It figures I manage to miss the one rally where E36 M3 hits the fan for you 
That hit looks like it would have mangled a steel oil pan as well, not sure anything would have made it survivable other than being higher up to clear it better.
It figures I manage to miss the one rally where E36 M3 hits the fan for you
That hit looks like it would have mangled a steel oil pan as well, not sure anything would have made it survivable other than being higher up to clear it better.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:It figures I manage to miss the one rally where E36 M3 hits the fan for you
That hit looks like it would have mangled a steel oil pan as well, not sure anything would have made it survivable other than being higher up to clear it better.
I know, right? It would figure that you would have completed the rally with no major issues and taken a podium spot. Then again, maybe it was because you were missing, the Gods of Broken Stuff had to take their anger out on someone else lol.
Yeah, considering the upper pan also cracked, I'm not sure a steel lower pan would have mattered anyhow - probably just would have broken the upper pan more due to less "give" by the lower. Since there's no steel upper pan available for this engine, guess I just have to protect stuff better (or avoid big rocks better).. I'm making some subtle adjustments to the skidplate and reinforcing bar to try and reduce the likelihood of this happening again.
Also not mentioned, but be had already bent the bar and plate a bit at WMWR '17, so it may already have been weakened/closer to the pan than it originally was....
Jim watched some of the vid and said we basically dropped directly down onto the rock with the full force of the car's weight. And when you drop straight down on it, the rock isn't going anywhere so something has to give....
ok some more repair and rallycross updates.
I continued on with repair of the e30, I think when we left off I was waiting for some gaskets or whatever. So that stuff came in.....
Also a new gas tank came in (amazingly cheap, I guess nobody wants the "small" e30 tanks these days so they're available for $130 or so....will get around to that sometime this fall or winter, we'll see.
Also replacing the front left hub/bearing, which is pretty crunchy now...
And got the subframe, oil pans, and steering rack back in place (with new tie rod ends). I also put some new motor mounts in. You may notice they're OEM-style mounts replacing the urethane ones we had on there, which I think are ready to go. Why? For the time being with no stage rally coming up soon I will be driving this car some distances to rallycross and frankly it's nice not to rattle to death. Obviously our sponsor Condor Speed Shop sells UHMV motor mounts, but for rally I think these are just too stiff and I want some compliance in certain areas to avoid breaking stuff. So got some OEMish ones from FCPEuro, which has lifetime warranty on everything they sell. So the plan will be just to send these back in for replacement after the rallycross season, and then keep doin that for a while to see how they hold up.
Also had to remember to grind down these little appendages on the rear of the upper pan to clear the M20 flywheel....
Then took a break to address a sudden major vibration in my wife's CX-9 after a recent trip to the beach. Guess the slide pins on the front calipers were sticking and overheated them during the trip, because the insides of both front rotors were totally trashed. I literally inspected all of this 5k miles ago but will admit I did not grease the slide pins at that time (we bought the CX-9 about 10k miles ago)
Also managed to slash my finger open on one of the little brake pad clips. Doesn't looks big, but I'm on blood thinners so I soaked through a bunch of paper towels and band-aids before I got it to stop lol
Then took the exhaust off and cut off the broken sections
And welded in some new pipe in my usual non-attractive manner...
And patched the "access hole" I made in the driver's floor with some sheet steel, self-tapping screws, and seam sealer. Just didn't want to get down behind the pedals to weld, would have been too much effort for the same result..
OK so on to rallycross. With the car down and a DC event today, I called in a favor to many people who had borrowed my car over the years when theirs were broken. Eric Eisele (last year's class champion) offered up his since his co-driver Neil Cox couldn't make it. So off I went in the Porsche to West Virginia....trailing fellow rally driver Robert Pepper in his Macan GTS...
(and um...well you know old Porsche speedometers are not accurate...of course we were going the speed limit)
So here's the car I drove. It's a 325i with header and puts out nice power. No power steering though, and a pretty nebulous e36 rack that is dead on center. So the opposite of my car in many ways. Eric knows how to drive it and use the power
Jim and Amanda were there with the Miata, and Stephen of course is leading the class in his e30 (me 2 points behind) coming into today's event...
Did I mention Pepper actually competed in the Macan (his stage car is a Porsche 944), along with his daughter Zoe. And they beat several Subarus lol...
Took a photo of the P-car
and some other stuff...
me and Eric, who is trying to do his best Grumpy Cat
So anyhow, it was the "big course" again (about a mile long) so having a power car would be nice. Eric's car is a handful without power steering. My car is very light on its feet with not very heavy steering, so I'm used to being able to one-hand it sometimes. Not this car. Two hands, death grip on the wheel so as not to break a wrist on snap kickback. I thought it would take a while to get going in his car, but I went hard out of the gate and actually led the class for the first three runs. On the fourth and final run before lunch, I put down a good run ....BUT....I went too wide on one turn and got two cones (the only two of the morning).......
Someone even got a picture of me about to hit the first one...
So that dropped me from 1st to 3rd at the lunchbreak. Unfortunately, over lunch a giant pop-up thunderstorm came up and along with booming thunder and lightning DUMPED rain for an hour or so. After it tapered off a bit, Adam called for afternoon runs, so we headed back up the mountain with it still raining. Unfortunately, the surface had turned into ice-rink slick mud, and the Miatas in particular were having all kinds of issues just getting up there. WIth this course having a lot of off-camber turns into hills, it woudl have been really sketchy jsut getting around certain corners, so they called off the afternoon and we drank a few beers, chatted, and everyone headed home early (running back through the same storm on the way home.....)
