- 17
- USA
New to the forum but long time Gran Turismo fan (since GT4). My bro's and I have been working on this E36 project for a couple of years. Looking back it reminded me of a build-mod from GT. Here are a few pics and a little of the story (nickname SMo). Much more on the car's insta-page...
The project started in 2019 with a non-running '93 BMW 325is manual for $1500. The fuel system was gummed up from sitting too long and the brakes were completely siezed up. A couple $hundred later and we had a running car.
Phase-1 was suspension & brakes with widebody, aero and exhaust.
Phase-2 was major engine mods. The cams and crank came from an S52 M3. We added in a GT3076 turbo system, forged rods & pistons, and a twin-disk clutch. Sounds easy reading that last sentance...it was a ton of work and we blew up an engine block along the way. Max boost just over 20 psi but we usually run half that. Total parts for both phases were 10X the the original cost of the car but with DIY sweat and bloody knuckles, it was worth it.
GT7 Mod's aren't exactly as shown. GT7 doesn't allow turbochargers on the E46 M3 (why???). Luckily I won the Z4 racing motor so I could match the output of SMo at full boost.
We wanted to see how much faster the mod's were making the car so we set up a little-autocross course at an undisclosed location. The original car made a 21 second fastest lap. After the mods we lowered that time to high-17's. Those 3.2 seconds were about a 15% improvement (at low boost).
The cool thing was that this 15% improvement was almost exactly the same as the lap time improvement on the Gran Turismo build. I used an E46 M3 and dumbed it down to stock E36 specs for a baseline (Polyphony: PLEASE ADD THE E36 generation 3-SERIES BMW to GT7!).
The virtual GT-Build was about 15 seconds faster from a 97 second baseline just like the 15% IRL autocross run. This isn't the first time I've used Gran Turismo as a simulator.
GT is the real-deal. More sim than game. It's awesome to take our virtual SMo "E36" to race-tracks all over the world...saves a lot of $$$ on tires too!
The project started in 2019 with a non-running '93 BMW 325is manual for $1500. The fuel system was gummed up from sitting too long and the brakes were completely siezed up. A couple $hundred later and we had a running car.
Phase-1 was suspension & brakes with widebody, aero and exhaust.
Phase-2 was major engine mods. The cams and crank came from an S52 M3. We added in a GT3076 turbo system, forged rods & pistons, and a twin-disk clutch. Sounds easy reading that last sentance...it was a ton of work and we blew up an engine block along the way. Max boost just over 20 psi but we usually run half that. Total parts for both phases were 10X the the original cost of the car but with DIY sweat and bloody knuckles, it was worth it.
GT7 Mod's aren't exactly as shown. GT7 doesn't allow turbochargers on the E46 M3 (why???). Luckily I won the Z4 racing motor so I could match the output of SMo at full boost.
We wanted to see how much faster the mod's were making the car so we set up a little-autocross course at an undisclosed location. The original car made a 21 second fastest lap. After the mods we lowered that time to high-17's. Those 3.2 seconds were about a 15% improvement (at low boost).
The cool thing was that this 15% improvement was almost exactly the same as the lap time improvement on the Gran Turismo build. I used an E46 M3 and dumbed it down to stock E36 specs for a baseline (Polyphony: PLEASE ADD THE E36 generation 3-SERIES BMW to GT7!).
The virtual GT-Build was about 15 seconds faster from a 97 second baseline just like the 15% IRL autocross run. This isn't the first time I've used Gran Turismo as a simulator.
GT is the real-deal. More sim than game. It's awesome to take our virtual SMo "E36" to race-tracks all over the world...saves a lot of $$$ on tires too!
