Here's the other side I did this morning. Still not pretty, but not as bad I guess. The plan is to take a class this winter once I have time. Not because I don't think the welds are strong (I work with shipbuilders so know full well that ugly welds can be just as strong as pretty ones), but because I actually want them to look good lol.
java230 wrote: Damn I looked at the pic and still missed the bottle.... I wasnt trying to be men at all, sorry if it came off that way, they look plenty strong, just not pretty. Ill shut up now. (mine dont look any better of sheet metal generally either....)
lol no worries. I sound defensive, but really I like it when people are critical so I'm motivated to get better at it! There is no better motivation than public shame 
In reply to irish44j:
The picture at the top of this page says "MOAR AMPS" to me
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wrote: In reply to irish44j: The picture at the top of this page says "MOAR AMPS" to me
Yeah, it does. Or more likely a little less hand speed. IDK, I try to use the table on the welder but it always seems a bit low on the amps per thickness of metal. In any case I was trying to be especially careful not to burn-through the towers (especially since they have a E36 M3load of rubber undercoating on the underside of them).
If that undercoating isn't catching fire you're not welding hot enough- although this advice is coming from the guy who cracked the front of his last rally car off.
If the undercoating on the other side isn't catching fire, it's not hot enough.
BUT you need to balance against not getting the general area so hot that you blow holes through the metal. So it's kind of a crapshoot.
Oh, it's catching fire for sure...just trying to keep it to a minimum. Got Downey's Car-b-que in my head lol.
That looks much cleaner, slowing the wire speed will allow you to get a little more heat in by moving slower also.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wrote: If that undercoating isn't catching fire you're not welding hot enough- although this advice is coming from the guy who cracked the front of his last rally car off.
yes, well it's certain that your sheet-metal welding is getting a lot more practice than mine!
Thankfully, most things I need to weld are heavy/thick stuff which is much easier :)
Not too much going on as it's too damn hot to do much car work, but I did get a couple new springs in today. Decided that in order to get a bit more compression travel (since the car was not fully compressing the bumpstops in the front before spring bind) that I would switch from the current setup to something possibly better.
Current is 8" 250lb springs along with a low-rate tender spring (to keep springs set under full droop), replacing with 10" 250lb springs and no tender. I figure this gives me about 1/2" more compression travel to get to the bumpstops fully when landing jumps without binding. The extra 2" is compensated for by removing the tenders (1/2" compressed stack height) and dropping the lower perch all the way down (about 1 1/4" below where it was before). That combination yields pretty much the exact same standing height for the car, but again gives me a bit of extra compression travel without changing the ride/handling of the car in any discernable manner.
Also love balljoint control arms that allow you to remove and change springs simply by unbolting the top hat, pushing the shock rod in, and tilting it out of the wheel well.
That rate looks light to me, how much travel do you have up front? If you're not smashing into the bumpstops those Bilsteins must be doing a better job than I give them credit for.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wrote: That rate looks light to me, how much travel do you have up front? If you're not smashing into the bumpstops those Bilsteins must be doing a better job than I give them credit for.
When I was on more traditional springs (like the H&R Sports) I was constantly on the bumpstops. With the 8" Eibachs (much higher rate) I never take hard bumpstop hits but I found that on jumps and large compressions the springs would lightly bind before the bumpstops were fully compressed (based on looking at the shock tube wear and contact points on the spring coils. So in theory changing to these 10" and then lowering the seat by 1.5" I should get that extra 1/2" of travel that will let the bumpstops stop travel just before spring bind, which is what I want.
I'll measure the travel for you this weekend. I've been happy with the HDs though - this is the same set I've had on the car since this build started and no sign of any leaks or loss of pressure. I am going to pick up another set soon though, since eventually one or more will go bad I'm sure. I have no complaints about the HDs though. I think on a light car like this they can take the beating pretty well.
Related: Dan Downey's car just did NEFR of course, and for all the stuff he did break, the one thing that didn't have an issue with was his springs/HDs - and his HDs are like 10 years old!
