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

So to my wife's chagrin I just spent most of the evening reading the build thread about the Vorshlag $2010-2011 challenge e30 on this months GRM cover. My eyes are super-tired, and now I am super-inspired to work on the car. Or at least to take even more pictures of things I do, and try to do more interesting things!

Unfortunately, this week has been busy with trying to re-fi the house and messing around with my car budget trying to squeeze in the cost of the WDCR rallycross season package, some front camber plates for the WRX, some used rally tires, and a couple other little projects on the e30 (including water pump and getting this muffler installed since I have no welding stuff).

So, no updates of note today for the three of you still following this thread.. Maybe this weekend, now that the weather has warmed up some!

One of the three, checking in

Isn't inspiration great? Its so much more fun than when you are completely lacking it...

ok, so I lied about not doing anything. Got off my arse and did a few things tonight.

First order of business was inspecting belts and pullies, as I've been getting a chirping/squeaking sound up there. To make inspection easier, I decided to go ahead and pull the stock clutch-driven cooling fan (which I will go buy an electric to replace it with tomorrow). Been meaning to do that for a while.

Fan takes a 32mm open-ended wrench.

IDK where this came from, but I happened to see it in the back of a drawer in the tool box. Whadya know....32mm :)

with the fan and shroud removed, there's alot of room in there. My plan is to get a fan with an outside housing diameter of about 17", and bolt it to the stock shroud, which attaches nicely to the radiator. We'll see what I can find tomorrow at the junkyard or at the parts store.

This should gain me a couple horsepower by losing some parasitic drag on the engine anyhow....and a couple of horsepower means alot when you've got a wimpy M10~!

old fans.....heavy and sucky

upon removal, I immediately noticed something that might have caused squeaking or other issues: 2 of the 4 bolts that hold the water pump pulley onto its hub were missing. And the 2 were next to each other, so it was basically only bolted to the hub on one side. Had a couple M6's sitting around, and replaced...

Issue #2, I had noticed that the alternator belt was a bit loose. Looked to be adjusted as tight as possible, but when I took it off (to check the smoothness/action) I saw that the original "ladder" adjuster bar was stripped at the top. Brilliant.

Just so happens I had been WONDERING why the p/o had a brand-new adjuster bar in the big box 'o spare parts. He never got around to installing it. So I did. After all back together, the belt deflects less and the alternator sits more solid. Excellent.

old and new

car does have a virtually new alternator, so that's a plus

next order of business may be to do the water pump. It seems to be working fine and doesn't make any noise, but it looks pretty old. Project for later this spring I think, or maybe sooner. ALl the coolant hoses are pretty mushy and old-looking, so I think I'll replace them soon as well.

FYI, that mystery wrench is a bicycle headset wrench, also known as the magic secret BMW fan removal tool.

Doing the water pump on an M10 is stupid easy. Don't forget the block drain (right side of the engine, about midway along down low) when you do the coolant.

02Pilot wrote: FYI, that mystery wrench is a bicycle headset wrench, also known as the magic secret BMW fan removal tool. Doing the water pump on an M10 is stupid easy. Don't forget the block drain (right side of the engine, about midway along down low) when you do the coolant.

thanks, and I really should know that about the wrench, duh. My bike stand and truing stand are sitting not 5 feet away from where the wrench was....haha. mental lapse.

today was a travel day.....250 miles round trip in heavy traffic and rain. Yay. But did manage to kill 2 birds with 1 stone:

First, sold my bottlecaps with the snow tires to Spencer and Stuart for their rallycross e30, for some cash and trade for one of their sets of bottlecaps with old tires on them.

Second, met up with Kevin Turner, a local rally guy, to buy one of his used sets of 185/14 Yoko A035 rally tires (medium compound), which have alot of life left on them. Also picked up a second set for Shawn (moxnix on GRM) for his RX7 rallycrosser.

I got up to Baltimore early, so made a quick stop at the big pick-n-pull yard (Crazy Ray's) there. It was raining, I didn't really come prepared to dig around the yard so only had a fleece on and a few tools with me, lol.

Didn't see any e30s there, but there were a ton of e36s, and I pulled the aux fan off of one of them. It has more blades (and curved for higher cfm) than the stock e30 fan, and I may mount it as either a pusher or puller. We'll see how much cleareance I have on the backside of the radiator. It'll be tight, but there is more room on an M10 car than on the sixes, at least. If not, I'll order a Spal.

