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

NGTD wrote:

irish44j wrote:

NGTD wrote:

irish44j wrote:

NGTD wrote: Was the Mazda stage car red? If it is, that must be the 323 GTX stage car I have seen in ages. I think I saw pictures of it posted on Facebook.

yep, it was red. FWIW, Nick and I both beat all of the runs by both that and the Focus stage car which were running right before us , but they were still pretty quick and it was their first time at the venue. The red Mazda had a mechanical issue after like 3 runs and didn't run any more. The Focus managed to do 5 or 6 runs before they bailed.

I am driving a control car (000) at Rally of the Tall Pines next weekend and my co-driver posted the pics on Facebook. Small World. Good runs when you can beat an AWD stage car!

Dave Shindle is your co-driver, I take it? Interesting, didn't realize that was an AWD 323. Figured it was just the FWD variety.

Yes. I am guessing that the 323 is a GTX. It looks like one, but maybe I am wrong.

Dave said it was a 323 GT-R.

In reply to moxnix:

Oooh even better than GTX!

Off-season plan of action

So the car is "winterized" to some extent...some interior back in, snow tires on, all my gear put away, fluid changes, and a few other things. Throughout doing that I spent a lot of time considering what I'm going to do with this car and stewing over blowing a season in which I won the first few events handily.

First off, let's talk about the competition. Nick clearly out-drove me in the second half of the season in terms of consistency. If this was autocross I would have won the season since I had the fastest runs in the class in almost every event. But this isn't autocross, and I was inconsistent with my driving an picked up far more cones than I'm used to. Nick drove amazingly clean in his e28 tank, and put up times that were just a bit slower than mine for the most part. I drove his car at the last event and it is mightily powerful for a rallycross car (SuperETA), even one as big and heavy as his. It felt really fast and well-sorted (his dreadful interior setup notwithstanding), and I already knew that Nick could drive from years of autocrossing with him.

I don't know exactly what his plans are (he's more circumspect than I am), but I know he's looking around for possibly an M30 swap, which would add some weight but add a lot of power for him.

As to Josh S., he's tired of the ETA with the cobbled-together turbo. He drove fast this season on occasion, but also made even more mistakes than I did and, to boot, had all kinds of mechanical issues with the engine. I know he's looking to get rid of the turbo ETA and drop something else in there. I expect to see him back next year with an M50/52 under the hood, or something comparable (he's a better fabricator than I am, so he may look outside BMW engines).

Meanwhile Eric Eisele and his co-driver will ditch their subie and run next year in a 325i with a freshly-rebuilt M20B25. Not to mention the ETA guys are swapping everything onto a fresh nice shell and also have (IIRC) a B25 sitting around, so who knows if they end up back with a SuperETA e30 next year as well.

So basically, I'm going to be even more out-powered next year than I was this year.

I spent a lot of time in the last few weeks researching various engine swaps or Jake's M42 turbo kit as possibilities. But finances are going to be limited this winter. A B25 swap might be doable, but I don't think that makes a big difference over the M42 when the extra weight is considered. M50/52 and the turbo setup simply aren't in the budget. Hmm. If Nick swaps to an M30, I could buy his SuperETA, but I really like the light, balanced character of this car and think six up front would kind of ruin that for me.

Then got to thinking about last season, watching some of my vids, etc and realized that it really wasn't so much power that got me as simple inconsistency. I was 1-2 cones away from winning two events that Nick won, and probably another win if my damn exhaust hadn't gotten ripped off. I think the car has "barely" enough power, but I think it can still win by being lighter and quicker in the tight stuff.

Add to that the possibility that we might be at a new venue next year, and there's no guarantee that it will be a big, wide-open space like Frostburg that is best suited to open, power-oriented courses. My car is better at tighter and grippier surfaces, and there's a decent possibility that any new venue would have more of both of those things than the giant Frostburg gravel site. Not to mention I drive better on those surfaces than the gravel.

Thinking back to my biggest problem, other than my lapses of concentration, was the uncharacteristic "wildness" of the car's handling as I pushed it harder later in the season, trying to catch the power cars. It rarely felt settled and at the last event it was downright antsy. Plus it was really crashing through ruts and dips and potholes - starkly different from Nicks car and the ETA boys' car, both of which seemed to "eat up" the rough stuff much more nicely.

So since power-adding to any real extent isn't going to be in the budget, I think I'm going to have to address the two things that are in the budget:

1. weight. I have to keep it street-legal, so I can't go too far here. Lights and bumpers need to stay. Front windows need to stay. But I have some plans and ideas that may let me take another 100lbs out of the car, perhaps. We shall see how that goes.

