lol yup. at that point though, it makes sense to get (or make) a dedicated track car.
My poor buddy with the DD S5 who bought an e36 M3 sedan (pictured in the motorsports seats cage thread) has had awful luck. He got into it for like $15-19k. Did the seats, cage, tires, cooling, subframe reinforce, and a bunch of other track prep work. Last time we went out his coolant hose kept falling off and he missed a bunch of sessions after his aftermarket radiator gave out. Then he gets home and finds out the block is cracked. $9000 for a new one refurbished from the junkyard.
honestly, 20k to 30k build a track car sounds about right.
As for prev maintenance, yup, lots of stuff to do when you’re beating on your car that hard at the circuit.
But therein lies the difference. Your buddy has a track car. And granted, so do you. However, for all the other guys who take their B8 S4 to the race track, they have a car that happens to see the track–not a track car. For the most part, ppl’s s4’s are in no way track prepped, and is likely not competitive when put into their own racing classes (unless one swaps out seats + puts in real suspension + spherical bearings in place of bushings etc etc as you are doing/have done). So in the end, you may be comparing a 30k build for a used car (ok, i’ll give you 40k even)…vs building a new car like an S4 for close to 90 
Not to mention, much of the track prep stuff that you can do on an e36, you cannot even do on an s4 without custom parts… 
For me, my car is a total compromise and i get that. I just get out there and have fun with what i got. it’s still a capable platform. But I know i get spanked by e36 track cars all day long 
I look at both the M3 and the S4 as integration platforms. There’s highly developed tuner markets for both and you can plug and play things onto these chassis models. There’s a point of diminishing returns where the car gets so old that things like the block cracking happens. Then you have to move up the value chain into the e46, or at this point the e90.
I realize I’m one of the first hobbyists to turn a B8 into a track car. But I also got 5 years of street comfort out of it. Now it’s just a hooligan on the street, lighting off the traction control every time I go over an expansion joint under full throttle.
Block doesn’t have to old to crack, and an old block doesn’t necessarily crack something caused it.
I don’t think anyone is buying a new S4 with the intention of making a dedicated track car. I think the more common scenario is that folks are buying S4’s as cars that can do it all, fall into tracking them, and then convince themselves that I’ve modded and invested enough to keep going. It sounds like that’s where West is at and I think I’m quickly getting there also. Our cars are quite capable, not ideal for the track, but capable and if they started as a good DD and track car combo, they might just make sense as a good still DD and pretty decent track car until a full track conversion can be made.
I have often considered starting anew with an e46 m3, new m3/m4, Porsche of some sort, or the forthcoming m2, but end up deciding that the efficient economic play is to continue investing in my S4. Each of us may see a different path here, and if cost was no object I would buy 2 of the new GT3 RS’s, one to track and one to sleep in at night, but that ain’t happening soon so why not rock our S4’s at the track in the meantime! And sure a fully track prepped m3 may, on occasion (or on multiple occasions), receive a pass, props to that driver and car. I still think the S4 is quite capable, quite fun, and quite competitive, even when it makes it to the tale end of its life as a dedicated track car.
And BTW, I think we’re actually all on the same page here. Tracking a somewhat newer car (on occasion) is bound to be less of a headache than tracking an older car with a mysterious history. Less headache, ease of modding, more modern engineering, less time related failures, more track time, all pluses right?
In the end I know we may all take different paths, and will all have a ton of fun doing so, but I do see some logic in this path too.
//OldSport I’d give you a +karma point if I could but my account is heavily restricted for being such a heretic.
It’s been surprisingly fun to be early in modding this B8 S4. There’s a lot of examples of guys who have gone further than I have with B7 cars. I have to say it’s a bit easier than modding an E90 328i from BMW because the bones are there - you have large wheels, a sports differential, a supercharger, etc. I really haven’t had to do anything twice, except the brakes and that’s because I was tried to do it a BBK cheaply as possible the first time.
