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

Got the radiator installed today with no issues. As expected it was a drop-in fit other than drilling a couple holes on the upper lip for my top mounts (same as the old one), since I don't use the OEM-style setup plastic thing, since it seems pretty weak. 

Here's a couple comparison shots of the one that's been in there for years vs. the new one.

Say what you will about "Chinese quality" (or lack thereof), the old radiator survived probably 50 rallycrosses and around 10 stage rallies with no issues at all. no cracks, nothing broken or whatever. Anyhow, now I have a spare as well, which I haven't had previously. 

Here's it fitted in the car. Since I'm on isolation right now can't go pick up any antifreeze for it (I run an 80-20 mostly water mix in the summer, but will go full 50-50 for winter). So will have to bleed it later.

A little tighter fit, but sill probably 2" of clearance from the radiator to the nearest engine part. Other than that, dimensionally it's the same as the old one.

Ah, also - don't think I mentioned it, but early Black Friday shopping and picked up a second halo seat for Jim's side of the car. Same as the one I got for myself earlier this year.

So, that's installed now. Still need to order new harnesses before the next rally, but may wait until Chrismas/New Year's sales and let the parts budget recover a bit. Between this, the Raider, and the Sequoia I've spent more on car stuff in recent months than I probably should have lol. 

So yesterday went to put coolant in the car, and that kicked off a somewhat lousy train of events, as follows:

1. Put coolant in and turned the car on.

2. Immediately small gasoline. WTF. Look under the hood and....

3. Find that the injection hose from the fuel rail return to the hard pipe running under the intake manifold is literally spraying fuel downward. Quick kill-switch action. Apparently the fuel injection clamp somehow had loosened itself up substantially and was leaking. Wonder how long it's been doing that??? Hadn't noticed it previously. My car has smelled a bit gassy for a while but assumed it was from my charcoal-canister delete. Perhaps not. So, pulled the hose, thinking it may be damaged, put a new one on with new clamps. That's good to go.

4. Turn car back on and run it to temp to bleed the coolant system, with front of car jacked up. I had already filled the radiator through the upper hose. Notice coolant dripping fast under the car. At first thought I hadn't tightened the radiator drain plug, but after looking up I see it's coming from the upper radiator hose. Apparently I did not actually tighten that one when I put the hoses back on. Whoops. 

5. Gauge shows car is up to running temp after about 10 minutes, a bit over 200....but oddly the fan isn't kicking in, and the lower hose is still ice-cold. Heat in the car is blowing lukewarm. Figure air in the system, so I burp hoses, etc. Temp keeps creeping up to 220.  Still no fan, and doesn't seem like the thermostat has opened. Shut the car down again. Annoyed, figuring I'm gonna have to do a thermostat replacement, which is a bit of a hassle with the M50 compared to other e30 engines. So, call it an evening.

6. Today, get to thinking maybe with the front of the car jacked up, there's an air pocket at the thermostat stopping the it from opening at the correct temp. So, put the car back down on the ground, burp the hoses again, and start run it to temp again. Looks like my guess was right, because this time the thermo opens on time (verified with my IR thermometer), lower hose warms up, and interior heat warms up more. Meanwhile, after idle and 5 minutes of running around 3k rpm, temp is holding at just around 205 (fans not kicked on yet, but outlet of rad where the fan switch is certainly would be cooler than 205). 

7. While running, I am in the car and want to tidy up some wiring. Reach behind the center dash section and as my hand bumps a wire, the car stumbles, then kicks back on. This happens 4-5 times as I try to figure out what wire caused this (narrowing it down to the ignition toggle switch wiring). Figure must be a loose connection.

8. Unscrew the faceplate of the center dash and tilt it out (car still running). There's a pop, puff of smoke, and car dies. Master kill still on, but no power to it. So....look back at the big fuse in the truck (aftermarket slow-blow fuse, not the OEM one). It's blown. Hmm.

9. So start digging into wiring looking for a burnt wire, obvious ground, etc. All the while remembering "it's probably the wire for the ignition circuit" The wires look fine, nothing obvious, so I pull the switch, thinking maybe it's internally shorted or something (not sure how that woudl be possible, but whatever). When I pull it, I notice a small part of the heat-shrink on the wire terminal (wire side) is worn away and showing bare metal. So i guess when I was jiggling it that touched something else (another ground wire, the metal frame of the switch panel?) and when I pulled out the panel it made full contact and blew the big fuse. 