So.....3rd for this event, with Stephen 2nd (he got a cone on his 4th run too). With our cones, Nick drove totally clean as he often does, and snuck ahead of us for the win. So he has two wins now (and two out-of-the-points finishes, I think). Same old in this class, anyone can win or finish 7th on any given day. Stephen is still the points leader, and so far I have a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd (plus a dropped event that I missed)....so...we'll see how I can do in my own car in 3 weeks at the same venue.
The e30 is running now, with exhaust, so most of the work remaining is banging out dents and doing other minor stuff. The car will be ready to run in plenty of time I think.
Well I guess I'm overdue for some updating.
A few weeks ago we had our last rallycross for this season at Panthera (a few more at Summit Point upcoming). The weather was great and I drove the e30, back together, up for the event - not exactly excited to try to catch the more powerful cars on Panthera's big hills again. The usual huge MR crowd was there...
The car was running fine, but I'd noticed over the past week it occasionally would fail to crank on the first try, but always worked on the second. I figured it was a worn key tumbler, since that same thing happened 6 or 7 years ago, you may (or may not) recall. Anyhow, didn't seem like a major issue so off I drove to W.Virginia. Had no problems until I stopped at Sheetz right near the venue and.....the car wouldn't start. At all. Luckily a competitor was there and for some reason jumping it let it start up and it ran fine. My voltmeter showed full charging. Didn't know what was up.
Got to the venue and no issues, so we drove up to start the event up on top of the hill. As I was moving to grid, I beeped the horn at someone and the car died and would not start again. Rolling down the hill and dumping the clutch did nothing either. The acc lights would come on but it seemed to have barely any power, and nothing was working except my one dedicated power line from the trunk (which runs our rally electronics).
Not having time to diagnose, I decided this would be the week to try a smorgasbord of cars, so in I jumped with Josh Sennett for my first run. His M50 car is powerful and fells pretty damn good and I started off fast, but in a section with a kink through some wet grass I got on the power too early and around I went. Damn. Event over from the very start. Lost 15 seconds getting back on course. In this class, that's not something you can come back from.
I drove his car the second run as well and laid down a fast time (faster than his time, I think). Next run I jumped into Nick's M3, which is sooo smooth and powerful and tight handling, though the brakes seem to suck for some reason. I ran another pretty good time and if not for the spin I would have been right in the mix. For the next run I decided to see how a stock-ish M42 car does, so jumped in with Jesse. He has stock school-bus steering and stock M42. Man, I was really slow in that car. Mine doesn't have any more power than his (and might actually weigh more), but having responsive steering and brakes and suspension makes a huge difference for how much you can push the car I guess.
At lunch, towed the car back to the paddock (second time I've had this view....)
we fiddled around with things and somehow the car decided to start again. Hmm. Ok, planned to just not turn it off at all for the afternoon. As we headed up after lunch, got to the top of the hill right by my worker station (working first) and.....it dies again. WTF.
So for most of our work-duty time, the other guys at my station covered while Chris Helgesen and I fully trouble-shooted the electrical. The e30 has a main power cable from the trunk battery, plus a smaller dedicated circuit for the DME, with a fusible link in it to protect the DME. It turned out the main cable was getting full 12V, but with any load on it the smaller cable would drop to about 3V (though it was at 12V with no load). Only guess is that the fusible link was bad and somehow acting as a resistor. After much sweating and cursing and getting dusty from passing cars we managed to splice some wires and get the DME onto the main circuit. So the car ran. I also took this cool photo of Brian Battochi going by at high speed
In any case, the car worked fine all afternoon, and I pushed as hard as I could to try to make up some time but to no avail. Too many cones, and just not fast enough with the hilly course. IDK where I ended up...maybe 6th or 7th (amazingly, still managed to beat half the class even after the spin). Josh Sennett held off Nick for his first ever event win, which is a good thing for the points race from my view. This event will hopefully be my 2nd and final drop event, so with the final 3 events at Summit point (no hills and more technical courses) I hope I can get some high-points finishes and try to win the class. I'm currently in 3rd for points with nobody all that close behind me, so I can pretty much drive all-out for the rest of the season unless Sennett continues to put up big points days.
So yeah....that's that. The weekend after I got home I re-wired the entire secondary circuit from the battery to the kill switch to the distro block, with a pair of 8ga wires for added backup, and a new fusible link in a changeable box (will carry a spare from now on). Everything seems to work fine again, so hope that's that.
In the meantime, some other stuff on the other cars:
The Sequoia has always had kind of lousy brakes, and recently I've been feeling a drag/tug from one or possibly two corners after the long tow back from New England. These (and other Toyotas of the era) are pretty well-known to have calipers seize up with high mileage. With 125k on mine, I went ahead and ordered all-new stuff from RockAuto. Raybestos now makes NEW replacement calipers for this vehicle (with no core charge!) for the same price as reman'd ones, so I went that route, along with new rotors and new pads all around (well, I replaced the front rotors 1000 miles ago so didn't do those)
I replaced a couple of the rear soft lines, but for the moment didn't do a couple of them because the fittings are pretty rusty and I don't really want to risk twisting off a hard-line at the moment. I figure the stock lines should still be fine at this miles, and it's only the rear (fronts have full stainless/braided lines), so will "risk" it until I want to deal with it.
In any case, car brakes much better now with some heavy-duty front pads (the same ones police forces use) and some stoptech rears. Also adjusted the drum parking brakes.
WIth the Subaru due for state inspection this month, I did a check-over of everything. The only thing that got my attention was a bit of movement in the front hubs. They probably would have passed, but it's not worth dealing with doing inspection twice, and if there's one thing I don't mind doing on this car it's hubs and bearings - because they are all full bolt-in assemblies and are cheap as hell at RockAuto. Normally I'd get higher-end or OEM for bearings, but since I only plan to keep this car for another year or so I got some Centric ones, which should be fine. Took one hour to do both sides. Easy peasy
I also got some cheap replacement front wheel-well liners since my original ones are in about 6 pieces and held together by a hundred zipties, and continue to crack and break. With winter coming up, I'd just as well keep as much crap as possible out of the engine bay and inner body.
