MyE28.com DEV

Like most E28s, my car was blessed with the chrome accents in the tail lights, and they don't exactly match with all the blacking out of other trim I've done, so it was time to tackle two projects at once. What was the other project? Water leaking into the trunk around the tail light seal.

I took out the lights and inspected the original insulating foam, and it had seen better days. I read a thread on here talking about a 3M product that is great at sealing things, and is likely the same stuff used to seal around the tail lights on my I30 and many other cars. Enter: 3M Strip-Calk.



We applied this liberally to both the lights and the body, and from what I can tell, it makes a good seal.







So after much cleaning, taping, sanding, and painting, I ended up with this:





Hooray!

===============================================

On another note, we tracked down another water leak a while ago, and it turns out the large puddles of water on the floor are coming from the lower window seals on the doors.

This part:






It clearly needs to be replaced, but I'm not sure which part is which in looking at the Real OEM diagrams.

For the front, I think I need part #5
http://www.realoem.com/bmw/showparts.do ... g=41&fg=40

And for the rear, I think I need #4
http://www.realoem.com/bmw/showparts.do ... g=41&fg=45

Are those the correct parts? Is there anything else I should replace in there while I have everything apart? Are there any tips on how to best do the job?

once the key is cycled the abs is reset, if the light comes on after you start moving you have a dead or really weak sensor, a quick and dirty test is hook up to sensor with meter set to AC, you will get a volt or two when you spin wheel, you can check one side against the other

Hrm, I'm in a bit of a dilemma, and I could use some opinions.

I've found a set of 24/18 Whiteline sway bars for $360:
http://www.energysuspensionparts.com/pr ... rod=BBF34X
http://www.energysuspensionparts.com/pr ... rod=BBR34X

But since the front bar is so large, I'm pretty sure I would need the M5 frame mounts for it not to fail quickly, and these are simply not available.

My other option is to get a used set of a 22mm ST front bar and an 18mm rear M5 bar that I found.

Doing my reading here:
http://www.digest.net/bmw/archive/v7/msg03531.html
and
http://www.mye28.com/viewtopic.php?t=63 ... light=sway

Tells me my '88 (late model) has 19mm front, 15.5mm rear bars, so the 22/18 would probably be different enough to be worth the effort and money. Additionally, the 22mm bar might be small enough to not put too much load on the mount, so maybe I could get away without dealing with the M5 mount headache.

What do you guys think? Is the 24mm front bar worth the extra effort of somehow getting M5 frame mounts on the car, or will the 22mm be enough of an upgrade? Or, is the 22mm bar big enough that it too will rip off the front frame mount, thus negating it's only redeeming quality?

A few weeks ago while under the car trying to fix the ABS issue I discovered the DS rear outer axle boot was ripped and was spewing out grease, so I wanted to get that fixed before the next race.

After looking at the price of new axles on Pelican and the reviews of the $60 remans at parts stores, I decided to just get the boot kits from Pelican and rebuild mine. Four $15 kits ain't so bad. Unfortunately, they decided to only send two, so now we'll have to take the axles out again sometime to do the inner boots. I decided to replace both outer boots since they were in much worse shape than the inners.

Thankfully I have good friends who were willing to lend a hand with the job, so I went the Patrick's place and Josh came out too. Bobby (the co-owner) was nowhere to be seen Before doing the work I had Patrick drive the car around and he picked up on a clunk coming from the rear end when getting on and off the throttle at low speeds. In his semi-professional opinion, the whine I'm hearing from the rear end on the highway is my diff and not the carrier bearing on the driveshaft, so I was worried that the clunk might also be coming from the diff. Apparently some diffs whine and some don't, and there's nothing you can really do about it except shut up and take it. So naturally, I'm going to install more sound deadening and carpet this weekend, because it is damn near unbearable.

Anyway, the point of all that is the clunk from the rear was actually coming from the PS axle. When Josh took it apart and tried to reassemble it, the bearings wouldn't all go back into the carrier thingy. He did some filing work, but I don't think that did much. Eventually, and I'm not sure how, it went back together and seemed to rotate more freely. IIRC the grease in that boot was much nastier than the grease in the ripped DS boot. Now I'm curious to see how bad the inner joint is for that axle. So for once, we solved a problem we didn't intend to, which is much nicer than the usual finding more problems while simultaneously not fixing anything.

Anyway...





Obligatory jacking off picture


Ahhh...


Well, it's half-nice


This is what the PS inner looks like


And the PS outer before we replaced it


So...who thinks we need new pitman arms?


Big thanks to Patrick for offering up his garage, lift and time, and thanks to Josh for all the help!

Holy shit, it actually happened!! The car has some properly sized sway bars!

After months of searching, I came across a set of used sway bars that were just right. Let me recap:

First idea- Get the ST 25/19mm set. Oh, but wait, it's no longer being produced and nobody seems to be selling used ones.

Second idea- Buy a used set of M5 bars and figure out a way to mount the front one. Oh wait, the guy who sold me the set lied and they turned out to be from an E12 or something and weren't even close to fitting the E28.

Third idea- Buy a new set of Whiteline 24/18 bars. Oh wait, they're out of stock and not sure when they're getting more.

Fourth idea- Just freaking get the medium ST set that's still supposedly available. Oh wait, the rear bar is only 0.5mm larger than stock. That's not worth $180.

And yet a few weeks ago the clouds parted and I got a PM from a gent here who had the perfect set: 22mm ST adjustable front bar and a 18mm M5 rear bar. Hooray! Those are respectable increases over the stock 19/15.5mm bars.

On to the install!

Patrick noticed the upper bolt for the DS FSB end link (about 2 months old) was very loose, so he snugged it up, but aside from that the install went pretty well. Pics!

New bars


Rear installed with new PowerFlex bushings


The front bar came with poly bushings that were slightly worn but still stiff, so I reused them to save the $50 for the new PowerFlex bushings I bought just in case.


Installed!


Dear god, these transform the car. All that slop and wallow I was complaining about is all but gone. It's not quite as nice to drive as it was on the lowering springs and stock bars, but it's close. I can't wait to get more seat time and really feel what the bars do, but for now, let's just say they were worth the wait. Now let's all pray I don't rip off the frame mounts!

