1987 E30 Coupe Rally Build

That's a lot of work and development in a year. Nice problem solving with the captive nut plates...even if there was a simpler solution. 

In reply to AxeHealey :

haha yeah, live and learn. I'll count it as a fun exercise in problem solving.

artur1808 said:

In reply to irish44j :

Good to know, thanks! I scratched my head for a few minutes trying to come up with a good way to attach it, and something like that would have saved me a lot of time haha. I do intend to put in a crossbrace that ties up to the framerails like yours, just haven't done it yet. We have a rallycross this saturday, so my priorities right now are to get the car ready for that, and I can't imagine I'll take so hard of a hit at a rallycross that I'll damage anything serious. The crossbrace will certainly go in before the first stage rally in this car. 

 

Here's a photo of the skidplate mounted up:

That little front lip thing apparently got broken at the last rallycross, but since the majority of it is still there, I decided to ziptie it back into place. 

looks good. Once you put the cross brace in, I'd detach it totally from the core support, or at very least put a rubber bushing between it and the plate to absorb shock (I used some old suspension bumpstops initially).

i discovered those weldnuts accidentally, actually, so I won't try to act too smart ;)

I removed that (also broken) front lip long ago lol. 

In reply to irish44j :

Yeah, I'm thinking that once the cross brace goes in, I might actually notch the core support a little to get a bit of ground clearance back. We'll see, I've got plenty of time to figure that portion of it out, I'm just glad I have something in there now that I can feel confident about for rallycross.

At the last event, I quite literally threw a spacer in between the core support and the Red46 skidplate that's meant for an m20 just so the oil pan wouldn't be totally exposed. Looked terrible and I was less-than-confident in it haha, you can see it in this picture:

Rallycross was a success! After being plagued by bad weather for months, the detroit region finally had a dry, fast, and fun rallycross. 

MR was full of fast cars, and made for some fun competition. The overheating issues from the previous events were healed now that I have convinced all of the coolant to stay inside the radiator, and aside from the valvetrain complaining about the amount of time spent on the rev-limiter, the car held up well overall. I had a real messy set of runs in the morning, blasting cones left and right, but managed to clean up my act for the afternoon and pull off a second place finish:

The MR2 that won is one of my favorite MR cars in the region and is historically very fast, so I don't have any gripes about losing to him. Between the supercharger and intake design on that car, it sounds like a dental drill flying at you on course, and it's glorious. 

Pictures have started rolling in from the event, and here are a few of my favorites:

No major updates in terms of the build as it's been colder than usual for this time of year, and I think we've already got nearly a foot of snow, which typically kills my motivation to work on the car. However, the following has gotten done:

-Trimmed the skid plate at its trailing edge. Was a full 24" wide and had a lot of overhang on the sides, I figured that unsupported steel wasn't doing me much good. 

-Engaged "winter mode": Swapped to winter tires and stock springs in the front. I noticed the nose had been sitting lower than I'd want with all the new weight.

-Continued to chip away at the interior. Finally got gauge lights working, added a portion of center console back for at least SOME storage, began wiring aux switches, and reinstalled trim pieces around the steering column to help it look/feel more like a complete car again.

-Played in the snow :)

In other news, the recent winter blast has caused our two-day November rallycross to get canceled. The detroit region rallycross program has had awful luck with weather this year. Unfortunately, because of the way the points system is structured, this reduces the points lead I have in MR for the season. As much as I was hoping to have a comfortable lead going into the season ender, the points race between first and second place will truly come down to the last event. Should be an interesting one since conditions at our December event are historically unpredictable.

just read this thread from post #1.  great work in a short amount of time!   i have access to a 1990 325is and this thread is kinda inspiring me to move that project up a few spots on the list of potential projects.   after MonZora and LS-swapping the Sonoma.

In reply to AngryCorvair :

Thanks for the kind words! It's definitely encouraging to know someone is still reading this haha. I just saw you're also in SE Michigan, if you ever want to come by a rallycross, you're welcome to come check it out and ride along (assuming SWMBO isn't already riding along - but she's not fond of the cold weather events). 

artur1808 said:

In reply to AngryCorvair :

 if you ever want to come by a rallycross, you're welcome to come check it out and ride along (assuming SWMBO isn't already riding along - but she's not fond of the cold weather events). 

i definitely need to do this!  got a link to the local club?

In reply to AngryCorvair :

Detroit Region SCCA Rallycross

And for the record, even if the passenger seat is already occupied in my car, just about everyone I've met in our region is happy to let someone ride along (assuming they have an open seat). Could come to an event and spend all day riding along in different cars. 

I'm still reading too ;)

artur1808 said:

In reply to AngryCorvair :

Detroit Region SCCA Rallycross

And for the record, even if the passenger seat is already occupied in my car, just about everyone I've met in our region is happy to let someone ride along (assuming they have an open seat). Could come to an event and spend all day riding along in different cars. 

This is the best way to experience a rallycross without actually driving.

This is why the passenger seat of the RX-7 is always open.  Get 'em hooked.  Hell, it worked on me...

Knurled. said:

artur1808 said:

In reply to AngryCorvair :

Detroit Region SCCA Rallycross

And for the record, even if the passenger seat is already occupied in my car, just about everyone I've met in our region is happy to let someone ride along (assuming they have an open seat). Could come to an event and spend all day riding along in different cars. 

This is the best way to experience a rallycross without actually driving.

 

This is why the passenger seat of the RX-7 is always open.  Get 'em hooked.  Hell, it worked on me...