Oh, also did one of the front hubs on the e30. And took this cheesy pic for my friend who does marketing for APC (which owns Centric, Stop-tech, Cherry Bomb, and various other brands). She says it's gonna get used in their print catalog, which I find somewhat funny (also had to take the pic so as to not show the Hawk stickers on the car, haha.
Can't remember where I left off with the Porsche, but I have the AC fully working now, so have moved on to little things like continuing to try to stop the damn sunroof from leaking in heavy rains. I also got a new steering wheel, which is a HUGE improvement. It's a 80s-vintage Momo Monte Carlo that came off a Porsche 914, so it works for looks and feels damn near perfect. I am adding a 1" spacer to get it a bit closer to me for comfort's sake. Already took a road trip with it and was happy with the car overall.
I plan to take this car on a cross-country trip (Va to Cali and back) in the next year or two, so now it's long-term planning on what to do to make this car the best for that. If you feel like following on my future adventure (and my way-too-much planning, route ideas, etc), I have a thread about it over in the adventure/road trips forum here at GRM...
Nothing to report on the rally car. I haven't driven it in a few weeks, and our rallycross this weekend was rained out (again). Damn red clay venues.....
I've been doing some work on the Porsche which I'll detail when I'm done, but in the meantime the WRX over the last year has been nickle and diming me to death (170k miles and the Bilstein Cup suspension was finally getting to the end, and having emissions code issues I coudln't solve). So with state inspection and emissions due at the end of this month, I made a quick decision and tossed it up on CL priced to sell. And it sold pretty quickly. I drove the Sequioa to work today, and then went and found a model-year-end deal on an '18 GTI SE. It doesn't have the raw performance of the WRX, or AWD, but I'm ready for something a bit more refined that gets better fuel economy. And something with a warranty (6 year/72k bumper to bumper on new VWs!). I like working on my project cars. i don't like working on my daily driver. So hopefully this will serve me well for the foreseeable future, and it's pretty damn fun to drive and has a lot of neat/thoughtful features that were somewhat lacking on the faster but much cheaper-feeling WRX.
I had said I wasn't much interested in getting another FWD car, but after driving the GTI its dynamics really changed my mind. Looking forward to 7-8mpg better on the fuel. This is the SE model with LSD, LED headlights, sport suspension/huge brakes, 6MT, and really ugly wheels.....
Does it have cool seats at least?
mazdeuce - Seth said:Does it have cool seats at least?
I got the plaid ones. I'm not positive I love the look, but they are very comfortable and extremely well bolstered. They feel a lot like my WRX seats, which were my favorite thing about that car. The leather ones are the same, except leather - but I personally prefer cloth seats.
Or, if you meant "cooled/AC seats"....no. But they are heated.
Mine are the same, but it's too dark to take a pic so here's a stock pic lol.
Back to the Porsche....
I know I'm not the first to do this of course, but anyhow here's my take on the "rear seat delete." Since this is my road-trip car and not a track car, I decided to not just delete the rear seat, but to turn the whole area into a useful storage and gear area.
I removed the rear lower seat, and stripped the cushions off the seatback, which is the only part I am re-using since it's the easiest way to keep fold-down capability. Then made some cardboard mock-up pieces. Then I cut some wood and made some brackets, using the seat belt bolts as the primary mount for the "front" piece as well as some aluminum angle pieces bolted to the front lip of the lower seat base.
For scale of depth/size..
I got a $15 roll of cheap Amazon.com black unbacked carpet. It's not great, but it stretches pretty well and will hopefully hold up. if not, it wasn't expensive. First carpeted the interior area, and used some old harness eyebolts I had sitting around to give me tiedown points for gear, water/fluid jugs, or whatever I put in there.
Then I padded the old seatback piece (not sure why, in retrospect, but whatever...) and got out my 3M carpet adhesive and electric staple gun and did some basic upholstery. And this is how it all came out. I added a cargo net, some tie-down eyes, and some other stuff that I figured would come in useful as well..
The seatback looks a bit lumpy here, but it should level out a bit over time I think..
I also plan to re-mount a rollout cargo cover to the back of it...
I wanted to be able to fold down the seatback in case of carrying something long, but also wanted it to be a "back brace" for stuff on the parcel shelf. So I double-hinged the storage compartment onto the bottom of the seatback (rather than to the car itself), allowing it to slide forward and let the original seatback fold down..
Hell, I'm 6 feet tall and can even lie down on it lol
Ok, so I guess I'll do an actual e30 update, not that there's much to say. However, after the electrical fiasco at the last event, I was sure I had solved the issue. No such luck. The last couple times I've tried to start the car, nothing.....and then it would magically work after a few tries. I went to drive it and on a hunch I jiggled the key and everything turned off....so that's key lock tumbler #2 that has died on this car. So time to go full "racecar" with no ignition key....
The easy way would be just to set up a starter button and splice all the power lines together and use the master kill switch for shutoff/run. But Jim suspects that this setup is the reason the track e30's alternator seems to go bad more often than it should, and that there should be an actual power on/off switch. So I did that as well. Anyhow, a bit of simple wiring and it's all set and works fine. One less thing to worry about
Speaking of things with starter buttons, I sold off the cheesy stock "tuner" wheels on the VW and got something more "adult" looking and with some better tires (BFG Comp 2 A/S). Since I have no plans to lower this car, I actually got a slightly taller sidewall (45 series vs. 40 series stock), which both increases my ground clearance a bit (recce ride?) and fills the wheel wells nicely. Only other thing this car will get in the foreseeable future is some mudflaps (going to cut out some cheap RA's) and some tint. Otherwise, time to commute..
wheel cleaner that changes color is neat. And BTW, the stock pads on this car bite hard, but damn do they dust a lot!
