Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

[martinpallot]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

I started today feeling more like I was goin backwards than making any progress. There was a little bit of crust exposed wherw the sill meets the floor when we stripped off the rubbery crap, I prodded it with a screwdriver which exposed a small hole, nothing to worry about but thought i'd better check from the inside, when that was prodded it fell through :cry: so what started off as an innocent 1" long gash turned into this:



Set off plating the floor first



Then made a plate to reconstruct the rotten inner sill, dont ask how long this took



Welded in



Then put the patch work quilt of the outer sill back together. Starngely enough this was untouched, requiring only a bit of buffing off on the inside



Buffed off and you'd never know!



Now thats that's out the way, I can do some proper jobs tomorrow

[gringo!!]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

this is lush.. awesome fabrication work..

[gsexr]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

Some nice fabrication mate. I do like a beemer

[DanR]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

what a great project, really nice work there

[martinpallot]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

More progress made today. Chassis rails notched and plated up. Couldnt work out a decent way to brace it afterwards so just plated it with 3mm plate, should do the job.



Bit above the diff sorted.



This one is so subtle but very necessary. I'l give bragging rights to anyone who can guess whats been done and why?

[martinpallot]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

Today I made a start on dummy building the rear beam. First cut away the offending bracing



Then moved my attention to the beam support brackets. First I shortened the stainless tubes to mock it up, then chopped the brackets themselves. As you can see, this has effectively lowered the car 30mm without actually lowering the car, if you get my drift



Plated it in situ



then finished it off with a gusset



Because I made the mount for the e36 rear cover using the standard setup, these also need chopping. All dummy built now



tomorrow I'll notch the chssis legs to allow the outer arms more clearance. Hopefully thats the welding underneath finished!

[martinpallot]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

Today I put some primer on the bare metal and set about modifying the rear beam so it sits higher. I cut down the top of the beam tubes and bushes accordingly:


As you can see, this results in a favourable rise for the beam, easy fix.......



Erm, no, it now means the upper diff bracket thingy fouls on one of the rails running across the car, so the diff is effectively prohibited from goin about 10mm higher, will have to notch the rail and weld it up again, Also need to massage the rear seat area a bit more with the birmingham spanner as its rubbing atm.



To add to that the outer trailing arm mounts now sit up in the body shell and would subsequently foul on the chassis rails as the suspension travels. Theres a dimple in the rail there from the factory but this will also need to be made a fair bit bigger. See the second pic where you will be able to see what I mean.

On a better note, the mobile blaster should be coming in 2 weeks time to blast the engine bay, wheel tubs, interior and boot. After my adventures the other week doing it indoors I'd rather pay someone to do it outside then go through the ballache again :evil: Better get my arse into gear and get it ready!

[dobuy]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

stunning work, always loved these old Bimmers

[martinpallot]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

Today I spent the day filling the holes. As you can see there were millions of the damn things





Unfortunately the inside of the boot now looks like this :x Owel, at least it wont look like a piece of swiss cheese anymore when its painted.



The postman also came today and bought some goodies, not terribly exciting but its a bit of motivation



Tomorrow, Il shoot some primer on the bare metal to keep the tin worm at bay, then I need to roll it onto the other side to do the other arches and some bits which I couldnt get to when it was this way up.

[gorilla1q]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

Looking a great project you dont do things by halfs do you bud

A well sorted E30 when its back on the wheels

[martinpallot]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

Great project there, some lovely fabrication and some very nice parts going on it.

Are you not limited in terms of bulkhead mods etc or are the rules quite open?

Thanks

Under new regulations yes, you would be very limited in terms of what the MSA will issue a rally car logbook, apparently they now even frown upon Escorts without heater bubbles!

Because this is already logbooked before the new regulations come into full effect in 2012, I can just about slip through, although upon cusulting scrutineers I now cant run as a rally car in hllcimbs and sprints, instead I will be sports libre with rally cars as a sub class - whatever that means

[david_white]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

Great project there, some lovely fabrication and some very nice parts going on it.

Are you not limited in terms of bulkhead mods etc or are the rules quite open?

[martinpallot]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

Well, all this is taking much longer than expected, but the end of the worst part seems to be in sight. So far everything apart from the the offside arches has had the rubberised sealant removed, I had most of it in a bag and ther must have been at least 10 kilos of the stuff on the bits that I took off, not including the standard tunnel and floor which were already removed. The rear arches which were destined to keep the sealer originally had to be stripped after some prodding of the screwdriver found the dreases brow plague beginning to fester.

Unfortunately what removing the sealer exposed were some very crusty but not rotten areas over various bits of the car. Because of this every single bracket has been removed from the underneath and where sanblasting didnt clean up as much as I'd liked the areas have been cut out and will be plated. I also removed the standard rear spring perches as I will be making up some tunular adjustable rear arms. The centre of the rear seat area and areas of the rear floor have been panel beaten as high as possible to allow the prop and rear arm brackets not to foul as the beam will sit around 20mm higher.

So here is the car as it stands. You may be able to see the red circles around holes which were proviously for screws and now need welding up, as well as vaious bits around the seatbelt reinforecments that were too crusty. I sanblasted the whole bottom of the car as it was rusting extremely quickly in this damp wheather

[martinpallot]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

Managed to haul my arse into the garage for a couple of hours despite the bollocks weather were having atm. Dressed all the welds off after cutting into my thumb whilst attacking the seam sealer when my chisel slipped :oops: then spent an hour or so finishing the left hand footwell. Think im getting the hang of it now as its coming along faster than yesterday. I modified my scraper to have round sharp edges which has helped a lot. Im hoping itl be done in a weeks time and then I can finally get some primer on it.



I think im going to take it off everywhere apart from the rear arches. Mainly because the sealant is in really good nick round there and because the wheels are spinning most of the time so paint would get shitty even if I stonechipped them.



Also had a brainwave the other day. I had a tech1 sport sitting outisede which i remebered had a bilsteins and a lowering kit on it. The car is a proper rotter so I wasnt too excited until I pulled it apart. They look to have been replaced recently as they're spot on with the exception of the wiper seals in the retaining collars. Theyre solid compared to the FK's that were on the car which I was using with 600lb springs. As I was planning to use some longer springs and go for 450lb's due to adding a roll bar, I think I'l stick with these and see how they perform before I shell out for a new pair of shocks.

[martinpallot]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

Stripped the car down and rolled it on its side on a frame we made up. Started stripping the underseal off. whats the best way people have done this? The best way we have found so far it a heat gun and scraper at first then buff off with a wire wheel in the Grinder. It works but its painfully slow :cry: