WOT-Tech

Hello,

My name is John and a friend of mine decided he wanted for my small performance shop to turn his e430 into an endurance race car. We plan on competing in Chumpcar Daytona, FL in May 2015. This will be our 4th Chumpcar build, first MB as the other three were BMW's.

So far the car has been stripped and caged, all glass removed except windshield, all unnecessary wiring removed (miles of it!), stock exhaust replaced with just dual straight pipes and twin resonators.

We are currently down to 2880lbs with very little fuel in the tank, should be an interesting track car.

Might have some questions, but future plans include using a PCM from another vehicle (or cheap aftermarket) and somehow getting a manual transmission in there - but that may not be in time for the May race.

We will be using this car only for Daytona as it's a high hp track. We have an e36 that was retired from Chumpcar and is becoming a GTS3/T1 road racing car, but the e30 (1989 325i) remains our primary car for it's agility and good fuel mileage.

Looking forward to conversing with you folks!

R2dMax

Sounds interesting. Got pics of any of them?

WOT-Tech

Sure.

W210Scot

I'm definitely gonna follow this thread! Having worked a few 24 Hours of LeMons races as a turn worker, I've become a big fan of crapcan racing.

Come to think of it, the first LeMons race I worked had an S600 coupe in the field. They didn't have a very good weekend, although they DID get a huge number of penalty laps assessed.

WOT-Tech

We have no idea how many laps we will get for it. The e36 was penalized 15 laps, the e30, none.

Some more pics. Lots to do still. Have to fabricate some sort of control/switch panel, mount seat/belts, fire suppression, and a few more braces on the cage.









Scored some super cheap wheels from an older lady at the tire store. She was trying to sell them to the store. Wrapped them in some Dunlop DZ2's (tires have to have a 180 or higher tread wear).





My technician playing under all the wires we eliminated.

W210Scot

I'll guess probably about as many as the E36, if not more. Chumpcar doesn't have this particular model listed in their rules.

The beauty of crapcan endurance racing is you get to see a lot of cars there that no sane individual would race otherwise.

cm60k

Waaaaaw, that's great challenge John,,

Thankss for sharing..

ZAYED,,

WOT-Tech

The e36 is penalized because they are naturally fast on the track. They value it at $500 and we had Lexan windows along with solid bushings, so the car was valued higher. Anything over 7hr race and they dock 1.5 laps per $10 over $500. There was a C3 Corvette at Daytona this year and Chump valued it at $500, so hopefully they will do the same for the MB. We will be using Lexan in it and they count the square footage of the side windows and multiply by $3, back window is free if you do all three.



Thanks!

WOT-Tech

I have been reading that these cars are speed limited to 135mph, can anyone confirm? We will want to remove this as Daytona is long enough to reach terminal speed. We didn't realize there was a speed limiter on the e36, so we were stuck floating the throttle most of the way around the NASCAR banking.

W210Scot

Looks like it's actually limited to 130mph, per this thread:

https://mbworld.org/forums/e-class-w...max-speed.html

Which incidentally is the same top speed as a W210 E320 (also electronically limited). I guess the E430 just gets there sooner.

WOT-Tech

Thanks Scott. Same threads.

210 views on this thread!!!!!!! Some coincidences are fun o.0

WOT-Tech

Got a few more things done. Polycarbonate windows in the rear, sprayed the cage with some rattle can and a temporary seat so we can test the car at Palm Beach International Raceway (PBIR) this weekend. Eventually a containment seat will go in and a real interior spray, but this is good enough for a test day. We will also be testing the #322 e30 since it got a completely new fuel system since the race last Sept at Sebring where we had issues with old gas caked on the sides of the take washing into the filter and injectors. Car must have sat somewhere for a long time. The MB won;t have that issue as it was a daily driver at the time when it was stripped.

WOT-Tech

This car handles and brakes surprisingly well! Street brake pads, even. Really strange driving an automatic on the track, will take some getting used to. Got a video of one of our buddies taking it for a joy ride.

DamianSicks

Holy **** that looks like fun. I didnt think this model was great in the handling department but it seems to be composing itself well, is the weight reduction responsible for better handling maybe? I heard (dont take my word on this because I heard it 2nd hand) that the Chrysler 300C or Dodge Charger uses the same chassis as this benz model. If thats the case then maybe you can find some handling mods that would fit.

Do you know of any type of racing in the NY/NJ area that would allow me to use a 80's-90's w124 E class?

WOT-Tech

Not sure if you will be racing with a bunch of them, but most organizations will let you race just about anything you would like. We race with NASA, the 210 would fit in the German Touring Series class (GTS).

WOT-Tech

Just got home from Road Atlanta. The e30 ran great, but one of the fuel pumps died and we had to fuel twice as often as we should have - it has a saddle tank under the passenger seat that goes over the drive shaft. We are required to change drivers every two hours, so we would normally fuel then, instead we had to fuel about every hour. Finished 45th of 93 cars, and had a best lap of 1:52 - not bad considering the car is a Chumpcar on stock-ish suspension and 205 tires.

Anyways, Daytona will come up fast, so we pulled Das Benz out to dust it off and finish up the safety items needed to be race legal. Someone sprayed a parked truck in our shop parking lot with graffiti, thought it was a good photo op.

E430 Merc

Hi John. Have just found your thread and recently signed into MB forum.
Just last year i caged an E430 to do the annual Targa NZ Rally (2014 , 800km special stages on sealed, closed, public roads and approx 1800km touring). Have also done some curcuit racing since then also. Targa cars need to be road legal so didnt quite strip out to the same extent as your project. We are still at 1750 Kg, caged up. I will be interested in how you get on with your chumpcar, Daytona racing.
Will try and figure out how to attach some pics. Follow this thread to see some thumbnail pics of the car on Targa. Look for..... my selection 6 .... on the top toolbar...

http://www.proshotz.com/?q=targa%20south%20722

Cheers Mike

E430 Merc

SerbNerd

You should bring this to our private track day in MI :p you know, test and tune

Cars looking great! Keep it up and MOAR pics

E430 Merc

I would love to come to your private track day...only problem is i live in New Zealand.

enrikerace

Ive been racing cars since i was 14. I own a w210 and allways thought it was a good plataform for a racecar. Maybe thats why in DTM once they races the CLK00 (kidding).

Ive taken my car to some track days and its allways one of the fastest cars on track.

Ive been working in Karting teams, Nascar Mexico, and rally teams. I highly reccomend you to buld a trunk, hood and rear doors out of fiberglass. Also try to make a pair of brake cooling ducts for the front brakes cause they fatigue too fast. Try adapting a bigger tranx radiator if you are not running with an standard gearbox.

About the speed limiter you can buy a ECU tune for 300USD or less that eliminates that and gives you more HP.

Another tip could be trying to eliminate from passengers side the right headlight circle in order to place a Cold Air intake...

Hope you win the race!

enrikerace

My bad, i forgot the tranx radiator is inside the water one, so, maybe an extra one should help.

WOT-Tech

The car did not finish the 14hrs. A few hours into the race the injector harness shorted at the firewall. Got that remedied and the car ran good except the fact that when turning off the main battery cut off, the car would "limp" the first 30mins until the ECU reset.

10hrs in the differential overheated the fluid, spit it all out the vent and eventually got so hot it melted the rubber mounts - eventually failing and the car no longer moves under it's own power. Will get pics later when the car comes back to the shop.

Few things to note:

We made a surge tank, cured the horrible fuel starvation in the corners once the tank was at 5/8's. The automatic HAS to go. Too difficult to drive fast, even when manually shifting it. The ECU speed limited the car to 130mph, it was capable of going much faster.

On a side note: The owner for Renntech was there racing another car. He said he has a limited slip that bolts in, so we will be changing that. He also said he could remove the speed limiter and raise the rev limiter (they want a lot of $$ to do it), but we have yet to decide if we are going to do an engine swap to make a manual conversion easier, or try to use a ZF BMW gearbox and make-shift clutch setup.

We couldn't find race pads for the single piston calipers, so we swapped in e55 calipers, rotors and used Hawk DTC 70 racing pads. They barely wore in the 10 or so hours, but the front is now too heavily biased - planning on a proportioning valve.

You can see professional pics here from AWOL Photo:

http://www.awolphoto.smugmug.com/key...9019&k=JMS3s8N

As you can see, there's new dents in the car. We had a test day at Sebring with NASA and one of the drivers ended up tangling with an e46m3. Bent the lower control arm, inner fender, fender and both left side doors. It definitely looks like a crap-can now!

They classified the car as EC (exceptional class) as the e430 is not on the list of approved cars (but the e320 is??).

WOT-Tech

We converted the A/C condenser into a transmission cooler. The owner of Renntech said it's too big and the transmission would be running too cool, but we don't plan on keeping it auto for long. The next race is in September at Sebring and we didn't plan on bringing the Benz, but we picked up a few more drivers on our team, so we will most likely bring the BMW e30 and the W210 ("Daz Benz").

E430 Merc

Thanks for the great update. Interesting that you had # 22..as I was also randomly given #22 in class7 ( hence #722) of the Targa Rally. Google.... 'Mercedes 722 Sterling Moss' for a heads up on what he achieved in his Silver SLR 300 Merc #722.
I am aiming for doing an endurance race series ( 1 or 3 Hour races) in October. I took out AC Condenser to help with better air flow through new standard Trans and water radiator and have had no probs with over heating...interesting about the diff though.
I installed D2 brakes...350mm rotors with 6 pot front and 4 pot rear .. to make the big girl pull up...running on "Pagid" endurance pads....and cant speak highly enough of them for their wear to date. I also had an "off road " excursion on the Targa and gave the left side a good whack also. My wife has a blue E430 so we swapped the 2 left doors to finish the Targa Rally.. will post some pics of damage. Cheers Mike