2. suspension. historically I've been a "suspension guy" but with the e30 I've never really gotten it to where I want it. The stock stuff was too unruly for my liking (that's the only way I can describe it). The H&R setup on it now was great last year on the smooth, hard clay at Summit Point and the dirt in Ohio at GLDivs, but has proven to be too soft and low this year on the rougher gravel surfaces and I spend far more time on the front bumpstops than I want to - to the point that I was consciously steering around a few giant holes at the last event to avoide the bone-jarring hits - while losing time doing that.

So that needs to be addressed. After a good bit of consideration and throwing around various springs (keep in mind, I don't have the budget for a high-end coilover setup), I think I'm going to go with a Ground Control setup. Had some discussions with some of the e30 rallycrossers throughout the country and am narrowing down spring rates at this point. Up front I'm pretty set on about 250lb springs (and with a nearly .99 motion ratio, that's pretty straight-up), and will try to put it around "stock 318" height (which is higher than the car sits right now). For the rear, the motion ratio is roughly 0.65, so I'm leaning toward about 350lb springs back there (giving an effective rate of about 225). As this car is pretty balanced, that seems about right for my purposes. An since this will be a linear rate, I think it will improve car control in faster transitions that I had the most problems on for much of this year. Another option is to go up to 400 in the back and ditch the rear sway (yeah, the little stock paperclip-thickness one), but we'll see. The plan is to keep the rear end a bit lower than the front because I like the feel of the rear end sitting down (and to help with weight transfer). Subjective point on that one.

I have a bit more to think of regarding that, but at the moment I think that's the direction I'll go. In the preseason I'll toy around with some other swaybar stuff (front on/off, rear on/off, larger?) and I still need to see where my alignment is sitting at the moment (I slacked on checking it for the past few events, so it very well could be all wacky).

May also keep my eyes open for a lighter driver's seat, and I have a few other small ideas for projects. I also need to get my ass in gear and moving on the e21 project (also with M42, an that will one definitely get a turbo at some point), so trying to minimize e30 expenses and spend some money on the other car if possible.

So that's about it for now. One last thing. As I mentioned, I hate the steel ladder ramps that the trailer came with. They're heavy, suck for loading, and only 5 feet long so not a great angle for any car lower than the rallycross car (like our Chumpcar e30). I was at my parents' place over thanksgiving and looking at some aluminum ramps online. Dad walked up behind and wanted to see them on my laptop. Next thing I know he hands the laptop back and says "merry Christmas, they're on the way."

And so they arrived today. 18lbs each, 6' long. Both together are lighter than one of the original ramps (which I'm selling on CL now).

So that's an upgrade at least, lol

irish44j wrote: I still need to see where my alignment is sitting at the moment (I slacked on checking it for the past few events, so it very well could be all wacky).

I think you are over thinking this alignment thing. Your suspension plans sound pretty good since your current suspension looks not so good out there.

Winter plans for my car - Get it to start on it's own or get a new car.

moxnix wrote:

irish44j wrote: I still need to see where my alignment is sitting at the moment (I slacked on checking it for the past few events, so it very well could be all wacky).

I think you are over thinking this alignment thing. Your suspension plans sound pretty good since your current suspension looks not so good out there. Winter plans for my car - Get it to start on it's own or get a new car.

lol, alignment is free, so I can overthink it :D

And man, that hurts about my suspension not looking so good, considering your suspension

There's gotta be a magic triangle engine somewhere in one of the pick-n-pulls down in stafford that you could grab for cheap, maybe?

My suspension is tigger (bouncy, bouncy, fun, fun, fun) yours is more eeyore

Is it possible that your shocks are toast/bumpstops are destroyed? I know it only took 2 events at Frostburg to blow the front struts on the Mustang, and if yours (Bilsteins?) have seen several seasons of abuse it may be time for a rebuild.

How much travel does an e30 have anyway? I know my e28/e24 had buttloads of wheel travel, which may be part of why Nick's car seems to handle the rough stuff better.

NONACK wrote: Is it possible that your shocks are toast/bumpstops are destroyed? I know it only took 2 events at Frostburg to blow the front struts on the Mustang, and if yours (Bilsteins?) have seen several seasons of abuse it may be time for a rebuild. How much travel does an e30 have anyway? I know my e28/e24 had buttloads of wheel travel, which may be part of why Nick's car seems to handle the rough stuff better.

nope, shocks are still good. It's pretty straightforward that the springs are too soft (and short). I mean, they always were....but when we were at Summit it didn't matter since the courses were so smooth. The softness helped the car rotate. Early in this season we ran courses that were tighter and slower, but as the season went on they really opened up and were pretty much never tight in the least - with higher associated speeds. Once I started hitting the same bumps and such at higher speeds, the suspension inadequacy became much more apparent.

