nope, no plans at all for power adding at the moment. WHen it comes down to it, when I want to add power someday (if I do), I'll swap in an engine that has power. Not going to waste money trying to get it out of the M10.
Besides, when I feel the need for speed I'll take the WRX. It's pushing around 330hp at the crank, so no matter how fast the e30 is, it won't feel fast in comparison. 
Good thing rallycross is not the kind of thing where alot of power really helps out alot....
Well, not thinking I just realized that I still haven't transferred the title for this car from the previous owner, and the title says it has to be done in 30 days after sale date. So will hit DMV (Va.) tomorrow and see what they say. I really hope this isn't going to be a major issue, but who knows....
Got a few cosmetic things done recently:
Blacked out the rear bumper finally
And got two of the four euroweaves cleaned up and painted. Trying to match the gray hood color. It's fairly close but will be able to tell better once they're on the car out in the sun..
irish44j wrote: Good thing rallycross is not the kind of thing where alot of power really helps out alot....
BLATANT LIES
100hp is meh. 180hp is kinda fun. 215hp rocks. I'm shooting for 300hp, because, well, 300hp.
Neat thing about having lots of power. You don't feel pressured into overdriving the corners to maintain speed, since you can just outdrag everyone else on the straights. Perversely, taking the corners slow and clean is exactly what you need to do, so having excess power makes it easier to drive. At least for me it does.
Knurled wrote:irish44j wrote: Good thing rallycross is not the kind of thing where alot of power really helps out alot....BLATANT LIES 100hp is meh. 180hp is kinda fun. 215hp rocks. I'm shooting for 300hp, because, well, *300hp*. Neat thing about having lots of power. You don't feel pressured into overdriving the corners to maintain speed, since you can just outdrag everyone else on the straights. Perversely, taking the corners slow and clean is exactly what you need to do, so *having excess power makes it easier to drive*. At least for me it does.
I'm speaking in relative terms. More power is obviously good in any kind of motorsporst, but on mud/dirt with a RWD car a lack of power won't have nearly as much of an affect as it would in drag/track/autocross, in my opinion.
For the first season of rallycross in 15 years, I want to sort the car itself out, and sort my driving out. Having extra power will just mask deficiencies that I will have and not force me to learn how to drive better. I'm not looking for easy right now. I could have bought a fast/typical rallycross car (Subaru). I wanted to see if I could do it the wrong way ;)
When I decide I need "easy," I have the WRX sitting in the driveway. And it already has over 300 hp. And AWD.
irish44j wrote: For the first season of rallycross in 15 years, I want to sort the car itself out, and sort my driving out. Having extra power will just mask deficiencies that I will have and not force me to learn how to drive better.
No, I dig. Always good to sort the driver first. That's where it's educational to let someone else co-drive your car, as they usually have different bad habits, so you can combine your powers to create an automotive Voltron.
When I decide I need "easy," I have the WRX sitting in the driveway. And it already has over 300 hp. And AWD.
I love WRXs. Specifically, I love seeing them way down in the standings compared to my little ol' RWD thing 
On tight courses, they can't turn very well and the lag hurts them. On fast courses, well... that's where it's good to be able to outdrag them 
remind me-what are you driving, again? RX7?
Yep. Been thinking of an E30 off-and-on, though, since they seem to be easier to find, and they have more and better headroom. And they don't seem to rust quite so horribly.
Running very close times with a good driver in an E30 at the RX Nationals doesn't hurt much, either. E30s can apparently be made to work pretty durn good.
Knurled wrote: Yep. Been thinking of an E30 off-and-on, though, since they seem to be easier to find, and they have more and better headroom. And they don't seem to rust quite so horribly. Running very close times with a good driver in an E30 at the RX Nationals doesn't hurt much, either. E30s can apparently be made to work pretty durn good.
Yeah, I never really thought of one. Was looking for an old GC impreza (non-turbo), but it wasn't in the budget so I said what the hell. Wish there was more resources on e30 rallycross though.....hard to find any information on what guys are running for suspension, mods, etc. The old Dirtye30.com site is no longer working.....so I'm mostly just winging it.
Since the previous owner of my e30 was nice enough to leave me a box of parts that included full refresh of the shifter linkage, decided to tackle that tonight, since I know the wife is getting me a Z3 shifter for Christmas, so might as well do it all at once. Yay for free/new parts.
So I take apart the shifter console and sheet metal shift bracket, only to find THIS: the two front mount brackets. See how many problems you can see with this pic
I wondered why the shifter was so extremely sloppier than anything I've ever felt in my life.
