As most of you are aware I had the somewhat stupid theory of doing some motor-racing this year, it all started with a trip to North Weald with some friends David and Jo for some driver training in our lotii. Our instructor mentioned the Seloc BMW Challenge still had spaces and the rest as they say is history. The SELOC BMW Challenge started as a gathering of like-minded Lotus drivers (Seloc is a lotus owners club) who wanted to do some enjoyable racing without spending the large chunks of cash involved in racing their pride and joy Lotii. The series has been specifically designed to be as budget racing as possible, all cars are BMW E30 318s or 320's (the early boxy shape ones), however these are properly race-prepared cars with full rollcages, fire-precautions and race-suspension this isn't banger racing despite the cars being around 15 years old.
To keep the costs down modifications are restricted to suspension, brakes and air intakes only so we'll be running on standard tyres with standard unmodified engines. With a field of 20 BMWs, a small racetrack (Lydden airfield in Kent for most races), 90% of drivers racing for the first time and generally similar cars its going to be close and interesting racing from the first flag. We're also hoping to fit in 'guest' races at Silverstone and Brands Hatch to be confirmed later.
After purchasing an old BMW 320 back in December last year Phil (my brother) and myself have been working like trojans on getting the car rebuilt and all the relevant racing gizmos installed. My bank balance has also been haemoraging cash as every piece we seem to remove off the car disintegrates in our hands. altohiway have provided substantial assistance in the form of sponsorship for this year and the car will be 'companied up' for the next season in altohiway livery.
The car lost its virginity on Monday with its first outing on a track (and the first time its been over about 20mph since I got it home in December) at Brands Hatch. A SELOC trackday was arranged and the BMWs given a slot to take the beasties out and give them a run.
After a 5am start and a long chug to Brands we prepped up the car to take out onto the track, pulling out of our garage to join the queue in the pitlane a nasty grinding sound was heard from the front near- side wheel "uh oh", here we go! It turns out that the new brake disks we'd installed seem to be a bit narrower than the originals for some reason which has meant the bolts for the wheels are going right through the disks and rubbing against the splash covers making a hell of a racket. After some head-scratching we notice that the security bolts on the wheels are slightly shorter so juggle some of those onto the front wheel and we're off.
The first outing lasts some 3 or 4 laps, on pulling away the car plumed smoke out the back like it was laying down a smoke-screen at the somme, however after a lap or two of firmly ignoring the problem it went away (probably just clearing the engine out a bit). After a few laps the tyres started to smell extremely bad and I was feeling a large amount of sagginess through corners (and I'm not talking my stomach!) so best to be safe and back into the pits for Phil to give it a poke. Pulling into the pits I remember that we had never set the suspension when we installed it (one of those 'we'll do it later jobs'), once I checked the suspension it was set rock-hard one side and soft-pillow the other hence the slight handling issues, the front tyres were also on back to front which didn't help much, oh, and we'd forgotten to tighten the bolts on the rollcage so they were hanging out the bottom of the car as well :)
The second session was much more promising I managed to keep the car out for the full 20 minutes on track and started to get an angle on how the car moved and reacted to my abuse and best of all kept it on the track slowly gaining speed. The last session of the day also kicked off well until I slightly overcooked the entry into the infamous Paddock bend forcing a bit of an anchors out the rear window braking experience and managing to pop off one of the air-cooling tubes from under the front wing. Feeling slightly dispirited I retired back to the pits only to find the grinding sound from the front wheels had re-appeared but this time it was the other wheel. As we were out of spare bolts and I didn't want to push my luck (with no tow-hook installed) we decided to call it a successful day and get home in time to deliver the land-rover and trailer we'd hired back to their rightful owners.
So far so good, the next outing for the car is Sat 27th March which will be the official test day for the Semsec series at Lydden Hill in Kent, that will be our last shakedown test for the car before the first race on Sat 3rd April.
A big thanks to all the people who've made things happen and helped out with what was a much bigger project than I first envisaged. Next time I get one of these stupid ideas someone gag me!
Special mentions to:
- altohiway for the sponsorship and giving me the time to get
involved with this
- David J for his work on the car livery design
- Lastly, but most importantly my brother Phil who has practically
lived at my house for the last 2 months working until all hours getting
the car ready. Without his help this project would never have got even
remotely finished for this season.
For more details on the series see the series website http://www.sitethree.buildsite.info/seloc/
Also, more details on lydden hill can be found at:- http://www.semsec.org.uk/
Breaking news: There's a rumour Silverstone may well be one of the early races, we're waiting for a confirmation of dates. As its my 'local' circuit (for the series) we'll be getting the barbi and the beers out and having a bit of a session over the weekend, more details to follow.
Cheers
Dave