Wow that is some achievement to arrange all of that which will likely become regular event including the help received from the BMW dealership.
Although on a less grand scale I can appreciate how much time and effort you must have put into making this a reality after doing our event the last 4 years.
You should be really proud of you effort. Also great pictures and video.
Tony.
Thx a lot. Would be awsome to arrange something together with this forum as well some time in the future. Europe is not that big and we like to drive our little cars!
Great effort
Really happy for you that you had a good turn out and that the BMW dealership joined in.
Hope it grows for next year!
Thx! We're aiming for 50 cars next year!
Word can only spread from this so hopefully you’ll be bigger next year.
Thx!
Congratulations
@fxslin, what a great turnout for your cruise. Well done.
Thx!
It was good fun and I'll look forward to next years Norwegian Zedfest. Is also important to mention that some of the members helped me out a lot and made everything easier. So this was really a result of enthusiasts working together.
Anyway after the ZedFest, I spent most of me spare time (read: allowed time to use on cars). To upgrade and work on my Hellrat and to track it.
Next upgrade was a new set of rims OEM style 154, that I managed to get for 30€. I had a search for these active on norwegian finn.no (ebay), as they are really light weight and the shape would clear the Z4 brakes in front. They weight only 7.6kg each, while an avg. OEM rims is about -+10kg.
I slapped on new Federal 595 RS-R on them and hoped that I would get more grip on next trackday!
Then next trackday came up...
To be honest I needed about half of the trackday to get use to the tires. No doubt that car was a bit faster and handled better with lighter wheel setup. But I wasn't able to figure out the grip limits on these new tires, however after some time I sorted it out. So then I managed to drive down my best time with 2.85 seconds with identical setup as last trackday, except for the lighter wheels and better tires.
Good fun driving these Zeds on the track...
In these period I also managed to sort out some stickers and coffee mugs for the Facebook group.
If you see a Norwegian registered Zed, look for this sticker
Then after a few nice weeks enjoying the Hellrat on the trackdays and the ///M on the roads with the great summer we had this year.
Then things suddenly happened fast....
All this trackday driving, started to inspire me to build a more hardcore dedicated trackday/licensed race car to drive in what we call BMW cup (low level amateur league, driving just for fun but cars need to have racing license). I initially planned to rebuild the Hellrat for this purpose, but I met some hurdles in the Norwegian rules for rebuilding the cars. Making it difficult to keep the license plates and have a street legal licensed car.
And using my stock Z3M for this project was out of question, that car will stay OEM!
I wanted to get a nice and clean platform to build this track car on and this time I wanted to have widebody 2.8 (M52B28). So I searched the marked for a good car, however nothing turned up in Norway for over 1 month. 2.8 widebody is really rare in Norway, more rare than ie. the Z3M. So I had to start look in Europe and after a few weeks I managed to find one in Sweden to a very decent price.
So after a few rounds on the phone/email with seller, where the seller guaranteed med that the car was in pristine condition. A friend and my self set out for a long road trip to Sweden.
Where we met the seller and after some small talk introducing our self, he said "wanna see the car?"
I had seen pictures of the car before, but when I saw the car in real life. I really could confirm that the seller was right, the car looked pristine and very well cared for. So after about 60 minutes of inspection and test driving, me and my friend (who also has a Zed) could conclude that we could not find anything to complain about on this car except for the classic rocking seats and some minor stone chips at the sills.
So after a few rounds with the seller we agreed on a fair price for both parties and I could drive the car back to Norway ( I managed to get the approx 25-30% cheaper than Norwegian prices ).
In end I ended up with a 97 widebody 2.8 with AC and Sports seats, very rare combo here in Norway. With everything on the car in good and working condition.
Then what about the Hellrat? Now I suddenly had three Zeds....
I ended stripping of the roll bars, wheels and the hardtop parts of the car and listed the Hellrat on facebook and Norwegian car sales pages.
It took only 2 days to sell the car. The buyer was a member of the BMW Z Norway group and he had been reading my Norwegian thread about the car. And wanted to have a big project and keen on continuing the work I had started on. We agreed on a fair price and the Hellrat will stay in the Z community with a enthusiast owner (he has done a lot of work already on the car, so that car will get a good life).
To be honest I was a bit sad when the buyer picked up the car.... The Hellrat was low budget car, but it had given me a lot of fun both winter tracking and summer tracking. A good car with small engine, providing a lot of driving pleasure!
In the next following days I managed to sort out the Norwegian license plate (is a bit work with importing a car and make sure that source country also get the correct papers work).
Local authorities inspecting the car and confirming the VIN numbers etc...
A couple hours later the car had Norwegian plates and Norwegian insurance, time start modifying the car
Next trackday was coming fast. My plan was to just drive the car as it was out the season. But there where a few things I wanted to have in place before next trackday.
First task - Install the roll bars I took of the Hellrat.
From this:
Via this:
To this:
Second task - Install a set of coil overs to stiffen up the car a bit.
The OEM suspension was still in on and working OK for street driving. But on track that would not hold up. I had a set of FK Motorsports coilovers from a Z3M Coupe laying around, that I wanted to try on the car. I was 99% sure that it would fit, even tough there are few difference betweeen regular Z3 and Z3M platform.
Inspection and cleaning of the coil overs:
Then we went from this:
To this:
And the car got lower and much stiffer, before and after image:
Third task - fix the rocking seats.
I was literally flying around in the car when driving spirited, the seat bushes was non existent..
To be continued....
