Now the car is ready to have the cage built and then roll it to the painter. Wierd to see the car totally stripped, since I know I have to put it all back together again in few months. Good news is that there is no huge problems with the chassis, so no big rust sections etc.
Engine left the car behind today, so now car is basically just a bare shell, with some minor things still attached. Also the fuel tank was taken out to help build the cage in few weeks. We took the gear with the engine as single unit, so saved some work there. There is plenty of space when the radiator etc is removed. “Make” had a self made rig for the engine and then we used the warehouse lift-truck to raise the engine out. This was pretty easy was a simple two man job. I never though I would do something like this someday, but now after I did it with good help, it wasn’t so scary after all 
Decided to break the bank and do the chassis work right, as I have the car now stripped to bones. I have plans on building DTM style cage, with support to all the strut towers etc. When it’s done then have the whole car painted inside-out. This is somethat I don’t have to come back later and do again.
Do currently I’m studying about different types of cages and going to talk with the builder soon about the ideas.
Slowly stripping the interior of the M3. It’s pretty amazing how simple these older cars are, everything is clearly visible and you don’t need handbooks or manuals to start taking things apart – and keeping the parts intact.
Today the blower got ripped of from the inside. It’s starting to look quite empty in the cockpit, so now I can finally take rest of the sound deaning material of and clean up the look.
It’s a good idea to empty to blower with compressed air from the engine bay, before disconnecting the coolant lines from the actual blower/ac unit. I didn’t, but I don’t have carpets that would get messed up
This winter I plan to do alot. I have now a good place to build the car so I have to make most of it during this winter. I have the car on jack stands while I’m stripping it. There is also a lift available, but I cannot leave the car there for long periods. Idea is to change all the auxilary devices from the engine bay, do the interior and reinforce the suspension bits. Deadline is the beginning of May when the first trackdays start. Let’s see how the project goes
During the last trackday my car developed a problem, it pops out the 2nd and 4th gear when doing treshold braking on the track. I have a reason to believe it might be engine mounts, transmission mounts of the shifter linkage. Today I updated the transmission mount to E24 series, this trick was covered in Gustave’s site www.e30m3performance.com.
The time finally came and I was able to unlesh the car at Ahvenisto racetrack for the first time . Car felt solid and the feeling of driving it is just excellent. There is some understeer since I haven’t done anything the suspension setup yet. Can wait untill the next trackday again
Finally this task is over, what a job. Really like the results but wouldn’t probably do this again . So I broke the wheels apart, polished the lips and bolts and took the centers to painter. They are now powder coated with gold. Could wait to build them and have some rubber wrapped around em.
Here are the first pictures of the car. It’s diamond schwarz (metallic black), with black leather interior. It came with the standard 15″ wheels, but I also bought BMW OEM Style 5 (BBS 2-piece) wheels to go with the style. I plan on refurbishing these during the winter. The car has felt solid and there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong based on the short drives I’ve had.
Cars and photographs, two hobbies which I regularly combine to create something nice to look at.
