Yep great looking cage

Your car looks stunning even on the floors lol

That dry ice is great though almost effortless compared to chiselling/scraping away for hours

Thanks Blandy. To be honest I think it photographs well! It's not that mint in real life, to my eyes.

I was in two minds about doing it but Hovis calling me out made my mind up. Thanks Hovis!

I used 2.5kg of dry ice so I'd reccomend 5kg per side if you wanted to make life easy for yourself.

Add a load of isopropyl alcohol into the mix, which speeds the sublimation process, and as well as it looking like top of the pops from the mid 80's, it also appears things up. This is exactly how I removed the deadening from mine.

https://youtu.be/_3XM6uaKN9k

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Cherry Red Rallye .... On going OEM spec resto

China Blue GTi6 .... Weekend toy

Black 208 GTi .... Wife's car now

Silver BMW 550i.... The executive missile

Beatifull car Sir, perfect combination of carbon and that cage is just a proper bit of kit as it is supposed to. Do you mind telling us the price of the cage?

dying for an update lol

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Ben did you get round to weighing it ?

still some behind the wiper motor and all.

How you getting on with your satchell shift? I have the urg all of a sudden

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Ph2 Black GTI 6!

EX black 6 owner
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update required hahaha

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Ph2 Black GTI 6!

EX black 6 owner
But now a Black caged rallye owner

Hunting for Go faster bits!


SEARCH

click here

Firstly, apologies that my updates have been so slow recently it’s been a series of very tedious jobs that have sapped my enthusiasm for getting in the garage and cracking on. However, I feel like I’ve found some momentum so long may that continue!

Finishing off the sound deadening removal was a boring job but one I’m so pleased I tackled. Not only was it good to see that there isn’t any rust underneath but it looks so much better, and the bag of sound deadening weighed just under 5kg which can help offset the weight of the cage.

IMG_20200725_162459 by Nick Buxton, on Flickr

IMG_20200725_135023 by Nick Buxton, on Flickr

While that was happening my M3 decided it apparently wasn’t getting enough attention and decided to throw a mechanical hissy fit. The throttle actuators failed and sent the car into limp mode so I got it booked in with Evolve to be replaced, along with the big end bearings (which are a real weak point on the S65 motor), and while it was with them I thought it was rude not to get their Stage 2 map and primary cat delete kit pipes fitted

IMG_20200821_085405 by Nick Buxton, on Flickr

Evolve did an awesome job, nice guys and great service. I’d recommend them if anyone else is looking for a BMW specialist north of London. I had a little look around the Eventuri products which look great, and I put a carbon fibre plenum for the M3 on my imaginary shopping list. You can tell the Stage 2 kit has had some proper development time, it’s given the car a new edge and urgency in every scenario but there’s no droning with the exhaust, just more noise under full throttle. I’m finding lots more excuses to drive it now!

Anyway, back on the Rallye I wanted to check that the seats still fitted because the cage does protrude into the cabin space. Happily, there were no issues, and seeing the seats back in place got me motivated!

IMG_20200905_161225 by Nick Buxton, on Flickr

My vision for the Rallye has always been that it look as much like a “factory special” as my skills and budget allow. The idea that everything looks like it belongs together, is well finished and stays true to the original design and spirit of the 306 Rallye. Which for me is both an aesthetic and practical goal, I want to be able to drive it to track days and enjoy it on the road without wanting to kill myself.

When I decided that I was going to get a cage I wanted as much of the interior and dash to go back in as possible which meant that I was going to have to get creative with the Dremel!

IMG_20200912_202103 by Nick Buxton, on Flickr

I marked out where I thought the cage would need to go through the top and bottom of the dash and noted how far it needed to go back to meet the bulkhead. Which made it look like it was never going to fit!

IMG_20200912_202111 by Nick Buxton, on Flickr

I made a template from the radius of the cage so that I could slowly keep trimming where the cage ran through the dashboard. This was a very, very fiddly job of trim a bit top and bottom on one side, test fit, do the same on the other side and test fit…...

IMG_20201119_153721 by Nick Buxton, on Flickr

After much head scratching and trimming I was starting to get somewhere. The design of the cage has actually meant that I can retain the original location of the fuse box and bottom glovebox on the passenger side which I’m really pleased about.

IMG_20201025_171230 by Nick Buxton, on Flickr

IMG_20201119_153502 by Nick Buxton, on Flickr

IMG_20201119_153529 by Nick Buxton, on Flickr

Once I was happy with how the dash was sitting and the gap between the sides of the dash and the outer door frame looked good I bolted it in.

IMG_20201119_153538 by Nick Buxton, on Flickr

The next step was to see how much of the standard doors would foul on the cage. I was fully expecting that I would have to do away with everything; speakers, door winder and door card. I’d even started looking at Maxi motorsport door cards! However, after wrestling the doors on single handedly (scratching one in the process which really annoyed me) it didn’t look too far off. The winders I don’t think are going to be usable when the doors are closed, but the speaker cleared and it was just the rear bottom half of the card that was causing issues. I marked out on the doors where they needed to be trimmed with masking tape and got cracking with the Dremel.

IMG_20201119_171241 by Nick Buxton, on Flickr

IMG_20201119_182518 by Nick Buxton, on Flickr

IMG_20201119_182531 by Nick Buxton, on Flickr

After much fettling, I’m now pretty happy that they fit around the cage and I’m going to find a trimmer to work some magic on them so that they don’t have a great big hole in them!

What putting the door cards on did show me though is that the dash still isn’t sitting quite right…

IMG_20201119_171331 by Nick Buxton, on Flickr

You can see in this pic that the top of the dash that sweeps down and connects to the door card and eventually becomes the door handle is out of line. I’m sure the dash is sitting flush with the firewall but I think it needs to come down a bit more, so I need to trim some more off the bottom sides so that it can sit over the cage more.

IMG_20201119_183352 by Nick Buxton, on Flickr

With those bits done I threw the seat back in to see if it still fitted and if I could get comfortable with the cage and door cards in place. I think I might need to move inboard a bit more than they were but there’s enough adjustment so it should be fine.

IMG_20201119_183352 by Nick Buxton, on Flickr

I still just need to find a good painter I trust to paint the cage and interior. You wouldn’t believe how many I’ve been through already!....but watch this space.

Looking very nice. Surprised you didn't go for flat door
Cards as you could still mount the speaker flat to them. What I'm thinking at a later date

________________________________________

Ph2 Black GTI 6!

EX black 6 owner
But now a Black caged rallye owner

Hunting for Go faster bits!


SEARCH

click here

More carbon

________________________________________

Ph2 Black GTI 6!

EX black 6 owner
But now a Black caged rallye owner

Hunting for Go faster bits!


SEARCH

click here