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

[Wschnitz]

I think you'd be surprised, lol. STPR is pretty much all mountain forest roads, and it's rough as hell. Sandblast is deep coastal sand, and is actually brutal on diffs and axles....I haven't been to NEFR but it looks pretty gnarly. None of them remind me of rallycross, lol.

But the only stresses dips and jumps are having on the diff is on the chassis diff mounts, lol. In which case a 20lb lighter diff would actually be less stress on the car, I guess..;D

The videos ive seen just look kinda like a big open field haha.

My buddy was at the prescott rally which looks like the real deal 80s on the edge of a mountain rally stage.

[irish44j]

Here's what STPR looks like. At 3:45 that's Jesse Yuvali in the e30 doing the spectator Super Special Stage - I was crew chief for him at that rally :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ne9LSwqvLok

[Wschnitz]

Higgins is ridiculously fast.

[irish44j]

I remember that final run at the SS....I was up on the hill about 10 feet above the turn. It was a madhouse up there, lol.

[irish44j]

ok so......with the car back in driving shape and ready for the next event this weekend, it's time to look a bit ahead to the NY event in 2 weeks and the November event in Frostburg.

Because



yep....and neither of those places are particularly warm, especially Frostburg in late November. So it's time to put a heater back into this car after ripping out all the OEM stuff after it exploded all over me a couple events ago.

So I ordered up the two-outlet Summit Racing heater for about $150 or so. I was planning to get the three-outlet one but was a bit worried about where to place it easily. In the end, it turns out it would have fit fine, for anyone else who plans to do this mod.

So here's the heater. It's the usual Chinese stuff, but the quality appears to be very good and the casing is far more stout and rigid than I had been expecting, honestly.



After doing some mock-ups, I decided to mount it angled up, using my recently-installed block-off plate for the original HVAC opening. Unlike the original HVAC, this setup will only pull air from inside the car, which is fine by me since the air outside tends to be dusty as hell for a rallycross car anyhow.

I oriented it also so the coolant lines aligned with the stock firewall holes. Now, let me admit that the first time I mounted it I centered it, with the outlet/inlet a few inches over from the firewall holes. This turned out to not work well and caused the hoses to kink, so I moved it over toward the driver's side to get it lined up. Working under the dash = no fun at all, but at least it's empty back there on mine.





I also spliced the heater wiring directly into the OEM fan control knob, just because I like it better than the one that came with the heater...



Probably the worst part of this was adapting it to the OEM hoses in the engine bay. First, because with the M42 there is almost NO room to work down in there between the IM and the brake booster.

Also, the heater comes with outlets for 5/8" hose, while the stock hose is 3/4"....so I had to ghetto-rig some adaptors to join them, which took a bit of creativity.

But after some bloody knuckles, finally all back together



Went for a test-drive and it warmed up within a minute or two and blew hot as hell. So I'm pretty pleased with the heater. Also a lot quieter than I expected. Still have to run some ducting, but actually with it oriented the way I moutned it, one port blows almost directly into the driver's side defrost and the other port blows toward the center dash vent....so actually I could feel plenty of heat coming out of both, which was the plan :)

Oh also, with some newer gravel tires on the way, decided to have some fun and paint up my (US) weaves in red (with the old dry-rotted tires being my masking). So will get those switched over and hopefully have pretty fresh tread for New York in a couple weeks.

[irish44j]

Car is all loaded up and ready to go. Not using any trailers tomorrow, so I have 6 gravel tires in the car (plus a street spare), plus the jack, spare parts, tools, and all my gear. Rollin' heavy...

And with several local classes locked up for the season with 2 events to go, time to have some fun tomorrow. Stock AWD winner Jim Golden will be co-driving with me (AWD is boring, so he needs some fun), and his brother and SA runner-up Mike Golden will co-drive with MR runner-up Nick. So time to see which team can take the title :)

[irish44j]

Well, I guess I'll post an update while things are fresh in my memory. Yesterday turned out to be a memorable event (in both a good and bad way) or me, but possibly memorable in a worse way for one of my top competitors.

