E36 M3 RallyCross build!

[95maxrider]

Super weird that there's no trace. You'd think if anything was wet, it'd attract dirt/dust and stick. The clutch line comes out below the booster and travels horizontally above the frame rail, then down and to the slave, right? Is there a drain hole on the frame rail that it's disappearing into? I should dig around and see if I still have my stock master and line on the shelf somewhere.

Yeah, lord knows I drive through enough dirt and dust, I figured finding the leak would be easy. I did my best to look under the booster from above, but I didn't disassemble anything yet. I looked at the line from below and didn't see anything, but I suppose it's possible it's going into the frame rail or something. I'll take a closer look at that area.

[95maxrider]

I posted up a thread elsewhere and someone thought that the booster could have "eaten" the fluid. I'm not familiar with how boosters work, is this a possibility, given the way the brake and clutch fluids are separated in the reservoir? I noticed no change in brake pedal feel.

[Laminar]

Yeah I saw that, it didn't make any sense to me. The reservoir sits on top of the brake MC. The only fluid path from the reservoir to the booster is through the MC. The reservoir is sectioned off so that the clutch and brakes can't steal fluid from each other.



The only fluid that can get into the booster has to come from the brake section of the reservoir, and your was full.

[95maxrider]

Well I did some more searching and came across this page:
https://forum.e46fanatics.com/showthread.php?t=934321

Where a member said this:
"As a safety measure, the clutch portion of the reservoir is up higher, so if the brake fluid drops, the clutch is likely the first thing to have issues and to save fluid for stopping the car."

Which makes sense. The other day when I sucked out all the old fluid from the reservoir in anticipation of bleeding everything and putting new fluid in, I noticed that after I sucked fluid out of the main/brake section, fluid from the clutch section would drain into the main section from a little hole at the bottom. But this only happened when the fluid in the brake section got real low. So it appears that if there's a leak from part of the braking system, it will "pull" fluid from the clutch section of the reservoir so that you have still have brakes. However, I'm not sure this squares with what I saw on Saturday. When I first opened up the reservoir, the brake section was topped off, and only the clutch section was depleted. To me, it would only pull clutch fluid if the brake section was very low, in which case I would have found the "brake" fluid low as well . The e-brake/low brake fluid light never came on, which I would think it would do if the level got so low as to pull from the clutch section.

I think I'm more confused now than ever....I wonder if leaving my pressure bleeder on the car for a few hours would help me determine if there's a leak somewhere?

[Laminar]

Was the clutch reservoir completely empty or had it just dropped below the level of the clutch fluid nipple? You said the brake section was topped off. Is there a check valve in between the reservoirs that only lets fluid flow clutch-to-brake?

[snakebit8]

Have you filled it and tried driving it again to see if the problem repeats itself? Can you get your clutch pedal back to feeling normal?

[95maxrider]

Was the clutch reservoir completely empty or had it just dropped below the level of the clutch fluid nipple? You said the brake section was topped off. Is there a check valve in between the reservoirs that only lets fluid flow clutch-to-brake?

Well, since you can only barely see into the clutch reservoir, I can't say for sure. But it seemed like it took enough fluid for it to have been completely empty. Yes, the brake section was topped off. I don't know if there's a check valve between the two, I think it's more of a gravity-only thing, but I can't say for sure. But from what I understand, fluid can't go from the brake section to the clutch section.

Have you filled it and tried driving it again to see if the problem repeats itself? Can you get your clutch pedal back to feeling normal?

Not yet, I'm waiting on the new clutch master to arrive. But I won't feel comfortable racing with the car without knowing where all that fluid went, I don't need another repeat of that last event. There's one race left, and I need to win it to win the season!

[95maxrider]

Well, I did something dumb, and I need some help figuring out if I need to drop my transmission to retrieve any lost parts from the bellhousing. Long story short, my clutch slave cylinder "exploded" inside my bell housing while I was trying to bleed the system. I was able to retrieve the following parts from the bellhousing with a magnet:



Here's what's left of the slave:



I'm wondering if any tiny pieces fell down to the bottom of the bellhousing, like maybe something that was holding the pushrod to the piston inside the cylinder? Maybe something that slides around this little lip?



