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

Car will be like 10lb lighter now too

"The grass is always greener"...  this time with respect to wheel bearings.  I have tapered bearings that you have to adjust, and leave a little loose, and I am jealous of your preloaded bearings every time I go to a Detroit event and they say "YOUR WHEEL BEARINGS ARE LOOSE I CAN WIGGLE THEM" and I am like, well yeah, if they did not have play, they would burn up.

OTOH I think I repacked the bearings in 2009 when I converted the front suspension, and that is all the attention I have ever paid them...

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

Car will be like 10lb lighter now too

 

"The grass is always greener"...  this time with respect to wheel bearings.  I have tapered bearings that you have to adjust, and leave a little loose, and I am jealous of your preloaded bearings every time I go to a Detroit event and they say "YOUR WHEEL BEARINGS ARE LOOSE I CAN WIGGLE THEM" and I am like, well yeah, if they did not have play, they would burn up.

 

OTOH I think I repacked the bearings in 2009 when I converted the front suspension, and that is all the attention I have ever paid them...

yeah, I have those on the Porsche, so i know what you're talking about. That said, the Porsche tapered bearings must be designed better than the RX7, because tightened to spec, there is virtually no play at all in them. 

I'm pretty sure my e30 front bearings were woefully shot at the last event I attended. But there's something about having a stage rally car that makes rallycross tech people not really look very closely at much of anything lol...

I did also finally take off my little trailer hitch, since I no longer have the tire trailer. So that actually is about 7-8lbs of weight off the far rear end...

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

I have only messed with a 944 once, and please do not be insulted by my way of putting it:  By my recollection, the 944 has a spindle nut with a pinchbolt, like an aircooled VW.  So you can adjust the bearing to Germanic perfection and lock the nut down with the pinch bolt, wherever that may be.

Mazda uses a castellated nut arrangement like the rest of the known universe does, so you tighten it down to maximum acceptable preload, then back it off until you can stick a cotter pin in a hole through the nut.  At which point it is loose.

Yep, exactly right, and it's truly brilliant. It's truly a joy not having to deal with stupid castle nuts. Why the rest of the universe didn't do it the way Porsche did is beyond me (obviously to save $5 in pinch nut cost)..... 

I think VW only did it that way so they could drive the speedometer cable from one of the bearing caps.  Can't do that with a cotter pin in the way.

In the Ford Escort Bible, they describe how to drill a hole through the spindle so you can run your Halda's drive cable through it and drive it off of the bearing cap.  They even call out to use a right side VW spindle nut.  Awfully convenient that Ford used the same thread diameter and pitch.

Yeah, the Porsche has the speedo cable there as well. 

Did the other side hub/bearing today, which was the "worse" side. This thing rumbled like a freight train even just spinning it by hand with the brakes removed. Immediately I noticed what probably killed this one: The dust cap was missing. Since they're sunk way in from the wheels, not easy to notice this unless you're looking for it, but I'm betting it departed during STPR last year at some point and somehow I just didn't notice (probably because on the rears you can actually see the hub nut and there is no dust cap since they're sealed bearings, so I didn't think about it).

Anyhow, once off it was pretty clear that mud had gotten right in, since the front bearings are only sealed on the backside, and open on the frontside. Why BMW did it that way is beyond me, but whatever...

So yeah, pretty nasty:

This is what a new one looks like - the ball bearings are open to the elements in the front...

So got that all wrapped up before another torrential downpour. It poured last night and the car continues to leak in a few small spots up front, so I tried to address those today with some silicone. Also repainted the bumpers with bedliner (which is my new favorite go-to for painting stuff that sees a lot of contact). And some other cosmetic touch-ups, since I have nothing better to do.

Gettin wet..

SOFR looks like it will happen, but as I noted previously, we're going to shoot for STPR instead. Ohio is only going to be a LOOOONG one-day event (like 8am to 3am, I hear....) with no parc, no after-party, etc. So that's kind of a long trip for one day of rally and no other peripheral stuff. Hopefully COVID restrictions have died down a bit by STPR in September. 

With nothing else to do around the house, I've been getting more annoyed with how ratty this car looks. "back in the day" I spent a lot of time doing cosmetic stuff, and then redoing it, etc. For the last couple years I've just kind of let it go and worked on other stuff. But now plenty of time.

