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

EDIT: Made some edits after re-reading my terrible handwriting on my tally sheets, lol.

I've always wondered what this car weighs, but I'm not going to drop a couple hundred bucks to go to a race shop and get on some scales. So I did it the ghetto way today.

I'll preface this by saying that measurements were made with the car in full "race" trim with a full tank of gas. No spare, no jack, no rear seat load panels. Exactly as the car is in competition except with the street wheels on vs. the rally wheels (the rally wheels/tires are 4lbs each heavier than the star specs on the wider euroweaves), so add 16lbs to the top of my meaurements.

I went to Walmart and bought four fairly cheap scales with a metal top. They have a max weight rating of 350lbs each, but the intention was to keep all of them below 200lbs where they're most accurate. To check them I weighed myself on all four and then on my $$ very accurate digital bathroom scale. The cheapos were always within 2-3 lbs of correct, plus or minus depending on where I stood on the scale (I tried different positions - in the middle, on the edge, etc). So that figures out to about a 1.5% margin of error per scale. Figure I'm using four per corner, so my max margin of error is about 6% either way.

I set up the scales in a square with a stiff board across them to distribute the weight, and thin pads in the middle of each one in the "best" position under the boards. I tried to center the tire as much as possible to distribute the weight across all four scales to keep them in the "middle range" where they're most accurate.

I also did each wheel at least 5-6 times with the scales rearranged in different positions, to try to see if the readings were affected greatly. Again, I found that no matter what I did, the readings were never more than about 3% off either direction.

So, did a crapload of measurements (with the car empty) and then did all the same ones with me in the driver's seat (wife reading off the numbers on the scales to me).

Then did a bunch of number crunching, and here's what I came up with:

Empty: RF: 567 AVG (hi: 587) LF: 611 AVG (hi: 644) LR: 520 AVG (hi: 526) RR: 552 AVG (hi: 564) - note that battery is in right rear corner TOTAL AVG: 2250 +16 lbs for rally tires, so 2276.

So I'm pretty confident that the car is a good bit under 2300lbs with the rally tires on in full competition trim. Note that this car has bumpers, all lighting, heater core, two seats, both OEM seatbelts, 6-point harness too, OEM dash and gauges, and a Kirk 4-point rollbar. Hood and trunk are not gutted.

So pretty pleased with that weight, since it's in the ballpark I had estimated in my head (well, I expected around 2200). I do find it very strange that the front left is so much heavier than the front right, and I can't really figure out why that is unless the M42 just naturally rests most of its weight on the driver's side.

And here are my avg. measurements with me sitting in the car: RF: 663 LF: 700 LR: 595 RR: 574 total: 2432

So that's a bit off there since fully dressed with my boots on I'm around 180lbs. But with two of the scales less visible and my wife not interested in getting under the car to read them straight-down, I expected the "me in the car" measurements to be off a bit, perhaps.

Anyhow, not meant to be a "scientific" measurement, but I think it's a pretty good ballpark to say that my car in race trim w/o driver is "right around 2350lbs" but the poor corner balance is somewhat annoying. It could explain why I've always felt the car is more balanced when I have a passenger riding on runs.

I'm not going to do any suspension "tuning" for the time being - I want to run it next weekend first to see how it feels first.

And thinking about how much weight I COULD lose on this car if it didn't need to be street legal......bumpers, lights, 2nd seat, front windows, rear windshield glass, gut hood/trunk, etc.....I think it would certainly be possible to get the car to 2100lbs even if it were bare-bones. I have no plans to do that, though.

Jesse Yuvali just posted up his corner weights for fully stage-rally-prepped M42 car (with all the stage gear...spare tires, tools, etc). That shows 2586 lbs, for comparison.

I don't have a pic of the other two sheets of numbers, but yeah....what a mess lol. This was the "first round" (did two more)

And yes, the car was level all four wheels for every measurements (on blocks)

Ok, it's been a long day, Pete. I don't get it at all......