Now here is what the mount brackets are SUPPOSED to look like
Keep in mind, whoever last worked on this part of the car (I think to do the rear transmission seal) also managed to leave two of the driveshaft bolts loose (cross-threaded the nuts), so I had wicked vibrations at any speed over 30mph driving the car home.
To boot, one of the threaded holes into the transmission casing was stripped/cross-threaded as well, so to re-install everything I had to drill it out and heli-coil it. That was alot of fun in a tight spot.....
But it's all freshened up now with all new bushings, mounts, grommets, o-rings, etc and ready for the Z3 shifter now.
Bit of a hiccup today. Went to retitle the car and get my vintage plates at DMV.....but as it turns out the P/O's wife didn't sign the title, and they're listed as joint owners. So mailing the title back to him to have her sign.
Turns out I've been doing all this work, and they still own the car, technically 
Too bad too, since the DMV line was the shortest I've ever seen. I'm sure it will be out the door when I go back, lol.
Got some things accomplished today, after spending the last week or so doing Christmas shopping and work!
First order of business, picked up the reman'd CV axle at Autozone. $65, and it is at very least a BMW OEM housing, so we'll see how it holds up.
So most of my axle-to-tranny bolts were pretty much E36 M3...either stripped or cross-threaded, or the wrong size. I'm starting to see a trend with this car. Every place I checked wanted about $25-30+shipping for the OEM bolts and nuts. The local dealers wanted something like $5 PER BOLT! Screw that...
Trip to Fastenal, which I just discovered is a half-mile from my work. Life just got better.
I needed the 50mm bolts (M10, 1.5 pitch), but the OEM bolts have a really long shoulder (due to the Guibo), and I haven't found any 50mm bolts except OEM that have that shoulder. McMaster didn't have them. Fastenal didn't have them. BUT Fastenal had some 70mm bolts that had the same shoulder length as the OEM bolts. So got them (as well as some top-lock locknuts. All grade 8.8 stuff, like the OEM bolts.
When I got home, I got out the dremel and cutting wheel and cut them off to the 50mm length, nice and clean. So for $9 I got the bolts with the CORRECT length shoulder and good locknuts, full set.
next to an OEM bolt
ready to put the DS back on as soon as I get the shifter stuff all finished!
Wanted to get the axle on, just because the next few days I won't be able to. I hate getting CV axles on. Tried first, could hardly get it to engage at all. So got out a small file and cleaned up the splines, which were a bit musroomed and burred. Tried it again and afte about 20 minutes of cursing under the car and trying every possible way to get leverage while on my back upside-down, finally got it in. I am a bit worried since the reman outer boot is a bit bigger than OEM, so it's fairly close (5mm) to the shock. I may put new boots on it (I have an OEM set sitting around) if I get ambitious. Will do it on the car! Or I might put a small washer spacer inboard of the shock bottom mount to give it a few mm of clearance. Or I might just let it be and if it rubs, I'll replace the boot then.
ok, that's all for now. Time to wrap the last of the Christmas presents. I hope all of you have a pleasant Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever you celebrate this time of year, even if it's just a celebration of having a couple days off work and enjoying being with your families!
After a morning of presents with family, grandparents, and the kiddo, I had a couple hours befor the next family function, while the girls hung out, and decided to get in the garage.
My Christmas automotive take this year: Z3 shifter and a DieHard charger from the wife, and some Hella 500s from the parents.
I've been waiting for the Z3 shifter to put the bottom of the car back together, and of course now that I have it, there was no waiting. Installed the shifter, and decided what the hell and put the driveshaft back on as well, with all new hardware. Also got the heat shields back on as well as most of the exhaust (need to buy a couple new bolts and run the O2 sensor. In any case, the car is almost ready to go back on the ground finally. This week I'll get the Gisvelds mounted on the bottlecaps and also order up some tires (probably Star Specs) for the euroweave 15s.
Hope you all had a great Christmas!
Cute family pic! Nice to see the progress continuing.
Your little girl doesn't look interested in the family photo at all. Her toys must have been off the he left.
This thread has me shopping for cheap E30s and I don't even like BMWs. Good work and merry Christmas.
MG Bryan wrote: Your little girl doesn't look interested in the family photo at all. Her toys must have been off the he left. This thread has me shopping for cheap E30s and I don't even like BMWs. Good work and merry Christmas.
lol, I must have 50 pictures of her today and she's always staring off someplace else in every one of them!!
