TIL that you call your car color Oreo.
Oreo was my friend's English Bulldog.
TIL that you call your car color Oreo.
Oreo was my friend's English Bulldog.
Knurled. said:TIL that you call your car color Oreo.
Oreo was my friend's English Bulldog.
probably a bit out of date, that's from when it used to be black and white, but not much white left at this point.
Yeah, I'm dumb. The gas smell was exactly what it should have been - an open gas tank vent line in the engine bay. I thought I had rerouted this back toward the expansion tank in the back, but looks like I must have rerouted the wrong hose back there, doh! No wonder I was only smelling the gas with a full tank and under hard WOT maneuvers (like rallycross). So, will get that taken care of. Who knows if next weekend's rallycross will happen with all the COVID-19 stuff going on.
In any case, I'm going to be working alternating days for the next few weeks at least so I'll have a lot of time at home with nothing to do, so did some car rearranging today and got the parts Raider into the garage to pull the drivetrain (to swap to the other Raider) and totally strip it so I can scrap the shell. Because suburbs, that meant some musical cars since I didn't want to put the truck in my 2nd bay. So the Black Raider moved to the driveway and the Blue one into its spot. Porsche gets to keep its spot in the driveway, but since the rally car doesn't (easily) lock and I don't need to drive it soon I stashed it around in the side yard with the trailer. I'm sure it'll enjoy sitting in the gravel :)
In reply to irish44j :
It is a dance. It is called "The Motorcar Shuffle". I grew up with a one lane driveway, no over night street parking, and 5 cars between 3 drivers.
TurnerX19 said:In reply to irish44j :
It is a dance. It is called "The Motorcar Shuffle". I grew up with a one lane driveway, no over night street parking, and 5 cars between 3 drivers.
I wasn't sure I could actually FIT the Raider around my shed in the back....I eyeballed it in advance but once I started driving around there I didn't think I was going to make it lol. My wife was also unhappy that I basically knocked all the fresh blooms off her favorite tree as the branches smacked across the whole car,
So a little package from FCP Euro came in today with a new PCV/CCV valve fitting and the associated hose, so decided to go out into the gravel for a few minutes to install that - the old PCV/CCV didn't fit very snugly due to wear, and the hose was basically hard as a rock and likely not sealing well. So that was a 5-minute fix.
While I was back there I decided it was a good time to figure out this gas smell. As I noted before, I ruled out pretty much everything related to the engine itself, and ruled out fuel system leaks. That brought me back again to the evap system. A while back I eliminated the (clogged) charcoal canister and at the time I basically eliminated the line from the fuel tank overflow reservoir from the mix by cutting it off in the rear wheel well and running it down to an in-line fuel filter behind the panel at the back of the car. Or so I thought. And the rest of you know exactly where this story is going, already.......lol.
When I did this, I didn't bother actually pulling the hose to the engine bay, since it wasn't attached to anything and my eventual intent was to get a smaller charcoal canister and re-install it (which I haven't gotten around to yet). But after investigating further it was crystal clear the gas smell was coming from the engine end of that hose. So WTF.
Pulled out all the evap diagrams again and traced everything. Over the gas tank four hoses run to the fuel tank access hatch area: 1) the fuel feed to the pump. 2) the fuel return hose from the fuel rail. 3) a hard-line to the far side of the fuel tank for fuel from the overflow reservoir to flow into. 4) a hard-line running directly above that which is the line from the overflow reservoir that runs to the driver's side of the tank and then down the car to the charcoal canister. I didn't recall which was which for 3 and 4 since they're right next to each other, so I pulled off the attaching hoses (both of which run up that tube by the gas tank past the back wheel) and had my wife stand at the front of the car near the open hose making the fumes as I blew into the end at the gas tank. First one I blew into no result (it was blowing into the gas tank, obviously). Second one my wife indicated she heard air coming out, but more importantly saw gasoline coming out! Hmm....
So then I pulled off the metal cover for the hoses in the wheel well and traced the two hoses. Dammit.....sure enough, what I (by that point) fully expected. Apparently I switched the hoses when I attached them after doing this the first time, so the hose going from the bottom (drain) of the overfill/vapor reservoir was actually attached to the line going all the way up front to the charcoal canister end (which was suppsed to be attached to the TOP port of the reservoir). Meanwhile I had the TOP line off the reservoir just running down to the in-line filter and venting to air.
