In the two months to go before the 2015 New England Forest Rally, I’ve found myself looking for nifty ways to irritate the sh*t out of myself, because building and maintaining a vintage rally car wasn’t enough. Plus, I have a drain somewhere and during the last event we had to disconnect the battery after every stage. Got old quick. And believe you me, we searched the BeJesus out of that car looking for the leak and came up short (pun intended).
So, if you find yourself trapped in a garage with no hope of getting out and all you can reach is a Bentley, a laptop and a flashlight, by all means, please chime in. If you have a similar setup and have pictures as opposed to diagrams, that would be fabulous. If you’re local and don’t mind getting paid in beer and pizza, and like working out of an un-AC’ed, one-car garage, we can work something out. Unless you’re an ax murderer.
Here’s what I want to do. Some of if could be useful, but most is ‘fun’ factor:
- Three gauges (batt/temp/and something else that sounds important)
- Push-button start (because you can’t possibly have a race car without one)
- Battery cut-off (I think that might actually be required now, RA/NASA)
- Power window switches (Plexi is pricey!)
- HVAC high/low switch (need defrost)
- Hazard switch (hazards happen)
- Aux light switch (gets dark on those upstate New York middle-of-the-damn-woods stages)
- Aux fan (my car runs a little warmer now with a surfboard stuffed betwixt the oil pan and skid plate)
- Horn (the car must remain street legal)
- Co-driver light (my ballast in the silly seat has to be able to see the stage notes; damn primadonna)
- Little indicator lights letting you know which switches are on
- 12V receptacle (so we can tweet whilst upside down in a Maine swamp)
- Possibly wipers (mud happens)
- Super Secret kill switch (so I don’t have to carry around that big red key when I leave the car in parking lots, see “Must remain street legal” and “Push-button start”)
Here’s the car, challenge and other bits:
1988 BMW 325is – Stock electrics, factory batt located in trunk, batt cut-off doesn’t need to be located outside the car. Aux lights, horn and fan are already wired. Battery cut-off needs to shut EVERYthing down all at once.
I’ve already cut aluminum panels for the center vent location (for the three gauges) and the entire HVAC/radio area. I would retain the factory window switches, but I’m not a fabricator and have few metal-working tools, i.e., circular toggles are fancy – and drillable – enough for me.
I want to retain a vintage, or at least period-correct look and feel to the panels.
I’m going super-vintage, pre-E30 though, with the actual toggle switches, which are from an honest-to-goodness, Vietnam-era, Bell UH-1H “Huey” Helicopter. The flip-up “Zeroize” momentary will be the Start switch.
The last challenge I guess is all of the above business has to fit on those panels. And if that weren’t enough, I also need a very solid way to mount those panels into the dash hole. And remember, this is a stage rally car, so it must withstand the most impossible pounding you’ve ever imagined.
Really.
In?
So, if you find yourself trapped in a garage with no hope of getting out and all you can reach is a Bentley, a laptop and a flashlight, by all means, please chime in. If you have a similar setup and have pictures as opposed to diagrams, that would be fabulous. If you’re local and don’t mind getting paid in beer and pizza, and like working out of an un-AC’ed, one-car garage, we can work something out. Unless you’re an ax murderer.
Here’s what I want to do. Some of if could be useful, but most is ‘fun’ factor:
- Three gauges (batt/temp/and something else that sounds important)
- Push-button start (because you can’t possibly have a race car without one)
- Battery cut-off (I think that might actually be required now, RA/NASA)
- Power window switches (Plexi is pricey!)
- HVAC high/low switch (need defrost)
- Hazard switch (hazards happen)
- Aux light switch (gets dark on those upstate New York middle-of-the-damn-woods stages)
- Aux fan (my car runs a little warmer now with a surfboard stuffed betwixt the oil pan and skid plate)
- Horn (the car must remain street legal)
- Co-driver light (my ballast in the silly seat has to be able to see the stage notes; damn primadonna)
- Little indicator lights letting you know which switches are on
- 12V receptacle (so we can tweet whilst upside down in a Maine swamp)
- Possibly wipers (mud happens)
- Super Secret kill switch (so I don’t have to carry around that big red key when I leave the car in parking lots, see “Must remain street legal” and “Push-button start”)
Here’s the car, challenge and other bits:
1988 BMW 325is – Stock electrics, factory batt located in trunk, batt cut-off doesn’t need to be located outside the car. Aux lights, horn and fan are already wired. Battery cut-off needs to shut EVERYthing down all at once.
I’ve already cut aluminum panels for the center vent location (for the three gauges) and the entire HVAC/radio area. I would retain the factory window switches, but I’m not a fabricator and have few metal-working tools, i.e., circular toggles are fancy – and drillable – enough for me.
I want to retain a vintage, or at least period-correct look and feel to the panels.
I’m going super-vintage, pre-E30 though, with the actual toggle switches, which are from an honest-to-goodness, Vietnam-era, Bell UH-1H “Huey” Helicopter. The flip-up “Zeroize” momentary will be the Start switch.
The last challenge I guess is all of the above business has to fit on those panels. And if that weren’t enough, I also need a very solid way to mount those panels into the dash hole. And remember, this is a stage rally car, so it must withstand the most impossible pounding you’ve ever imagined.
Really.
In?
Attached Files