mazdeuce wrote: I'm pretty sure nobody wants me to run them again at this site.
Normally I would say that this is how you know they were the right tires....
but that second picture 
Me thinks that site is no bueno when wet. You might loose a car in ruts that deep. 
cghstang wrote:mazdeuce wrote: I'm pretty sure nobody wants me to run them again at this site.Normally I would say that this is how you know they were the right tires.... but that second picture
Most of the site was OK. A few spots were soft. Then there was the dip. The dip had no bottom, as you can see. In the afternoon we routed the course waaaaaay around it and the problem went away for the most part.
Brief update. I haven't really driven the car since the last event in May. I tucked it in the back of the grosh for the summer and forgot about it. When I got home I tried to adjust the floats, put it back together and drove it out under the car port. This morning I started it and it was a bitch. I pulled the air cleaner and with the fuel pump on it was leaking fuel right down the intake. berkeley. Took it back apart and adjusted things again. It's not leaking now and frankly it starts better that it ever has and for the first time it idles below 1000 rpm. I suspect that it's been leaking from the front bowl the whole time I've had it. I think I still need to lower the level in the rear bowl a smidge, but now that I've had it apart half a dozen times it only takes me 10 minutes to pull the top of the carb, adjust the float tab, and put it back together. I'll update the budget soon and go into why I'm not taking this car to rallycross nationals. 
It looks like it has a passenger seat now? I dont remember seeing one the last time i asked you for a ride. 
mazdeuce wrote: and go into why I'm not taking this car to rallycross nationals.
Because you're scared?
In reply to Vigo:
It is seriously the sketchiest setup ever. I only let people ride that I know won't freak out about it. You'd qualify. 
In reply to EvanB:
Not scared, just lame. I don't really care what class I finish back of the pack in, but at this point prepping the car would take time that I'm spending on other things (like building a sewing room for my wife) and towing by myself would get me back a day later than sharing a drive which would have my wife taking a day off work which would not be cool. Old married guy excuses. I'm lame.
Drive the car there. Eat gas station burritos on the midnight speedrun back home. Sleep at work.
'Course, it's further for you now... it's almost three hours closer for me. 800mi instead of 950 to Tulsa.
The long and short of it is this. The co driver I had decided to run his new AE86 Corolla. It's a new shell he put together for this year. He ran the red one last year. The guy loves his Corollas. Has an AE86 tattoo. I'm cool with that. However, nobody else really wanted to drive the RX7 with me. That left me towing by myself. Driving the car there would be the equivalent of putting your head inside a running blender for 13 hours. The noise and vibration would liquify my head even if the car somehow lived. I have the trailer, so towing makes sense. However it's 13 hours. Even if I somehow leave by 2:00 on Sunday, I'm home at 3:00 in the morning at the earliest. I'm an old man. I don't do that E36 M3 any more. The cost of an accident with a loaded trailer is simply too high for me.
So I ran the math on fuel cost towing vs. sharing costs driving up with my friends Civic and figured that I could buy fresh snow tires for his car and still come out ahead as well as have a co-pilot for the drive to get me home safely late Sunday night.
Neither me or the RX7 are ready to play with you guys nationally in MR. I'd put a E36 M3 load of effort and time into a back of the pack effort that I could spend getting other stuff done. Frankly, I just want to go to nationals and not tip over. If I can do that, I'll be happy.
Budget:
Old money - $596
17 weeks of money that I haven't spent (on this car) brings me to $2296.
I'm going to do something that is a bit out of the spirit of the rules for this project, but might help me stay married. I just spent $414 on snow tires for the car that I'm driving at rallycross nationals. I also spent $50 for me and $50 for my co-driver on registration at the last rallycross where I borrowed a super sweet 80's Mercedes turbo diesel. That leaves me with $1782.
I'm going to include my nationals entry money and some expense once I figure that out too.
Mostly, I'm trying to not spend money on the car until I can get the theoretical money up to $3k. Once that happens I'm going to wipe out that money and use my race budget to pay back the trailer cost.