Finally back to some rallycross, after the rain ended for a while.
Back to Summit Point we went last weekend for a doubleheader (two single events). Pretty cool to be back here where I first started rallycrossing 8 years ago. With the weather dry, Saturday's competition took place on the Barn Course, my favorite course (and the only one of the old three courses still in existence today). Barn is a very long, very fast course that, when dry, packs out as hard as tarmac to the point where it gets rubber marks all over it.
Due to it being a reschedule, a few of the regulars were not there - including my codriver Jim, points leader Stephen Nichols, and Josh Sennett, who has been coming on STRONG in recent events. But, still some dangerous fast-movers, including Nick in the M3 (2nd in points), Chris Helgesen (and his son Thomas) in their 325i, and Peter Grasso in his very powerful 325i. I think I can take all of these guys in the handling department (more on that later), but they all outpower me by a good amount.
After walking the course it was pretty clear I was going to have a hard time, as the course was set with three long straights where all the higher-power cars would be able to pick up a good amount of time on my little M42. I had hoped there would be some slaloms in these straights but no suck luck - straight as an arrow. So I'd have to try to make up the time on the more technical back half of the course, which was pretty windy. However, windy in terms of slow turns requiring power for exit.....not really much in the way of slaloms or offsets, which I'm fast in.
With a relatively low turnout (~40 cars), we were sure to get a lot of runs, especially with a good breeze keeping dust off the course and good visibility on the flat course allowing a lot of cars running at once (4-5 at a time on course).
So off we went. From the first run it was clear this would be an uphill battle for me. I thought I was driving pretty well but was off the pace by a bit, especially to Grasso who was really enjoying the open course setup. We did something like 7 runs in the morning, and by lunch Grasso was up by 4-5 seconds, as I recall, with Nick behind him and me a couple seconds back in third. The course had a lot of grip already, so switching to my Maxsports from the DMack gravels was unlikely to change anything. I also picked up a couple unfortunate cones. The afternoon course, oddly, was unchanged and in the same direction, which is unusual. So more of the same, with little opportunity to pick up time unless someone screwed up. We did 10 more runs (17 total), and they didn't screw up. Grasso ran away from Nick and I, and we battled for 2nd but I couldn't quite catch Nick. So third for me in the end, with Nick 2nd. Thomas actually finished a few seconds behind me, so he's learning fast since he's only had a driver's license for a couple years. He even beat his dad for the first time ever.
Interesting comment by course workers that I was much more "sideways" than the other e30s coming out of turns, which is unusual for me. With all the grip I was pretty surprised, especially if the higher-power cars were keeping it straight. Hm.
On to Day 2, and we were on a new course...well, new for this year, but we did run it in crazy mud months ago (the event I won by a large margin). But it was dry now, with pretty good grip. Fortunately, it was MUCH more technical with basically no places the power cars could use their power to any real extent. In short: just my kind of course. 2017 class champion Eric Eisele made it out to this one and he's always a major threat to win. e30 croo out in force.
I jumped into the lead right off the bad with a fast first run. With a lighter car I tend to go out a bit harder than the power cars do, since I have a bit more agility it seems. Eric and Chris were right with me though. Nick and Grasso seemed to have a bit more problems with the tightness and very technical transitions. As the morning went on, Eric and I separated ourselves from the rest of the pack to some degree, with him holding a slight lead on me thanks to (again) an unusual amount of cones for me, even though I was running faster times. I couldn't get the ass-end of the car in check and kept sliding it into cones when coming on power out of turns.
The afternoon course was reversed and had some "pucker-factor" sections due to high-speed offsets and some heavy braking and switchback zones. I thought it was a blast, but kept picking up cones with the back of the car.
I also managed, according to a course worker, to knock down a cone with a rock shot from my rear tire 6 feet away (which counts). More on that in a bit. We ran 7 in the afternoon, with me putting up the fastest times in the class on most runs, and Eric putting up runs almost as fast, but with way less cones. On the day, I had 9 cones, he had TWO, in 12 runs. That dude rolls CLEAN.
Coming into the last run, I was sitting 0.3 seconds behind Eric with nobody close behind me. Now remember that rock-thrown-cone. Without that I would have a 1.7 second lead and could back off a few percent and hopefully run clean (though you never know), since there didn't seem to be much room for Eric to go much faster. But being behind, I had to "send it" so to say. Through the S-curves at the back of the course, not pushing particularly hard I once again lost the rear end and kicked out a cone. Once I did that I knew I had to go full-send on the hopes of picking up time. Unfortunately, I managed to pick up a second cone. In the end, it was the fastest run for the class for the day (I think), but not enough. Eric was only about 1/2 a second behind me (he was pushing too) but kept it clean, so he won. Chris H. was third with Nick finished in 4th, just edging out Grasso.
I thought I drove well, but the car was uncharacteristically loose at the rear end, which has been a recurring problem for the second half of this season and resulted in a high cone count, even when I've tried to mitigate by adding trunk weight and changing back to the IX springs. hmm.
Anyhow, with Stephen missing the event, and Nick getting a 2nd and 4th and me a 3rd and 2nd, the points race shakes out (with our drop events) with Nick in 1st, and me 3 points behind going into the last event. So, my only chance is to win the last event and have him finish 3rd or worse. That's a tall order, guess we'll see what November's course looks like.