On a side note, I see you're looking at that AW11 (and various other rally/rallycross-ish cars). What are your plans? Back to RX?

Maybe. I plan to sell the Celica in the spring, and I miss rallycross...

With any luck we'll find someplace closer to I-95. Adam and I already have some plans on how we're going to look for new venues, so we'll see how that works out.

Hmm....after I emailed Ground Control about their thoughts on spring rates, I got the response "based on your description I would recommend 375# front springs and 550# rears, as well as a set of large aftermarket sway bars."

I'm thinking he either doesn't know what SCCA rallycross is, or he misread and thought I was talking about euro rallycross or stage rally. That sounds like a road course setup, lol.

After much discussion with fellow e30 rallycrossers (in the US and in Europe), I'm actually leaning toward 250# up front, #350 in the rear, and stock sways at most, lol.

I was pretty happy with the stock e28 535 springs in the front at the last event, though they may be a little high (height). probably ok for f-burg, but maybe not for a smaller, smoother venue. I've been running the stock front bar and no rear bar all season, but I'll be adding a rear bar and larger front for next season. It'll be interesting to compare the two setups.

I'm also looking into switching to e46 front control arms for increased track and camber. The other night when I was talking to Nick, we also discussed chassis rigidity and that we both think it's likely that his e28 is better in that regard, so I'm going to explore additional chassis bracing as well. That might not happen until the season starts, though.

Chris, we need your flavor of crazy back. do it!

In reply to bluej:

One of the other ideas I've been kicking around is a 318ti done up like a mini Dakar truck...

do it

I’ve always loved this build.

I think you’re on the right lines with weight, lose it! What about the following:
• I don’t see any recent pics of the interior, do you still have the door trim panels? Is so replace with Coroplast.
• Out with the tin snips and start removing the interior sheet metal at least from the rear doors
• Remove the side impact beams from the rear doors
• For sure loos the extra spot lights on the bumper, also lose two of the four headlights, just keep a single low beam set in the outer.
• Do you still have an odyssey batter? If so replace with something smaller and lighter.
• Why do you need bumpers to be street legal? I’d lose those. If you have to have them why not break out the foam and a skim of fiberglass?
• Bonnet and boot, errr, I mean hood and trunk lid. Have you removed all the inner structure? What about making super thin fiberglass replicas? I’ve seen people who just put brown packaging tape on the outer surface of the existing panels then lay up a couple of layers over the outside. Not the best finish as the outer surface is the ‘rough’ side, but with your skills I’m sure you could do an excellent job.
• Junk the dash. Simple alloy plate for the instruments?

You say you can’t afford a turbo, how about some extra cash to buy one? You seem to have lots of time to devote to the project so why not gather up all your build posts and do a self-published book? I’m sure there is a huge interest from all the forums you post on. But out the even coverage except as commentary on how the car reacts, repairs and ideas for improvements. Cut out the Chump car and E21 stuff and you have a gold mine of information here you could turn into a great book, especially if you re-arranged it so rather than chronological you did chapters on different general subjects like suspension, Protection, Weight, wheel/tires etc. If you do that for the love of the flying spaghetti monster make it a real book, not an e-book though. If It’s an e-book there’s no incentive to buy it over the forum posts.

Edit: Stupid forum lack of formatting mutter mutter grumble grumble. WYSIWYG is 25 years old, why can't we get that here???!!?!?!?!?!

bluej wrote: The other night when I was talking to Nick, we also discussed chassis rigidity and that we both think it's likely that his e28 is better in that regard, so I'm going to explore additional chassis bracing as well.

Yeah, I did think about the fact that he has a full cage and that likely helps things quite a bit. I'll cage this car eventually, but that's not in this year's budget.

