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switch panel 2.0

During some night rally's we realised we were in the need for more light, we had enough light in front of us, but at the roadsides the visibility was poor.
And the original E12 reverse lights don't help at all when driving backwards in the dark.

So time for updating the switch panel with some extra switches and adding some extra sets of lamps to the Pastellblauer.
[*]the added switch "rear" switches the extra rear lamp when engaging the reverse gear.
[*]the added switch "wide" switches on a pair of wide beam lamps at the front together with standard lights.




1 extra 55 Watts lamp at the rear:



2 55Watts wide beam Hella oval lights added under the bumper, angled both to the side of the road, to give plenty of light to both the roadsides:



and again added a relay with fuses for the wide beam lights:



for protection the lights when not in use i sewed some soft covers with hella logo's





The car sometimes gets really dirty during a classic rally:






Oh yes, the sump protection as seen in the photo below it serves its purpose:

And some rally action

Nerves at the start of the Hornenacht, studying the maps, this was a 6 hour rally in the dark:



woodroads in the dark:



drie provincien rally (three province rally)


farmers blocking the road:


icy roads last winter:


waiting for a TC:


chasing another BMW through the woods:



ow yeah, sometimes we even win a rally

Nice lights upgrade, and nice pics, thanks Rob!

Hornenacht 2019, what a night...

It's already some time ago, November 16th last year we drove the "Hornenacht", which means translated someting like "Horne Night", where "Horne" was a famous count in the past in our neighbourhood.

Our rally club is named to this guy and that is "ASC van Hornerijders", where ASC stands for Auto Sport Club, and "van Hornerijders" is something like "of Horne Drivers", so a full translation could be "Car Sports Club of Horne Drivers"



Now back to topic.

Hornenacht is a classic car rally driven during the dark hours. It exists out of two sections each 3 hours, Cars build before 1985 are accepted.
Edition 2019 was the 46th edition and for us the 3th doing this rally. We like this rally a lot, as driving in the dark seems less difficult for us as for most other particiants. Generaly we score good results in night rally's, but last year (2018) i made a big blunder, forgot to write down 3 check codes to the control card. Hopefully edition 2019 goes without blunders.

Start is as always at our clublocal "Schuttershoeve", a nice establishement in the woods. First equipe starts at 17:01, it's just dark now. Each minute 2 equipes from different classes are started. We participate in "sports class" which is in the "middle" and the biggest class.
We have startnumber 12 and starting at 17:06.
Most equipes take a lot of time on the carpark drawing the route on the instruction maps, handed out at your start time.
We've decided not to do so, and start driving immediately after receiving our instruction maps, to keep ahead of most equipes, and not losing precious time.

Section 1 exists out of 5 different map reading systems, which we did not bad at all, only 2 faults and 9 penalty minutes, which was good for first place at that moment.

After secion 1 we had a 1 hour buffet diner break. (realy?)

So about 21:00 we started for section 2, again almost 3 hours rallying in dark, in this section there were 4 different map reading systems.
We didn't stay out of trouble this section, because of a mad farmer who did not like al the rally cars passing his property on public roads, and he took his big Tractor and blocked the road and tried to push us in the ditch.
Luckily Petra (my driver and wife) managed to get past the big tractor, but while trying so we hit another equipes car.
It took her at least 15 minutes to calm down before we could continue the rally, but motivation was killed by this accident. We had to another 2 hours of rallying to go, and went on....
The second system called "fishbone" was next, "fishbone" is the system which fears most equipes because it is a very difficult system, especialy in the dark, if you got lost, oh oh oh you are in big trouble. Luckily we managed this system without problems. YEEY

My biggest problem now was my driver who had lost all appitite of driving fast and needed a lot of encourage to keep her going.

We finished a little after midnight with another 25 penalty minutes and 5 faults extra , not good. We needed a first place to win the National Championship, this is through the toilet now.

After finish i first sought contact with the equipe we bumped into to make appointments for insurance claims for the damage to the cars (our car luckily stayed out of damage, we hit the other car with our hitch)

Then is was "beer" time and lots of talk with the other participants, most topic ofcoure was that mad farmer.

Around 01:30 it was time for the award ceremony, and we were very surprised we managed second place !!

This was a very strange "Hornenacht" with a second place we won't forget for a long time, thats part of the game.

And now some action

Preparations before start:


checking before start:



and GOGOGO


flashy Pastellblauer


"ART" Citroen DS


Harry Potter?


Cool:


VETTE Toyota:


Having fun:






FULL Photo Compilation click here

Thanks for the report buddy. What a night it has been, amazing! Still, congrats on the result!