E30 croo loves our luxo-toyota-suv rigs :)
Now....
After the event, Keith Pizio commented to me that he thought one of my rear shocks was blown since one of my rear wheels was hopping a lot. Interesting. The car didn't FEEL bouncy inside so I haven't really checked the rear shocks since NEFR, but perhaps that was a cause of my loose rear end. So I pulled the rear shocks (keep in mind, these were used at NEFR, which really beats up suspension).
Sure enough, both rear shocks were blown. One was still "kinda" ok, and had some damping pressure to it. The other one was totally gone. ZERO pressure in it, and the piston was literally clanging around inside the cylinder. Well.....I guess that explains why the rear end of the car was such a mess for the last couple events. I had assumed it was the M3 springs with no spare tire weight in the trunk (the stage setup), but guess not.
So, I have my spare set of Bilsteins installed and I imagine that will setting things down. I've been so busy working on the Porsche, selling the Subaru, and buying the GTI I admittedly slacked off on even so much as checking much on the e30 in the last few months, other than to fix the electrical gremlins. So, that was pretty dumb, and it almost certainly cost me the win on Sunday, if not Saturday. Lesson learned.
Oh, here's some vid of the Saturday course and the Sunday morning course, in case you want to watch
There was no avoiding it, but I'm still so pissed about missing the Saturday course. Sorry you had a rough go this weekend. The last event in November is gonna be epic!!
In reply to bluej :
Yeah, Jim and Amanda and Stephen all missed the weekend as well (they were all at the same wedding), so the reschedule foiled a lot of peoples' plans for sure.
Virtually everyone I talked to thought the Sunday course was a ton of fun and really enjoyed it, even the guys hitting a lot of cones. The Saturday course was long and a ton of runs, but I don't really recall many people talking about enjoying it all that much really. The technical sections were mostly off-rhythm turns rather than "features" so it was really just "go fast, slow down, turn hard, go fast, slow down, turn hard, and repeat." It started getting pretty hard and rough as the day went on. I thought it was cool to get a lot of runs but was pretty bored with the course after about ten or so and ready for the event to be over.
Couple weeks until the final rallycross. Car is about where it's gonna be at this point so guess we'll see if I can pull off a good finish to the season. Nick's been peppering me with questions about rally tires and shipping time from Demontweeks (UK) so I'm gonna assume his plan is to show up at the last event with brand-new tires and make it much harder for the rest of the class, none of whom are running tires that are very new (mine have two seasons and a stage rally on them).
Of course, I gave Nick really bad tire advice so hopefully he shows up with those tarmac rally tires I suggested! (lol jk)
Well, some of my Porsche parts made it in this week. I've been redoing all of the fuel system to get rid of the 30-year-old pressure lines. A member on the Porsche forums makes custom lines, and since my 924S has slightly different setup from either the early or late 944, he made some special for me after some measuring and test-fitting. Also replaced the 90 degree jumper line, which was also 30-years old. While I was in there I decided to try some new fuel injectors (fairly cheap Chinese ones, but a few people have used them with success), so we'll see how those go. If not, I think my old ones are in good shape. I thought one was leaking, but it turns out the fuel rail bracked bolts had worked loose and probably allowed it to move enough to move the seals.
Anyhow, off with the old lines...
new injectors
new OEM jumper ($100 for this tiny little hose!)
The new lines attach to the factory hardlines down near the bottom of the bay before they curve to go under the car. A bit tight working in there but managed to get them hooked up.
And hooked up up top, with some protection from chafing, etc.
Also picked up a little something for Nonack (from another fellow rallycrosser), to hand off to him at some point...
Biggest shop manual I've ever seen
Well, not much of interest to update. The Porsche is waiting on a new reference sensor harness (on backorder) so is currently immobile in the garage and I can't really pull it outside since the driveway is a slope and it would be a bitch to get back in.
Meanwhile, drove the e30 for the first time since the last rallycross and the car has a really big vibration in the driveline someplace. I know the diff had been making noise for much of this season so maybe it finally E36 M3 the bed. Or it's quite possible that the driveshaft U-joint or center support bearing is shoot. Or it could be one of the CV axles. Unfortunately, with the P-car stuck in the garage and the other bay full of stuff at the moment (and noplace to put it outside due to rainy weather), I can't exactly address whatever the issue is at the moment so looks like it's time to shut it down for the season and get ready to take the whole driveline apart and refresh it as soon as I can get the Porsche running.
So, that's pretty annoying. I had hoped to try to put the hammer down at this weekend's rallycross with the new shocks on the car and likely softer conditions that usually favor my car over the big-power cars. With drop events included Nick only has a 2 or 3 point lead over me for the class championship and he's been pretty inconsistent depending on the course. With literally EVERYONE in the class coming to this event (18 cars signed up for MR), the competition is sure to be fierce and maybe I could pull off a high finish and have Nick finish way back (or just the opposite, who knows) and sneak into the championship. In any case I'm sitting in 2nd with a pretty good lead over Stephen, so as long as I get a few points I will have that locked up. The word is that both Stephen and Nick will be showing up to this last event with brand-new tires (mine are far from new) so that would probably make it tough to catch Nick unless it's really sloppy out there.\
To that end, still need to get a few points so looking for a car to co-drive. Unfortunately, the fastest cars in the class are almost all dual-driven at this point (Eric-Neil, Jim-Amanda, Stephen and Chris) and Josh S. is having a buddy drive with him, so that's probably out as well. I'd ask Nick (since he owes me 3 or 4 co-drives from driving my car over the years) but I feel like that's a bit cheaty to borrow the M3 on fresh tires - especially if I were to beat him in it. Sooo....at the moment Dan G. has offered up his stock-class, M10-powered 318, which would probably be a fun reminder of how my car started life but would probably not be all that competitive in MR class (but I almost want to try it just to see how decent of a driver I am, lol). I've inquired with Shawn about running their PR Miata (the Unicorn) in MR, mostly because I'd love to see how a Miata does against this class with someone other than Shawn (the master) driving it. Other option will be to see if Jeff and Cody would share their PR 325i e30, or I could ask one of the other random people in the class who I don't know as well. So, we'll see what I end up driving (or more than one car...).
