1985 BMW 318 Stage Rally Build - 1988 Porsche 924S Street Build - Sequoia Build

I guess I'm a bit latent on any updates. We had a rallycross at Summit Point back in May. I drove pretty fast, but not fast enough and Nick won, with Mike Golden in 2nd in his SR class MR2 spyder.....fast thanks to running on tarmac rally tiers on the hardpack sun-baked surface. Was pretty pleased with my speed, actually, and the car ran fine.

For the early June event, it was supposed to be a doubleheader at Summit Point again, but got rained out. The reschedule was the next weekend with sketchy weather as well. Even before the event, Day  2 was cancelled, so only a handful of people showed up for Day 1 with morning rain on the way there that actually made the course pretty great initially. 

Unfortunately, with only about a dozen drivers per run group, and the threat of heavy afternnon storms, Adam decided to just do one session per run group. As we worked first, the other group did 20 runs as the day warmed up, plenty of people having car issues, etc. I think only half that morning session finished as the course started getting rougher and the Subarus started breaking. Then it was our turn. By then the temps were in the muggy high 80s with full-blast sun and the course baked hard and getting very choppy as Summit does. 

For the first 6 runs or so I was leading the class, and then had a bad run that probably put me in 2nd or 3rd, not sure....because we were hot-lapping with so few cars there was literally 10-20 seconds to actually stop between runs, so only checked times a couple times. At some point Mike Golden blew his engine (spun rod) and Nick and Stephen were laying down similar times to me so we were all pretty close. But the constant "GO" was wearing on me, and on the 13th run the car just didn't feel great, the course was rough, and I wasn't feeling great (had been sick the previous 3-4 days and maybe a bit low on energy). My oil temps were about as high as i've ever seen them, same with coolant. And my one decent set of gravel tires were starting to get hot and "melty" which I also didn't want, since I'd like them to last the season.....Both still in the "ok" range but higher than I like. The engine sounded kind of loud, like the oil was so thin. After that run I just called it a day, wasn't having fun and stopped caring, and was sweating my ass off with no time to even take my helmet off between runs in this hot car. Nick was fine in his A/C-equipped car and he and Stephen battled out for the lead for 7 more runs (Stevie ended up beating him by almost 6 seconds...dude is still fast as hell). I drove the car directly to the trailer and started packing up before the rain.

Then noticed....

Some pooling oil on the trailer and lots on my skidplate. Couldn't locate the source at the track, and the dipstick still showed it at the low end of the OK level, so wasn't really that much and shouldn't have caused any real issues I hope. Examination in my garage reveals its almost certainly the oil filter assembly gasket between it and the block - a known failure point on M50 engines (but one that's never failed for me previously). So I have a new gasket and o-rings on the way (and a new VANOS line, since that looks to be seeping a bit as well, and it's another known failure point. 

So I guess it was fortuitous I actually stopped early, since I almost certainly would have spit all the oil out trying to do 7 more runs. 

Hopefully we'll get our attendance numbers up, this year has been a bit depressing from that standpoint and not really enough to pay for the venues we use, I dont' think. A lot of the MR guys have broken cars, or other things going on and while more runs are sometimes fun, it's more fun to have a big turnout and a lot of friends to run against. The FWD classes are almost empty. They've never been huge in DC RX (but are in other regions) but we really need to do some recruiting.....because of all classes, there are more cheap-ass FWD cars on Marketplace than AWD or RWD, that's for sure. So we have about 2 month break for the mid-summer and I'll try to do some recruiting (and fix the car)..........

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

That suuuucks about all the breakage everywhere!

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

Glad to hear the oil issue was something common and not anything totally terrible. I also hope you're able to recruit more people, rallycross is a blast. My partner is actually buying a old rally car with his roommate soon, so I'll send him this thread. 

