Duncan Millar bmw, e30, engine stand, Interviews, m20, m42, motorsports, power steering, racing, rally, stage rally, steering rack, Uncategorized, z3 steering rack

E30 Projects in the Time of Corona: Part 1

COVID-19 has fundamentally changed everyone’s way of life. For those of us that love our E30s, it’s made life practically unbearable. The worst thing to happen to anyone, EVER, has happened to us collectively as enthusiasts of this particular car and its variants. Without warning, we pounced on the inboxes of some of our favorite Instagram accounts to see what they were up to while they are self-isolating. We haven’t had much opportunity to work on ours, but these folks have, and if you’re one who enjoys being forced to live vicariously in this digital age, oh boy, do we have something for you. Enjoy!

@CooperAutoworks – Soon-to-be M54-powered Rally Racers

Photos courtesy of @cooperautoworks

Calvin and Kelsey of “Cooper Autoworks BMW” fame, were already facemask-deep in preparation for the upcoming rally season by the time most people had started isolating. On top of swapping out their M50 for a tuned-up M54, they’re also documenting the Frankenstein-monstering of their shop-yard E46 in their new Project Schmutzwagen YouTube series. Kelsey is also the focus of a recent RYE30 Racing article on women in motorsports and you can check that out here!

#Stayhome Score:
Flatten-the-Crest/10

@grant_baumg – West Tennessee Drift King

Photos courtesy of @grant_baumg

Grant took his grocery-getter from grandma-uses-it-to-get-to-singles-night-at-the-bingo-hall to grandma-uses-it-to-lure-young-men-into-her-BDSM-dungeon by tossing a “fat turbo”, BC coilovers, and a rollcage at it. Now he rather impressively rips skids while representing Retro Race Co. at drift events like Slammedenuff’s Stoopicold. Right now, he’s cleaning out the engine bay and dropping in the only thing that’s more American than bald eagles; the LS. Check out his team’s Instagram below, or if you’re worthy, beg Grant to let you follow his private Instagram here.

#Stayhome Score:
No-replacement-for-displacement/10

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Opinions??

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@off_joee – Almost Literally From the Ground Up

Photos courtesy of @off_joee

We’d be doing Joe a disservice if we tried to sum up his build better than he already has:

“…I’ve always worked on cars since I was young, I spent most of my life with my grandad, so we would work on cars and other stuff through the summers. The first time I saw an e30 was when I was watching and listening to Tyler, The Creator. So I said to myself one day I’ll have one of those and me and my grandad will fix it up. In the last few years my grandad has developed dementia and now lives in a home. So I’m fixing mine up because I know he’d be proud of it and we would have done it together 🙂“

Check out his Instagram below and follow the very detail oriented restoration of this Brits M40-powered E30!

#Stayhome Score:
You’re-honestly-going-to-make-me-cry/10

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🤖

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@robsgarageisfull – Full of Cool Stuff, That Is

Photos courtesy of @robsgarageisfull

Rob is in the final stretches of the most pain-in-the-ass repair you can do on an E30; the sunroof. But he won’t be friends with boredom for long because an old outboard motor and a classic GSXR are next on the to-do list. Rob comes across our Instagram feed often, but not so much that he doesn’t get lost in the scroll, so we’d advise you give his profile a good read because it’s not just his garage that’s got cool stuff. You can check out his bikes, him and his wife’s adventures in nature, and if you were told that no man is perfect, he’s also an artist!

#Stayhome Score:
We-wish-our-garage-was-full-of-cool-shit/10

@robotronan – They’re basically us, if the three of us got married to each other like in Netflix’s Tiger King.

Photos courtesy of @Robotronan

The Robotronan crew members are our spirit animals. Josh and Amanda race their M42-driven E30 in Texan autocrosses (yee-haw) and do very well (2019 was an award winning season for both of them), as you’d expect from a team driving a car that’s set up almost exactly the same way our is! There will be more on that later when we dig into their story for a future article. In celebration of the virus, Josh refreshed the power steering system with Chase Bays equipment. Josh was also going to pick up an engine with the intent of rebuilding it, but was coughed on by the universe, and has resorted to, eerily, another RYE30 Racing-similar activity; fussing about with Alfa Romeos.