Got a few updates on the car, so I figured I would post up.

We finally got some carpeting down over the sound deadening in the trunk and back seat to keep the SD from getting damaged or torn up when putting things in the car. The carpet in trunk and on the lower portion in the back seat aren't glued down, due to ongoing water leak concerns, but at least the SD is protected.





We also installed some HD roll cage padding at helmet level.


And then we did some redesigning of the interior. We removed the remainder of the center console that housed the window switches and the tacked on aluminum dash panel that our ex-third member installed to make room for a storage container. Oh, and some much needed sound deadening on the firewall and trans tunnel! Bobby (the co-owner) had a spare set of floor mats from his E46, so we threw those in the car as well. Every little bit of sound deadening helps!





And we finally got back to doing some more blackout work on the chrome trim. I used more of the blackout tape around the windshield and paint for the front Roundel, which had completely stripped down to the chrome. From 5' away it all looks good enough for me!

Oh, and we took the car through a car wash after the last event. Doesn't it look nice?

I'm liking the milk crate mod

Good stuff!

Got some pics from the last race!

Well to celebrate the snow day here in DC, I'll be doing some long overdue updates to my build thread!

Due to a combination camera malfunctions and poor video quality (vibrations) resulting from too many hinges in my GoPro mount, I haven't really had many videos to post, but I got things straightened out by the end of the season, so I've got vids from the last two events of the year, plus one bonus event!

Rally-X #6 10/20/13
By this point we had our 25/19 sway bars on the car, and were loving the body control. No other mods had really been done to the car.

So coming into this event I was pretty solidly in third place for the season behind Roberto in 1st (2nd gen RX7) and Josh (E30 318 w/M42) in 2nd. The wild card in our MR division was Chris, who had previously ran a V6 swapped MR2 (and done very well with it) but the motors kept dying and he sold it, leaving him without a car for the season. For the 4th event I let Chris co-drive the E28 since my co-driver was out of town, and Chris beat me pretty handily in my own car. I watched him drive, and I learned I simply wasn't abusing the car enough, so I've tried driving more aggressively since.

Anyway, for this event, Josh let Chris co-drive the E30, and guess what? Chris smashes Josh in his own car and comes in 1st for the day, earning himself enough points to tie me for 3rd for the season! I came in 4th, behind Josh and Roberto.

Here are the results.
http://www.wdcr-scca.org/RallyCross/Res ... lt.aspx#MR

After 13 runs of about 60 seconds each, Josh was 12 seconds behind Chris, Roberto was 2 seconds behind Josh, and I was 11 seconds behind him. I only hit two cones for the day, which is quite a bit less than others in my class. Maybe I need to drive even more aggressively!

Towards the end of the day, the gas pedal was coming off the floor and flopping around, occasionally making the throttle stick, which added a few seconds to my final runs. The metal bracket the holds the pedal to the floor had rusted off, so there wasn't much holding the gas pedal in place. We had planned to get a hinge from Home Depot and do a quick fix before the next race, but never got around to it, and it came back to bite us. More on that later.

Another problem area with the car was the lack of ABS. There were a few sections on the course where I really was going easy on the brakes for fear of locking up, which was costing me valuable time. As of right now, the issue still hasn't been resolved. I also got tired of having my foot to the floor for so much of the run, and starting wanting more power. But what else is new?

Here's a video of my best run in the AM, followed by my best PM run.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3EvNIYJ1 ... D7LGc5McKA

For whatever reason, I auto-x my Infiniti I30, but when the final Solo event came around, my front brakes were metal to metal and the new Wilwood pads/rotors hadn't arrived yet, so I decided to bring the E28 out on its snow tires and have some fun. I'm pretty sure I set the slowest times of the day, but the car sure made people laugh! Three other people from rally-x also come to Solo events and they got a kick out of seeing the E28 come out. Anyway, times didn't matter this day, so I'll let the pics and video do the talking. Watch the video to the very end!!

One of these things is not like the other




Here we go!

And finally a video of that magnificent run
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl9QvVek ... D7LGc5McKA

After all that hoonin' around, our tires were in pretty miserable shape, and although we now owned a near-new set of REAL rally tires, we didn't have any wheels to put them on, so we finished off the season on our balding snow tires in a class full of cars on rally tires.

As you might remember, Chris won the 6th event in a borrowed E30, tying me for third place for the season, so I had to beat Chris if I was going to win anything. Josh, knowing this, decided against letting Chris co-drive again, so Chris was forced to drive his clapped out 80s Celica that he had mostly broken at a previous event (control arms, steering links, etc). Apparently those old Celicas are no match for rally-x. I had beaten him before in that car, so I knew it was possible, but our tires were in worse shape than ever, and Chris had more seat time in his new car, so anything was possible.

Thankfully the water truck gods smiled upon me that day, and we made it an entire event without the water truck coming through to wet down the course (to keep the dust down from coming onto the main track at Summit Point). Our car (big, heavy, on snow tires) is at a huge disadvantage after the water truck comes through, often falling 20 seconds behind after a single run compared to the 400+ pound lighter cars on rally tires. So a dry course gave me the best shot possible at holding onto third and getting close to Josh and Roberto ahead of me.

By the end of the very short AM session (with only three runs), I was in 4th behind a guy who had never beaten me before (Jim) who has an E30 on rally tires, but I was still ahead of Chris and the Celica. I really wanted to beat Jim, so I drove like a madman in the PM session. I quickly pulled ahead of Jim, but was still losing a little time to Josh and Roberto on each run. On my third run, semi-disaster struck; the throttle got stuck, and badly. At the beginning of the run it was justly mildly stuck, adding something like 5-10% throttle when I let off, but as I drove it got even more stuck to the point where I was braking with my left foot just to keep the car on the track. After one WOT section it got so bad that I almost lost control of the car, so I threw it in neutral and shut it down in the middle of the course. The throttle cable had gotten pulled out of the rubber grommet on the throttle cable bracket on the throttle body and was getting hung up, so I pulled it back out and was able to limp the car to the pits. But I still had two runs left to do, and no car to run in, and if I didn't get those runs, I would be disqualified for the day, thus ruining my chances of getting third for the season.