Paris Van Gorder said:

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

Glad to hear the oil issue was something common and not anything totally terrible. I also hope you're able to recruit more people, rallycross is a blast. My partner is actually buying a old rally car with his roommate soon, so I'll send him this thread. 

awesome. Yeah, got the parts in now I just have to actually do the work. It was 102 degrees today....:P

Well, finally got around to pulling off the alternator and other stuff to put a new gasket on the oil filter housing , which was puking oil at the end of the last event, as you may recall. It was a dirty, oily, messy job to say the least...

While in there I cleaned up everything as well as I could, and while looking around I noticed an issue area on the frame right at the rear end of where the front subframe bolts to it. Did a bit of wire-wheel and.....yeah, not good.

The frame runner there is cracked 75% up each side and across the bottom. Remember how I mentioned the car felt strange at the last event? Well I'd say there's a good chance the frame was actually flexing at the front on hard down-bumps.

So needless to say, I have more work to do. Will have to drop the subframe (loads of fun) and then see how bat it is, weld up the cracks, and plate all three sides. More on that once I get some of that done. Luckily no rallycross for almost 2 months, so I can wait until it's not 100 degrees.

Side note: the other side is fine. This side already had been weakened due to some rust long ago that I patched, but I think it hasn't been draining well (due to other factors I discovered) so a lot of wet mud packed in there. We'll see how bad it is once I cut it open a bit :/

Guess this isn't a big surprise on a 40-year-old car that's been beaten hard for the last 15 years. Happy I noticed it, that could have led to a major break at the next event :/

irish44j (Forum Supporter) said:

Guess this isn't a big surprise on a 40-year-old car that's been beaten hard for the last 15 years. Happy I noticed it, that could have led to a major break at the next event :/

You take care of her, she takes care of you. 

"Love. You can learn all the math in the 'Verse, but you take a boat in the air that you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turning of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she ought'a fall down. Tells you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens. Makes her a home."

-Malcolm Reynolds

Ok, so latest road trip. I headed up last weekend to the Susequehannock Forest Performance Rally (STPR). I've crewed for teams there a couple times, competed a few times (including a podium finish a few years ago in the e30), but never gone to just hang out/spectate. So I packed up the raider for camping and headed out for 5 hours of driving through VA/MD/PA to Wellsboro. Since our friends had an air bnb (competitors) I didn't bring ALL my camp gear this time, since I was only going to sleep in the Raider, but not camp-cook since there was a nice kitchen 50 ft. away. 

It's a fairly nice drive, and I managed almost 17mpg going up there, which is pretty great for this giant box.

Also, I turned 250,000 miles on it. Well, on this chassis. The engine came out of the other Blue Raider and was rebuilt, but it still counts!

There was some other good scenery on the way up too

I got there Thursday afternoon and went and found some of the cars in paddock (drivers were mostly out doing recce). You'll recognize some of these if you're on the GRM build forums...

Later in the evening there was the "Super Special Stage," which is basically a spectator rallycross and is always entertaining.

Then we headed to the house, made some dinner, hung out, and I headed out to camp outside in the yard. The "driveway" to the house was a nice little trail as well..

THe house was on a river and had a rickety old cable-car running across to another house, which Amanda "tried" for a minute lol

--

On Friday, I headed to Parc Expose to see some cars and rally friends

Then headed out to view some stages, and found a non-spectator hairpin where I shot vid of one of the best turns, with almost nobody else there (see Chris's BRZ thread for some of that). Also hung out in service with some other folks I've raced with for year, which was fun (but hot). 

Jim and Amanda finally showed up late in the day. Eventually we all ended up back at the house with everyone competing doing fairly well.

Unfortunately, Jim had a bit of an accident with a hatchet and his hand and had to go to the ER for stitches in the middle of the night. Something something about sucking at building campfires lol. But in the morning when I woke up the Tacoma was back, and Jim and Amanda asleep. Eventually we all headed out to the 2nd Parc Expose in downtown Wellsboro. More cars, more old faces, etc.