10. In any case, put on new terminals with new shrink wrap and some plastic loom for extra protection. Put in a new 60A slow-blow fuse in the main battery circuit, and did some othe wiring cleanup and now everythign works fine again.

Takeaways:

- when it rains, it pours

- my haphazard wiring over the years has never caused any real issues, but it's definitely time to clean it up better and secure it better this winter. This was already the plan, but now it's going to kick in faster. 

- happy to see the car idling under 205 now. In the past it's been around 210-212. So, hopefully the 3-row radiator will have a noticeable difference in temps vs. the old 2-row. I'll run the car hard this weekend and see where it's sitting then. 

- I do have another cooling project coming up, stay tuned for that at some point. 

- never much thought of checking fuel injection clamps as part of regular maintenance, but now I will. 

- all in all, my usual attention to detail seems to be lacking somewhat recently, as I've put my car efforts mostly in to the Porsche and Raider projects. Time to buckle down and give the e30 a good going-through this winter, I think. It's boring, but really I've run this car mostly "as-is" for years with minimal "checking" of things. Happy the things today were found today and not on stage where they'd have really sucked. 

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

I've experienced the mysterious loosening fuel injection clamps before too- make sure the hose is rated for ethanol, seems like the ones that aren't are good for a year or two and then start getting soft and moving around.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

I've experienced the mysterious loosening fuel injection clamps before too- make sure the hose is rated for ethanol, seems like the ones that aren't are good for a year or too and then start getting soft and moving around.

In this case, the set screw appears to have just backed out and loosened itself, sicne it wasn't fully clamped like the other one. So I made sure to put some blue loctite on them this time. May be the solid motor mount vibrations just caused it to loosen up. 

Well, if you read Nonack's BRZ rally thread you already know this, but ARA just dropped the 2021 rule updates, which include a mandatory in-car fire system (in addition to the two handheld extinguishers currently required). So, that's pretty annoying to drop that on us at the last second with the first rallies of 2021 slated for February. That said, our first rally will likely not be until May or June, so a bit of time to scrape up some extra money to cover that (probably around $4-500). It's going to take some thought to figure out where to put the tank and route the cables. In our track e30 it's just where the passenger seat goes, but in a rally car of course it can't go there, so will need to figure things out. 

In unrelated news, I did a few things on the Porsche today (been a while!)

- trimmed a heat shield under the car that was rubbing the exhaust

- ordered a new stainless catback that hopefully will be a bit more vocal than the OEM-style Bosal on there now

- rebuilt the blower motor, which has always has an annoying squeak to it that made me never want to turn the heater on lol. . More accurately, I took it out and lubed the motor shaft and bearings as well as I could and cleaned out a bunch of acorn pieces that somehow got in there. That's kind of odd since the blower has a grid over it that a full acorn can't possibly get through. ANyhow, it blows quiet now, which is nice since I plan to do some driving this weekend in it and will want to run the heater.

Took the rally car out today on some country roads nearby and put about 40 more miles on it to break in the diff more and test out the cooling system.

Diff feels good, though it still makes a little bit of noise on sharper turns when unloaded - probably to be expected with the 3-clutch setup and higher preload, but just another noise to get used to when driving this car.

Cooling system did its job fine on a day in the 50s. Coolant temp never went over 205 (seems to me it used to run closer to 210 normal) and the fan never kicked on at any point, even at a few long stoplights, which tells me the radiator is cooling stuff well, since the fan switch is on the cold side. So, high hopes for that setup, we'll see what the temps look like in competition. I have one additional cooling thing happening later this winter when I get around to it.

Not for the rally car, but after a 4-month wait, new JMA headers finally came in for the Sequoia, which has a cracked header and for the last couple years has made an annoying ticking sound. Unfortunately, 4 months ago the weather was nice, and now it's the middle of December and the Sequioa doesn't fit into the garage. This job is *said* to be an 8-hour job if everything goes perfectly, and that seems unlikely on a 15-year-old truck. Not something I want to do in the driveway in the middle of winter, so more likely than not, this stuff will sit in a box until the Spring warm-up. We'll see how impatient I get lol..