Luckily, Josh is a generous fellow and allowed me and my co-driver to use his car for the last two runs. His car is fully prepared in terms of suspension tuning, and he has nice rally tires. The car is just very tight compared to our loose E28, and drives completely different. I had only driven the car for about 2 minutes on the street earlier this year, so I wasn't sure if I was going to know how to drive it in the dirt with all that grip and response. I got in, and drove the piss out of it, and ended up setting the fast time of the PM session for a 2WD car on my first run! Apparently all that fine tuning Josh has done paid off, because that car is stupid easy to drive fast. The grip from the rally tires, combined with the tight suspension and responsive steering, plus very low weight equals a formidable package. Unfortunately for Josh, I beat his fast time by over a second on my first run in his car, and after having the same thing happen when he let Chris drive it earlier in the year, he wad forced to concede that he's better at building cars than racing them. Still though, I know Josh is going to be my main competitor next year now that Roberto sold his RX7 and is moving on.

Results:
http://www.wdcr-scca.org/RallyCross/Res ... lt.aspx#MR

When the dust settled, I was in third place for the season, feeling pretty good about the way I finished the day and the season. I now know that I can set fast times given a properly prepared car, so my goal is to get the E28 to the level of Josh's E30 by the beginning of next season.

Oh, one thing to note. At the lunch break we threw a set of spring spacers/deadeners in the front springs in an attempt to firm up the front of the car, as I haven't been happy with the feel since we put on stock springs. They WORKED! The front end was tighter and there was less dive under braking. Whether or not they contributed to the other problems that showed up, I'll never know, but we had other problems once we were back in the pits, aside from the stuck throttle cable.

First, the trunk latch mechanism decided to separate from the body ever so slightly, making it impossible to open the trunk. After much jiggling and pushing the button it caught and opened, but not before something else broke. We had to do a drive through of the course to find a number that flew off, and while on the slow cruise I noticed a clunk from the front end. Oh shit, is that the dreaded sound of a broken sway bar frame mount??? We get the car back to the pits and I start yanking on things until I realize the PS front end link is loose. We said "fuck it" and decided to fix it later. Then, when we got on the road, we realized our old exhaust hanger problem was back, and the exhaust was hanging on the freaking drive shaft. If you're ever heard the sound of a drive shaft rubbing against an exhaust while going 60 mph for 1.5 hours, you will know how terrible a sound it is. Oh, and then the throttle cable we thought we had fixed decided to unfix itself, and the car was back to driving itself. A few zip ties later and we were back on the road, but damn was that a stressful end to the season.

Anyway, here's a video showing my best run in the AM, followed by the throttle stuck run in the PM!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrNBPLjX ... D7LGc5McKA

And here's what the throttle cable looks like. I'm not sure if the bracket is supposed to be bent like that or not, but I'm wondering if this might be the result of the 885 head swap raising the cable up a bit. There is just no slack in the line, and I'm not entirely sure how to approach this one. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

This is after we took off the zip ties holding the grommet in place.









And here's my list of things I would like to have fixed before next season:
-Obviously fix the throttle cable/gas pedal
-Get those rally tires on some wheels
-Fix the ABS
-All new brakes
-Get some more spring isolator rubber for the rear springs, cut a coil from the fronts???
-Adjust valves, get an O2 sensor on the car
-Remove sunroof (save weight, get headroom)
-Make driver's seat height adjustable (car was built for a guy who was 6' 6", and my co-driver is some 5" taller than I am and our seat has no height adjustment, so I have to sit on three folded up towels just to be able to see where I'm going).
-Get proper hangers on the exhaust
-Get different style steering wheel
-Fix the god damn water leaks in the trunk, get turn signals to work
-Reinforce sway bar frame mounts

That's all folks, thanks for reading!

Picking up where I left off at the end of last season, we had a rusted out gas pedal hinge that might have been a cause of the throttle getting stuck open during one of my runs, a throttle cable that was inexplicably tight, and a broken exhaust hanger that we assumed was the culprit of the exhaust resting on the driveshaft. Driving home 100 miles at 70 mph with the exhaust on the driveshaft is not a pleasant experience. As the beginning of the season is quickly approaching, getting those items fixed were our priorities.

So this Saturday we took the car to a friend's garage and started looking things over. We had purchased new pitman arms since ours looked pretty beat, and decided to throw them on first since they were an easy job. I had no idea how completely dead ours were. The bearings were shot and moved around with ease. We replaced them with a HD set of Meyle arms, and my god is the difference enormous.









We also removed the FSB end links and reinstalled with blue loctite, since the upper nuts have come loose twice so far, and I don't want that to happen again.



And in anticipation of the E46 rally wheels and Style 4s, we got an extended stud conversion kit!



Here's the broken hanger we thought was behind our exhaust problems:



Alas, it would not be that simple. I was casually looking around the engine bay when we got it on the lift and noticed something slightly alarming:



Umm, yeah. We broke the PS motor mount support bracket. Too much powah!



Of course, BMW doesn't stock the part and it's a 3 week wait to get one from Germany. So off to the junkyards we went. In what must be the best luck I have ever experienced in working on cars, we actually found one E28 in the first junkyard we went to and we able to get it's bracket and mount. This junkyard had tons of E34s, E39s, E46s, etc, but no E30s, and just our one E28. I could not believe our luck.

Upon getting back to the shop, we quickly realized the other motor mount had broken, but thankfully the bracket was still intact. Oh, and we fixed up a very minor coolant leak.



Oh, and look, two broken trans mounts! So basically the entire engine/trans was being held in place by the crossmember and our super-duper skid plate bracing (see earlier in the thread for more detailed pics.) Amazingly, there were no weird noises or vibrations from this, and the car drove normally. How? I have no idea.



Of course no parts stores sell the motor mounts, but we were able to get a pair of cheapo trans mounts. I'm awaiting new motor mounts from Pelican that I ordered yesterday. Naturally, with the motor sitting in it's correct location, our throttle cable and exhaust problems pretty much solved themselves.