Day started out beautifully with great weather for the cruise up there. Before sunrise the crew met up at the usual spot for caravaning



As the sun rose, we ended up in the clouds and fog, which was fun on an enpty highway trucking along



Eric got a nice rolling shot of the car from his pickup :)



So anyhow, we got there and about 40 cars/drivers in attendance, weather is the best we've ever seen it at Frostburg. As mentioned earlier, SA champ Jim Golden co-drove my car while his brother Mike (SA runner-up) co-drove with Nick in the e28. Corie McKenzie finally got his car back together agan, and the Turbo Volvo 240 now had fresh Lassa rally tires and a welded diff. The rest of the class was rounded out by Eric E. and Neil Cox in the black 325i (the one I co-drove last event), "Little Eric" Helgesen in the ETA, Jeff Holmes in the M42 318is, and a couple others.

Also, a bunch of Volvo guys showed up. In addition to Corey's turbo 240, PR class had Justin Roth's 240, two new guys in a 740 Turbo, and two new guys in a 740 Wagon :)









If you hadn't already noticed, I love me some Volvos....they are kindred with the e30s as the "other" cheap/old euro sedans for rallycross :)

I had previously re-attached my rear sway bar, lifted the rear of the car about an inch, and had my worse almost-cordede rally tires on the car (trying to save my good ones for New York in 2 weeks). Again, I've already won MR for the season, so the results of the last 2 events don't matter for the season championship (though for pride of course).

In the morning session the course was fast and flowing and though I didn't really think it suited my car, apparently it did because I maintained a lead from the first run thought the eighth. I also got 3-4 cones (none of which I could figure out where) that kept Nick and the Erics close. Meanwhile, Corey was actually running a bit faster than me but picking up more cones. At the lunch break I had about a 4 second lead with 3 or 4 other drivers within single-digit seconds of me.

On his last run (which turned out to be the fasted in the group for the morning, no less), Corey broke the welds on his welded diff so they spent lunch trying to fix things



Afternoon course was similar to the morning so that bode well for me. Corey jumped into Jeremy Sitar's M42 e36 318i (2nd in PR points), which he and Nick co-drove at the last event as well as you recall. That car apparently is the go-to for MR drivers when their cars break, lol, and it's surprisingly fast with good tires and a welded diff.

In the morning, Jim Golden didn't have much fun in my car as a AWD driver and was 2-3 seconds behind me every run. Mike was a second or two off of Nick's time in the e28 also. For the afternoon they switched and Mike drove with me.

My first run ended the day for me essentially. Just 4 gates into the course, I looked right past one for some reason and by the time I saw the "extra" gate on the left, I was going 50mph 10 feet to the right of it. All four locked up but there was no way to make the gate short of stopping and reversing. In retrospect, that would have been the way to go I think, but whatever.

Now, off-course is only a 10-second penalty at this venue so this is where *not thinking* comes into play for me. I coudl have just continued on with a competitive run and taken the penalty, which would have still had me in 3rd overall with 7 runs left. Instead, for some reason I just decided to "wide open" the course. It actually worked out pretty well until the "U-turn" which had a large lake/puddle on the outside. The correct line was to take it inside on the dry stuff. Instead I came in too hot and pummelled the lake and the 3 upright cones on the outside of it. So plus-3 more. We got water/mud through my roof vent onto my co-driver and my dash, lol....







Well, that was dumb. The run actually turned out to be very fast so I would have only been back 6 seconds with the off-course. Instead, I was back 12 by being dumb and getting those other 3 cones.

For the next few runs I put up some good times and was slowing clawing my way back in. After 12 total runs I was back into 3rd, though 2nd was going to be tough with Nick and Corey duking it out for the top spot with roughly similar times to me.

After Mike finished his 12th run I got in the car and noticed that even on small movements there was a substantial clunk from under the car upon any movement. But the car seemed to move ok so figured I'd go give it another run and see what was up (more on this later). Sitting in start line, etc I'm mentally tryign to figure out what the issue could be (tranny, driveshaft, my newly-rebuilt diff, subframe bushings). Run starts and the red flags come out.

Yep....helmet is still sitting on the ground next to my grid spot. DNF run. I finish the run at 1/2 speed and the clunking is worse bu still can't figure it out. Went to timing and just told Shawn to DNF the rest of my runs and headed back to paddock to pack up and change tires and look around the car.

Event results here: https://drive.google.com/folderview?...&usp=drive_web

Changing tires, couldn't find anything loose or broken on the rear end. Maybe just a rock someplace....IDK. Put the street tires on, packed up, and hung out of a while. Drove the car around grid and didn't feel any clunking so who knows.



