The oldest, lightest, slowest e30 - not an e30 rally build this time, just a budget build.

mr2s2000elise said:

happy new year , friend 

you as well!

-break-

since I live in the burbs and have kids and I'm old, new year's eve isn't a "going out" night lol. So, I immediately had to address the ugly shifter handle. Oh hey, I have the old rally car z3 shifter, with a Condor Speed Shop weighted knob on it. Hmm.

This ebay shifter has a THICK shaft (insert Michael Scott saying "that's what she said" here). It's 20mm, and has M20 x 1.5 threading on it. Not a usual shifter size. The Condor knob is only about 14mm lower opening, but the knob is thicker in the upper half. So I cut off the bottom (below the "lip"). Then I chamfered a tapered hole roughly 20mm wide since I don't have a bit that big. Then I found a hole saw that's about 20mm (or SAE equivalent) and drilled down into the knob (removing the weighted center piece). Then I pulled out the HF tap and die kit.....and it had a M20 1.5 tap. Go figure. So....

And amazingly, it fits and screws down snugly. I may take it off and try to put back part of the weight (if I can even cut it, it's some really hard/heavy steel), but this should do for the time being......and much improvement over the fugly white one.

At this rate, the recce car is going to end up too nice to recce, well done! Super cool mods so far

RustBucketLegacy said:

At this rate, the recce car is going to end up too nice to recce, well done! Super cool mods so far

well, the idea is it needs to be nice enough that crew members will be willing to drive it 6-12 hours to a rally while I'm towing lol. 

irish44j (Forum Supporter) said:

RustBucketLegacy said:

At this rate, the recce car is going to end up too nice to recce, well done! Super cool mods so far

well, the idea is it needs to be nice enough that crew members will be willing to drive it 6-12 hours to a rally while I'm towing lol. 

 

If we aren't racing whatever rally it is and I have the time, I'd happily drive it that far. If the a/c works it's better than my daily

Looks like a great project.

The plaid console fabric would look great on the door cards!

Wow, this is quite the project. I'm not sure how I didn't see this thread earlier, good work.  I have some E30 parts that I received from CaptainAwesome, I'll send you a PM.

RustBucketLegacy said:

irish44j (Forum Supporter) said:

RustBucketLegacy said:

At this rate, the recce car is going to end up too nice to recce, well done! Super cool mods so far

well, the idea is it needs to be nice enough that crew members will be willing to drive it 6-12 hours to a rally while I'm towing lol. 

 

If we aren't racing whatever rally it is and I have the time, I'd happily drive it that far. If the a/c works it's better than my daily

Hey! Get in line! 

Josh, small fishing weights and some epoxy work well to dump down into the shifter for additional weight if that's easier.

RustBucketLegacy said:

irish44j (Forum Supporter) said:

RustBucketLegacy said:

At this rate, the recce car is going to end up too nice to recce, well done! Super cool mods so far

well, the idea is it needs to be nice enough that crew members will be willing to drive it 6-12 hours to a rally while I'm towing lol. 

 

If we aren't racing whatever rally it is and I have the time, I'd happily drive it that far. If the a/c works it's better than my daily

A/C will be the last thing done on this car, but it'll be done eventually :)

ralleah said:

RustBucketLegacy said:

irish44j (Forum Supporter) said:

RustBucketLegacy said:

At this rate, the recce car is going to end up too nice to recce, well done! Super cool mods so far

well, the idea is it needs to be nice enough that crew members will be willing to drive it 6-12 hours to a rally while I'm towing lol. 

 

If we aren't racing whatever rally it is and I have the time, I'd happily drive it that far. If the a/c works it's better than my daily

Hey! Get in line! 

Josh, small fishing weights and some epoxy work well to dump down into the shifter for additional weight if that's easier.

cool, the epoxy in with them is good thinking. Will have to see how it feels with/without. The shift rod is fairly heavy vs. stock so TBD if it's necessary to add more weight or not.

78CobraII said:

Looks like a great project.

The plaid console fabric would look great on the door cards!

probably would. I need to figure out if there's a good way to attach it though. Upholstery is still not my strong suit lol 

Got the correct CSB in for the driveshaft. Here's a comparison of the "early" CSB vs. the late one. No idea why BMW decided to change the entire unibody, my guess is to slightly decrease the driveshaft tunnel width or something. IDK, but it's annoying

So changed that out and installed the DS, finally, with new nuts at front and back, etc. 

Also wired up the reverse light switch while I was under there and also put on all the heat shields, since this isn't a rally car, so it actually gets heat shields.....

And made up the last few ghetto-fab fuel/brake line brackets (using more scraps of old Blue Raider hood...), along with some new M4 screws I picked up at the local hardware store.