Anyhow, some pics as usual

beautiful older 5-series I saw on the way out of town

loaded up

e36 fan

So whens the first rally-x? I wana see some action shots!

March 18th! I want some action shots too :)

in other "small victories".....as I was about to order a new water pump, something in the back of my mind told me to go look at past orders. I haven't seen a water pump in my garage in the last few months, so figured I must have forgotten to order it previously. Not the case. Old order form said I had received one (and a 71-degree thermostat). Hmm..

Dug through all my parts boxes...nothing. Not in the car. Finally looked in my big cabinet where all my GT6 parts are. Whadya know, its a Graf water pump and a thermostat, still in the shipping box, shipped back in September. I probably posted about it in this thread back then......

This is what happens when doing too many things at once, and almost cost me an extra $60.

And now I have a project for this weekend. I still need to get some new hoses though. Hopefully the 2 local auto parts (non-chain) stores will have some hoses that will work for me. I'll pull the beat old stock ones and bring them in and see, I guess.

Also have an ebay bid on a 16" low-profile Spal fan, which will fit in my OEM inside shroud (17" inside diameter) if I win it. If not, will order a new one. Don't want to put the clutch fan back in.

I've now done about 95% of the stuff I wanted to get done on this car before the first rallycross (coming up in about 3 weeks), with most of the other projects not in the "urgent" category.

At this point, my primary remaining concerns, none of which will be addressed before the first event, are: 1. Engine. It runs fine, sounds fine. I'm still paranoid about old engines on long drives, and Summit is about 100 miles from here and 100 miles back after the event. I'll probably do a few hour-long weekend drives locally just to ease my mind. 2. I still have a feeling that perhaps the input shaft bearing on my diff is bad. There seems to be a bit of noise back there, which was unchanged when I swapped the 318 rear suspension/hubs for 325 stuff, so I don't think it is wheel bearing realted or anything. That leaves the diff, or just my imagination. Or maybe that's a normal noise and I"m just hearing it alot since I have new bushings in the entire back end (some poly) and no insulation and no back seats to absorb the sound.

Not something I'm terribly worried about at the moment, but I'll have to turn up the 2-speaker stereo "system" to make me not hear it, and so not worry about it, lol.

If it makes you feel any better, I drove my 1974 dual Weber M10-engined 4-speed 2002 from NY to Spartanburg, SC for the 02-02-02 event at the BMW factory. About 14 hours each way straight through, IIRC, with an autox at the event (which I actually managed to win) in between. Aside from a minor bout of carb icing (it was February, after all), the car didn't miss a beat.

You've got injection, a 5-speed, and a bunch fewer years on yours. M10s are hard to kill. Really hard.

that does make me feel better :)

did some maintenance on the Subaru tonight and switched on the summer tires, since this winter has been a bust and I want my performance back...

did get a couple little tiny projects done on the e30.

First: a brand-new junkyard-sourced cargo net from a G35 (including the mounting "nubs") on the rear seatback piece. Just because you can never have too many cargo nets to carry random crap...or reading material

Second, after talking to Shawn last night was thinking about how much of a hassle it will be to use my GoPro suction mount on a super-dirty car (not a problem in autocross, but definitely in rallycross). So went to the box 'o GoPro parts and stuck on a couple perma-mount clips, one on hoot front, and one on the roof. I'll probably put a couple more on, perhaps one on the side (my favorite view), and one on the trunk to look backwards. Why not...

I thought this was a bicycle headset wrench?

In reply to Taiden:

No. HELL NO.

Anyway, if 100 miles in the e30 bothers you, I took the GT6 to the Simeone museum this morning. Haven't run it in months, but it started up (after some crankin to refill the carbs) and it tootled down I-95 at 70 mph with nary a whimper.

Taiden wrote: I thought this was a bicycle headset wrench?

I hope you're kidding, lol.....if not, you must have a cheap headset if you're using that thing on it.

I would never let a serrated edge touch my Chris Kings....

Ian F wrote: In reply to Taiden: No. HELL NO. Anyway, if 100 miles in the e30 bothers you, I took the GT6 to the Simeone museum this morning. Haven't run it in months, but it started up (after some crankin to refill the carbs) and it tootled down I-95 at 70 mph with nary a whimper.

I've stretched my GT6 out to about 30-mile trips so far since the rebuild. Oddly enough, my concern with that car is quite similar to the concern with the e30: the diff. My 3.27 in the GT6 is noisy as hell, even after being rebuilt by a reputable shop that has done GT6/Spit diffs well previously.

