I'm sure i'm a bit behind on stuff, but here's some updating. Last weekend I was NOT at New England Forest Rally, where a number of our e30/BMW friends and non-BMW friends were running. Kind of sad, since last year was our first DNF at this rally and would have liked another shot at it, but just couldn't do it this year.
Apparently it was a rough go for many, though the BMWs largely made it through without major destruction. Stealing a few pics of the carnage, just because you've seen enough of my car sitting in my driveway, right?
Sadly, our friend Adam Kimmett, who runs our rally-x program locally and won SOFR Rally outright last month, was running near the top when he got out of sorts coming off a big kick and did some rolling, totalling the car. Adam is an awesome driver, so this goes to show that even the best can crash hard.
Another Subie had a steering knuckle break at high speed and had a similar result
Even the lower power cars had issues.
And the red 80s RWD croo...
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So, now that I'm sad not to ahve been there, a few things going on here...
I built a new rolling storage workbench. Yay.
Then headed over to pick up a pair of from subframes from my buddy Viet - we go back way back to the Maxima days when he was 16 and had just gotten his license. Now he runs an import shop and drifts...
One subframe for me, the other for Ozgur, who cracked the ears off his rallying (on the white 318 shell that I gave him a couple years back, as you may recall)...
I had originally gotten a free subframe from another local buddy but he didn't realize it already had wrecked mounting ears and was in bad shape:
So yeah, not gonna use that...
The new subframe I got had already been reinforced with some seam welds at open seams, and also powdercoated.
Before using it, I am going to further reinforce everything. This is also going to be the setup to mount my new skidplate H-Frame to increase its strength. More on that later once I get fabbing.
Also got in a set of new front control arms. I've had the same arms on this car since the original build 8-9 years ago and they're holding up fine (they had Moog balljoints pressed in at the time), but probably time to replace them. Got the Lemforder ones, which generally seem to be the best-regarded ones.
Interestingly, they are a lot more heavily built than the (stock) ones on the car, with less "holes" and a thicker casting. Curious.
So that's it for the moment. Some things going on in terms of strengthening. More later.