Was down at Goodwood Circuit this weekend with the Zed Owners group for the German Carfest on Saturday. Had a blast and managed to get my car on the track in the morning until I ran low on fuel. Its amazing how fast it will burn fuel at full chat for extended periods.
This was the first time I have really been able to try out the new engine. The car itself ran without fault. It is extremely fast and could easily keep up with the nicer newer cars.
There is no shortage of power and the starts involved a lot of wheel spin. I am not sure if the front straight isn’t a little loose since every time I came out of the chicane and got along side the pits it would spin the rear in third. Every where else on the track you could just ease into the throttle and it would go.
Handling and cornered extremely well. It only stepped the back out once when I messed up a hard left into a downhill section. I am running 245 fronts and 295 rears with BC coilovers. Only change I made was stiffening up the rear dampers 5 clicks. Its noticeably stiffer and a bit more then I want on the road but was an improvement on the track. The fronts showed the wear from the high speed corners and I may look at adding a few degrees of additional camber into the front.
Absolutely no complaints about the engine or turbo set up. Its spot on and power delivery was really controllable compared to the last engine. Temperture and oil pressure never fluctuated.
Only thing I would like to improve is the brakes. They worked but I started getting some disc vibration in the front when they were really hot. There was no brake fade or issues just not as crisp as I wanted when pushed really hard. Coming down the back of Goodwood the car was doing between 130 and 140 and it’s a bit unnerving looking at a right hand corner. I have 330i fronts with Brembo slotted discs 328i vented discs and callipers on the rear with EBC yellow stuff pads all around. Cant fault the set up but they can be better. Looking at some Porche 996 callipers with M3 front discs and 330i rear discs. Only thing is the handbrake on the E46 is larger then the Z3 so have to figure that out. May end up welding some custom shoes since they are 30mm larger in diameter. That’s for the future and requires more thinking.
This winters project will start shortly. Rebuilding the rear diff and stiffening the boot floor. I have additional clutch packs for the LSD and a twin ear diff cover to install. I have limped the diff floor along for far to long as there were more fun things to do.