You don't need to measure travel for me, I'm just impressed that a commonly available shock seems to hold up so well- that's what we have on the 318ti (along with huge foam bumpstops), and it yumps pretty well for a street car, but I'm not sure I'd want to take it stage rallying.
HD's front travel is like 6.5 nearly 7. Rear is over 8 inches.
Mine are new as of April though. same stuff though. The rears I had in it had 250k on them and 27 years old. Only started failing after a rally sprint in April.
I forsee no reason to change them or get them rebuilt for most likely years.
Stock Is Springs too. Loves jumps and does not care about bumps. We Freaking devastating compression that sent stuff flying in the car and broke at least one mk3 golf. Suspension still feels new.
So just to finish up the lighting stuff. Today UPS brought my final piece, a Hella 350 pencil-beam LED bar. So time to mount and wire everything in the final setup.
A few requirements for this: 1. Lights all have to have quick-disconnect plugs. The old 500s were just hard-wired to the car and that was an issue more than once. 2. The entire lightbar assembly (with all the large lights) had to be quickly and easily removable and installable. 3. DPDT switch has to let lights be on EITHER with the low-beams (which I prefer since my lows are pretty good) OR the high-beams (per NASA Rally rules).
So, after much measuring, drilling, splicing, and plug-building, here's the final setup. The Hella lightbar is actually on the bumper and so will remain installed all the time. The other lights attached to the assembly can all be removed at once by unplugging them and taking off four bolts that run through the bumper holding the entire assembly on. I did a test and it takes less than 5 minutes going slowly, so that's good.
The upper bar is an ebay one, but has good brightness and a wide spread for cornering and shore/medium fill. The Hella 3000s (big round ones) are driving beams so medium/long distance with some fill. The Hella 350 is pencil-beam so a very narrow beam and very long distance. Will take pics one of these nights after I go out somewhere and aim everything.
Some pics of the setup
Can I still sit on the lightbar?
EvanB wrote: Can I still sit on the lightbar?
lol at rallycross, of course! The big LED bar will only be on the car on night stages lol.
I also like having the lightbar seat available at rallycross myself
Will have some minor updates later in the week, but we're continuing prepping the car for Black River Stages in about 6 weeks. In the meantime, we are having some shirts made, so if you'd like one of our team/crew shirts, here's the link. Front and back print and they should be pretty nice quality. The're selling for "cost" so we're not trying to make any profit on you guys but would of course be happy with any moral support and wearing our swag :)
https://teespring.com/pitchblack-rally-2016-tshirts#pid=369&cid=6513&sid=front
Time to do some catching up, I guess. First, car build updates and then on to WDCR RallyCross #5 last weekend.
So let's start with the dumb stuff. I had dropped the right side of the rear suspension to measure some things (basically by just unbolting the top of the rear shock). Anyhow, I left it like that for a few days and then went to turn the car around. Ooops....shock dropped out when the suspension drooped leaving the driveway. So I reached in and pushed it back into the holes and bolted it up from inside the trunk. No biggie. More on that later.
Next day I installed some 10" 250lb front springs to replace the 8" springs already in the car, as I mentioned before
So, that all done, time to test drive through the woodland roads nearby. Car felt good though there was a mysterious clunk from the rear end on certain corners, and though the car is noisy I kept hearing a faint noise that sounded odd. But car felt fine so I cruised for a bit, then headed home. When I got home decided to take a quick look to make sure things were tight back there and.....dammit. When the suspension dropped the day before the spring fell out and cocked diagonally.....but was kind of held in by the shock assembly so the car still felt ok. Problem: it was rubbing on the CV axle outer boot and totally destroyed it, spraying greasse everywhere and probably ruining the axle.
So, that was dumb.......had to scrounge up another CV axle to swap that in. Not a bit job, but still stupid and one I didn't want to do. Plus the axle in there had fresh boots on it from last winter, grr.
