Vorshlag $2010 GRM Challenge car - BMW E30 V8

[Fair!]

I have to side with Vorshlag on this one. Motorsports serves absolutely no purpose unless you are trying to win. Sure it is fun to compete but nobody in there right mind puts this level of effort into a car and isn't going to try and win. There are several quotes about winning but if you take racing seriously as anybody does who goes to the SCCA nationals, "winning isn't everything, it's the only thing", and when you show up with a car meeting the letter of the rules and it is then find that the rules are less than strictly adhered to, it can be very very frustrating. As anybody who seriously competes with any organization knows, the rule book is your bible and is the determining factor in just about every aspect of the car, when it isn't followed exactly through unspoken or unenforced rules and that leave you with a car that is 324lb over weight, it is frustrating.

My $0.02

Excellent reply, Evan. I couldn't have said it better.

I admit that I have the sickness you describe above. No matter what car I own, I always build it around some competition rule set. I can't just own a "fun car" built to no class rules... I've tried that, but there's something always itching at the back of my brain: "...you know with a few mods this car fits in ___ class really well". That's just how I am - and how everyone else on our team is. We're all.... racers.

And as such, we took the competition portions of the GRM to heart, especially the autocross portion. It hurt us all to place 7th in that event, even without any testing whatsoever. And I was a drag racer before I was an autocrosser, so having two DNF runs for our team in that portion pained me more. Yes, we still had fun. We got to skip work for 4 days - so that's always a plus! Yes, we're coming back next year, but we're hoping to do better in the competition. Does that make us "bad guys"?



Its cool that people can spend a year(s) building a car for the GRM Challenge, only ever desire to do that, and "not care about winning". Same goes for the majority of the LeMons teams, that wear the funny hats and only care about the beer and bar-b-q, not the racing part. Whatever floats your boat. :)

That's just not how I'm wired. I always care about winning. Sure, I have fun "just racing", and the building of the cars is also enjoyable, but in the end: I like the competition. Team member Costas' own LeMons team is deadly serious, and they've done quite well in the competition portions each time (placing 2nd in their first event). He's running the true 24 hour LeMons event in November in their Camaro, and they want to WIN.

What I'm trying to say is: the competition element is the "fun" part for us.



We also built this E30 to more than just the GRM rules - we built it to do multiple competition events, which limited what we did greatly. We didn't just want to build it to do well at GRM Challenge, we also wanted it to be able to transition into an SCCA autocross class and a NASA Time Trial class. So it had to do EIGHT things well... car show, drag race, GRM autocross, SCCA autocross, NASA TT, UTCC, and kept it street worthy. And did it all staying under the $2010 cap, using the GRM budget rules. We poured over hundreds of pages of competition rules and every single previous GRM event results/published build budgets trying to make sure we didn't cross the line anywhere.


Every car we've ever owned had some competition class it was built around

I've been an autocrosser for 23 years, because of the steady and consistent competition element. I've put up with the sluggish Solo Events Board's obtuse rulings and still built cars to classes that had broken rule sets. I've written countless letters for changes, and fought hard to help poorly written rules get changed. Because it makes the competition better. That's why I got bored with HPDE events when I started doing them back in the 1990s. I couldn't afford club racing then, and "sort of racing without rules" was utterly pointless and boring to me, so I just gave it up for over a decade. When NASA Time Trial came around, I was all over that. :D


That's me back in 1991 at TWS at a competitive track event, taping up the headlight seams to gain more mph on the main straight

If the Isetta-creation was indeed built for the Locost class (tube framed) in the GRM Challenge, then I apologize. If that was the case then that car was indeed built to the rules, and I commend them on their efforts. I asked a staff member about that car and was told otherwise, but they were apparently mistaken. That's actually kind a relief - it lets me know that there's indeed legitimacy in the GRM Challenge event. :)

If I had a hand in writing the rules there's be pages of things added with minimum weights, wheelbase limits, clearer budget rules, very defined safety budget exceptions, etc. But its GRM's baby, so its all good. We'll adapt to what we've learned, finish the next iteration of our E30 sooner, and do some damn testing before going back, heh.

With the level of time and money that it takes to build a car correctly even on a crap can racing budget, if you are a competitive person, doing events like this or LeMons racing I don't think will ever be rewarding from purely a drivers perspective which is why I haven't considered participating.

I've avoided LeMons for the same reasons - the serious teams always get penalized by the "tech judges" and race officials. It can be tiring... but the new Chump Car series is a bit more serious about the competition element, and some of the hard core LeMons teams are jumping to that.