I think he is saying just drive the damn car.

Would this make you understand it? (Skipping a bunch of parts but you get the idea)
You look at fine BMW Car. You think it need crazy springs and weights and engines.
Go to rallyx course, practice with many runs, then you not need to put crazy E36 M3 on BMW.

I think my car weighs less stock than your stripped car does

moxnix wrote: I think he is saying just drive the damn car. Would this make you understand it? (Skipping a bunch of parts but you get the idea) You look at fine BMW Car. You think it need crazy springs and weights and engines. Go to rallyx course, practice with many runs, then you not need to put crazy E36 M3 on BMW. I think my car weighs less stock than your stripped car does

Lol....well, I sure hope it does. But mine can carry all of my tires and gear, and I have lots of headroom .

Nobody would love to "just go out and drive it" more than me. However, as you know the availability of dirt roads and such in beautiful suburban hell northern virginia is somewhat....lacking. Could be why we all have to drive 3 hours to rallycross "locally" lol. Unless you have a secret rallycross "practice course" available someplace, please do let me know!

In the interim, I like doing stuff on the car. I enjoy the building and tinkering as much as the racing. When one only has one project car to mess with.....well, you wouldn't know anything about that.

I hardly think faux-coilovers and a stock 4-cylinder engine qualify as "crazy E36 M3" though For less money than I've spent I could have just gone out and bought an e36 m3 and had a car that's better than what I have now without doing much of anything to it. That would be pretty boring though.

Looks like Josh S. won't have the M52 swap done in time so he's co-driving the ETA as the 4th driver just so he can run (though he could certainly win in that car too). As it stands, looks like we'll have over 40 cars at the first event (including over a dozen BMW drivers), so that's good for business.

Anyhow, some last-second project stuff: Rebuilding the fuel/brake line protection that finally got ripped off at the end of last year (they lasted 3 full seasons, so that's good). Doing it the same way this time, but made them to fit better and be better secured this time. So another one of my heavy-duty rubbermaid storage bins is now without a lid..

Probably don't need it, but first season Stuart managed to bust a fuel line on course, so might as well play it safe.

So, will do a full update on the season opener tonight or in the next couple days, but a few quick takes:

1. My e30 has finally gotten some oddball electrical gremlins that made for a frustrating day (ok, more just annoying since none of them affected performance). I think I have figured them out after ripping the dash apart today, but more on that later.

2. The new suspension feels exactly how I had hoped it would on the rough terrain. I'm pretty damn pleased with my calculations for spring rates and heights - though I do have to get used to some of the new handling dynamics of the car.

3. In spite of some wildly inconsistent driving by me that had back-to-back runs often differing by almost 4 seconds and more cones than I like, I still managed to win MR for the first event by 6 seconds over Nick (also trying some new suspension stuff that I don't think he's as happy with). I also put up the 2nd best total time in our 20+ car run group, with only the SA champion edging my out by a few seconds (with totals over 600 seconds). The M4, PA, and PR group has some course alterations, so really can't compare them too well with our group.

4. Miatas driven by Shawn Roberts, even with no brakes all afternoon, can still finish a close 2nd in PR to a well-driven e30. The guys in PR should probably start worrying about it when his brakes are fixed :)

More when I have time, but so far a promising start :)

re: 4. I nearly matched the times I was running in the RX-7 the first (only) time I got to drive Evan's Miata. Evan and I have a slight height disparity and his seat was fixed. I could not reach the brake pedal.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwjtPf0V9kM

k, a quick recap of the first event!

First of all, there were 19 RWD cars entered at this event, so that is pretty awesome. In addition to a bunch of e30s (including an IX) and Nick's e28, we had Shawn and Katie in a new (to them) Miata, some guys driving the hell out of a stock Volvo 240 in SR, the Jeffs running a 5-series wagon in SR, and Theresa Thao in her RX-7 that has run at nationals a few times (I guess she moved to this area so will hopefully keep running with us).