Oh, and we ordered new spring rubber isolators to try to increase the spring rates since the car is a little soft for my liking. A fellow rally-xer (Chris) gave us a single rubber that was cut in half at lunch on the last race and it firmed up the front of the car nicely. We ordered a pair of full/new ones, but they were too big to fit in the rear springs, so we pulled the half ones from the front and put the new ones in there. In an effort to stiffen up the rear, we moved up the spring perch one notch on the Bilsteins. I'm not entirely sure it did anything yet though.



Oh, and that broken gas pedal hinge? Since the floor is so rusted up, we didn't want to deal with cutting and welding a bunch of stuff, so...door hinge to the rescue! With the matching other half underneath the car for support.





Oh, did I mention we picked up a set of super fresh rally tires for cheap? Oh, and a set of forged Style 46 wheels that weigh ~13 pounds?



Oh yeah, and we picked up a pair of new seats (PS not installed yet). And you might notice I pulled the steering wheel from my I30 and put it in here. More on the seats later.



I don't have pics of everything, but here's a quick list of other things that were fixed.
-Oil change with Rotella T6 5w-40
-Fresh coolant
-Adjusted the valves (one rocker was loose, the rest were in spec)
-The hubs were so rusted up that the rally-x wheels wouldn't get close to flush on the hub so much sanding ensued.
-Some magic with the seats (like I said, more on that later)
-That elusive ABS problem has been solved! The one ABS sensor we replaced on the DS front was apparently defective, so that explains why it didn't solve our problems when we installed it. Thankfully, I had racked up quite a pile of spare ones, and we threw one on, and viola! We finally have ABS again!!
-Threw some Seafoam in the gas, because why not? The gas was a few months old and I wanted to clean things up a bit.
-Got all new tail light bulbs and sockets, which seemed to fix most of our problems.

I think that's it, but I'm probably missing something. Next up, a seat/steering wheel update!

Well after doing all that work, we still had to install new motor mounts to replace the one cracked one (the other was just old) and mount the summer tires before heading off to a BMW test and tune on 3/8. As per usual, we were stuck doing this on the Friday night before the event in the cold, and as usual, I managed to find a way to fuck something up. The motor mount install was going pretty well until I over torqued a bolt for the motor mount bracket going into the block on the DS, which left that mount attached with 3 bolts. I hoped it would make it through the TnT the next day.

Then we tried to mount the 16x8 Style 4 wheels with 225/50/16 Hankook V12s. This required using spacers, which REALLY didn't want to fit over our rusty (but already heavily cleaned) hubs. The 5mm spacers seemed to give them enough clearance, so I didn't bother trying out the 12mm ones I had also bought. After much banging with a rubber hammer I got them on and went for a drive. Holy crap do these tires make the car feel good! Granted, we have been used to snow tires, so most anything would have been an improvement. By this point it was about 10 PM and we had to be at the TnT by 8:30 the next morning.









The car makes it to the TnT without issue, and I was really enjoying myself on the new tires. The car actually behaved like a proper BMW! Even on fresh rubber, the car felt composed on the course and put down very respectable times. After ~5 runs I parked the car to go to the bathroom. When I came back, the clutch pedal went to the floor and didn't come back up. Crap! Popped the hood and looked under the car to be greeted by a puddle of brake fluid. Double crap! After wiggling a couple things around it was determined the the clutch line had a hole in it. Of course, this being a 26 year old 528e, nobody stocks clutch lines for it, so we had to get it towed to a shop (thank god I did that instead of to my house) and wait for parts.

I ordered a SS clutch line as well as brake lines from Ireland Engineering, since I figured the brake lines wouldn't be too far behind the clutch line. Unfortunately, IE sent the wrong clutch line and the rear brake lines didn't match my calipers either. Suffice it to say that the customer service at IE is pretty horrendous and I don't think I'll be ordering anything from them in the future. So I had to overnight a stock line from Pelican and held off on the brake lines. And of course, when the new clutch line arrived, my mechanic couldn't get the old one off the slave cylinder without stripping it, so we had to get a new slave.

After many problems refilling and bleeding both systems (we did put new SS brake lines on the front since they actually fit), the car felt great! Apparently the fluid that came out of my calipers was watery and filled with rust particles. With new fluid in the pedal felt perfect and the ABS seemed to operate much more smoothly/quietly. I reattached the skid plate, test fitted the rally wheels (they needed the 12mm spacers) and drove it home, not 12 hours before the first rally-x TnT. See a pattern here?

I'll post up a recap of the rally-x filled weekend along with plenty of pics later!

We left off around 9 PM on the Friday night before the first rally-x TnT and race, with a new slave cylinder and clutch line in the car. I got the car home and started packing for the long weekend ahead. I was on the road at 6 the following morning to meet up with Josh and the other E30 guys, and it seems we have a new member to the club. It's a GRM Challenge car, a turbo E30 ETA, and proved to be quite capable.

Our new racing venue is in Frostburg, MD, which is much further out than the old Summit Point location. We arrive to a constant 20 mph wind, which didn't let up the whole day. Our venue is the top of an old strip mined mountain, and it's just a wide open field of gravel. It's a far cry from the hard packed clay we had at SP, and proved to be quite annoying since it rutted up so easily.

After some difficulty in removing the 5 mm spacers, I eventually got the 12 mm ones on (damn rust/corrosion), and had all four rally wheels/tires on the car for the first time. I just had to snap some pics.

They will never look this clean again.



After a lot of runs at the test and tune, the car looked like this:











Sunday was the race, and thankfully the winds had died down to normal levels and you didn't have to struggle to walk into the wind. The results after the first run basically previewed the finishing order for the day, with Josh and his 318 in first, me in second, and Chris and his insane 5.0 (ok, 4.9) Fox body Mustang in third. The Mustang is new this year and was untested before we began, but is gutted beyond belief (no rear hatch whatsoever) and has a heavily modded motor probably putting out about 320 HP. It has by far the best power to weight ratio in our MR class, but it struggles to put it all down. In fact, probably about half of the cones he got penalized for were from his rooster tails, not for any body contact. Chris is fundamentally opposed to adding any weight to the Mustang, so my (our?) only hope is that he doesn't wise up and get some mudflaps. The turbo ETA E30 was on AS tires, but by the end of the day it actually posted the fastest time in the afternoon in the class! If and when he gets real tires on that thing, the E28 is really gonna be in trouble.