So very cool, this rally hobby of yours. Thanks for the story on this part of the forum. Love to see the e12 in action, helps me to get mine done!!

Tripmaster V2

Almost 5 years ago our self build rally tripmaster went in service. And with it we dived into the world of classic car rally's.



This is our actual tripmaster, together with a mechanical compass, that was all the navigation equipment we had.

In the upcoming years we started missing functions in my selfbuild tripmaster, some functions were changed,added or improved, like the addition of a driver display and a buzzer.

Next to the tripmaster we added other equipment, like my self build rally clock, and since last year a Wayfinder (a digital compass).
That wayfinder is the best improvement in our cockpit, without it a rally like Horneland would almost be impossible.

The actual tripmaster doesn't have the requirement to fulfill all the new ideas and functions i want to have in a tripmaster, thats why i've started developing a new tripmaster, which could fulfill all my experience of the last 5 years.

I while ago i started a "development" document, for documenting all the functions and setup of a new tripmaster.
unnecessary or unused functions were stripped, new functions were added with a detailed description.
a summary:

• easy control, calling functions now is only possible by 2 simultanius buttons
• each display has it's own specific functions
• improved accuracy, the old tripmaster has a time drift bigger as tens seconds per hour.
• displaying time in minutes/seconds, no hours. A possible time could be 78:59, which is 1 hour 18 minutes and 59 seconds, why?, stage time is given in minutes only in most rally's.
• restarting a stage needs a simple but error free handling, pushing 1 button for a specific time, generating short beeps followed with a long beep for conformation.
• logicaly arranged displays groups by function
  [*Displaying the previous trip distance after "tripping" would be a very nice addition. "tripping" is the most important function of the tripmaster (measuring short distances)

Simultaniously with the development document i made a visual design, which together grown out to a final design of the new tripmaster.
And in parallel i've build a developing system for testing the firmware and new functions.
Gathering specific parts also started a while ago.
And from the developing system a schematic drawing arises.

Such a developing system is a messy setup:


Also some technical improvements will be implemented:

• Power Supply is changed from a lineair type to a hf switching type, which means much higher efficiency thus lower heat dissapation, and a much wider input voltage (6-60 volts will do). Especialy the low input voltage is important, because you do not want the tripmaster stop when starting the engine.
• A rotary encoder for easy control (display dimming and setup functions), welknown in modern cars for climate control and radio.
• adding a RTC (real time clock) chip for accuracy in time registration.
• Proffesional fabricated PCB, like i did in the Rally Clock
• low profile enclosure, half that of the old tripmaster
• Components with wide tempertature range specifications, guaranteed deep below 0 degree celcius

Then the visual design was frozen and the build started:


The visual design shows function separated in three groups, each with their specific function:

• in the top the "trip" fuction, for tripping short distances during rallying, trip is resetted with a foot pedal switch, in such manner resetting is done when the pedal swich is released, this overcomes unwanted resets. When resetted a short beep conforms the reset. previous trip distance is shown in the right small display, a unique and very welcome feature.
• middle group is "stage", showing stage distance, time and average speed. while driving measuring distance can be halted or reversing.
• bottom group for regulatity's, again showing distance, time and average speed. Restarting a regularity goes automatic when you start driving (after reset)
  when regularity isn't needed, it is switched off, all displays in this group go dark.
• driver display doesn't change in functionality, showing trip and stage average speed, or regularity average speed when regularty is switched on.

After the development was frozen i started designing the PCB art work, placing the displays and switches was already fixed by visual design, designing such a PCB art work takes many evenings. Searching for footprint for all used components and drawing them is a big job.



And besides a nice PCB i need a enclosure and frontpanel.

Like the old tripmaster, now again i made a aluminium front panel, but instead of etching, this time i've chosen for a paper printed design gluet to the aluminium and the laminated.
Because the new design has a lot of 7 segnment displays, the aluminium panel has a lot of rectangulare holes, not the easiest to make with basic tools.

First took over all holes to drill with a printed template:


then drilling and slashing with a chisel (sound stupid)






thats how:


and then a little filing and the aluminium panel is ready:


Glue the printed design to the aluminium panel and laminate the whole thing

Tripmaster V2 part 2



after all i wasn't that happy with te light colored front panel design, so i made a new one:


So again printing, glueing, laminating and cutting:




I like this black brushed aluminium with yellow text a lot more, maybe i'll change the frontpanels from the rally clock and driver display to this design too.