Or is the pushrod really just held against the piston with the metal lock ring and the boot? Apparently there are slave rebuild kits that include the following parts:

LINK



The only thing I'm unsure about is that piston object, is that the thing that's inside the cylinder? What do you think, am I good to go after replacing the slave or do I need to drop the trans?

Thank you!

[aeronaut]

You're probably ok.
But...*I THINK* I have an old clutch slave cylinder lying around. If I do, happy to explode it and count parts for you.
I'll know later today.

[95maxrider]

You're probably ok.
But...*I THINK* I have an old clutch slave cylinder lying around. If I do, happy to explode it and count parts for you.
I'll know later today.

That's very generous, please only do that if you're sure you will never need it again. I'm curious as to how the pushrod is held in place. Is it just the rubber boot? Because I've seen other BMW slave cylinders that don't even have the boot. It just seems like the pushrod can fall out very easily.

[aeronaut]

Here's my old one, exploded.
And yes, I've read posts from people who've tried to bleed their clutch slave with it out of the trans, and BOOM, across the room goes the rod.

IMG_20191104_141307.resized.jpg

IMG_20191104_141318.resized.jpg

IMG_20191104_141327.resized.jpg

- - - Updated - - -

[95maxrider]

Here's my old one, exploded.
And yes, I've read posts from people who've tried to bleed their clutch slave with it out of the trans, and BOOM, across the room goes the rod.

- - - Updated - - -

Thank you, that's awesome! But I don't see the metal retaining thing in there? I had removed my slave to check for leaks, and had only reattached it with one of the two nuts for bleeding it (I had to replace the master). But I didn't think what would happen when I went to push the clutch down to finish the bleeding procedure. I'm pretty dumb!

[aeronaut]

Thank you, that's awesome! But I don't see the metal retaining thing in there? I had removed my slave to check for leaks, and had only reattached it with one of the two nuts for bleeding it (I had to replace the master). But I didn't think what would happen when I went to push the clutch down to finish the bleeding procedure. I'm pretty dumb!

The retaining ring is there, it's just hard to see, and stuck to the rubber thing.

ret.jpg

[Laminar]

So there's no internal snap ring to retain the piston?

[aeronaut]

Correct.

[Laminar]

I'm thinking about some softer springs for winter so I'm going back and trying to figure out what you're running - is it still 250lb up front and 400lb rear?

[95maxrider]

I'm thinking about some softer springs for winter so I'm going back and trying to figure out what you're running - is it still 250lb up front and 400lb rear?

That sounds right to me, I'll double check and let you know if that's not right.

[95maxrider]

Well I sure let this thread die, didn't I? Not to worry, the car and I are doing just fine, but with the 2020 season about to start, I figured it might be a good idea to wrap up the 2019 season and go over the very few things I've done since then.

We left off after I had mysteriously lost enough brake/clutch fluid at a race to break my clutch master cylinder, causing me to come in 4th at event #3 (10/26/19), and basically miss event #7 the following day (10/27/19). The day my car broke we were part way through the PM runs, and I was able to finish off the day in Shawn and Katie's new to them (but very much used) turbo NA Miata that was built for auto-x (IIRC). I couldn't really get the hang of it, but that probably didn't really change my finishing position for the day. I think I was in 3rd at lunch, and with some rain in the PM my M3 didn't fare as well as the lighter cars, and I just didn't know what to do with the Miata. It looks like I got a video of my final AM run, which IIRC was the fastest run in the session:



Once again I didn't hit any cones for the day. Dan was nice enough to let me drive his Porsche 944 the following day. I forgot the 944 didn't have ABS, so I locked up the brakes in one corner and hit three cones, my first of the season! The 944 had overheating problems after a few runs, so I called it quits and gathered up the courage to drive my car home without a clutch. The night before everyone assured me it was totally easy, but I was still weary. I did some practicing in the parking lot and then hit the highway. Thankfully 90% of the 120 mile drive was on the highway, so I only really had trouble when I got close to home on surface roads. There was some minor gear grinding, but nothing serious. I guess everyone was right, it really wasn't too bad. I got a DNF for the day, and 0 season points.

Josh came in 2nd place at event #3, and 1st at event #7, and all of a sudden jumped into first place for the season. That left the final event as my only chance to catch up, and I would have to beat him by at least one place, possibly two.

