BMW E46 Saloon WTCC/ETCC/BTCC Inspired Track/Race

[Brosefer]

Firstly welcome to the build, it’s been a few years since I’ve been involved in a full car build something I had said I would never do again. Having previously built BDC spec Nissan PS13 Silvia and S14 200sx also had a play with a few other rally cars since then. I’m well aware of the investment and energy required to complete something like this, so here goes!

Link to my PS13 build thread for nostalgia! https://www.driftworks.com/forum/threads/joes-onev...




My S14 didn't have a build thread. but it was much better built car, which had a lot of engine issues initially, then when it just about got good. I stuffed it into a wall at mondello! im just as guilty as anyone for moving away from forums 2014/5 onwards as instagram and facebook became much more prevalent




However with some great support around me and and some opportunities I can’t miss time to go down the rabbit hole once again.

The plan is over the next few years build a e46 saloon race/track car, this will be done in 2 stages first one is to get the chassis complete and working as desired, using a m54B25 circa 200hp with minimal exterior modifications, something a little like this,




with some earlier supertourer styling influences.



Once this has been proven and enjoyed if everything goes well phase 2 will be for the 2002/3 WTCC wide body to be added as well as a power unit of around 300/350hp.




Probably an unpopular opinion but I’m really not keen on e46’s fundamentally, I’m a huge Nissan fan and 370z was probably the most favorite car I’ve ever owned. However I’m coming around to them a little, and a big part of this for me is to have a car I’m not to precious about, I want this this to be driven hard by myself and anyone else that uses it.

So, Firstly introduction into the cars, I say cars as this project will involve 2 cars concurrently to try and expedite the time to build as much as the budget will allow. The first one (silver) is a BMW 325i Automatic SE saloon with 117k with minimal rust, and a relatively healthy sounding engine.



As per e46 life, useful amount of dash lights....



This car will be used to be built into the race car, first jobs will be full rust inspection, full rear subframe mounting inspection. To ensure the shell is in the best possible condition before anything is invested into it, then full tear down to nothing ready for shell preparation.

The second car (blue) is a BMW 325i Manual M Sport with 137k miles This car has been my run around for a while and has been great to get used to the qwerks of e46’s. The last e46 I drove was when instructing at a drift school. Although the school was a great experience and something I loved doing, I really didn’t enjoy the e46 at all. So to have driven one this summer has been fun.






The idea of this car is to be a test mule while the silver car is having the shell prepped,

The first ask for this car is to look it over to ensure there is nothing mission critical that needs to be fixed, then to replace the rear subframe with a full E46 M3 rear end. The second task is to fit a 8HP50Z gearbox, however more on this to follow….

Car build Is going to be sponsored by Star Autocare, and as always Hywels knowledge and expertise!

[CKY]

Cool idea, loved seeing the E46s race in the early '00s, the way those 2 litre P54b20 straight sixs used to scream... sounded so much better among the sea of 4 cylinder rivals, they won for me on sound alone.

Intrigued about the 8 speed auto box, not something i'd be considering given the intended use but to each their own.

[shalmaneser]

Why the auto box? Is this a drift thing?

[G111MDS]

Look forward to following your progress.

[Brosefer]

CKY said:

Cool idea, loved seeing the E46s race in the early '00s, the way those 2 litre P54b20 straight sixs used to scream... sounded so much better among the sea of 4 cylinder rivals, they won for me on sound alone.

Intrigued about the 8 speed auto box, not something i'd be considering given the intended use but to each their own.

Yeah plans to make it sound great, unfortunately I can’t make it scream as high as the original cars just form a reliability point of view for me, but i will try my best

[Brosefer]

shalmaneser said:

Why the auto box? Is this a drift thing?

Basically the Auto box is instead of a sequential box. With this being around 2/3k all in it’s much cheaper then the 5 figure set up of a sequential and the service costs are almost negligible in comparison

Shift times are 200-400ms in theory which is still rapid.

A big part of this is the car is going to be driven by a lot of different people, and ruling out the possibility of an Mis shift mid endurance race is going to be invaluable.

However, nothing is free, it’s much much heavier than a manual or sequential, in some situations slightly less car control, and there is power loss to run the auto box.

[Brosefer]

So first things first and most importantly Pressure washed the shell for the e46 touring car clean, and it came up really well….














found some small areas of rust on the jacking points, luckily this is all isolated to the outer sills.



This is such a positive start to the build rust can bring all manor of problems and to know that it’s just going to be a few new panels, which are ones we want to modify anyway is going to really help, we will be adding some high durability jacking mounts, as well as sill stands as normally seen in the rally world. These may or may not be made to be covered by the side skirts. Depends on how quick release I can make the side skirts, Apart from that area of rust she’s a really clean shell and super happy that this is the base for a full build!




Obviously the next thing you do after you was your new project race car is to try on the wheels!



First set of wheels we are going to run in the car will be some OEM bmw rims, seems to be little prone to cracking but in good sizes and offsets







They already seem a great fit, hopefully they will still be a good fit once we have done all the changes to the suspension.

[rob0r]

Love the idea of this!

[roadie]

This sounds like a really interesting project. I definitely have a soft spot for the E46, but an E92 335i might have been a less challenging!