So today I cleaned up the rockers and hit them with bedliner (also the leading edge of the rear wheel arch that gets sandblasted easily). Then did the bottom halfs of the doors in straight black, since it gets torn up with rally sponsor stickers comign on and off, so tired of having a "pattern there."

Then, 9 years after I did the original black-on-black door stripes, finally went ahead and made them match the rest of the car.....

So, I think that looks a bit better. The door paint was so dinged up, scratched, rust spots.....just had to.

Because if you're gonna be middle-of-the-pack at rally, might as well look good doing it :)

Oh also, I tuned up my wife's mountain bike, and then while testing at a higher-than-needed speed in our street, I tried to do a hard-lean circle of the cul-de-sac and hit some gravel washed there from yesterday's big storm, and wiped out hard.....drilled my hip and have a giant bruise there, scraped up my arm, a few other cuts. So, that was stupid. And I scuffed up her seat...

You needed more gin in your bloodstream?  

I biffed hard on (well, off) Evan's bike and all I got was giggles

after replacing a hose spigot and doing some other stuff, got the car up on ramps to check out a few things and to re-install a "stinger" of sorts off teh skidplate. It's not really a skid plate as much as a splash/mud/gravel guard for the transmission/driveshaft (HDPE). 

The 80s gang all together

And Jason swung by to drop off a nice shelf unit since he's once again trying to de-clutter his garage, so I had to find a way to make it fit, which of course required doing a bit of "construction" and rearranging, which led to actually cleaning up the messy garage all evening...

I know, not that exciting  but whatever.

While looking at the skidplate yesterday I was thinking about airflow. This car tends to get front-end lift to some degree at higher speeds, or at least it feels like it. The missing front air dam added to the big skidplate probably isn't helpful. And I looked up on a shelf and saw an old Thule roof rack fairing.

So....there's a nice little angled lip above the skidplate that the OEM plastic valence attached to. Well, a few holes and a few bolts and now this thing is there. We'll see if it does anything, this is more of a test idea out of curiosity. At worst, i figure it'll direct more air into the radiator. At best, maybe it gives some downforce up front.

Hard to see in the photo, but it just overlaps the front lip of the skidplate, so it's pretty high off the ground and shouldn't have any problems with hitting stuff....

irish44j (Forum Supporter) said:

While looking at the skidplate yesterday I was thinking about airflow. This car tends to get front-end lift to some degree at higher speeds, or at least it feels like it. The missing front air dam added to the big skidplate probably isn't helpful. And I looked up on a shelf and saw an old Thule roof rack fairing.

So....there's a nice little angled lip above the skidplate that the OEM plastic valence attached to. Well, a few holes and a few bolts and now this thing is there. We'll see if it does anything, this is more of a test idea out of curiosity. At worst, i figure it'll direct more air into the radiator. At best, maybe it gives some downforce up front.

Hard to see in the photo, but it just overlaps the front lip of the skidplate, so it's pretty high off the ground and shouldn't have any problems with hitting stuff....

 

I'm betting this will make a huge difference on the airflow to the radiator.  My Impala SS had a 1.25" deflector at a similar pitch.  When removed, the temperature flirted with overheating during spirited driving.  With it installed, I never logged temps more than 5 deg more than the thermostat temp.

I feel like it's somewhere buried in your thread but do you have a run down of all the storage you've packed into your garage?

I am, at the same time, upgrading my home garage space significantly but overall downsizing my total garage space because I'm leaving the shop I rent and I'm going to need as many creative storage ideas as possible while leaving work space.

FooBag (Forum Supporter) said:

irish44j (Forum Supporter) said:

While looking at the skidplate yesterday I was thinking about airflow. This car tends to get front-end lift to some degree at higher speeds, or at least it feels like it. The missing front air dam added to the big skidplate probably isn't helpful. And I looked up on a shelf and saw an old Thule roof rack fairing.

So....there's a nice little angled lip above the skidplate that the OEM plastic valence attached to. Well, a few holes and a few bolts and now this thing is there. We'll see if it does anything, this is more of a test idea out of curiosity. At worst, i figure it'll direct more air into the radiator. At best, maybe it gives some downforce up front.

