POS13 - A Nostalgic RallyCross Project

berkeley yeah!  I've got brakes back.

Apparently it was the new booster that was causing issues.  I bled the coolant, installed the booster, and took the car for a flog around the local area.  What a difference a confidant brake pedal makes!  I can stop most of all, but with the ability to heel-toe again, and push into corners, knowing I can bleed speed if needed, it's a whole different car.  

I was also able to bed in the brakes now that I have a consistent pedal, and the cool down loop took me through a patch of rough potholed tarmac on a sharp turn. This was a good test of the suspension mix of Tokicos up front and the blown coil overs in back.  The back did bottom out and rebound severely, and bucked the drive wheels into the air just like the RallyCross... so I still need to fix that before the last event.  
 

I've got some Bilsteins inbound, if I can figure out how to mount the rear S14 springs to them, I may try to make it up to the Susquehanna event this coming weekend.  If not, the last DC event is Nov 14th I believe.

In the massive distraction category:  SWMBO and I have been test driving some potential tow rigs...  All of them financially ruinous and terrible life choices, but sit at the Venn Diagram intersection of easy to park in NOVA's bullE36 M3 small parking lots, enough luxo-stuff to do long road trips, not common enough to run across one every other car, and capable of towing more than 5k lbs up and down the mountains of West Virginia.  It's been an interesting mix of hot-V turbo V8's and supercharged motors, I pray to god that Carmax still does the Doug DeMuro warranty...

Rear Bilsteins B6/HD are delivered.  The lower spring perch that came with them doesn't fit any springs I have available...  This was the churn I was hoping to avoid with an OEM setup, I have to keep chasing parts no body wants to make anymore... So this week I made the decision to go with a DIY style coilover on the rear based on these shocks.

Some quick measurements for my reference later:

50.15mm outer diameter

53.15mm snap ring OD

10mm Shaft OD

6.5" of travel with about 2" of that eaten up by the bump stop.

Snap ring about 3" from the top of the tube

There was still a few aspects to figure out: I need a top hat (I think I can use the one off the coilovers on the car), I need to determine the length of spring, and the rates, and I needed a threaded sleeve system that works with the shocks.

To fix the sleeve issue, it was troublesome to find exact information about how 'deep' the part that mates up with the snap ring inside of the sleeve.  Ground Control doesn't post much info there, and the circle track stuff didn't publish that either.  But on the plus side, there's some cheap stuff out there!  So I just pulled the trigger on one 5" sleeve from AllStar Performance, it arrived today, and it seems like it will work?

There's a square lip approximately 15mm in from one end, and another support ~30mm from the other, but it has a chamfered edge.

The next step is to mount it in the car, run the suspension through the range of motion, and get an idea of what lengths will work,  It seems like I can get a long enough spring to not bind before I get to use the ~6" of travel on the shock, but obviously it's better to get a longer one if I can fit it.

Either way, I'm certain that I won't be able to get any parts here by the Nov 14th DC RallyCross event, so a working rear suspension will have to wait for next season.

The great news about the last event is that someone has volunteered to bring a set of scales to the event to allow us to weigh our cars, for a donation to the club for equipment.  This is perfect timing, as it will confirm the corner weights I'm assuming off of internet math, or give me a chance to update them prior to buying springs!  I'm also very curious what the overall weight of the car will come in at, I'm going to pull out the rest of the carpet and interior that's behind the seats to see what fighting weight will be.  Hoping for something in the 2500-2600 range.  Looking forward to the weigh in as much as driving at the event.

Massive Distraction:

I mentioned previously that SWMBO was looking to get a new car, and I tacked on a requirement to tow more than 5,000lbs so I can drag around my terrible cars when they break, and bring the stress level of an event weekend down.

Well that requirement made for an interesting conundrum that's been brought up on this forum every month or so...   and I found a different (likely wrong?) answer.