I take passengers constantly, even being in the race for the championship. My car actually preforms better with the extra weight balance, with the high-rate springs I have. Plus I drive like less of an idiot with someone in the car and focus better, unless it's a particularly attractive female (which is admittedly pretty rare at rallycross lol)> 

Alright, I've been slacking pretty hard on this thread, so it's time to play some catch-up. At our October event, I was spending a lot of time at high rpm (rev-limiter) and noticed that I was getting a considerable amount of valvetrain noise. Thinking I might have collapsed a lifter or something, I decided an oil change would be a good place to start, and added an oil cooler. The adapter piece for the oil filter housing is straight from ebay, and the cooler itself is actually a transmission cooler off of a Ford Explorer at the local junkyard. 

The season ender rallycross was a rollercoaster of emotions. It had been cold the week leading up to it, but was warm the day of the event. So the first run group had a fairly solid and frozen surface, which they immediately tore up, leaving the rest of us with wet boogers on top of ice. My tire choice proved to be the wrong one and I was at or near the bottom of the MR pack at the halfway point. Due to the way season points are structured, the 2nd place (in points) MR driver was the only one that I needed to beat. I was about 14 seconds down after the morning runs, but between a tire change and the surface drying up, I managed to claw back enough time to beat him. This is the first time I've committed to a season-long points run in the same car for rallycross and I am happy to say that I am the Detroit Region Modified RWD rallycross champion for 2019!

In other news, I've been reinforcing my strut towers in preparation for stage rally. Rears were plated with 1/8" steel that wrapped to the vertical portions of the strut towers, which were tied together with some roll bar tubing:

Both of the front strut towers were "capped" with strut tower tops that I took off of a junkyard e30 and then tied into the chassis. The passenger side I used some tubing to tie it into a plate on the firewall:

Unfortunately, because of the position of the fuse box on the drivers side, I modified an "off the shelf" strut tower reinforcement to work. I had to modify it to tie into the "cap" on top of the strut tower rather than into the side of the strut tower itself.

I hate that the two sides are executed differently, but I did what I thought to be the strongest option (short of connecting to the roll cage-because one does not exist yet)  on both sides. Even though it's not ideal, I'm confident that either side will be significantly stronger than if I'd left them completely alone, so it'll have to do for now.

And just for fun, someone posted some late photos of our February 2019 rallycross so here are some older action shots: 

Also, even though our weather has been unseasonably mild recently, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for some ice racing this winter and just picked up a set of studded tires from a local rallycrosser. 

They're on Honda and Miata wheels, so the center bores don't quite work for me. My options are to somehow bore out the center bores on these wheels, or install a 15mm spacer at each corner to get the mounting surface of the wheel past the lip on the hub. 

For reference:

e30: 57.1 mm

Honda: 56.1mm

Miata 54.1mm 

The honda wheels i could probably take a dremel to for a couple of minutes and make them work. But I'm not so sure about the miata wheels, which is why I'm considering spacers.

Those are some interesting looking studs". What are they exactly?

"Kold Kutter" 3/8" studs with some washers and nyloc nuts on the inside. Around 240 of them per tire. 

Had a bit of spare time and finished up reinforcing the passenger side strut tower. The drivers side doesn't have the tube going back to the firewall due to the fuse box being in the way, but both are now capped and tied into the fender portion of the chassis. 

Wow, lots of great work here!  I need to make it out to the next Detroit RallyX, assuming it doesn't get canceled.  The January event for this weekend was canceled as well, can't catch a break!

Are you planning on entering SnoDrift or Summer SnoDrift this year?  Empire Hill Climb is also tons of fun if you throw some tarmac tires on the car.

In reply to engiekev :

Thanks! Yeah, we seem to be cursed with bad weather on Rallycross days around here, it's very frustrating. Conditions don't look great for Ice racing right now either...

I will probably be at Sno*Drift as a spectator/volunteer/crew, but the car doesn't have a cage yet so I won't be competing. Summer SnoDrift, on the other hand, is a fairly realistic target for a first stage rally in this car. 

In reply to artur1808 :

Awesome! We're kinda burned out on SnoDrift, the last few years the spectating areas have been really cut down and more difficult to access.  Summer SnoDrift is a lot more fun in that you're not freezing your ass off and you can find a place to camp very easy in the area as opposed to getting a hotel for snodrift.  We found a pretty sweet spot that is "dispersed" camping (Free! but no amenities of any sort) that we'll likely hit up this summer snodrift.

Central UP rally is another smaller one that some of our MI rally friends participate in, it is a very long drive though as its basically in Wisconsin!

Looking forward to seeing your car at some stages, very cool to see some RWD action when it's usually Subarus and Fiestas running the field.  Shanti Witt used to run an E30 as well but last I heard he is selling the car.

In reply to engiekev :

Yeah, I hear ya. Sno*Drift isn't the easiest event to spectate. I actually entered Central UP Rally in 2018 in my old car. 

Unfortunately I hit a boulder that an earlier car had kicked into the road and bent the rear beam enough that the tire was rubbing through the fuel filler neck. That and drowning the car on stage 2 put an early end to that event for me haha. 

I will always be an enthusiastic supporter of RWD in rally. I'm not entering events with the hopes of winning outright, so for those of us that want to have fun, RWD is the place to be.

What year was that? One of our rally friends Mike Purzycki ran in 2019 in his Cherokee but we couldnt make it to crew or spectate.  He doesn't run this truck anymore but the Cherokee looks identical. 

https://jalopnik.com/this-vintage-jeep-races-as-a-rally-car-1594454893

SnoDrift last year was interesing as he stuffed it into a tree and shoved a stick through the radiator.  We dumped stop leak in it and left the stick in, finished!

Based on that experience maybe you should put a snorkel on the BMW, safari style.

We've done some seriously deep water a few times at the (melted) winter rally in PA with no issues. The stock e30 airbox is pretty good, but our current/updated setup has a cone filter in a sheltered box, with a hydroshield over it, so I really have no worries at this point.