In the heat of all that, I didn't post up the results to event #6, which happened three weeks before events #3 and #7. Event 6 was back at PTC, but due to a lack of rain in the preceding weeks, the course was very dry and turned to moon dust almost immediately. It was also a relatively tight course, and cars struggled for grip the whole day. Since I was in first place for the season, that meant I was the first car on course for our group. On the drive through I missed where one turn was due to some high grass, so on my first run I took it REALLY slow there so I didn't go off course, as I still didn't really know where the turn and cones were. This put me something like 4-5 seconds back, which in our group is an eternity. Jeremy jumped out in front with a very fast first run, but had to retire after his second due to a broken diff mount. That left Stephen to walk away from everyone else the rest of the day, only hitting one cone. Unfortunately for him, he just barely went off course on one run, which dropped him back down into third behind me. Josh ended up in first, some 2 seconds ahead of me. Again, I didn't hit any cones for the day. Here's a video:



And so we get to the final event of the year. We were back at Summit Point on the non-tree lined course. It was mid-November and temperatures were in the mid-30s, maybe getting above 40 in the afternoon. In similar conditions at our final race in 2018, it seemed like snow tires were the ticket to going fast, and almost everyone was running snows for this event. Everybody except Stephen and Chris. I should note that the only event that Chris has won in MR was this same course at the final event in 2018, although he was on gravel tires then as well. Well, Stephen and Chris defied the snow tire rule and just absolutely destroyed everybody while running their normal gravel tires. This was the first time I had ran on snow tires with the M3, and the lack of lateral grip was appalling. Don't get me wrong, I had more fun sliding and drifting around than I do when I run my gravels, but it was not fast. Josh also was running snow tires, and stayed ahead of me the whole day, but he too was getting destroyed by Stephen and Chris. It was clear by the PM runs that I was not going to get ahead of Josh and that the season was his, so I let a little loose on my final run, and actually hit a damn cone in my own car, the first of the season. So for the event Stephen came in first, Chris in second, Josh in third, and me in fourth. It was a fitting end to a disappointing season with Josh in first, me in second, and Stephen in third.



I'm fairly certain things would have been different had my car not broken, but that's the way the cookie crumbles. Time to regroup and make sure that doesn't happen again in 2020!

[Laminar]

Wait...did I miss what fixed the clutch issue? Did you just rebleed and it was fine?

[95maxrider]

Wait...did I miss what fixed the clutch issue? Did you just rebleed and it was fine?

Good catch, I forgot I never did an update on that. Well I had to replace the clutch master cylinder because the circular plastic piece at the end where it attaches to the pedal had split in half, likely due to the increased pressure I had to apply because the fluid was low.





And since they're relatively cheap, and I was already going to be bleeding the system, I decided to replace the slave as well, even though it showed no signs of leaking and was pretty new. I never did find a fluid leak, all I can assume is that worn brake pads caused the level to drop in the reservoir. But I only had put like 3,000 miles on the car since I last changed the brake fluid, so that seems a little premature/severe to me. To this day I'm still not positive what happened, but the level in the reservoir has not changed since I replaced the parts. All I can do is do a better job of monitoring the fluid level and hope it doesn't happen again.

Moving on to off-season maintenance, I figured a smart thing to do would be to flush out the brake fluid and make sure it was topped off My bleeder screws were pretty grungy looking, and a few had started to round off a bit, so I bought new bleeders.



Since I have 328 front calipers, and part numbers on different sites were conflicting, I bought two different sized sets of screws to make sure I had the right ones. But, since I did this many months ago, I no longer remember which set was the correct one. I think it was the 7mm set?



My valve cover gasket was weeping, even though it only had a few thousand miles on it, and since I had bought the parts from FCP Euro, I decided to replace them since the parts were covered under their awesome lifetime warranty. The last time I did the job I think I used all aftermarket parts, and the rubber grommets appeared to have failed:







This time I paid the price difference for OEM parts in the hope that they last longer. Time will tell.

I must say that I absolutely despise doing VC jobs in this car since the rear crescent areas are so close to the firewall that it makes scraping off the old RTV a real pain. I had to cut a razor blade in half so it would fit in the tight areas.



The VC was all sorts of dirty since the oil held onto all the dust I kick up when I race, so I sprayed it with some Purple Power and power washed it a few times before reinstalling it.



