95maxrider's Rally-x '88 E28 build- caged, head swap and more

[bluej]

oh nick.

also, trim those bits of wire ends sticking out from the positive terminal!

[irish44j]

didn't notice it in the background the first time, but seriously....who is that in the shorts, loafers, and argyle socks? Looks like Bobby's racing outfit? :D

[95maxrider]

didn't notice it in the background the first time, but seriously....who is that in the shorts, loafers, and argyle socks? Looks like Bobby's racing outfit? :D

Yeah, Bobby came straight over from work and I loaned him a pair of shorts....

[95maxrider]

Rally-x #4 7/25+26/15

Please excuse my appalling tardiness in updating this thread, but life has been rather busy lately!

Our 4th event of the year in the DC region coincided with one of the Northeast Region's championship events, so it was doubly important! The STPR event I went to earlier in the year up in PA was another one of the NE championship events. I came in second there to Josh, so I really had to beat him at this event to have any chance of winning the DC season and NE championship.

Unfortunately, my 3 year old GoPro2 refused to stay on, so I won't be able to post up any videos until I get around to buying a new one.

It's been about two months since the event, so my review is going to be light on details. Basically, over two days of racing Josh and I were neck and neck, with us trading the lead a few times. With two runs left and Josh ahead of me by 0.1, I had no choice but to go as fast as I could. Josh had been climbing back all afternoon due to some cones on my part, so I somehow knocked off more than 2 seconds from my previous best and laid down two very fast runs, managing to pull back ahead of Josh by 0.2 seconds. That's two-tenths over almost 19 minutes of racing! With a victory secured, Josh and I were tied for first with two wins each for the DC region, and tied for first in the NE region with one win and one second place each. Who would prevail in the second half of the season?



Now for some awesome action shots















Now I'm only two events behind....

[FreedomM3]

Those action shots are badass!

[95maxrider]

I've also been negligent in keeping track of the work we've been doing to this car. Time to do some catching up.

I believe it was during the fourth rally-x that I noticed I could see sunlight underneath my gas pedal (reflecting off the ground; I wasn't upside down). You might remember that we reattached the gas pedal hinge about 2 years ago when it started separating from the floor with a door hinge. All was well until this event, when I quickly realized the cheapo fix was apparently not a permanent one. I noticed the problem halfway through the morning runs, so I babied it until I could park for lunch. I started tying what was left of the pedal hinge to the roll cage and seat framing with metal wire, but then Chris found a ratchet strap, and we used that to secure the pedal to the seat frame. Things were a little awkward under my right foot with the strap all over the place, but I made it though the day and made it home, so all was well.

Fast forward a week or two and Josh is once again gracious enough to help do work on my car that I can't do myself, namely welding in a new floor section under the gas pedal. Here's what the hilarious mess looked like:



Josh doin' stuff








Apparently the door hinge we installed wasn't really attached to metal...more like a very thick undercoating. Fantastic!



While we were there, Josh decided the rats nest under the driver's seat needed to be cleaned up.



We then replaced the inline 30a fuse for the aftermarket thermostat/fan as it decided to melt at the prior race while not breaking, so thankfully the fan kept going, because the fuse holder and fuse had become one giant mess and the fuse couldn't be replaced.



While Josh was cutting and welding, Bobby and I were replacing the fuel vapor lines coming off the fuel filler neck that go to the little plastic tank in the trunk. We had been smelling fuel very strongly after we filled up all the way, and people said this should be the first place you look. Turns out they were right, because one of the necks had rusted and basically fallen off, leaving a nice big hole for fuel and vapor to escape from. Enter new hoses and clamps!



This is what was left




And with that, the car was a little bit more reliable. Thanks Josh!!

[95maxrider]

Another day, another thing to fix on the car. As I was leaving Josh's house the gas pedal didn't want to come back all the way, so I had to keep pulling it back while I was stuck in traffic on the highway. It was rather warm out and after 30 minutes of that, the clutch pedal started making a weird squeaking noise. Upon inspection, I noticed a rubber bushing for the gas pedal that had ripped, so I ordered a bunch of new bushings for all the pedals.



All of the bushings for the gas pedal were shot:





And Josh's lovely paint had cured and we had installed two screws to bolster the rivets.



We didn't get to the clutch pedal bushings, but the noise hasn't returned yet.

Next up was a rather large project that we had been putting off for about a year, which was to paint the roof. We decided to go with a gray Plastidip spray, and I think it turned out reasonably well!









More to come!

[irish44j]

lol, stole the pic of me welding because it's funny.

[mikebloco]

Just the fact that you rally an e28 is awesome!! Way to be different.

[95maxrider]

Just the fact that you rally an e28 is awesome!! Way to be different.

Thanks, but at this point I think I would rather be smart than unique (i.e. have bought an E30 or Miata). :D Next time!

[95maxrider]

Rally-x #5

It's been a while since event #5, so details will be scarce again!