So on to the next project...more reinforcement. The reason I had unbolted the rear stuff anyhow.
Basically, I bent up and cut some thickish steel to make cap plates for the rear shock towers. Not particularly pretty (it's tight working in there) but should give some added reinforcement and peace of mind for landing jumps, etc..
Then cleaned and painted the trunk white to make it a bit easier to find stuff in there. ALso rigged up a new way to hold my jack handle, whcih I think is pretty smart ;)
http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j85/irish44j/BMW%20318i%20Rally%202016/IMG_20160805_173648324_HDR.jpg
In the meantime, also went over to help Chris and Stephen and Eric diagnose a blown engine on their 325i, which turned out to be messy (they had to swap it out immediately to make the next event).....
Then installed some new hood pins since my old ones were getting pretty rusty
Then went and worked with Jim and Amanda on her rallycross car, trying to get it ready for last weekend's event..
And checked out the RageCage track car damage from Jim's wall incident up in Canada next month
Praying Mantis help
So now let's talk racing! Last weekend was a test-and-tune Saturday and racing Sunday. I went to a late concert in DC saturday instead (yay for 3 hours of sleep + hangover + 90 degrees in the sun all day Saturday). I think my competitors must have been pleased at my sleepy condition Sunday morning lol.
To boot, most of the crew were there and had their rides for once (Josh S., Corey, Nick with the M3). Nick had some issues on Saturday but got the car going for Sunday (read his thread on GRM for details). Josh and Corey's cars seemed to be up to snuff. Amanda's car wasn't ready yet so she co-drove with me again, and Jim (my codriver) co-drove with Steven's newly re-engined 325i. As always, Eric and Neil were there in the Dirty Industries 325i as well, and we had some other cars inthe class as well. All in all there were almost 25 RWD cars registered out of a total field of less than 40......guess all the Subies are brokedown......
With a small field, though, that promised a lot of runs, and it woudl turn out to be fortuitious. The morning course was VERY technical. I figured that would help me and on the first run I jumped into a good lead already. But it wouldn't last. A couple mistakes and sloppy cones over our 6 or 7 morning runs, and by lunch I was sitting in 5th place, probably about 6-7 seconds off the lead with a bunch of tough competitors above me (minus Nick, who broke the M3's suspension on his second run and retired for the day in frustration). Well, basically all of the fast guys ahead of me at the break would certainly make it hard to catch up.
So for the afternoon the course was more open and that (I thought) would seal the deal for the more powerful/heavier cars since usually "handing" courses is where I do best. So we got going with everyone runnign similar times. But as luck (or bad luck) would have it, Corey broke ANOTHER axle on his turbo 240 and had to bum rides in various cars so I managed to jump him, sitll behind the Dirty Industries guys and Stephen, all of whom were running pretty clean and pretty quick. Josh S. picked up some cones (driving borrowed cars since he had a driveshaft issue in the morning) and dropped back as well. I started pushing harder and stayed clean all afternoon (IIRC) and thanks to a lot of runs (9, I think), I slowly reeled them in as they got a cone here and there and ran slightly slower times than me. By about the 6th run I had jumped over Eric and Neil (though they were within a second or two still) and was right behind Stephen, who had been clean all day but picked up a couple cones to let me get close. On the 6th run I had a fast one and he didn't and coned again and dropped into 3rd or 4th, and I took the lead. Eric Eisele managed to take half of my margin back on the 8th run, but I put down a fast 9th run to seal the deal! In addition, I had the second fastest total time of the event overall, only behind MOD AWD winner Adam Kimmett, so that's good as well :)
So: Won this event, that's 4 wins in 5 events this year (which is great considering the strong competition). So that puts me in a strong position to win the championship again even if I don't win again this season (not that I'm not going to try). More importantly, the car still had nothing break, no issues....whcih seems to be the bane of several of my MR competitors recently. This is good since I'm trying to make sure the car can survive full rallies, and breaking in rallycross woudl be a bad precedent there.