I hope that explains our mentality, a little? It might not jive with all of the other GRM Challenge teams, but I know several folks we talked to there also cared about winning, so we were not completely in left field. When they stop handing out trophies is when the competition element no longer matters, you know? ;)

Thanks for listening.

[Evan Fullerton]

I have to side with Vorshlag on this one. Motorsports serves absolutely no purpose unless you are trying to win. Sure it is fun to compete but nobody in there right mind puts this level of effort into a car and isn't going to try and win. There are several quotes about winning but if you take racing seriously as anybody does who goes to the SCCA nationals, "winning isn't everything, it's the only thing", and when you show up with a car meeting the letter of the rules and it is then find that the rules are less than strictly adhered to, it can be very very frustrating. As anybody who seriously competes with any organization knows, the rule book is your bible and is the determining factor in just about every aspect of the car, when it isn't followed exactly through unspoken or unenforced rules and that leave you with a car that is 324lb over weight, it is frustrating.

With the level of time and money that it takes to build a car correctly even on a crap can racing budget, if you are a competitive person, doing events like this or LeMons racing I don't think will ever be rewarding from purely a drivers perspective which is why I haven't considered participating.

My $0.02

[ForcedFirebird]

Sounds like a mis-understanding. That car was in a different class all together. So even if it came out first, it would only be first in its class, not overall. Either way, not like we're competing for money here. Winning this thing was never as important as bringing your best within the budget, and just having fun.

-Jay

This.

No one there takes the racing so seriously (although are happy to see the cars do well), it's all about getting together and having fun using junk yard parts.

[Good & Tight]

[QUOTE=Fair!;2206755]
Not trying to poo-poo this team's hard work.
[QUOTE]

Just being neutral here, but from reading your posts seems like you don't take losses very well.

[Jonny Cash]

That last one pictured there was pretty slick, but a bit of a stretch of the tube frame rules, with a custom frame & suspension, rotary power, and a little BMW Isetta body slapped on top. It tipped the scales at a sprightly 1400 pounds. Pretty ingenious build, but clearly outside of their intent of the tube frame limitations, no matter how you read the rules. I've asked the GRM folks pointedly about this one, as anyone could pull this trick if this type of build is allowed. Not trying to poo-poo this team's hard work, but If this is the way the Challenge is headed, we won't go back with our E30. Something that light, when fully tested and optimized, would be hard to lose with. Anyone could build essentially a tube framed formula car and slap some little micro-car body on it, too.

Sounds like a mis-understanding. That car was in a different class all together. So even if it came out first, it would only be first in its class, not overall. Either way, not like we're competing for money here. Winning this thing was never as important as bringing your best within the budget, and just having fun. A few people seemed to have missed that concept. We knew the white e30 was plenty good looking, and easily fast enough to have taken first in the auto-x/concours. But we didnt care about the results, we had a blast!

It seems the UTCC would better fit your style. For us, we're just normal blue collar guys with day jobs (not related to cars) just having fun ;) Expect to see a more thorough car from us with fancier(?) tools/facilities- Instead of a one car stall with a harbor frieght work bench and a beat down welder on its last leg...

And for the record- No, we didn't have time to test the car with the new setup. We did ONE test run on the street, realized the no.3 cylinder was tired (spark plug completley soaked), and didnt even fire it up again until we unloaded the car in Gville! Sorry for the long post, just felt like that needed to be cleared up.

-Jay

[Fair!]

Update for Oct 11, 2010: So yea, I missed my scheduled update for last Wednesday... business is picking up and we've been slammed, and I promised my wife not to work nights for at least a week. This weekend I already started scrounging for parts and testing potential changes for next year, which gobbled up all day Saturday. Anyway, here's more about the actual $2010 GRM Challenge event. Let's start with the gallery of about 300 pics from the event: http://vorshlag.smugmug.com/Racing-E...010-Challenge/

Just a couple more pictures from the trip out. We were fueled by Waffle House:



Once we got unloaded we had a steady stream of other Challenge teams coming by to take a look (some of which had followed our build thread), and most liked our little E30, including the guys from Georgia Tech. That was the massive roaming hoard of yellow shirted student builders. I'm kinda glad G.T. team won it - they had a great team, good spirit, and after 2 years of DNFs they came back with one helluva V8 Miata. Nice job, guys!



That engine had a ton of set-back, which had to help their overall balance. I really liked their hand built fiberglass extractor style hood. Massive attention to detail on this car all around.



They were so dominant in the autocross they didn't have to be ridiculously quick in the drags to win.



Another long term Challenge competitor was the Nelson family car. This is their latest iteration of the same theme - huge V8 with crazy power, Ford 9", massive drag tires, automatic trans, massive cage, and effortless 10 second times. I'm still a bit baffled at how they can get that much hardware into a $2000 budget, but hey... we're just noobs here. We'll learn eventually. :) The car was beautiful, and I am not trying to take anything away from their fabrication abilities. It was a top notch build, and when you heard the motor fire up... you knew it was all business.





There were many other V8 swap cars at the event like Datsun 240Z's, Nissan 240SX's, RX7s, and Miatas. Some were even turbocharged, like this blue Z.





Then there were some.... wackier builds. The K-car was pretty cool with the dual hoods, including the massive "four pack" hood for the drags. In which it hauled down the strip with some respectable speed!





How about a gutted/Lexan/Hoosier equipped 2600 pound Jeep? That the team put a turbo on the night before the drags? Definitely wacky! The damn thing was quick in the autocross, too! And how about an east German Wartburg with its anemic 2 stroke engine replaced with a Subaru flat four, stuck in the rear? The most wacky, but pretty cool, too.



There were more traditional "low cost sport cars" in abundance, of course. MR2's were popular, as we're some Hondas and even a few SAABs.









That last one pictured there was pretty slick, but a bit of a stretch of the tube frame rules, with a custom frame & suspension, rotary power, and a little BMW Isetta body slapped on top. It tipped the scales at a sprightly 1400 pounds. Pretty ingenious build, but clearly outside of their intent of the tube frame limitations, no matter how you read the rules. I've asked the GRM folks pointedly about this one, as anyone could pull this trick if this type of build is allowed. Not trying to poo-poo this team's hard work, but If this is the way the Challenge is headed, we won't go back with our E30. Something that light, when fully tested and optimized, would be hard to lose with. Anyone could build essentially a tube framed formula car and slap some little micro-car body on it, too.





Just a few more autocross pics and then I'll sign off... this post is already too long. I did manage to get one of the Pro drivers in a massive spin in the Condor Speed Shop E30, ingesting large quantities of cones and ejecting their rear valance cover in the process. Enjoy!





I'll post up later this week with more on our team's actual event details, pictures and videos. Still have some video edits to finish.

Thanks,

[JoeyBones]

eh, it's still badass especially for the time frame and everything else ya'll do! V8 E30 is really starting to sound like a great idea!

[Danny]

Hey man, there is always next year :D

Glad to see you got it all together.

[Fair!]

Update for Sept 30, 2010: Yep, I'm writing this from the past, but doing it in the future. I have a time machine. How do you think we squeezed the last 500 man hours in the final week on this project??

So, anyway - here's what we did after our last Project Update on Sept 28th up until the registration party in Florida on Thursday the 30th. More accurately - its what I can remember. Those last few days are a total blur, with virtually no sleep. We worked crazy late on Wednesday night, when hood pins were installed by Paul M and McCall, and where Amy started on applying decals and cleaning stuff.





I really liked the custom silver/yellow GRM decals Costas made... we had lots of people ask us "where'd you get those?!" We made 'em all.



Matt spent the evening until 1 am and finished our budget book, and I don't remember what I did - probably ran around in a panic most of the night? Paul M installed $11 worth of cheap black indoor/outdoor carpet inside that I got at Home Depot earlier that day, covering up the area where the back seat was, and I detailed every inch of the interior and underhood.



On Thursday we were closed so I went and got the trailer and the guys showed up around 2 pm. They put a bunch of used parts/spares together, installed the last of the trim that we had, faked the door trim chrome with aluminum tape (it looked great - only 2 people figured it out!), and then backed the car out so Costas (our designated autocross driver) could take his first test drive. And then I stopped him in the driveway after seeing a MASSIVE fuel leak. On the lift it went again, a lot of testing, and out came the two main hard lines, on with the brazing rod and torch, and an hour and a half later that was fixed. Hairline crack at one of the brazed fittings. Then we slapped on the 15x10" wheels for the first time in a LONG while and Costas finally took that first real test drive at around 6:30 pm.



And 2 minutes later, he called us from a mile away for road side assistance with a collapsed front spring... (facepalm!)



I nut and bolted the car myself, but missed the collar clamping bolt loose on one of the used coilover sleeves on the front strut. We ran out there with a jack and some tools and put it together on the side of the road good enough to limp it back to my place, then got it on the lift again. Off came the strut, and then the now damaged strut collar wouldn't come off. Rusted on solid. Jason "the hammer" McCall managed to get it off the strut, and mangled it to a pulp in the process. ;) Luckily we had a spare, which I had to re-machine on the lathe to fit this particularly rusty strut housing. We got it back on and reset the ride height quickly (we got the cross weights to 50.9%, which we didn't know until days later, which was pretty good for a total guess).

