Well since getting the car back from Butler Motorsports (they fitted the cage/painted the interior) its been going slowly.
The reasons for the go slow are mainly the weather, as the car is worked on outside its not good working on it when it’s raining and for the time being the weather hear is lets just say moist. So how is it actually progressing. The original plan was to run the m52 engine from the old race car, but we did say if that got sold then we would go up to class A and use either a s54 or a s65 engine.
Research has been done into the s65 option and although it will fit they have reported issues with main bearings under extreme use, so as we don’t really feel like changing the engine often, and the way to prevent this issue is to dry sump the engine (not allowed by a lot of club motorsport rules) the other option of the s54 has to be considered.
The s54 engine in the second hand market starts at around £1500 for a eBay special, with most hovering around £2500 on eBay, the higher end, and rarer engine is the s54 from the csl, that has modifications to the cams, valves, intake manifold and probably a couple of other mods. Now you will see these listed for nearly double the standard engine, are the worth the premium, that’s a question we need to answer. With any of these engines the sensible thing to do is replace the main bearings and use arp rod bolts, not that there is an issue, but for piece of mind.
As for the shell, the dashboard is in, as well as the wiper motor, we have a collection of under trays that we need to note what we have, what’s broken, and what’s missing, this will enable us to get a smoother floor (aerodynamics etc).
The rear race suspension is on, we have also a pair of csl front king pins (different to std m3) and will probably use these when we put the front suspension on. There are a couple of metal brackets etc that we will be looking at getting blasted/powder coated so it all looks nice underneath.