My car is a 2008 M3 E93 (hard top convertible) and it has about 420+HP but weights close to 4,000lbs. While this car is clearly not track ready out of the box, it only takes a few thousand dollars to get you to the promise land, as I’ve learned. My ongoing dilemma has been that all I did was use racing brake fluid (Motul 600 or 660) and pop on racing pads before each event. The stock tires are Michelin Pilot Sport PS2 265/35/19 rear and 245/35/19 front, which are great tires but at 6,000 mi I’ve shredded the fronts and the rears have less traction than the reunion tour of New Kids on the Block. My goal is to be safe, go fast, finish track days without mechanical issues and save money without tearing up my street tires or my wallet. This all led me to the purchase and now I’ll outline a few reasons why I decided to do this.

Speed
Slicks provide better grip which allows me to go faster. Also I dropped close to 20lb of unsprung weight going from stock 19″ wheels to these super light 18′s which makes the car easier to stop, keeps the brakes cooler and lightens the load. 20lbs might not seems like much but it’s huge when it’s unsprung.

Brake Preservation
Dropping the weight on the wheels really does allow them to run cooler which will positively affect the entire braking system and will hopefully allow me to get through events without significant brake fade or other failure.

Tire Preservation
Since my stock tires are staggered (larger in rear, smaller in front) and the new ones are 275/35/18 square (same size all the way around) I can rotate the tires front to back, sided to side, corner to corner, flip them or whatever I need to do to extended the rubber life.

Money Preservation
While I had to drop $3,000 to buy everything, I can sell the wheels, spacers and lugs for pretty close to what I paid for them and I can even resell the tires if need be. So my actual cost when it’s all said and done will be far less than $3,000.

One issue is that since I am still relativity new to tracking my car, I’m learning in leaps and bounds as opposed to tiny increments. The events I frequent use different “run groups” which separate drivers by skill. Everyone starts in green, then blue, then yellow and after that you go red. After red you can probably be an instructor if you want to but I’m still trying to figure out why anyone would want to do that aside from the free track time in the instructor group. We are running at Texas World Speedway this weekend and I will be starting in the yellow group which is a step up for me but I have earned it by consistently driving faster than others in my run groups and by being safe, no spins and never had I gotten more than 90 degrees sideways. Which brings me to my next point that these tires are not very “audible”. In other words they are pretty quiet on the track so if you start to slide you don’t really get a warning, it just happens all of the sudden. The PS2′s scream like Richard Simmons at a George Michael concert. They let you know what’s going on and you can use that sound to make corrections. Slicks are not that friendly so when they let go (as I’ve heard) they just let go really quickly. So I’m a bit apprehensive as they also require a couple more laps for warm up. In fact I run (2) laps briskly and midway through the 3rd lap, lower the boom. At Eagles Canyon I got to run this new setup for a couple sessions and got sideways in a turn only to later lose all (4) wheels in another. Luckily I was able to reel it in quickly on both slides. Texas World Speedway is much faster so I will have less time to react but it also flows better so I’m not running 140mph to a hairpin turn and wailing on the brakes. On to the purchase and installation..

Tire Purchase:
BF Goodrich R1 275/35/18
Two words.. Tire Rack. They kick ass, heat cycled them for me, had them in stock and I got tire totes so I can transport them in the car without messing up the interior.

$1,048.00 – (4) tires
$      30.00 – Competition heat cycle all (4) tires
$      39.90 – (4) tire totes which are great BTW and highly recommended if you don’t have a trailer.
$      82.64 – Shipping to Dallas TX
$ 1,230.54 – Grand Total

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Wheel Purchase:
D-Force LTW5 Lightweight Forged Alloy Race Wheel 18×9
Bought these at Turner MotorSports which is a great place but they did muff the shipping. They quoted me an extra $100 for 2nd day and when they realized they under quoted me, rather than calling me to ask what I would like to do, they shipped them regular ground. This could have caused me to miss my Sat track day because if they did not arrive on Friday, I was screwed. We were lucky and they arrived at 1PM on Friday so I had time to get them balanced, installed, spacers tested and then uninstalled and put in the tire totes. They sent me a sweat shirt as a “sorry about that” gesture and I appreciated that. Decided to go with flat black since they looked nasty and I like it like that.

$1,159.80 – (4) wheels
$     89.95 – pair of 12.5mm spacers (front)
$     96.95 – pair of 18mm spacers (rear)
$    69.60 – (10) 75mm studs (12 x 1.5)
$    69.60 – (10) 90mm studs (12 x 1.5)
$    45.00 – (20) 17mm (12 x 1.5) open lugs
$      0.00 – (2) loctite 262 thread lockers
$  204.32 – Shipping
$1,735.22 – Grand Total

Here are the tires delivered to my office and the wheels delivered to Autoscope with the spacers and lugs..

