RALLY|SPEC: Cutting my teeth in grassroots motorsports with an E30

[theseeker411]

Even with your car breaking it was a very fun day yesterday. If you need help with fixing it just let me know.

[C-Hutch]

I foresee good things in the near future.

well don't quit your day job and go into fortune telling... I knocked the scuffler out of commission already.



The plan was to take the car out to some local logging roads popular with the 4x4/ dirtbike/ quad crowd and do some shakedown/ research and development/ science and see how the car performed in the dirt. The problem is that to get to the logging roads, you have to go through some pretty rough and rocky terrain more suitable for... say... a land rover. And to make matters worse, it has rained a lot lately and the sun hasn't been out much since it stopped, which meant that rather than dirt, we were dealing with mud. Soft, squishy, lose-your-shoe-in-it mud.



We showed up and there were a few trucks and trailers around where guys had offloaded their bikes and stuff. Got a few very strange looks rolling up in a BMW with a couple hellas on it. The opening to the trail was down trodden and riddled with small brown ponds of unknown depth. I gradually approached the first mud pit and with Brennan riding shotgun whispering words of encouragement in my ear, (read: "FUCK IT, LET 'ER EAT") I drove on in with all the open diff glory the e30 could muster.



It did surprisingly well for the first stint, wading through door sill depth water holes and climbing muddy inclines without too much effort. Once I was past the mud and into the more solid dirt and rocks, I started increasing my pace and grabbing for the e-brake more often. The more success I had, the more my bravery was reinforced, adding to the speed. I hit a couple humps, got a little air time, got a little sideways... things were going well.



I had almost reached the opening to the logging roads when things went south. Having been down the trail before months ago on a 4 wheeler, I somewhat remembered how it went. After the trees opened up, it was a kink to the right, up a small hill, around a bend towards the left with tall grass on both sides, then you reach a clearing and pick a road. I just forgot the jump and the giant rock in the center of the trail. Since I had become more brave, I didn't take that section as slowly or cautiously as I should have. Hit the little jump, regained stability, booked it up the left-hand bend and there was the rock. Dead center in the trail, 12-14 inches higher than the ground around it, and I didn't have time to react. It hit hard enough to pop the car up off the ground and land on the nose again.



I knew immediately after hitting it that I had more than likely damaged something. It just sounded so much more violent than the other rocks I had crept over minutes before. I was still moving pretty fast after I landed, but the car was down on power. "Maybe we knocked a plug wire loose?" I decided that pulling off was the only option, so 50 yards into the glorious logging road, that's what I did. Popped the hood to a bit of smoke as the car idled on 2 or 3 cylinders, and the oil light came on, so I killed it immediately. We came out to the sound of a small creek, but it wasn't running water. It was oil.



The skid plate had failed and bent directly into the oil pan, massively cracking it from front to back. It was completely empty of oil in seconds. The engine never knocked or ticked in the 20 seconds it ran after the impact, but the misfiring worries me. Brennan mentioned a lack of crank case pressure... hopefully that's all it was. But needless to say, my rally shakedown lasted 5 minutes and now the car is down for the count with the first actual rallycross event is in less than a month. So we'll see how things go I guess!

[Hotsauce]

I foresee good things in the near future.

[aLaFleur]

I've been wanting to build a Toyota pickup rallymobile for the longest time now. I think you may have motivated me or some junk.

[e21mark]

Figured you'd enjoy watching this, if you haven't already?

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd3OwX23g30"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yd3OwX23g30[/ame]

[e21mark]

Love this thread. Brightened up my Saturday morning breakfast!

E30's are great for all forms of motorsport and I've done a few sprints and hillclimb events in my old one. If the m20/2.5 ever lets go, an e36 M3 donkey adds even more fun. Mine made near 300 brake and would go sideways with a twitch of the right foot.

Love the e21. They're more my thing when it comes to styling.

[Khalil]

RALLYBOYZ in da hooouuuussseeee


Cory is the coolest motherfucker I know. Seriously. So everyone keep an eye on this thread. Cause it's clearly awesome. As are we.