With Josh S. not getting his M52 swap quite done in time, he co-drove the ETA with Eric Helgesen in MR (with the two others driving it in PR). We also had several e30 newcomers, which is excellent since we've been working hard recruiting via our FB group and various net forums. Overall, about 50 drivers came out for this first event which is the most we've had at the new venue since we left Summit.

As usual the course was flowing and fast in the morning which I didn't really think boded well for me against the power cars. But I was pretty pleased with how the suspension reacted to the higher speed transitions - much more predictable than it used to be with less body lean. I led from the start and managed to hold onto a small lead at the lunch break over Nick. I picked up 5 cones in the morning to Nick's two, and still led so I think I was driving pretty well, and none of the cones were "hard hits"...mostly just ones I nicked. At the same time, Nick was struggling a bit learning their new rear suspension setup, which is higher and stiffer than the old one (see his thread for more details on that).

In the PM the course tightened up with a lot of slaloms and a tighter hairpin. Normally this would help me out but the stiffer setup actually made me feel a bit less comfortable in the slaloms than normal. The car doesn't "dance" quite as well as it did and I had a couple runs that were nearly major disasters (including one where I was at full opposite lock coming through finish and somehow didn't take out the entire finish gate after getting "all over the place" in the slalom before the finish.

In the end, Nick and I were back and forth run-wise in the afternoon, but I had about 5-6 seconds with a few runs left and let off a bit to be more "careful" (which is never a good idea and almost caused a spin). In the meantime, NIck put up a few good runs but coned twice on his last run trying to close the gap. In the end, I won by 6 seconds and had no cones in the afternoon, which is a minor miracle of its own.

Most surprisingly, Eric Helgesen - in the beat-up ETA and only in his 2nd year - has gotten quite good and actually had a couple of the fastest runs in the PM. He ended up about 10 seconds behind Nick, but did beat the other three drivers in the class.

In any case, good start to the season for me. I have a few minor car adjustments to make but won't do much until I get a couple more events to feel it out and get used to it. I have some electrical stuff to finish fixing, but that's really boring so I won't mention it further.

Here's the results:

PR was an even bigger class, with a bunch of e30s taking on Shawn and Katie in their Miata - replacing the nearly-dead RX7 that won Shawn three titles in three seasons. Even with his brakes almost non-functional in the afternoon, Shawn still managed to take 2nd to Stephen.

Here's the PR results:

And a few more great pics by Ed Palaszynski, whos son Mike was running the other M42 car :)

Yeah Justy!!!

Looks like some are still rocking the snows out there. Did the fresh build make it out there?

Here are a few crappier photos from my phone of some of the others there

paperpaper wrote: Looks like some are still rocking the snows out there. Did the fresh build make it out there?

Most of the guys on snows were either SR cars or new guys who haven't gotten rally tires yet. Shawn ran snows on the Miata in the morning when it was cold and switched to gravels in the afternoon. All the MR cars ran gravels except Eric Eisele who had BFG all-terrains.

Not sure which new build you're referring to. Josh Sennett's M52 swap (referenced a bit earlier with pics) wasn't done so he co-drove the blue ETA. Eric Eisele got his 325i with freshly-rebuilt M20B25 out there.

18 cones + an off course. soooo messy. After that off-course, I gave up any semblance of caring about where I placed and was just trying to drive fast and have fun without beating up on the "village bike" eta too much. Still an interesting glimpse at the rest of the season. Adam commented to me that I was driving it like I stole it in the afternoon. Maybe I should have taken it a little bit easier

If you drop everyone's cones, the raw times shake out as:

JH - 670

ND - 676

JS - 684

EH - 685

EE - 706

BT - 732

I can see EE's times dropping as he adjusts for RWD and maybe looks into different tires. Be curious how they stack up if he runs more events on them.

EH looked good. He may not have the most competitive ride, but he knows it well and if he keeps up his consistency, which I think he can, he'll be right there when any of us screw up.