Alan (on the right) was the first guy I ever met at a stage rally a decade ago, still running the Orange Neon. That's Jim and Amanda on the left, of course. 

If you follow my rally car build, you know Ozgur (long-time rally codriver and built most of my roll cage), and if you follow the Raider stuff you definitely know Andy - who was runnign his pickup as "heavy sweep" for the rally.

Eric in the red you'll recognize from yeas of DC rallycross, and he was codriving for Dan, who has been here and there in my threads over the years too

And Andrew and Julia, who have a build on GRM as well (and who I crewed for at Sno_Drift last year)

I wasn't competing, so won't go into the rally itself too much other than it was fun to hang out and watch,

Andrew and Julia

Chris and Sara had the smallest "jump" of the day, trying not to break the car and pushing for the win

We searched out some of the old STPR stages we ran years ago in competition, and ran them in the Raider/Tacoma, visiting some cool little shops for ice cream and stuff. This one had an Audi 4000 and a VW camper in the back....wow.

And drove the roads along the "Pennsylvania Grand Canyon" 

At one point we caught up with some of our buddies in their Beetle rally car, for the best photo ever...

...and most of our friends did well, getting on the Podium. Chris and Sara were 4th overall and won RWD Limited class in the BRZ. Dan and Eric were 3rd (?) in NA AWD in the Subaru, and Andrew and Julia won NA AWD in the old Jon Kramer Impreza. So it was great to see them do well (and some other friends).

Late night, hung out at th ehouse...then off the next morning to drive home

Well, first a stop for breakfast with the whole gang

The Raider did fine on the trip, burned a bit of oil but overall no drama. The new sleeping platform worked well and was more comfortable than the old setup i the Raider. I do wish this truck had more power, but that's not gonna happen anytime soon.

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

Irish, it seems as though none of your photos are working on the website...

Recon1342 said:

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

Irish, it seems as though none of your photos are working on the website...

yeah IDK why, same text and photos I pasted into the Raider thread and they worked fine. In any case, re-copied it in and now they show :)

So back to the e30. Time to address the frame crack. It's pretty bad, goes basically up both sides and across the bottom just behind where the front subframe / engine cradle mounts. For some reason BMW has doubled reinforcing plates just forward of there, and just aft of there, and this crack is the 3-4" area where there's no doubled-up steel. Go figure :/  The inside of the rail is going to be tricky because it's right next to the fuel lines and brake lines and right below the fuel filter, so will have to see how I'm going to handle that area. The outside a bit less tricky but I'm too lazy to take off the brake line so let's work around that. I cleaned up the whole area good and then welded up the crack (no pics, it wasn't super-pretty) and then made a fishplate to bridge to the two reinforced areas. 

Sorry, E36 M3e photo there. The aluminum foil is to protect the brake line, btw. Anyhow, I bent the fishplate around the bottom and dropped the subframe a couple inches so I could have the extra strength at the corner. Should be fine. I'll note that there's a second internal frame above this one, so it's not like the car was going to break in half immediately, but still good to address this ASAP.  There are a few other areas in the wheel well that I need to touch up as well, but not worth taking photos of. 

Meanwhile, I happend to notice a small crack up on the metal below the corner of the windshield (on both sides). I already know what this is gonna lead to.....so took off the fender, and yep....

That's basically the outer cowl reinforcement, not attached to anything any more except the top edge. BMW thought it was sufficient to put a couple 1" weld beads on this, which probably was fine for a street car but not a rally car. So I welded up the whole crack, and using a good bit of persuasion hammer reattached the bottom and sides of the piece back to the unibody. This is not particularly thick metal, and it all has undercoating on the backside, so I spent plenty of time putting out little smoky fires and getting too much burn-through. My welding is fine for heavier stuff but still suck at lightweight sheet. I'm not going to pretend this is some awesome work - it's not. I may go back this winter and build a reinforcing plate for the whole area, we'll see. I just need to get the car through a couple rallycrosses.