We moved to Northern Virginia with a newer Ram 1500 Sport.  It had a great interior, decent tech, fun motor, and could tow something crazy like 10k lbs.  However, SWMBO quickly grew to hate parking it in the tiny parking lots and concrete mazes at the shopping areas around here, and on the twisty 45mph rural highways in and out of our house, it just felt too big, especially for daily tasks.  She quickly traded in on a Volvo C30 R Design that was quirky, fun to drive, easy to navigate the area, and comfy on road trips.  We dubbed it The Tepid Hatch, not quite a hot hatch, but still fun and practical.

It was coming up on some major maintenance, and the recent trip back to the MidWest had us touring in a fairly high spec Mustang with heated and cooled seats, and other niceties that the Volvo (as an aged design for her 2013 year) just didn't have available.  So the hunt was on for something new.

Our requirements list came out something like:

• Fit 5 adults in it if we needed to make a run to the airport (1.5hours) to pick up visitors
• Be reasonably fun to drive
• Have luxo-features (heated seats, good headlights, and airplay mostly)
• Be unique enough to find it in a parking lot around here
• Agile enough to park in small parking lots with ease
• Tow more than 5,000 lbs (assumed 2700lb car and steel trailer) through West Virginia mountains
• Be capable off road to explore properties in WV and not get stuck in a field towing.

So we test drove many of the cars in white in my Venn Diagram of financially ruinous decisions.  Trucks couldn't park well, luxobarges didn't have the towing capacity, we've already got a couple sports cars to scratch that itch.  The right choice was likely a Tacoma or Frontier or smaller truck.  After test driving a few, they just seemed slow, and had way too much residual value for what you actually got in the vehicle.  Also, every 3rd vehicle in our area is a BroComa with fake beadlock wheels and rifle stickers.

Of the gaggle of test drives we took early on, one interesting choice came up: a BMW X5 550i, it's hot-V turbo V8 had tons of torque all the time, it had all the nice stuff inside, and handled nicely.  However, the electric steering had a dead zone mid corner, the side profile was ambiguous, and we saw a ton of them around.

It wasn't where we intended to head, but all the sudden we were sampling depreciated high end SUVs that aren't always on the GRMer radar.  Add in a waay too high trade in value on the Volvo, avoiding me getting another project in a beater pickup truck, and a CarMax extended warranty, the cost started to make sense.

Well, then this happened:

Supercharged V6 out of the F-type, same transmission as our old Ram, air suspension with adaptive tow mode, locking diff, absurdly comfortable seats, tows 5,500lbs.  All boxes check, and budget completely ruined.

First order of business was to clean it up and check the fluids... oh wait, there's no dipstick, buried in the infotainment there's an oil level Goldilocks message: Overfilled, OK, or Insert Credit Card.  This one said overfilled...  well, E36 M3.  No telling how long it's been like that, so I went under the car to drain a tad of oil out and re-check. 

On previous trucks and my Outback, there's enough clearance to slide the oil pan under and loosen the plug.... So I set the the air-suspension to MonsterTruck mode, and slid under to remove the splash guard/skidplate. As I'm stretching to get to the middle bolts holding on the skid plate I hear an unnerving hiss of a pneumatic valve opening, and a pressure on my chest.... THE berkeleyING THING WAS LOWERING WHILE I WAS UNDER IT!  I shot out from under, as thankfully it only moved a tiny bit, and went to get jack stands and supervision.

About a cup of oil out, I re-checked, and the level reads as OK, so whew!  Hopefully other than installing a trailer hitch, this'll be the extent of maintenance I put into this thing.

cameo

and a nice Garrett Lofland photo of your ride, if you didn't see them in his FB album

Made it to the last RallyCross of the season!

So to summarize the changes from the car's first event: Brakes that work, took out the moldy carpet, maybe better front suspension

So I packed up the car, and headed out to the event.  I still haven't hooked the speedo up, so I just use a free GPS app on the phone...  On the way out, it kept messing with me, I thought the RPM in gear was quite a bit higher to get the target speed, I figured my last running 240 was over a decade ago, and it was just fuzzy memories.  Traffic was sparse, but as I got the highway, I was zipping by traffic... Again, I reconciled this in my mind as slow early sunday drivers, but as I kept going it was eating at the back of my mind.  Finally I started poking at the settings, and kph would have been wrong the other way, so as I got in the menu, the berkin' thing was on Knots!!!   Just for reference for those of us that aren't pirates or pilots in our spare time, 75 knots is 86 mph, so sorry to all the folks I flew by on the way there...

