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Summary
- YouTuber TJ Hunt has successfully completed his 6-month conversion project, turning his BMW M4 Competition Coupe into a street-legal M4 GT3-looking race car.
- The project involved various modifications including fitting a GT3 carbon fiber hood and front bumper, drilling holes for motion sensors, repositioning the oil cooler, and trimming carbon fiber bodywork.
- Hunt’s M4 GT3 will be showcased at the 2023 SEMA show after spending 45 days away from his garage for further preparation. The conversion kit cost $125,000 and focused on the exterior appearance while making some performance modifications under the hood.
After nearly half a year of conversion work, YouTuber TJ Hunt finally started the engine on his 2022 BMW M4 GT3 conversion project and drove it outside the garage in a new video.
Hunt has documented the conversion of his rare British Racing Green 2022 BMW M4 Competition Coupe into an M4 GT3-looking street-legal race car in 13 videos over the span of 6 months. During that time, he documented all the ups and downs of the process — from finishing the iconic large rear wing of the GT3 cup car to trimming off a few pieces of precious carbon fiber bodywork to make the car functional.
The recent video will be the last time Hunt shows off the car publicly until he shows it off at the 2023 SEMA show.
Hunt’s M4 GT3 Is Almost Ready For SEMA
The YouTuber started off by showing viewers the last few things his team had to do to get the car back on the road. In the beginning of the video, the car lacked most of its front end thereby showing the M4’s powerful engine and chassis to the viewers.
Hunt explained that they weren’t installed on the vehicle because he and his team were doing some final work. The work included drilling holes into the vehicle’s new carbon fiber bumper to fit the M4’s stock motion sensors, reinstalling the radiator, repositioning the oil cooler, and some fabrication work to fit the new equipment.
Remounting the oil cooler and filling it with new oil were the last steps to get the car’s engine up and running.
After topping up the oil and coolant, Hunt went to the lockbox where he and his team stored the keys to the M4 for the past 5 months. The YouTuber and his team then reinstalled the vehicle’s GT3 carbon fiber hood and front bumper before starting the car and hearing the engine for the first time in months.
After that, the vehicle was finally ready to drive. Hunt drove the vehicle outside the garage for the first time in months before they got it ready and shipped it off for further work. According to Hunt, the European car will spend 45 days away from his garage to get ready for the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) show in November 2023, where it will be on display at the Meguiar’s booth.
The M4 GT3 Was Once Just A Regular 2022 BMW G82 M4
Hunt’s journey started in November 2022 when he took delivery of his rare British Racing Green 2022 BMW M4 Competition Coupe with a Kylami Orange interior. Online sources suggest that there are only two M4s in America with that color combination — and only one when Hunt received his from BMW.
The 2022 BMW G82 M4 Competition Coupe is the high-performance version of the BMW 4 Series coupe.
It is an all-wheel drive 4-seater sports car that has a 3.0-liter I6 engine that produces 510 hp and 650 lb-ft. This gives the car a top speed of 180 mph and a 0-62 mph time of 3.9 seconds.
Performance
|
0-62 MPH |
3.9 seconds |
|
Top Speed |
180 mph |
|
Horsepower |
510 hp |
|
Torque |
650 lb-ft. |
|
Layout |
front engine, all-wheel drive |
The road-legal M4 has a wheelbase around 2 inches shorter, an engine 80 hp less powerful, and an overall width that is 6 inches less than the track-only BMW M4 GT3. The GT3 also has some track-oriented features including a motorsport steering wheel that contains controls for functions like the radio, windshield wipers, and race car driver drink system. The GT3 also has plexiglass windows and a revised gas cap location.
A $125,000 GT3 Conversion Kit Transformed The 2022 BMW M4
Hunt bought a brand new OEM BMW M4 GT3 body kit for $125,000 directly from the German automaker to turn his street-legal M4 into a wide-body competition race car. By keeping the stock M4 interior and engine, Hunt and his team essentially made a luxury road-legal track car.
The YouTuber’s BMW M4 GT3 project was never meant to be a full conversion as he and his team still wanted it to be a road-legal car. Thus, he didn’t equip it with all the features of the track-only M4 GT3 — instead opting to focus on the vehicle’s bodywork and exterior appearance while making a few performance modifications under the hood.
For example, Hunt didn’t replace the stock M4’s powertrain with the more potent motor of a true M4 GT3. He also didn’t install the race-focused interior of the GT3, as well as the plexiglass windows of the race car.
However, Hunt did equip the car with some race-focused equipment on the street car such as air jacks. Air jacks are a system that quickly lifts a competition car while in the pits during a race to allow teams to quickly replace a race car’s wheels.
Hunt’s M4 GT3 Has Been A Long Time Coming
Hunt and his team have been working for nearly half a year on the project. The most notable parts of the journey were the modifications his team had to do to accommodate the differences between the M4 GT3 and the stock M4. BMW made a few modifications to the stock M4 to accommodate the upgrades they equipped the M4 GT3 with, thus the GT3 body kit Hunt purchased didn’t perfectly fit on his stock M4.
Because of the differences between the wheelbase, engine placement, and air ducts between the M4 and M4 GT3 cup car, Hunt and his team had to slightly modify the M4 GT3 body kit. They did this by trimming a few pieces of carbon fiber and removing a few air ducts. They also had to custom-make a few pieces of hardware.
“If I wanted an M4 GT3 cup car, I’d go buy one. But I don’t want that. I know there’s gonna be comments of people that are like ‘I can’t believe you’re gonna cut up a GT3 kit…’ I want to have the look of one but have it on the street and have all the functionality of a street car,” explained Hunt.
For example, the wheel arches on the GT3 body kit are much higher than those on the stock M4 so Hunt and his team had to install custom suspensions from Ohlins that will allow the car to sit much lower and for the wheels to fill the wheel arches better.
Still, on the topic of wheel arches, the front axle is a few inches more forward on the GT3 car than on the stock car which meant that the front wheels wouldn’t sit in the middle of the arches. That also meant that the wheel on the stock 2022 M4 would hit the GT3 body kit while turning.
To solve that problem, Hunt and his team had to trim off a few pieces of the inner part of the front wheel wells. They also had to get a new set of wheels to better fit the bigger wheel wells of the M4 GT3 body kit.
Another change on the GT3 is its recessed engine. Hunt explained in an earlier video that the engine on the BMW M4 GT3 is around 1 foot closer to the center of the race car than on the stock M4 to make way for the large vents that connect to the car’s large kidney grilles.
Thus, the team had to remove the large front vents on the GT3 body kit and custom-make new vents that filled in the two big holes in the hood where the vents of the GT3 once were.
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