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

[95maxrider]

2014 Event #7 recap

As usual, I'm about a month behind in updating my thread, so let's see how many details I can remember from the final two races.

Due to a lapse in insurance for the venue, our final two events of the season were pushed into a back-to-back weekend. Coming into #7, I had to win one of the two final races to clinch first place for the season in the modified/unlimited RWD class. Josh (E30 318i M42) had to win both in order to be season champion. Turbojosh (hand-built turbo ETA E30) had laid down some very fast times throughout the season, but due to some missed events and car trouble, wasn't really in the running for the season championship.

As usual, I left my house at 5:45 AM to meet up with the other E30 guys. It was a particularly cold weekend, and temps were around 20* on my drive out to the event. My car doesn't have any sort of heating system, so I was quite bundled up. Even so, after an hour of driving, my feet were numb and I was slightly worried about them falling off before I arrived. Thankfully I arrived with feet intact, and with temps hovering around 30*, I began to warm up a bit.

I started my AM runs with some fast and clean times, and built up a small lead over the two Joshes. By the end of the AM session I had about a 3 second lead over regular Josh, but then disaster struck (for him). A sizable berm began to develop at the start, and Josh's muffler got caught on it on his final run. How it didn't catch my recently-hung Borla is beyond me. The berm pulled the muffler/cat-back from its slip joint, and he only made it a short distance before he was red flagged because the exhaust was dragging on the ground. The rules for a red flag meant that Josh was saddled with the slowest time of our run group plus a 10 second penalty, which put him squarely in third, meaning his quest for the championship was pretty much over before lunch on the first day of a long weekend. I didn't want to win this way, but Josh didn't file a dispute with anyone over the huge berm, and he knew about the problematic slip joint during the season and neglected to properly fix it. We later learned that he probably could have appealed the red flag and gotten a proper rerun, but by then it was too late.

Even so, I didn't ease up my driving in the afternoon. I maintained a small lead over the two Joshes, and with two runs left we decided to switch cars and have some fun. The 318 was as easy to drive as usual, but I had some trouble with the turbo car. It bogged really hard off the line and seemed like it wanted to stall. I babied it around the course and was able to hold onto my lead for the day despite running about 10 seconds slower than usual. And with that, I had won my first rally-x season! Beers were drank. :ST1G:

Results here!
Looking at the results, it turns out I was again the fastest 2wd car at the event, besting the beautifully-driven FC RX7 in the prepared (middle) class! Who would have thought...

I put the mic for my GoPro inside the car to see if it sounded any better than its normal location on the trunk lid. It did not.

[phenryiv1]

yeah, I'm not giving you any more advice on things, lol. Need to keep you slower with stuff falling off ;)

The irony there is somewhat high.

[phenryiv1]

Remember when the circlip failed in my PS rear Bilstein? Well that strut has been looking like this after I did an event after rebuilding it:



It made it through the final races of the season like this, but I can't say I have very much faith in it. I'm considering doing a Koni rear setup, but I'm not keen on the fabrication involved.

This...

http://www.ground-control-store.com/products/description.php/II=674/CA=2

Look around to see if any shops still have an active-but-forgotten "Shock Value" code to buy the Konis at 25% off. I did that on my WRX 2 (or was it 3) years ago.

[irish44j]

I'm a little behind, so bear with me here.



Oh, and that pesky RSB end link? Well I took Josh's advice and had some cotter pins installed. They seem to be working so far!
.

yeah, I'm not giving you any more advice on things, lol. Need to keep you slower with stuff falling off ;)

[95maxrider]

I'm a little behind, so bear with me here.

Before event #7, we had some maintenance to do. Our belts were loose and slipping, we had a new RSB end link to install, and some other minor stuff. I also wanted to clean up the intake system of the car, so I used some TB cleaner on the TB, MAF cleaner on the AFM, and some carb cleaner on the IACV.







I'm not sure if these little gouges were causing the RSB to come loose, but since I could buy them individually, I wanted to try a new one and see if they held any better.





Then, the day before event #7, I noticed the nuts on the motor mounts were all loose again. Why would that be? I took a closer look at the mount on the PS and saw some hairline cracks. Hmm, what's this? Oh look, another failing motor mount.