Everything was going smoothly until my third run in the afternoon, when I finished the run and noticed some steam coming from the hood and my temp gauge slowly rising. The culprit was a rerouted coolant hose that got caught by the alternator fan blade. Josh, being the good sport and generous guy that he is, let me finish my afternoon runs in his lovely 318, allowing me to not get a DNF for the day. Driving his car is worlds different than the E28; the steering is tight and quick, body motions are well controlled, and the car just seems to float over deep ruts where my much heavier car would want to sink into them. It's so nimble I didn't ever think twice about hitting a cone when driving. It was really quite eye opening.

Thanks to the generous help and supplies from Chris and Josh, we got the car fixed up after the race without having to go to the parts store by shortening the hose to go over the head, and we began our caravan back home with the snow beginning to fall. Of course, the one time it snows during a rally is the first time I've ever had summer tires on the car, as my old snow tires were all I had to commute and race on. Even so, the car made it home just fine, and I was glad to be home.

Overall, I was very pleased with the car. While the new rally tires didn't quite do what I was expecting, they were a necessary addition as the new surface is so rough that any snow tire would only last a race or two. The suspension on the car really feels better and very tight after installing the rubber spring spacers, and I think is pretty close to ideal. If the car was bottoming out, it was not nearly as noticeable as in Josh's 318, so I think we have a good combination of wheel travel and suspension firmness. Even so, I can't help but think about cutting a coil off the front springs....

Oh, and how about a video?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1WVBp3L ... D7LGc5McKA

So Saturday we got a lot done to the car, including gutting the sunroof and gaining 2" of headroom, getting the Recaro PS in the car, and getting the old FSTB to fit over the bigger 885 IM.

First off was finding a way to remove the stock passenger seat without hacking it apart with a saw. You see, the previous owner decided to weld the two front seat nuts to the frame, which were obscured by the sliders on top of them. Oh, and the motor that controls forward and backward movement was broken. After about an hour of trying everything to get it out normally, we disassembled the power seat reclining gears and made the seat manual, and were able to get to the bolts and cut the welds.

Note the new homemade seat adapters, made to drop the seat ~2" from the riser it was on before. Thankfully, our seats adjust for height too


The Recaro stands alone, victorious after a grueling battle.


Ahhh


For the sunroof, we considered doing the aluminum sheet method, but ended up retaining the stock one for rigidity. A big part of the reason why we wanted to remove the sunroof was to gain headroom, since my co-driver/owner Bobby is about 5" taller than me at 6'3". By removing all of the interior metal supporting the sunroof and most of the sunroof itself, we gained a little over 2" of headroom, which I think is awesome. However, we ran out of time and some things obviously aren't done. To reattach the sunroof, Wayne (mechanic) did some welding:





WE'RE NOT DONE YET DAMMIT!


This is also just a test fitting. Much more welding needs to be done.


I'll leave you with this

Well it's a few weeks late but I'll post up a little recap of the second event.

The temperature had warmed up quite a bit for the second event but the wind was still blowing pretty good on top of our "mountain". While I was installing the rally tires I noticed that RSB had come out of the DS end link, and it really didn't want to go back in there. Chris helped out by lending tools and his hands, and after a while we were able to wrestle the bar back into the end link. I have no idea how or when it came out, but judging by how well the car drove afterwards, I'm guessing it came out sometime during the test and tune/1st race weekend a month earlier. The tech man (Mike) noticed my throttle cable was a little loose too, since we never readjusted it after getting the motor to sit correctly, and throttle response improved slightly after we tightened it up.

The course was pretty dry compared to the first event which limited rutting, but the AWD cars were still digging pretty good trenches for the rest of us to slog through. This made for a generally rough course, which beat up some of the cars pretty good. Josh managed to bash up a section of the floor in his E30, and I'm willing to bet that the rough terrain had something to do with the fan relay failing in Chris Nonack's monster Mustang. Chris was running fast but dirty, and after the relay blew he decided to call it a day and put the car on the trailer in case he blew a HG or something.

In the past, I almost never posted a faster time than Josh (run to run), but this day I beat him in 6 of our 11 runs, which was quite surprising. At the first event I averaged something like 2 seconds slower than him per run, but this day we were neck and neck, trading 1st and 2nd place all day. I got called for two cones on my last AM run, but I really didn't think I hit any that run. At the end of the day, I was 4.6 seconds behind Josh, so the cones wouldn't have saved me.

We had some people taking pictures this day, and I bought some pics from last season that I forgot to buy, so enjoy some pro pics!

Last season at Summit Point:


Is this what bottoming out looks like?






Pics from Frostburg by Jason Catterton








A perfect picture of the shark nose










Remember how I said the course got a bit rough? Well some cars fared better than others.




The croo




Can't forget the videos! Does this site not support embedded YouTube videos?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq12L_ABYCk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB_ttLSvbFw

Long time, no updates!

So at the #4 event the car decided to spit out one of the circlips holding the rear Bilsteins together, which caused the rear of the car to pretty much drop to the ground. After many calls to parts stores, we were unable to locate a new rear strut, so the car got towed to Patrick's house and I finished up the race in Josh's E30. Thanks to both of them for being such good sports! Who knew that finding parts for an E28 could be so hard in the middle of nowhere? Oh wait, I did (see: leaking clutch line earlier in the season). I had the lead when the car broke, and I was able to maintain it over the next day (#4 was a two day event) which tied me up with Josh for the lead in season points.

Slammed, yo


Goodbye for now


So after fighting with Bilstein to send us new circlips for about a month, they finally arrived with new spring perches, and with Patrick's help we got the suspension back together without too much fuss. Repairing the torn axle boot was another story.

It has been over a year since we did the two outer boots, and in that time we forgot everything we learned in the process, so fixing this PS inner boot was a major PITA. Again, Patrick to the rescue!



