1985 BMW 318 Stage Rally Build - 1988 Porsche 924S Street Build - Sequoia Build

nope, the stopper is all the way down so it's not holding it open.

I need to do timing. I fiddled with it "by ear" a bit and the car idles great (and engine pretty quiet), but now it has no power at all, feels even more like a slug than a normal M10, lol.

I printed out your little scale thing for the pulley today, so I'll use that as reference. I plan to actually put some marks in the metal itself using a dremel though, I think.

Once I get the timing sorted, will see where I"m at then, and perhaps try the penny trick.

I actually have a spare throttle body in the box 'o parts as well, so might investigate that one and check the plate. How the hell does a throttle plate get out of round anyhow? Isn't it just a regular butterfly?

I don't know. The one on my car was perfect, but my spare one is so out of round that when closed there is about a 1/16" gap in places. For reasons that are embarrassing to talk about, I had to swap in the out of round throttle body and do the coin trick to make it not idle at 1800 rpm when warm

aw....no automotive SNAFU is too embarrassing to talk about. Especially if they prevent me from doing the same embarrassing thing!

Spent the early evening watching my boys from George Mason whoop up on the mid-conference-dwellers from Delaware to go to 14-5 and 6-1 in the conference (with Towson and their 37-game losing streak coming up next).

Then I got off my arse and pulled the dashboard. Pretty straightforward, didn't break anything but did take some elbow grease to get it the last 10% over the steering column. As you can see, this dash is pretty nasty. The plan is to hit it with some bondo, sand it all down good, and then FLOCK IT!

Below the dash is about 25 years of nastiness, so that will take a good amount of cleaning up before I put this all back together. Somehow I think putting it in will be more work than getting it out......

Figured i would chime in now:

Wow. Congrats on such a cool build. I am totally jealous of the result. Your work is GRM perfect and its just sweet to see people doing cool stuff like this.

The stance is spot on (though the wheel/tires look a touch small to me) and the body and interior are cool.

Keep up the good work.

Ill be watching as this progresses

Thanks. I'd love to go to a taller tire setup, but toeing the fine line between a rally stance and how large a tire that my little 100hp M10 engine can actually make go at a reasonable rate! If I had one of the sixes in this car, there is no doubt I'd be ordering up some taller rally-specific tires in no time.

maybe next year :)

--

Stopped by my local steel warehouse today and they weren't much help. Wanted to get some C-channel pieces for seat brackets and all they would sell me is the stuff I wanted in 20-foot pieces for $70. Um...no.

Also inquired about various thicknesses and materials in about a 3x3' size for a skidplate, and again all they'd sell is in 4'x10' pieces. Aluminums were $300-450 and 11ga carbon steel 1/8" was still $170.

So, I'll be looking at scrapyards and hitting up some of my "industrial" friends to see what scrap stuff they have lying around. This kind of material would be so much easier (and cheaper) to find if I didn't live in "the city"/"the burbs" and instead out in "the country" I imagine.

I asked the guy about scrap pieces and he more or less gave me a dirty look as if I asked him if I could sleep with his wife....

onlinemetals.com?

irish44j wrote:

Holy mother of...

I'd yank the heater core to test or replace it, since, well... I doubt it'll ever be easier than it is now...

The heater core seems fine, and since this car will only need heat for maybe one or two months of the season I don't want to mess with it too much.... But I am going to try to figure out how to yank the fan, because that mofo is squealy and noisy. Gotta figure out a fix!

a few little things tonight:

First, my HVAC fan has been squeaking like a mofo. Clearly the sign of bad bearings, but replacing the entire motor isn't something I'm real interested in. So, opened it up, everything works fine except the squeak, which I isolated to one of the bearings, of course. Hit it with some WD40 and ran it for 10 minutes full blast with no noise. I'm sure it'll wear off eventually, but at least I knwo the quick fix. Just needs to get me to and from events in March without noise.

The cover had about 2" of pure grease from 27 years of use on it. Took it to the sink and scrubbed the crap out of it. Yay, it's clean.

Now we move to the dashboard.

Lots 'o cracks. I took a knife and beveled the edges which had slightly turned up. Then I used plastic epoxy to fill the gaps. I went through 2 full tubes and still could have used a bit more. But not running to the store, so I filled the remainder with some glazing putty. Let it dry, did a bit of sanding but will do more tomorrow. It's not going to be perfectly smooth, but the flocking should cover it it for the most part - and it's still 100x better than it was before.

post-bevel

a bit 'o sanding

the thought that is constantly in my head now is that I want an e36 steering rack in this car. Every time I drive it I enjoy it, but I really DON'T enjoy the school-bus steering rate, which will be hell in rallycross.

So I'm on the lookout for the e36 rack on the cheap. We'll see if that happens.

car-part has a few z3 racks for $150 shipped

dont tell anyone I told you. I've been waiting to pick one up

Yeah, that's not the budget I want, so you're safe. I can get an e36 rack for about $50 from what I can tell. I'll see if that's sufficient. The z3 is only slightly quicker - it's less locks mostly because it's a shorter travel (due to smaller wheel wells).

Did alot of reading on this stuff last night, lol...

The steering rack thing is a total clusterberkeley.

The important thing is the Z3 rack is linear. If it's overall ratio is slightly quicker than the e36 racks, that would mean that the ratio where it counts would be even quicker.

I thought the regular e36 racks were linear as well - it's the M3 (except 1995) racks that are non-linear (with the quicker ratio at the outer ends of the turn radius). Could have sworn that's what I read in several places.

In any case, regular e36 is still a ton quicker than our stock racks, so I'll save myself a hundred bucks and be satisfied with that for now :)

Next winter, the budget refreshes itself for the next round of mods to this car (specifically, dedicated rally tires, diff rebuild, and perhaps a bigger engine)....