Fast-forward to exiting the venue. Pull onto the main road and there it is. Harsh vibration at any speed, any gear, and it's noticeable on the shifter! Pull over immediately on the shoulder. Nick pulls over with me and then Shawn and Katie pull up with their tow rig/trailer/miata. And then at least 5 or 6 other rallycrossers stop to check/help. All of us on the side of the road, lol, as Shawn waves additional arrivals to go on, lol



Jacked up the car on the gravel shoulder and now I am loooking farther forward on the car since I can feel it through the shifter.

WTF.....two of the three bolts on the output flange-side of the tranny to the driveshaft guibo (the rubber disc linkage) are MISSING . Completely. The three on the driveshaft side are still there. These were all replaced during the M42 swap with 8.8. hardward and metal-lock nuts and on previous checks had never been loose.

Now what to do...SUnday evening in BFE, no place to buy BMW bolts and most stored locally closed.

Chris Helgesen digs through his parts box and ghetto-rigs some bolts to use there (had to get a preceise length because of clearance with the tranny)

So we use these and bolt it all back up so I can get home.



So, it works, but creates a serious driveshaft imbalance at any speeds over 30. I am 200 miles from home......

Anyhow, Shawn and Katie graciously offer to put my car on the trailer and let me drive their Miata home on snow tires, but I don't want to be a burden on them on a Sunday night, so thank them but decide to just take a long slow drive home. Nick offers to travel with me, but just decided to tell everyone to go ahead and that I'll be ok.

So....it was ok. But very slow. And these are 70mph highways at night. Right lane with hazards on doing 40 was SKETCH. So I get on the phone and call Pat Henry, who is about 60 miles away off the highway. As it happens (and as I expected), he has spare DS bolts and nuts and a quick-lift, and he's home. So for the next 90 minutes I limp the car on backroads to his house in Martinsburg WV.

Get there, chat a bit, we put it up and Pat jumps under and quickly installs the correct bolts





Car is good to go, and was about to be on my way when the phone rings. It's Nick. I figure he's calling to check up on me, so tell him I'm at Pat's and all is good.

Apparently all is not good. 25 miles up the highway (again, traffic was going 80+) traffic had come to an abrupt stop for some reason. Nick tried to avoid it by braking onto the shoulder, but the tractor trailer behind him couldn't stop in time and drilled the e28 from behind. IDK much more detail right now and I'm sure Nick will update his build thread (on R3V) but he is apparently ok but the car is totaled.....

My car with the new bolts was smooth as butter going 80+ all the way home. I'm starting to suspect at least one was already loose since in the last month I've noticed some minor driveline vibrations and those were now gone. So, that's one good thing I guess.

Anyhow, time to do yard work and unload the car (and maybe I'll wash it), so that's it for this update.....

[TeXJ]

"Nick will update his build thread

What's his build thread?

[irish44j]

on here.....user name is 95maxrider. Just look for a rallycross e28 thread. Can't be more than one lol

[TeXJ]

found it

http://www.r3vlimited.com/board/showthread.php?t=278121

[phenryiv1]

My car with the new bolts was smooth as butter going 80+ all the way home. I'm starting to suspect at least one was already loose since in the last month I've noticed some minor driveline vibrations and those were now gone. So, that's one good thing I guess.

Glad that they smoothed things out versus the pre-failure NVH. You should be good to go for a while now!

[irish44j]

If any of you three people still following this thread are on facebook, I created a new page for the upcoming stage rally transition (and more rallycross/road racing stuff as well), so feel free to give me a Like :)

https://www.facebook.com/Pitchblack-Motorsports-978363762205414/?ref=profile

[TeXJ]

If any of you three people still following this thread are on facebook, I created a new page for the upcoming stage rally transition (and more rallycross/road racing stuff as well), so feel free to give me a Like :)

https://www.facebook.com/Pitchblack-...4/?ref=profile

done!

[irish44j]

Loaded up and ready to roll at the crack of dawn tomorrow for upstate NY and the last NEDiv National Challenge event. It's gonna be a long day: 6 hours towing, and the event runs 3pm-Midnight Saturday and 8am-3pm Sunday.

[irish44j]

RECAP: 2015 Northeast Division (NEDiv) National Challenge - "24 Hours Spooky Night at the Farm"

Hopefully some other people actually got pics of me driving. Also will post up a vid or two once I get a chance.



The final event in the NEDiv national challenge event was this weekend, with Nick and I going into it tied for first in the series and this being the deciding event. Since Nick's car was totalled by a tractor-trailer coming home from the last event he went up to co-drive Jason's Miata instead.