Still have to open up the passenger fender, but I expect to see the same thing there, since it has the same crack up top where I can see it. However, I did check the passenger frame rail and it looks fine, no sign of cracking or damage (for now) so fingers crossed there. 

Seeing all this (and probably more areas I can't see) brings up a few things:

1. When I built the cage I definitely should have tied it into the front towers. I didn't do that because it meant a lot of creating moving of stuff around (including the fuse box) and some very difficult-to-access welding areas, but that may have helped the front of the car stay in one piece better.

2. This car is 41 years old now. Metal fatigue is a real thing, and this won't be the last of it, I'm certain of it. 

Since everyone was so excited over my last post, I checked out the passenger side. The frame rail on that side appears to be fine, no sign of any cracking or anything (thought it's a bit tempting to fishplate it "in case" but probably not...)

The cowl brace/structure though - same story as the driver's side. The original welds just broken off

Same deal with the area up toward the windshield....

And something different, just for fun. This is the upper rear wheelwell, under the battery tray....welp...I would actually say it looks better than it probably is.

That's a nice big 6"+ crack in the back of the wheel well, which is the upper footwell inside. No wonder it always gets a lot of water in there on wet days or when I was the car after an event. It's also broken/cracked up in the corner too, and under the battery tray. On the upside, it's just bare metal on the other side of all this and it's accessible, so shouldn't be TOO hard to fix. But still annoying. Looking at things, I think a lot of this has been like this for a good while, maybe years. Just finding it now because I'm actually LOOKING for it. Hopefully it's mostly limited to this front area - the rest of the car is caged so hopefully holding together better. This winter may have to do a deeper look at the whole car.

Anyhow, most of my weekends are booked up until the next (2-day) rallycross so will do what I can and just send it I guess...

Interesting on the rear wheelwell crack- E30s twisting the nose up is relatively common but I've never seen that one.  Wonder if it's related to your no-springs WM run a while back.

Welp, good info. I guess this means I should look my car over a lot more carefully than I ever have.  It's been a rally car for 25+ years with an almost full SCCA logbook, I'm likely to find something I'd rather not...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

Interesting on the rear wheelwell crack- E30s twisting the nose up is relatively common but I've never seen that one.  Wonder if it's related to your no-springs WM run a while back.

I need to improve my writing clarity lol. It's the upper rear side of the front passenger wheel well, under the stock battery tray (that you can see the underneath corner of in the pic) - so basically the codriver footwell area. 

The no-springs action in WM was for about 100 ft., so ulikely it did any permanent damage :)

well, most of the welding is done, at least all the structural stuff. Still have some cracks on the driver's floorboard (which was cut out and patched long, long ago when I first got the car) and up behind the pedals, but nothign that looks too bad. To keep dust and water out i liberally applied alumminum tape topped by gorilla tape, and will address those cracks this winter (will proabably need to take the pedals and seats out to get to the area more easily for welding. 

Other than that, took a bunch of stuff out of the car....not going to bother carrying all my rally gear for now. It helps settle the rear end down, but maybe just being a bit lighter will help more, who knows. 

I also found my long-missing 21mm short impact socket, trapped back behind the box that holds my tow strap. No idea how it got there, but ironic since we always joke about hiding a loose socket in Nick's M3 to throw him off his game (no, we'd never actually DO that). In any case, I expect that was the clunky noise that I've long-attributed to noisy spherical bearings in the rear suspension. And also, 21mm is my lug size for the Raider, and that's my only spare one. So it's good to have it back :)

Rallycross doubleheader this coming weekend at Panthera, so hopefully the weather is good and my driving is good. Looks like another sub-par turnout unfortunately (though MR should still have a good number), which is disappointing. We're having a tough time recruiting new folks, and some of the long-timers just aren't coming much any more (including several of the e30 guys), so IDK what the solution is there. I've tried some marketing on forums and such, like I did back when we first "built up" this MR class, but not really having much success - a shame since it's a great venue. But there's a LOT of competing motorsports in this area with DC SCCA autocross, four (five?) tracks at Summit Point, drift, etc....so maybe that's hurting things, IDK. 

