Pitchblack Motorsports Rally e30 318i (now with M50) - and some Porsche 924S stuff.

[irish44j]

rear on an e30 isn't a coilover, the spring is located inboard on the trailing arm. The motion ratio is about 0.6 to 0.65, depending on who you talk to. So 350 on the rear equates to about 210-225 if it was a coilover setup like your car. So I actually went slightly softer in the rear than on the front.

[ForcedFirebird]

250 and 350 is a good choice for travel.

[irish44j]

Finished up the gauge and lighting install and ran a wire for the water temp to the engine bay tonight. Just waiting for the VDO sender to come in. For the lights, didn't bother with the plastic colored covers for bulbs, just took them out and hit them with some VHT red taillight paint. Worked out pretty well, though the camera-phone doesn't exactly capture it very well, lol.

Beats my old mismatched white and red.

Also not sure I mentioned it but I calibrated the fuel gauge by just taking the sender out of the tank (while spilling plenty of fuel) and holding it up to simulate empty signal, and upside-down to simulate full while I set the gauge. Not surprisingly it worked and the gauge appears to read pretty much correct (TBD when I fill up the tank).

[irish44j]

Small project today. Took off all the hood hardware (hinge bar, latch, cable, pull handle, hydraulic support, etc) which cut out about 11lbs from the very front of the car. It's not much, but all this little stuff adds up in the end. I also plan to get a smaller washer reservoir and mount it in the battery tray and figure out a new way to put sprayers on since the hood now will need to be able to be taken off completely rather than just tilted up.

For the front put in a couple hood pins. Nothing too exciting that hasn't been done on a thousand other track e30s. But it's something.

No idea why the image sizes are all different, wtf....

[stonea]

I have a "quick release" for my washer hose on my hood. It's just a simple plastic barb from the local hardware store. You'll loose some washer fluid when you disconnect it, but it might be easier and cheaper than trying to redesign the washer nozzles.

[SkiFree]

Glad you got to talk to Jeremy .... I sit 5ft from him, heard the conversations, didn't make the connection until now.

[irish44j]

I have a "quick release" for my washer hose on my hood. It's just a simple plastic barb from the local hardware store. You'll loose some washer fluid when you disconnect it, but it might be easier and cheaper than trying to redesign the washer nozzles.

That's probably what I'll do in the end, but I have a few other ideas I want to explore as well, since I don't have much else to do this winter :)

[irish44j]

Glad you got to talk to Jeremy .... I sit 5ft from him, heard the conversations, didn't make the connection until now.

Yep, Jeremy was very helpful even though I know you guys were pretty busy over the holidays here. Remind him to throw some nice big IE stickers in with the shipment so I can pay you guys back with a bit of publicity at least ;)

[irish44j]

Killing time waiting for the suspension to get here, a couple projects.

First, finished with a partial gutting of the rear doors. I left some frame because I hate how flimsy our doors on the Chumpcar are, and also want to be able to lock them, so left some frame to hold the mechanism.



All told, the two rear doors (just the inner skin and crash bars) plus the hood hardware deleted added up to about 17lbs, so that's not bad. On the downside, in the process I discovered that I've added 3lbs, so will need to remedy that as well :/



Also rigging up my new windshield washer system. Since the hood is no longer on hinges, and I still need a sprayer, I'm going the route of 80s-90s GMs (and some other cars) with the wiper-mounted sprayers. Ran the hose today (under the cowl with a T-fitting), and Josh S. is picking up some sprayers off an old GM at the junkyard this weekend so will finish it up once I get those. Even without the sprayers, it actually works fine.

Will clean up the cosmetic look a bit - right now its just rigged up as a test-fit

[irish44j]

Various stuff today. Suspension is due here on Thursday, so I know what I'll be doing next weekend :)

Today, Nick came over with his i30 to do some work on it in my garage, and Josh S. and Jim Spoth came by as well to help out, and do a few other little projects. So we drank a few beers, ate some chili (which my wife made), and worked on cars in my 40-degree grarage., though not on any e30s.

black car meetup


doing stuff




Nick's i30 (with VQ35 swap)




Jim did some wiring on his new e92, hooking up a thing for his phone/display. During the process with the battery disconnected, he closed the trunk. Oops....no way to open it without power. So we had to steal my e30s' battery to "jump" the trunk, lol.