Here's the short version in case you don't want to read the long version:
1. It's a long drive. We did 850 miles round trip towing in under 48 hours.
2. As expected, Central NY Region (hosting this event) was nowhere near as organized as we are in DC. They just are more laid-back and not used to handling big groups of cars/drivers. That was frustrating, as it was at the STPR event last summer.
3. CNY's venues are awesome. Great terrain, scenery, and courses.
4. The weather (cold, rainy, windy) killed most of the actual event, though we did manage to do one group of runs.
5. In our small group of runs, I built a large lead over the other MR cars and won. So I'm the NEDiv champion, in addition to being the Washington DC regional champion this year.
6. The second day for the 2WD cars was cancelled due to the soaked 1/2-mile dirt oval track being like an ice rink slippery (it's clay mixed with wax in the surface). BUT those of us who hung around until the afternoon ended up getting an hour or two of "open track" time with basically no rules. So at any given time there were 8 or 10 of us out there in 2WD cars on the track doing whatever we want (including using the banked track, infield, and joker cut). That by itself was worth the long trip up to New York. And since all the AWD cars had already run and left, we didn't have to deal with them :)
7. No car issues other than breaking a rear exhaust pipe before the muffler. Also, when wax-impregnated clay gets on your exhaust and gets hot, your car starts smelling like a burning candle when on course, lol.

So, that's the short write-up. Here's the long one for people who like details (and for posterity):

We knew going into this that the event could be good but disorganized, as CNY has a reputation for being pretty laid-back and indecisive, plus they use old stopwatch timing rather than electronic like we do. But with NEDiv on the line, about 6 of us from WDCR rolled up there 400 miles to Weedsport NY (near Syracuse) for it anyhow.



The event started at 3pm Saturday and planned to run until Midnight, then 8am until 3pm Sunday at a different venue.

Saturday's tow was uneventful and about 6 hours later we arrived at the venue. Quite different from what we're used to. It's a large field surrounded by woods, but with 6-7-foot tall grass and shrubberies and the course cut through it.





WIth this being an into-the-night event, that made it so there were no cones on course (except a few pointers) and no course workers out there except at a few overlook spots - since it would be dangerous to have course workers out in tall grass with fast-moving cars at night. Instead of red flags, each car off had a live radio in it for red-flag calls (this actually worked well, surprisingly). The upside to all this is when not driving, you basically just got to hang out and watch from the overlooks if you weren't doing timing.

They also had a couple hi-lifts and cherry pickers for the radio spotters (and photographers) to go up on.







As to the course: FUN. heavily rolling terrain, with all blind turns. You can't "look ahead" like most rallycross/autocross so it's fully "react to what you see" or try to memorize the course. WIthout cones you coudl cut the corners a bit if you knew (or didn't care) if there were rocks or stumps or anything in there. I didn't really do much of that, nor did anyone else that I could tell (at least not on purpose). The surface was dirt/clay/grassy stuff to start out and to be honest, I greatly enjoyed the course setup and how much elevation change it had throughout. Also very scenic.





After the first two run groups went (we were in the third one), we got off two dry runs in our group and I took about an 8-second overall lead. Keep in mind, this was Nick's first event in Jason's Miata, which is a good deal different from his e28. Also only Jason's first full event in the car, for that matter. RWD was poorly represented as the upstate guys seen to lean toward AWD and FWD due to all the snow events they run.
Third run it started raining (keep in mind, it was already dark). The course was long and for the first two runs I had 1:33-1:35 times. Third run as the rain started it quickly got VERY slick, especially dicey in the steep uphill areas where there was a lot of wheel spinning. Nonetheless, I managed to pull off mid-1:30s as the first car off in the group. As the rain continued it got slicker and slicker and Nick was several cars back. By the time he went, it was very slippery. Near the end fo the course there is a slow, slow turnaround into an uphill (and another turnaround at top sprint down to finish). Nick coudln't make it up in the Miata and I think had to back down the hill and cut the course to get off. 10-second penalty isn't that much on a course like this, but still it put him almost 20 seconds behind me by then (IIRC). Our second run session (at almost 10pm in the pitch black) the course dried out some, but right as I was on the start line a downpour came up. I rolled anyhow and managed to finish the run (with much slipping and sliding and some slow uphill climbs) in a whopping 2:02 (IIRC). But I barely finished. With spare tires in my trunk for weight and very fresh tires on the car. They black-flagged the other 2WD cars from going since as the rain continued, nobody would have been able to make it around the course, and the rest of the night wrapped up.
Went back to the hotel, got some sleep, and showed up at Rolling Wheels Raceway the next morning - a big dirt oval-track.





