POS13 - A Nostalgic RallyCross Project

irish44j (Forum Supporter) said:

rallyxPOS13 said:

if I've gotta go for the oversteer handle, 

The oversteer handle is below your right foot lol.. 

Oh, right, you guys with IRS can't put power down 

More seriously, though, I had a major Holy S--- Moment when I saw an S13 at a hardpack rallycross entering a corner.  He was in your standard four wheels sliding a little on corner entry, and he was able to brake and accelerate mid corner without the car's attitude changing.  It was mind boggling.  No wonder people love this chassis for drifting.

To be fair, I've only resorted to the oversteer handle 3 times at at RallyCross.  RallyX Nats at Tulsa, where they put a pin cone as a turn in the middle of the first day's course.  I put one in a course when we had less than a dozen folks at an event in Kansas. Last was one where I was going off course early in my racing career, and tried it to correct my line.

Basically under braking on stupid corners.

I finally gave up on flushing coolant, 10 in and it still looks like the same murky rusty clay soaked nast.

Threw some coolant back in, and drove it to work today.

The gearing is hilarious, but I think I've got just enough 5th gear to get up to highway speed.  Between the better acceleration gearing, and maybe updated timing, the car seems 'faster'. I just need to bleed the brakes again, fit the skid plate back up and it's ready for this weekend's event.

Its looking like a mudfest with a reasonable chance of being canceled, so I didn't bother to rent a trailer this time.

Yeah, i'm betting on cancelled, which is annoying since it's too late to make any good alternate plans for me prbably and looked liek a great MR turnout :/

In reply to rallyxPOS13 :

Congratulations on the magazine photo. I ment to say something when I first saw it. We are in the midst of another house flip so I have been bordering on comatose in the evenings. Glad to see you are still having fun with your 240.

In reply to madmrak351 :

Thanks! House renovations are some of my least favorite activities, but hopefully the flip nets some good car funds!

For those that aren't in the area, the persistent rain did lead to the last event being canceled.  Despite that, I've been putting the POS13 to work doing yard duty!

Turns out that 2.4L of uncatalyzed exhaust at idle will knock out some mole runs!

Other car based shenanigans, got my wheels and tires mounted to the daily:

And found this gem while at the mall last weekend!  I don't know BMWs well enough to know if it's an E28 or E21

E21 with some artistic license.

So in the 7ish weeks since the last RallyX was canceled, I've had plenty of time to catch up on all the projects for the POS13!

So I've stripped all the sound deadening, and fitted the aluminum seat, right?

Well... no.

Certainly I've made a better air box to keep dust out of the air filter, that's easy!

No.. not quite yet.

Well at the very least, I've pulled the rear suspension to figure out why it's binding

Nope.

So all the POS13 has done over the past month is sit under a Tulip Poplar and get covered in pollen, sap, and dirt.

So yeah, the weather was really nice in the past week, so I decided to drive it to work to remind me of all the things that are jacked up on it.

So yeah, after driving this for a week, I had one overwhelming thought in my head:

The next couple days, I get a shipping number to watch my parts make their way from the mountain passes above Suzuka Circuit in Japan over to my house.

In reply to rallyxPOS13 :

Ok, really wandering what is in the well traveled boxes! 

Oh yeah, the boxes!

So when I bought my first S13, it was 2001, 'tuner' culture was raging.  Any Sport Compact Car, Super Street, GRM, etc. magazine was stuffed with any wheel you could imagine.   Unfortunately, they were all made for Civics, it didn't make sense in the US to have low offset 4 lug wheels, when all the Civics, Sentras, Mitsubishis, etc were all high offset.  As a result, most 240s at the time looked a bit goofy, with wheels that didn't fill out the wheel wells.

Slowly as drifting started coming to our shores, and the internet pirates started spreading Best Motoring, Video Option, and other Japanese DVDs, our eyes were opened to those greener pastures of what the aftermarket had over there.  For every Civic, there was a Silvia, for every Integra, there was an AE86, and the industry made parts to suit.  Those same US magazines that ran 4 page NOPI ads selling high offset wheels and clear brake lights, started sending reporters over to see Japan, write an article on Toyko Auto Salon.  While over there, the local guides showed the forbidden fruit of Super Autobacs, and Up Garage, where speed parts were all shared with gently used parts, and very cheap. 

After this awareness spread to the US, the engine importers would stuff the containers around all the half-cuts and body kits with random wheels from yahoo.jp and Up Garage.  In those early 2000's if you were friends with those importers, you got first dibs on the container, however for most mortals, the scraps were random mixed pairs of SSR meshes, Longchamps, etc.

At the time, I was a Serious Autocrosser (LOL) and didn't care about the frivolity, but on the forums at the time, I watched many cars get these wheels, and it must have affected my brain.  Now, I really like the looks of an S13 with some nice low offset 14" or 15" wheels. 

So timewarp out of the 00's, and now there's plenty of companies cashing in on the nostalgia.  Right in the middle is Up Garage themselves.  They sell access to their entire network of stores online at Croooober and this has been dangerous for me.  You can find any wheel you can imagine, second hand, for rather reasonable amounts of money.   Lately the value of the yen vs. the dollar has almost made the shipping worth it.

So I regularly visit that site, and keep an eye on low offset 4x114.3 wheels.  And recently I saw a set of rally wheels pop up.  Likely off an AE86:

Hmm, my brain thought:  15" rally tires are the most common, but it'd be nice to have some 14" wheels to be able to pounce on any sales that pop up on either 15 or 14 inch tires.  Even if that doesn't work out to lucrative rally tires, I could even get in on UTV or Kei Truck muddies for that size.  So this tab stayed on my phone forever, taunting me.  And the other night I decided a few hundred bucks (plus like double that in shipping) was worth it!

And as a bonus, they 'fit' pretty well:

Half the fun was watching them ship from the other side of the globe and making up stories about who had them prior.  They shipped from an Up Garage in the mountains above Suzuka Circuit, and I imagined them being used on an AE86 in gravel trails. 

Anyway, a really stupid amount of money on something I didn't need.  I guess Nostalgia's one helluva drug.

While I was in there, I also did the front brakes finally.   The RF brake was completely seized on the slider, the seal had failed, and it was full of dirt and rust.  This explains the poor and inconsistent braking performance.  So I did those too:

It was hard to find good quality rotors, so Wavespec seemed like a good choice, they are in 'merica and sponsor Rally and RallyCross.  However they threw me off... every other braking product is typically done per axle... this was per rotor... so I installed the RF rotor and moved on with my life.

So with this parade of poor choices... I decided it was finally time to buy a trailer.  This would enable me to tow outside my AAA radius, and get to PA, WV, and NC events to get more seat time.

I had been passively looking for a good, used aluminum trailer, because the 4runner only has a 5,000lb rating, and the car's around 2500.  with the U-Haul trailer, I could certainly feel that I was up against that limit.  So I was looking for something more in the 1500lb range.   I looked and looked, but everything seemed either inappropriately sized at 22' long, or way too expensive.

I ended up just ordering a new trailer from EconoTrailer I could get a new trailer for less than the price of a used one, and they had a posted weight for a lightweight open trailer.  It's steel, so it's easier to modify and weld on accessories than an aluminum one.

I called them up and ordered it, the 3-4 week lead time started stretching out to a 6 week delay.  But last week, I drove up to Pennsylvania and picked up my new trailer! 

The trailer looked great, and I'd never seen a new trailer before.  But there was one hiccup:  The TuRDPro has the trailer connector tucked up so it doesn't get caught on rocks, and this was apparently about 6" further away than a standard truck... the wires wouldn't stretch.   The owner and I sat there for a while pushing slack around, moving the bundle a bit closer and closer, but when it finally got close enough to plug in, there was no way I was making a right turn.

I was really impressed with the guy, he stopped everything, and made me a quick jumper harness for free to make sure I could make it home!  

Things are coming together for the two day even in a couple weeks, and I'll hopefully be able to focus on remembering how to drive!

new wheels and new trailer are kick ass!

rallyxPOS13 saidto find good quality rotors, so Wavespec seemed like a good choice, they are in 'merica and sponsor Rally and RallyCross.  However they threw me off... every other braking product is typically done per axle... this was per rotor... so I installed the RF rotor and moved on with my life.

you fancy. my rally car just uses the cheapest Centrics I can get on RockAuto lol....

congrats on the trailer. makes life a lot easier for sure ;)

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

Well, when my dumbass thought the price for one was a pair, it seemed like a deal! 

Also, Rock Auto's on my E36 M3list lately, when I got the RH rotor swapped and started bleeding the system, the brake cylinder started leaking, Rock Auto to the rescue with the wrong sized brake piston:

So a few things to wrap up on the POS13 for this weekend's double header rallycross weekend at Panthera.  When swapping wheels, I noticed the new welded diff was eating the centers out of the

front(?!) tires.   So out of curiosity, I checked the alignment, and it had a tad over 1" toe in!!!

So yeah, had to dial that out back out to zero!

While I was under there, I threw a new trans output seal in.   The new welded diff was the original S13 manual trans style, and didn't have a speed sensor in the nose, making it an inch or two shorter.  This sticks the splined section of the driveshaft out a tad when used with an auto driveshaft that I assume this car has.  This gets more dirt in this section, and wears out the seal, and mine was leaking quite a bit when parked with the nose high.

With that the car prep was done for the weekend.

For my new trailer, I still hadn't towed a car with it yet, and as I mentioned in a recent thread, my driveway's an adventure for things with low overhangs, and bringing it home involved some scraping.   So I loaded up the POS13 and did some test departure and arrivals to try to dial in the angles and lines... it still scrapes.  I have a couple schemes in mind to alleviate this with some trailer modifications, but not before the event.

I also added the most appropriate 4Runner towing sticker I could find:

So speaking of the event...   as I type this, I'm supposed to be wrapping up my morning runs at the course not on my couch at home.   This event was in my mind not a test of the car, but of myself, and to see if I would be adding something to my own personal Murtaugh List.  (From Lethal Weapon via HIMYM where Danny Glover's Character was "Getting Too Old for this E36 M3").  I was planning on camping out over night at the track in a tent.

So I took Friday off work, and started packing tents, EZ Ups, coolers, etc to prepare for a camping event that I hadn't done in at least 5 years.  In addition all the bits of car support and trailer stuff.  Rewinding to the beginning of the week, I had a rough start, when I  was trying to evict a yellow jacket nest, I won the war, but they took at least one battle, and my ankle had swollen up to 4x it's size for most of the week.  Midway through the week, I began battling a head cold.  Then, late Friday while packing up the car, I decided to replace a worn tie down strap with a new spare, and when cutting the packing material off, I sliced right through my thumb with a razor blade!

While waiting for it to stop bleeding to see if I needed to go get stiches... I decided the universe was trying to tell me that I shouldn't camp in a humid mid-90's day and try to die out in a field.  I threw in the towel on the doubler header, got a good nights rest, and decided to just head out for only Sunday's race.

I AM apparently getting too old for this E36 M3.

Slimer towed the new trailer and POS13 just fine over the WV mountain pass, being a solid 1000+ pounds lighter, and having good modulating brakes made all the difference!

So I rolled into the morning of Day 2 of the double header and found some free paddock space:
 

It was great to be out at the event, chat with folks I hadn't seen in a while, and test out the few changes I'd made in the off season.  We were on the 'other' side of the hill than I've typically run in the past, and that meant the surface was a bit rougher, but there were more straights, some real braking zones, and some higher speed offset gates.

Our group was up first, and it was immediately apparent that the gearing changes and locked diff were a huge improvement over last year.  I was in the meat of 2nd for the whole run, and it had plenty of torque even up the hill from the pivot turn.  It was like I was in that mythical 2nd gear in an STi 6speed.  Having working front brakes made a noticeable difference, on the first couple runs, I was too timid with braking, and was bleeding speed too early.  Certainly leaving some time on the table with my driving there.

Since this event was a bit faster with transitions, I needed all the front end bite I could get... but with the balder tires up front, and newfound grip out back, I was struggling with placing the car and fighting a bit of understeer.  My runs were dirty, my driving was rusty, but I think the times were ~81s raw, which isn't terrible.

I was also overwhelming the new powersteering fluid reservoir with all the back and forth, so I should likely try to plumb in a cooler in the future.

At the start of the 3rd run, I was chatting with my passenger, and when it came my turn to pull up to the start line, I realized that hey, my car wasn't running?!  I always let it run between runs with the fans on, and on this 100 degree day, it needed all the cooling it could get!  The straight piped Commanche grided next to me was so loud I didn't notice that my car had died.

No idea what happened, but my turn to get up to the start line, I hopped out quickly and ran up to the engine.  The Antigravity battery I have has a 'restart' function to self-jump itself.  So I hit the button, dash lights were back on, and it fired right up.   Headed up to the start line, get the nod from the starter, and rev it up...  Dead.  All the electrons left the building.  Obviously, something is wrong, so pointed downhill and I just pushed it out of the way at the start and went back to get my multimeter.

Battery sitting at 0.8V, and I was getting flashbacks to the previous battery issues I was having.  So I said some prayers to the car gods, sacrificed some animals at the alter of Ohm, and pressed the restart button again, this got me enough electric juju to drive just off the course to an unused section, and point myself downhill.

