Martin's rally car build - update 8/2/16

[martinpallot]

Geoff, it is indeed the elite box. I chose the standard ratios as these are available off the shelf should anything need replacing and they were fairly decent when coupled with the 4.45 diff. the ratios are 2.85, 2.00, 1.58, 1.27, 1.08, 0.96.

The sump behind/inside the crossmember was chosen primarily so that I could use the M3 evo twin scavenge pump (which I have yet to source and fit) and to give some protection too. Quite a few people have done on it on their rally cars now, the E34 sump is simply too vulnerable in comparison.

[Jhonno]

I have dual pickup sump and pickup going spare if you are interested..

[BEMER_LAND]

What are thoese top mounts like?
Tempted to get them as there cheap,

[Jhonno]

Tempted to get them as there cheap,

Brilliant reason to buy something..

[martinpallot]

What are thoese top mounts like?
Tempted to get them as there cheap,

Errrrrr....If you read what I say about them it should give you an idea of why they are cheap

[martinpallot]

I have dual pickup sump and pickup going spare if you are interested..

Thanks Jhonno, I would ordinarily snap something like this up but unfortunately I find myself floating on the job market atm so cash is being pumped into only life's essentials until my situation changes. Feel free to PM me a price in the meantime, if you still have it when I have an income then I'll definitely take it off yours hands

[GeoffBob]

Geoff, it is indeed the elite box. I chose the standard ratios as these are available off the shelf should anything need replacing and they were fairly decent when coupled with the 4.45 diff. the ratios are 2.85, 2.00, 1.58, 1.27, 1.08, 0.96.

OK, gotcha. Must be an IL300 with a 1:1 drop-gear then? In other words your gearbox includes three full gear clusters to give you 1st through 6th, and a drop-gear for fine tuning your ratios. Very nice indeed! That really is the way to do it. Sadly, my 4th gear is fixed at 1:1 (spigot shaft locks to output shaft) so I don’t have this freedom. To fine tune my ratios I would have to rework all my other ratios around my 1:1 4th, and/or change the final drive ratio (which offers coarse adjustment only). I suspect that in future you’ll come to realise just how handy that drop-gear can be. All other sets of ratios (horizontal lines) listed in the second table here are accessible to you by changing the drop gear only. How handy is that! I’d say that was 6K well spent Martin.

How high do you plan to typically rev your engine before shifting up and what size tyres will you be using on your drive-wheels?

[BEMER_LAND]

What are thoese top mounts like?
Tempted to get them as there cheap,

Errrrrr....If you read what I say about them it should give you an idea of why they are cheap

Missed that bit

[martinpallot]

The drop gears were part of the reason I bought it Geoff, hopefully it proves its worth!

Car now stripped and on the spit, what a dodgy mission getting the shell on it was! Adjusted the balance point so it spins nice and free all the way through 360 degrees

[martinpallot]

[quote="GeoffBob'']How high do you plan to typically rev your engine before shifting up and what size tyres will you be using on your drive-wheels?[/quote]

Engine revs to 8k, box should be OK on changes at that rpm, relistically I'll be changing at 7,800. Tyres are 200 580 15's. Im limited to 8'' width by MSA rules which makes it a bit tricky putting 300 horses on the road. Decent ratios should help make it more driveable though.

[Demlotcrew]

Errrrrr.....you must be flash gordon to shift at 7.8k when the red line is at 8k!

[martinpallot]

Spent all day yesterday making one of these:



So that I could make one of these:



To fill this:



Voila!



Just wish I had made one earlier, makes things so much easier and more professional looking!

[ross_jsy]

Looking good Martin. Much happening with your other shell?

Was told the new regs didn't allow tunnel modifications? Must have been misinformed

[martinpallot]

The tunnel isnt allowed to be re-made like one would in an escort, but it can be modified to accomodate a gearbox which is what i've done. Nothing going on with the other shell, just sitting in the shed under a cover.

Got the tunnel finished by filling in the piece at the rear and trimming it all up underneath. Because the elite box is so long and the output flange is a good 8 inches further back that the standard one, its a bit close for comfort at the back in terms of prop guibo to tunnel clearance hence why I've made it so long.





