1 Series (E87) Tarmac rally car build by Mefmotorsport

[rutthenut]

Shame about the shunt but good to see new section grafted in there and looking the right shape again

[mef]

so, all the repairs were completed in March 2015 and just in time to go to compete again (16th time) on the Monteberg rallysprint. My usual co-driver Mark Hewitt (brother in law) wasn't keen to do it this year (2016) so I advertised for a co-driver on the British Rally forum and Facebook pages "Rally co-driver resource" and this Danish girl called Jeanette Qvick offered to do it with me, how could I refuse?

[mef]

Its all so quiet on here recently and I thought it was about time for an update since nearly a year has gone by since our attempt at the Monteberg rallysprint last April!

Well, it was a disaster!

We only managed to go around 800m of the first stage on the 2016 event, co-driver Jeannette Qvick with me for this one. It was a horrible wet miserable day, hailstones most of the day! Unfortunately the engine cut out going through the woods on the very narrow slippy section. I had no idea what had happenend, no noises, it just stopped, freewheeled down the hill to eventually pull over into a gap off the road. Lost of cranking, testing end evaluation revealed nothing. Game over. you-tube in car video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t2DLaVvnJI

Once we got towed back to service in Dranouter and after a lot more testing and pondering what could be wrong we finally noticed that the cam chain had snapped and the cams wern't rotating! I removed the cam cover to find that the inlet cam vernier sprocket had come loose hanging on just about on the cam, 3 M6 capscrews sheared off and 3 missing, presumably in the sump.

So that was the end of that! One event I would like to forget.

More later!

[mef]

A little belated update from April 2017,

After our disasterous Monteberg rallysprint back in April 2016 I took the engine apart to further investigate the damage, 12 bent valves, 1 snapped cam follower finger, damaged vernier pulley, cam chain, cam chain guide etc etc.......... fortunately no damage to the cylinder head itself or the pistons, I had been very lucky!

I started gathering replacement parts but I just couldnt get the enthusiasm back to put it together, in fact it wasnt until January this year that I finally got my finger out and started to rebuild the head and sort out the repairs. I finally got it all back together by the end of March as I intended to do the Monteberg rally in Belgium again this year.

Engine all put back together after sorting out the previous verier cam pulley problem. I wasn't happy with a sort of "tapping" noise that the engines always suffered with and decided to remove the cylinder head to investigate further, this revealed that the pistons were protruding slightly too much out of the block and just glancing the cylinder head on the piston eyebrows. I removed the pistons and machined 12thou from the eyebrows, put it back together and it was sorted, no more noises. BUT after a road test it just didnt seem right! Anyway I went to do the rally at Anglesey as a test before going to belgium in May.

The car was dreadful, just wouldnt pull properly at all. I spun off on the first stage onto the grass and sunk in the waterlogged ground, we got stuck for near 5 minutes, eventually got going but took a stage maximum. After that it was time to play with a few settings, removing the front anti-roll bar made it turn in much better but it was too sloppy on the tight bits.

Not a good event for us that one.

Back home and I did a compression test which revealed that there wasnt much! having had the engine in bits I knew all the bores, pistons and valve seat were good so that only left cam timing as the culprit. Investigation revealed that I had made a mistake with the exhaust cam timing, it had 100tho of lift less at TDC than the Schrick recommended figure. I just dont know how I came to make that mistake, I'm normally meticulous about getting it accurate. It seems that it was one full rotation of the dial gauge from the correct lift figure! I retimed both cams and the engine was back to normal, idled better and much sharper, pulled like a train again!

[mef]

So, the engine was now fully sorted in time to go to compete on the "short rally of Monteberg" on 7th May, which this year consisted of 2 stages making 7 stage runs in total.

Everything worked well, no problems bar a small hydraulic cylinder leak on the clutch which I could live with. The new format of the rallysprint event was superb, best ever, highly recommended.

The engine performed well, back up to original power and no problems. We had a cracking weekend, dry stages but a bit cold all day Sunday for the service crew!

After the rally I removed the gearbox and replaced the clutch concentric slave cylinder which was wet, I couldn't see any problem with it and actually think the leakage was from a slightly loose -3 goodridge fitting on the hydraulic line to the bleed nipple.

[mef]

No work to do to the car after the short rally of Monteberg so we took the car to the Classic car show at Tatton Park and joined the Warrington motor club rally car display. A great 2 days in lovely sunshine!

Since then I decided to sell the DTA X dash since its now been superseded by the new NT Dash which I'm currently installing in the dash pod. I need to make a new carbon panel to take the smaller unit.

As a DTA agent I thought it would be best that I had the most up to date product on my own car as an advert! The NT Dash is certainly very nice, very sharp and clear with a lot more pixels, a better definition display which is just as easy to see even though a bit smaller than the X Dash display.

Pics to follow

[mef]

Wow, how time flies!

I hadn't realised it was so long since I've updated this story, I see the last comment was attending the Classic sports car show at Tatton Park and that was in 2017!

Well since then another year has gone by, during 2018 I didn't do many events, in fact the only event in the BMW was again the "short rally of Monteberg" in Belgium, as its now called.

This was the second year that it ran with 2 stages and talk of a 3rd in 2019. All went well, it was massively hot weekend, nothing particular to comment about really, no problems with the car, it performed faultlessly. All in all a great weekend as usual.

On returning home the car was tucked away ready for the next event but I then suddenly had the bug to start a new project!

At the end of June 2018 I purchased a Porsche Cayman road car with the intention of building a rally car. A big new venture and learning curve. I stripped out the Cayman, fitted a weld in cage plus all the usual safety mods and managed to get it finished in time to compete on the Neil Howard stages rally at Oulton Park on 4th November. 4 months build time from the start to its first event was quite an achievement for me but it is only a standard road car that's stage rally prepared.

That's a completely different story and not really for this forum I suppose.

The 1 series is now up for sale, contact me if interested.

Cheers all,

Martin

[mef]

Here again, about time I updated this thread:

I still have the 1 Series BMW and its still for sale. I've recently advertised it again, this time on Motorsport Auctions.

A couple of interested partys have made contact already and one guy coming over tomorrow to take a look with the view to purchase so lets see what happens!

Martin