Clubmans Rally spec E87 130i

[CahunaKiwi 21]

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!

 

[CahunaKiwi 21]

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".

Edited February 6, 2023 by CahunaKiwi

[CahunaKiwi 21]

Now that I've taken some weight out of the car it's time to put some back in by installing the rollcage.

I'm no engineer, so was never going to be able to build the cage myself. Instead I sent it off to a friend of mine, Ray Chubb (www.rollcage.co.nz) to build. He has his own 135i that he's built for the gravel and is a mine of information for my build, so I basically told him "give me what you've built for your car" and sent it off. This is what came back:

 

 

It's pretty comprehensive, with the only thing I decided to skip being the extension through to the front strut towers. Those with an eagle eye may notice that the seatbelt bar across the main hoop (behind the seats) is not straight across - I'm pretty tall, so one of the advantages of building a car from scratch is that I can (to an extent) make it fit around me. So in this case the main hoop is located as far back as possible and the seatbelt bar on the drivers side raised to get the correct angle over my shoulders. The side intrusion bars are low enough that I can get my long legs over them, and also low enough that the standard door cards can stay fitted without needing any modification. Also, having someone who had built plenty of cages before made everything on the Motorsport NZ side easy - he filled out all the paperwork, took all the necessary photos and the post-build check by a scrutineer (needed before painting the cage) was a breeze.

Next job was painting the cage. I've never painted one before, and never will again! It's a long, tedious, messy job and to be honest I'm not that happy with how it came out (it looks fine from 10m away if you're squinting) but it's good enough and saved me a whole lot of money that would have been spent getting someone else to paint it for me.
 

Wrapping the car up. Lots of plastic and masking tape.

 

Primer coat applied. This isn't too bad, maybe this whole painting it myself thing isn't so hard after all!

 

Now to apply the top coat. Hmm, that isn't so easy...

 

For painting it I did the following:

• Masked/covered everything I didn't want to get paint on. This includes removing any rubbers that may get paint on them.
• Prepped the cage by rubbing it down with a kitchen scouring pad, to roughen up the surface. I also needed to attack parts with a wire brush on the drill as I didn't get to painting it quickly enough, so some minor surface rusting had started to appear and needed removing.
• Cleaned the cage down with thinners, to remove the packing grease on the bare tubing
• Applied a coat of primer
• Applied the top coat. For this, after doing some reading online, I used Dupli-Colour spray cans from Supercheap in Alpine White. This wasn't a perfect match for the car colour but I decided it was close enough for a clubmans rally car so went with it.

Everything actually went better than expected right up to applying the top coat. Even the primer was easy to apply and went on evenly. Then I tried the top coat. Now, I'm terrible when it comes to art, paint etc and so I wasn't expecting much. But this was bad. If I went lightly then the primer showed through. If I went hard then I ended up with runs everywhere. An utter mess! After a couple of days of sporadically attacking it (and going through way more cans than expected) I had something that was kind of okay - that was soon after I decided I didn't care if some overspray ended up through the interior.

For someone who knows what they are doing with painting it would probably have come out fine even with using spray cans, but for a novice hack like me it wasn't great. It's fine, it does the job and is (marginally) better than if I'd let my 4 year old do it, but next time I'll just spend the money and make it someone else's problem!

 

 

Edited February 6, 2023 by CahunaKiwi

[CahunaKiwi 21]

Time to reinstall the interior stuff.

I was able to retain most of the dashboard innards (including the HVAC system) during the cage build, so this wasn't really that hard. Cut out a template to fit the dashboard pad around the rollcage, measure it again, use the template to cut the edges of the actual dashboard and slide into place. Well that was the theory, but despite measuring twice, once I installed the dashboard pad I found I had cut out far more than necessary to fit the cage. Turns out I measured from the windscreen without realising the dashboard actually finishes 4-5cm before it. The good news is that it fit straight in, the bad news is that there's an ugly gap in the da shboard on both sides. Such is life; I've kept the parts that were cut off and will look at a way of fitting them in a way that can be removed if/when I ever need to remove the dashboard again.

 

I mentioned that I was keeping the HVAC system in the dashboard. Yes it's added weight, but as mentioned previously I'm both heavy and lazy, so removing it and putting in something lighter was never really on my radar. Besides, how would I get the A/C air into the car... yes, this rally car is going to have A/C! I've done too many events on stinking hot summer days to want to get into a hot car wearing double-layer overalls and helmet, and too many cold, wet events in the winter with fogging that the demister and Rainex just can't handle. So given this is just a play car and I'm not serious about results the A/C is staying.

The basic dashboard pad fit in easily enough after the cutting dramas, along with the rest of the electronic components (instruments, HVAC controls etc). There was a large hole where the iDrive display was previously and I was tempted to take a trip to Pick-a-Part to look for a base E87 with the storage cubby in that spot but, being cheap, decided to just remove the screen and reinstall the empty plastic surround as a tray. Aside from having a hole in each end it actually works well for holding oddments and is the perfect size for the bluetooth workshop speaker, which will now be the dedicated "rally in-car touring stage entertainment system".

Wanting to keep things neat and tidy I needed to fill up the hole under the HVAC controls left by the stereo and heat warmer controls being removed. After a bit of pondering and discussion with various people I went with cutting out some polycarbonate as blanking plates and gluing it onto the original fascia panel, then covering it with a carbon-fibre looking vinyl. For an amateur with no craft skills it came out remarkable okay - just don't look at how messy the hot glue holding it in place is (it's hidden).