The two things that make the B8 great for the track, in spite of the odds, are safety (quattro) and reliability. The consumables are well known quantities: tires and endurance pads every year; rotors every 2 years.
My remaining plans for the car are finite. I need to set the front swaybar to stiff and lower the car 15mm (which should push camber from -2.7 to -3). 034 has another spherical insert for the upper control arms which I already have. I want to do the front lip aero attachment and air split rear valence. That’s pretty much it, period.
A few years down the line I might give David @ Eurocode a call and see what his race motor builds are about. I’m going to guess it’s a $15k job all in for forged pistons and rods, titanium valves and springs, that build head he made for the 3.0TFSI, etc. The engine is not broken so I’m not going to “fix” it yet. I’d hate to trade something reliable for something that has maintenance headaches, or burns oil.
Now, that is a dedicated track car, sweet!
Re your prior post, thanks and agreed on all fronts. I’m very curious to hear more about the Eurocode “built” motors but also generally agree that if you’re at a reliable place and feel the power is decent then this may be a project for down the road. Does anyone have more info on these (it seems like they’ve built at least one)?
West, are the GT-R calipers slightly smaller than the GTs? They didn’t clear the inner barrel, lightly rubbed and left paint transfer with the 19" peelers, but your running 19s with no clearance issues?
https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3741/19222062591_84f8291b7c_b.jpg
It’s close but it doesn’t touch. I started with a 5mm spacer and my BBS wheels so I’m not certain if they’d clear the peelers.
On the Brembo GT kits, I think you can drop in their CCM-R carbon rotors. I’ll find out from my brakes guy. The rotors are 11.1 pounds in 380x34.
12 thousand dollar rotors…wtf :o
Yea I wonder what the cost of making ceramic rotors actually is these days.
I got a discounted quote for $14,900 for a “Complete Front CCM-R GT System”. They say the rotors will last 4000 track miles. I calculate I do about 970 miles a year on track.
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You must be one of the few guys who figure a gt-r brembo kit is “not good enough” lol. I’d understand if you were on stock brakes and were balling west west style on mods…but isn’t this move a little much? Just put it in a 997 gt3 fund…
It’s a contingency plan in case I use ceramic brakes on track and they change my life. The unsprung weight diet package would also include BBS FI-R in 19x9 @ 17.2 pounds. That’d drop 54 pounds by my count. Probably not worth it for $25k. Just comforting to know it is possible.
Going from your heavy"ish" flow formed bbs wheels to a lightweight forged option would have tremendous benefits IMO Plus, saving weight on a wheel will be more beneficial than the rotors. Hell, if you are really gonna dump money like that, might as well figure out how to pick up a set of CF wheels the GT350R is coming with from the factory. They are torture testing them in the conti challenge series, where I believe they won last weekend at mosport.
The moment of inertia I for a cylinder or circle has a second order dependency on radius. Since most of the wheel mass is on the barrel, you are getting a lot of rotational mass penalty for the I = m r^2 barrel of the wheel. The brake rotor will be closer to the rotation center and thus less penalty on I.
This is for the rotational physics, obviously unsprung mass reduction be the same no matter where you remove it for suspension dynamics (aside from maybe the suspension itself).
My impression is that most of the weight is trimmed out of the spokes. How much lighter is a forged barrel?
I am really only speculating about wheel mass distribution, but here is an article with some discussion, nothing to earth shattering http://www.superstreetonline.com/how-to/wheels-tires/modp-0906-performance-wheel-test/
[quote]But rotational inertia is affected not only by a wheel’s weight and shape, but more importantly how the weight is distributed throughout the wheel and its overall size. Two same-weight wheels could have vastly different amounts of rotational inertia if the weight or metal in the wheel was distributed differently. A wheel with a heavy hoop will have more rotational inertia than an identically heavy wheel whose weight is mostly in the hub.
Read more: http://www.superstreetonline.com/how-to/wheels-tires/modp-0906-performance-wheel-test/#ixzz3g6HMY06S
[/quote]