It's nothing at all with making a "level playing field" and all to do with "keep people from doing stupid things" like, say, cutting off the front and rear of the car, or hulling out the doors to am empty outer skin and using a piece of rope tied to the door latch as a combination door handle and door pull. As an example of two things that have been in the past.
Note I am NOT on the RXB....
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
I am waiting for the official announcement too. I bought a new rallycross car 3 days before the rules rewrite was announced. Now I get to wait and see if rear engine to mid engined conversions are allowed before I drill out all the welds holding the doors closed and install latches. The no mans land between modified and constructed means no more rallycross travel if the rules end up in a certain place.
In reply to ojannen :
Moving engine outside of original engine bay is 99.9% going to expressly be for Constructors. Even before the rules are released, I can guarantee it.
I was told by another person that should be no problem, I pointed out that 99.9% of cars have roof and floor that do not meet Constructors thickness spec. And berrrrrrk wearing no exposed skin in the summer at rallycross.
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
Interesting. The proposed rules I have seen allow moving the engine anywhere as long as you keep the original the original firewall and build a new one around the engine. Hopefully the ruleset you are seeing gets released in time for me to be ready for January events. Constructors means redoing the roll cage and I would have to farm that out.
Maybe I will just start my own stage rally sanctioning body. I don't think it would actually need to run a rally, just exist and hand out logbooks. It is probably cheaper than paying someone to install a new custom cage.
In reply to ojannen :
Got pulled away and edited my response before refreshing thread.
The RXB was surprised that the current ruleset does allow engine relocation, and I believe that they wish to close that door, so to speak.
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
Thanks for the info. Just saw the edit.
I mentioned the metal thickness rules to the rxb too.
Get a room, you guys ;)
In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :
Hai, hai....
Pete. (l33t FS) said:In reply to ojannen :
Got pulled away and edited my response before refreshing thread.
The RXB was surprised that the current ruleset does allow engine relocation, and I believe that they wish to close that door, so to speak.
Any idea what that means for the Smurf Snowplow? I believe they moved the engine back 2" or something in that car.
95maxrider said:Pete. (l33t FS) said:In reply to ojannen :
Got pulled away and edited my response before refreshing thread.
The RXB was surprised that the current ruleset does allow engine relocation, and I believe that they wish to close that door, so to speak.
Any idea what that means for the Smurf Snowplow? I believe they moved the engine back 2" or something in that car.
Yeah, enquiry minds with MR engine swaps that are almost done and required some firewall massaging want to know..
In reply to bluej (Forum Supporter) :
At the risk of pissing off Mr. Hickey even more 
Massaging (as in hammer work) was included as acceptable firewall/floor work in our final proposal to the RXB. Basically you can't cut out sections and add your own material, but if you need to clearance, add pass throughs for wiring/legal fluids, that would be okay.
We'd LOVE to make it a free for all as long as the cabin is sealed and structurally the vehicle is as strong or stronger than stock, but that can't really be put into a concise rule that doesn't involve individual vehicle inspection and logbooking, which would be beyond the scope of the club's abilities.
Moving the engine is fine as long as it stays in the same engine bay where it started. IIRC they were even fine with everything in front of the firewall being fair game, but they really didn't want the passenger compartment messed with. Absent a way to have an engineering analysis for every specific case, and the tendency for some people to Sawzall now and figure out the rest later, I can see their point.
alternatively, any currently logbooked rally car is and will always be allowed, because there IS a way for those to be scrutinized and logbooked.
So nothing going on with the car itself, but I annoyed my wife this weekend as we went down to my parents' place (they own a marina) for 5 days and I hauled along my newly-acquired G250 (if you're gonna have a huge SUV, might as well fill it up with stuff, right), as well as 2 jugs of oil and a filter to do a oil change on the big pig. 5 days of family requires some breaks for car work, right?
Besides, they have a big industrial pressure-washer (for cleaning boat hulls), and this thing is greasy and grimy.
So. other than family stuff, at least I accomplished some car stuff over a 5-day work break...
Also, taking some measurements the G250 is approximately 1" longer overall from the front of the bellhousing to the output shaft flange than the G240 currently in the car. This may be an issue, as my current driveshaft setup appears to have at MOST 1" left of spline on the slip yoke (I *think* it's a 318Ti driveshaft).....The G250 came with a driveshaft as well, so I'll have to do some comparing to see if it's shorter or the same, or whether I'll need to go find an e30 6-cyl DS (which I know is shorter).
Nothing much new on the car....it's still under cover. I am about to register for the North East Penssylvania (NEPA) winter rallysprint in early February, which will be the first US Rally Federation event (USRF is newly-setup and oriented toward grassroots rally teams and several GRM folks are part of the committee.....we'll see how it works out!). Anyhow, the NEPA Winter sprint allows studs, and I needed new snow tires anyhow so I got them with some baby studs. This car doesn't see any real street action in the winter, so not worried about legality around here. No idea what conditions will be at the rally or if the studs will help anything, but the tires were on closeout at Tire Rack so figured what the heck...They are Uniroyal Ice Tigers (or something like that).
I actually like the tread block pattern and spacing - may be better for snow and mud than the Altimax Arctics I've been using for years. Guess we'll see...
If you're not following my other e30 build thread on here, here's a quick shot of current progress.....just because I have no photos to post of the rally car itself...
FWIW, I have some Arctic Claw tires that have a tread pattern that looks suspiciously close enough to Michelin ZE rally tires that I bought some and finished cutting them to make them look the part. At least on the front of my rear weight biased rallycross car, they work as well or better than actual rally tires. I am not sure I would try them on the rear, they'd probably melt, but at $60 each it was worth a try for the front. I'd definitely run them on the rear for winter purposes.