I made the mistake of following the directions in the Bentley and Pelican manuals and put the new gasket on the head, and then put the VC on top of it. This of course did not go well, and a part of the gasket must have gotten folded over when I put the VC down on top of it, as I had a pretty sizable oil leak from the gasket after I started driving the car again. Cue doing the whole job again, only this time I put the gasket into the VC before putting the VC down on the head.



I of course had the pleasure of scraping off all the RTV again, and it wasn't any easier the second time around. But at least it sealed up properly this time.

Then I got to do something that was long overdue, and vitally important on any rallycross car, which is to install a subwoofer. I had my eye on an 8" 125w RMS JBL under seat sub for a while, and when I saw the price drop to $150 due to a "new" (but totally the same) model being released, I snatched one up. I knew it wasn't going to fit under my Recaros, but that's okay. My plan was to just put it behind my seat, and then take it out when I race.



I went with JL Audio RCA cables, and I also picked up a new aux cable from Blue Jeans Cable to replace the wimpy and interference-prone junk I've had in the car.



I had to tie into the signal wire that was running into the trunk that feeds my 4 channel amp, but when I got to it (under my seat and carpet) I found the crimp connector was barely crimped, so I decided it would be best to solder it all together, since I didn't want to lose all audio on a long drive.



I have a stash of nice 6 AWG copper welding cable (which is complete overkill for this amp) so I made my cables. I adore these glue-lined heat shrinks and solid copper terminals.



I found an existing ground terminal under the seat, so I cleaned it up and used it for my ground.





Got another fuse holder to match the one for the 4-channel amp:



But when I got to the amp, I realized the spots for the terminals were too narrow for my terminals required by the 6 AWG wire, so I ground my terminals down so they would fit.



I did my best to run the power and ground wires away from any signal wires to prevent interference, and this is how it ended up. Power on the PS, signal wires on the DS. I also put the power cable in that annoying protective plastic sheathing to make sure it doesn't chafe through:







It took a little while to get the sub dialed in, but now it sounds pretty good. I'm used to a 12" JL W6 with 500w RMS in my other car, but since this is sitting right behind me and not in the trunk, it's actually good enough. It sure doesn't go low like a 12", but it's a 100% improvement from not having a sub at all. I can also remove the whole thing in a few minutes if I want to, as I left enough slack in the wires so I can move it around and get to stuff. Considering this car splits DD duties with my other car, this was well worth the money and effort.

[95maxrider]

So while cleaning up from the leaking VC, it looked like either my output shaft seal (OSS) and/or the shift shaft seal (SSS) on the transmission were leaking, so I figured I might as well replace them, how hard could it be? Ahh, well it turns out, they were rather difficult, at least for me.

Any time I remove the heat shields from the car I'm greeted by pounds of dirt falling onto my face that had been sitting on top of them. Weight reduction!



Got the driveshaft out...



To make access easier, I supported the trans and then removed the trans brace:



The SSS came out without too much fuss:



But the OSS was another story. I had a Lisle seal puller, but the non-adjustable kind. Looking closely at the pics in the Pelican guide, I noticed they had an adjustable seal puller. They were also demonstrating the job on an earlier 325, which has a different trans, which conveniently has a spot they could use for leverage to pry the seal out. I had no such luck on my trans, and no matter how I tried, all I could do was gouge the surface. My heart sank and my stomach was queasy. What have I done?!? And more importantly, how do I complete the job?



So I ordered two other Lisle seal pullers in the hope they would solve my problems.



Well, they didn't. The smaller one wasn't at all right for this job, and the adjustable one helped, but not nearly as much as I had hoped. I just kept gouging the surface further, there was just nothing good to pry from. It just kept tearing up the seal without making it move. I was getting desperate, which made me use more force and try different places to pry from, which led to more mistakes. Eventually, I got the damn thing out.