So basically, when racing with a full/near-full tank as the fuel/car heated up and got sloshed around in hard turns, it was overflowing (as intended) into the overflow reservoir. But instead of the vapor venting out the top (the cut line that originally went to the charcoal canister) and the liquid flowing out the bottom back into the other side of the gas tank, the liquid gas was instead just going into the line back to the front of the car (and the gas tank drainback was basically just venting to air). Neither had enough down-angle to actually drain any fuel anywhere, it doesn't seem, so it was just gas vapors coming out of both of them. A good explanation of why the car always smelled like gasoline, but generally only with a full or near-full tank!
In any case, I swapped the hoses to where they SHOULD have been in the first place and blew out any remaining gas in the hose/line going to the front of the car. So now I'm 100% confident this is set up the way it's supposed to be, and i should have no further gas fumes from the front of the car and really should have only the bare minimum from the back due to the fuel filter and check valve back there (so basically just if the gas tank gets overpressurized it will vent - and that's assuming the gas cap isn't leaking, which is a dubious assumption).
On the upside, while searching for this problem it did force me to check out some other things, including the compression, plugs, fuel lines and fittings, and PCV/CCV system - things that i don't regularly look closely at. So, at least there's that.
And yes there's a jack stand under there with a baseplate under it....
That will be a nice thing to have fixed though realistically!
For sure. Nothing more disconcerting than getting a whiff of gasoline in the middle of a stage..........
With that done, she's hiding away from viral infection, or something like that.
Crossover from my other build, but the garage bay is open again (though the other Raider will eventually go back in) as I'm finally scrapping this POS parts shell.
All the fun cars got to move back into their places in the driveway :)
Feels like a long time since I've updated this, and that's because there's really nothing to update. Other than a couple quick driveabouts the car has sat in the driveway under cover for the last couple weeks as I put my attentions on the Raider build (which is about 2 months ahead of schedule at this point). But Tom Gsell did swing up from Richmond today to pick up my old Sparco seat and drop off old body panels and doors from Eisele/Neil's old e30 (part of the deal when I sold them the red shell).
So yeah, that's something I guess.
I'm betting SOFR is going to be cancelled, and even if it's not I don't intend to go into Ohio by mid-June, since they seem to be going the wrong direction on all the COVID stuff from what I've seen. In any case, that's probably going to mean pushing back and doing STPR again this year - hopefully all will be good to go by September. Not the worst thing, as we did well last year, but was looking forward to doing Ohio this year. Such is life.
Who knows what's up with rallycross. DC region sounds like their plan is to get motorsports stuff for SCCA up and running in late June timeframe, and we'd presumably make up for the 3 lost events with a bunch of doubleheader weekends, which would be fun. Again though, all that remains to be seen.
So, hope you are all doing well....I'm just chugging along on other things...
I have another thread on this build, if you feel like following along while this one is slow......a few pics of my progress..
Ohio was one of the first states to close schools, and then go to a stay at home order, and things have been going pretty smoothly here. Most people have been pretty chill about it, although I live in Cleveland and not the hinterlands where SOFR is, so for all I know it is a zombie apocalypse LARP happening down there right now.
It was WEIRD going to NoVa with Evan the weekend before the order dropped. I didn't see anyone wearing face masks or gloves and people were paying for things with foldin' money. By that point a lot of people were doing the gloves/mask/stay away from me! thing in Cleveland, and the businesses that were open were credit card only, no cash. (This was critical when we found ourselves in PA and had to pay tolls, and it was like "Pay money with pieces of paper?")
Pete. (l33t FS) said:Ohio was one of the first states to close schools, and then go to a stay at home order, and things have been going pretty smoothly here. Most people have been pretty chill about it, although I live in Cleveland and not the hinterlands where SOFR is, so for all I know it is a zombie apocalypse LARP happening down there right now.
It was WEIRD going to NoVa with Evan the weekend before the order dropped. I didn't see anyone wearing face masks or gloves and people were paying for things with foldin' money. By that point a lot of people were doing the gloves/mask/stay away from me! thing in Cleveland, and the businesses that were open were credit card only, no cash. (This was critical when we found ourselves in PA and had to pay tolls, and it was like "Pay money with pieces of paper?")
My recollection of being told the Chillicothe was the crystal meth capital of the world, makes me think that the people there in the Ohio hinterlands may not be following the rules as well as the people in the cities lol. yeah as far as Virginia goes the moment that order dropped pretty much everybody complied. Everywhere I go now it's people with face masks and gloves. but the upside is northern Virginia has pretty much the best health care system in the entire country and it's operating at a fraction of its overall capacity right now,. And one of the big risks with this is just overwhelming hospitals as we've seen in some of the other big cities. Which almost certainly won't be an issue here.
