This article was written by John Ward of Fuel Bespoke Design – the builder of this immaculate custom BMW E9 named “Von Trapp”. When possible we like to bring you the story of a vehicle in the words of the person or people who built it, so you get direct insight into their thought process and methodology.

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Having just completed the BMW 2002 aka “The Red Baron” I had a good idea of the journey I was in for, but this time I wanted to step it up a little. The E9 is in my opinion, one of the most beautiful cars to come out of BMW so I didn’t want to mess with the aesthetics but I did want to give it a new lease of life with more than a few hidden secrets. After a complete strip down, it was off to Redistrip for a chemical dip to take it back to bare metal as it’s so much easier to repair a stripped clean body. She was pretty bad, just about every panel would need either repair work or replacement.

That’s the easy bit, the hard part is the spring set up, the E9 used a shock and separate trailing arm spring, the E28 has a coil over. So now the tiny E9 shock towers needed to be removed and replaced with the substantially larger E28 ones which requires significant fabrication work. Again, I used Ground Control coil overs for the rear. The differential was rebuilt with a LSD 4 clutch and 3.15 gear set and the M5 rear brake set up installed. One of my main concerns was the rigidity of the chassis and how the pillarless designed body would handle the extra power. The E9 was very successful in the European Touring Car Championship and those cars could handle the power, so after some research I found the body strengthening specs they used back in the day and applied them to my chassis, which effectively involved stitch welding every seam in the entire chassis.

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The E9, like the 2002, uses a dual remote brake booster set up, because of the size of the units, that just wasn’t an option so luckily whilst on a trip to the UK, I found a similar set up that just used a single booster with dual slave cylinders which would fit. I retained the original brake master although resleeved it with a slightly smaller bore. The original wiring harness had been molested beyond repair so I decided to try a whole new system from Infinitybox, which is basically a CAN bus system, power cells feeding the 12v supplies controlled by a master control cell which only uses microamp triggers from the switches. It’s programmable and has some interesting customisation features like controls from your smartphone.

I kept the interior pretty stock, Rolls-Royce red Italian leather perfectly complementing the French walnut wood trim. The custom 17-inch wheels are a 3-piece design in the style of the Alpina wheels. Finally, the car was dyno-tuned by Brintech Customs in Seven Hills, these guys do BMW engine swaps everyday so really get it. The run-in tune is just shy of 200KW at the wheels (~300 BHP or 268.2 RWHP), which is more than enough power to have some fun.

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This article was originally published on - Silodrome.com

Photos thanks to - Machines That Dream

This article was written by John Ward of Fuel Bespoke Design – the builder of this immaculate custom BMW E9 named “Von Trapp”. When possible we like to bring you the story of a vehicle in the words of the person or people who built it, so you get direct insight into their thought process and methodology.

‍

Having just completed the BMW 2002 aka “The Red Baron” I had a good idea of the journey I was in for, but this time I wanted to step it up a little. The E9 is in my opinion, one of the most beautiful cars to come out of BMW so I didn’t want to mess with the aesthetics but I did want to give it a new lease of life with more than a few hidden secrets. After a complete strip down, it was off to Redistrip for a chemical dip to take it back to bare metal as it’s so much easier to repair a stripped clean body. She was pretty bad, just about every panel would need either repair work or replacement.

That’s the easy bit, the hard part is the spring set up, the E9 used a shock and separate trailing arm spring, the E28 has a coil over. So now the tiny E9 shock towers needed to be removed and replaced with the substantially larger E28 ones which requires significant fabrication work. Again, I used Ground Control coil overs for the rear. The differential was rebuilt with a LSD 4 clutch and 3.15 gear set and the M5 rear brake set up installed. One of my main concerns was the rigidity of the chassis and how the pillarless designed body would handle the extra power. The E9 was very successful in the European Touring Car Championship and those cars could handle the power, so after some research I found the body strengthening specs they used back in the day and applied them to my chassis, which effectively involved stitch welding every seam in the entire chassis.

‍

The E9, like the 2002, uses a dual remote brake booster set up, because of the size of the units, that just wasn’t an option so luckily whilst on a trip to the UK, I found a similar set up that just used a single booster with dual slave cylinders which would fit. I retained the original brake master although resleeved it with a slightly smaller bore. The original wiring harness had been molested beyond repair so I decided to try a whole new system from Infinitybox, which is basically a CAN bus system, power cells feeding the 12v supplies controlled by a master control cell which only uses microamp triggers from the switches. It’s programmable and has some interesting customisation features like controls from your smartphone.

I kept the interior pretty stock, Rolls-Royce red Italian leather perfectly complementing the French walnut wood trim. The custom 17-inch wheels are a 3-piece design in the style of the Alpina wheels. Finally, the car was dyno-tuned by Brintech Customs in Seven Hills, these guys do BMW engine swaps everyday so really get it. The run-in tune is just shy of 200KW at the wheels (~300 BHP or 268.2 RWHP), which is more than enough power to have some fun.

‍
This article was originally published on - Silodrome.com

Photos thanks to - Machines That Dream

This article was written by John Ward of Fuel Bespoke Design – the builder of this immaculate custom BMW E9 named “Von Trapp”. When possible we like to bring you the story of a vehicle in the words of the person or people who built it, so you get direct insight into their thought process and methodology.

‍

Having just completed the BMW 2002 aka “The Red Baron” I had a good idea of the journey I was in for, but this time I wanted to step it up a little. The E9 is in my opinion, one of the most beautiful cars to come out of BMW so I didn’t want to mess with the aesthetics but I did want to give it a new lease of life with more than a few hidden secrets. After a complete strip down, it was off to Redistrip for a chemical dip to take it back to bare metal as it’s so much easier to repair a stripped clean body. She was pretty bad, just about every panel would need either repair work or replacement.

That’s the easy bit, the hard part is the spring set up, the E9 used a shock and separate trailing arm spring, the E28 has a coil over. So now the tiny E9 shock towers needed to be removed and replaced with the substantially larger E28 ones which requires significant fabrication work. Again, I used Ground Control coil overs for the rear. The differential was rebuilt with a LSD 4 clutch and 3.15 gear set and the M5 rear brake set up installed. One of my main concerns was the rigidity of the chassis and how the pillarless designed body would handle the extra power. The E9 was very successful in the European Touring Car Championship and those cars could handle the power, so after some research I found the body strengthening specs they used back in the day and applied them to my chassis, which effectively involved stitch welding every seam in the entire chassis.

‍

The E9, like the 2002, uses a dual remote brake booster set up, because of the size of the units, that just wasn’t an option so luckily whilst on a trip to the UK, I found a similar set up that just used a single booster with dual slave cylinders which would fit. I retained the original brake master although resleeved it with a slightly smaller bore. The original wiring harness had been molested beyond repair so I decided to try a whole new system from Infinitybox, which is basically a CAN bus system, power cells feeding the 12v supplies controlled by a master control cell which only uses microamp triggers from the switches. It’s programmable and has some interesting customisation features like controls from your smartphone.

I kept the interior pretty stock, Rolls-Royce red Italian leather perfectly complementing the French walnut wood trim. The custom 17-inch wheels are a 3-piece design in the style of the Alpina wheels. Finally, the car was dyno-tuned by Brintech Customs in Seven Hills, these guys do BMW engine swaps everyday so really get it. The run-in tune is just shy of 200KW at the wheels (~300 BHP or 268.2 RWHP), which is more than enough power to have some fun.

‍
This article was originally published on - Silodrome.com

Photos thanks to - Machines That Dream