We discovered at the fourth event that the car was spewing out gas onto the mud flap, which meant our replacement of the fuel vapor lines did little to fix the problem. We always knew the car reeked of gas when we filled it up all the way, but we didn't realize it was spitting out a bit of fuel on hard turns until the fourth event. We didn't have time to fix it before the fifth event, so I raced with half a tank and didn't have any problems aside from the usual odor. Aside from that the car was running well, and I was eager to race with a properly secured gas pedal with new bushings. I felt pretty good about my chances!

Basically, I jumped out to a small initial lead, but I believe by lunch Josh had a few second lead on me. As the afternoon wore on, I fell further back to the point where little Eric in the haggard ETA E30 was ahead, and I ended up in fourth. TurboJosh was co-driving Josh's 318, and was in first for a while in the afternoon before a mistake pushed him back to second. Here are the disappointing results:



This might be my lowest finish in a very long time, but at least I was only about 5 seconds back from first.

I'm going to try and keep track of cones for the top guys in my class to motivate myself to drive cleaner. I've been rather sloppy lately...
Me- 5
Josh- 4
TurboJosh- 10 holy crap
Eric- 4







I turned on the headlights at some point on the drive home, which led me to realize my turn signal stalk had gone bad again. Whenever I used the turn signal the headlights would quickly flicker to high beams, which caused Josh to pull over, thinking I was trying to signal a problem to him or something. Time to get another used one and hope it lasts longer. I have a feeling it has something to do with contorting yourself to get over the roll cage and removing the seat through the tight space in the cage on a few occasions.

[95maxrider]

More stuff!



Hooray, no more flashing my high beams at people when I switch lanes!

I also patched up two holes in the floor with that aluminum HVAC tape, and covered it with duct tape. The impetus was getting splashed with mud on my glasses at the last race when it came through the floor.



We went through quite a few large puddles at the last race, so I wanted to see if any got up in the intake.



Yup, it sure did. Thankfully the filter didn't look too bad, but it made me wonder...as for the rest:



Maybe I should get around to building those splash guards for the engine bay like I keep meaning to.

Then I added a little extra protection to a coolant hose that was rubbing on some metal part of the motor.



It's the little things....

[irish44j]

lol, I got a ton of mud in my face at the last event driving Eric E's car. He has all kinds of holes in the floor. I actually had a piece of gravel come through his open drain hole in one of those big puddles and hit me dead-center in my sunglasses lens. I've made a substantial effort to seal up my own car better recently, lol....

[95maxrider]

Rally-x #6

Due to some complications that I will get into on my next post, the E28 was not able to make it to the sixth event of the year. As luck would have it, Josh's 318 couldn't make it either due to some charging problems, so we were both without cars to drive. Our buddy Jason (who used to race an E30 with my buddy Patrick) has been fixing up an NA Miata for rally, but it wasn't quite reassembled, so that wasn't available as an option to co-drive. That left a few RWD cars I could hope to get a ride in, with some being better than others.

-There's the immortal but ratty ETA E30, but that car has three guys beating on it every event, and I felt bad asking. Naturally, all the guys are good sports and said it would be okay, but I had another car in mind.
-Then there's a relative newcomer to the RWD crew, an E36 318 sedan that has like 5x the rust damage my car has. It however has beat one of our best drivers (Shawn in his Miata) on one occasion, so I knew it could be fast. This car usually runs in the class below mine, PR.
-Then there's Eric with the E30 325i, who has usually been quite a bit behind Josh and I, although the car seems to be pretty well put together.

We get to the event and Josh gets a co-drive in the E30 325i. To make up for it, he puts on his rally tires instead of the truck tires Eric usually runs. I managed to get a co-drive in the E36 318, but I had no idea what I had just signed up for. I knew it had rust issues, but I didn't know it had an 8 pound flywheel, a welded diff, and no power steering. I had never driven any car with any of those mods, and certainly never a car with all three, so I had my work cut out for me. I quickly adjusted to not having power steering, but the clutch, and especially the diff took much longer. In the morning I was launching the car around 2000 and going nowhere. Only at lunch did I find out the owner dumps the clutch at 3500. After trying his technique, the car was MUCH faster off the line. The diff pretty much fought me all day. On my first run the car just refused to turn in, and I couldn't figure out what to do. On that run alone I was some 5 seconds slower than Eric. I realized the only way to steer the car was with the throttle, so I got more aggressive as the day wore on, but I don't think I really got it mostly right until the last run of the day. The car had very abrupt transitions, and was very uncooperative when driven at anything below full crazy mode.

Due to the unpredictability of the car, I was hitting cones left and right. Here's the count for the day:

Me (318i E36): 9
Josh (318i E30): 4
Little Eric (ETA E30): 7
Big Eric (325i E30): 2
Corey (Turbo Volvo): 5

Ugh, another 4th place finish....



Anyways, big thanks to Jeremy for letting me co-drive his car, it was an eye-opening experience!

[Porthos]

1988 528E Color: Poo Brown, Winning!!!!!!