Welcome!

This is the first post in our project Blog! Me (Aitor Molina Encabo) and my mate (Alden Markby) are preparing a car to go drifting! We are students at the University of Hertfordshire; we both study Automotive Engineering with Motorsports. Alden and I are both very passionate about cars, we love to talk about them work on them look at them and discuss them. We both wanted to do something that would give us practical experience, and would allow us to apply the things we learned in class to real life. It is also a great way to learn about how a car is put together and how all the different subsystems work. No matter how much theory one learns, getting your hands dirty and doing the work is just as valuable. The universities formula student program did not appeal to us, because we felt that we joined we would not have enough time to concentrate on our studies and do the work required for formula student to the demanded standard. So we decided that we would look for our own project. We wanted to do something that was slightly different and a bit more unique. We decided that we wanted to tune a car to go drifting, we decided on this because it is an emerging tuning scene and because 95% of the cars sold in the last 20 years are front wheel drive so we would have something a bit out of the ordinary. We got very lucky when we managed to acquire a red BMW E30 3 series touring for the princely sum of 150 pounds! This was acquired from A1 BMW Spares http://www.a1bmwspares.co.uk/ who are specialized in 3 series, they are really great and can help you get any parts for a good price. Currently we have already lowered the car and striped the interior; I will post pictures and diary entries, with tips and tricks on how to go about it, shortly. The only downside to our car was that it was a 318i Auto and that the paint was a little bad. We want to put a 12v M20 engine and manual box, which would give us 170hp. After that we want to supercharge or turbo charge the car, we still haven’t decided because this stage is still far away! In the end we are hoping for 200-220hp with lots of torque! We don’t want to go to mad on the boost because we do not have the money for forged pistons and con rods. we are hoping that with a lower compression head gasket we can get away with it. Body wise we are slowly fixing it, currently the lacquer on the hood is gone and on one of the wings its also shabby, however the car is free of rust(well except the drivers footwell which has a bit) and dings. In the end the car will have a black boot, black hood, black rims with a red lip, black rear view mirrors, a redone wing in red and general wash, Tcut and polish. Well apart from this there is also my car a Citroen AX GTi which we are giving a light restoration and tune up. Well that’s enough for the first post, we will keep you updated on both cars and will post many pics of the work and progress, I hope you enjoy our blog as much as we enjoy this project.

Cheers Aitor