Our diff cover has been leaking since we put in the 3.73, and I was hoping to replace the gasket. Patrick checked the diff cover bolts and found a few to be loose, so we decided to hold off on the gasket and see if this fixed the problem. It didn't. But it did do one amazing thing: it seemed to eliminate most of the whine coming from the diff! Don't ask me to explain how, because I don't know, but it's awesome! Once we get a proper muffler installed (Borla ProXS 19") the car might actually not be a penalty box to drive to events!

Oh, and check out the awesome steering the car has! I can't imagine either of these things to be good. Damn steering box.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3NYwhV ... e=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InhWzrT ... e=youtu.be

Even though nobody seems to read it or care, I'm going to do another update, this time of the Northeast Regional Rally-X Championship, held at our local venue in Frostburg, MD a few weeks ago.

Fresh off of coming in third in the Ohio championship event, I was hungry for a win at home, and I was feeling pretty good about the car after FINALLY getting an O2 sensor in the car. We couldn't remove the one from the stock location, so Meineke welded in a new bung and threw one in, along with a new Borla ProXS muffler. I was sorely disappointed by the lack of noise reduction from the "quietest 3" muffler available," but thoroughly impressed by the results of installing a working O2 sensor. The car now idles like a normal car, instead of rocking itself to bits, and throttle response is MUCH better.

The championship was a 2-day event, but I didn't make it through the first AM session on Saturday without a problem. Just after starting my fourth (?) run, I felt the car start dying on me. Lights were flashing on and off on the dash, and the car struggled to stay alive. I babied it through the run, somehow only adding ~2 seconds to my fast time so far. I had a feeling it was battery related, and sure enough, both of the battery terminals had come off the battery. Apparently my co-owner went a little crazy with the dielectric grease and didn't quite tighten the bolts enough when he installed the new terminals a few weeks prior. I used up my 10 minute tech session and got back out there.

The guys in my class for the event were:
-Josh (Turbo Josh) in his home built turbo ETA E30
-Stephen in the ETA E30
-And some guy from NY in an E36 325i. This was only his second event, so I wasn't too worried about him.

Josh, with the E30 318i (and my usual competition), couldn't make it due to a wedding, but that didn't mean I was going to have it easy. When turbo Josh's car runs properly, it's fast. Very fast. Unfortunately for him, he broke his ghetto wastegate spring bar-thingy and was without any boost for all of Saturday. As such, I was able to keep a pretty good distance between myself and the others. Stephen was running pretty clean, but about a second slower than me.

The rest of Saturday was pretty uneventful, and I finished the day something like 6 seconds ahead of Josh. Unfortunately for me, he was able to super-ghetto fix the wastegate with some Loctite, and was making boost on Sunday. Unfortunately for him, he then noticed two small tears in his intake elbow, which bled off most of the boost he was making. Still, he was clawing back time on Sunday morning, and was putting down faster times than me by the end of the AM session. If he kept that up, he was going to pass me after a few runs in the PM.

I was going to have none of that. I removed the passenger seat, and spent my time working the course figuring out how I could drive faster in the final PM session. Whatever I did must have worked, because I was on a roll in the afternoon. I was laying down clean, fast runs, and Josh and Stephen couldn't get close to me. It didn't help that Josh was coning like crazy. He was in a close second all weekend, but ended up falling back to third behind Stephen by the end of the day. At least the car was able to make the drive home!

My car took some damage though. Midway through Saturday I heard a clunk coming from the back of the car when going away from a stop. A little investigation revealed a completely blown center support bearing on the driveshaft. Without much of a choice, I pressed on, and it made it through the weekend and the drive home.

Oh, I should probably mention that we got something like 30 runs in over the course of the weekend, which I believe is the most of any of the regional championship events, so hats off to Adam and the others who put the event together! I can't seem to get the results to load, but IIRC I was the fastest RWD car there as well, beating out a fast Miata, so that's something. It looks like this car is finally coming together. Who would have thought?

Now for what you have all been waiting for...pics and video!

Winnar!




















https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMz8IkR ... D7LGc5McKA

Congrats! Enjoyable read!

Congrats man! That looks like a HELL of a good time. Way to go!

Yesterday I got to participate in a half-day session at DirtFish Rally School. I've always wanted to try it; I had a feeling it would be the type of racing I'd really be able to commit to.

Don't mean to hijack your thread, but figured those interested in rally would appreciate these pics:

Our steads (they have 11 of these):



They also have 9 BRZs that they will be rolling out in the next few weeks.

The guy who owns the place has a big car collection. Four of his cars are on display including this car in which Colin crashed and broke his wrist.



I loved this:



Wow:


I can totally see why you are so into it. I have half a mind to jump in completely and turn Maytag into a rally car. Haha. Shit eating grins all day long:

love this thread! looks like you're having at least 1 shit-ton of fun. maybe two.

Thanks for all the compliments guys, there is plenty more in store! I'm definitely having at least one metric shit ton of fun doing this stuff.

cek- That looks incredible, thanks for posting up! I highly recommend you jump right in and get dirty, it's so much fun!

So a few weeks before the NE National Challenge in Frostburg, MD, a few of us DC folks headed up to Ohio for the Great Lakes National Challenge (Aug. 23-24). This event had a lot more competition in the MR class, including a few drivers/cars who had done very well at the national championship previously. Notable cars in my class included a turbo 1st gen Miata, a built/stripped 1st gen RX7 and a gutted 2nd gen RX7. Josh was generous enough to let me co-drive his car (E30 318i with M42 swap), since I wasn't comfortable driving my torture chamber 7 hours from home, given it's recent reliability issues. Turbo Josh also joined with his turbo ETA E30, and took the risk of driving his car to the event. Regular Josh towed his car to the event, and it's a damn good thing he did.

We arrived Friday night to find a pristine grass/dirt field, something unknown to us in the DC region. We've done clay before, and we're currently on gravel, but we've never really had much experience on plain old dirt.

When we come back in the morning to run, we found the grass covered in dew, making things very slippery. Josh had the bad luck of drawing a short straw and had to run in the 4th grid spot. Others in MR didn't have to run until something like grid spots 25-30, so they had a clear advantage in running in drier conditions after the wet grass had been torn up. I was somewhere in the middle. Josh had some bad luck on his first run and ended up spinning out, costing roughly 10-12 seconds. I did well enough, and for most of Saturday I was in first place. IIRC, the co-driver of the turbo Miata was on my ass all day, but he couldn't come on Sunday, so I wasn't concerned with him.

