continued from above
PLUMBING BRAKE LINES & ADDING BMW MK 60 ABS
Since this car came with no ABS unit we planned on adding one of our "Motorsport" ABS units and mounting it in the trunk. So all of the OEM brake hard lines were removed, along with the factory master cylinder, booster, flex lines - all of it.
This is NOT something I would recommend for the casual car builder - there is a LOT of work re-plumbing a complete brake system, replacing the pedals/master cylinder with aftermarket bits, and re-wiring for a trunk mounted ABS system. In other words:
Do not do this unless you are willing to spend 100 hours chasing a small amount of weight removal/redistribution.
We ordered a BMW Mark 60 ABS unit, stand-alone wiring harness, and sensor harnesses from Racing Harness Technologies. He supplied everything we needed to add this harness to any BMW. Ryan used some new tools we bought for this project (tubing straightener + more extensive flaring kit) to make all new hard lines for the entire car, front to back.
The ABS harness came with instructions and was relatively painless, just a time consuming install. The plumbing was a lot more work...
I am a fanatic for using proper bulkhead connectors when a hard or soft line passes through sheet metal, and this trunk mounted ABS hydraulic unit meant there were lots of bulkheads. The wiring harness has a bulkhead as well.
All new lines were routed for all 4 corners of the car, some through the cabin and some under the floor. The ones in the back seat went to the OBP hand brake added in the back of the stock center console. This has its own master cylinder and connects to one rear wheel.
There are hard then soft lines at all four corners of the suspension, then two hard lines to the twin OBP master cylinders for the brakes and one line (its own system) to the OBP clutch master. We used their "bolt-in" E46 pedal box, and it is a giant steaming pile of garbage. I will talk about the dozens of hours we spent replacing all of the leaky OBP master cylinders + re-positioning the OBP pedals because they were jammed right next to each other. Hot mess, don't buy their pedal box or anything they sell with a master cylinder.
WHAT'S NEXT?
That's enough for one round. That shows the work through May 2018, right before we moved from our last shop to our current one. Ryan performed all of the work on the M3 up until this point, and for about a month or so after we moved in and got settled.
Next time I will show the final work on the twin air filter boxes, then the hood ducting and splitter install, which is around the point where Evan takes over on fab work.
Tune in next time for another "catch up" post that hopefully gets us caught up to current time. We should have another track test under our belt in this car by then, and hopefully some proper lap times.
Thanks for reading,