And to those who may ask why I got the "shorty" headers and not long-tube, there are two reasons:

1. This truck has to get emissions every 2 years, and the shorties are legal, the long-tubes are not. 

2. The long-tubes are said (according to the Tundra/Sequoia guys) to lose torque (while gaining a lot of HP up top in the range). As this is a tow vehicle, that's not at all what I want. Frankly, I'll be fine with no significant power gains as long as it fixes the ticking noise. But we'll see. I also got new studs, nuts, and good gaskets in advance.

I did switch the e30 over to snow tires today (still muddy as hell from an early season rallycross) and did a quick drive during a rainstorm to clean them all up. Not that I do much snow driving around here, but I like the car sitting on the snows in the winter just in case I feel like doing so :)

Erk.  Hope it goes easier for you than for the Infiniti I-have-no-idea-what (big giant SUV) that I did last year, which technically required removing the nose, radiator, and A/C condenser so it can come out the front.

I made it come out the back, but it wasn't pretty.

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

Erk.  Hope it goes easier for you than for the Infiniti I-have-no-idea-what (big giant SUV) that I did last year, which technically required removing the nose, radiator, and A/C condenser so it can come out the front.

I made it come out the back, but it wasn't pretty.

Nah, these can come right out the bottom. Most people remove the driver's side engine mount to get better access to a couple bolts, but it *can* be done even without doing that. Most of the time seems to be getting rusty exhaust bolts apart and getting the 02 sensors out and stuff like that. Since this is a later VVT-i model with the air injection lines, that might make the engine mount removal a requirement since I'll need a bit more clearance. I'm not all that worried about it, honestly. It wont' be much fun, but it'll get done. 

Today got around to finally fixing a long-standing issue: fuel gauge. For a few years we kept the stock gauge around which worked ok, but once I took out the stock cluster I got a cheap programmable digital gauge, which initially worked fine. But over time it started getting really glitchy, right around the time when the sender got mashed at NEFR. It never really read correctly anyhow, and at times would just go haywire.  So addressed both of those things today.

But first fired up the heater, since it was snowing outside and my garage is kind of cold.

You may recall at NEFR we hit a rock really hard and it dented the gas tank and popped the sender up out of the top. Well, it also mashed the bottom of the sender a bit. At the time it seemed like it was fine, but I disassembled it and it turns out the bottom "cap" to the sender was sitting at a slight angle, which was causing the float to bind slightly and not move up and down with the fuel level. So, massaged the aluminum tube back into form and got the cap back on there straight and now the float moves smoothly. So, one end of the system resolved.

For the other end, decided to just get a cheap VDO gauge to match all the other gauges in the car

Of course, BMW uses a 60-0 ohm sender, which basically no aftermarket gauges match well. So I picked up this thing: a programmable module to make any sender work with any gauge.

Here's what it looks like out of the case. There are buttons to adjust the gauge to where you want it (like if you want it to show "E" at 1/4 tank, you can).

So, got that all programmed and the gauge installed. Like the one next to it, I had to build a "collar" since the gauge hole was 2 1/4" - too big for the VDO gauges. So just copied it the same as the one next to it.

So, that's worthwhile progress, as actual fuel level has been a source of some anxiety over the years in this car, that for some reason I didn't address entirely until now. 

Also....got in a big box for the Porsche. I noticed the old exhaust was looking a bit marginal, and it doesn't sound particularly good (just a OEM-style Bosal). Also didn't look all that good, lol. So after looking around and listening to a lot of YouTube vids, decided on the stainless Dansk catback, which seemed to have the best sound and isn't too loud. Got it on a good sale from RMEuropean, and shipped to my door (in a 6-foot box) cost me probably less than what someone might pay an exhaust shop just to do a basic muffler install. In any case, couldn't install today due to the winter storm outside (and the Porsche outside), but if the driveway is dry enough tomorrow I'll defintely get it installed :)

I had no idea that device existed, and suddenly I realize how much I need that in my life.

The fuel gauge adaptor box, that is.  I know I need a torpedo heater in my life.  Not in the garage tonight because it's just too damn cold right now.

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

I had no idea that device existed, and suddenly I realize how much I need that in my life.