Either way as ia DoD employee I'm currently held to within 50 mi of home until June 15th at least, so I'm not trying to get my leadership pissed off at me by breaking that to go to a rally lol.
In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :
Yeah, the DoD wouldn't want to risk their employees catching it and spreading it everywhere (something something Navy)
Have you heard of anybody doing virtual stage rally the way the road course guys and NASCAR are?
Pete. (l33t FS) said:In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :
Yeah, the DoD wouldn't want to risk their employees catching it and spreading it everywhere (something something Navy)
Have you heard of anybody doing virtual stage rally the way the road course guys and NASCAR are?
I mean, I know a lot of US rally guys are doing DIRT 2.0 and whatever. You mean "pro" guys? IDK. I think Higgins did some virtual rally thing a few weeks ago but I could be wrong. I like actually DOING rally but honestly couldn't care less about professional rally guys, or SRT, or whatever. I probably couldn't name more than 4 or 5 "pro" rally drivers currently active in the world. I know/know of the top US drivers because I'm at those rallies too, sometimes parked right next to them.. I don't have the first clue who the top guys in WRC are. I mean, I've met Travis, Higgins, Solberg (jr), Block, but if I passed them walking down the sidewalk in regular clothes I probably wouldn't even notice haha...
Same goes for other racing. I love to be on the track doing wheel to wheel, but could only name a few of the top drivers in F1, Indy, NASCAR, IMSA, Rolex, ASC, etc. And even then it's mostly because I "know someone who is on that team" or whatever.
Back to your question though - no, but I'm the wrong person to ask. Probably not as much fun since for rally you'd have to virtually hook up with your codriver, and it's not like it's head-to-head stuff anyhow (except some of the arena rally-x stuff). Would be cool if they did a head-to-head "group start" WRC rally virtually though, lol. Watch people tryihng to pass on stage :)
Got another question for you Josh. Have you had any issues with your IE rear shock mounts? I'm about to order a set today.
shagles said:Got another question for you Josh. Have you had any issues with your IE rear shock mounts? I'm about to order a set today.
No. Actually I have the same ones in there I put in...what....8-9 years ago?
That said, I kind of wish they had rubber inserts vice urethane. The e30 rear shocks at droop actually tilt toward the back and are not vertical, so I feel like the poly uppers may actually put some lateral strain on the shock at droop. No idea if that affects anything though, but it makes bolting them up a bit annoying when the car is on stands, since you have to muscle the lower mounts into position.
That said, the mounts have held up well (I pulled them out when I did the Escort shocks and checked them) with no sign of wear or crackign or deterioration. Keep in mind my upper mounts are tied into my cage, so the only real point of failure possible is the aluminum mount itself, which hasn't had any issues.
In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :
Cool. I'd rather deal with a little trouble mounting the shocks than have the rubber inserts wear out.
shagles said:In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :
Cool. I'd rather deal with a little trouble mounting the shocks than have the rubber inserts wear out.
its not so much the rubber "wearing" out, but the OEM-style rear mounts will tear out/punch through eventually - probably faster on stage rally than rallycross due to jumps and stuff, Granted. several of our local e30s have stock-style rear mounts and just replace them annually since they're dirt-cheap and easy to replace. Stock rubber stuff works fine as long as you replace it periodically. I still use stock-style upper mounts in the front and have replaced them once in 10 years, and that's with a 10 stage rallies and a ton of rallycrosses.
Sorry, I meant the rubber inserts for upgraded rear mounts like the IE ones. I've seen too many rubber bushings with a metal pin through them get misshapen and let stuff move around. It seems to me like the movement of the shock shaft in that bushing would wear it out significantly faster than the urethane ones.
shagles said:Sorry, I meant the rubber inserts for upgraded rear mounts like the IE ones. I've seen too many rubber bushings with a metal pin through them get misshapen and let stuff move around. It seems to me like the movement of the shock shaft in that bushing would wear it out significantly faster than the urethane ones.
Ah yeah, perhaps
Nothing new to report, really. SOFR was cancelled/postponed. Sounds like NEFR may be as well. So we'll see what we do this year. At this point I'd just like to get back to rallycross, and rally whenever it gets going again.