This will slow down any real work on the car, but I'm spending enough other money playing with cars that I think I need to do this.
This is the AWESOME Merc that I got to drive the last event.
This is my sometimes co-driver in his 'old' Corolla giving my son a lesson in the proper physics of driving sideways on dirt. 
I'm right with you on the time and $,$$$ thing, friend. Between a 150 year old "fixer upper" farmhouse, a newborn, a full time job, and the code enforcement people, I barely have time to E36 M3. Last racing I did was a LeMons race back in May. BOth my rallycross car and the LeMons car still run, but sit.
My wheels,OMG!!!
Mazdax605 wrote: My wheels,OMG!!!
I feel super E36 M3ty about not taking them to nationals. I promised. I suck. I'm sorry. They're still having fun, I promise. 
Not so much an update as the potential for updates. I fired the car up and moved it into the garage and put it on jack stands. It starts great after sitting for a months which is nice.
The plan is to get it ready for track stuff. That means a seat that fits me, belts from the past decade at least, change all fluids, check wheel bearings, change front disks/pads,generally go over the car to make sure things are tight and functional/not cracked/not broken. 
I'm pretty sure race cars don't need wires. Not this many anyway. 
So yesterday I pulled the entire harness with the exception of the power to the coils and the wires that go between the coils and the distributor. This morning I hooked power up to those wires, the fuel pump, and the starter. I turned on the master switch and fired it up. The simplicity of this car is pretty awesome.
The inside is naked now except for the steering, pedals, and cage. Even though some of you keep telling me not to, I'm going to knock all of the sound deadening off the floors, clean it and give it a coat of paint. This will make it easy to clean, which has been a shortcoming of the interior thus far. 
Because all of this is free, I'm not updating the budget yet. I do have a new seat in the living room and a new set of belts on the way, so I'll need to pull out the calculator at some point.
How much of the harness is going back in after the interior prep/paint?
None.
All I need is a switch to energize the ignition and turn on the fuel pump, and a button for the starter. From there it's easier to build the harness for the taillights and aftermarket gauges than try and reuse bits and pieces.
At this point I've decided that the car is very very unlikely to see the street again. If it does (for stage rally or the like) I'll just have to teach myself how to build out the rest of the harness, which would be a good skill to learn anyway.
Taking out the crash bars in the doors?
No good reason to gut the doors right now. The cage doesn't intrude into them and the car needs to sit outside sometimes and rallycross is a windows up event. Eventually the glass will come our of the doors and the rear hatch and then I'll remove the rest of the heavy stuff on the car.
My father in law is awesome. He'd been off the plane for about an hour at this point. Chipping sound deadening off the floor. 
Man, no dry ice even? Are you sure you like the guy? ;)
Filled up a bucket with sound deadening chips. 12lbs.
Another 1/3 of a bucket or so still in the car. Plus the half a foot well I scraped out 6 months ago. Call it 20lbs of tar. The weight probably isn't such a big deal, I just want to so this properly while I have the car apart and this is part of doing it properly.
Deucekid #2 wanted to help. I'm pretty sure his dreams of building race cars ended after about 20 minutes. 
Finishing up being sick, so I decided to rough in some wiring. Then I decided to test it. I realized that I hadn't blocked the hoses to the heater core when it vomited coolant through the firewall at me. Oops.
Fuel pump is properly wired with a relay, so is ignition. Brake lights work. I need to integrate my fuse box into everything and hook the gauges up when they get here. And wipers. And the defrost blower.
Pictures when things look a bit less like colored spaghetti and more like proper wiring.
In the early days of the IT class the rules said something like, "The stock wire harness shall remain in the car"
The work around was to zip tie the thing into a ball and attach it just inside the right tail light. We couldn't ballast the cars so the fact the FB is light on that corner when you remove the stock exhaust made that the best location. The panhard bar mount ended up being made of some pretty heavy material toobecause that is all we had laying around the shop
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