Yeah the steering rack thing is a total clusterberkeley. So much different information in so many different places.

Also have a couple momo wheels coming in (one 270mm, one 250mm), so those should make a nice difference over the trucker wheel!

I don't know if I missed it or what, but how did you get the ride height so high? Unless that's just stock and I'm just really bad at E30s. Of course, by asking this question I feel as though I've proved my lack of knowledge on these. Oh the shame

thatsnowinnebago wrote: I don't know if I missed it or what, but how did you get the ride height so high? Unless that's just stock and I'm just really bad at E30s. Of course, by asking this question I feel as though I've proved my lack of knowledge on these. Oh the shame

if you look at the first post of the thread, you can see it always sat high (it was bone-stock when I bought it). As far as I know, the springs are the same as the 325s, which are considerably heavier due to the engine and mroe sound dampening. The 318s just sit higher because they're ALOT lighter (like 200-300lbs in most cases)

Actually, I removed one of the spring spacers int he rear, so it's sitting about 5mm lower than it was before, haha.

Plus mine has a coulple hudnred pounds of stuff removed as well (most of the interior, all power windows/locks, most sound deadening, all the carpet, and other crap). Also, it's a visual deception - the early e30s have higher rear wheel wells than the later cars do, so the later cars always look like they're sitting lower in the rear.

It'll look better this weekend when the rally mudflaps go on ;)

I actually am really starting to love the high stance anyhow. Because most e30s I see around here are hellaslammed/hellaflush stanced, so I like the idea of being completely opposite of that :)

FLOCK'D

Came out pretty decent, and took about an hour (plus it will be drying overnight). Actually pretty easy, just paint the adhesive on (it's thick stuff!), and use the little tubular "flocking gun" for lack of any better word for it. I missed a few little tiny places with the adhesive, but noplace really noticeable. Also messed up a little part on top of the gauge hood, by accidentally grabbing the edge of it when I moved the dash.

Went with the gray color, since I figure black will get really dirty, really fast and dirt will just blend in with the gray. In person looks pretty good - not perfect, but 95% of my cracks are now totally invisible and no more sun-faded black color. Pretty pleased with this for a $25 project!

before:

after:

and a few other little things.

1. replaced the foam weatherstripping with some high-density stuff that I had sitting around the house. Not sure if it really matters, but I had the dash off so might as well.

1. got a delivery - some RallyArmor basic mudflaps (in the extra long SUV size). Also rounded up some hardware to mount and some metal pieces to use for brackets. That'll be a project for later this weekend.

Looks great! I'll have to try this on my ES when the time comes.

In the category of "budget," made a bit back today. Wheenever I'm at the pick-n-pull yard I keep my eyes open for older Benzes with the yellow fog lights build into the headlight assembly. It takes about 10 seconds to pull them apart and remove the yellow glass "capsules" that go over the bulbs inside. These are great for yellow fog light conversions on other cars without having to use Lamin-x covers and without having to buy the pricey (and not that yellow) bulbs. So now you're in on one of my little mods that I've done a couple times with good success :)

They're pretty popular with Subaru guys in particular. I can usually pick these up at the yard for 5 or 10 bucks, and have now sold three sets of them for $30 each.

in case anyone is wondering, they really work great - I have a set in my WRX stock fogs, using my stock bulbs, and this is the result:

Put the dash back in. Please ignore the really old, really un-ipod-capable deck, haha...That will have to be resolved at some point.

for those of you asking about what flocking is....here's an idea of how small the fibers are that are essentially bonded to the dash..

Also put one of my RA mudflaps on. A bit sloppy trying to get it even, doh! BTW, these are the basics, in "SUV" size. They'll sit lower once the suspension is settled (it just came off stands in this pic and is sitting even higher than usual).

I've since added an upper attachment as well. All the hardware will be covered with rubber undercoating to delay rusting a bit. Not like I can't just replace them...

today was a bit under the weather so called in a sick day (mostly so as not to get my co-workers sick, more than anything). Was feeling better after lunch so spend the afternoon in the garage watching 6 episodes of the 5th season of Dexter on the laptop and working on the car.

A few things accomplished: First, finished up a few things with the dashboard re-install. Nothing exciting. My daughter tested it out for me, and everything appears functional

She also pointed out some wiring issues under the hood

Next I messed with wiring for a bit, trying to wire up the Hella fog lights to the factory harness/dash switch. Kept on having problems with it not working. The switch was ok (tested), and when pressed I could hear the click of the relay in the box. Fuses good too, but still no light. Ended up tracing the wiring harness and found that the connectors to outer wires (the round 2-pin connector near the headlights on each side) were corroded and not forwarding the charge. So cut them off and soldered in some direct wires to the lights. Now everything works, except the OEM dash switch won't click to stay on - the little plastic tab inside is broken off. But if held down the lights stay on. So next junkyard trip will look for a working switch, no biggie.

cleaned-up wiring and splashguard installed

Ah, also yesterday I picked up an e36 steering rack (off a 318ti). The p/o switched to a quicker ratio and the rack is in good shape and not leaking. Eventually I'll swap this in, once I figure out where to get some new copper seals for the power steering lines. Otherwise the plan is to use all the e30 stuff, since the lines in the car look pretty new. Will need to verify that the tie rods from the e30 rack will work with the e36 rack, but I've read in most places that they will. The rack was pretty gunky, so did some wire-brushing.

also cleaned up the spare throttle body, for no apparent reason other than I want to swap it in so I can check out/clean the one currently on the car.

and installed the driver's side mudflap. I'm going to wait on the rears until I get the new muffler put on, since I'm going to have to cut the inner flap to clear and not sure where to cut right now, so it will wait.