And once installed, along with a few other pieces of trim, it looked pretty darned good. I also went with putting vinyl on other parts of the dashboard trim to make it look consistent. Eventually this will have things like spotlight switches and the battery isolator switch mounted to it.

 

The steering wheel caused a few headaches, thanks to me making assumptions and not measuring anything. While I was pulling the car apart I ordered a bunch of parts from Demon Tweeks, including a steering wheel and boss kit for fitting it.

Of course I didn't consider that the steering wheel had a dish to it; I was planning on keeping the standard steering column which has reach adjustment, so of course I could just push the wheel closer to the dashboard, right? Oh, and because I have stupidly long legs I also bought a quick-release steering kit from Allports. The end result? The boss kit added 60mm of depth and the steering wheel dish was 70mm, added to which was the depth of the boss kit. I installed everything, hopped in and found that the driving position was very similar to that my Nana used to use. Or a NASCAR driver on an oval. Which is to say that it was all far too close to me to be driveable. So I removed the quick release and installed just the wheel and found that, while not perfect, the wheel was now far enough away that I could comfortably drive the car. But I couldn't get in or out properly. So in the end I threw money at the problem and bought a second steering wheel with no dish to it and installed that along with the quick release. Lesson learnt.

 

Finally, I wanted to have some additional instrumentation for the engine - in particular the water temp and (ideally) oil pressure. And because the motor is much more powerful than anything I've driven before (and it's often hard to hear when on the gravel) I decided that a shift light would be worthwhile having too. Buying gauges for each task would be the easy option but would require work to wire into the car and mount, plus would end up being a few hundred dollars all-up for anything of decent quality. But what if I could find something digital to do it all? After a few hours of research I decided to take a punt on an Lufi X1 digital gauge from Ali Express. With shipping it came in at less than $150 so, at worst, it was the equivalent of one decent water temp gauge wasted.

Here's how it looks temporarily mounted in the car for a bit of testing before I started stripping everything out of it:

A few pros and cons:

• It connects to the car via OBD2, so is easy enough to install that even I can manage it!
• It can have multiple screens, each one user-definable. I've just stuck with one with the water temp and voltage, along with revs
• It has a whole lot of other display items I could add if needed, some of which may be useful if I had a turbo setup. Some of these (intake temperature/pressure etc) I've configured on a second screen but probably won't look at all that often.
• It doesn't do oil pressure or temperature, because the OBD2 feed on the 130i doesn't include it (which is strange since there is an oil pressure gauge on the instrument cluster)
• It has programmable shift lights across the top, but in reality it's not that easy to see them when I'm concentrating on the road ahead rather than looking at the dashboard
• It has programmable alarms, which trigger a separate idiot light. I've set this up with alarms for when water temp goes over a certain point (which sounds an alarm and lights the idiot light permanently) and as a secondary shift light (sounds an alarm and lights up 500rpm from the red line, so I have time to react and grab another gear).

From doing some basic testing of it on the road (before stripping out the interior) it seems to work well. The idiot light is mounted on top of the instrument cluster and seems to be visible enough to get my attention, and the main unit is pretty responsive in keeping up with things like changes in the revs. Overall I'm pretty happy with it so far, albeit reserving final judgement on it until I've tried it actually racing.

And finally, here's my nearly-finished "office". The Lufi (and the magnetic phone mount, for touring stages) are screwed onto the dashboard for extra safety and I've added some grip tape (same as used on outdoor steps) in front of the pedals to stop the feet from sliding around, rather than spending money on a proper foot plate.

 

Next job up is the suspension. Most of it is sitting waiting to be installed but until I get the windscreen fitted and the seatbelt mounts installed the car isn't going anywhere, so that's going to be a few weeks away yet.

Edited February 9, 2023 by CahunaKiwi

[gofaster 101]

living my dream, all the best with your build, expect some in car at some stage.

[CahunaKiwi 21]

1 hour ago, gofaster said:

living my dream, all the best with your build, expect some in car at some stage.

Will definitely post some in-car once I get out there! 

[TPO130i 8]

Looking good. Just wondering if you have still got the CCC unit that was in the car? If you do, was it working ok? Would you want to sell it? 
 

Cheers

Simon

[CahunaKiwi 21]

On 2/9/2023 at 10:21 PM, TPO130i said:

Looking good. Just wondering if you have still got the CCC unit that was in the car? If you do, was it working ok? Would you want to sell it? 
 

Cheers

Simon

I've still got the head unit (which I presume has all the smarts inside it) and the iDrive controller, but the screen was damaged during removal and it (along with all the wiring) have been tossed out. You're welcome to the head unit and and controller if you like.

[elias 253]

This is awesome to see, a much more extreme version of my 135i build, also had Ray do a halfcgae for me, very impressed with his work! Might have to steal your idea of blanking off the holes in the centre console trim piece.

[TPO130i 8]

6 hours ago, CahunaKiwi said:

I've still got the head unit (which I presume has all the smarts inside it) and the iDrive controller, but the screen was damaged during removal and it (along with all the wiring) have been tossed out. You're welcome to the head unit and and controller if you like.

Cheers Chris. Yes I would - that would be great thanks. The screen was had it on mine so I've already fitted another one and that was when I found the unit itself was knackered. I'll PM my details and sort out courier etc.

Thanks

Simon

[RedMist 0]

How's it going? I'm thinking of going down a similar route.... or not.