But the damage to the area had been severe. Granted these areas were all outside the sealing area, so not terribly important:



But when I had pried the seal from further inside in my attempt to actually get it out, I had caught the inner lip of the trans where it actually seals against, causing a deep and sharp gouge. Excuse the blurry pics, it's tough getting a camera up in that area. You can see the damage around 7 o'clock:



Great, now I was worrying about how I would get the new seal to actually make a good seal. I considered using RTV around it, but then decided that if it leaked after that, I would need to then remove the RTV from all around the hole, and I knew that would be next to impossible, so I decided to put it in normally. But not before I cleaned up all the damage by hand with my file set:



It took a long time, but everything cleaned up pretty well and I couldn't feel any more rough edges, so it was time to lube the seal and press it in. Except it just didn't want to go in straight. I eventually got it in, but there was a tiny bit of the rubber that had folded over in the process at around 11 o'clock:





But by this point I was fed up with the whole project, and in no mood to order a new seal and try it again, so I hoped and prayed that this wouldn't leak and just put the car back together. I noticed earlier that my exhaust hangers were pretty floppy after only being on the car for like two years, so I bought some new ones. Thankfully, they were much stiffer.





After a few weeks of driving there were no signs of leaks, so I guess the gods must have smiled upon me. It's good to not have any leaks again!

Oh, and I bought some pics from our local photographer Steven Phillips from last season that I never posted up, so here goes! I don't get very sideways all that often, so they're pretty boring. But they're pretty!

[Laminar]

Glad your clutch is working, and the sub is a cool project. I did Polk components up front and 6x9s in the rear deck. The 6x9s do their best, but bass is lacking. Something like you have that could easily be yanked out at a race is a great idea.

[pondhopper]

How did you attach the lugs to the welding wire?

[95maxrider]

How did you attach the lugs to the welding wire?

I splurged a while back and bought a TEMCo Lug Crimping Tool, it can crimp from 8 gauge to 4/0 gauge, and it does it very well. I rewired the entire system in my other car with it and it's a joy to use. It should last a lifetime too, as it's very well built and heavy duty.

[95maxrider]

And just like that I'm behind in my updates, not that there's anything interesting really. Way back in the spring I drained my coolant as it had been about two years since I had put new stuff in. Granted, I only put like 5k on the car in that time, but I figured coolant is cheap, so I might as well do it. What came out kind of shocked me, given the low miles:



I run the blue OEM BMW coolant, but this was decidedly not blue. Feeling guilty, I decided to refill the system with another round of Evaporust Thermocure, which proved itself quite capable when I installed this motor in the car a few years back. I put on 100+ miles, but given that I'm mostly working from home, and my commute is three miles, it took some time. Like, 3 months or something. I probably put on more miles than needed.

This was the result:



You're supposed to do two drain and fills with just water, with some driving in between, so that's what I did. Except after two fills with just water, it was still draining out looking like this:



Uhhh, I don't think it's supposed to do that. Evaporust is a gooey clearish yellow substance, so it looked like I hadn't gotten it all out of the system yet. So I did another two rounds of water. The color didn't change. WTF? All the while, I had been draining the system from the drain plug on the block first, and then from the radiator, while the car was up on ramps in the front to aid burping. Except every time I went to drain the radiator, nothing came out. Hmm, maybe it was all just draining out of the block? So after like the fourth or fifth drain of just water still coming out all golden, I decided to drain the radiator first. Annnnnnd nothing. Wait, what? How is that possible? I knew the damn radiator was full, why wasn't water coming out? So I jammed a drill bit up there, and felt it stop almost immediately. So I pressed harder, and felt it start going through something hard but gooey. And finally, water started to trickle out. So I grabbed a bigger bit, and really got up in there. This is what got stuck to the bit:



Huh. Maybe I shouldn't have left the cleaner in the system for that long? I guess that would also explain why after five rounds of draining, the water was still coming out all nasty, since I wasn't able to actually drain what was in the radiator. At this point, it was like two days before our first events, and I wanted to get real coolant back in the car. So I did two more rounds of just water, and it eventually came out "kinda clean" which was such an improvement that I said eff it, time to put in some 50/50 and call it a day.



I also replaced both of the plastic radiator burp/drain plugs. Interestingly, the drain plug (which was aftermarket) had this weird hook thing on the end of it. Huh, I wonder if it's there to prevent the drain plug hole from getting all clogged up like mine had done? The new OEM block drain plug I ordered was taller than the one in the car, and couldn't be installed without removing an O2 sensor from one of the manifolds, so I cleaned up the old one, slapped on a new crush washer, and installed everything.



And with that, I had "cleaned" my cooling system, and was ready to race.....