In addition, Mike Cessna will be there (with a co-driver) running his e36 stage rally car, for even more competition....
After a strong start in the mud-choked first event, this season is the first one where car issues have really killed me, after seven pretty drama-free seasons in terms of car reliability, so that's pretty annoying (as well as missing one event). Add that to the car's not-quite-enough-power making Panthera events a bit of a mismatch for me (which is driving the possibility of an engine swap if we keep running there). With most of the other fast-movers also missing some events (Eric, Josh S., Neil, Stephen) Nick has chugged along with solid finishes and no missed events to hold onto the points (kind of the way I did it one of the seasons I won the class). In any case, it's pretty clear it's time to make this car better after somewhat resting on my laurels for several years now with no significant performance upgrades at all.
So, that's that and we'll see how it pans out. If this weekend for some reason gets postponed for weather, that would give me a couple weeks to try to sort out the e30's issues perhaps. I have a spare diff, spare axles, a spare DS (which needs a new CSB).....so I'll have to get my ass on the cold garage floor and start taking stuff apart I guess :/
though on second thought, maybe i'll change the diff oil with some extra friction modifier tomorrow, and maybe blast the u-joints with some lubricant to see if that reduces the vibration. I'd really like to finish the season in this car.....and since i have a trailer I guess there's no real harm in giving it a go. If something breaks, so be it....
Well, perhaps luckily the rallycross was postponed thanks to 7" of melting snow, even though I had lined up to drive with Shawn. that may give me enough time to get my car back on the road. I haven't taken anything apart yet (other than changing the diff oil, with no effect), but I'm 95% sure it's a bad driveshaft U-joint and/or center support bearing. So a new CSB and giubo are on the way, and I'm running up to Baltimore this weekend to pick up an M42 driveshaft from Spencer that has good U-joints (note: M42 DS's aren't all that easy to find since they're different length from M20 cars...).
Other than that, still waiting on a reference sensor harness for the Porsche (now sitting at a month....) which is super-annoying since the car cannot run without it. Grr. In the meantime I met up with a fellow 924 owners who is parting one out and picked up a few things from his parts car for cheap. I managed to score a nice taillight to replace my nice-ish one that has a small crack in the turn signal lens. Also pickep up a couple spare fan relays, which may come in handy one day. But nicest, he had a slightly-used Bosch alternator with only a couple thousand miles on it that I got for a fraction of new price. Plus a belt that is equally almost-new. So, that's nice.
In addition, I just scored some 968 Boxster seats off ebay for really cheap, and they have been recently reupholstered so they look almost brand-new. Hopefully as nice in person as in the pics, I'll find out next week. This is really the last big thing i want to have done on this car to consider it "done" at least for the moment, so I'm kind of excited about that.
In the category of "facepalm"
Drove up about 60 miles to Baltimore to pick up a M42 driveshaft from a buddy who had one sitting around, that had good U-joints (and bad everything else). But since I have a new giubo, new CSB, and new centering bushing here I figured I'd just rebuilt it. Once I got home I had to spend some time clearing out the garage bay #2 to fit the e30 with room to work, since it was full of kids bikes and stuff......
So, that done, got it up on stands to take stuff apart. Exhaust off, heat shields off, still don't see anything amiss. With the ebrake on and car out of gear, I did a few jiggles of the DS to see if the u-joints seemed loose before removing. Nothing notable, but I heard a light "clink" from the front. hmm. Did it again, same clink from the giubo area. Last week I got under the car (on ramps) to check the giubo/DS bolts and the ones on the bottom were fully tight. I didn't rotate the DS to check the uppers at that time.
This time, the bottom ones still tights (I guess by sheer luck same orientation). But with the car up I rotated the shaft and dammit....one was totally loose with the nut halfway threaded off. Other 5 totally tight.
So yeah, looks like one of the metal-lock nuts backed itself off. This happened a couple years ago leaving an event (when 3-4 of them were loose) and I replaced them all with new metal-lock nuts and new bolts. Not sure why only ONE of them got loose.
So, I kind of half-hoped that this wasn't actually the issue because it's so dumb and simple and my fault for overlooking one loose nut. The CSB and giubo looked to be in perfect condition (replaced last year). So I put a new bolt and new nut on there, cinched it up, slapped the exhaust back on and went for a test-drive. And shocker.....vibration gone, everything is fine again.
While I was under there I checked every other bolt I could access on the rear suspension, diff, DS, etc and all were fine.
So, that was dumb.
Hopefully the weather holds up for next Sunday's last (rescheduled) event. This season has been ridiculous with weather delays. I need to finish 2-3 positions higher than Nick in order to win the season championship. Nick told me today he has brand-new Maxxis rally tires. So, we'll see how that improves his driving, etc. I have the aformentioned non-blown rear shocks on the car so hopefully last event's sloppiness will not happen again. I'll be running whatever old/worn tires I have that suit the conditions best, but none of them are great at this point. This winter will probably pick up a new set of something or other.