[C-Hutch]

suuuuuuupdate

been goofing with this thing after work from time to time. I was having this happen a lot, and it's been like 5 degrees out for what feels like two months now so waking up to go to work and seeing this...



wasn't gonna cut it. Bought some cheap new tires just to drive on for the time being. Eventually I'm gonna have a set of basket weaves for daily wheels, the bottle caps with some all season mud and snow type tires on them for "rally" use, and another set of probably 15's for track days or autocross.

It's still had the idle surge so I started going through all the checklists on bf.c and r3v to try and fix it... wound up doing the valve cover gasket since that was my last vacuum leak, and adjusted the valves while i was in there



that didn't fix it. So I cleaned the IACV and throttle body, set the TPS with feeler gauges as per the factory manual...



also didn't fix it. tried a known good air meter, replaced the temp sensor, a bunch of stuff. no luck. So I decided to do some things that I knew would be actual progress...









bam presto changeo rally car



Then I got a red46 sump armor plate just in case i hit a rock or armadillo on a back road



then the other night I was trying yet again (unsuccessfully) to fix the idle issue, and decided to just jam a penny with a tiny hole drilled in it into the ICV inlet. So it isn't fixed per se, but it idles, so whatever. It works fine at WOT so I'm happy.



Then I took Luke out to go get an older Subaru Legacy wagon. AWD, 5 speed, 2.2 boxer



Drove it in the dirt a couple times then added door numbers and that basically made it a rally car as well.



Tomorrow we're gonna go field test them both for some research and development. For testing. It's purely scientific.

and my running total:

previous total 814
Hella 500 lights 74
red46 skidplate 140
195/60r14 x2 88

total= $1,116

[Miles.]

This is awesome build, its nice sometimes to just see something that's going to get regularly beat on, rather than being a garage queen with so much potential.

[parttimeprojectionist]

...and other miscellaneous parts were laying against posts and the wall of the garage, and the engine itself sat in the bay with no wires or hoses connected to it. It was a soupsandwich.

ida gone wit soupsandwich but shitmess works too...

if scca still does a rallycross, do that shit, its waaay tooo much fun,

until your ditchhook goes horribly wrong...

[87shark]

Might get interesting next week.

Does this mean i need to fly back out?

[meech]

dude 140 acres? I'm very jealous. Can't wait to start ripping on this thing.

Thanks everybody! I've got more to tell and more photos and progress to post, just gotta host everything and take the time to write it down and whatnot. Might get interesting next week.

Yea tons of land its insane. Honestly my only advice is stay away from trees cause they ruin the fun faster than anything lmao. and skid plates for the fuel lines and stuff like that cause they take a real beating.

[saturnstance]

I love builds like this.

[C-Hutch]

Ryan gave me a new gauge cluster so that my tach would read higher into the rev range. This actually wound up being a bit of an adventure to get it all functioning





The front trim and stuff was also in the trunk with the car, but I hadn't bothered to install any of it just for the drive home since I was kind of pressed for time. Once I got it to work, I put on the front bumper trim, wheel wells, grilles, and some replacement headlight buckets since the ones that came with the car were banana'd up pretty badly and the headlights aimed directly at the ground.





figured while I was at it, I would go ahead and paint the grilles and kidneys since they were pretty faded and it always looks 5000x better if they're nice and fresh



Then the bacon was installed. Lots of screws and zip ties here. Also painted the bronzit valance whiteish to sort of match the car.





and boom it's got a complete face.



Just for the sake of keeping track, I'm gonna keep a running total of parts prices as we go.

Initial purchase price 750
Fluids 50
headlight buckets and valance at j/y 14
current total---------------------------------- 814

And that's literally all that I had to spend to get the car home, running and driving. Most of the parts needed to make it work were included in the tubs that came with it.

[Dr.AK]

Rallykor! Great thread. Bashing around on dirt roads is soooo much fun. I had an E34 not too long ago that I beat the piss out of on the local dirt roads and such. So much fun!

This thread excites me.