Adrian_Thompson wrote: I’ve always loved this build. I think you’re on the right lines with weight, lose it! What about the following: • I don’t see any recent pics of the interior, do you still have the door trim panels? Is so replace with Coroplast. • Out with the tin snips and start removing the interior sheet metal at least from the rear doors • Remove the side impact beams from the rear doors • For sure loos the extra spot lights on the bumper, also lose two of the four headlights, just keep a single low beam set in the outer. • Do you still have an odyssey batter? If so replace with something smaller and lighter. • Why do you need bumpers to be street legal? I’d lose those. If you have to have them why not break out the foam and a skim of fiberglass? • Bonnet and boot, errr, I mean hood and trunk lid. Have you removed all the inner structure? What about making super thin fiberglass replicas? I’ve seen people who just put brown packaging tape on the outer surface of the existing panels then lay up a couple of layers over the outside. Not the best finish as the outer surface is the ‘rough’ side, but with your skills I’m sure you could do an excellent job. • Junk the dash. Simple alloy plate for the instruments? You say you can’t afford a turbo, how about some extra cash to buy one? You seem to have lots of time to devote to the project so why not gather up all your build posts and do a self-published book? I’m sure there is a huge interest from all the forums you post on. But out the even coverage except as commentary on how the car reacts, repairs and ideas for improvements. Cut out the Chump car and E21 stuff and you have a gold mine of information here you could turn into a great book, especially if you re-arranged it so rather than chronological you did chapters on different general subjects like suspension, Protection, Weight, wheel/tires etc. If you do that for the love of the flying spaghetti monster make it a real book, not an e-book though. If It’s an e-book there’s no incentive to buy it over the forum posts. Edit: Stupid forum lack of formatting mutter mutter grumble grumble. WYSIWYG is 25 years old, why can't we get that here???!!?!?!?!?!

thanks for the post! You've definitely hit on some ideas that I've thought about as well, so I'll touch on them as well:

I only have the front door panels, and they will likely come out in the near future. They've been in mostly just for sound insulation when driving the car on the street. Rear door panels are off and I may do some snipping on them and take out the crash bars. That weight is in the best possible location really, so it hasn't been a real priority. The extra bumper lights are gonna stay. The headlights on this car suck, and I actually use the Hellas when driving at night in the country. We also may have night events next year, possibly. Plus....they were a Christmas present specifically to use on this car, so I'd prefer to leave them on :)

I still have the Optima, but don't really want to go with an Odyssey or a lightweight, since this car sits for long periods and I don't want to have to have it on a tender. I may move the battery directly over the rear axle from the rear corner of the trunk where it is now, to reduce the "end weight" of the car.

Pretty sure the bumpers are required for street legality in this state. And to be honest, this car is not exactly loaded with safety technology so I prefer to have bumpers when driving in traffic around here because there are plenty of idiots out there. I have been thinking about a "quick release" pin setup for the mounts though, which would allow me to quickly take them off at events. I'm still thinking about how I want to set that up. Possibly some drilled studs replacing the piston mount bolts where I can just pull a couple cotter pins and pull the whole assemblies out of the car. We'll see.

hood and trunk....the only reason I haven't skinned out the frame is that I let my kids climb on them, lol. And I like to sit on them and would forget they were skinned, I'm sure :) It keeps them from climbing on the cars that actually have nice paint jobs.

I've held back on some weight reduction for the sake of keeping the car looking nice (IMO). I hate e30s that are all stripped of bumpers an lights and stuff. They look like E36 M3 (IMO). For the sake of my (few) sponsors, and for getting the car in photos, I'd rather not have it look like a junkyard car, to be honest :)

As to the cashflow, it's really more on principle than me not actually being able to buy a turbo (or some high-end gravel-spec coilovers) if I really, really wanted to. All along I've tried to keep this build on a relatively low budget an a decent turbo setup would cost about as much all-told as I've spent on the car for everything else I've done to it in the last 3 years....doesn't really jive with my M.O. for this build, overall. Maybe someday. I think suspension will be more beneficial right now. My car budget is reasonable, but is finite - and it has to cover things like new summer tires for the WRX this winter, trailer maintenance/upgrades, and the e21 build as well.

I like the idea about the book. Wish I had more time (and patience) for something like that, even assuming someone would want to read it. Someday down the road, if this car makes it to a stage rally build an maybe does a Chumpcar race to boot, and I have more stories to tell, and actually take a break from car/house projects for a while, it might be worth it. Kind of why I'm documenting the whole thing, even if I'm not doing anything especially crazy that hasn't been done before. Definitely food for thought though!

It's actually funny how LITTLE time I have, in reality. I work fast and do most of it late at night and Sundays (except during fall, when I'm raking leaves all day), so I get a lot accomplished. But as it is, I work my office job M-F and then work a retail job on Saturdays. Gotta spend time with the wife and kids too, and get other projects done that are less fun (toilet seal replacement, rebuild the stairs to the deck, install ventilation fan in bathroom, etc etc).

So in other news, I've kind of gotten bored with the e21 project. With no real end-goal for it, it's a lot like working on the e30, except parts (like LSD diffs) are way harder to find and more expensive. So I'm cutting bait on that car and selling the shell and everything else non-drivetrain-related.