Oh, and finally got my hads on an M42 throttle cable. I had hoped to be able to re-use the M10 cable, but couldn't figure out a way to sufficiently shorten it up, and couldn't find a used M42 cable, so just bit the bullet and dropped 40 bucks on a new one. ....

Totally no progress on anything. I was in California for 10 days for work, and then got COVID (after 3 years of not getting it), so it's been an unproductive February for all car-related things. Oh well. Here's some pics from my Cali trip, where I did the entire coastal highway (and then some) from San Francisco to Eureka, and back in a rental BMW 330i on my own dime (which I had to cash in for a CR-V on the fourth day, since the rest of the trip was on the taxpayer's dime). Anyhow, a couple pics since it was a lot of fun and those roads crush any rally roads in the US, period. I can honestly say that on the part of Rt1 from Leggett to Mendocino, I thought I was going to make MYSELF carsick....sooooo many curves and I was hitting them as hard as I felt I *should* in a rental car with fresh tires :)

In addition, more great roads a bit inland through all the redwood forests. Found a few unpaved ones too :)

Here's a random car in one of the swanky seaside towns I stopped in...

First off.....I went and got 5 gallons of gas today, and started the car. Just for a few seconds since I have no exhaust at all on it and my neighborhood is a quiet place on Sundays lol. But, it fired right up after it got fuel pressure. Felt pretty rough/chunky, but then again no exhaust, no 02 sensor, and the engine hasn't run in a number of years (who knows how long it sat at the shop I got it from). So I'll fab up an exhaust in the next month or so and get it actually running. Also happy it seems my COP conversion wiring is correct, but I'll double-check everything. 

No pics, so here's a pic of the non-working tack (will need to do a new batter on that....). Also not sure why the fuel gauge is showing full, I only put 5 gallons in...

It was warm yesterday, so I took the hood off the car and with wire wheel/dremel/other stuff cleaned up as much of the rusty parts as I could

Then got to a point that was "good enough" and rattle-canned it. well, except that one panel with the foam engine insulater still on it. It wasn't rusty, so why bother wasting paint.

Then flipped it and sanded the whole outside, primed, and painted

hey, that looks decent

So now the whole car is officially painted. Well, still a few small areas, but none of the exterior is bronzit any more, so at least it looks alright...

Well, as you may have (not) noticed, no posts on this thread for 6 months. I kind of got wrapped up in other projects and lost motivation to finish this things up - mostly because I really had no idea what exactly i'd do with it once I finished it, since everything it does I pretty much already have a (better) vehicle for, honestly. 

So after some back and forth, this project is moving on to another GRM member  (ralleah) to turn into whatever it's going to turn into. I expect it will get some interesting stuff involving Megasquirt, boost, and whatnot but you'll have to follow the new thread (or if Leah decides to finish it in this thread) to see what happens. 

All in all, I bought this car because I was bored and wanted a project, and I got a lot of practice on rust repair, did some interesting interior stuff and all the usual mechanical stuff. So I hope you enjoyed following along, and will keep following along. And of course ,I still have my other build threads about the e30 rally car, Raider, Porsche, Sequoia, etc so hope to see you over in those. 

(btw, at some point in time I'll be getting back the Euroweaves, LSD, and a few other things, but they'll stay with the car for now until they can be replaced with other parts). So at least you'll see SOME of these parts again in my threads, lol. 

One last pic, so much matching....

Cheers, first-year e30. 

Saturday I went and got tags with 45 day temp regs, and she lives, as of 11:00 last night. Took her for a ginger spin around the block tonight. Progress!

Took a vid, and forgot the board won't host it, so here's a pic from the other night of my crew-in- training instead 

you weren't kidding when you said you'd get it on the road in a week..........

In reply to ralleah :

Upload the video to YouTube then share with the Calendar + symbol.

IT'S ALIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIVEEEEEE!!!!!!

Bump.. Ruby is street registered for two years. Today I figured out which wire in the c101 connection had been snipped and need extended to make the blower and all AC work. Tomorrow I'll finish the wiring cleanup and new battery install, then I can actually start driving it.. 

Hooray, nice job on the troubleshooting!

ralleah said:

Bump.. Ruby is street registered for two years. Today I figured out which wire in the c101 connection had been snipped and need extended to make the blower and all AC work. Tomorrow I'll finish the wiring cleanup and new battery install, then I can actually start driving it.. 

 

wow, can't believe it's been a year on this thing. Someone asked me about it just last night. 

I'm sure I snipped that wire because I used the diagram from the rally car that I sketched out years ago,  which of course doesn't have AC so I probably forgot to keep it.