At the lunch break, Slimer navigated out onto the course to rescue the stricken car. (I hit 5 less cones with the trailer than I did with the car!)

I got most of the way onto the trailer with gravity, but then I got my trusty jump pack out, and paralleled it with the battery, and was able to fire up the car OK, multimeter still only showed 12.04 V, so I'm guessing the alternator decided it was too damn hot and dusty to whirly gig it's way to a flow of electrons. 

After that it was just another day at the beach:

I left early after working my afternoon shift, and the tow back was uneventful, other than being greeted by the now typical scrape up the driveway.

As SWMBO asked:  Was all this time, money, and drama worth it for two runs?   Nope, probably not.  Will I do it all over again for the next one?  Absolutely.

Bummer - about the finger and the car. Actually, camping was really pleasant - it was super-nice in the evening in the mountains there....possibly the most comfortable sleeping weather I've ever camped in. 

I didn't catch up with you later, but yeah, I was wondering what was going on with the car while sitting in grid line. And don't sweat the cones, we all hit plenty of them (well, except Nick of course). I think I had like 12 or 13 on the weekend - more than I've had in some entire seasons! MR class alone had (we counted) 33 cones on ONE single run on Saturday IIRC. Anyhow, don't sweat it, it was very hard to both go fast and drive clean on that course, it wasn't just you :)

I hear you (no pun intended) about that Commanche. It's one of my favorites but man is it loud! I was working the start in a recent wet Susquehanna event and he had the thing spinning 6k rpm while creeping by at 2mph to get moving. My ears are still ringing. 

Yeah, that truck's got some PRESENCE

So when I went to work on the POS13 again:  It seemed like it wasn't charging, the battery wasn't coming up much over 12V batt voltage when it momentarily fired on.  This could be a couple things in theory, the alternator had crapped out, or the battery's BMS was not accepting a charge.  The easiest one to check was throwing another alternator on it.

As luck would have it, I had just pulled the engine stand back into the garage with the 'other' KA on it, and that motor still had an alternator on it!

It was pretty dirty, so I ran a can of alternator rebuild through it:

Smugly happy with the progress, I threw it on the car, and prepared for key turn success!

Whelp, that wasn't the case, out on the course, when I hit the restart button, it'd fire right up.  However, now it'd click the start relay, but not turn over..... hmm, maybe I'd used up the threshold of electrons, so I threw the charger on it.

In previous struggles with the battery, I could never get the Noco Genius 10 charger to pump electrons into the Antigravity battery, this time around it worked perfectly.  This replacement battery from Antigravity has really been a hero of the car, it sits forever and starts right up, and the restart function saved me from needing a winch on the trailer at the event.

After an hour or so, I assuredly twisted the key, and again, nothing but a relay click.   Hmmm, battery was reading 13.something volts, plenty of juice to start the low compression KA.  I did the normal thing, and beat the hell out of the starter with a small hammer, still no start.  

So I started poking around with the multimeter, I figured I messed something up with the wiring on the alternator install.  That positive terminal on the alt was showing battery voltage, I checked the starter relay, and the ground signal was good on the start, and I could hear the relay clicking, but the large gauge start signal directly from the battery to the starter was nothing, nada, 0V DC.  Well that's F'd up.  To confirm what I was seeing with my eyes, I looked up the wiring diagram, and that path is direct from + terminal of the battery to the starter.  I checked the main fuse just to be sure, but that was intact too.

To confirm that's the issue, I grabbed a random battery cable from the collection, and vice griped it in place:

The bypass of the wiring was a success, car fired right up.

So I'm guessing somewhere between my terminal attachment, or the PO's rear battery install has something completely shorted or cut in the cable.  Tearing this whole harness apart is going to by tricky, and I need to likely but a larger terminal crimper, so happy that the car was off the trailer, I called it good for now.

So the other reason I gave up there, is that my daily decided to become a project car as well:

  A few weeks ago, it threw the accessory belts off in a fit, I was about due for a timing belt, so I decided to spend a crapton of money on the accessory pack of 'reliability mods' to install with the belt.  I get annoyed at working on that engine in the bay, so decided to pull the motor, and that's why I needed to pull the KA off the engine stand.

As I got digging around in there, the culprit of the thrown belts became obvious:

Main crank pully's rubber had failed, and was sitting 15 deg off normal.

Engine out, this was easy enough I may do this instead of trans off when I do the next clutch.... hell, I may even do this to change the plugs!