Ironically, I've never been a BMW fan either, historically. Driven quite a few on the street (mostly E46s) and didn't really love them as much as others do for some reason. The rawness of the e30, and the fact that it's "old school" but is put together like a modern car, made this project appealing. The more I work on it, the more I appreciate the quality of the car's design and the thought that went into figuring out how every bolt and piece went together with such great fitament.
Got the rallycross/winter tires mounted finally. Eventually I'll get around to cleaning up and painting the bottlecaps, but that will wait
Gislaved NordFrost 3 in 185/70/14. They're the same tires as the General Altimax Arctic, but with european badging, which gives and extra 10hp of course!
as of today I'm only awaiting a few small rear brake parts and one tie rod end nut before I can put all four wheels on and get the car back on the ground. All of these parts are on the way, from RevLimited member [B]wodcutr[/B] (Dan), who was nice enough to pull them off one of his parts car and send them to me for dirt cheap - THANKS!
In preparation for those parts getting here, the other last step was to bleed the brakes. I ended up having to get some new bleeders - primarily because the tiny nut on the OEM ones (6mm?) was smaller than any flare-nut wrench I have and I really don't like using box-end on brake fittings. So off to the local parts store to pick up some with an 8mm nut.
Once those were on, time to bleed. Since I brilliantly sold my power bleeder (I never needed it with my other cars!), had to do it the old fashioned way - ask the wife to come out in the cold garage and pump the brake pedal, lol.
Anyhow, all done and I think they're bled well. If not, once I get it moving around any last air bubbles will get to the valve and I'll let them out.
btw, used ATE Blue fluid in case anyone cares.
An inspection of the system with the new braided hoses shows no obvious leaks at any fittings, so that's a good sign.
also decided to do a little bit of fun/easy project tonight. The Hellas :)
still need to wire everything up, but they're mounted!
Hey Josh, thought you might get a kick out of this:
http://www.e30tech.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1276866
^^nice, I may have to do that :)
You know I've been coming to this forum pretty much every day for the last five years or so and have always figured you to be much older than you are.
Did you ever get the title issue worked out? I hate dealing with that crap.
Anyway Happy New Year!
Yep, got it titled yesterday (paper plates until my vintage plates arrive).
lol....I look younger than I am I think. Or I"m old at heart, Just turned 36 in actuality.
Car is on four wheels and out in the driveway as of right now. More updates later. It's my daughter's birthday so time to celebrate!
happy new year's
While the daughter was napping between various birthday celebrations, got some stuff in the mail, got some stuff bought, and got some stuff done.
First.....STILL looking for a tie rod end nut. It's M10, but fine thread and NOPLACE around here has one, not even Fastenal. McMaster has them, but in packs of 25. Grr. Stopped by Olympus to inquire, and they didn't have them either. But they had new tie rod ends for $17, so I just bought one. Figure I'll use it one day rallycrossing, so might as well get it as a spare, and use the nut lol
So with that done, all four wheels on, car on the ground for the first time in a month!
Mail came, and so did my sport trunk spoiler that I got in trade for a used guibo. Not in the greatest shape, but I should be able to spruce it up. We'll see. The shipper's packing was.....creative
Also the other day I found I had some amazon.com credit.....not enough to buy anything cool. so what can I spend it on? Some yellow Lamin-x for the fog lights (and for the headlights, but we'll see). I love me some yellow lights!
Battery was totally dead, so jumped it. Car started right up, albeit with some funny smells for a while like burning. Didn't see or find anything of note, so maybe just some crap in the exhaust or refurbished exhaust manifold. Drove the car up and down the street a few times. Brakes are grinding a bit in back when on the pedal, making me think that perhaps they're not bled well enough. Will deal with tomorrow.
Oh, and here's a shot of the clearance for the "rally lights" with the hood open. Close, but perfect!
Also nice to get the car out in the driveway so I can clean up the disaster area!
Oh, and one other little thing that I got in the mail, just because I always wanted to have one of these on a car, ever since I saw my first Lancia Delta rally car....
If you figure out what the burning smell is, let me know. Mine has a strange smell under the hood as well.
In the category of "that was dumb"
I posted a bit ago about one of the rear brakes grinding. Decided than rather than watch new years boring festivities on tv, would go investigate.
Didn't take long to notice the problem:
yeah, that would be a brake pad on upside-down. I'll add this one to the "best of automotive berkeley-ups by me" list....lol
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