 

The fuel gauge adaptor box, that is.  I know I need a torpedo heater in my life.  Not in the garage tonight because it's just too damn cold right now.

There are a few other ones (Speedway sells one also), but this one was the cheapest (about $60). was easy to program, with good instructions, and hides away nicely. 

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

Same! I figured you could use a potentiometer between the sender and the gauge to eyeball it close enough, but that magic box looks way more refined.

artur1808 said:

In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :

Same! I figured you could use a potentiometer between the sender and the gauge to eyeball it close enough, but that magic box looks way more refined.

Yeah, I know there are other ways to do it that are cheaper, but I suck at electricity in general (ask my electrical engineering professor...) so figured I'd just get something I *knew* would work lol

Got my butt up this morning to find everything iced over but the morning sun had dried off my driveway, so time to do a little bit of outdoor work. First pulled out my tall metal ramps. They sit outside and had about 1" of solid ice on them so I stuck them out in the sun and then poured a bucket of hot water on them to break all the ice off. Because trying to drive up ramps covered in ice rarely goes well lol.

In any case, got the Porsche up on the ramps eventually, and it took a total of 5 minutes to get the "budget" catback off the car (since I put new bolts on it 2-3 years ago, made things easy). But overall, the way Porsche designed the exhaust hangers on this car is brilliantly simple and makes everything accessible for standard tools. Nice and easy.

Old vs. New

Installed

Took it out for a drive and I'd say it's maybe 20% louder at idle and under all types of loads vs. the old stock-ish one, but still quiet enough to sound like it "should" have been the stock setup. More importantly, the tone is much, much improved. Now it sounds like a proper GT car, with a smoother/more mellow tone vs. the kind of "sputtering" sound the Bosal always seemed to make. In any case, very happy with it. And it may be butt-dyno, but after a number of 0-(fast) runs on a local parkway the car does feel quicker under acceleration. Maybe it isn't, but maybe it is :)

Also while testing it, some jackass in front of me had a sheet of ice fly off their SUV's room directly into my windshield, which wasn't a fun feeling. Luckily it didn't crack. Though....since I have it on video, I guess if it broke I could get a new windshield paid for my that idiot...

Vid of a run with the new exhaust, though to really hear it you need it on good speakers or headphones, not your smartphone or computer speaker, lol.  The squeak noise I think is a spring in my seat or something. I don't notice it in person, but apparently my phone mic really picked it up. 

In other news, the fire system for the rally car arrived. Will take some thought about how I want to set it up, but it's here now..

Hope you all had an excellent Christmas! Since I'm just sitting around decompressing, figured I'd do a quick update. So, the other day I got around to doing some initial install for the fire system. I don't plan to plumb it just yet but it's a good a time as any to fit the tank. So, after a bit of test-fitting, the rear footwell behind the codriver seat seems to be the place to put it, which will allow me to run the hoses and activating cable down inward of the sill bar with the main wiring harness. 

The system comes with some nice mounts, but I didn't want to mount it directly to the floor, since we know well that the floor can get..."moved" by a large enough rock. So to get it up off the floor I put in a pair of mount bars running from the side risers to the transmission tunnel, just some C-channel I had sitting around.

Then added some captive bolts on the bottom to bolt the tank mounts to, shown here..

Anyhow, seems this will work and keep the tank as safe as possible from impact, etc. Still determining my nozzle mount locations and how I want to run the pull cable to the transmission tunnel. Though not required, I'm considering doing a secondary outside pull - though I'm somewhat concerned that it could get grimy/rusty pretty easily on a rally car, so i'll have to think on that.  Anyhow, here's some pics

And with the seat back in

So, only about a year and a half late I finally got my hands on the full 30GB of video files from STPR 2019. So in the next week or so i'll try to upload them. Some stages are pretty good, some are pretty boring. We are big fans of the WM stages due to the tons of turns, transitions, and rough terrain. I know a lot of the other teams HATE this stage, which probably explains why we are about 10 places faster on it vs. the rest of the field compared with all other stages. We've run it a lot at the winter rally and I have it mostly memorized. So, here's some vids from it since they're the most fun to watch.

First one is the FINAL stage of the rally and the rally finish (including by backwards entry across the finish line lol), and includes the in-car calls.