One of my friends is in marketing and one of her clients is APC, a conglomerate that makes/owns various national brands (StopTech, Centric, Cherry Bomb, etc). So when she was designing their new webpage she asked me if I used any of the brands. But of course....Centric hubs/bearings are cheap on RockAuto, so we use them on the rally car . And our Cherry Bomb, of course. So she wanted photographic proof, and not it's on APC's site, which is kind of fun :)
I am only the second most famous racecar driver on that page though ;)
First of all thanks for all the help on previous threads on this topic (and older threads that talk about it). I initially wanted to put 987 Boxster seats into the car, but looked like there were a few reasons that it would be a very difficult fit, both in terms of physical fit and electrical hookup.
So I settled and got some really nice 986 seats on ebay (for cheap) - recently recovered with very nice, soft leather (the leather is soft, the seats are VERY firm actually). They came almost totally disassembled so it took me a couple hours to figure out how to put them back together (not as simple as a pivot bolt, haha).
Anyhow, following the previous how-to's on this I ground down the "nub" on the rail and flattened the front "feet." After testing I found that the center bar (to adjust height) actually has enough clearance for the seat to slide just fine, so I didn't take it off like some people do.
Hooked up power and it works fine. Definitely more bolstering than my 924S stock seats , though I'm not sure yet if I think these are very comfortable. IDK what it is, but I have yet to sit in an (older) Porsche seat that I find all that comfortable. Guess we'll see if these break-in. They do look nice though :)
Aaaaand.....yet another cancelled rallycross. They postponed it again until next weekend, but the weather isn't improving and it's pretty certain that one will be cancelled and the seaon will be over. I guess we should be thankful we got 7 events in this year (this year was record rainfall in this area, by a large margin), since apparently most of the other eastern rallycross clubs (Ohio, Susquehanna, AHR, etc) in some cases had as few as TWO events....ugh.
So, I guess Nick wins this season and I finish 2nd. Oh well. I shot myself in the foot this year with car problems and some suspect driving and he stayed consistent as he learns the M3 further. So many other guys right there with us, and the final event was suppsed to have 22 cars running in MR. Next season is going to be crazy....
So, mostly just planning to park the e30 in the garage for the winter in a week or two and begin some "winter projects" on it. But before I could do that I need to get the Porsche out of the garage and finish a few projects on it. It's going to live outside this winter for the most part, under a nice (not cheap) new cover I bought for it. Also so I can drive it occasionally, maybe try it in some snow :)
So if you recall before, I replaced ALL of the high-pressure fuel lines in the engine bay since they were 30 years old and kind of scary-looking. But because my wiring for my reference and speed sensors cracked (it's a funky shielded triple-wire setup) I wasn't able to check for leaks, etc immediately. I ordered a new wiring harness from Lindsey Racing - the only company that custom-makes them to replace the factory pieces - and as it happens their manufacturer was behind schedule so it took 4+ weeks to actually get it. Anyhow, got it yesterday, re-wired it to the ECU plug (bobby pins work great to free the OEM wire pinouts, by the way). And, with fingers crossed, hooked up the battery....ERRRRR> what? As I contacted the negative terminal, I hear the starter spinning. Hmm. Back under the car to check that I wired it all right when I put it back in. As it turns out, the signal wire to the starter was somehow rubbing on the main power post and the insulation was worn thought. So, put a new connector and insulation on there and re-oriented it so it couldn't touch the other post. NOW, hooked it up.....and the car fired right up (without FIRE). No sign or smell of leaks and the engine is running smoother now than before, as I also put new injectors in while I was at it. Nice.
Then on to project #2 - final installation of the seats. These pretty much bolt right in, so not much to say here. There are a few little things that have to be done but nothing of interest. I had to run some power wires to each seat since my originals were manual and these have power seatback tilt. So all that hooked up, car back together, good to go.
I was a bit worried about ebrake clearance, but there is clearance from the seat switches, so that's perfect.
Then with it being 60 degrees, I spent the rest of the day doing the last big garage cleanup before winter...tossed two trash cans full of stuff that for some reason I've held onto (Miata seatbelt receptacles? WTF....)
And built a fold-down work table (mostly for my daughters to use when they play with stuff in the garage)
Well as luck would have it the weather this week has been 100% dry so we are running this weekend! Aside from the fact that it gives me a shot at winning the season, I'm just happy to go drive in the dirt - seems like it's been forever. Now the big question is tires. At Summit Point it's been around freezing all week (in the teens and 20s at night) so a lot of the mud has not so much gone away as probably frozen. The course we run is mostly packed red clay, which is like ice when wet, and probably like ice when frozen. So now have to consider whether to run with my still-new Altimax Arctics, with the mud-friendly Maxsports, or the hardpack-friendly soft gravels. Or a mix-and-match. I'll probably lug a few tires and the jack with me out to the grid in case of a last-second change of heart, we'll see. :)
Also, and I know a few of these people aren't running (or are running in a different class for this event), but that's a lot of MR cars...
Well, I guess I'll do a wrap-up of the final event. As noted above, this one was a 3rd-try makeup event at Summit Point. The entire week before was dry but very cold. Coming into it, I was 3 points behind Nick in the standings and (I think) 8 ahead of Stephen. So basically I could drive all-out to try to catch Nick and hope that he somehow dropped down the standings. With almost everyone in the class coming (except Josh S.) it was sure to be a shootout. To make it more fun, Shawn Roberts (moxnix) bumped up in his PR Miata to MR since he's long had PR championship wrapped up.
With the weather so cold, I towed the car out there with some General Altimax Arctic snow tires on it, thinking they would be better for traction. Upon arrival (in the mid-20s) and walking the course, it seemed pretty grippy and after much internal back-and-forth I decided to switch to my gravels for better steering response. This would prove to be a major mistake, as once on course at speed it was clear that traction sucked with gravels, and the car understeered badly in corners, which is unusual for this car. Trying to be as light as possible I had no gear or spare tire or anything in the car, which is also unusual for me. This gave the added downside of making the car a bit taller in the back than I like, thanks to the M3 springs that are there to deal with 150lbs of rally gear on stage.
