Life With Two B13s - SE-R Stage Rally Build & More!

Photos from a recent BMWCCA IceCross event. I set some of the fastest times again with my humble Nissan!

New wheels!

I drove down to Keene last night to trade some of my 14'' B13 wheels with a fellow racer, who needed some for his new SE-R RallyCross car. He traded me the 15'' B14 set that his new car came with. I was going to simply put these on my B14 when it comes time to sell, but now I have a dilemma. They actually look pretty good on the B13, and there's some great street tires I can get for them! So now I need to decide whether to use these or my 14'' NX2000 wheels for some summer performance tires.

B14 wheels look awesome on a B13. Sell the NX set.

I definitely want to keep the NX set, but I'll be trying to source some other wheels - even some steelies - to put on the B14 when it comes time to sell it.

Yay! Another solid polyurethane motor mount installed - one more "difficult" one (need to drop the crossmember) and one easy one and the car will be ready for a lot more abuse. These mounts are much better than the notoriously weak stock mounts, completely eliminating engine / transaxle movement and wheel-hop, and helping prevent transaxle damage. A lot of effort, but worth it!

The Bullet Bill Hyundai, is that the one parked by Falbo's in Seymour??

4g63t wrote: The Bullet Bill Hyundai, is that the one parked by Falbo's in Seymour??

Correct! That LeMons car is his daily driver as well.

Crossmember is dropped! As I suspected, the stock mount insert is toast. The new Prothane insert will be much better! After that, it's just the front dogbone mount and the car will be completely converted to Prothane mounts.

Those pictures also show my new-to-me Gravel Rally tires, my first set ever! Silverstone Rallye S-505s, can't wait to test them out when the conditions are right for them!

Finally done with the arduous process of converting the car to Prothane motor mounts! This is the one true functionality-related project the car needed this winter, now it's just minor adjustments and checks here and there and the car is ready for a return to racing on April 19th! It will keep the interior for now until it gets closer to Roll Cage Time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enxt1RO3P-U

She lives! It's nice to see that the vibrations actually aren't too bad from the solid motor mounts, and even better to see zero engine / drivetrain movement! Doing some final adjustments and it will be time to drop back down onto the ground and get ready to drive, and ready to race again!

Nice work! I am trying to find a new DD, and a B13 Se-r, 200sx Se-r, and 98-99 Sentra SE are part of my regular Craigslist search. Can't wait to see those gravel tires running! Oh, and you should definitely run the B14 wheels...I've always loved how they look on B13's.

sethmeister4 wrote: Nice work! I am trying to find a new DD, and a B13 Se-r, 200sx Se-r, and 98-99 Sentra SE are part of my regular Craigslist search. Can't wait to see those gravel tires running! Oh, and you should definitely run the B14 wheels...I've always loved how they look on B13's.

Thank you! I can certainly say that the B13 SE-R and B14 SE-R are great choices! The later-model Sentra SE you mentioned is good too, I love how the earliest B15 SEs could be had with the beloved SR20DE.

I'm also looking for a more permanent DD (The B14 is just a winter beater and has too many problems, I blame dodgy modifications made by previous owners), and while I was considering a '06 B15 SE-R, I started to throw my aspirations for practicality out the window and am currently seeking a NX2000!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQCn2QkeR-U&hd=1

Back on solid ground! Nothing much more satisfying than taking the car you've been working on all winter, driving it straight out of the garage on an hour-long drive with zero issues or drama of any kind. Although having a valid AAA card nestled in my wallet definitely took any stress out of the ordeal. The Prothane motor mounts are surprisingly liveable, of course there are extra vibrations but not nearly as bad as I expected.

Looking forward to some more driving in the daylight tomorrow and making whatever adjustments I need to for the car to be ready to return to racing via RallyCross next weekend! The car is legal for Prepared FWD right now but I'm going to just run Modified FWD anyway and see how close I can get to the dedicated MF guys. Psyched!

Final preparations for Raven's return to racing this weekend. Infusion of Redline MT-90 gear oil and satisfying test-drive with silky-smooth shifting. Installed the skid plate and fire extinguisher, and test-fitted the Gravel tires for kicks. Looks good - I could get used to the look (and presumably the performance) of the Gravel tires! Getting more and more psyched for this weekend.

Sweet! Good luck!

Saturday's race day was AWESOME! Gravel tires have completely transformed my view of loose-surface racing - Raven is nimble enough as it has been with snow tires, these Gravel tires are a whole different level of grip and control. The Modified FWD RallyCross class in my SCCA Region is extremely large and competitive (usually between 12-20 drivers, 14 at this one), and attracts the best drivers in the region.

I went into this day just to have some fun and get used to the Gravel tires in a Prepared FWD-legal and otherwise stock car with Prothane motor mounts. At the first half of the day, I was surprised to find myself in 4th place out of 14! Satisfied with that, I gave some rides and experimented more in the second half and dropped down to 7th for the day. But, MF is such a closely-contested class that the difference between the 4th-7th places was a matter of under two seconds for the whole day. I still managed to beat a heavily-modified version of my own B13 SE-R. What a blast!

I'll continue playing with these tires as I figure out when I want to pull the interior and start working on the roll cage. I may get myself to try another Hillclimb before that point, along with doing some more Autocross with NER and FSCC. This will mean purchasing either some Falken Azenis or Dunlop Direzza Star Specs!

I had a great weekend of Grassroots Motorsports, putting over 500 miles on my car while running a RallyCross in Vermont and an Autocross in Connecticut.