Here's results if anyone wants to see:
(on the right, event #5) https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B0DAjl8siZI9YWFnYlNIbHRENzA
Video of Amanda on the tricky morning course: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH_EAOsOLfY
Video of Me on the less tricky afternoon course:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ntk0l0xG76Y
And some pics:
Hiding from lunchtime storms
Driving home into armageddon that almost blew the truck and trailer off the road...
Let's do a few projects since it is below 95 degrees today, finally. First, been meaning for a few weeks to take care of installing rear air bags in the Sequoia to reduce rear-end squat when towing. Was a pretty easy install and less than a hundred bucks, so figure, why not?
Then UPS arrived with a new tach/shift light. My cheapo shift-light stopped working and the equally cheapo Sunpro tach I've been using seemed to have slow "action" and terrible night-lighting. So even though I usually try not to spend money on stuff I don't "need" per se, in this case figured I'd go ahead and do it just because I'm looking at it all day when driving, so might as well look at something that doesn't suck lol.
Then walked inside to cool down and clicked on the TV and this was on. Thought it was somewhat apropos lol
Do ALL of your vehicles have Bilsteins??? 
Your CV joint is fine. Or at least it isn't hurt. I've found that it takes tens of thousands of miles to hurt a CV joint after all of the grease is gone, and you didn't even do that yet. Slap a new boot on it and throw it in the spares pile. The main damage you did is a whole lot of nasty grease all over the suspension and wheel, and if there's an easy/fast way to clean that up, I'd like to know about it.
Knurled wrote: Do ALL of your vehicles have Bilsteins???
lol, no the Triumph has SPAX shocks 
I like the Billies. The WRX has Bilstein Cups on it and after 130k miles they're still perfect. The HDs on the e30 have taken 5 seasons of rallycross/rally and still are good too. And they're not very expensive, so definitely keep getting them!
I just blasted the whole area with brake cleaner and it got rid of all the axle grease. And yeah, I will rebuild that one once I check the movement. Not so positive it was a very good joint in the first place but will see. Just need to get motivated to make a mess....and damn e30 boots are mroe expensive than they should be 
So on Sunday will go out with the Bolivian Rallysprint guys at the Rally Farm nearby to get some testing and shakedown done. In the meantime, more prep stuff...
New brake rotors....since i've been using these for 4 years and they're kind of gross. I do love Rockauto....this isn't a road racing car, so I have no problem with some $13 closeout rotors. After all, the last set of $13 rotors lasted four years of driving, rallycross, rally, and autocross just fine
Also don't like the feel of my front left wheel bearing (the only one that I haven't replaced since I started this build), so there's a Moog hub/bearing on the way. While I wait, pulling my Motorsport Hardware studs out. Still in great shape...
On to another project I've been meaning to do for a while. For street/track with the M42, the trans stock crossmember is fine, but for the kind of impacts (jumps as well as possibly physical hits from below), I wanted to reinforce it in two ways: first, the crossmember itself, and second to add additional mounting bolts in addition to the one stock bolt on each end (in that "groove" in the chassis).
So first I boxed the brace itself, and added 3-4" "ears" on each end with some beefy steel stock.
Then lined them up for two extra outer bolts that go through the tripled-up subframe seam into the front floors of the car, and through-bolted. So that gives me some peace of mind.
Also picked up a used Longacre bottle cage like the one we use on the track car. The track car cage (Jim's) I guess we'll bolt up to his side to use for him
Oh, and printed out some new vinyl with our new logo for the car
Last weekend I went out to the Beltway Rally Sport rallysprint at the Rally Farm (that's a lot of rally in one sentence!). This group was formerly known as Bolivian Rally Sprint because it's about 95% Bolivian and hispanic guys. I had heard various things about them over the years - mostly relating to their events being very "laissez-faire" so to say.....very lax on rules, safety, and schedule. So I was prepared to be frustrated to some degree...