So I made good time there! I was looking forward to the pre-event just as much as the driving.   Someone had brought their scales and for a $20 donation to the club's van repairs, you can get two weighs of your car.  One empty, one with driver. 

The empty weigh, I was excited.  There's still half the interior, a half tank of gas, and all the sound deadening.  So I can still get to under 2500 for free.  Most of the weight removal is over the back wheels, and it's still only 54% on the front.  Switching the silly rear battery to a lighter battery in the engine bay, gutting the AC and some stuff under the dash, and maybe some lighter panels and I'll be knocking on 2400.

So with that out of the way, I checked the fluids, wheel torques, and tire pressures, and prepped for the event.  In solid juxtaposition to the last event, it was very cold, the mountain air just cutting through all 4 layers I wore, including the carhart farmer armor.  But it's all worth it, as this site is beautiful.  With all the trees showing fall colors in the mountains around, and the massive elevation change. This is certainly the best place I've rallycrossed.

Time to turn the wheel and press the pedals in an imitation of driving!

This course was faster, flowing, but bumpier than the last day I ran here.  My driving was poor,  to be honest the handling was a bit terrifying.  It must have been hilarious to watch from outside, I'd try to get the car on line, but there'd just be random massive rebound events from the blown rear coilovers that'd shoot the drive wheels in the air, and all the weight on the fronts, causing random understeer off the course.  Through a series of cone destroying events, a couple slides off course, I cemented my role holding up DFL.    I did the first couple runs only in 1st gear, but was on the limiter for long enough to certainly be slowing me down.  But when I went to 2nd, the wheel speed would fly up when the tires were in the air, and cause some good terrifying oversteer events go to with the understeer.  However, when I had 'four on the floor' as my grade school teachers used to say, it got decent grip and seemed to handle well.  

I got back to the paddock for the lunch break, munched on some beef jerky and pringles, and went to start it up to head back up the hill for the afternoon runs..... and nothing.   I rocked the car back and forth in case there was a mismatch on the teeth.... nothing.  Popped the hood, and noticed that the (solidly mounted) engine had vibrated the starter positive wire nut almost all the way off.  Tightened it down.... nothing.   At the point, most of the competitors had worked their way out of the paddock and up to grid.   So I did what any normal person would do, and whack the living hell out of the start relay with a hammer.... nothing.  Pushed the car a bit to kick start it on the level grid, and again, nothing.   Fortunately, the guys paddocked next to me must have noticed this spectacle, and kindly offered to push start me.  Got a bit of speed, kicked the clutch on the key, and thankfully it fired right up!  Thanks guys!

Ready for runs in the afternoon, I wanted to focus on reading the course better, and try to work on shifting at a couple key points, but mostly just murdered some more cones.  Of note in the afternoon:  There was a great photog there! @iamgarrett really captured the motion of the event, and the scenery of the site.   Second, Mike with the MR2 rode along with me (against all common sense)  His perspective was invaluable!  He confirmed that I wasn't going crazy, and the car's handling really was laughably terrible.  Also he noticed something I was blindly ignoring:  The engine's performance was all wrong.  It seemed to lose torque on the upshift to 2nd, which should be a a KA's bread and butter.  So I need to do som investigating there!  It was a eye-opening observation.  Thanks Mike!  Here he is wondering why the hell he ever sat in the passenger seat:

And one more shot by @iamgarrett

(Back to E36 M3ty cell phone pics)

Time to work the course, but with a known inop starter, Iand a history of driving terrible 240s, I parked facing downhill:

We got done working the last heat just before the rain/snow started to come in, I went over to my car, and ran into Josh (Irish44j), and he offered to give me a tow back to the paddock.  I cockily declined, I got this, I planned this out.... Well, slightly wet dust covered grass apparently doesn't give enough torque to pop the engine over to start... epic fail.