Guess I'm a bit behind here.

So, first the Panthera doubleheader last month. On Day we ran the BIG course, including the lower loop that we haven't used in hears. This resulted in some seriously high-speed (and fun) racing, which also involved some pretty rough/high speed sections that got to the point later in the day that Mike Golden even just bagged it in the MR2, saying it was too rough and didn't want to break the car (he ended up breaking it on Day 2 instead....). When Mike is worried about his car, that's a rare thing... It was also pretty dusty. 

Anyhow, Day 1 went ok, though the car took some hard suspension hits, harder than usual, on some fast downhill off-camber stuff. I was pushing extra hard to try to catch Nick's m3 (what's new...). Long story short, I didn't catch him. He beat me by 16 seconds, but nobody was close behind me, so 2nd it is.... But at least my car matches Tyler's NASTRUCK. 

That night we did Mexican restaurant, camped out, drank some, etc...

Day 2 - on the back course, which is slower, but arguably even rougher. Again trying to catch Nick, so was throwing the car around pretty hard. After the last morning run I was working start, where I could see the car, and it looked odd, like it had excessive camber on the passenger side. So drove it down the mountain to the paddock for lunch, and directly pulled it up on my trailer ramps to check underneath, suspecting something bent. Nope, nothing bent. 

Just broken.

So that's the very bottom of my strut. Cracked over halfway around (and even my heavy gussets were starting to crack, and they were all that was holding it together). IDK when this happened, but I suspect it was on a brutally hard rut hit on Day 1, and probably got worse over the next several runs. So yeah, day over. That could have ended badly on the high-speed course where any rollover or major off-course could result in rolling down the hill......I was actually worried that strapping the car down on the trailer could actually put stress on it and it would break on the way home, so blocked up the car and dragged it home that way...

After getting home cleaned it all up and took a better look.

I initially suspected it was at the weld where the threaded coilover tube attaches to the remaining 3-4" of the OEM lower strut tube - but it's not (weld is where the red line is). The welds were fine. It was actually the original tube itself, below the weld. I guess 40 years of driving just eventually caused failure. Also that metal is thinner than the coilover tube, so I guess the weakest point always breaks first. Happy I put the gussets on...

I had a couple already-chopped e30 lower struts (some drift guy chopped them) to use to make a new one (or two). Except the coilover tubes I used were out of stock (and other UK vendors won't ship them to the US right now due to all the tariff stuff). So out of luck on getting new ones. Will have to chop and re-use the old one. Brian's docol welds took a lot of grinding to get flat, lol. 

So welded those back up, aligned as well as I could do it. I certainly don't trust my welding as much as Brian's but mitigated that by adding a full sleeve that goes 3-4" above and below the connecting weld (some DOM tubing, which I had to slightly split to get it on over the threads). So this should actually be substantially stronger than the way it was done before, and also takes the weaker OEM section out of the concern. It's not pretty, but it'll do. 

Added some even beefier gussets as well. 

So that's back together. I also pulled the drive's side one (no cracking) and added DOM tube sleeve there as well (had to split it in half to install, of course). 

While in there, noticed that my inner and outer control arm balljoints were woefully bad. I haven't changed them since the last stage rally a couple years ago, so not surprising. But a ton of slop. Time to replace all that...

I also replaced the inner and outer tie rods on both sides, which were possibly even more worn. This car is tired....but less tired now with all the suspensions stuff up front refreshed, all the broken unibody/frame stuff reinforced, etc. 

I also replaced the conical AEM air filter that I've used for a couple of years. I wash it after every event, but the mesh was starting to collapse and I don't think it was getting very good airflow even when totally clean. Couldn't get a new one in time for the next event so picked up some rando Amazon one that had similar dimensions, for the time being. 