The WDCR crew, far from home


The course was set up with cones on 2/3rds of the banked track and also the (tarmac) infield area. It was wet ans slick, as the wax-impregnated clay they use for Sprint Cars and such gets sloppy when really wet. After much course-pounding and prep (by this big crazy truck). the AWD classes went and took a few runs each. Looked dicey but as it dried out they started doing well. And then the rain came. For hours. The last AWD car almost couldn't make it around the course and slid down the banking of the track into the infield grass!







Long story short, the second day was cancelled for all the 2WD cars, which sucked. BUT, we hung around for a while hoping that things would be able to get going, and when they announced the cancellation, the track owner told us we could still go out and "do whatever we want" on the track. Without cones and courses, and with the rain finally stopped by 1pm or so, about 8-10 of us in 2WD cars spent the rest of the day road-racing, drifting, cutting through the various infield and joker sections (which had a small jump) of the track. All the while the big Road Warrior truck was rumbling aroudn the track at 50mph, so it had to be avoided as well.



Nick clowning


The main issue with this is that the waxed clay, when splattered on your windshield, doesn't like to wipe off with wipers. I already knew this from watching a video of an event there so kept off my wipers when the Miata threw mud all over me. I think some others were not so lucky, lol.



So in the end, that was more seat time and WAY more fun than a rallycross course would have been anyhow. All's well that ends well.

On the downside, this waxy clay is STICKY and sticks to everything. Example: After we were done, using hands, tools, sticks, etc we all probably pulled of 30-40 POUNDS of this stuff from the wheel wells of each car. Afterwards, I went to a local self-serve car wash and 15 minutes of pressure washing on the underside blastin tons more of it off. Then today, back home, I took the wheels off and pulled giant gobs of this stuff off the places where i couldn't reach before. Just my left rear wheel area had 9lbs of it in there (mostly sitting on top of the control arm!) and I used a trash bag to collect it all. All told, took another 35lbs of clay off the car today. And there's still plenty more there.





As for the car, it ran well, and even after an hour of near-redline revving no engine issues or anhything. The LSD felt good and lockup was consistent. Only issue was a broken exhaust pipe just in front of the muffler, and it was already cracked so no surprise that the hilly/jumping terrain on Saturday broke it completely. Hung it up with some bailin wire and finished the event. WIll fix correctly this weekend.



The tow home at night was overall uneventful for about 360 miles.



Then as I'm following Jason/Nick towing the Miata in the left lane doing about 65, he changes lanes to go to the right. Thought he was letting me by to take lead, but nope....Deer. Right in the middle of my lane. I jam on the brakes (Sequoia has Hawk HPS pads and I just adjusted the trailer brakes and dialed in the controller). Truck and trailer slow down faster than I thought but deer decides to GTFO of the way and bolts right - directly into the driver's side of Jason's new Tundra, banging along the front fender and doors before falling down on the centerline. Meanwhile, I have a guardrail directly on the left and somehow while in full braking with trailer, manage to come within inches of it while somehow missing the deer on the centerline. Pull off quick to check on Jason, but don't notice any odd stuff from the traffic coming up behind us, so guess the deer got off the road and rolled out. Minor denting damage and stuff, but we resume the journey and I got home a bit after midnight last night.



Overall, a long, tiring, often frustrating, but ultimately very fun weekend of driving. I'd have loved to do those venues in good weather because they are far more interesting than our flat gravel lot at Frostburg in many ways. But in the end accomplished the goals this year: winning WDCR Region and Northeast Division. One more local event in a couple weeks and then it's time to start getting this car ready for a full roll cage and other rally-related stuff.

Other mentions: The lighting worked great. Here's two pics in the woods of the car with H1 projector headlights only, and then H1+Hella 500s+LED lightbar.





What else.....oh, got a great deal on an Alpinestars driving suit for about 1/4 of the original price on closeout at Speedway. It's red (not my first choice), but fits way better than the G-Force suit I've been using for Chumpcar so far, and looks way less cheesy as well, haha.....though it will look plenty cheesy with my black driving shoes and blue Alpinestars gloves :/



So, that's it for the moment. More updates when something interesting is done that's worth talking about!