Pitchblack Motorsports Rally e30 318i (now with M50) - and some Porsche 924S stuff.

[irish44j]

nothing much new to report. Today I ran out to my buddy Viet's place DANGEROUS MOTORWERKES and he mounted up my other two loose DMacks onto two more bottlecaps I managed to score up. Still need to paint them blue, but that's a project for a random evening.

In other stuff, I'm re-doing the GT6's exhaust system this week, and pulled the header only to find a nice 1" long crack in one of the tubes in a very inconvenient place. Had to get the welder out and try to patch weld some very thin metal (it's a 40-year old header!). That was fun. Hopefully it works.

Doing a few other little things on that car, up on the stands right now.

[img]http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j85/irish44j/BMW%20320i%20e21%20build/DSCF6972.jpg]/img]



also pulled the header off the e21 project to sell. It's a Stahl header, so it's worth more than I paid for the car. Since I"m not using the M10B20 in that car, selling the header, exhaust, and eventually the engine/tranny.

well-designed piece

[phenryiv1]

You have to wonder how/why those people came to install that header on that car...

[irish44j]

You have to wonder how/why those people came to install that header on that car...

They didn't own the car from new, IIRC....so it could have been the previous owner as well. That said, the widow said her husband worked on cars a lot, and it was clear he kept this one in good condition until he died..

The car has a few other little things that are performance-uppers, just subtle stuff like modified emissions equipment and what I believe to be a "sport" front swaybar.

[irish44j]

today I built a little protective shelter for my tire trailer. It looks weird, but that's because it folds down and out of the way when not in use (the leg is hinged, and the diagonal brace is removable, just held in place by the weight of the shelter. All if it was built with spare materials I had sitting around - 2 types of shingles, some wood, and some old gate hardware:




with enough room to open the double gate :)

[irish44j]

Some stuff for this weekend's project arrived. Since my M42 OEM expansion tank is bulging (said to be a precursor to failure), I decided to "upgrade" to an M20 setup with the separate tank. I know there's a lot of back and forth about what is a better setup, but this was the budget way to do things.

Ordered up an ebay aluminum radiator. Yes, it's Chinese-made. Yes it was about 1/2 or less the cost of the big-name brands. And no, I'm not worried. I actually know the company that makes them and they have a pretty good reputation in the industrial world. And for $125 I'm willing to take that risk, frankly. I gave the piece a thorough inspection and it seems reasonably well-made with decent gussets and welds, so we'll give it a go.

Still need to round up the expansion tank (getting from someone local) and a couple hoses, but all in all should be a pretty easy project, which has been done before on M42 cars.







Having 3 tons of gravel delivered to my house tomorrow for the "side parking zone" so I expect to be getting a good workout with my shovel and wheelbarrow for the foreseeable future :P

[irish44j]

Also we got a nice little plug (collectively as e30s) in the August edition of WDCR SCCA's "Straightpipe" magazine..

[phenryiv1]

^^^^^^^^^^^^^

We roll deep.

[irish44j]

Took out the M42 rad and fitted up the M20 rad. I used the stock M10 rad lower mounts, and then used some upper mounts out of the e21 (will replace those later), as well as my old ghetto upper mount just for some extra security. It's a good fit and very secure.

Need to go pick up a reservoir from Viet, and one new upper hose, and should be good to go. Also, cut out a bit of the headlight cover so the temp sender wires could clear, since the M20 rad is a bit wider than the M42.

Also have to get some stuff to fit up my Spal fan since the old M42 shroud mount won't fit this one.



e21 upper mounts through the rad support lip and the radiator lip


test fit


cutout for the temp sender


partial install

[irish44j]

I think I set a personal record today. My formerly M10-powered rallycross e30, which has an M42 swap, got an e36 6cyl (Chinese-made) aluminum radiator today. Because of this, I had to "install" an expansion tank, since the M42 radiator has one integrated. From an M20 e30.

On the M20 car, these are mounted on the passenger side, but I have coil packs mounted there so it had to go on the driver's side. Since I was lazy I decided to fab up my mount brackets for it out of whatever was in my "junk drawer."....this included some odd BMW bracket for something else that happened to have holes that lined up to the reservoir mount points (on the wrong side), a backing plate from a u-bolt, and a twisted L-bracket (this is the front mount for the M42 airbox. The rear mount is a bent-over bracket that used to hold relays on the M10).