Should get the morning on it tomorrow so I plan on sorting the bulkhead with a strengthening plate and captive nuts for the new steering column location

[martinpallot]

Got the bulkhead and the engine mounts done today, I cut out more that was needed from the bulkhead as when trial fitting the engine I found that I had to dress the area above the tunnel quite a but to clear the LHD water rail that runs round the back of the head. As the metal had been worked quite a lot and was very thin It made sense to form a 1.2 mm plate to shape and patch it in. This got rid of the holes from the original pedal box and steering column too so looks neater I think. Got the engine mounts moved back and inch and slotted the holes downwards slightly as the motor was a little higher than it needed to be. This way everything should be nice and snug.



View from the inside

[martinpallot]

Had a productive weekend and some evenings in the week so got a few things done. I'm going to 5 stud suspension so have been preparing the car accordingly, ive bought some 118d rear flanges which use the same bearing ID as a standard e30 325 flange. I also got some wilwood 4 pots for the rear with an intergrated handbrake mechanism and some 294mm vented e46 rear discs which I'll use for the rear. Ive stripped down some standard e30 arms which ill strengthen as per the early group A arms.



Got hold of some e36 m3 bilsteins which are 53mm diameter, had these machined down and welded some 50mm adjustable collars on them.



Had a bit of a dilemma with top mounts, mainly due to compbrake being utterly useless to speak to in terms of advice. In the end I bought some 90mm Citroen C2 R2 rose jointed ones and had some top hat spacers made up to suit the bilstein struts. I made a filler plate to TIG into the standard strut top hole seamlessly and added some slotted holes for adjustment, I'll make a thinner plate to weld on top of this to play safe.
Because the top mounts are nice and small this gives plenty of room for them to be adjusted and I havnt lost any travel as per the usual 2 piece off the shelf mounts that fulfil this purpose.





Finnally I made a start on chopping about the crossmember yet again. I will be making adjustable arms with a bit of posher design than my previous effort. I've had some steel sleeves made up to house a standard outer balljoint and the rest will be 32mm CDS. with a compression strut and polybushed connection between the two.

I added 2 settings - 1 for gravel use should I ever choose to use it where I need the car very to have plenty of ground clearance, this is the standard position of inner balljoint, the other one is an inch higher up for when I want it low for tarmac. I'm going to make the lollipop end adjustable too so that I dont get any funny handling characteristics switching between the 2. The rack mounts will also need revising to be adjustable to correct bump steer issues. Once this is don,eI will make a jig off this crossmember so that I can knock one up with much less fuss.

[Rallyprep_UK]

Good effort ! I have plans of a similar kind re: the crossmember so this is very interesting to compare !

[martinpallot]

Had a good few productive evenings in the garage and got the crossmember T.C.A brackets done, aswell as the replacements for the lollipop brackets. These are dive adjustable to compensate for the raised rollcentre of the TCA's - just need to make up some spacers later on. I have a feeling I may need to notch the inner edge of the chassis legs ever so slightly to make room for the chunky compression struts on full bump but will see when its all dummy built.





There's a 12mm ID CDS tube welded through the chassis leg make sure to make sure the brackets are super stiff



Started on the TCA's, just need the brackets for the compression struts making and welding on. Ive decided not to rubber mount the compression strut to the TCA out of fear it may feel a a little loose, just waiting on some 16mm ID CDS and ive got everything I need to finish these off.

[Jhonno]

Impressive work Martin!!

[martinpallot]

First bottom arm done, ended up bushing the compression strut, memories of the crashing and banging over pot holes from the ones I made for the old car prompted it. These look tough enough to survive a nuclear blast. Just need to make the other one and the tube to be delivered so I can make the spacers for the rose joints. I have also finally found a new big workshop which I will be moving a lot of my stuff into next weekend. The plan is to get the underseal stripped off this car and the rest of the fabrication done in my garage at home, then prep it and paint it up at the new shed. (there is a bodyshop next door which rents out their spray booth and oven at weekends so may take an advantage if this)

In the meantime I also aquired a rather tasty M3 bodykit. I wasnt sure at the beginning but Im now pretty sure that It will make it onto this car too so that needs doing aswell........ More bloody work oh well, it will be worth it in the end!