Second one was from the prior evening in the dark, so not as fast since it's freaking DARK in there. 

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

Nice! 

So only loosely related to this actual thread, but today I did some road-tripping in the Sequoia, with the trailer. I wanted to pick up something in PA for a future project, and as it happens Thomas Helgesen's Volvo needed to get to a nearby town for its rally cage to be installed next weekend. So, he gave me gas money and I hauled it up there for him. You may know it from his build thread here on GRM...

Picked it up at 8am today at his place 

And trucked 200 miles to Nonack's rally garage, which some of you here on GRM may also be familiar with

Chris had a very difficult time getting it off the trailer, sans driver's seat and apparently a tricky shifter (he first went forward and almost hit the trailer's front end lol)

But eventually made it into his garage

So Thomas's car and Chris's BRZ will both be getting caged by Adam Brock next week...

Oh, also saw this thing while on the road.....pretty sweet.

After that, with the trailer empty I headed about 40 miles away via some really fun country roads (well, less fun in a big truck with a trailer....

...and ended up at this long, long driveway

Anyhow, the item in question I wanted to pick up was way down behind his house in a totally muddy field. Apparently a person who picked up another car there yesterday got his F250 stuck and had to be towed out with a tractor. So, put the Sequoia in 4WD and locked the diff and headed down the hill (with much banging and clanging by the trailer). 

Oh, and this guy builds funky lowriders. I know he has some crazy 6-wheeled thing that was at SEMA last year, but I didn't get a chance to see it. Did see this thing sticking out of a shed

So, what did I get? Well, a few things.

1. the bed box from a Mighty Max pickup (as you may know, the Max is the close cousin to the Raider, as well as the Dodge D50)

2. the rear axle (not sure why, but pretty sure it has the same hubs, brakes, etc as the Raider. Don't think this one has LSD, bu since it was free I figured I'd grab it for future use (or for $5 at the scrapyard). TBD. 

3. he had the full Mighty Max frame there which I didn't want to haul. But thought maybe the rear section for under the bed could come in handy (or be useful just for heavy steel material). So the guy pulled out a super-long extension cord and a grinder and just chopped it in half for me, which was pretty cool of him since I know he just wanted to get rid of this stuff and I was only taking half of it (he still has a Mighty Max cab sitting there....)

Anyhow, loaded up and strapped down and headed 200 miles home...

And tucked away in my side yard for the night after some backig assisted by the Sequoia's rear floods :)

Sooo. what am i doing here? If you haven't already guessed, probably some kind of trailer. TBD on what it will be/be for at this point, but I thought it would be cool to use a Mighty Max bed since the body lines and wheel wells match the Raider. So, once I start on that project I'll put it here as well.

Been a while so time for a quick update! Today UPS arrived with some goodies from our friends at Condor Speed Shop. Among them is the 2nd part of the "improve cooling" project (the other part was the new 3-row radiator): ventilation. I know Carlos uses these on his track cars and tells me that he's noticed substantially lower coolant temps (running mostly in Florida) as well as increased front-end downforce from this setup, so figured I'd try it out.

And of course, this is a non-reversible mod, for all intents and purposes, because:

It's kind of scary cutting a hole in my "good" hood (I have another hood around back already with a hole in a similar place, which I probably should have used, but forgot about it).  Anyhow, here's the vent. It's aluminum and you basically bend the fins into place. In any case, I'll let you know how it works at some point (probably once it warms up).

Nothing at all new to report on the car.....it's currently being used as a place to stack various other crap in my garage at the moment lol. 

That said, DC Rallycross just released its season schedule, and it's pretty great. 10 total points events: three doubleheaders (so two individual events each weekend), three single-day events, and one two-day single event (i.e. total times from both days), but with double points.....

The only downside is that all events are currently at Summit Point (though a couple may change to Panthera if they open it up again post-COVID). I mean, it's nice because Summit is really close to home (an hour) and is a great venue, but the downside is I'm not generally as fast against the field at Summit vs. Panthera where my power is helpful on the big hills. So may have to think about some setup choices specific to the harder-packed stuff at Summit, whatever those may be. 

All of these dates are laid out pretty nicely around SOFR and STPR and Rallycross nationals. Oh yeah, nationals are in Ohio this year, so i'll probably actually go for once. 