Yeah, for our rallycross courses around here I'd never use snow tires, honestly. we run on hardpack and I like the stiff sidewall. Hell, I hardly ever even use maxsports any more, just whatever old gravels I have. I'd say that now that so many guys locally can beat me, I don't see the point in buying fancy tires any more, since that won't change the result for the most part. There's a bit of an unspoken agreement that in DC people either run rally gravels or Maxsports so nobody starts a tire "arms race" with all those other crazy ones.
We did have one car show up with tarmac rally tires at a mid-summer hardpack event and they did extremely well on the hardpack course (less well when we used the "fluff" course.....).
In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :
I like the snows because of the soft sidewalls. I figure on letting the tread grip the ground at least staccato like when it can, a stiff sidewall promotes sliding instead of gripping.
Or another way, they work well enough and were cheap. I definitely will not ever use them at NEOhio's gravel-quarry site, there are sharp rocks under the surface and I want the sidewall protection of a rally tire, but anywhere soil-y or hard clay, they're on. Plus, I can drive them on the street so I only have to change one pair of tires.
Snow tires won't last long at Panthera if you're driving hard.....though I guess you get a re-run for debeads so it's not as big of a deal for rallycross these days. I've never debeaded a tire, of any kind (gravel/maxsport/snow tire), at ~75 rallycrosses......and my only debeads on stage were due to the tires already being flattened by sharp things lol.
Also, I've driven against you at GLDivs (and I was on old/worn/hard gravels and you were on snow tires), and you were doing WAY more slipping than i was ;)
That is the thing, the front of the car is light enough (1150lb) and at 35psi they don't debead as easily as a rally tire at 24psi while being more compliant and having less rolling resistance. On the front of the car they have had no measurable wear after four or five events.
That GLDiv doesn't count, my tires were way too large, and I was only running on snows because I had lost access to the place where my rally tires were stored, so those were also my daily-driver tires. And did I mention that they were way too large? And they were garbage compound? Flotation is not a characteristic one desires when trying to generate lateral grip Another lesson learned.
I just don't know how you guys are debeading gravels. I have dropped all the way down to 18 psi at rallycrosses on mine and never debeaded. Maybe it's a driving style thing. Ymmv.
oops, wrong thread :)
Geez, 6 weeks since I posted in this thread. What have I been doing? working on the other e30, mostly.
For the rally car, I've been rounding up all the parts I need to swap in the G250 transmission in place of the G240 currently there. These include:
- the transmisison
- e36 clutch slave cyinder
- e36 clutch slave hose (the e30 one works, but it's literally a stretch and turns the wrong angle, so figured good time to swap. The e30 braided line on this car will be swapped onto the other e30 project car so it's not going to waste).
- e21 323 throwout bearing
- e36 6-cylinder front driveshaft (car currently has the 318TI front half which is too long for the G250)
- DSSR linkage so I can use the short shifter I bought and then removed last summer. I was going to make one myself, but sometimes just gotta say "that's more hassle than it's worth" and spend $40 instead.
- new M20 clutch. I'm not sure how the clutch in the car currently is in terms of wear, but it's been in there for 8 years so this seems like a good time to change it.
Hopefully I can book some time on Stephen's lift at some point in the next month or two and get this swapped in. DC rallycross starts off in a few weeks and it looks like there will be four rallysprints in the general region to run this year - one at Panthera (DC's first sprint in 15 years) and three at Rausch Creek, which has added 1/2 a mile to its course.
I also grabbed some Maxxis Victra gravel tires since they were on a major sale. Figured I'd grab these for NEFR in July and I can use up the hard-compound Federals at the rallycross and sprints. I got soft compound this time because I want to see the difference in grip and wear and see if it's worth it. I'm cheap, so I've always just gotten medium/hard compounds so they'll last a long time (the Federals have 3 stage rallies on them and are still probably at 75% amazingly)
In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :
What DSSR are you finding for $40?
In reply to AWSX1686 (Forum Supporter) :
I misspoke there, sorry..... I had another browser window buying something totally unrelated for $40 when I posted that :/ I bought the garagistic one, which I think was about a hundred bucks
In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :
I just bought the same one. Well, the 24v tilted version. I went to throw the shifter on the car I'm m50 swapping and the selector rod rattled around inside the selector joint. Yikes.
I was about to be really pissed if I spent an extra 70 on one when I didn't have to!
Not really about this car, but since it has rallycross people in it, and the Porsche is part of this thread, this is a cross-post from my other e30 build thread...
Took a road trip down to Richmond to have brunch with an old friend and after she left I rolled over to meet up with Neil and Eric from rallycross at the shop they do their car stuff at (owned by a friend) on their rallycross e30. They have an old ratty parts e30 vert there that's mostly stripped but had some stuff I wanted for this budget build.
There were some other neat things hanging around there as well
Neil showed up in his project Volvo, which is mechanically totally redone/upgraded but he hasn't done the cosmetic side of things yet
As is typical with road trips to get parts, the Porsche got to carry the stuff. It's more fun than driving any of my other more practical vehicles, and it can fit damn near any e30 part I woudl ever need to get anyhow..
Side note, the hydraulic hatch supports on the Porsche (which are actually from a Jeep) are still too powerful and they can actually pop the hatch up from the latches, as I've experienced a few times before. In this case, I was exiting I-95 going about 70mph and hit a big bump entering the exit and *up goes the hatch* like a giant airbrake lol. So for the rest of the trip I disconnected the supports so it would stay down. I need to see if I can adjust the lower latches enough to actually lock it down, which I'm not sure about.
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