Hard to see in the photo, but it just overlaps the front lip of the skidplate, so it's pretty high off the ground and shouldn't have any problems with hitting stuff....

 

I'm betting this will make a huge difference on the airflow to the radiator.  My Impala SS had a 1.25" deflector at a similar pitch.  When removed, the temperature flirted with overheating during spirited driving.  With it installed, I never logged temps more than 5 deg more than the thermostat temp.

I haven't had any overheating issues with this car, but it does generally run about 5 degrees warmer than I'd like it to (though that's assuming the gauge is accurate). But, at very least it shouldn't hurt anything to try!

AxeHealey said:

I feel like it's somewhere buried in your thread but do you have a run down of all the storage you've packed into your garage?

I am, at the same time, upgrading my home garage space significantly but overall downsizing my total garage space because I'm leaving the shop I rent and I'm going to need as many creative storage ideas as possible while leaving work space.

oh man....lol.

I do have a thread on the garage journal forum, but haven't updated it in some time: https://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=198129

Anyhow, just went out and took some pics so I'll just post them right here and go over some of the things I like and what my process has been, to some degree. Please excuse it being a bit messy, usually I'd clean up before posting pics of it lol. So, it's a 20x20 garage (or maybe a tad larger). I do have to have kids bikes and stuff in there, so it can still fit two cars if I take those out and my rolling workbench, but I almost never have 2 cars inside. Luckily, I do have a 20x10 shed out back so I can put large parts (hoods, doors, other big spares) and all "house and yard" stuff there, to avoid having it in my main garage.

One key it to put big, odd-shaped stuff someplace else. like engine hoist. The green job box holds some big stuff like spare radiators and such.

So the garage. The right side is my "working bay" in general. Has shelving at about 6' tall and 24" deep along the side, suppported by 4x4 posts. It's made specifically to fit pre-planned items, like the old kitchen cabinets I hung below it and exact fit for the Home Depot bins of various sizes. Also has a fold-down small workbench that I rarely use. The bins have spare parts for all my car projects except the e30 (raider, sequioa, porsche),and other stuff. 

At the back of that side, I have a shop sink and more old kitchen cabinets

Across the back wall is my big steel workbench (an old sound-table base from a music studio) and a second workbench made of an old industrial kitchen counter (stainless steel). Above them built-to-fit another high shelf supported by 4x4s, primarily for holding all my tires, plus air compressor reel and some other stuff.

Under the big workbench is an old cabinet and a rolling tool cart that holds my power tools (saws, grinders, etc) and other things that I need power for.

The jars are an old trick from my grandfather, and worked well when my kids were babies so I got free jars. I've broken enough that I only have one spare left. Some guys use old coffee cans, or (preferably) clear plastic jars. they hold various hardware, all sorted.

Under the left side bench I have a beer fridge and a small compressor, and more storage

Overhead is a narrow shelf running the full 20 feet front to back of the garage. It's only 12" wide, made of 2x4s. On that are walmart storage containers for various stuff that isn't too heavy (wiring, small tools. paint brushes, etc etc). It's at about 6 1/2' up, so out of the way but low enough to reach up and get stuff. This is stuff I use fairly frequenly so want good access.

left wall toward the back benches are some self-built shelves and just enough space to put my welding cart, and my big toolchest.

4x4-supported shelves over all that as well. High shelves are the biggest space-saver in a garage, even with a standard overhead height like mine (9' i think)

Left side toward the front are more old kitchen cabinets full of car maintenance stuff,, small spare parts, etc. with shelves under them that hold all my racing gear and stuff. Cabinet by the left garage door holds paint and other flammables.

Over the left bay is an overhead shelf about 3' wide running over the front end, just for low-profile stuff (HDPE sheets, roof racks, etc)

recently added this shelf right behind the center post between the garage doors. It hold jackstands, some racing gear, and my wife's gardening equipement.

In the middle of the left bay is a rolling workbench made of wood, with room for 6 large home depot bins (almost all my e30 spare parts and race spares). It's useful for projects and I can roll it out of the garage easily if I need the bay for a car or something. It's also a "dividing line" for where the kids' bikes cannot pass lol

Things I dislike: 

- my lighting is not as good as I'd like it, not even close

- electrical is all on the back wall, with one remote outlet via extension cord near the front door. If I was starting from scratch, I'd put 110 outlets on all four corners and from the overhead, plus a couple 220 outlets.

- I hate the floor, but am too lazy to make it pretty with epoxy or tiles or whatever.

- I want a second full-height cabinet like the one in there now, this one for fluids, oil, and stuff like that which is currently stashed in side cabinets that in some cases don't fit them correctly. 

I move stuff around constantly. My buddy brought me the new shelf yesterday and I spent 3 hours rearranging stuff to make it fit. I'm contantly adding, improving, and making things fit better - and organizing stuff. I spend as much time working on the garage as I do on the cars, honestly. It's like its own hobby that usuall involves building stuff with lumber and plywood and painting things. Almost all the shelves and storage are wood, just painted black to look cooler :)

So, hope that (and the GJ thread) give you some ideas. Feel free to ask about things you see. There are a hundred little detail things meant to fit specific things in places I use them most, but it's really just a matter of constantly tweaking and refining things to make it all fit. And also constant cleaning up messes I make lol. 

Advice: use standard-size storage things: The Home Depot black and yellow bins are tough and cheap and stackable, and are my go-to for all heavy stuff. Most of my large shelves are the exact right height to fit two of them on top of each other. Then I use the same couple of designs of smaller storage bins from walmart in various places. If you keep it standardized, everything fits better. 

I also have a proprane "jet" heater for really cold days out there, plus a smaller electric bench-top heater. The garage is "in house" under two bedrooms so it is somewhat insulated. I insulated the doors and that made a big difference. 

Hope you never have an earthquake 

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

Wow! Can't thank you enough for that detailed rundown. I've got the GJ thread pulled up as well. 

Electrical is high on my priority list on the extension of my garage as there is literally only one outlet and even the garage door is powered by an extension cord. Luckily there is a panel out there with plenty of open spots.

I think I'll be able to utilize full height shelves in a number of places (where cars aren't) but I also love the idea of that shelf that spans the depth of your garage in the middle. I can easily identify a number of places in my setup where that would work width-wise. 

I've got a jet heater as well - I've typically only used it when the outside temp is in the teens. There are vents running into the garage, however, when we had the AC on a few days ago, nothing appeared to be coming out there so maybe they're blocked off.

Thanks!

Now on GRM CRIBS!   

Here we are at IRISH44J's crib.....decorated in post-apocalypse/current pandemic style.

Here's where the MAGIC happens!

Notice the dedicated attention to dense pack hoarding and creative trash day re-use methods.

Clearly a high level of tool collection.....

A serious Grassroots Motorsports athlete.

Who's next on GRM CRIBS?

I am going to have to save this somewhere for inspiration. My garage appears to be about the same setup as yours, 20x20, 9 foot ceiling, 2 doors. I came from a one door 18x20 with an 11 foot ceiling, and the first things I noticed after the change were how close to the wall I was forced to park and that I couldn't fit anything in the space above the garage door. After seeing some of your solutions I am now confident that there is a way to make my space work :)

Although it looks like you don't have to deal with a furnace or water heater taking up space. Attic/basement?

Justjim75 said:

Hope you never have an earthquake 

We've had one or two over the years, but everything is overbuilt in there....only thing that could really fall is the glass jars (which happens anyhow randomly if I don't screw them in tight enoug). 

bOttOmfeeder said:

Now on GRM CRIBS!   

Here we are at IRISH44J's crib.....decorated in post-apocalypse/current pandemic style.

Here's where the MAGIC happens!

Notice the dedicated attention to dense pack hoarding and creative trash day re-use methods.

Clearly a high level of tool collection.....

A serious Grassroots Motorsports athlete.

