E30 M3 Brakes

James, it's pretty simple to fit. You have to remove the front bumper and remove the fogs. The good thing is that the ducts can use the same mountings as the fogs. You will need to trim the ducts that come from Bimmerworld, I have templates for these that I made when I did mine (I can do copies for anyone who needs them). You also have to cut a hole in the plastic covers that are found on the inside of the wheelarches adjacent to the sump. These let the hoses through. Repalcing the backing plates is very straightforward, 10 minutes with the tin snips sees the old backing plates off. That's it really. If you want to have covers for the ducts to stop birds, small children etc getting stuck in them for daily use I have a wizard and very DTM "Stylie" solution.

Oh, and yes your right, they do work. Probably too well for really cold days. Depending on your pad and ambient temp. running them partly blanked off can be necessary.

Quote: Originally posted by Houlbt on 04-June-2003

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excellent site Martin.... good find.

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 Glad to be of service, there's some great stuff on there

excellent site Martin.... good find.

The reason the track guys like 15" firstly the tyres are cheaper, but the main reason I think is that  lighter is better.

Your car has to move mass in order to go. The more mass the more HP it takes. Another problem is where this mass is. With a bigger rim it moves the mass out more this needs more HP to get it moving.

 

Think of a weight of a piece of rope. Let say you a 1 lb weight in a  1 foot piece of rope and swing it around your head, now put the same weight on a 3 ft piece of rope and it will take much more effort to swing the rope. Exactly the same principal with wheels, the further out the weight the harder it is to get it moving, hense slower acceleration.

I have been following this thread with some interest as I have shortly to replace mine (pads & disks) I was going to continue with the mintex fast road pads as they have suited my driving up till now (no  track use though - life always manages to get in the way... ) but I was going to go for grooved disks (G88's due to board members experience).

Questions I have are: is it worth getting grooved disks on the rear aswell?

and why are 15" rims favoured? I had noticed that all track prep'd cars tend to run them and again people here seem to prefer them, but I wondered why, as I would have thought that a lower sidewall (as on a 16") would provide less tyre deformation on turn-in etc.  Or have I missed something?

Any answers would be welcome.

Thanks.

Have you checked Gustave's site Tom? There's plenty of great info

http://e30m3performance.com/index.html

 

TMS do a 4 pot caliper set up that will fit under 15" I believe. They're suppose to be pretty good.

on the subject of brakes, dave gamble has just fitted some very nice 6 pot hi-spec brakes that came in i think at around £1000 not fitted, his car is up at bexleys for a few days i think while they get his 2 litre race engine going, should be interesting to see this car go.

Tom,I have a copy if you want to borrow it.

   Jon

Tom, if you like all that stuff. The book "How to make your car handle" by Fred Puhn is a good read. The technical sections about roll centres, unsprung weight etc. help you understand why certain cars work better than others ie. double wishbone v mcpherson strut.

Roops

Well it was following our curry house post Brands discussion on suspension that I decided the next job on my car will not be engine based (read Carbon Airbox & Motec or equivalent) but will in fact be Leda/Camber plates.

I recognise that I'm nowhere close to using the power I already (235) have effectively with my current setup...

Increasing track experience will make the biggest difference to my times though methinks.

I'm not sure how much if any difference unsprung weight makes on cars at thislevel, but I understood that lower unsprung weight effectively improved the time (due to momentum) in which the shocks and thus keep the tyres incontact with the road more of the time (huge over-simplification by me I suspect) - call me sad but I find all this stuff quite interesting!

Tom-H