Just make sure you have clearance from the driveshaft. I know the z3 shifter that I have is (it appears) a bit shorter than that one and it is mighty close to the DS in certain positions.
The lean-back setup is interesting, I may have to think about that.
Fortunately I had the luxury of making my own bracket so I moved the bracket up a bit. Looks like I have about an inch of clearance between the driveshaft and the bottom of the shifter.
I have some time off work this week, so I'm trying to get as much done on the car as possible between family events.
Yesterday I finished up the new exhaust. I merged the factory exhaust into a collector and then ran a single 2.5" pipe all the way to the back. It's a very simple setup, but from the idle and rev I did in my garage it sounds alright. I got the longest glasspack I could find, stuck that in the middle, and a cat at the back. I tried to position the rearmost v-band far enough forward that I would only need to remove the rear section to service axles/diff/control arms.
With that done I decided to finally bite the bullet and take on the body work. I've never done any body work beyond unbolting panels and bolting them back on, so pulling out the grinder and welder was fairly nerve-wracking.
Here's a "before":
Another shot with the door off:
Right about here is when I realized there's no backing out:
And this is how I left it for the night:
It's far from perfect and will almost definitely look rough when it's all said and done. However, I think it'll be good enough for a rally car. I'll make sure to paint it in some distracting fashion so the imperfections aren't as noticeable.
In reply to artur1808 :
That's not bad at all! Body work kinda scares me too. It's just not the same as replacing brakes, or welding an exhaust.
took a few welding breaks to let my back/legs recover and decided to paint my new (to me) wheels:
Very happy with how these turned out. They are 15” wheels from a VW corrado, found them on Kijiji, which is apparently Canadian craigslist. Totally worth the drive for a $65 set of wheels.
Dammit, I've been looking for Corrado 15s forever. They never seem to pop up around here!
Minor note on the exhaust - that pipe that dips under the rear subframe is a danger-zone. I have a factory-type "flattened" pipe that tucks right up to the subframe and it has still been mashed halfway multiple times. You probably want to 'armor" that pipe if possible because if you stage rally, it definitely, 100%, will get drilled by large, immivable things and/or ripped apart. It happens to all of us with e30s. I know Downey is going fuel cell and plans to run his exhaust up over the subframe when he does that. For those of us with stock tanks, the best you can do is to keep it tight to the subframe and beef up its strength.
I think there is actually one guy who built the rear end of his exhaust out of light rollbar tubing, taking a weight penalty to make it indestructible.
In reply to irish44j :
Racing Beat makes exhausts for rotaries out of .125" wall tubing. Yes, they are heavy, but they are also practically indestructible.
In reply to irish44j :
I can see why. They seem very strong and are nearly identical to factory e30 width/offset. It was absolute luck that led me to find these, I remembered about Kijiji and found these several pages into a “4x100” search.
I had the same thought about the exhaust and tried to tuck it up to the subframe as much as I could. I considered doing a side exit exhaust and might re-evaluate it if this routing keeps posing problems.
artur1808 said:In reply to irish44j :
I can see why. They seem very strong and are nearly identical to factory e30 width/offset. It was absolute luck that led me to find these, I remembered about Kijiji and found these several pages into a “4x100” search.
I had the same thought about the exhaust and tried to tuck it up to the subframe as much as I could. I considered doing a side exit exhaust and might re-evaluate it if this routing keeps posing problems.
Yeah, for e30 rally guys who want to bump up to 15" tires, the go-to wheels with our 4x100 BP and offset are pretty much the Corrado wheels, and certain Mini Cooper wheels (though you have to either use a spacer or bore the hub bore. Also old Dodge Daytona wheels are a perfect fit, but heavy as hell. I just missed out on a set of 8 of them recently for pocket change...
you'll be ok with the exhaust in rallycross. Of course in stage, if you lose the exhaust - you just keep going without it (less weight! :))
Rallycross report: MUD.
Unfortunately, due to some shipping issues with discount tire, I wasn't able to get the hankook snow tires I had hoped for. Thankfully, the folks at discount tire were real helpful and I ended up getting a set of Hakkapeliitta 8's for almost the same price as the entry-level hankooks. So they got mounted friday night, I finished up throwing some windows in the car and loaded up. Don't mind the fact that the white paint is far more white than the now-faded original paint. I think the "distracting" paint scheme turned out alright considering it was hastily spray-bombed in a 45 degree garage at night.
While the Hakkapeliittas are an excellent snow/ice tire, our event turned out to be a mudbog and they weren't able to clear out quite as well as some more open tread pattern tires. Aside from that, it was a great shakedown! The car performed flawlessly, unfortunately I can't say the same for my driving. Despite being rusty, I still managed to pull of 4th in Modified Rear (of 8). Considering two (or maybe all 3) of the cars ahead of me had some agressively-cut tires, I'm happy with that result. Here's a couple of not-so-exciting action shots.
Nice, was that at Bitzer's? Every time I see pics of that place it's a mudfest. We'll be running in wet/frozen red clay this weekend so I suspect it'll be a slip-fest for us (though it's packed, so won't be that stuff you guys had). I'm in the garage right now trying to decide which tires to run....soft gravels, Maxsports, Alpine Arctics....who knows what we'll have for conditions.
I assume the guys ahead of you in class were Evan, Pete, and England Jr? If so, no shame in losing to three top national guys ;)
Also, nice paint job. You know I'm obviously a fan of the diagonal striping :) FYI - striping is way less of a pain in the ass if you just order some rolls of vinyl - get some Oracal 651 (rolls are only like $15 in whatever color you want). Then just roll them out and use a straightedge to cut stripes in whatever thickness you want. I used to paint all mine (so many rolls of masking tape lol) but have since switched to the vinyl so I don't have to mask stuff. So if you plan to do any more striping (hood, etc) think about that...
This is actually at Thistle Hill, which is in the Detroit region. Very good surface in the summer, but the ground had a chance to go through a freeze/thaw cycle already, and we had rain on top of that. Events like this make me wish I had a spare set of tires to cut up and make some aggressive mud tires.
First in MR was actually Kevin (fidelity101 on here, stage rally rx7), second and third were a foxbody mustang with cut tires and a 5.0 powered rx7.
I will definitely look into the vinyl stipes! I managed to find some 3" masking tape, so I was able to just lay them down edge-to-edge, cut a line down the middle, then peel off every other one. But masking off the rest of the car is definitely a pain.
Really wish I had more updates after the long holiday break. Unfortunately, as usual, the holidays got in the way of making as much progress as I would have hoped.
No pictures of this, but I noticed that my rear end noise got worse after the last rallycross and saw that 3 of my 4 CV boots were ripped all the way around. Mud getting in there probably wasn't helping things. I ordered some axles, the driver's side went in just fine, but I fought the passenger side on and off for the better part of a week. For some reason, it seemed that the tolerances were off just enough that the new axle would not go into the hub.
Anyway, with the axle fiasco finally done, I decided to go through and clean up the interior a bit. I started stripping out a bunch of unnecessary wiring, "massaged" the door a bit so it would actually close all the way and seal, and made some simple door cards from Coroplast. I had a pile of stickers laying around and decided to decorate one of the door cards a bit:
We have a rallycross tomorrow so not wanting to start any major projects I swapped out the blown transmission mounts for some poly transmission mounts:
I decided to take the car for a quick test drive before bed, and unfortunately the poly mounts have uncovered some other issues. As soon as I started driving, I noticed some gear whine coming from the transmission. On top of that, there were some very noticeable clunks as the load changed on accel/decel. I think the old mounts were so mushy that they were allowing the trans to shift enough to mask some of the internal issues a bit, and the poly mounts are not nearly as forgiving.
The car still drives fine and all 5 gears seem to work, but I'll be on the lookout for a new trans now.
In reply to artur1808 :
I may have missed it earlier in the thread, but are you using poly motor mounts as well? I spent some time on the phone w/Condor Speed Shop when I bought my mounts. They said if you go with solid trans mounts and rubber motor mounts you can tear the mounting tabs on the transmission. I know they sell reinforcement plates for the motor mounting tabs. I tried their Delrin motor mounts and promptly resold them..the M42 is just too harsh for solid mounts. The M20 is a lot better balanced, so maybe that's more tolerable.
They said solid motor mounts and rubber trans mounts was common because the rubber transmission mounts would help with the NVH.
Good info on the Corrado wheels, I didn't realize they would be a direct fit.
In reply to Hoondavan :
I have poly motor mounts but didn't have time to install them last night. Might need to try to swap them out before loading it all up on the trailer tonight.
In reply to artur1808 :
oh yeah I know Kevin he beat me by less than 1 second at the great lakes challenge about three years ago haha.....
Hoondavan said:In reply to artur1808 :
I may have missed it earlier in the thread, but are you using poly motor mounts as well? I spent some time on the phone w/Condor Speed Shop when I bought my mounts. They said if you go with solid trans mounts and rubber motor mounts you can tear the mounting tabs on the transmission. I know they sell reinforcement plates for the motor mounting tabs. I tried their Delrin motor mounts and promptly resold them..the M42 is just too harsh for solid mounts. The M20 is a lot better balanced, so maybe that's more tolerable.