These things obviously look great and the weight savings combined with added grip means they should absolutely kick ass at the track.

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Fast forward a couple weeks after I did Texas World Speedway, Nov 2009

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Got to run the entire weekend (4 sessions per day) on these new tires and wheels and as expected they made a huge difference. Had one spin coming off the front straight which caused me to slide at least (50) yards off the track into the grass backwards. Don’t really blame that on the tires because I has just passed a good friend and was going way too fast into that corner. The spin was going to happen one way or the other simply because I was way carrying too much speed into the turn and I’m apparently not good enough to convert a rotten corner entry into a blazing exit. On the bright side, my lap times were cut by about (13) seconds which for me is HUGE. I also ran more consistently and on (3) complete sessions, all of my laps were within a few seconds of one another. Best time for me around Texas World Speedway clockwise was 2:04 and my goal there next time is to get under 2:00 by a few seconds.

Here is the spin and BTW, this is after I passed a bunch of cars:

In closing, for anyone trying to figure out which tires, wheels and spacers to buy for an E92 or E93 M3, I can honestly say that I feel as though I made the right choice. It was cost effective, everything is very high quality, the tires are awesome, the wheels are light like you would not believe and the results are in the (13) seconds I shaved off my lap times.

Side note:
I switched to Castrol SRF brake fluid for this last track day at Texas World Speedway and completed the entire weekend without any brake issues. Highly recommended over motul (which is still great stuff).

Till next time ~ John

The Solution: Over $800 Worth of Stuff
After dropping $850 on racing pads and fluid over at Autoscope came the moment of truth

The Result: Continued Brake Fade
I expected to get a least a full weekend out of the car but I guess it was too hot, the car is too heavy, my driving style too aggressive and the brakes are simply not good enough. Got fade right away and I was done for the weekend. The event is a 2 day, 4 session per day event and I got the first 2 sessions of day 1 and was finished.

The Conspiracy: I was Not Alone
Also invited a friend who warped his rotors and he has an 08 BMW M3 E92 so I’m starting to see a pattern forming. Oh yea, another friend with an 08, M3 E92 blew out his front rotors too. Now you can call me crazy for taking that car to the track on such a hot day or say that maybe I’m a poor driver (which I’m not) OR maybe this car is simply not ready for the track right off the assembly line.

The Rub: May I present.. Exhibit A:

BMW M3 2008 – 2009 Sales Brochure

This is a stripped down version of the 2008-2009 M3 sales brochure (I removed pages that made no reference to the track to reduce the file size although almost every photo in the brochure was of the car on a race track) and it makes reference after steamy reference to the track capabilities of this car. If they are going to entice you with this stuff then they need to back it up by not balking when your rotors warp after only 40 minutes of track time. In all fairness they did replace my front rotors and pads a month ago after Texas World Speedway but it felt like a favor rather than an obligation. So this time I went ahead and made some minor upgrades to prolong the life of the brakes and save BMW from having to replace my brakes every 3  months. It was NOT worth it and I’m not comfortable driving this car on the track now unless it’s much cooler out.

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Update #1: Got my stock pads put back on today and all of the brake pad sensors were melted (sigh)

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Update #2: I already forgot my rule about no whining without coughing up 3 solutions to the problem, so here goes.

1. Cooling ducts for the brakes (front and rear)
Those massive ducts you see on the front bumper do nothing for the brakes. Drivers side goes to air intake, center is for radiator and the passenger side has a small finned radiator but I can’t tell for what. What I can tell you is that there are no direct or indirect cooling ducts moving air to the brakes (front or rear) and all four wheel wells are blanked off.

2. 4-piston calipers
Porsche has 4 piston, Corvette has 6 piston front and rear, even the Nissan Z has 4 piston calipers so shame on you BMW. Your literature touts track this and track that, but the car comes up short. (but I still love it)

3. Provide some factory options for better performance and durability
This would be tough but how cool would it be to get track worthy brakes, maybe a few other options to reduce weight and increase performance from the factory. This is tough because BMW would essentially be endorsing aggressive driving but it would sure be nice to roll some of that stuff into payment rather than having to spend thousands out of pocket for mods (that might void warranty) just to make it track ready.

4. Bonus Solution
Stop blitching (bitching via my blog) and start spending more money on a better brake kit.  Already bought new BF Goodrich R1 tires (racing slicks, 275/35/18 all the way around) and D-Force 18″ forged wheels (17.8 lbs each) so I am running faster already and really need a brake upgrade to keep getting better. (See below)

All this stuff having been said I still love the car, it handles like a dream, good weight balance and the low end torque is stunning. My complaint is the brakes, lack of cooling ducts and (with the exception of the rotors) lack of heavy duty stopping hardware.