Sunday comes around and I think I lost a little bit of my mojo. I had a decent lead at the start, but it dwindled rapidly as the day progressed. On my second to last run I was passed by the 2nd gen RX7, then by Josh on my final run, ending the event in third by some 1.01 seconds, out of a total of about 1,500. Naturally, I was pretty frustrated that I let my lead slip away like that, and I was not in the best mood on the drive home. After some hard thinking, all I could figure out was that I got complacent with my lead, and didn't really push to 100% like I do when I'm behind. I realized that even if I have a lead, I really need to drive it like I stole it, and not get comfortable. I believe this is what helped me win the NE Divisional event, as I had a decent lead that started to slip away again on Sunday. Only after giving myself a pep talk did I summon up my skills to pull off a decisive win.

Anyway, I guess third place isn't too bad, and I like to think I learned a little something. I got a little consolation last weekend when two of the guys I beat in Ohio came in first and second at the National Championship, so, in a way, I can tell myself that I beat the National Champion.

Anyway, I alluded to it being a good thing that Josh brought his car up on a trailer. Well, Turbo Josh had a lot of problems with his car all weekend (broken motor mounts, bad idle, etc) and ended up having to put his car on the trailer and drive Josh's 318i home. So thank god I didn't bring my car up there, because it surely would have broken something, then we would have really been in trouble. Thanks again to Josh for letting me wail on his car all weekend!

Rally? I like rally.

I love your rallyx effort. Years ago (1999), my friend and I got the SCCA started with rallyx. We wrote the classes and rules that spread around the country. Too fun.

I drove to SnoDrift and back (500 mile round trip plus the 275 mile rally) and served as my own service crew for the rally.

Remember that blown CSB I mentioned? Well we had to fix it before event #6, and while we were in there, it was a good time to refresh the shifter. So one Sunday we attempted to remove the exhaust and get started. Unfortunately, the previous owner who put the exhaust together decided to save a few bucks and not install a flange anywhere in the system, meaning it's one single enormous piece from the down pipe (after the manifolds) to the muffler tips. Yeah, it's quite unwieldy. To make matters worse, we had no luck removing the studs/nuts from the manifold, so we couldn't do a damn thing. We took it back to Meineke and paid far out the ass to have a 3" flange installed. While this made removing the exhaust easier, it caused other problems later on.

I have never done any drive shaft work before, so I bought a bearing puller set and c-clip pliers set to ease the process, and both were quite helpful. The exhaust came off with a bit of prying, but our first big problem was getting the drive shaft around the newly installed exhaust flange. It just happened to be right in the middle of the DS, and it being for a 3" exhaust, clearance was at a premium. After much wrangling and dirt in our eyes, we got the DS out.

Working...


Yeah, I think it's dead


The less said about the shifter work, the better. Between rusted bolts and an unreachable "bitch clip" on top of the trans, it took a few hours to get that damn thing back in the car and working. Surprisingly, nothing seemed too worn out or broken, and the improvement was pretty minor.

The metal that holds this to the car seemed like it wanted to snap off at any minute.


Before:


After:


The day before the race, I decided it would be a good idea to do a once-over of the whole car, and I found my DS motor mount missing it's lower bolt, so I got a new one from the hardware store:


The PS mount was pretty loose on both the top and bottom, but I didn't think too much of it. More on that later.

After it was all said and done, the car was feeling great. Between the new CSB and O2 sensor, the car was smooth and responsive, and I was feeling good about event #6. Unfortunately, with all the gear in the car, the rear tires rub the fenders like a mofo, and the 12mm spacers have fused themselves to the hub over the last 6 months. Thankfully, we were able to throw a bunch of gear in other people's cars on the drive to and from the event, thus saving the lives of our rear tires.

Event #6!

Fresh off of getting the car back together, my co-driver and I headed up to Frostburg for event #6. It had been raining there all week prior to the event, and the ground was soaked. For possibly the first time ever, we had puddles large enough to remind us of a real rally stage, and they added a new element to the racing.

Turbo Josh jumped out to an early lead the first run, but I quickly came back, and by the end of the morning had an 11 second lead over regular Josh in his 318. I was running clean and fast, and was feeling pretty damn good. Then we went to Burger King for lunch, which prompted a run to the porta john upon return. It's way off on the far edge of the lot we race on, and is near a few greenhouses, and more importantly, some chickens. They apparently like classic Bavarian luxury cars.

Please excuse the camera phone pics. The lens is apparently made of the softest plastic ever, and gets scratched when sitting stationary in my pocket. It might have a self-scratching feature, I'm not sure.







In the afternoon the car felt good at the beginning, but seemed to get worse as the day went on. Both Bobby and I noticed something, but couldn't find anything wrong in the short time between our runs. More worryingly, Josh was catching at an alarming rate, and we just kept getting more and more runs. Normally we get about 7 runs, but this afternoon we got 11, giving Josh plenty of runs to make up time. I really made a push on my 10th run to go as fast as possible and kept a little buffer room, but Josh came back on the 11th run with a blazing time. Mercifully, that was the last run, and I walked away with a 1.6 second lead, keeping myself in first place. Had we done one more run, I'm sure Josh would have won. In some weird retribution for the Ohio championship, my lead would have evaporated if I had hit a single cone, which thankfully I didn't do. To refresh your memory, I lost the Ohio championship by 1.1 seconds. I hit one cone that whole weekend, and if I hadn't of hit it, I would have won by 0.9 seconds. That really stung. These tight finishes are nail biters!

Still giddy from holding onto first, I started packing the car back up and found the source of my slowness in the afternoon:


This is the second time the rear sway bar has come out of that end link this season!

Oh yeah, remember how I said it was wet out? Yeah....nasty.


Oh yeah, and after my final run we noticed the rain gutter trim piece on the passenger side had popped off on the front, so we just slapped it back in place and forgot about it. That was a mistake.