Luckily, we kept the mount we pulled from the car in the junkyard earlier this year, and thankfully it was an OEM piece instead of the random Germany crap we had to put on at the last minute. Hopefully it holds up better. Not too long after I finished up I found out the event had been postponed due to a lack of insurance. Oh well, that just gives me extra time to get some other things fixed up.

You have probably noticed the bulbous roof vent we installed a while ago. It clearly was the wrong style vent, and we needed one that would fit more flush with the roof, and we needed the bondo smoothed out and prepped for paint. We dropped the car off at my buddy's shop and let him get to work. I think the roof turned out great, now it just needs paint!



You may remember months ago I ordered SS clutch and brake lines from Ireland Engineering. They sent us the wrong clutch line and the wrong rear brake lines, then tried to tell us we didn't know what we were talking about. Well they finally sent me the correct parts, and I let Wayne finish up the rear SS brake lines (the clutch line was done long ago). Wayne had mentioned before that the brake hard lines were pitted and corroded towards the back of the car, but I didn't put much thought into it. Well after he installed these new ones, he took the car for a drive, and what do you know? One of the hard lines sprung a leak. Which of course meant we got new hard lines installed from the rear of the car up to about the driver's seat area! Here's a taste:



Unfortunately, I didn't notice any increase in braking performance. Oh well. At least I know my brakes are safe.

While he had the car on a lift I figured I would let him do the new diff gasket, as I was tired of new stains on my driveway and it's getting too cold out to do this on cold concrete. Woo hoo, no leaks!



Oh, and that pesky RSB end link? Well I took Josh's advice and had some cotter pins installed. They seem to be working so far!



Remember when the circlip failed in my PS rear Bilstein? Well that strut has been looking like this after I did an event after rebuilding it:



It made it through the final races of the season like this, but I can't say I have very much faith in it. I'm considering doing a Koni rear setup, but I'm not keen on the fabrication involved.

[irish44j]

lol....nice. Maybe you should drill a little hole in the end of the swaybar so you can put a cotter pin in there or something to prevent it from popping off again.

btw, Edo Morse apparently went up to Frostburg yesterday just for the hell of it (since he coudln't cancel his hotel room for money back). He said it was 27 degrees, windy as hell, and snowing. Makes me kind of happy we got cancelled......though I bet the reschedule is gonna be cold cold cold.

[95maxrider]

Event #6!

Fresh off of getting the car back together, my co-driver and I headed up to Frostburg for event #6. It had been raining there all week prior to the event, and the ground was soaked. For possibly the first time ever, we had puddles large enough to remind us of a real rally stage, and they added a new element to the racing.

Turbo Josh jumped out to an early lead the first run, but I quickly came back, and by the end of the morning had an 11 second lead over regular Josh in his 318. I was running clean and fast, and was feeling pretty damn good. Then we went to Burger King for lunch, which prompted a run to the porta john upon return. It's way off on the far edge of the lot we race on, and is near a few greenhouses, and more importantly, some chickens. They apparently like classic Bavarian luxury cars.

Please excuse the camera phone pics. The lens is apparently made of the softest plastic ever, and gets scratched when sitting stationary in my pocket. It might have a self-scratching feature, I'm not sure.







In the afternoon the car felt good at the beginning, but seemed to get worse as the day went on. Both Bobby and I noticed something, but couldn't find anything wrong in the short time between our runs. More worryingly, Josh was catching at an alarming rate, and we just kept getting more and more runs. Normally we get about 7 runs, but this afternoon we got 11, giving Josh plenty of runs to make up time. I really made a push on my 10th run to go as fast as possible and kept a little buffer room, but Josh came back on the 11th run with a blazing time. Mercifully, that was the last run, and I walked away with a 1.6 second lead, keeping myself in first place. Had we done one more run, I'm sure Josh would have won. In some weird retribution for the Ohio championship, my lead would have evaporated if I had hit a single cone, which thankfully I didn't do. To refresh your memory, I lost the Ohio championship by 1.1 seconds. I hit one cone that whole weekend, and if I hadn't of hit it, I would have won by 0.9 seconds. That really stung. These tight finishes are nail biters!