Glad to see Theresa is out there running with you guys. She and her husband drove down from Oklahoma and ran a ton of events with us in Texas. We've all driven each others cars and that white RX7 has the most vague steering I've ever felt. I can't believe either of them can drive that car fast in the dirt.

mazdeuce wrote: Glad to see Theresa is out there running with you guys. She and her husband drove down from Oklahoma and ran a ton of events with us in Texas. We've all driven each others cars and that white RX7 has the most vague steering I've ever felt. I can't believe either of them can drive that car fast in the dirt.

Yeah, I chatted with her for a minute or two. She seemed kind of disappointed that we didn't do trophies at the end of the event or announce winners or anything (we never do). Guess they're more formal out in the midwest :) I think she said she lives in DC now, so I assume she'll be out for more events.

I'm sure she was just learning the surface and taking it easy....because the car's times weren't remotely competitive against our very strong PR class. Her co-driver must have been a first-timer, because she was going really, really slow. Guess we'll see at future events.

Not sure what the courses are like out there, but that car had tiny tires on it. Probably great for tight autocross-style courses, but I can't see how they'd be helpful on the open, high-speed stuff we run. IDK magic triangles though....

Her husband is the faster of the two of them and I just saw on FB that her co-driver was a newb. The super skinny tires on that car work pretty good on the surface that we run. She's in DC for at least a year, hopefully her husband will make it out to run too. And yes, we all gather round and announce the winning times and cheer at the end of the day. When you get used to that, it feels weird to have everyone just pack up and leave.

mazdeuce wrote: Her husband is the faster of the two of them and I just saw on FB that her co-driver was a newb. The super skinny tires on that car work pretty good on the surface that we run. She's in DC for at least a year, hopefully her husband will make it out to run too. And yes, we all gather round and announce the winning times and cheer at the end of the day. When you get used to that, it feels weird to have everyone just pack up and leave.

lol, true. Everyone at our venue is 2-5 hours from home so by the time we wrap up at 6pm on Sunday, everyone just wants to get packed up and get on the road I think.

We do awards at divisional challenge events and have an end-of-year dinner though.

I was more referring to the diameter of the tires, not the width. They looked like 13" wheels with low-profiles almost, lol. Car must scream on the high speed sections.

I had been thinking about going down to VIR for TarHeel Sportscar Club's rallycross next weekend, thinking it was a 2-day event, but as it turns out it's only a single day - and the word is that TSSC runs a fairly laid-back event time-wise that results in only like 6 or 7 runs on their (reportedly excellent) course. Can't really justify towing down there for so little racing time, and have other things to do. .... so looks like I have a few weeks to work on some small bugs in the car.

As noted before, figured out all my wiring/electrical bugs from the last event (mostly related to bad ground, a fuel sender plug coming loose, and a faulty headlight switch) so hopefully everything is good to go in that respect.

On the trip home from the last event I was noticing a loud rattle from under the car under load. Figured it was a heat shield or something, but after some investigation I found that the front exhaust mount (off the tranny) that I had ghetto-fabbed up 2 seasons ago and just tack-welded in place had finally ripped itself free from the y-pipe and the metal mount was rattling against the pipe under load. This setup was supposed to have been temporary when I first did it, but never got around to making it better.

So with the weather nice I got the car on ramps, got on my back and fabbed up a couple new exhaust hangers - one to replace that one and one at the front half of the catback (even though it's a full welded system now, I prefer to distribute the hanger load for obvious reasons).