But as things would turn out, we had a great time. Yes - their rules are pretty loose - more or less "some kind of 6-point cage or more" is required and I don't recall seeing any tech inspection going on. With Jim out of town, fellow rallycrosser Brian Battocchi came out to co-drive with me and to test out his fancy new Stilo helmet (we use a Stilo WRC intercom). We showed up at 8am as the schedule showed as "arrival" and....
....nobody there, except the Rally Farm owner Lance, on his tractor. Hmm. Lance filled us in that these guys just "roll in whenever." About an hour later a dozen or so rigs pulled in with a variety of rally-ish cars on them....some nicely setup Subarus, several Civics and Sentra SE-Rs, and a few other random cars. Only one other RWD car showed, an old AE86 that looked mightly low for rally.
We figured it would be time to get running, but everyone seemed more intent on setting up sun tents, grills, and cooking breakfast and socializing. IN the meantime, someone told us that the course was open for driving (at full speed!). We took the opportunity to make several laps of the course so Brian could practice writing out stage notes. The venue right now is basically a HUGE rallycross course - mostly flat on big farm fields. At full speed we were turning runs in about 2 minutes (speeds probably up to about 70-75mph at most). Obstacles and course was laid out with huge rolls of hay. The Rally Farm is cutting much longer courses through the nearby woods and other fields, but those won't be open until next spring.
Anyhow, eventually the event got underway. Each team would do 5 consecutive laps of the course (nonstop), with 2 other cars on course at the same time (gapped by about 45 seconds). For the day we ended up doing 3 "stages" with each one of them around 10 minutes in length, for a total of about half an hour at full-speed on course. Since we've run rallycross here before (and used part of the rallycross course) I was pretty comforatble with the surface and we ran well. The only rough part was the two transitions between fields, which were basically partially-filled drainage ditches where we had to brake hard and "compress" into before popping up the other side back onto the smooth field. Many Subarus lost their front clips on this section, lol....
Anyhow, in the end we finished 2nd in the 2WD class (about 1 second behind the winner over 1,800 seconds!) and 3rd overall, so that was cool. Between run groups there was much loud latin music, much chatting (sometime using a 3rd guy to traslate), had some great fresh-cooked food, some Modelo and Sangria, etc. Overall I'd describe it more as a "family picnic with some rally going on" than a hardcore motorsports event, but it was a great time nonetheless.
Oh, and we did manage to hit a hay bale lol....
Here's some video of one of the runs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0hAlLCqZNw
And some pics
So, near the end I did get an odd feeling in the car that my LSD wasn't working well. Odd since I just recently rebuilt it in the spring. This is the small-case 3.91 original to this car. Tonight I torque-checked it and sure enough.....it is now an open diff. That's pretty annoying...not really sure what the deal is unless I screwed up something in the rebuild.
Anyhow, will put the medium-case 3.73 back in (I was kind of planning to anyhow, for stage rally). That diff seems to be in good shape with good lockup. One issue is that the prior owner somehow cross-threaded one of the upper mounting bolts though, and I coudln't thread it tightly without additional stripping.
So, since I want all four bolts holding strong I drilled out the hole and tapped it to an M14 x 1.5 thread (original is M12). Then I took an old M12 1.5 wheel stud and cut off the end of it, leaving the "splined" area. Then shaved that down a bit and took a die to the "fat" section to make it M14x1.5. So now it can screw into the diff with the M14 end (with red loctite) and have an M12 stud on the top for a regular 19mm head nut. This will also help locate the diff during install, so that's good.
Oh, also made one of my new exhaust moutn brackets. I hate the stock e30 rubber mounts...so wimpy. So welded on some steel rod so I could use some poly hangers I had left over from the Subaru
Oh, and we got our driver/crew shirts in :)
So, one rallycross on the 11th and then off to Black River Stages, where we'll pit with Ozgur (M50 e30), Dan Downey (M20 e30), and Chris Nonack in his XR4Ti.
Wow! The Rally Farm looks like a really fun place!
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