Who's next on GRM CRIBS?

lol. hey now, I've never taken anything out of the trash! All the cabinets came from a buddy's kitchen remodel and they're all good and solid. They looked a lot nicer 10 years ago when I put them in :)

ValourUnbound said:

I am going to have to save this somewhere for inspiration. My garage appears to be about the same setup as yours, 20x20, 9 foot ceiling, 2 doors. I came from a one door 18x20 with an 11 foot ceiling, and the first things I noticed after the change were how close to the wall I was forced to park and that I couldn't fit anything in the space above the garage door. After seeing some of your solutions I am now confident that there is a way to make my space work :)

Although it looks like you don't have to deal with a furnace or water heater taking up space. Attic/basement?

Yeah, we have a finished basement with a separate utility room for all that. Plus two attics (one is my wife's giant walk-in closet and the other one at the top of the house isn't really used for anything at all, it's empty. 

The wife basically has limited "my" stuff to the garage and shed. When we moved in the deal was she got half the garage to park, but as her cars kept getting bigger (Jetta --> Mazda3 --> 4Runner --> Sequoia --> CX-9) that pretty much ended, especially when she backed the 4Runner out before the door was totally up and did some damage to the door. I think after that she decided to just park in the driveay and gave up on trying to claim any part of the garage :)

Basically, I'm not allowed to really have any of my stuff in the actual house, at least nothing that has to do with cars, tools, racing, etc. Which is fine by me but means I have to find space for everything in the garage. 

Jumping back to the Porsche today - since I built this car it's always had a very slow leak from the PS pump (which i totally rebuilt). Like, 1-2 drips per day in the driveway. While working on the Raider and rally car I just kind of tolerated it, but with all this free time decided to fix it today, since I have  a full PS pump seal kit here (e30 uses the same kit). 

I initially was just going to rebuild my spare one in advance, but it had a broken-off bolt in one of the threaded holes for some reason so didn't feel like dealing with that. So off the car came the one there, which works fine just has that little drip.

Having looked many times, I was never able to determine exactly where the drip was coming from, other than "top half" - definitely not from either of the banjo fittings and didn't seem to be coming from the case itself, so assumed it must be the shaft seal for the pulley (which was also replaced 1000 miles ago). So took it all apart and everything looked fine, no sign of the main O-ring on the case leaking so must be the shaft seal. So I replaced that one, reassembled, and put it back on the car, then drove around the block.

Got back, and STILL leaking slowly. WTF. Took it apart again, everything looked fine. Put a very thin layer of RTV outside the big o-ring just in case it was somehow getting through there. This time it was apparent the leak was not from the shaft seal, since no fluid was in that vicinity. So put it back together again and tightened the case a bit more this time (just box-end wrench, nothing big) to make sure the RTV sealed. And you know where this is going....

Pulled back out of the driveway after refilling the fluid....again... but this time it didn't seem to be bleeding as it had the prior two times, so i was getting a groan from the pump. Figured I'd drive up the street and maybe the air would work its way out. Drove up the street a block or two and came back and coming back onto my road I saw this, tracing the curvy track I drove leaving my house:

and drove directly back up onto the ramps, and immediately saw this:

So I was like WTF.....how could the leak have gotten bigger? Note that i's very difficult to see most of the top of the pump while in the car, since the mount bracket and other stuff is in the way. But there's nothing ON the top of the pump to see other than the seam of the case, which seemed smooth. After much looking around, finally my eye caught on the culprit:

Yeah, that's not supposed to be there. Took the pump off again.....and clearly a big crack. 

So, my guess is that there was a very small crack there previously causing the initial very slow drip, small enough that it could not be seen unless I was actually looking specifically for it, rather than looking at the case half seams and shaft seal.....

The 3rd (4th?) time I reassembled the case snugging up the bolts more, I clearly completed the crack and caused the larger leak...

So, pulled the spare one out and drilled out the broken stud (actually it just threaded right through the bottome when the bit got halfway into it, so it wasn't seized - not sure how it broke in the first place. Then used that case back half on the front half of the pump I had already resealed, put it back together with much less torque on the assembly bolts and back on the car.

And now no drips, no leaks, works fine. 3 hours solving this issue (only takes me about 15 minutes to uninstall, rebuild, and re-install a PS pump on the car now, however.....), including a run to the auto parts store since I ran out of ATF to fill it the last time with. 

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

You have exceeded the design parameters of this high quality German steering component, failure to purchase a new one is your own fault.