#Stayhome Score:
When-the-Alfa-Romeo-is-al-dente-you-know-it’s-fully-cooked/10

Unfortunately, @robotronan was the victim cyber-crime and the newness of his current account seems to be causing some issues with our ability to embed his page, so follow his new Instagram here. Hopefully you’ll get the same kind of ‘autocrushing’ updates you’ll be, again, hopefully, be getting from us in the summer.

Thanks for reading and don’t forget to follow us here on the blog, Instagram @rye30racing, and Facebook @rye30racing. If you’ve read this far and you reside in the United States, give us a follow on Instagram and then DM us an address and we’ll send you two free 4″ RYE30Racing stickers! We appreciate your support! See a picture of the stickers below.

We’ll be racing plenty over the summer so we can bring you more high quality content like you read above. Our partnership with Diagonalt is still new and exciting, like that of a new romantic relationship, so check out Diagonalt.com for classic BMW prints and coasters (16% off using code “RYE30” at checkout) and calendars for the new year.

Duncan Millar auto repair, autocross, automotive, block, bmw, craigslist, e30, engine block, engine stand, harbor freight, m12x1.75, m42, motorsports, racing, road racing

Can’t Stand Your E30 – How to Assemble a Stand and Mount Your M42 Block

Another lesson in frugality incoming: We picked up an early E36 M42 engine for $250 down in Indy for purposes unknown to use at the time. It was fortuitous however because we ended up using its cylinder head after the dreaded faulty profile gasket fault made itself apparent during a July 2018 autocross. We turned in our bad cylinder head as a core-return at local junkyard where we found a good replacement and now we have a fully unfunctional E36 M42 again to make an example of for you fine fuc…folks.

Step 1: A.B.C. – Always Be Craigslisting – ALWAYS BE CRAIGSLISTING

Photo Courtesy of Duncan Millar

Engine stands are cheap. Even brand new. We overpaid for our Harbor Freight brand “Central Machinery” stand. Rated at 750 lbs, it’s over-qualified, but for $40 on Craigslist, isn’t as great of a deal as we’d like considering we could get one for under $50 with a coupon and we’d have a warranty.

Step 2: Engine Stands – Assemble

Photos courtesy of Duncan Millar

The stand is essentially made up of two parts. The mounting bracket that sits in the head tube, and the stand itself. The stand is made of three parts. The two rectangular sections have the caster wheels and the other houses the mounting bracket. In our example, the two rectangular sections are already bolted together with the included hardware we received. If you’ve misplaced yours or never received any, they’re easy to replace (check your leftover nuts-and-bolts bag or buy new ones) and don’t require a specific thread because they’re slipped through simple through-holes.

After those are bolted together you can bolt the mounting bracket section to the wheels. Ours has a nut welded inside the bottom of the tubing to tie it to the wheels. Put the longer bolt through the wheels section and into the bottom of the mounting bracket section. Now you have a completed stand. If you have this stand in particular and you don’t have that bolt, it’s an M12x1.75 and approximately 100mm with a locking washer.

Step 3: Stick it to Me – The Mounting Bracket

Photos courtesy of Duncan Millar

The mounting bracket simple slips through the head tube on the mounting bracket section of the stand. Each of the four arms is adjustable. Again, if you don’t have any included hardware, hit up the nuts-and-bolts bag. These M12x1.75s might not be found as easily in your leftovers, so measure the lengths you’ll need and hit the hardware store. With ours we needed four shorter ones (about 3″), four longer ones (about 5″), and four nuts with washers.

With the block on a stable surface and all of the arms loose, mock-up your bracket thusly; bolt the bracket to the block hand-tight and then get the other side with the tube as square to the block as possible so that they are evenly horizontal to each other. Hand tighten those bolts and nuts. After that, tighten the bracket to the block fukentight and then tighten the tube section gutentight.

Put a towel down and grease up the head inside of the head tube. In your best parody of German porn, grab a friend or six and lift the block with the mounting bracket attached, and gently slide the whole thing into the head tube of the stand. Celebrate the event by sliding the swing lever and locking pin into their appropriate holes at the end of the tube. You’ll use those to lock the block in place and swing it around on its axis when necessary.

Word of advice whenever you do so, use two hands! A fully loaded engine is going to be very top or bottom heavy and will leave you in the dust when you try to rotate it. One of these we’ll get around to rebuilding our M42 and hopefully provide you with more scintillating and Pulitzer Prize worthy innuendo.