[dapper]

Awesome, love a 5 door. Will be good to see the progress from the ground up.

[Brosefer]

roadie said:

This sounds like a really interesting project. I definitely have a soft spot for the E46, but an E92 335i might have been a less challenging!

Probably! However I wanted something eligible for classic touring car series and it has to be pre-03 so I’m just in with this. After going to watch a few rounds and there being a distinct lack of saloons at them I really hope I can get this finished up and ready for 2025 season! As always tho life keeps getting in the way!

[Andrew-b90y3]

Love the project! Those style 216 will look great. How's the fitment on them? I'm sorting a track spec e46 saloon at the minute and would love a set of these.

Also great colour, is it mora metallic? I had an e36 touring exactly the same colour.

[E63eeeeee...]

Love an E46, so I'm in for this. Any special reason you've gone for the 2.5 over the 3.0, or just availability?

Are you aware of the 330Ci track car thread on here? Might be some crossover. If you're not I'll see if I can track it down.

[Its Just Adz]

This is gonna be a really cool project, good luck with it.

[Brosefer]

roadie said:

This sounds like a really interesting project. I definitely have a soft spot for the E46, but an E92 335i might have been a less challenging!

Probably! However I wanted something eligible for classic touring car series and it has to be pre-03 so I’m just in with this. After going to watch a few rounds and there being a distinct lack of saloons at them I really hope I can get this finished up and ready for 2025 season! As always tho life keeps getting in the way!

[Brosefer]

Andrew-b90y3 said:

Love the project! Those style 216 will look great. How's the fitment on them? I'm sorting a track spec e46 saloon at the minute and would love a set of these.

Also great colour, is it mora metallic? I had an e36 touring exactly the same colour.

Fitment seems good, rear looks close, I’m not sure how it’s going to be with an M3 rear end. The track will be wider fingers crossed it will be just about right.

I’m not sure on the colour, eventually it will probably be going standard BMW motorsport white, I think it’s called alpine white?

[Brosefer]

E63eeeeee... said:

Love an E46, so I'm in for this. Any special reason you've gone for the 2.5 over the 3.0, or just availability?

Are you aware of the 330Ci track car thread on here? Might be some crossover. If you're not I'll see if I can track it down.

Most of the categories the car will be running in will be power to weight ratio based so the capacity of the engine isn’t really important.

In its early life (who knows how long) I’ll only be looking to run 200 ish Hp and I think the 2.5 will be able do this. Plus at the moment they are basically free, I think I have 3 of them already. Plus I’m hoping they don’t suffer from the same harmonic issues of the 330’s

Indeed I am aware and there is a lot of cross over! I’ve been in contact with Tom and hoping he can make a few duplicates of the parts he has made for his.

Basically the plan is to run a completely stock bare block, with m50 inlet, nice CAI set up, and some nice headers, anything bolt on that can increase reliability, probably a baffled/gated sump.

Hopefully around 200 maybe a touch over.

I’m going for a relatively beefy transmission and rear end so that the chassis is comfortable to take double the power in the future. I’d rather have the increased reliability and weight during the early phases of the cars life and not have to change anything once the cars built if we go for a different engine setup.

I’ll probably be hating myself for this when we are driving around in a e46 that’s 300kg over where we could have been if I was aiming for a competitive car at a lower power to weight ratio!

[Brosefer]

The next purchase for the car is some s52 exhaust manifolds, years of being at drift tracks hearing the drone of various BMW’s has made me a little paranoid of how I want this car to sound.









The performance gain of this mated to a well designed exhaust maybe a few hp, and allow us to get the most out of the stock block but in reality I want this car to be great and how it sounds is important to me so hopefully these will help in both departments.

Finally a very wet trip to British GT at the weekend for some inspiration….



Is it to late to build a GT based car instead 😅

[Brosefer]

Next up is to start to look at the gearbox conversion, I decided to opt for a full pmc adapter set up.



Even though it is technically possible to have done a m54 to 8hp45 without one I decided to go for a conversion plate for a number of reasons.

Firstly it means if I ever changed the engine in the future I would only have to change the conversion plate. Everything else would still be the correct length/fit

Secondly it ment I could go for the newer 8hp50z

The job I was dreading the most was stripping the gearbox down, removing the mectronics and valve body and modifying the TCU.



This is done by removing the original tcu and soldering in a pcb to jump the connectors, since doing this I have found out that this method seems to be problematic so we will have to see how it goes.








With all the bits purchased for the swap it was basically a case of just putting it all up and seeing how we got on.





Firstly a E46 M3 rear end was bolted onto the car, things to note hear, it was substantially heavier then the 325i subframe, more then I probably accounted for, I’m really hoping that the rotating mass is not to great but either way this is a penalty I’m willing to take at the moment for reliability and future proof. I might be eating my words when the car is sluggish and hard to get the weight down. However at least the weight is low down.





Then to fitting the box, after multiple hours of fiddling and fettling the box was finally on, there’s a few bits that need to be done before we can give it a test, I need to sort a cooler out for the gearbox. We will need to fabricate a mount, the m3 propshaft will need to be shortened and something done with the center bearing offset rearward.




Plenty of things to put on the list for next time!

[TheDoggingFather]

The E46 is still the best looking 3er IMHO, looking forward to seeing how this turns out.