GT6 reliability doesn't worry me as much as getting run over by a soccer mom in here SUV texting, which would result in instant death in that car, lol. And pretty much everyone around here can't drive, is on the phone or texting, and drives something big.....

The diff in my car makes some noise as well... ... and my Spit 6 before it... and my g/f's Spit does as well - and its diff came from Quantum Mechanics... I think that's just what they do.

Ian F wrote: The diff in my car makes some noise as well... ... and my Spit 6 before it... and my g/f's Spit does as well - and its diff came from Quantum Mechanics... I think that's just what they do.

I drove that car for years before the rebuild and never noticed it. But perhaps that was because I always had the music cranked when I was younger, lol.

Haha, I use a giant adjustable wrench.

Also known as a plumbers wrench..

I've been putting off doing cooling stuff for a while....I hate antifreeze with a passion. But it was time. So after making a huge mess of my driveway (hopefully will not kill any local wildlife, cleaned up as good as possible) with antifreeze, I replaced the water pump (the old one looked ok, but I'm in there so why not. I'll keep the old one as a spare), cleaned up the pulleys, replaced the thermostat with a 71* one, replaced the upper radiator hose (the old one was really soft). The other hoses were newer and in good shape, and no local replacements so I kept them. New clamps everywhere. Also put a new accessory belt on, which got rid of my 3k+ rpm squealing that is a major embarrassment.

Next project is the front brakes. I'm using some secondhand rotors and secondhand OEM-style pads. The braking isn't as good as I'd like, and I get alot of squeaking and squealing. Next week will get the rotors turned and get some Hawk HPS or HP+, since I hear Pep Boys is clearing out HPS at super-low prices. We'll see if they have any e30 pads.

Still looking for a 16" electric fan, but today for 50 miles the car ran well below mid-temperature on the gauge with the new thermostat and 50 degree weather. I may put the 80 degree back in eventually, but this will do for the moment.

pics, as usual pump and accessories off

the old stuff, pretty grungy

New belt. It was the cheap one at the local parts store ($4.99 vs. 18.99 for the "better" one). It's made in the USA and looks fine. I picked up a 2nd one for a spare, just in case

put back together. DId some corkscrew paint on the water pump pulley, just for fun

SPent some time last night "fixing" my disintegrating Bentley manual. Used a whole roll of packing tape, going page by page to reattach the book back together. It's not pretty, but it works!

Tried to hook up the AccessPort to bump my boost up to 18psi like the Subie runs. Sadly, it didn't work on the e30 :/ haha....

not much new this week, and heading out of town for a few days. In the meantime I did order some Hawk HPS pads because no decent used ones turned up, and these stock-ish ones suck.....

Also ordered the lockplate for the e36 steering rack. We'll see if I have time to install it before the first event....may wait until after.

AND I paid for the DC Region season subscription for SCCA Rallycross - the 2nd most expensive thing I've done since I got the car. No turning back now! First event is March 18th, so just working out the last little kinks and need to get the tires mounted.

got the A035's mounted. Damn this setup is heavy. And loud. Drove just down my street on them and my neighbors must have thought it was a big rock-crawling 4x4 coming by, haha...

then, for no reason other than "because rally car" I painted the bottlecaps. Didn't have more than half a can of any paint color in the cabinet, so just did two black and two white. Hey, why not, lol....

They look sweet! All white or all gold what be awesome as well...

All white!!!

edit; Not because I'm a racist, because rallycars should have white wheels

Deep thoughts: Just an offhand guess, but I think I've spent maybe $3500 on this entire project, including the purchase price of the car, SCCA membership, season of rallycross pre-paid, a set of rally tires, a set of Star Specs, and a pair of used and a pair of new Konis. Add that in to all the smaller stuff and that's my guesstimate of overall cost. I've also sold off about $500 worth of parts that came with the car. Not too bad. Were I to sell the rally tires and the euroweaves, I could be pretty close to the GRM $2012 Challenge budget, actually. Not that this car would do well in the GRM Challenge...

Anyhow, another quick one: install of the rear mudflaps. I used the RallyArmor basic universals, so had to do some trimming and fab up some basic brackets. All in all they turned out pretty good I think.

the brackets

installed. I'll put some rubberized undercoating over all the bolts once I'm sure everything is lined up how I want it.

had so have a bit of fun, just because this is not a serious car, so it shouldn't look too serious.