Still giddy from holding onto first, I started packing the car back up and found the source of my slowness in the afternoon:


This is the second time the rear sway bar has come out of that end link this season!

Oh yeah, remember how I said it was wet out? Yeah....nasty.


Oh yeah, and after my final run we noticed the rain gutter trim piece on the passenger side had popped off on the front, so we just slapped it back in place and forgot about it. That was a mistake.

Here's a video of my best AM and PM runs. Somehow I forgot the mic and magnetic numbers at home, so you'll mostly hear wind noise. I recommend turning your speakers down....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcvXOou0YMk&list=UUS0pqs8Ikre7PD7LGc5McKA

WTF is up with embedding youtube videos??

Pics!









About an hour into our drive home, the trim piece decided it had enough of our car, and tried valiantly to separate itself while going 70 mph in the dark. For once, I was glad to have a co-driver. With my painters tape in hand, Bobby made an emergency repair to the trim by holding it against the car with his foot and trying to find a surface clean enough for the tape to stick to. After about 10 minutes and much tape, it was kind of held in place. Getting home, the car looked like this:











If I say so myself, I think the car looked excellent with this mud scheme going. I kind of wanted to thrown some clear coat on top and keep it looking like this.

Oh, and the belts for the motor were really loose, and made the car feel like the PS was cutting in and out. Thankfully the alternator was able to maintain a charge on the battery, but we had some work to do before event #7.....

[95maxrider]

Remember that blown CSB I mentioned? Well we had to fix it before event #6, and while we were in there, it was a good time to refresh the shifter. So one Sunday we attempted to remove the exhaust and get started. Unfortunately, the previous owner who put the exhaust together decided to save a few bucks and not install a flange anywhere in the system, meaning it's one single enormous piece from the down pipe (after the manifolds) to the muffler tips. Yeah, it's quite unwieldy. To make matters worse, we had no luck removing the studs/nuts from the manifold, so we couldn't do a damn thing. We took it back to Meineke and paid far out the ass to have a 3" flange installed. While this made removing the exhaust easier, it caused other problems later on.

I have never done any drive shaft work before, so I bought a bearing puller set and c-clip pliers set to ease the process, and both were quite helpful. The exhaust came off with a bit of prying, but our first big problem was getting the drive shaft around the newly installed exhaust flange. It just happened to be right in the middle of the DS, and it being for a 3" exhaust, clearance was at a premium. After much wrangling and dirt in our eyes, we got the DS out.

Working...


Yeah, I think it's dead


The less said about the shifter work, the better. Between rusted bolts and an unreachable "bitch clip" on top of the trans, it took a few hours to get that damn thing back in the car and working. Surprisingly, nothing seemed too worn out or broken, and the improvement was pretty minor.

The metal that holds this to the car seemed like it wanted to snap off at any minute.


Before:


After:


The day before the race, I decided it would be a good idea to do a once-over of the whole car, and I found my DS motor mount missing it's lower bolt, so I got a new one from the hardware store:


The PS mount was pretty loose on both the top and bottom, but I didn't think too much of it. More on that later.

After it was all said and done, the car was feeling great. Between the new CSB and O2 sensor, the car was smooth and responsive, and I was feeling good about event #6. Unfortunately, with all the gear in the car, the rear tires rub the fenders like a mofo, and the 12mm spacers have fused themselves to the hub over the last 6 months. Thankfully, we were able to throw a bunch of gear in other people's cars on the drive to and from the event, thus saving the lives of our rear tires.

[phenryiv1]

That steering issue, how are your inner/outer tie rods. My inners were absolutely shot so I swapped in a E36 rack and its SOOOOO much better

He has an e28. Everything is different, unfortunately.

[E30NJ]

That steering issue, how are your inner/outer tie rods. My inners were absolutely shot so I swapped in a E36 rack and its SOOOOO much better

[95maxrider]

dat positive camber, lol.....

No Ohio write up? You could talk about how you beat the two guys who just won the National Championships last weekend :)

Nope, no positive camber here, just got her aligned and she's within spec. Must just be the stupid high ride height.