On the front I bent an L-bracket out of some random piece of metal and then welded it to the pipe. To cut down on any NVH I set it up to use one of my spare WRX hangers as the "bridge" to the stock hanger on the tranny. Pretty pleased with how it came out, actually, and should hold up better than the old ghetto setup

Farther back, this one is a bit more ghettos with limited options for using a donut-style hanger there. I got one of the swivel-head heavy duty hangers from an auto parts store and hung it from the side. This hanger is more of a "security" piece in case the two exhaust sections come apart like they did last season....so now something will be holding the forward end. It's a lot stronger than it looks, actually. I was tired of welding on my back so I just bolted it through the rear floor. And please ignore the horrendous weldes on the multiple pipe sections - those were done when I was just learning (I'm a little better now, lol)

While the welder was out, I finally got around to putting on the two extra D-rings on the back of the trailer. This is pretty beefy stuff and wasn't sure if my little Hobart would "Handle" it (pun intended). Did a few rows of somewhat ugly welds, and also tripped the breaker on my garage plug by trying to do a full beat at full power, lol. Anyhow, after done I smacked them 2-3 times with a 5lb sledgehammer and they didn't come off or crack the welds or anything, so I guess they're strong enough :)

I'm not one to usually post any deep thoughts in here, but for those who follow the news you may have heard about the shooting and police chase in DC yesterday. This happened at the outer perimeter of the federal complex I work on, and the guard who was shot and killed was somebody I drove past every single day for the last few years. No matter the weather, he always had a smile, a wave, and often a sharp salute (even though I'm not a military officer) for me as I drove by on the way home, which was a nice coda on a long day at work. I never knew his name, but when I drove out today I noticed he wasn't there, before I knew he was the one shot.

http://www.myfoxdc.com/story/28774286/slain-security-guard-lawrence-buckner-remembered-as-hero-family-man

So, as you go through your days, make sure you appreciate the people who you may not know, and make sure to give them a smile and a wave back. Because you may not realize how much they actually matter to you and the world until they're gone.

No car work tonight.

moxnix wrote: You look at fine BMW Car. You think it need crazy springs and weights and engines. Go to rallyx course, practice with many runs, then you not need to put crazy E36 M3 on BMW.

Which is ironic, given that the E36 M3 is, in fact, a BMW....

Been a couple weeks and not much going on other than planning. We have a local event on May 3rd, and another 3 weeks after that. Then in early June a bunch of us are going up to Susquehannock Trail Performance Rally (SPTR) to help crew at the rally and then run at the NEDiv national challenge rallycross there the next day, which basically uses the course from the STPR Super Special Stage. So far 7 cars signed up, and all but one (Dan Downey bringing his e30 from Massachusette) are WDCR regulars, which is kind of funny seeing as it's 5 hours north of us.

In the meantime, been helping out working on Nick's car (cutting his rear springs and doing a few other things to make it faster), and again I ask myself why I'm helping my top competitors make their cars faster lol.

I hear Josh is pretty close to finishing up the M52 swap. Yay again, lol.

In a discussion on some forum today lugnuts were being discussed, and it reminded me of a little thing that I've been meaning to do since we started running at Frostburg, where gray-black lugnuts disappear into the gravel during tire changes, never to be seen again (ok, so they're always found after searching the ground for 5 minutes lol). Paint the damn things a bright color so they're easier to see.

So yeah....while my competitors are busy swapping in big engines, and doing major suspension changes, here I am painting lugnuts :/ And saving my pennies for a cage later this year :)

I need some lugs studs bad... now with summer tire changes are here. And I am Guessing that cutting rears for better weight balance/ride height?

Those are for Nick's e28, which he put e34 rear springs/shocks on which put the rear of his car up pretty damn high due to the higher static length + higher rate. He was just trying to get it down closer to his previous rear height without going back to the e28 rear stuff (go read his thread on R3vlimited for more details if you care).

But yeah, when I dropped the rear of my car down I felt like it was more locked-in and less skittish on course. I still keep the front slightly higher than the rear for rallycross. On the street or for autocross, I take the front down about an inch.

Yeah, definitely get some studs. Get bullet-nose studs (they make life so much easier). Motorsporthardware is the place to go. Mine have been great.

In reply to irish44j:

what size are those 75's?

Yeah, I think so. I got them extra long so I can run spacers on my winter wheels, which are a Spec Miata offset and need like 15mm to clear my front suspension.