Finished my work week on Friday and got to packing and final car preparation. I set my alarm for 3:15AM on Saturday and set off for Vermont. At the RallyCross, I managed another mid-pack finish in Modified FWD in my Prepared FWD-legal car. The driver of the other new SE-R in Modified that I beat last time managed to surpass me this event! Running the Gravels is like starting to race all over again, I have a lot of work to do to the car (and adjusting my driving technique) before I'll see a trophy in Modified! It would probably also be good to get some newer and softer-compound Gravels, but before then I need to realize how much faster I can drive my car on the ones I have!

After the RallyCross, I made my way down to the southern edge of Connecticut to spend the night with a few friends that were also going to the Autocross. As always in the social side of racing, we ended up staying up until 2AM after a late-night diner trip and way too much Cards Against Humanity back at the house. Despite being up for nearly 24 hours straight and getting up again after less than five hours of sleep, I felt great!

We made our way down to the Autocross, held by FCSCC. It was a small lot with runs averaging 37-30 seconds (save a 28-second run by a Formula SAE car), but it was still a ton of fun with my new Falken Azenis tires. I can't wait to try these tires out at a Hillclimb!

Being rather inexperienced at Autocross and also being seemingly outclassed by turbocharged cars, I couldn't get the extra second my class-mates had on me. Regardless, it was an absolute blast while getting the car up on three wheels constantly. Went back to the house for a quick dinner with my CT friends before making the four-hour trip home. Some issues with my car hesitating and sputtering turned out to be the throttle position sensor - simply unplugging the TPS allowed me to get home without any further issues. I can't wait to get the interior stripped out and start making my way toward more serious Hilclimb and Stage Rally efforts!

Nice work! I love reading your updates!

Some pictures are missing. Sorry, will fix soon!

I figured it was about time I updated on what I'm up to!

After playing around with Raven and daily-driving for the summer with a stripped interior, I officially have her down in Rhode Island where a friend and fellow racer is installing a Rally America-spec Roll Cage so I'll be good to take Hillclimb more seriously as well as compete in any Stage Rally I can afford in Northeastern US and Canada / Nova Scotia!

MEANWHILE!

I have also bought a new car which serves many purposes. My first true front-engine, rear-drive car, my year-round daily-driver as well as serving occasional RallyCross duty and ice racing this winter. It's excellent! I've always kind of wanted one of these 318ti Compacts, it's kind of the gremlin bastard-child E36 and also my more attainable Clownshoe M-Coupe alternative.

I bought it for a song and immediately set to work. Functionally, it was fine but it was in grey primer and there was no idea of when the "time bomb" cooling system (primarily the infamous plastic-impeller water pump) was last serviced. Also, it had an open differential which would never do! Otherwise, it ran and drove awesome right out of the box.

In a rare change in character, I decided to tackle cosmetics first as I couldn't stand seeing a grey-primer car in my driveway. My spraybomb job is cheap and crappy, but it has held up well so far and definitely passes my "20-foot rule".

Once that was addressed, I tackled the cooling system. Thankfully entire kits are available for these and I took care of everything. New metal-impeller water pump, radiator, thermostat & housing, belts and hoses. For having no prior experience with these cars, it was extremely easy much in thanks to the massive space in the engine bay originally designed for a straight six!

Happy car!

Now it was time to pull the differential. I decided to weld it, which has since turned out to be an excellent decision. Despite having no experience with RWD cars, pulling the differential was surprisingly easy and my only real issues were bolts that were untouched since 1995.

Another friend / fellow racer / lifelong master welder took care of welding the differential for me and didn't charge me a cent. Thanks again, Nate!

At this point I reinstalled the differential and it was time for road testing. The welded differential highlighted a bad left-rear shock absorber, another ten-minute replacement with a Monroe OEM unit until I convert the car to Bilsteins with upgraded rear shock mounts. Considering the car's first test was an upcoming 700-mile round-trip weekend and RallyCross (on my birthday, no less) during, I put on some MasterCraft Glacier Grip IIs. I'll eventually source some studded Hakka8s for winter / ice racing duty.

Naming the car The Bastard, I made the trip down to Southwestern CT, back up to Western MA for the RallyCross, back down to CT for the remainder of the weekend and then back home for a total of over seven hundred driving miles. The car held up amazingly, the welded differential works perfectly and the car even still averaged 33mpg for the whole trip! Aside from the cruise-control cable seizing up and sticking the throttle at 3/4 open on Route 93 (a long and hilarious story all on its own), the car ran perfectly and is still ready for more.

As for the RallyCross, although the car is Prepared RWD legal, I ran in Modified RWD because I was more interested in losing in MR than winning a class of my own in PR. With this being said, I ended up beating all the regulars and all-out won Modified RWD in my little BMW by a huge margin, my first time out in RWD! Definitely a great way to spend a birthday! All and all, a very successful project and I can't wait to see what the future holds for this car! It's extremely fun and now I see what all the fuss is about in RWD cars, although my FWD SE-R still holds my heart.

Now I just can't wait to get Raven back in a week or two with the full roll cage! Spending the winter finishing all the remaining mechanical / safety preparation, and hoping to have her Logbooked next spring.

You're building the wrong car for stage rally.

Awesome 318ti! You may want to look at the plastic coolant pipes on the side and back of the engine block. They are prone to breaking and that will cause a big headache if you overheat.

Some threads just plain have It all. Great photos, Great content, Great writing. This is one of those threads. Thanks for sharing.

Oh! Just got these in from my friend doing the roll cage. Main hoop is in place and sunroof is out and ready to be sealed up. He'll be incorporating an air scoop into the new panel as well!

I really dig your approach to modifying and playing with cars. It looks like you're having a blast!

Just got another update from my friend doing the roll cage. So far, so good!

Man I love this thread! It got even better when you said Nova Scotia... I grew up there and can't wait to see some pics if/when you get up there!