plain stupid).


Dean

[motoyen]

I bet finding parts is a ***** too eh? Can you get any parts from the dealer any more?

[VtwinVince]

The M1 may be a challenge to maintain, but once you hear the exhaust note, right behind your ear, you won't care.

[Dean]

Most everything is available at the dealer, including the tire pressure sticker. Some things have gone NLA, but I still order them and so far they seem to show up eight months later.

A lot of the mechanical bits are typical Bosch parts of the era. The ignition rotor is from a mid-eighties 8-cylinder Mercedes-Benz. The fuel pump is a common VW fitment. The fuel filter is from an early E21 320i. The oil filter is from a 911 from the eighties. The rear brake pads are from the front of an E21 320i and the front brake pads are from an E12 528i.

I have heard that most of these cars were purchased by collectors and immediately stored. There are several with less than 10,000 km on them. Mine had 16,000 km on it when I bought it three years ago. I suspect that BMW made the appropriate number of spares, but since nobody is driving the cars the spares aren't being sold.

At 26,000 km I put on a new alternator belt, which was about $50 at the dealer. The belt has 3 ribs on it, and one of them started ripping away after 20,000 km. All of the M1 alternator belts were produced by Dayco in the late 70's and the ones sold even now are from that original run. The weird thing about this belt is that it is used on a 1983 Toyota Tercel 1.5l 4 cylinder (3AC) engine, without Air Conditioning. Lordco stocks the latest Dayco belt for $18.

A very big hurdle is finding this information about cross referencing parts. When I need stuff I usually take off the old part and take it into a good Bosch dealer (like BMV or WM Autohaus) and ask for "a new one of these." It's best not to mention what car it came from - if the salesperson is willing to look for the part it frequently becomes very expensive. I also look up parts on the ETK then look at the cross reference information; I then go and ask for a "windshield washer pump from a 1978 BMW 320i" and I can get the right part at a reasonable price.


Dean

[CrazyCanuck]

Nice pictures, but you should have got a pic of Dean wearing his racing booties!