So, ON TO THE NEXT EVENT

Last weekend at Summit Point was supposed to be a 2-day, but with heavy rain forcast for today they changed it to a single day (Saturday). 

Many of the usuals were there, and one newcomer (well not new driver, but newly-acquired vehicle).

If you've followed this thread for a long time, you may remember this Mighty Max from our very first stage rally in 2016, Black River stages. We started right behind it (IIRC). Most famous for having a bubble machine in the back that would leave bubbles all over the stage behind it...Anyhow, Jesse is bringing it back to life (and it completed the event, though didn't sound great by the end..). You can see his thread here on GRM about it though.

In the morning , the car felt FAST - like, more powerful than I can recall for a while (air filter, or the slight tweaking of the TB set screw I did?). It also felt borderline out of control, and I had to do a E36 M3load of normally-unnecessary steering to keep it on target. And really unstable under hard braking into corners. Somehow after clean 4 runs I was only 0.8 seconds behind Nick, in 2nd, even on what he described as a "power car course" (i.e. the M3). On the 5th run, the instability bit me, and I picked up 3 cones at three different corners (very unlike me). So for all intents and purposes, probably ended the competition being almost 7 seconds back. Nick doesn't hit cones, and doesn't make major mistakes. Hm. 

At lunch, looking at the car it was clear that whatever half-assed alignment I did in my garage when I put everything back together was really lousy. Clearly significant toe-out. That, combined with all the new/tight balljoints and steering stuff, no surprise the car was a handful. So got out my wrenches and dialed in zero toe as best I could (the old "look-down-the-tires" method).

Well, it worked. In the afternoon the car felt great. Like, the best it's felt in years. I also took passengers / visitors with me on every single run - and I always say this car feels better with someone in the codriver seat. And guess what? Of the seven afternoon runs I was the fastest in the class on six of them. And the one that Nick did beat me on  was by 2/10ths of a second. In the end, I closed the gap from 7-8 seconds at lunch down to 3 seconds. Not enough to catch Nick (who once again hit zero cones and no notable mistakes). But  it's a raw time win (which is worth nothing since the 3 cones in the morning cost me 6 seconds), but at least means I was driving fast. John Royer and Chris Helgesen, both good drivers also in e30s, were over 20 seconds behind me. I also had the fastest single run in the class.

So all in all, pretty happy with the car (other than some more oil and coolant leaking which is annoying AF and messing up my trailer deck but doesn't seem to be an issue otherwise). We have one more event in November. I'm sure my hard gravels will be great on the cold summit point clay, haha. Or I could pull out my 6-year-old snow tires on the bottlecap wheels, haha. 

Whoa- good catch on the strut crack.  Interesting how it seems like all of the metal fatigue kind of caught up at once, between the unibody and that.

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

more likely it's been catching up for years and I just didn't notice a lot of it before I started looking for it lol. I'm not at 10% your level when it comes to post-race inspections haha...

So the theory on those cracking/breaking is that the stock strut inserts went all the way down into the bottom and interfaced with the cast base. When you put a short strut in there with a spacer under it or weld it on top of the tube in your case you place a lot of extra stress on that tube that it wasn't designed to see. A fellow E28 track guy has broken many strut tubes like yours on track just from sticky tires and curb hits running spacers under shorter inserts.

When I welded up my current set of coilovers I fully boxed in the coilover tube to the spindle with 3/16" plate ground and bent into place, so far, so good. I'd look at your other side pretty closely and add some re-enforcement there as well.

(posting my amatuer welds on the internet, always risky lol)

In reply to adam525i :

Well that could have ended much worse, and your welding looks great. Send it.

In reply to adam525i :

yeah, I added a DOM tubing collar around the whole thing, welded to the spindle, and two gussets to the spindle as well. This is much stronger than the original setup (which was fine for a half-dozen stage rallies and about 50 rallycrosses on our rough courses). So should be good to go. I like your reinforcements though.