[M2M3M3]

Originally Posted by jacktli_g87

All good points, there's definitely risks to any restraint system.

I'm personally going to run mine with an extra substrap, as the quickfit system actually has a slot to add one:

https://www.schrothracing.com/item/sub-straps

Being 5'7" + variety of shoulder pass throughs on the podium seats, I feel relatively comfortable with the setup, but accept there are risks.

Rollbar will be in the future for this car, but hoping to keep most of the interior in the car until my new house is done at the end of the year so I have less things to move

yes, the podium has options for shoulder strap height...good.
it also has an opening for using sub-strap....good.

stock seats have neither...bad

[aerobod]

I don’t know about tracks in the US, but my local track here near Calgary (Rocky Mountain Motorsports) brought in a rule last year that a HANS device has to be used for any car where a 4, 5 or 6-point harness is used for track days. Also, if a passenger is authorized to be taken around the track, they have to have the same safety equipment as the driver.

[jacktli_g87]

Originally Posted by aerobod

I don’t know about tracks in the US, but my local track here near Calgary (Rocky Mountain Motorsports) brought in a rule last year that a HANS device has to be used for any car where a 4, 5 or 6-point harness is used for track days. Also, if a passenger is authorized to be taken around the track, they have to have the same safety equipment as the driver.

Yeah I purposefully went for the pro version of the quick fit to be able to use my HANS with it. Not sure how much it’s codified in rules here, but personally would never use a restraint system without it.

I think we have the same matching restraint rule though. This made me look for a seat that could take 3pt safely, which brought me to the podium. I don’t usually take passengers but in the case that I do, can just run the 3pts for now. Wouldn’t be pushing too hard on these laps anyways. Wanted to keep the backseats and backseat access for now, so keeping passenger side oem is my solution lol.

[NekoRacing]

Originally Posted by jacktli_g87

Have some goodies sitting in the garage!

Recaro Podium seats

I was actually hoping to get the gfrp ones to save some money, but apparently they got discontinued. The carbon ones felt a little too expensive, but these are super nice and can fit a seatbelt receptacle on the side for easier street use, and also my planned harness situation (more on that later).

I had also thought about the Tillett B10 seats, and actually initially placed an order for those. Ultimately I decided that they might be a little too street oriented, and might prompt me to upgrade later.

Attachment 3653652

To mount this, I have some VAC motorsports hardware coming. I got the bases, sliders, 6-pt mounting brackets, and went with the Recaro Podium FIA side mounts.

I'm debating right now between mounting the seat directly or using the slider. Being 5'7" and the steering wheel having a relatively high "lowest" setting, I feel like I might need to add the slider just to get a little more height.
Will play around with this a bit and see. I've also only ever mounted seats using a whole bracket, where I would assemble the whole seat out of the car and drop it in as one piece, so this mount will be a new experience. This car definitely has more side clearance than the tight space of the cayman though!

For harness situation, I didn't want to put in a rollbar yet, so I decided to go the Schroth Quick Fit Pro route. They also have a sub-strap that are compatible with these, so I'm going to use this.
I got the e92 quick fit set, haven't fitted it to the car yet so I will share more details when I attempt that.


MCS 3-way remote

I got these MCS for a decent deal, and they arrived last week.

I'll probably sit on these a little bit and try to squeeze a bit more out of my current setup first.

They look great though! 800/686 spring rates. QD on the front but unfortunately no QD on the rear.

I have a helper spring on the shelf that I'm going to add to the fronts.
Also have some SPL front tie rods, front endlinks, and rear toe links that will go on at some point too.

Attachment 3653736

sub 05 incoming with those for sure!!
let me know if you need help with corner balancing =^.^=

[adenjr]

Originally Posted by M2M3M3

yes, the podium has options for shoulder strap height...good.
it also has an opening for using sub-strap....good.

stock seats have neither...bad

FYI - I'm 5'11" and my shoulders are lower than the openings.

[ZPD]

Originally Posted by adenjr

FYI - I'm 5'11" and my shoulders are lower than the openings.

The podium comes in 2 sizes- which size do you have?

[adenjr]

Originally Posted by ZPD

The podium comes in 2 sizes- which size do you have?

I mean with the factory M buckets, in response to @M2M3M3 saying the Schroth QuickFit Pro is dangerous because your shoulders can be the highest point

[ZPD]

Originally Posted by adenjr

I mean with the factory M buckets, in response to @M2M3M3 saying the Schroth QuickFit Pro is dangerous because your shoulders can be the highest point

gotcha

[jacktli_g87]

Recaro Podium Install

I installed the seats over the weekend, here's a quick rundown of it to help any others.

Parts list:



Thanks Jackie / PhD Racing for working with me on putting this together.

Seat:

I initially was hoping to get the GFRP seat to save money, but seems like this got discontinued so had to upgrade to the carbon version. It does look really good with the carbon with the interior, but saving $1400 on the seat would have been nice!