Timing components look OK at 80k miles, best to change them before I 'need' too.  Also poking around at the engine, my other reliability mods seem to be working out.  The AOS has the new intercooler completely dry of oil, unlike before, and the VF40 turbo is still in great shape with no shaft play.

So, wrapped up the Subaru's timing belt and various 'while I'm in there' tasks:

I bought custom tools, like I owned a BMW or something.

Broke all my normal tools, like some kind of maniac

Threaded a nut on with a pick 

Embraced my inner JDM fanboi and bought a purple timing belt sold from some bloke called Roger from the UK by a retailer in Colorado

And added more room for oil to burn off:

and made things super damp

And somehow it all ran afterwards!

Ok, with that out of the way, work travel, family vacations, and yard chores, and I'm finally back to trying to figure out why Electrons don't flow with the POS13.

Everything seemed wired up as is, so I pulled the whole sub harness out of the car.

Immediately, I was greeted with sins of my past.  I had put some of the worst cold solder onto this wire to extend it to the battery location, then crimped a terminal on with the wrong tool.  It instantly fell off when I removed the tape.

This is the main wire from the positive terminal of a battery to the starter.  This would certainly result in the no-start issue I was chasing, and since it's the main connection on the battery, could also lead to charging issues.

So I bought some super expensive wire with the same types I'd put on airplanes for a living, and a crappy knock off hydraulic crimper, and just made a new starter wire:

This seems crimped on there well, passes a pull test, and I added an adhesive heat shrink to hopefully keep everything sealed.

I put it back into the harness, and reinstalled.  Success, car starts!

It started right up.  However, it still doesn't seem to charge, so I'm right back where I started at the event, just with a much more expensive positive battery cable.

Pouring through the diagram with a multimeter, and everything checks out except the charge bulb.

The White/Red wire going into E17/E202 is strange, the alternator harness has a 4 pin connector, and the body harness has an 8 pin connector.... so it was likely never connected.  I'm curious how the alternator was triggering the field without that circuit.

More to dig into, event coming up this weekend!

So fought it off and on this week, and didn't get it working right.  Reading up on it, there seem to be two modes of voltage regulation, spinning around 3k rpm, and using the battery charge light as a load.  

So I tried to jankily jump the white/red wire with an alligator clip and a couple terminals:

No change, but I suspected my setup.   I remembered I had a whole 'nother engine harness sitting around, and sure enough, it had a similar 8 pin connector!

I de-pinned the corresponding wire to the chassis plug, then pulled the white/red wire out of the 4 pin connector:

I popped it back in the 8 pin, then found out there was a keying feature that kept idiots like me from doing exactly this.  So I did what any idiot that's not supposed to be doing this would do, ground it off!

Ok, now turn the key, and....    Still no charge light!

So I tore the interior apart to get to the back of the gauge cluster, and traced the signal all the way to the Charge Bulb

Of course, the Bulb!  On previous visual inspection, it seemed like the filament was intact, but after I swapped it with the fuel level light, and sure enough:  Fired it up, and the battery light came on for a second, then right back off when the alternator picked up, Success! 

Well, mostly. Poking around with the multimeter, the alternator would cough up some higher voltage, (like 13.6V) then drop back out.  I hit the fans, and they started slowly pulling down voltage.... well crap.  This wouldn't fly for the event, it'd die out again.

I figured both the alternators had been equally abused, so I sought out a replacement, but with a day before the RallyCross shipping was doubtful to pan out.  A search of the FLAPS, showed the only option was an Autozone about an hour and a half away. 

The Jingle: Piece of Crap, Duralast!  They didn't even give me a box, since I brought in the core from the start...

Installed the new shiny part, and it seems fixed, its at least cleaner.  Puts out 14+V, and held charge with fans and all lights on.

A couple other things to button up, but it's looking promising for the event Sunday, and the weather looks great for once.

One more quick project before I head out!

So now that I'm actually heading to the next event, I wanted to try and fix the trailer scraping the driveway.

I'd previously done some quick CAD:

Then sent it to a company that cut it, and sent it back.

Tacked that mess all together:

As I was welding it into final position, I of course ran out of MIG wire on the upright, but whatever, good enough for a proof of concept!

sprayed it down with paint, and hit the driveway!

It's just enough to relieve the corner!  A little more side load than I'd like, but that wheel's cheap through McMaster and much better than chewing up the driveway!

Now this whole mess is hitched up and pointed to WV.... Although I realized as I was pulling the car onto the trailer it hasn't even left the driveway since the last event, hopefully no more surprises.