They said solid motor mounts and rubber trans mounts was common because the rubber transmission mounts would help with the NVH.
Good info on the Corrado wheels, I didn't realize they would be a direct fit.
As someone who is sponsored by condor and has use their mounts on the m10 and 42....don't, for rally cross.. they're great mounts and very well made, but as I told Carlos, they are just too harsh for the m42. I run a softer durometer Polly motor and transmission mount in mine. I would definitely use them with an m 20 or other six cylinder though, and I would definitely run them on the track as well.. I do use the Condor rear subframe mounts and diff mount, however, as well as a number of their other parts. the other thing to consider is that rallycross has a lot of impact so it is good to have rubber in certain areas or soft urethane in order to absorb some of the shock.
To add to that we use solid mounts on our m20 track car and is not a vibration problem
artur1808 said:
dammit, now I want to buy white ones for mine. And need to up my sticker game...
Quick rallycross update: (no action shots yet, maybe someone will post something in the next couple of days)
Somehow despite 40+ degree weather in January, the site didn't turn into a complete mud bog. Our morning runs had a couple of very slick corners, but in the afternoon the surface was staying surprisingly solid and dry. I may have gotten a little carried away practicing maintaining long drifts rather than being clean and fast, but still managed a 4th place in Modified Rear. However, the trophies went to some properly fast guys in our Detroit region and I have no shame losing to them. Just gives me motivation to get faster.
As I finished my second-to-last run for the day, I cross the line, slow down, and notice the car is struggling to make the turn back to the grid area. So I decided to get out and see what was going on and find that the front wheels are pointed at each other. Whoops.
Get under the car and the tie rod end on the passenger side had come out of the knuckle. The nut that's supposed to hold it was nowhere to be found and the threads were almost completely stripped. Thankfully, my buddy in a turbo Volvo 240 let me finish my last run in his car, then we hose clamped the tie rod end in place and managed to drive the car onto the trailer. My theory is that this tie rod end was replaced at some point with a less-than-great part and the extra abuse of rallycross exposed that weak point.
In other news, facebook marketplace finally paid off! I managed to score a set of forged OZ Racing wheels with old, but decent, tires for $200.
These will serve as my street tires until I buy a set of new gravel tires. Should serve nicely for warm weather errand runs and the times that our rallycross courses dry out and essentially turn to bumpy pavement.
artur1808 said:
I decided to take the car for a quick test drive before bed, and unfortunately the poly mounts have uncovered some other issues. As soon as I started driving, I noticed some gear whine coming from the transmission. On top of that, there were some very noticeable clunks as the load changed on accel/decel. I think the old mounts were so mushy that they were allowing the trans to shift enough to mask some of the internal issues a bit, and the poly mounts are not nearly as forgiving.
The car still drives fine and all 5 gears seem to work, but I'll be on the lookout for a new trans now.
A bit hard to see...but it looks like the poly mount has a bolt straight through it, is that correct?
If so, that is probably where you have your gear whine, and nothing is wrong with the transmission itself. If you have a long bolt through the mount and into/onto the transmission, you have basically solid mounted it in one direction (stretch), meaning there is no noise/vibration insulation at all.
On top of that, unless there is a crush tube in the bushing, it is also impossible to torque the bolt correctly as you only will compress the bushing. Chances are the bolt will break or loosen quite quickly.
If there is another construction that I can't see, please excuse me :-)
IME, you really want a bushing made as the OEM, so that you have no metal-to-metal contact in the mounting. Or a different design to get the same results.
Gustaf
In reply to therealpinto :
Gustaf,
That's correct, it is a single bolt straight through. That definitely makes sense, I see there are a couple of suppliers that make "upgraded" OEM style mounts; I might need to get a set and try them out. Thanks for the input.
No worries, and good that we caught that. I often see mounts made like this so you're not the first person to end up with something like that.
Years ago when the gearbox mount broke on my Sierra, the transmission rested directly on the cross member. The transmission that was perfectly quite before, sounded like straight cut box. New mount, sound sorted :-)
Gustaf
Found some pictures of my car from this latest event:
AWD e30 that won Stock AWD class:
The Escort that wont quit. I think this car had 4 drivers across two different classes at this event and didn't seem to miss a beat.
Mazda 323 that seems to be about as stripped out as can be and making tons of power. Got the overall Fastest time of the day by a good margin:
A fan favorite: Turbo swapped tiny Rav4.
Ugh, you make me want to build a rallycross car to race. I don't have time or money for that...
You'll need to log in to post.
