Spares

I got yesterday my hands on a "damaged" chassis.
It is actually in a very good state, except it was slightly perforated by a big stone on a road on a few spots, still enough to be declared as a wreckage here in France.
Still, it is healthy, no deformation at all, every wishbone mount is perfect and should be a very good base for a track car.

As you see, it came with some parts with it...

A good chassis, with windscreen and frame, undamaged crashbox and engine subframe, a rear clam (bubbled, but in good state for a track car), all wiring looms including the full engine one, the fuel tank and pump and some other stuff... for less than 700€... how could I say no ?

Confirmation

Will have a closed 75 square meters part in the "dream" warehouse sometime between half to end of July !!

Very excited !

Crap

Well,
Fed up with working outside, especially as the weather conditions are stupid and extreme in both directions (choosing between sunny 35°C and rainy 10°C... no thanks, not for me).

Good news is that I should have a part soon in a warehouse where everyone is working on (race) cars at different levels, all passionate people with different complementary skills; I could not dream of any better situation to be fair and this will help a lot for the rebuild and some other evolutions.

Looking forward to it

Assistance

Part of the "no compromise" mode rebuild, the Speedster will not really be a road car anymore so I had to get a car to pull the future trailer...

Decided to get a BMW and nothing else as I needed a strong and flawless thing which will not let me down.

For the same reason I was specifically looking at 325d, as having a detuned 330d is good for reliability and the engine is strong enough for the job,

Wasn't able to find the perfect options combo, but these are really rare, especially with a manual gearbox, so I had to do with it... and I could play with the OE retrofit kits if I really need Xenons this winter.

Except all of that, really good car, especially on highways of course (the feeling on B-roads is a bit loose to be honest, but the grip is really good)

Neeeeeeeeedddddd !

Working outside is simply not good enough for the quality standard I'm looking after...

Compromises

Today I decided I was fed up with compromises, like keeping the boot and having the car in an easily reversible state, so I had some fun with the Dremel (best tool ever) and made a small hole here :

Plan is that it should make enough room to make the car work with on these old BTCC intake manifolds.

It's one of the oldest spec of the BTCC intake manifold, but it may very well be the easiest to fit to a Speedster, and as the engine it was fitted to still made 265cv (naturally aspirated of course), I doubt it will cause any restriction on my engine for some time...

Running

Just to check the car and engine are still ok after having passed the winter outside not protected from anything, I quickly converted the current Sybele wiring loom to an interim Motec one and was able to start the engine at the first try...
Ok in truth it was the second try as I forgot to plug the fuel pump relay at the first try... need more sleep I guess

Filmed a quick small video with the iphone; nothing interesting but it's good to hear it running again !

I do not plan to keep this converted wiring loom as I'll prefer redoing it from scratch.

Next one will be true Mil-spec with the adequate crimpers, Deutsch Autosport connectors where possible, and Raychem type 44 or better wire and of course DR-25 heatshrink...

Antiques

As the Motec is much more capable of running OE stuff, some of our previous running gear will now be unused.
Say goodbye to those :

Modified OE ignition cassette with a "Bosch" style module... figured out in the meantime out to use the OE ignition module which is a lot smarter on safety features.

Trigger wheel and VR sensor billet bracket, not needed anymore as the Motec can work with the OE GM 6+1 pattern.

A few grams and OE reliability level gained, thanks Motec !

2012

So after two years of mixed results with the current car and build, I decided to take some time to rebuild it for an intensive 2012 trackday season.

Even if the engine itself is flawless, often taking its 8200 rpm rev limit and has now 8000 km on the clock (which is believe is almost 10 times more than other z22SE's with similar specs that all have failed...), the chosen standalone ECU did not work that well and some small issues were never solved due to bad error algorithms and lack of end user flexibility on those points.

Sometimes, you have to spend more from the beginning rather than loosing time with lower spec stuff... that's why I decided to find a used Motec ECU and quickly found a good deal on an almost new Motec M600.

Other plans are rebuilding the wiring loom from scratch using Autosport connectors when possible, adding more temperature and pressure sensors, controled by the Motec for better engine monitoring and protection, dealing with the way too long gearbox, and rebuilding the chassis to get the "as new" if not better feedback it deserves.

Main issue is that we bought a new house... with no garage, and due to various reasons we won't be able to build one big and cool enough to work in perfect conditions, so I'll have to figure out another solution...

More on all of this asap