Ok, I suppose I could do a little write up for the Ohio event.

So a few weeks before the NE National Challenge in Frostburg, MD, a few of us DC folks headed up to Ohio for the Great Lakes National Challenge (Aug. 23-24). This event had a lot more competition in the MR class, including a few drivers/cars who had done very well at the national championship previously. Notable cars in my class included a turbo 1st gen Miata, a built/stripped 1st gen RX7 and a gutted 2nd gen RX7. Josh (318i) was generous enough to let me co-drive his car, since I wasn't comfortable driving my torture chamber 7 hours from home, given it's recent reliability issues. Turbo Josh also joined with his turbo ETA E30, and took the risk of driving his car to the event. Regular Josh towed his car to the event, and it's a damn good thing he did.

We arrived Friday night to find a pristine grass/dirt field, something unknown to us in the DC region. We've done clay before, and we're currently on gravel, but we've never really had much experience on plain old dirt.

When we come back in the morning to run, we found the grass covered in dew, making things very slippery. Josh had the bad luck of drawing a short straw and had to run in the 4th grid spot. Others in MR didn't have to run until something like grid spots 25-30, so they had a clear advantage in running in drier conditions after the wet grass had been torn up. I was somewhere in the middle. Josh had some bad luck on his first run and ended up spinning out, costing roughly 10-12 seconds. I did well enough, and for most of Saturday I was in first place. IIRC, the co-driver of the turbo Miata was on my ass all day, but he couldn't come on Sunday, so I wasn't concerned with him.

Sunday comes around and I think I lost a little bit of my mojo. I had a decent lead at the start, but it dwindled rapidly as the day progressed. On my second to last run I was passed by the 2nd gen RX7, then by Josh on my final run, ending the event in third by some 1.01 seconds, out of a total of about 1,500. Naturally, I was pretty frustrated that I let my lead slip away like that, and I was not in the best mood on the drive home. After some hard thinking, all I could figure out was that I got complacent with my lead, and didn't really push to 100% like I do when I'm behind. I realized that even if I have a lead, I really need to drive it like I stole it, and not get comfortable. I believe this is what helped me win the NE Divisional event, as I had a decent lead that started to slip away again on Sunday. Only after giving myself a pep talk did I summon up my skills to pull off a decisive win.

Anyways, I guess third place isn't too bad, and I like to think I learned a little something. I got a little consolation last weekend when two of the guys I beat in Ohio came in first and second at the National Championship, so, in a way, I can tell myself that I beat the National Champion.

Anyways, I alluded to it being a good thing that Josh brought his car up on a trailer. Well, Turbo Josh had a lot of problems with his car all weekend (broken motor mounts, bad idle, etc) and ended up having to put his car on the trailer and drive Josh's 318i home. So thank god I didn't bring my car up there, because it surely would have broken something, then we would have really been in trouble. Thanks again to Josh for letting me wail on his car all weekend!

[irish44j]

dat positive camber, lol.....

No Ohio write up? You could talk about how you beat the two guys who just won the National Championships last weekend :)

[95maxrider]

Even though nobody seems to read it or care, I'm going to do another update, this time of the Northeast Regional Rally-X Championship, held at our local venue in Frostburg, MD a few weeks ago.

Fresh off of coming in third in the Ohio championship event, I was hungry for a win at home, and I was feeling pretty good about the car after FINALLY getting an O2 sensor in the car. We couldn't remove the one from the stock location, so Meineke welded in a new bung and threw one in, along with a new Borla ProXS muffler. I was sorely disappointed by the lack of noise reduction from the "quietest 3" muffler available," but thoroughly impressed by the results of installing a working O2 sensor. The car now idles like a normal car, instead of rocking itself to bits, and throttle response is MUCH better.

The championship was a 2-day event, but I didn't make it through the first AM session on Saturday without a problem. Just after starting my fourth (?) run, I felt the car start dying on me. Lights were flashing on and off on the dash, and the car struggled to stay alive. I babied it through the run, somehow only adding ~2 seconds to my fast time so far. I had a feeling it was battery related, and sure enough, both of the battery terminals had come off the battery. Apparently my co-owner went a little crazy with the dielectric grease and didn't quite tighten the bolts enough when he installed the new terminals a few weeks prior. I used up my 10 minute tech session and got back out there.

