The 318is

[Byron]

I'm on 16's and my wheel to fender gap is less than his, although he is running smaller tires. 20cm works great though, any idea how much it would be to ship it from your little pile of sand to over here?

[Zic]

its exactly 20cm's. that white one is on 16's and bags, maybe thats why it seems so low?

[Byron]

20cm, equals 7,8inches or there about.

20cm exactly? I could totally fit 20cm, but going off this guys car it looks like it's more than that?

How many times are you going to break your pan on the way down to SoWo? I feel like we should allocate time for that.

Lol I should be good with the reinforcements. I have actually never broken a pan before knock on wood

can't wait to see this in person. Are you going to be at the limbo contest on Friday? you'd prolly be pretty competitive with it.

Probably won't get there till late on Friday, what time is it? I'm sure there will probably be a miata there that will put me to shame though haha.

Car looks great man, Just finish it off with a nice I lip and be done.

I have one but my valence is too bent to put it on. I'm probably going to run a duckbill again, I like how easily they bend.

Lol. I feel the same way.

Car looks awesome though Byron. I can't wait to see it on the SoWo cruise.

I'm looking forward to this cruise so much haha, and thanks!

You win for lowest static e30. That is nuts, how do you drive like that?

It's actually not that bad to drive. For how low it is it only really hits on the big stuff.

[88SuperEtaBD]

You win for lowest static e30. That is nuts, how do you drive like that?

[andybob]

How many times are you going to break your pan on the way down to SoWo? I feel like we should allocate time for that.

Lol. I feel the same way.

Car looks awesome though Byron. I can't wait to see it on the SoWo cruise.

[White325is]

Car looks great man, Just finish it off with a nice I lip and be done.

[HWY HNTR]

can't wait to see this in person. Are you going to be at the limbo contest on Friday? you'd prolly be pretty competitive with it.

[Kielan]

How many times are you going to break your pan on the way down to SoWo? I feel like we should allocate time for that.

[Byron]

20cm, equals 7,8inches or there about.

Thanks, I'll go measure how much room I have once it tops raining

It's builds like yours that has me shopping for an E30

Keep it up, awesome work so far

Haha, happy to be an inspiration




So back to the build



whoops.



But there is a method behind my madness. I scraped the bottom off my 95 M3 steering rack because I had to space it down to clear the oil pan. The rack is dead now and has like a quarter turn of freeplay in it lol, so I got an e46 M3 rack to install in its place. I don;t want this one to fall to the same fate though, so I'm modifying a new pan. The pan has a dumb step-down in it right where the rack fits in my car, so I cut it off and I'm having my old boss weld a flat piece in its place. This way I'll be able to tuck the rack about .5-.75" higher, getting it out of the way.



Thats only the upper half of the pan though. The lower part is steel and is the first part of my car to say hi to the road. My stock one is looking pretty beat up nowadays, Its about a half inch higher than it started because of dents and is pinched up so hard in one area that it actually cracked the metal. How it's still holding oil is beyond me. So I set out beefing up a new one. I got a sheet of quarter inch diamond plate and cut it to shape



And caught my foot on fire lol. But I got it cut out in one piece and was planning on bending it to fit the angles of the pan, but my friend didn't have a large enough tip for his torches so I couldn't get it hot enough to bend. So I cut it in 3 pieces and tacked them into place



No finished pictures because I haven't finished yet. I used up all the gas in his welder doing my struts. So I had to stop partway through. I didn't get any pictures of the strut modification this time, but I did the same thing that I did on the last page, just taking another 1 5/8" out. So 2 5/8" out of the struts total and the new 5" springs is my final setup. I had to leave it all the way up in order to get off of my friends lift, but I set it down the next morning. This is 3/4 of the way down on the adjusters in the front.



I backed off the 2x4's to test it out and felt it dragging so I pulled up closer to my garage to investigate. Found all this in a trail following the car



It was rubbing on the inner pinch weld inside of the front fender. So I broke out the BFH



(You can see my cracked strut tower here. It has since been repaired)

Then rolled the car back and checked and found this



So I raised it to halfway down. It turns out it was the tires holding it up, because this only raised it about a quarter inch. But that was enough and I was rolling. Went out for a drive and it works great. It hits everywhere lol.

Just for Joshypoo



The pan, steering rack, front subframe and exhaust are all exactly the same heights off the ground lol, it works out great.

So this is the final height. I would need to step down to a smaller tire to go any lower, but that would pretty much put me on the ground







Needless to say I'm pretty happy with the end result. All I have to do before the trip to SoWo Thursday is install the pans and steering rack, section my resonator and mount it higher, align it and make a smash bar to try to help out the pan.

[Raarasutra]

It's builds like yours that has me shopping for an E30

Keep it up, awesome work so far

[Zic]

20cm, equals 7,8inches or there about.

[Zic]

ill go measure right now

[Byron]

All will be answered with the build update Remember, you're looking into the future right now lol

[88SuperEtaBD]

Yeah man, stock e30's are ugly. Slammed=sex. I thought you meant a new is lip. Cuz I was like you only have like 2inches from valence to ground. But damn. Your car is great, keep up the good work. Can't wait to see the rf's. I wish my stances could be like yours. How long do ur tires last? Is this a daily for u? How is ur clearance? U running a skid plate or is ur pan not as low as m20s?

[Byron]

I'd love to lol. Think you could measure it for me? I need to know the height to see if I could even fit it.