In any case, season starts up March 28th, so I supposed I should probably get going with some pre-season maintenance and stuff one of these days. 

In the meantime, been doing some offroading with other rallycross folks...

Seeing Chris Nonack cracking along on his build motivated me to do some rally car work. So, let's take the passenger seat out and do some things.

So I didn't take pics along the way and this photo really doesn't show it well, but I built a parcel shelf for Jim, so he has someplace to stick his codriver bag, papers, timecards, etc etc. He's been wedging it next to the seat for a while, but we've found that ends up with things getting wet/muddy, which is never good. I just found some scrap metal tube and essentially built a frame out of it, with a 1" lip on the back and sides to hold the bag in place. The whole thing is supported by the front bar on one end, attached to the cage A-pillar bar. This setup makes it so if for some odd reason it takes an impact it should just bend out of the way. I added some padding to the front lip of it, but it's a LONG way from the codriver legs (like 6" higher than the OEM glove box). To do this I also relocated the ECU/DME from the haphazard mount it previously had to some brackets I tacked to the dash bar, which gets it up higher and out of the way of wiring and stuff. 

It's hard to take pics of this stuff, but hopefully you get the idea.

In that pic you can also see I did some rearranging of our electronics, power outlets, etc. Just moving things around base don some lessons learned over the years, and also removing the partial dash cap that I had kept there for cosmetic's sake. At this point, I think accessing stuff is more important than "looking clean." Still a work in progress, though, but I plan to redo all of our auxiliary electronics, wiring, comms, etc. since most of that stuff was just added on piecemeal, and I want to clean it all up. 

On to fire system stuff. I already installed the tank a few weeks back, but time to get it all plumbed. First order of business was to set up the activation pulls. Rally only requires a single in-car pull, but I eventually decided to put and outside pull as well, because....it can't hurt to have it. 

For the inside, set up a bracket on the transmisison tunnel just to the left of the codriver seat. This will give good access, but also sits down below the side bolsters of the seat so less chance of accidental activation.

For the outside pull, I ran the cable through the HVAC intake since it has a removable cover. This is where we put it in the e30 track car as well. Then it just runs into the interior up behind the electronics

You can see it there up to the top right, parallel to the fire system tubing that also exits there. 

And the pull installed

And hooked up to the tank.

On to plumbing. First I tacked the engine bay. I know some setups just have the nozzles on brackets spraying from four corners, or back and sides, but with an inline engine, pretty much all the flammable stuff is on the driver's side or top (fuel lines, fuel rail, injectors), so wanted to focus things directly on fuel areas. 

The tubing also came through the HVAC box from the inside (routed along the cage sill bar), and to a T-fitting right outside the firewall

From there, split into a left and right circuit. For the passenger side, I mounted one nozzle just forward of the suspension tower, pointing generally toward the header and valve cover

The other one on that side I ran to the forward corner so it sprays at the front of the engine and hopefully also covers the FPR and the front end of the fuel rail - though I don't honestly think any of these can hit the fuel rail, since it's hiddent under a plastic cover. 

On the driver's side, I wanted to focus both nozzles on fuel areas, so I mounted both brackets on the strut tower brace bar, with one pointed downward toward the HP fuel line and the return line and fuel filter, and the second one covering the throttle body and intake manifold area.

You can see all four here

Again, this engine has covers on everything, and the IM pretty much totally covers all the fuel stuff anyhow. So I have my doubts about how well this would extinguish a serious engine fire (and on this car, luckily, the fuel system is generally on the opposte side of the bay from the "hot" stuff). IDK, it's required so I'm doing it. I also will still carry the two handheld extinguishers as well. 

I've installed one of the interior nozzles (you can see it in the photo of the parcel shelf above, actually), but still have to figure out where to put the other three. 

Finished up the fire system on the driver's side. Very exciting. 

New harness came in for me (Jim is getting his own so he can use it for road racing too). Forgot how much of a pain it is to get everything set up at the right lengths, since I haven't done it in 5 years lol..

Oh, and got a little something for Jim since he always loses his writing instruments on stage and I find a few pencils under the seat after every rally lol...

What's the "Subaru ahead" light all about?

Justjim75 said:

What's the "Subaru ahead" light all about?

That's the high beam indicator :)