Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

[mista weava]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

I can't believe the work put into the previous shell was wasted.

[ColeJersey]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

Great Fab work.. keep going!

[Group4_Mark2]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

Welding is superb. I wish mine even looked remotely like this. Anyone willing to do a welding and fabrication tutorial with some videos

[Toymex]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

Stunning fab work ,i wish i could weld like that

[david_white]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

Brilliant work. Love the quality of fabrication and the amount of thought that goes into it. Those rear arms are works of art too.
Keep the updates coming..

[exboyracer]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

Fantastic work , love the handbrake

[headbolt]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

love the handbrake design proper thinking outside the box hope it works ok for you am sure other people may take up that idea

[martinpallot]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

long overdue update at last!

there has been progress - although not a massive amount on the shell itself - sneak peak at the new rear axle which is in hiding under the old shell - i would have taken a proper one but couldn't be bothered to pull the thing out. Its an e30 one with a custom blade type arb mounted under it, e30 arms with e34 inner and outer flanges, e46 300mm rear discs with and powerlite 4pot calipers with an internal handbrake mechanism



new diff to go in the axle - this was a bit of a nightmare - its an e28 m5 diff with an e46 m3 3.62 CW&P e28 LSD unit which I though would be easy to 4 plate - unfortunately the large case diffs don't have space to fit 4 plates in by simply machining 50 though off the end plate and omitting the spacer - this needed 3.5mm taken off the end plate and the inside of the basket - this meant that the oil channels needed machining back in too. The holes for the crown wheel bolts also needed taking out to 14mm for the m3 ring gear. all new bearings and seals, a lick of paint and a breather welded into the back plate and I should have a theoretically bullet proof diff. Got 4 porsche 930





I also needed to put a dome in the boot floor as the combination of raising the beam and the large diff meant there was a lot of interference - the brackets at the end of the diff bolt to the tubes through the boot floor to support the heavy bugger. I tied the front chassis mounts for the diff into a plate with a captive nut on the rear seat area where the brackets for the seat belts used to be.




Then added a bar into the cage which pics up on these - should stop he whole thing ripping the floor to pieces in the (hopefully) unlikely event of a diff failure



made a rather unconventional handbrake



Strengthened the front end a bit



bent up the anti roll bar and welded some brackets to hole the thing on



made the removeable front jacking points up



got hole of a rod of polyurethane - after much cursing managed to turn the thing into something resembling some engine mounts. These are to replace the the mk2 escort type ones I used previously. These are wider and harder so should cope with the weight of the s50 better. Now I need to make up some new plates for the motor and dummy fit it for welding together.



Pedal box now assembled - I had the front and rear suspension powdercoated and this was done at the same time.

Welded up the copious amounts of holes in the rear firewall too



Thats it for now - going to be taking a week off in February hopefully to get it all in paint - then it should fly!

[martinpallot]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

Some more progress....

Diff mounts done


front strut brace


cage and bulkhead


brackets and anchor points for the fuel tank, wheel well also plugged

[martinpallot]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

Progress report for the last week - cut the backstays out of the cage, they were heavy as fook, mounted on the arch tubs which have the structural integrity of plastic and the harness bars were in such a shite position that the harnesses would have pointed downwards towards the seat - big order of tubing on its way from custom cages. Also bought a tube notcher from demon tweeks - best hundred quid I ever spent!



Drawing some inspiration from the more upmarket safety devices cage I decided to make the backstays mount on the turrets but in a slightly neater fashion than chopping 2 big holes in the rear bulkhead so this is what I came up with, pictures speak for them themselves, you can also see the rear strut brace which ties to the boot floor and provides the diff mountings









All on captive nuts for easy fitting and should be as strong as an ox. Just need the tubing to arrive

[martinpallot]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

Got the rear seat area and the chassis members notched for the beam and rear arm reinforcing tubes - amazing how many issues moving the beam 40mm causes!







Also started planning how im going to tie the diff to the chassis, going to use use this alloy spacer between the beam and boot floor and weld a tube between the turrets going down to a reinforcement on the boot floor.



Its all going very slowly at the moment -these jobs seem to take forever!

[Graham]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

good stuff, i tried a beam that went really high up into the body, but found it was no good because the trailing arms were hard on the chassis rails, although you wont be running wheels as big as mine and thus might not be trying to get it as low on the suspension if you see what i mean

[martinpallot]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

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 :roll: 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.

[muckerbarry]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

Very clever stuff, and very tidy fabrication work, well done.

[martinpallot]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

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.