Writing and debugging the firmware for this tripmaster V2 takes a lot of evening hobby time, some pieces of firmware from the old tripmaster were reusable, but most of it is new, mainly faster and more efficient.

For driving the 7 segment displays i've written a new library which is 90% faster as libraries for these display drivers already on the internet. Also the library for the RTC available on the internet wasn't complete and needed rewriting.
And besides that i gained a lot of performance and memory by reading the inputs (switches and rotary encoder) by 'port manipulation'.
Now the firmware is ready for 95%, ready for usage. It's almost 15kb in size, half of the capacity of the Atmega328 microcontroller on which the tripmaster runs.

In the mean time the postman brings a nice PCB, not cheap, made by a Belgium company, good quality and fast:


Behind the frontpanel comes a red plexiglass panel, and behind the plexiglass the 7 segment displays takes their places.
The plexiglass panel will be screwed to the PCB with distance nuts and screws, so drilling again using a printed template to take over the exact positions of the mounting holes.

all together it makes sturdy package


When all components are gathered, its soldertime. As first all small smd components:


Then 7 segment displays and rotary encoder, exact height is very important now:


And as last power supply (yellow daughter PCB) and micro controller (blue daughter pcb):
Just in time debugging made a change nessesary, thats why there are 2 wires running over the microcontroller board. it was a very important change, and PCB was already ready.


Then it was time to power up the device, check if it all works like plan, and measuer current consumption with displays at maximum and minimum intensity. at maximum intensity the unit draws 275mA, this is with driver display included. At minimal intensity current is only 30mA @ 13,5 Volts.

Full intensity:


lowest intensity:


Frontpanel and switches installed:


While developing and debugging new functions came to my mind, which eventualy could be added:

• keep track of total distance and running hours of the unit, displayed during startup and accessible from the setup menu.
• And because all needed parts are available why not use the device for measuring acceleration tests for the vehicle it is in, hence a car acceleration meter, 0-100 kmh

I've managed to add the mentioned functions, but took al lot of extra time.

Enclosure is again sheet steel, like the old tripmaster, made out of 2 pieces of sheet, welded together with small iron bars. Welding isn't nice to see, but all hidden inside the enclosure.





enclosure is realy slimline, only 26mm heigh. ofcourse it will be painted black again.

Tripmaster V2 part finish

And then i needed a bracket for mounting the tripmaster in the car, i made a steel sheet bracket which fits the old bracket already in the car. welded 4 M4 nuts to the back.


then painted bracket and enclosure black:


Inside the old tripmaster it is a war of wires, due the extras added in time ande because switches are mounted in the enclosure and not to the frontpanel/pcb package.

this is a view into the old tripmaster:


in the tripmaster V2 all components and switches are nicely built together as one unit, which makes it a lot more robust:


old and new tripmaster side by side:


The laminated frontpanel isn't the nicest solution, the laminated transparrent already is losing the paper in the corners. In time i'll change the frontpanel for a professional milled one.

And then it's time putting the new tripmaster in the dash of the E12, and do a decent function test:


All functions work like expected, and it would be fun to try the acceleration mode and test the acceleration performance of the E12 520/6.
Below diplays results of a standing sprint to 100kmh:


The displays show the result, the standing sprint to 100kmh took exactly 200 meters and 11,00 seconds.
Better as factory specs 40 years ago.

From the department of McGyver instruments hahaha! Thanks for sharing, looks real professional!

very cool.

Last post of me here was just before the worldwide lockdown, so not much happend since then.

We drove only one rally, which was in September when the world has loosend up al little, It was the "Peelrand Classic", a one day event with a morning and afternoon stage, each about 3 hours driving fun. The nice thing was we managed to win this Rally, cheers.



With so much spare time this year i managed to finish my spare engine and got it in this summer, a few weeks before the Peelrand Classic.

A few years ago i began the overhaul of a spare engine i had laying around. It's a 1997 motronic M20B20, which i purchased for ancillary parts for the Megasquirt conversion. No history known, but when i took the engine apart, it looked quiet good.
It has a 371 cast head with the slighly bigger inlet ports.

First started with the head, because there were no signs of "mayonese" in the engine, i presumed the head won't be cracked. After a good cleanup and valvetrain removal i hammered the valve guides out.

Pressed the valve springs with my self build spring compressor tool:


Some valves had mushromed heads due wrong mounted excenters, i had to grind them gently down before they passed the valve guide:




camshaft is in great condition, checked with the fingernail test, also did the cam followers:




cleaned all parts in my ultrasonic cleaner






polished the valves, first one done:


A old worn exhaust valve guide:


compared to a new guide:


After that i've build a jig to press in the new valve guides, using a bottle jack, all valve guides went in well.
Before you buy new valve guides you'll have to measure the old ones, because BMW used 4 different outer diameters.