The alcantara inserts with the red edges was my favorite aesthetically, but I didn't want to put in another $800 just for that. Really $$$ seats.

Having the dual ABE/FIA certification is really nice for peace of mind, and my mentality with this car is: Track car that I don't need to trailer.

Side mounts:

These seats have two side mounts available from Recaro: an "ABE" version and an "FIA" version. From what I can gather online, the ABE version requires the use of a slider, where the FIA one is more like your typical side mounts.

I'm not sure if other side-mounts will work for this seat, as these fit directly onto the seat with no spacer, and have a curvature to them.

I went for the FIA option, as I really don’t see a benefit of ABE over these with potentially more fitment issues, and having the option to floor-mount the seats down the line is a nice-to-have.

One item that might be an area of concern is that the podium side mounts don't have any adjustability on the bottom of them. So, make sure that whatever bracket you're installing these on are flexible, because the sidemounts are not.

I was nervous about this, as this meant that the slider holes on the bottom had to overlap perfectly with the holes on the VAC mounts. Luckily it did, but there was very little margin for error here.

Seat mounts

I got the VAC floor mounts with the anti sub bracket, side harness brackets, and sliders.

I was initially kind of nervous about the install with these, as I wasn't sure about clearance around the seat and being able to tighten things up in the car. It turned out to be super simple though, and I much prefer this to the assemble-onto-one-bracket-and-drop-into-car mounts.

Install part 1: Seat assembly

My plan of attack here was to assemble the sliders, side mounts, and seat together as one piece first, and then bolt the sliders down to the VAC mounts in the car.

I have no idea how others are installing the seat mounts first, and dropping the seats in to the side mounts in the car... there is like no clearance on the tunnel side to put a bolt in, let alone torque it properly.



The install here was pretty straightforward. The hardest part was bending the slider adjustment bar. These seats are wide!


Install part 2: Schroth QuickFit anchors

To attach the anchors for the quickfit, just need to remove the backseat cushions by pulling straight up on it. I used the seatbelt bolt here.




Surprised how dirty the bottom of these seats were! Gave this a good vacuum while it was out.

Result:


Install part 3: Floor mounts

Forgot to grab some photos of this, but I mounted the all of the brackets to the bottom of the seat mounts. I ended up mounting the substrap plate too far back initially, and didn't have enough length on the substrap. So, I ended up taking this apart and moving it further up.

Install part 4: Slider -> seat mount

The VAC parts were fantastic, they were super easy to mount and came with all of the hardware.

The only slight blemish was when it came time to put the slider and seat mount together. The provided hardware was a hex bolt, but there was no way I could drive that screw down.



I ended up heading to Lowe's to pick up some M8x1.25 25mm socket head cap screws to be able to secure this down. I added some blue loctite for peace of mind.



Install part 5: Belts

The main lock piece on the quickfit doesn't fit through the podium shoulder holes, so I needed to feed everything through the right shoulder hole from the front of the car, and then feed the left side back through the left shoulder hole.

After this, I ran the 3pt belt through the lap belt hole on the seats. This brings us to the end of this.

Final result:


Unsolved problems

1. Interestingly for the G8x, it seems like the seatbelt receptacle has a short plug on it that goes into the main harness for the seat. This means that I can't plug it directly into the wiring on the car, resulting in this being disconnected right now.

I don't love this, as part of the appeal of the QuickFit is it's compatibility with the seatbelt tensioner + making sure airbag doesn't deploy at max power.

Does anyone know what the best way to handle this is?
I didn't want to have to extract the wiring harness on the seat, so I ordered an OEM wiring harness for the driver side to see if I can plug this into that, and that into the car. I will share the part # if this works.



2. Need to figure out coding. I have an X431 that worked well for putting the rear brakes into service mode when I was changing pads, I hope I can use this to code out all of the errors as well.

seems promising, so going to try to replicate this later.

[ZPD]

good work. Check with nekkai30. He coded his seat out but I forget what he used.

[jacktli_g87]

Data Collection - AIM Solo 2 DL

I love my catalyst, but the one thing that I wish it could capture better was my inputs.

Brake/Throttle traces in AC help me a lot to understand my driving so much better in the sim, and I want to be able to get the same in real life.

So, I decided to pick up an AIM Solo 2 DL to start capturing more data. Plus, I think the overlay could make for some sweet youtube videos. I basically never use any of the Catalyst review and coaching features, and instead review my helmet cam youtube videos, so might as well get more data there.

Will try this out this weekend to decide which I'm going to keep, between solo2dl and catalyst.

The install process was simultaneously simple, and difficult. So, to make it easier for anyone else, here's the correct install steps I figured out:

Install manual from AIM: https://aim-sportline.com/download/e...es_ecu_100.pdf

(I figured out this existed after struggling for a day. Don't be me)

1. Update unit + set configuration
Download Racestudio3, and upload a configuration to the solo2dl unit using ECU: BMW, F_Series

I couldn't get my unit working and turns out, I needed to load a configuration before plugging it in lol. Do this first and save yourself the headache.