Meanwhile, kept working on my trailer reconfiguration/refresh.

What it looked like at the beginning



I kind of wanted stuff on the trailer to sit lower, and a better balance to it. So here's the new reversed setup. The "tire rack" part is removable in case I want to use the front half as a flatbed. The box now sits about 6" lower than the frame, hung on steel straps.





Have some more work to do still.

Josh also brought me some wiper sprayers off an Oldsmobile Alero or something. Did a quck test-fit and they'll need some adjustment, but seems that it will work out well. That's all for now :)

[irish44j]

With the day off for the holiday, got a few of the projects done. First I finished up most of the trailer rebuild. I "seam-welded" all of the main bars to stiffen it up some from just being bolted together, painted the underside (after chipping off a lot of lousy bubbling Harbor Freight powdercoat/paint). Also finished the box mounting with a pair of turnbuckles holding in onto the trailer, cut down the third brake light mount to allow the box lid to open fully, and replaced a shattered side light lens. Overall, pretty happy with the result. Fully loaded with tires (but with nothing in the box), the tongue weight is around 50lbs, so with some stuff in the box that should be more like 35-40lbs once I add the spare tires and front "shelf" top.

Also re-packed the bearings, which I hadn't done since buying it. As expected, there wasn't much grease in there and the stuff in there was pretty thin and gunky..

Anyhow, mad tyte yo...





bottom straps for the box



turnbuckles holding it to the trailer, hooked to upside-down stainless U-bolts mounted in the handle slots of the box. Worked out almost perfectly as expected...



And finished up the e30 on-wiper washers, using the Olds Alero pieces from a pick and pull. After fiddling around with various hose arrangements that wouldn't kink, pinch, or overstretch the hoses, I have the final configuration now. It's not exactly beautiful, but it is functional and on this car that's really all that matters. Pretty pleased with the result overall.

Here you can see the sprayer head
]img]http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j85/irish44j/BMW%20318i%20Rallycross%202015/IMG_20150119_162126316.jpg[/img]

Hoses and such. I just used electrical tape to locate it as it seems to hold it in place better than zip ties. I have a few ideas for a more permanent solution, but that will have to wait.





Hard to capture the spray pattern, but it gets the whole windshield and frankly does a better job than the stock sprayers on the hood. Need to do a speed run to see how they are on the highway..



About to move the car back into the garage and think about taking suspension apart. For the moment enjoying how much space there is in there with no cars parked...

[irish44j]

And so it begins.



Figured I'd pull the front suspension tonight. And as usual, everything went fine until that damn lower balljoint. Curses upon BMW for that design...



Eventually using the balljoint separator, heat, hammer, and jack got them to pop. Managed to mangle up the threads of one a bit....nothing that can't be fixed with a file or die, no biggie. Also looks like one of my tie rod end boots is pretty shot, not surprisingly. Luckily, RockAuto has Moog tie rod ends on sale for $13 right now, so ordered up a couple of them.






Also got my Condor Speed Shop 2015 calendar. Just call me "Mr.July" lol

[irish44j]

before the suspension gets here, luckily the last part for other projects arrived:



water temp sensor in the thread to replace the stock one with no adaptors. Nice little easy project, right? Nope. Not on an M42. The sensor is directly under the middle of the IM, and it's impossible to get any tool in there. I ended up having to remove the upper IM, airbox, and some other stuff to get the old one out (spilling some coolant in the process) and put the new one in. A couple bloody knuckles later and having improv'd with most variants of 19mm wrenches I have, it is installed. Hopefully in there tight enough (the stock one was REALLY loose, surprised it hasn't been leaking).

Yeah, that's it way in the back there :P



Won't get to test it out for a while, but I don't see any reason it shouldn't work as intended..

[Smrtpunk]

Coolant Sensor

Hey Josh, do you know if that coolant sensor you picked up will work with an M20? Also, do you have the part number for the gauge you picked up?

Ian

[irish44j]

From what I've heard, the M20 uses the same OEM sensor, so I would imagine that this one would work on the M20 as well. In our Chumpcar I think we use an NPT size with some kind of adaptor, but this seemed like a simpler way to do it (though I did have to wait a month for the sensor, since it was backordered).

For the gauge, no idea. I got it used a couple years ago but it's a standard VDO vision series 150-250 degree range. If you can't find it, I can go out and pull it out of the gauge pod at some point and look for a part number.