I've also made a youtube video how smooth this press works








valve guide almost in:




That was already done a few years ago, now it was time to bring the head to a mechanic for skimming and cutting the valve seats and grinding the valves.

When the head was back from the mechanic, i assebled it with all its original parts, but first lapped the valves and their seats.

Here the left valve is lapped:




compressed the valve springs with my tool, it isn't a fast tool, but it's very save to use:










then i had to repair some corrosion on the backside heater water pipe connection:




filled with JB-Weld:


Done


And last cleaned the inlet and exhaust gasket mating surfaces, now the refurbished head is ready.

one done


all done

And the saga continues!! Rallybeast all the way, Rob. And I like the e12, you know that!

Yes i know,


Next coming up is the bottom end, i dismantled the engine a few years ago and stored all parts heavily oiled to prevent any rust.

The engine is very dirty inside, thick black residue, but all parts seem in very good condition, it shows this is a low mileage engine.
The intermedate shaft bearings are like new, no wear at all.

slightly worn bearing shells:



Cross hatch still there:


checking the crankshaft main bearing with old bearingshell with plastigauge




Pistons how they came out of this engine, not bad at all, pitty, because these are the low compression pistons (8.8:1)







Then is was time to clean the crackcase, lots of degreaser used.









after that i tried to remove the rust with a rust converter fluid.



When the crankcase was dry i oiled the cylinder bores and bearing surfaces to prevent them for rust:



And then masking and painting the crankcase, black ofcourse, i didn't pop the freezeplugs.








Oil pump disassembled, cleaned, oiled and reasembled:








more to come

The original pistons in this '87 motronic engine are the lowest compression pistons available for the M20B20, e.g. 8.8:1. the dome is 0.8mm heigh
Carburetted engines had a compression ratio of 9.2:1 and a 2.1mm dome
And the K-Jet and L-Jet engines had a 9.9:1 compression ratio, pistons with a 3.3mm heigh dome

So i went for a search of k-jet or l-jet pistons, found a set on ebay for small money. Pictures from the seller didn't reveal that one piston had a hale shot head, some pictures from the seller:




and the engine they came out, boah, looking bad and worn.


when the pistons arived i did a quick check and then they dived into the ultrasonic cleaner

1 original motronic piston compared with 2 very dirty high compression pistons:


some piston rings totaly stuck:




after a cleanup the pistons looked much better, but one revealed a hale shot:





The motronic camshaft has slightly more cam lift, and therefore the vavle pockets in the motronic pistons are slighly deeper as in the high comp pistons, so i made a plan milling the valve pockets a little deeper.

I also noticed that the motronic pistons had minor damage from collision with the exhaust valves, M20B20 pistons only have inlet valve pockets. My plan was milling little exhaust valve pockets also.

see this motronic piston with a little dimple from the exhaust valve:


i made a jig wich i could bold to the engine block, on the exact angle as the valves (22 degrees), then put a piston in the engine at TDC and did first a trial run on a motrinic piston which i wouldn't use anymore





i adjusted the setup in such manner that the pocket in the motronic piston just touched the mill, cutting as little as possible:


Then it was time putting a high compression piston in and start milling the intake valve pocket.
before:


and after:


another "before" and "after" compare:


After all intake valve pockets were milled i had to modify the jig for the exhaust valves, beware, inlet an exhaust valves aren't mirrored in a M20 engine, exhaust valves are placed 5mm more to the side.
New jig setup and again a trial run on a motronic piston after i marked the center of the exhaust valve dimple on this piston:


It seemed OK so all high compression pistons went in for a exhaust valve pocket:




Intake valve recesses are now 0.4mm deeper as before, after milling i wanted to know if the recesses are in the right place and polish them a little, and did this by using sandpaper glued to a set of valves, put a piston in the engine at TDC, dropped the head with a old gasked and the two sandpaper modified valves in it.
With a length of fuel line into the drill taking the valve stem makes a effective valve recess polish machine





piston in TDC


head with valves:






result after polishing:




both valve recesses excacty on the right place in the pistons, spot on

After that check was done i smoothed out all valve pockets, again a before and after closeup.





And in the end i did a piston balancing job, bringing all pistons to the same weight difference before was 5 gram, loosing 5 gram needs a lot of grinding, so the heaviest piston became a lightened wristpin, in the end all pistons with mated wristpins were within 0.5 gram of each other.

next is balancing the conrods