Combine this with a welder that didn't want to cooperate, as well as my mediocre welding skills, and this is what you get. The funny part is that it's solid as hell and holds everything exactly where I want it. And since this is the rallycross car, who cares about engine bay aesthetics?

(also, the lower coolant hose is made out of the OEM hose with a 90* elbow, and the charcoal can (which I will get rid of eventually) is mounted down below).

But it all works, and is all held in place nicely.





hose routing


Also installed the fan with quick-install stuff. I'm not really confident in their strength and will fab up some kind of more substantial mount in the near future (and no, it will be less ghetto than the other one...)

[irish44j]

Since I know ALL of you have been checking this thread all day waiting with baited breath to see my results as we start the second half of the season....... :P a quick update.

Today was beautiful weather, course was very long (90+ seconds for the fastest cars when dry, more like 120 when wet), course was tons of fun, and the results came out exactly as I expected: with Roberto winning. Big Course is his strongest of the three and he's now won all three events where we ran this course. Also expected but not too pleasing....Gorka (last year's MR season runner-up) co-drove Roberto's car, and with no points on the line, ran fast and hard and took second. He was in place to beat Roberto on his last run with a "decent" solid run but he went crazy and just pummelled cones.

So instead of Roberto and I going 2-3 as it probably should have ended up, in the end Roberto 1 and me 3, which makes the next two events do-or-die basically. I have to take first in both of them to win the season points. I'd love to complain about it, but in reality Roberto ran strong and mostly clean and fast, and I made some lame mistakes in easy areas of the course due to lack of concentration or something.......so nobody to blame but myself and on good driving on Roberto's part.

I'll give Gorka credit too, but not quite as much (lol) since he ran 2nd in a co-driven car, so he didn't have nearly as much mud to deal with on the post-water-truck runs sitting at the back of the grid line, and I think almost his entire margin over me was from those 2 or 3 runs where Roberto and I were mucking it up in the messy stuff....Like 8 seconds per run difference. But that's the way it goes. Maybe I'm justifying a bit, whatever.

I think the final time spread had Roberto 1st with Gorka a second or two back, and I was about 18 seconds out of first. So fucking rotaries continue to be a curse on me, lol. I did manage to beat the other 9 cars in the class (a couple old Toyotas - celica and supra) as well as all the BMWs, by a 40+ second margin....so I guess that's worth some bragging rights since most of those guys are my buddies :)

On the upside, I improved significantly on post-water-truck runs and of the two muddiest runs, me and Roberto were pretty much even on them. I attribute that to a bit better weight transfer of the car on my part (conscious) and better grip with the fresher DMacks over the old worn Yokos. I'm not sure I like the "feel" of the Dmacks as well as the Yokos, but I do like their grip.

some random pics, mostly not of me since those aren't posted yet.

[95maxrider]

Josh, any idea where in this thread I can find your pics showing how you removed your sunroof? :)

Oh, and I'm seeing lots of gravel rally tires for sale. Is that what I should be looking for? And I should get a soft compound if I can, right?

[phenryiv1]

Josh, any idea where in this thread I can find your pics showing how you removed your sunroof?

http://www.r3vlimited.com/board/showthread.php?t=224191&page=64

Oh, and I'm seeing lots of gravel rally tires for sale. Is that what I should be looking for? And I should get a soft compound if I can, right?

Soft will wear down fairly fast on Barn.

[irish44j]

Josh, any idea where in this thread I can find your pics showing how you removed your sunroof? :)

Oh, and I'm seeing lots of gravel rally tires for sale. Is that what I should be looking for? And I should get a soft compound if I can, right?

Not sure, but I did it in probably February 2013 or so, so I'd look back in the thread to about that time.

You want medium compound for "all conditions." Soft is good for mud but will get destroyed quickly on Barn and dry conditions.

[irish44j]

I gave several ridealongs on the day, and one was a photographer (not AJ, our usual photographer who was also there). Turns out he works for Jalopnik and he posted up a couple shots of me (and other cars) on the OppositeLock blog.

http://oppositelock.jalopnik.com/is-that-really-a-box-stock-brand-new-accent-out-there-1277633814

[silence]

Sounds like you have your work cut out for you at the next event.

BTW, Great photos!
I like the paint scheme on this one :)