In the meantime, this weekend took a couple "social-distance" cruises with some of the guys. On Saturday met up with Jim (in the rallycross Miata) and Amanda (in her GTI) and cruised out to the Rally Farm in Catlett where we used to rallycross. Just stopped to take a couple pics. I had the Porsche
Then today took the rally car and met up with Josh Sennet (bluej) in his GRM Challenge Mazda pickup and we did pretty much the same drive, but this time stopped to visit with Lance and Robin, old-school rally drivers who own the place and were busy doing actual farming stuff (yes, they knew we were coming). The car feels great and did about 80 miles of twisty/country roads with no issues at all, though I may or may not have a wheel bearing starting to make noise. It's so tough to tell among all the other noises in this car lol
So in the good news category, it's been officially announced that DC Rallycross is going to start up in early July. To make up for our four missed events, the four remaining events will all be doubleheaders - so that should make for quite a fast-paced points race, especially if people break their cars (probably a good idea for me to do a full checkup on mine).
As to stage rally, looks like SOFR is going to happen in June or July, but likely as a one-day event, which will certainly be hard to get into since all the rally folks have been sitting around....at this point I don't really want to tow to Ohio for a one-day event, so the likely situation is that we'll do STPR again in September, since it's close and hopefully some of this COVID stuff will tone down by then. Chances are I'll go to SOFR and crew instead. So, we'll see.....
In the meantime, I cleaned out the interior today since it has 6 months of sitting around dirty since I've been busy doing other projects..
Happened for no apparent reason to get on FB marketplace today, and the top suggestion that FB gave me was a local guy selling four 15" Mini Cooper wheels with tires for dirt-cheap (I guess still leftover algorithm from when I was looking for Mini wheels last year). Anyhow, shot him a message and an hour later I picked up four wheels with almost-new all-season tires on them for double-digit cash. Guy had a heavily-modded Mini there so clearly took these things off as soon as he bought it and just wanted to unload them.
The tires are new enough they still smell like fresh rubber and have all the nubs/"hairs" on them. I have no use for them, but figure I can take them off and re-sell them loose for about what I paid for all of it. The plan is to use two of them for the fancy mud tires I picked up last year (for stage use if needed, not rallycross). The other two will just be spares.
So just to let you know that I actually work on this car on occasion....
With the delay on the season due to COVID, I'll fully admit that I haven't really done much of my "preseason" checklist that I usually do on this car - mostly because it usually turns up pretty much nothing wrong, and also because I replaced a bunch of stuff late last season. I took the car for a drive today to check a little thing and while I was driving, I noticed the car seemed "more rumbly" than usual. Now, that's a tall order seeing as this thing makes all kinds of noises. The G240 transmission is notorious for its rumbly idler shaft bearings (not noticeable in stock/street cars usually, but very noticeable when you have harder engine/trans mounts and no soundproofing). So I've been used to hearing that for years (and it sounds like a kind of rumbly bearning, basically).
This drive seemed a bit different, so when I got home I decided to check the front wheel bearings and sure enough, both of them are shot. This isn't a suprise really (and i would have found it had I done my checklist) - STPR was hard on the car and bearings and did several rallycrosses after that as well. Over the years I've bought a variety of front wheel bearings, ranging from OEM to Moog to cheaper ones. All in all, I've basically found that all of them last about the same amount of time: one season of rallycross + one stage rally. I last replaced one before STPR last year (the other the year prior). So I've gone to just getting the cheap ones and expecting to replace them every 6-12 months in the front, since those are easy and quick. The rears I usually get higher-end and those are bigger and last longer anyhow, but are much more of a hassle to change.
Only had one new spare (Centric) plus our "emergency spare" (a used one that still feels smooth). So did one wheel...
Got the heat out (to free up red loctite) so I could get the studs out
And assembly is the reverse of disassembly, yada yada
Will do the other one next week. Ordered three more Centrics from RockAuto at $30 each. So that's the price of one OEM one that doesn't really last any longer for the rally application............
The e30 was sitting there today, and after wasting a couple hours powerwashing the driveway I was just staring at it thinking how beat-up it's starting to look. So got out the rattle cans and paint and touched up a number of areas around the car that had been bothering me for a while. This is a rally car so it needs not be close to perfect......but I do need to take care of stuff that could rust, etc.
The trunk has looked like crap for some time, with remnants of various stickers and just generally ratty looking. At one corner the 10 or so layers of paint had actually chipped off in a big flake (yeah, this thing was painted at couple times before I owned it for sure). The paint was so thick i actually used a razor scraper to take like 6 layers off at once, down to one of the primers. Pretty funny being able to strip all the paint using a razor blade scraper...
Then some sanding to my usual half-assed standard, and then hit it with the rattle can...
Had to cut some vinyl to get the crew names (and those of people who have been a notable part of our rally effort over the years), and a new Condor logo. More importantly, it covers up some of my less-than-great (because lazy) sanding transitions...
And gratuitous pics of the 80s Germany Crew
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