The guys in my class for the event were:
-Josh (Turbo Josh) in his home built turbo ETA E30
-Stephen in the ETA E30
-And some guy from NY in an E36 325i. This was only his second event, so I wasn't too worried about him.

Josh, with the E30 318i (and my usual competition), couldn't make it due to a wedding, but that didn't mean I was going to have it easy. When turbo Josh's car runs properly, it's fast. Very fast. Unfortunately for him, he broke his ghetto wastegate spring bar-thingy and was without any boost for all of Saturday. As such, I was able to keep a pretty good distance between myself and the others. Stephen was running pretty clean, but about a second slower than me.

The rest of Saturday was pretty uneventful, and I finished the day something like 6 seconds ahead of Josh. Unfortunately for me, he was able to super-ghetto fix the wastegate with some Loctite, and was making boost on Sunday. Unfortunately for him, he then noticed two small tears in his intake elbow, which bled off most of the boost he was making. Still, he was clawing back time on Sunday morning, and was putting down faster times than me by the end of the AM session. If he kept that up, he was going to pass me after a few runs in the PM.

I was going to have none of that. I removed the passenger seat, and spent my time working the course figuring out how I could drive faster in the final PM session. Whatever I did must have worked, because I was on a roll in the afternoon. I was laying down clean, fast runs, and Josh and Stephen couldn't get close to me. It didn't help that Josh was coning like crazy. He was in a close second all weekend, but ended up falling back to third behind Stephen by the end of the day. At least the car was able to make the drive home!

My car took some damage though. Midway through Saturday I heard a clunk coming from the back of the car when going away from a stop. A little investigation revealed a completely blown center support bearing on the driveshaft. Without much of a choice, I pressed on, and it made it through the weekend and the drive home.

Oh, I should probably mention that we got something like 30 runs in over the course of the weekend, which I believe is the most of any of the regional championship events, so hats off to Adam and the others who put the event together! I can't seem to get the results to load, but IIRC I was the fastest RWD car there as well, beating out a fast Miata, so that's something. It looks like this car is finally coming together. Who would have thought?

Now for what you have all been waiting for...pics and video!

Winnar!




















LINKY

[95maxrider]

Long time, no updates!

So at the #4 event the car decided to spit out one of the circlips holding the rear Bilsteins together, which caused the rear of the car to pretty much drop to the ground. After many calls to parts stores, we were unable to locate a new rear strut, so the car got towed to Patrick's house and I finished up the race in Josh's E30. Thanks to both of them for being such good sports! Who knew that finding parts for an E28 could be so hard in the middle of nowhere? Oh wait, I did (see: leaking clutch line earlier in the season). I had the lead when the car broke, and I was able to maintain it over the next day (#4 was a two day event) which tied me up with Josh for the lead in season points.

Slammed, yo


Goodbye for now


So after fighting with Bilstein to send us new circlips for about a month, they finally arrived with new spring perches, and with Patrick's help we got the suspension back together without too much fuss. Repairing the torn axle boot was another story.

It has been over a year since we did the two outer boots, and in that time we forgot everything we learned in the process, so fixing this PS inner boot was a major PITA. Again, Patrick to the rescue!



Our diff cover has been leaking since we put in the 3.73, and I was hoping to replace the gasket. Patrick checked the diff cover bolts and found a few to be loose, so we decided to hold off on the gasket and see if this fixed the problem. It didn't. But it did do one amazing thing: it seemed to eliminate most of the whine coming from the diff! Don't ask me to explain how, because I don't know, but it's awesome! Once we get a proper muffler installed (Borla ProXS 19") the car might actually not be a penalty box to drive to events!

Oh, and check out the awesome steering the car has! I can't imagine either of these things to be good. Damn steering box.

[95maxrider]

So apparently Josh's rattle can paint job isn't smooth enough for my GoPro suction mount to properly adhere to: