Mini-update for October 3, 2010: OK, let me post this up quick to stop the rumors and poor guesswork. I've got three Project Updates coming shortly... one full update later tonight showing the last minute thrash to get the car driveable before we left, then a post about the event itself will happen Wednesday (along with pics and video of our car and others') after we know more about the results, and Friday I'll post up with the Future options for this E30... and its up for a vote. By you guys.
That's right - we're putting the fate of the little E30 in YOUR hands! :)
So, let me give a quick update here, mostly to address the haters that have posted up with wildly inaccurate rumors... (shakes head)
"It didn't go to good"? Kind of like your grammar lessons in 3rd grade didn't go to good? :D
Derek Zoolander: So join now, 'cause at the Derek Zoolander Center For Kids Who Can't Read Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too, we teach you that there's more to life than just being really, really, really good looking. Right kids?
The Condor Speed Shop's white E30 (aka: DirtE30) probably was nicer inside and out than our flat black car, and I think they just eeked past us with a Pro driver on a 5th run at the autocross, (they got a re-run, which was lucky as their driver had lots of cone issues), but I didn't see their drag race times. I think they needed to run an 11.18 to beat the Georgia Tech team's Miata V8 entry, which dominated the autocross and did well enough in the concours and drags. We left the event after we had two driveline failures in the drags early on Saturday, so I'm not sure about anything on who won what.
So we almost beat the white E30 in the autocross (up until their 5th and final re-run, and only the first 4 count), but our drag times were barely more than a DNF (see below). And they crushed us in the car show. Not a surprise, after seeing that car in person.
I think their white E30 won overall best the concours event, but that's only a rumor - GRM is VERY slow to post updates about the event online and we don't know much for fact. We also had two different photo shoots with our black E30 and their white one... good vs. evil. :) Several GRM photographers took 100's of photos of both. I won't be surprised to see their entry get in the magazine with a full 4-page spread, but our ugly duckling might sneak in there, too. You never know.
Remember that this was their 3rd or even 4th? year at this event in the same car, and they do local autcross events between Challenges to fine tune things. We're total noobies to this event, and foolishly finished so late that we had ZERO testing on ours. We left in almost all of the interior bits, glass, and other "functional street equipment" as stipulated by the Challenge rules. The Condor E30 was gutted like a real race car and tipped the scales at a scant 2160 pounds with a full tank of fuel. As we found out the hard way, nobody took the "street functionality" aspects seriously at all. Well, we learned that lesson the hard way, as our car tipped the scales at a portly 2490 lbs with working power windows, all the stock glass, most of the dash, heater, lights, horn, carpet, etc. We wasted a lot of time with all of that, and it probably didn't help us one bit in the concours judging that we had a beautiful stock dash, interior panels, fully carpeted interior, 4-point roll bar, etc.
Left: Condor Speed Shop E30 = gutted car that was 2160 lbs. Right: Vorshlag E30 had working windows/lights/wipers/interior and was 324 pounds heavier at 2484 lbs
I have a lot of respect for those guys - their E30 looked awesome, and even had the same E36 front and rear bumpers our car had (hey!). But ours... well, for 2 days worth of bodywork and paint it sure was well received (or "received to good" for you 2nd graders) by both the concours judges (at least to our faces) and by the other competitors. We had dozens of groups come by to gawk at the car and most left saying they loved our little E30, and many said they'd be looking for a 5.3L LM7 for their car next year (see why we held back on that piece of info until late in the build?).
Wait... what??? Hold on there, hater, your rumors suck. :D Don't speak for us, please, even based on second hand rumors from someone who might have been there.
I am going to post a better update about the event later this week when I have time to compile all of the pics and video, but in short: the car and our driver Costas did very well in the autocross, considering the car had ZERO testing and we had a terrible alignment (we couldn't fix the -4° camber in the rear in time) and way too stiff on rear spring rates. I think we were 3rd fastest in the autox at one point but maybe slipped to 7th fastest, out of 55 cars? And he beat the Pro driver that we let take a fun run in the car (who had dozens of looks at the course). Again, the handling was a MESS, and also the brakes didn't work worth a damn. But man, it had power! I made one fun run and pretty much put on a drift show... it was a MESS, but it was FUN. :D
Our drag race driver, however, had more serious troubles on Saturday... a CV joint in the old halfshaft shattered on his first drag launch, we replaced that with a spare, and then third gear exploded on his 2nd run, by 10 am. We're still not sure what happened, but this was an old, used T5, and he had never driven the car until hours before. Its weird because we put a bunch of 1st through 4th gear runs on the car on the street, to have it let go on a mild drag race pass. We'll crack it open and look for long term fatigue cracks and the like. With any real dragstrip testing this would have showed up as well, and been fixed.
So after the 2nd driveline failure by 10 am Saturday we were pretty bummed, and still had an 18 hour drive home ahead of us. My wife was running a NASA Time Trial event the next day and I wanted to get back if I needed to help. Costas had already flown back the day before to instruct at that event, too. We had planned on staying for the banquet and then leaving at around 10 pm for Dallas, but we talked about it and decided it wasn't worth it for us to stick around another 12 hours waiting, then leave at 10 pm and drive that 18 hours all night and through the next day. So, I made a judgment call and we packed up and left by 11 am - and got home at 4:30 am Sunday morning, almost a full day early, for some much needed rest. Worth it! I slept through them leaving for the NASA event but spent most of Sunday cleaning the truck, trailer, unloading the broken car, and then putting away all of the crap we brought with us. Otherwise... hell, it would still be sitting out there loaded up today.
Before we left the event Saturday before lunch, we said our goodbyes to the GRM staff (that we could find - which admittedly wasn't many people at 10 am on Saturday), stopped by and talked with some of the other GRM teams we met, wishing our competition well in the drags, and hit the road with a smile. We had fun, but yes, we were a bit disappointed that we didn't get a single drag run in - that totally boned our chances in the overall placing. We never expected to win overall but had hoped to at least get some sort of respectable drag times in. At best if the car hadn't broken we might have eeked out a top 5-10 place finish, but that's a total guess. Could our car have run the 1/4 mile in the low 12s? 11s? Not really sure, but I damn sure want to find out NOW, you know?!
We were surprised at how well the car ran in the autocross, and we were happy that the car and our team was well received by the competition and the GRM staff. I don't know how we placed overall yet, but I'll call GRM and find out tomorrow. Probably not well, considering the only timed drag run was an 18 second ET, coasting from 330 feet to the end. I'm not bitter, but that sure left a bad taste in my mouth. One full year of hard ass work... we can't NOT go back next year, you know??
Again - we'll let you guys decide the fate of this car soon. Check back for the poll on Friday.
More soon!
That's right - we're putting the fate of the little E30 in YOUR hands! :)
So, let me give a quick update here, mostly to address the haters that have posted up with wildly inaccurate rumors... (shakes head)
Originally posted by some-dbag-on-bimmerforums
Derek Zoolander: So join now, 'cause at the Derek Zoolander Center For Kids Who Can't Read Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too, we teach you that there's more to life than just being really, really, really good looking. Right kids?
The Condor Speed Shop's white E30 (aka: DirtE30) probably was nicer inside and out than our flat black car, and I think they just eeked past us with a Pro driver on a 5th run at the autocross, (they got a re-run, which was lucky as their driver had lots of cone issues), but I didn't see their drag race times. I think they needed to run an 11.18 to beat the Georgia Tech team's Miata V8 entry, which dominated the autocross and did well enough in the concours and drags. We left the event after we had two driveline failures in the drags early on Saturday, so I'm not sure about anything on who won what.
So we almost beat the white E30 in the autocross (up until their 5th and final re-run, and only the first 4 count), but our drag times were barely more than a DNF (see below). And they crushed us in the car show. Not a surprise, after seeing that car in person.
I think their white E30 won overall best the concours event, but that's only a rumor - GRM is VERY slow to post updates about the event online and we don't know much for fact. We also had two different photo shoots with our black E30 and their white one... good vs. evil. :) Several GRM photographers took 100's of photos of both. I won't be surprised to see their entry get in the magazine with a full 4-page spread, but our ugly duckling might sneak in there, too. You never know.
Remember that this was their 3rd or even 4th? year at this event in the same car, and they do local autcross events between Challenges to fine tune things. We're total noobies to this event, and foolishly finished so late that we had ZERO testing on ours. We left in almost all of the interior bits, glass, and other "functional street equipment" as stipulated by the Challenge rules. The Condor E30 was gutted like a real race car and tipped the scales at a scant 2160 pounds with a full tank of fuel. As we found out the hard way, nobody took the "street functionality" aspects seriously at all. Well, we learned that lesson the hard way, as our car tipped the scales at a portly 2490 lbs with working power windows, all the stock glass, most of the dash, heater, lights, horn, carpet, etc. We wasted a lot of time with all of that, and it probably didn't help us one bit in the concours judging that we had a beautiful stock dash, interior panels, fully carpeted interior, 4-point roll bar, etc.
Left: Condor Speed Shop E30 = gutted car that was 2160 lbs. Right: Vorshlag E30 had working windows/lights/wipers/interior and was 324 pounds heavier at 2484 lbs
I have a lot of respect for those guys - their E30 looked awesome, and even had the same E36 front and rear bumpers our car had (hey!). But ours... well, for 2 days worth of bodywork and paint it sure was well received (or "received to good" for you 2nd graders) by both the concours judges (at least to our faces) and by the other competitors. We had dozens of groups come by to gawk at the car and most left saying they loved our little E30, and many said they'd be looking for a 5.3L LM7 for their car next year (see why we held back on that piece of info until late in the build?).
Originally posted by some-dbag-on-bimmerforums
I am going to post a better update about the event later this week when I have time to compile all of the pics and video, but in short: the car and our driver Costas did very well in the autocross, considering the car had ZERO testing and we had a terrible alignment (we couldn't fix the -4° camber in the rear in time) and way too stiff on rear spring rates. I think we were 3rd fastest in the autox at one point but maybe slipped to 7th fastest, out of 55 cars? And he beat the Pro driver that we let take a fun run in the car (who had dozens of looks at the course). Again, the handling was a MESS, and also the brakes didn't work worth a damn. But man, it had power! I made one fun run and pretty much put on a drift show... it was a MESS, but it was FUN. :D
Our drag race driver, however, had more serious troubles on Saturday... a CV joint in the old halfshaft shattered on his first drag launch, we replaced that with a spare, and then third gear exploded on his 2nd run, by 10 am. We're still not sure what happened, but this was an old, used T5, and he had never driven the car until hours before. Its weird because we put a bunch of 1st through 4th gear runs on the car on the street, to have it let go on a mild drag race pass. We'll crack it open and look for long term fatigue cracks and the like. With any real dragstrip testing this would have showed up as well, and been fixed.
So after the 2nd driveline failure by 10 am Saturday we were pretty bummed, and still had an 18 hour drive home ahead of us. My wife was running a NASA Time Trial event the next day and I wanted to get back if I needed to help. Costas had already flown back the day before to instruct at that event, too. We had planned on staying for the banquet and then leaving at around 10 pm for Dallas, but we talked about it and decided it wasn't worth it for us to stick around another 12 hours waiting, then leave at 10 pm and drive that 18 hours all night and through the next day. So, I made a judgment call and we packed up and left by 11 am - and got home at 4:30 am Sunday morning, almost a full day early, for some much needed rest. Worth it! I slept through them leaving for the NASA event but spent most of Sunday cleaning the truck, trailer, unloading the broken car, and then putting away all of the crap we brought with us. Otherwise... hell, it would still be sitting out there loaded up today.
Before we left the event Saturday before lunch, we said our goodbyes to the GRM staff (that we could find - which admittedly wasn't many people at 10 am on Saturday), stopped by and talked with some of the other GRM teams we met, wishing our competition well in the drags, and hit the road with a smile. We had fun, but yes, we were a bit disappointed that we didn't get a single drag run in - that totally boned our chances in the overall placing. We never expected to win overall but had hoped to at least get some sort of respectable drag times in. At best if the car hadn't broken we might have eeked out a top 5-10 place finish, but that's a total guess. Could our car have run the 1/4 mile in the low 12s? 11s? Not really sure, but I damn sure want to find out NOW, you know?!
We were surprised at how well the car ran in the autocross, and we were happy that the car and our team was well received by the competition and the GRM staff. I don't know how we placed overall yet, but I'll call GRM and find out tomorrow. Probably not well, considering the only timed drag run was an 18 second ET, coasting from 330 feet to the end. I'm not bitter, but that sure left a bad taste in my mouth. One full year of hard ass work... we can't NOT go back next year, you know??
Again - we'll let you guys decide the fate of this car soon. Check back for the poll on Friday.
More soon!
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