CAN Connections

I followed this guide, which was very helpful for getting the CAN connections. These are the same wires as the AIM guide.
https://g80.bimmerpost.com/forums/sh....php?t=1959139

Car Yellow/White --> AIM White (CAN +)
Car Yellow/Black --> AIM Blue (CAN -)



Positaps make this pretty easy.


Power Connections

So this turned out to be pretty tricky. Mostly because I couldn't figure out which wire was carrying a 12V Power.

I decided to use a fusetap for power here instead.



The ground was easier, as this was the brown wire with black stripe on the same wiring harness as the CANBUS. I used a positap here to connect the ground wire.

Reassembly

I couldn't figure out how to get the side-trim attached, and then I realized you had to pop out these white tabs, slide them back on, and then push them in. Kind of annoying piece of trim to work with!



Result

I put the AIM wire through the glovebox, and ran it behind the screen.
I have an adhesive 1" ball mount behind there, and got an 1" Ball diamond mount that I secured to the back of the AIM backplate.

After updating the configuration through RaceStudio3, unit works and is reading data like Brake Pressure, throttle position correctly.



Excited to try it out at G2 Motorsports Park this weekend.

[jacktli_g87]

G2 Motorsports Park

I went out for a track day at G2 Motorsports Park on saturday.
This track is pretty new, but they have started running their own track days every now and then.

I had driven this track a few times in the Cayman, but was really excited about what the M2 could do here as there are lots of straights that would benefit a lot from the M2's power.

Unfortunately, it was a bit of a rough day. I spent the first session getting the track map set up in the AIM, getting 2 warm-up laps in. I ended up running session 2, missing Session 3 because I forgot I was oncall and had to run home to get my laptop, and Session 4 was delayed because of a red flag and my AIM for some reason wouldn't turn on. Only managed to run ~10 laps today, but was still a fun time hanging out on the paddock.

Fastest lap today was a 2:21 ish, timed through gopro footage:

I was able to revive the AIM at home later, and was able to get data from Session 2.

So here's a lead-follow I was doing with my friend and his E92. Best lap of this session was 2:22.913

When reviewing this, I noticed that for some reason, the collision warning is turning my DSC back on.

Video: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/rpOCwhyb8jg

I never noticed this before, and I guess generally my ECR member days are empty enough that I don't see this often. I have felt that the car can feel a little weird sometimes on some laps, but never put this together until now.

[adenjr]

you need to put it in track mode, which turns off all "street" safety/ driver aids

[ZPD]

Also if you are in track mode and go to Live Data it shows a cool bar chart of important data (boost, oil temp, etc)

[M2M3M3]

Ditch the go pro and get an aim smartycam. Zero effort data and video integration and allows much better analyses in RS3.

[jacktli_g87]

Figured out the problem,

I had my cando.plus setup to enter Track mode in M2, and Sport mode in M1.

However, since my M1 has engine: Sport Plus, and my M2 has engine: Efficient, it was putting my M1 in track mode and M2 in sport mode.
Didn't realize the screen said "track" in the middle in track mode lol.

My solution here is to just program both buttons to turn on track mode.



From https://g80.bimmerpost.com/forums/sh....php?t=2106760, it seems like this is because the unit can't actually see which M mode is being activated, so tries to infer it from the setting.

cc canDO_Stef

Come to think of it, this is probably why I find it faster when I'm at 37-40 psi, the car is twitchy below that because I'm fighting the DSC, and at higher psi, I'm able to get some slip lol

[jacktli_g87]

Originally Posted by M2M3M3

Ditch the go pro and get an aim smartycam. Zero effort data and video integration and allows much better analyses in RS3.

Yeah might go down this route if I can trust the AIM to keep working.
It's alive now for some reason, but the rightmost button is not registering correctly, requires me to press and hold it to work. Going to ship it to AIM and see. It's above the data port so wonder if something happened there that messed up the internals.

[M2M3M3]

New 2DL unit? They are usually pretty bullet proof. I have four solo2's that i use for data coaching and a full AIM setup in race car and they have been solid.

[jacktli_g87]

Originally Posted by M2M3M3

New 2DL unit? They are usually pretty bullet proof. I have four solo2's that i use for data coaching and a full AIM setup in race car and they have been solid.

Yeah new 2DL unit.
Not sure what happened, I had the unit plugged in while I drove 30m home and 30m back to the track where it was on and working. When I got back in the car for the next session an hour later, it refused to turn on no matter what I did. Ditto for when I came home, plugged into the AC adapter.

A day later, I tried again and it turned on with the right-most button issue.

[M2M3M3]

Dealer won't just give you another one?

[jacktli_g87]

Originally Posted by M2M3M3

Dealer won't just give you another one?

Going to ship to AIM team going to look at it, going to be on vacation for 2 weeks so I’m ok with this. Also curious if maybe my install is not good for some reason.