So the car was test driven once more - quickly - and nothing fell off or caught fire. Woo! Costas went blasting down behind our neighborhood and was swerving wildly to test the handling... and freaked out one of our neighbors walking her kid in a stroller (who was dozens of yards away - he saw her and slowed WAY down, but any car this loud is going to scare soccer moms), who almost called the cops. Oiy! Damage control on that front was underway, then we finally loaded the car. The 4 pm departure window we had set slid to 8:30 pm. We rolled out and started our 18 hour tow over 1070 miles from north Dallas. That drive was driven in shifts by me, Costas, and McCall with absolutely no issues - just the way I like it. We watched a few episodes of Archer on the way - hilarious!



We drove non-stop and arrived at our hotel at about 3:30 pm, and immediately unloaded the car and got to work installing the rest of the decals and checking the alignment (toe, camber) and Costas strung the car. Amazingly, my 10 minute toe change done in the wee hours days before was spot on, and the rear was lined up to the front. Total dumb ass luck! The rear camber was amazingly BAD, however, at -4 degrees. We had no way to adjust this, and this meant that a good portion of the rear tire wasn't touching the ground most of the time. Sheesh. Not good.



Some big slabs of blue/red/white vinyl turned out pretty damn nice as a Texas flag for the roof. Costas worked his magic and got that multi-piece freehand decal laid up perfectly. Covered up that mess of bondo on the roof. Don't Mess With Texas :D



The car was at least looking pretty darn good, and sounding pretty darn good, and that was as far as we got on Thursday. Went to the welcome party at 7 pm and met everyone on the GRM staff as well as some of the competitors - and consumed tasty beer and pizza. We actually did some more decal work while waiting for the gates to open Friday morning at 7:30 am, making room for the huge red Kumho banner we had to run by placing it diagonally on the hood - came out great! - and did some more "testing".



I'll go over everything about the event itself in the next project update this Wednesday - where I show how we did in the overall standings (24th out of 55, ouch!). But it wasn't all bad - our auto-x time was good enough for 7th, and our concours judging results weren't half bad, either. One judge gave us a perfect 25 score on exterior - ha! I totally love that guy. :D

More soon.

[Erick]

Sell me the full M20 setup so you guys can put in a V8 in there :D

[ForcedFirebird]

Overall:

1st: G-tech/Wreck Racing Lexus V8 Miata
2nd: Hooligan's AWD Colt
3rd: Condor Speed Shop's e30 took 3rd

[Fair!]

No, he was talking about the Bimmerforums.

Honestly Terry, you shouldnt have to defend yourself on what one guy says, especially someone who was'nt even there. Your car was well built, and was fast enough to compete at the top- granted you had some better luck. I say bring the car back!

The car pulled a 12.38 @117 with some wheel spin, which was a huge suprise to all of us. We officially pulled a best of 33.0 in the auto-x, but as you guys probably noticed- there was plenty room to spare. Unfortunatley the hairspray came into play a day late, dollar short :) Anyway nice meeting you guys, looking foward to next year.

-Jay

Jay,

It was nice meeting you guys - the car did look incredible. I'll post up more pics later this week when I get caught up. A 12.38 ET is a huge improvement over last year, congrats!

So... what were the overall standings? We missed all of that...

I have an inkling, after the upcoming online poll, that we'll see you guys again next year. :)

[Jonny Cash]

No, he was talking about the Bimmerforums.

Honestly Terry, you shouldnt have to defend yourself on what one guy says, especially someone who was'nt even there. Your car was well built, and was fast enough to compete at the top- granted you had some better luck. I say bring the car back!

The car pulled a 12.38 @117 with some wheel spin, which was a huge suprise to all of us. We officially pulled a best of 33.0 in the auto-x, but as you guys probably noticed- there was plenty room to spare. Unfortunatley the hairspray came into play a day late, dollar short :) Anyway nice meeting you guys, looking foward to next year.

-Jay

[ForcedFirebird]

White e30 was second to G-tech in autox by .5secs, 5th in the drag race (only beat G-tech by .6secs) and was 3rd in the Concourse.

There was a cone in the last straight BEFORE the driver got there as proven in video, only reason there was a another sanctioned run.

I haven't seen anyone on this board bashing you guys???

[Fair!]

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)

I heard it didnt go to good. not only was the guys from miami e30 ALOT nicer bodywork wise but it was alot faster in both events also.

"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?).

... rumor has it they didnt show up for the banquet at the end because they expected to beat everyone easily and was pissed off they didnt win anything. cant imagine that sat very good with the grm community.

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!