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Upgraded the work (and play) from home office as I decided the E30 wasn’t enough of a money pit. As close as I’ll get to driving Group A DTM E30 M3!

First things first; you can't go rallying with carpets or a back seat. It's the rules (not an actual rule) and makes it harder to fit all the necessary safety stuff. I'm not a small lad, and my rule with making the car lighter has always been "if I want a lighter car I'll start by removing 40kg from around my waist, otherwise I'm just being hypocritical". And I'm a little lazy, so I'm not going to the extremes with making the car lighter. With that in mind, I spent a couple of weekends removing all the easy-to-remove stuff from the interior to get the car ready for the rollcage. The rear of the car denuded: And all the trim and carpet removed from the front. Wires everywhere! Dashboard removed so that the rollcage can go in (the A-pillar bars go through the dashboard). Duct tape is great for holding the instrument panel in place for driving the car to the rollcage builder. The audio wiring loom removed from the car. On the 130i (I don't know about other BMWs) it was almost completely a separate loom from the main harness, with only a couple of attachments to the main harness under the dashboard. What I did find is that removing it also removed the functionality on the remote, as the wiring for picking up the signal I believe goes through both the roof aerial and the rear window. No biggie for a rally car but it did give me a few moments of consternation the first time I went to lock the car and found it didn't respond! A full load of interior trim, carpet etc to go to the tip. There were no major issues removing everything, apart from finding exactly where everything was attached in some cases. Because of the airbags in the car the whole thing was done with the battery disconnected, to reduce the risk of accidentally activating them. Removing the stereo was a godsend because once it was removed I no longer had to listen to an entire melody of warning alarms (missing fog lamps, airbag issues, seatbelt issues) from all the stuff I had removed every time I started the vehicle! At this stage I'm keeping the main wiring harness intact as I'm not too worried about the weight and don't want to risk pulling some wires that accidentally screw up the Canbus system. So it's all being tucked up under the dashboard and/or cable-tied nicely out of the way, with a few fuses pulled to deactivate the circuits. And in the spirit of being lazy I'm also keeping the sound deadening stuff, because I can't be bothered trying to find a supply of dry ice and scraping it off. Both of these tasks can be filed away under "if I get bored in the future then I can do this to remove weight from the car".

I've been around the rally scene for a few years, both as a competitor and am organiser. I started competing at age 12 in my father's Mk1 Escort, eventually progressed to an AE92 Corolla FXGT and won the local club championship as well as doing a few club rallys, and then did the usual mid-late 20's thing of getting married, having kids etc. So motorsport took a back seat for a while. Now that the kids are a bit older and the mortgage is under control I decided it was time to get back into doing some competing. Or perhaps it's just a mid-life crisis thing. For me motorsport is about having fun driving the car fast. Some people are out there trying to be as competitive as possible and winning at all costs. That's not me. Heck, on one gravel rally I was lifting off on the straights (doing 160km/h) because that was more than fast enough for my tastes! And when I did go after the club championship I didn't enjoy the racing because I put too much pressure on myself to get a good result. So coming back into the sport I want to build something that is fast enough not to get boring, slow enough I'm not going to scare myself silly, is reliable and, most importantly, goes sideways. Because going straight is boring and sideways is much more fun! After looking at what existing competition cars were out there that met my requirements (not many) and were within my budget (even fewer) I decided to go the route of building my own. I'm not a very good mechanic, so building a rally car from scratch means I'll be leaning on lots of my car club friends to assist with the trickier stuff. And I don't have an unlimited budget so this is going to be a case of spending money where it's going to be worthwhile (eg: good suspension) and forgetting about things that won't materially add to the enjoyment factor (eg: adding carbon-fibre roof scoops). The candidate vehicle I identified? An E87 130i - with 260bhp without making any modifications to the engine and rear wheel drive, plus ample parts availability for the inevitable meetings with banks and fences, I decided this was the best route to take. Here's the car I bought, in full lowered, boy-racer spec: The rough plan for the build is: Safety gear - rollcage, seats, belts etc Suspension - something strong that will handle rough rally roads without requiring repairs after every event Brakes - work out what can work with 15" wheels without having to replace the entire setup with a pedal box etc. And of course a bias valve to get some braking onto the rear. Diff - you can't go sideways properly without a LSD! (not without welding it anyway, which isn't the plan) Other - sump guard, under-body protection etc. And all the electronic nannies need to be exorcised from the car. Bureaucratic stuff - it's going to need both a MSNZ Authority Card and a LVVTA Low Volume Cert. The latter is always fun to sort out... As of starting this thread I'm already part way through the build, so I'll add posts over the next few days with what's been done so far. Thanks to family stuff the build isn't going particularly quickly but the car should be in a state to at least get out of the garage sometime before winter - I hope!

https://www.trademe.co.nz/a/motors/cars/bmw/listing/3984272500

spotted at the inaugural Palmerston North Cars&Coffee last weekend.

😍

First world problems, drowned my cell so ordered a replacement ex AU a week ago - DHL has just processed it in Auckland, FFS 7 days from Brisbane to Auckland customs. Ordered a laptop for my daughter, two and a half weeks later and it's still sitting in Dunedin as Harvey Norman failed to request the stock transfer to Auckland. I did roast the Michelins through third today to blow off some steam.

sold

Autobots wage their battle to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons.

Not sure if this counts as a rant or not, but I've lost $25K worth of irreplaceable vinyl to the floods. I'm out of the country, as was my good friend whom was storing it for me. I was waiting for the phone call upon when they got back, and had mentally prepared for it, but I honestly feel relieved. Most of it was single release / no repress, so there's no point in chasing the dragon again. I guess the question is, what the F**K do I do with my record player now?!?!