Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

[martinpallot]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

Its been a while but had my first day in the garage in months, finally finished the spit I was making, its adjustable so that I can move the balance point when I dummy fit parts on to compensate for the weight. Not sure how well it'll work yet but I'll soon see.





Large hole caused by fat gearbox, need to make a folder so that I can patch this up neatly as possible.



Moved the steering column over to bring it in line with the pedals and to help the exhaust manifold a bit. Its also been moved more towards horizontal to allow the floor mounted pedal box to work better. Drivers seat is about an inch away from the rear seat bench so pretty far back. Whilst on this subject, I was told by a local scrutineer that new reg's state that the original brake pedal must be used. My polite reply to this was that if anyone says anything to me about it at scrutineering the can go f*&ck themselves......nothing more was said on the matter.




Turrets sort of tied into the cage for a little piece of mind. engine has a good inch available to go further back, once the motor is back out I'll shift the tabs for the mounts a bit further back.




The X member from the old shell pre bulkhead mods has been chopped about a bit and re-used.



New design for the gearbox X member, uses standard S50 rubber mounts and should protect the sump plug which is a little exposed. It also picks up at both the main casing and the tail casing so less stress for the box over jumps (if I ever drive that fast!)



Hopefully it'll be stripped down and in the air soon.

[exboyracer]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

Nice to see you cracking on with it

[martinpallot]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

Got the car stripped down again last night and the shell is now on the spit after using many crazy and sometimes dangerous methods to lift it high enough. the adjustable balance point has worked out well and it spins freely through 360 degrees.

[martinpallot]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

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!

[Graham]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

some good progress there , so under rally regs you cant cut the bulkhead but you can cut the tunnel/floor??????????

[martinpallot]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

some good progress there , so under rally regs you cant cut the bulkhead but you can cut the tunnel/floor??????????

Yep, silly isnt it! apparantly im on the limit with what ive done here. I can cut the top off the tunnel like I have done and modify it, but I wouldnt be allowed to cut the sides out and remake the whole thing like you would in say an escort. On the other hand, I'm kind of glad that there's some sort of restriction on it as it keeps me going too wild with the grinder and welder!

[martinpallot]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

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]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

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.

[martinpallot]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

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, I will make a jig off this crossmember so that I can knock one up with much less fuss.

[exboyracer]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

Nice work!

[martinpallot]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

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.

[martinpallot]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

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!

[Graham]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

some nice working going on there, im watching closely!

[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.

[muckerbarry]

Re: Jersey E30 rally car rebuild

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