So thankfully Josh gave me a tow back to the paddock as I tried to remember to keep tension on the tow rope.  Thanks Josh!  Appreciate the assist!   

Back on pavement I popped the clutch on the key and started right back up, and I just left it running as I packed the car up, drove back, and even (for the first time ever) while I filled up with gas. 

While my driving, and performance were terrible, and the car sort of broke, I still had a great time!  I got to meet more rallycrossers this time around, talk to more folks, was more comfortable with the car.  It's great to see how friendly and helpful the rallycross community is, even at larger events like this.

I owe Josh a beer for the tow, Mike a beer for the advice, the guys next to me in the paddock some beers for the push, and the corner workers a keg for picking up all those cones I hit.

irish44j (Forum Supporter) said:

cameo

Great picture!   Thanks again for the town down to the paddock, I really appreciate it!

rallyxPOS13 said:

irish44j (Forum Supporter) said:

cameo

Great picture!   Thanks again for the town down to the paddock, I really appreciate it!

I've been on the other end of the strap a few times myself, so I know how it goes lol. No problemo and see you next season!

If you haven’t found the cause of the no crank problem hear are some issues I have had in the past. Check the pad on the clutch pedal arm that the clutch switch seats against. They crumble and fall out. Check the clutch inhibit relay generally blue and located in the r/f fender near the oem battery location. Be interested in seeing what you find.

In reply to madmrak351 :

Thanks for the tips!  I've certainly been victim to the clutch switch button falling off before. 

As I looked into the circuit, the little plastic button that actuates the clutch switch was missing, so I zip tied the switch closed. Still nothing.  So I went looking for that blue relay, and it wasn't there either....  The ride is so violent, and none of the relays are actually secured to anything there, it could have fallen out, but more likely I suspect a previous owner did wiring shenanigans.  It's a fairly simple circuit:

So I just replicated the Canuck wiring, and jumped around the relay and clutch switch:

Still nothing.  Both starters I have test good off of jumper cables out of the car, the ground to the starter chassis is ringing out good.  The voltage at the hot wire is reading good battery voltage, but the coil output drops to ~6V by the time it starts.  I started to poke around at it with the multimeter, and it was ringing out with connectivity to both the power and the ground, so I'm suspecting a short in the harness somewhere, or it's been bypassed elsewhere in the wiring, and I'm creating some weird loop.   At this point, I just gave up on it for a while, and decided to clean all the post-rallyX dirt off.... 

My less than 1 year old Ryobi pressure washer decided to also not start. Another simple circuit unsuccessfully troubleshot, I decided to give up on starting things.

So I did what everyone does on a car that won't start: I upgraded the lighting!

The headlights were some terrible fake projector ebay things, and they just had a vague forwardish cast of dim lighting.  They also weren't sealed, and had accumulated plenty of dirt on the inside. As most of my driving in this season is in the dark before and after work, I wanted the headlights to be decent.

Old Lights:

Part of my old job was evaluating lighting solutions for Bizjets, so I've learned the tell-tales of which LED housings are garbage, and which ones are worth taking a look at it.  I came across a nice mid-priced option from GE that used some decent reflectors to control the light made for the utility and trucking market, unfortunately they didn't make them anymore.  But poking around I saw they sold the design to a South Korean outfit as the Tungsram Nighthawk:

Pattern actually puts the light where it's needed, and cuts both the glare and LED hotspots, so these look like a good improvement.

Unfortunately, I've not been able road test them yet, with some travels over Thanksgiving I just shoved the car off to the side to work on the non-start later.

Most of my recent car tinkering is on the rest of the fleet.

The Range Rover did Range Rover things within the first hour of our first road trip:

The code rang up as a fuel trim error on the LH bank, traced down to a bad O2 sensor.  I think the car was fed some garbage fuel while bouncing around dealers.   Also put on some new tires...  because nothing says offroad prowess like 40 series sidewalls.

However, it's a glorious road trip car.  Did a 13 hour stint and wasn't even fatigued or sore at the end.  Proper ergonomics go a long way, and I've never been able to dial in the driving position on anything else I've driven. despite the 'wrong' tires, the air suspension eats up the bumps of the highway, and it even corners amazingly well through the WV mountains.

Getting SWMBO a new shiny tow-capable SUV has mostly backfired on me.  Now it's 'too nice' to kick out of the garage spot overnight, and she doesn't want it sitting out in the rain or snow.

For my daily driver, the exhaust started a small leak, and it was starting to be noticeable when stopped in traffic.  Through the joy of model bloat, a brand new STi exhaust will for the most part just bolt up to my '05 Outback XT.  STi owners are always upgrading exhausts, so there's plenty of low mile OEM ones floating around for cheap, so I picked one up this past weekend and bolted it up.   Hangs a bit low for my taste, so I may get in there and hack up the hangers when I make up the POS13's exhaust system.

Sound-wise, it's perfect.  Not much louder than OEM, and little more bass at idle and startup, but 2.5-3k rpm is still able to have a phone conversation.  It easily will support any future power goals I have for the daily, and the turbo seems to spool a bit faster than the Outback exhaust.

Well, found the issue with the no-start:  The first thing I replaced was a good starter with a dead one.... then when I found the missing start relay I just chased my tail for a while.  Fires right up now!  This Optima battery is a trooper, it's been just sitting outside in the cold with numerous starts without charging and just keeps spinning the engine with no worries.

While I had it in the garage, I got it ready for winter duty by clearing all the crap out of the heater ducts.  The AC condenser was packed with leaves and dirt.  So I removed it as the last vestigial part of the system. And sealed the bulkhead with some Aluminum tape:

I also got to take it for a drive tonight, the heater's much more effective with that core removed, and smells much less like squirrel ass.  The headlights are a huge improvement!   .... however they're aimed nowhere near the road.  Too dark to fix tonight, but I'm happy the car's back in the rotation and will get some more attention now that I can move it around easily.

Reading all of these dc region rallyx threads have me wanting two cars now for both autox and rallyx 

I have a yellow top in the rally car as well. I fired it up yesterday after a full month sitting outside in the 20 degree weather. Fired right up.

After ONE week, the conventional batteries in both the Porsche and Raider were totally dead. All three batteries are about the same age - though the rally car does have a full-system power cut so there is absolutely no low-rate loss from stereo or USB chargers or stuff llike that......

Honda_newb said:

Reading all of these dc region rallyx threads have me wanting two cars now for both autox and rallyx 

You say that like it's a bad thing.  

In reply to moxnix :

It's only bad when you're trying to be financially smart with a house but you have the space to finally have multiple  cars lol

In reply to Honda_newb :

The beauty of RallyCross is you can get 80% of the experience by buying something cheap and just hating the thing!

Bonus points if it's the same car as your autoX/other car because then you can mentally write it off as spare parts!

Nostalgic Story Time:

When I was in college, I had a black 240SX that I used in any Motorsport I could find to enter, and through getting to know folks and keeping an eye out for deals, I grabbed a $Free KA24E engine from someone who'd swapped to an SR, a few months later I came across a non-running car with major hail damage on the hood.  For a couple hundred bucks, I combined the two into my RallyCross car!  I sold off the pristine interior, and traded some Silvia headlight brackets for non-dented front sheet metal and the SuperBeater was born:

I had one LSD that I'd swap between cars in the driveway depending on if there was an auto cross or a RallyCross coming up that weekend, and many parts were swapped back and forth!

In reply to rallyxPOS13 :

Now that's a awesome story in that case I need a cheap 7th gen accord as I daily a 1st gen tsx 6sp and have been scoping Miata's or z cars for cheap motorsports cars. I really need to get the swmbo on board with more cars that's for sure

I don't know them that well but I'm just saying that I have never seen a z do very well in rally cross. I think they have pretty limited suspension travel. 

Another option you shouldn't sleep on is an E36 BMW. They are very competitive in all classes. One of them won nationals in stock class a few years back and the DC region two time champion drives one in MR. Plus they are still pretty dirt cheap (as opposed to e30s which are similarly competitive)

No direct experience with them but I've seen a 350z have potential. There's a few "winners" out there but imo pretty much anything has trophy potential if driven well, and just about anything with four wheels and an engine will be fun.