As to the freshly-rebuilt M42 I had for it, I think I'm going to put that in the rallycross car for the winter at least so I can check out the thrust bearings on the rallycross car, which I didn't do when I did the top end refresh 3 years ago. So I pulled that engine out of the e21 tonight and at some point I'll swap it into the e30 this winter.

In other news, SCCA has announced a restart of its RallySprint program (which is kind of like stage rally, but with shorter courses I guess). With that being a good stepping-stone to stage, I'm seriously considering putting a cage in this car in the fairly near future. We'll see how this year's work bonus looks :)

irish44j wrote: In other news, SCCA has announced a restart of its RallySprint program (which is kind of like stage rally, but with shorter courses I guess). With that being a good stepping-stone to stage, I'm seriously considering putting a cage in this car in the fairly near future. We'll see how this year's work bonus looks :)

What are the safety regs? Full stage rally type cage or will a simpler Improved Touring type cage work?

Just wanted to add that I love this thread as well. I started looking for an E30 on Craigslist mostly due to skimming this thread during downtime at work and hey, look, there's a 318is in my driveway.

Adrian_Thompson wrote:

irish44j wrote: In other news, SCCA has announced a restart of its RallySprint program (which is kind of like stage rally, but with shorter courses I guess). With that being a good stepping-stone to stage, I'm seriously considering putting a cage in this car in the fairly near future. We'll see how this year's work bonus looks :)

What are the safety regs? Full stage rally type cage or will a simpler Improved Touring type cage work?

Not sure. They're putting together the rules board this month and then stuff will be clarified I'm sure. An IT cage is fairly close to an RA cage, as I recall. Might have to add a couple bars. I could be wrong though.

VinnyGT19 wrote: Just wanted to add that I love this thread as well. I started looking for an E30 on Craigslist mostly due to skimming this thread during downtime at work and hey, look, there's a 318is in my driveway.

Sweeet!

So....while selling the e21 now I've gotten about a dozen emails about buying the M42 (and only a couple about buying the rolling shell :/ )

I don't think I"m gonna sell the rebuilt engine. I want to see if it works, since it's my first full rebuild. So it's going in the e30. If it works, I'll sell the one out of the car for less.

So what do you know....there's an e30 in my garage for the first time in a year. And there's a fresh M42 next to it

After pulling some stuff off the engine to see what's going on in that dirty-ass bay, I opened a little box that I got in the mail today. Try to contain your excitement when I tell you it's a working inside latch for the rear door. For the last couple years that door almost never latches fully and has flown open once while driving (yeah.....). So it's been closed and locked for the most part for the last year, except when Josh S. accidentally opened it in Ohio and it took me 10 minutes to get it latched again.

So after some heat on the screws to free them up after 29 years, it was out and a new (used) one is in. Nice to be able to open the door again and have it close.

Yeah, this is some hardcore stuff yo...

old

new

yup. So I did something on the car.

More to come in the next few weeks. Then we order some suspension after Christmas.

Well, I did something today at least. Still waiting for th e21 to get out of here (and money in) and I'll immediately order the new suspension. I think I have it all decided what exactly I'm going to do but more on that once I have it in hand.

Carlos at Condor Speed Shop is also sending me some UHMV rear subframe and diff bushings, which will tighten up the rear end a bit. I've shied away from a lot of solid bushings in the front, to try to reduce impact shock on the front suspension and chassis - especially since on dirt it doesn't matter all that much. I'm doing it in the back though because first of all my diff bushings is kind of shot anyhow, but mostly to tighten up throttle response a bit and get a bit better feel on the rear end. I'm not doing the RTABs though, since I want them to be able to deflect a bit on hard side impacts.

So will be dropping the subframe and diff to do that, and doing all four corners of springs sometime here in January I think.

And talking to Ozgur, who is building the Rally America cage on the e30 I'm crewing for at the Waste Management Winter Rally this February. So far it looks like a great cage, and the plan is to do my car next, sometime this Spring perhaps :) We'll see.

In the meantime, stumbled upon a local selling the cover for the engine wiring loom. M10 cars didn't have the firewall harness holder, and I had the bottom section when I got the engine, but have never had a cover. They're surprisingly not that easy to find....junkyard cars always seem to be missing them. In any case, picked one up locally for a few bucks. Doesn't quite fit (since I have some extra wires and stuff jammed in there) using the stock clips, but I just used some zipties. Not really consequential, but it cleans up the engine bay a bit and keeps mud and stuff out of the electrical area, including the relays.

Don't think my engine bay is gonna make it into any import tuner magazines any time soon though...

In reply to irish44j:

Sway bars? Rallyx? Pfffffffttttttttt