Here's a video of my best AM and PM runs. Somehow I forgot the mic and magnetic numbers at home, so you'll mostly hear wind noise. I recommend turning your speakers down....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcvXOou ... D7LGc5McKA
WTF is up with embedding youtube videos??

Pics!









About an hour into our drive home, the trim piece decided it had enough of our car, and tried valiantly to separate itself while going 70 mph in the dark. For once, I was glad to have a co-driver. With my painters tape in hand, Bobby made an emergency repair to the trim by holding it against the car with his foot and trying to find a surface clean enough for the tape to stick to. After about 10 minutes and much tape, it was kind of held in place. Getting home, the car looked like this:











If I say so myself, I think the car looked excellent with this mud scheme going. I kind of wanted to thrown some clear coat on top and keep it looking like this.

Oh, and the belts for the motor were really loose, and made the car feel like the PS was cutting in and out. Thankfully the alternator was able to maintain a charge on the battery, but we had some work to do before event #7.....

100% subscribed. Love it.

I'm a little behind, so bear with me here.

Before event #7, we had some maintenance to do. Our belts were loose and slipping, we had a new RSB end link to install, and some other minor stuff. I also wanted to clean up the intake system of the car, so I used some TB cleaner on the TB, MAF cleaner on the AFM, and some carb cleaner on the IACV.







I'm not sure if these little gouges were causing the RSB to come loose, but since I could buy them individually, I wanted to try a new one and see if they held any better.





Then, the day before event #7, I noticed the nuts on the motor mounts were all loose again. Why would that be? I took a closer look at the mount on the PS and saw some hairline cracks. Hmm, what's this? Oh look, another failing motor mount.







Luckily, we kept the mount we pulled from the car in the junkyard earlier this year, and thankfully it was an OEM piece instead of the random Germany crap we had to put on at the last minute. Hopefully it holds up better. Not too long after I finished up I found out the event had been postponed due to a lack of insurance. Oh well, that just gives me extra time to get some other things fixed up.

You have probably noticed the bulbous roof vent we installed a while ago. It clearly was the wrong style vent, and we needed one that would fit more flush with the roof, and we needed the bondo smoothed out and prepped for paint. We dropped the car off at my buddy's shop and let him get to work. I think the roof turned out great, now it just needs paint!



You may remember months ago I ordered SS clutch and brake lines from Ireland Engineering. They sent us the wrong clutch line and the wrong rear brake lines, then tried to tell us we didn't know what we were talking about. Well they finally sent me the correct parts, and I let Wayne finish up the rear SS brake lines (the clutch line was done long ago). Wayne had mentioned before that the brake hard lines were pitted and corroded towards the back of the car, but I didn't put much thought into it. Well after he installed these new ones, he took the car for a drive, and what do you know? One of the hard lines sprung a leak. Which of course meant we got new hard lines installed from the rear of the car up to about the driver's seat area! Here's a taste:



Unfortunately, I didn't notice any increase in braking performance. Oh well. At least I know my brakes are safe.

While he had the car on a lift I figured I would let him do the new diff gasket, as I was tired of new stains on my driveway and it's getting too cold out to do this on cold concrete. Woo hoo, no leaks!



Oh, and that pesky RSB end link? Well I took Josh's advice and had some cotter pins installed. They seem to be working so far!



Remember when the circlip failed in my PS rear Bilstein? Well that strut has been looking like this after I did an event after rebuilding it:



It made it through the final races of the season like this, but I can't say I have very much faith in it. I'm considering doing a Koni rear setup, but I'm not keen on the fabrication involved.

As usual, I'm about a month behind in updating my thread, so let's see how many details I can remember from the final two races.

Due to a lapse in insurance for the venue, our final two events of the season were pushed into a back-to-back weekend. Coming into #7, I had to win one of the two final races to clinch first place for the season in the modified/unlimited RWD class. Josh (E30 318i M42) had to win both in order to be season champion. Turbojosh (hand-built turbo ETA E30) had laid down some very fast times throughout the season, but due to some missed events and car trouble, wasn't really in the running for the season championship.

As usual, I left my house at 5:45 AM to meet up with the other E30 guys. It was a particularly cold weekend, and temps were around 20* on my drive out to the event. My car doesn't have any sort of heating system, so I was quite bundled up. Even so, after an hour of driving, my feet were numb and I was slightly worried about them falling off before I arrived. Thankfully I arrived with feet intact, and with temps hovering around 30*, I began to warm up a bit.

I started my AM runs with some fast and clean times, and built up a small lead over the two Joshes. By the end of the AM session I had about a 3 second lead over regular Josh, but then disaster struck (for him). A sizable berm began to develop at the start, and Josh's muffler got caught on it on his final run. How it didn't catch my recently-hung Borla is beyond me. The berm pulled the muffler/cat-back from its slip joint, and he only made it a short distance before he was red flagged because the exhaust was dragging on the ground. The rules for a red flag meant that Josh was saddled with the slowest time of our run group plus a 10 second penalty, which put him squarely in third, meaning his quest for the championship was pretty much over before lunch on the first day of a long weekend. I didn't want to win this way, but Josh didn't file a dispute with anyone over the huge berm, and he knew about the problematic slip joint during the season and neglected to properly fix it. We later learned that he probably could have appealed the red flag and gotten a proper rerun, but by then it was too late.

Even so, I didn't ease up my driving in the afternoon. I maintained a small lead over the two Joshes, and with two runs left we decided to switch cars and have some fun. The 318 was as easy to drive as usual, but I had some trouble with the turbo car. It bogged really hard off the line and seemed like it wanted to stall. I babied it around the course and was able to hold onto my lead for the day despite running about 10 seconds slower than usual. And with that, I had won my first rally-x season! Beers were drank.

Results here!
http://www.wdcr-scca.org/RallyCross/Res ... lt.aspx#MR

Looking at the results, it turns out I was again the fastest 2wd car at the event, besting the beautifully-driven FC RX7 in the prepared (middle) class! Who would have thought...

I put the mic for my GoPro inside the car to see if it sounded any better than its normal location on the trunk lid. It did not.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKJbauz ... D7LGc5McKA