[rix313]

Fantastic

[e21Jason]

How did you fab the cup for the ball joint is it splined or are you using a different ball joint. Worl looks the mutts nuts by the way.

[martinpallot]

Cheers. They're just turned from some en19 billet- no splines. Took 9 tonnes to get them in so doubt they're going to budge but time will tell!

[ross_jsy]

How are you an accountant Martin? Very impressive!

[Mikey_Boy]

This is really awesome stuff!!

[martinpallot]

Front suspension is now all complete, have made all the spacers for the adjustable roll centre aswell as the rack mounting tabs to bring it back into line with everything else and allow it to be moved up an down together with the control arm pick up points, steering coupling joint also done.

I had to make some camber shims for the king pins to get a bit more negative camber You can tell that the e36 geometry is hard to package into an e30 in a way for it to work as it should. I also got my reinforced rear arms done. Next step is the rear beam and the anti roll bar mounts, then its time to send everything off for powdercoating and crack on with the shell.

[Demlotcrew]

Will you be running a custom fuel tank and rear anti roll bar?

[Karan]

Cool stuffs, do those arms you have made for the front affect you steering lock at all?

[Demlotcrew]

Of course dude, it will have a massive effect on the total lock possible.

[martinpallot]

MK2 escort tank in the boot and will make provision for a blade type roll bar on the rear. Not sure If I will run it except for flat surfaces.

The effect of the compression struts on lock is absolutely minimal, of course if I was running huge wheels it would be different. Generally if you need that much lock to do anything other than drifting your going to have bigger problems on a rally stage!

[Karan]

MK2 escort tank in the boot and will make provision for a blade type roll bar on the rear. Not sure If I will run it except for flat surfaces.

The effect of the compression struts on lock is absolutely minimal, of course if I was running huge wheels it would be different. Generally if you need that much lock to do anything other than drifting your going to have bigger problems on a rally stage!

Don't quite get your response....

So you still have good clearance between the back of your wheel and the new compression arm you have made when on lock?

[Demlotcrew]

At a guess, the loss of lock depending on wheel size could be anything from 25-30mm per side.

[martinpallot]

With 8x16's et25 and 200 610 16 tyres the wheel hits the touches the compression strut about 10mm before the tyre hits the chassis leg, will need some lock limiting tabs making up

[Karan]

Oh that's good!

[martinpallot]

Frustrating day in the garage today more than anything, rear arms were dropped off from the powdercoaters. these were an experiment to see if im happy with the finish. Im chuffed with how they turned out. The problem came when I went to press the e30 325 bearings in - they were clearly too big. The arms came off a facelift 325i so I immediately thought I had the wrong bearings. however once I measured the bearings and the hubs with the verniers I realised I appeared to have 323i trailing arms. The good thing was that I could still go five stud with these as they use the same bearings as e36 compacts, the annoying thing is that I couldnt use the brand new genuine 1 series drive flanges and bearings that I bought. This meant I had to piss 200 quid up the wall to buy compact bearings and some compact drive flanges Moral of this story is measure your bearings before you start spending money on your arms!!!



Over the weekend I modded the rear beam. lifted it almost 40mm up to correct the rollcentres, this brought about the usual problems of the diff carrier, top of the beam and trailing arm brackets hitting the body. will need a combination of panel beating and chopping and welding to rectify. I also ordered high tensile bolts to chassis mount the diff so this is tomorrows job





Chopped the spare wheel well out as I was going to fit a flat floor anyway and because it made the next job easier. I cut out the turrets and made some new ones, wanted them to look fairly standard which I think they do. They are 35 mm higher than standard , will get some 2 way avos made with rose joints top and bottom.







I'm Not happy with the rear cage legs for two seasons, they mount on the arch tubs which is very flimsy and the position of the harness bar is such that the harnesses point upwards with the seats in their current position, will get some roll cage tubing ordered and re-do them to pick up at the turrets.