Now, you will say "well, wasn't everyone else there on gravels too?" Well yes. Except Shawn, who went out on snows (I should have known well enough to just copy whatever he did, but as previously noted, I was being stupid). At the Summit Barn course, however, there are three pretty good-sized straights where the higher-power cars have a substantial speed advantage over me. It doesn't help that the course designers (who drive higher-power Subarus) make them pretty much just straight - no kinks, slaloms, offsets, etc. So as has been the case all season on these big, fast courses I would have to make up my time in the turns, where my car typically does better than the rest of the class. Unfortunately with the gravels there was no grip, and my attempts to carry speed in the turns immediately turned into understeer, sliding off the outside of the course, and a couple cones. The power cars were just slowing down more in the turns and makign it up in the straight sections, as expected. After 4 runs i was already beyond frustrated with the general handling of the car (and my driving) and pretty much cashed out on trying to win (though only about 7 or 8 seconds back of the lead at the time). For my 5th run I jumped into Jim and Amanda's Miata to give it a try. Having never been in the car (or ever driven an NA Miata) it was a bit of an adventure finding the limits, but damn those things are like go-karts. I basically put up the same time as I had in my previous run in my own car, and that's while making some "new-to-me car" mistakes from not knowing how it handled. Hm...
I ran one more in my car before lunch, and it once again sucked. I think at the lunch break I was 11 seconds off the leader and in something like 12th place overall (out of 18 cars). Meanwhile, Shawn had been running, for the most part, the fastest times in the class on the snow tires (aside from one run where his throttle stuck and he lost some time). Granted, this is Shawn, who is one of the best rallycross drivers in the country - so not a huge surprise there. But I wanted to see if the tire choice was also a big factor, so at lunch I swapped on my Altimax Arctics and threw a wheel/tire in the trunk to settle the rear end down.
And what do you know....it worked. On the first run I picked up 3 seconds on Nick, who was leading at the time. I beat every car in the class by 2+ seconds except for Shawn, who ran a similar time. Same story on the second run, even faster - would have been another 2 seconds back on the leaders except i nicked a cone. For the rest of the runs, basically the same story. I beat Nick on every run (though a few other guys in the class got faster runs here and there). Guess I should have gone with my gut from the start and not changed tires. A learning experience indeed. In the end, I finished 7th and Stephen was 4th so didn't catch me in points for 2nd. Nick finished 2nd and locked up the Championship.
One interesting thing to note is that i always talk about how competitive this MR class is here in DC region. Well, in 8 events this season, we had 7 different winners - so that pretty much shows it. Plus Shawn could certainly win events in this class if he changed from PR to MR. Mike Cessna came over from Ohio for the event as well, to test out his new stage car, an e36. I'm not sure offhand how fast he is in the Ohio Valley region, where fast dudes like Evan and John England run, and it was of course a new-to-him car, but Mike was a good 6-7 seconds per run off of my pace, so at least I didn't get beat by the other stage car there lol.
All in all, a frustrating season. I managed 2nd in points, but that's likely only because other guys missed more events than I did (Nick missed none), because there were 2-3 different guys on any given day that were as fast or faster than me. This doesn't bode well for next year, with all the events likely taking place at Summit and at the hilly power-course at Panthera. Really gonna be thinking hard this winter about putting a 6-cylinder in this car. I really hate to upset the balance of the car, but it's at a point where the rest of the class is getting so fast that I will not be very competitive next year without additional power.
Options are: 1) leave it as-is and hope that less mental errors allow me to stay in it. 2) turbo it - though I'm not real big on FI for rally/rallycross and that's not the inexpensive solution. 3) Get one of Jim's spare M20B25's and swap it in, which wouldn't be very hard and would put me in power parity with most of the other BMWs except Nick's M3, or 4) take the shell out in my shed, do a light build on it, totally gut it, and drop my spare M42 in it. This is probably more work than I want to do, and i don't really want a car that isn't street-legal and only good for rallycross, but it's certainly an option.
So with that wrapped up, one other possible issue: In the afternoon I noticed the car was runnign hot on my water temp gauge (VDO, not stock). Even with the heater blasting and temps in the 20s-30s, the gauge was showing around 230 degrees after each run (it's usually around 210). On the final run it was over 240. The car felt like it was running fine. No coolant loss in the reservoir, no white smoke in the exhaust, and nothing but clean oil on the dipstick. So I'm at a bit of a loss offhand. First off i will check for a stuck thermostat. Or since I run a 80% water coolant mix, maybe it froze up the radiator due to the cold temps? IDK. I guess the gauge could have a bad ground or something as well. Or its possible that since this was the first time I've used the heater since the last coolant change, perhaps there was some air in the heater core that kicked loose since I had it blasting, and the car just needs a bleed. Guess I'll figure it out in the next week or two, hopefully just needs to be bled. Though a HG issue could be an excuse for a swap lol.
Side note: Rally plans: WMWR in February (hopefully we'll get snow this year) and I think we're gonna do Southern Ohio Forest Rally (SOFR) since most of our local friends are running it and said it was a lot of fun last year. So that's in May.
In any case, congrats to Nick for a hard-fought season championship (you'll recall he won it like 4 years ago in his e28 as well).
A few other pics I took, just for fun
Peter Grasso and Stephen Nichols/Chris Helgesen
Jesse's M42-powered 318i
323 GTX!
Cone crew
Some goons from other classes
Washed up and put away for the winter....well, ok just washed.
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