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

I should've specified Miata and z were being looked at for anything paved motorsports I've been looking at cheaper fwd chassis particularly Hondas for something dirt cheap to chuck around. 

I dunno, I had a Z (sort of) and a Miata, and they both had the same sort of suspension travel, each would find the bump stops if things got too exciting, but soaked up most of my gravel commute at the time.

The Miata has had success despite the suspension because it's light.  I don't think anyone's seriously campaigned a Z.  They've got decent power, LSD, and should be a riot out there.  Surprised I don't see more of them in the dirt.

Now that the car is mobile, I can steal a bit of time in the garage while SWMBO is running errands.  The headlight adjusters had jumped out of the groove on the lights, and the drivers side was intermittent.  Some work with the pliers got the adjusters planar again and lined up with the adjustment screw...  The intermittent problem however:

it got a bit toasty in there!  I'm not sure if someone was running kajillion watt bulbs, or if the nicked wiring resulted in a short.

Even the conductors themselves were black charred with abuse!

I was excited to see Susquehanna Motorsports was still in business (the Hellas on the SuperBeater above were purchased there on sale 20 years ago) and grabbed an H4 headlight connector from there to replace the toasty one.

Easy fix, and the headlights were back!  A quick pizza run made sure they were aimed right.  Now the car's back in the rotation for drives to work!

I also got to do some RallyCross relevant testing since there was some snow still on the ground.  Some forensic analysis of my north facing long hilly driveway shows that the VLSD is locking up pretty well, and quickly puts spin to the off tire.

Hilarious! 
 

So I did a bunch of suspension travel measurements that I'll write up in a minute, but as I was wrapping up I decided to see how much travel the current setup has....  apparently none. Watch the jackstand:  at about 1/4" of bushing deflection, the entire corner lifts up.  I think I found why this pile is so terrible to drive at RallyCrosses!

So with a bit more time in the garage, I had a chance to run the suspension through it's travel, and get some real numbers to confirm the suspension spreadsheet I'd worked up previously.

First thing was to remove the coilover, disconnect the swaybar, and figure a way out to measure travel.  I had a drywall square (that I've never used for drywall) but it kept falling over, so I taped it to the fender, and rigged up a pointer with a long bolt in the brake disc.

So running through the motion, it looks like there's about 5.5" of wheel travel, and there's an additional inch or so of droop travel if I force the suspension down with my foot.  So for the sake of calculations, I'll split the difference and call it 6" of wheel travel.

Next up I went ahead and put the shock back on with the bump stop and no spring to make sure that there isn't any limitation in the shock geometry that prohibits that full range.

The bump stop came into contact at 4", but fully compressed down to the 5.5" of wheel travel.

After that, I put the coilover sleeve back on the shock, and measured travel at the shock with another ruler.

Again, this roughly corresponded with the 95% numbers I had in my spreadsheet, and the travel worked out to a smidge over 5" of shock travel.

The one last check I did was a check of tire clearance, so I removed the suspension, and threw the wheel and tire on, and ran it through the full motion.

As all the mad JDMtyte drifters know, the wheels will tuck up in there pretty far without any interference.  I got to full suspension bind without the tire impacting the wheel well.

When I was all wrapped up with that, I decided to see where I was at with the existing suspension, to see what the travel was on the craptastic coilovers I was fighting.   Apparently it was completely seized, and I've been rallycrossing on tire flex as my only suspension.  So anything I can throw together will be an improvement! (see previous post)

So with those numbers in hand, it's looking like a 275 or 300 lb/in spring rate will suit the rear. 

Looking through the Eibach catalog, it seems like I'm limited by how far down the threaded portion of my coilover sleeve goes, and I'd need to use the (assumedly smaller spring wire diameter) of the 275 to get close to the maximum travel.  This one looks like my first shot: https://eibach.com/us/i-482-eibach-coilover-spring.html

Luxury SUV towing a 90s rwd RallyCross car? Perfect! 

I should be joining the club soon with our cayenne diesel and miata.

Those wheels look absolutely fitting to the style