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

[irish44j]

Large recap and pics to come later this week.



Cliff notes:

About 20 cars started the rally (more than half of them 2WD). Only half of those finished all five stages.

We finished all five stages and our 3 clean stages were right there with the fastest cars in the class (some of which are very experienced rally drivers in well-built cars). On our other two stages we had a flat (which we drove on for a mile before stopping to change tires on stage, costing us about 8 minutes), and we finished the rally with 2 miles on the roughest terrain with a flat rear tire...so, slowly...cost us probably 4 minutes or so.

In the end, we were 3rd in class (though officially listed 4th due to a timing error) and 7th overall (IIRC). We finished behind Chris Nonack who amazingly managed to run clean all day (though a bit slower than us for the first few stages), until he also got a flat near the end of the last stage (and passed us on that flat while we also had a flat...). Nonack was 5th fastest overall in the rally!

We completely destroyed two new snow tires and two bottlecaps, which went in a dumpster before we towed home. Snow tires are great in snow, but not great when the snow melts and turns into giant jagged rocks.

Otherwise, no damage to the car, suspension, body, engine, or anything else. Our worst damage is a big dent in the skidplate from a cinderblock-sized rock we hit at aout 50mph (it was loud). So, happy that my "build" held up well. We also passed tech easily (and the inspector is a known Rally America inspector who likes to find things wrong, so I hear).

Jim was awesome reading the notes and we were on the same page (no pun intended) for the entire rally so he made driving the course much easier, especially with a lot of blind corners due to mud all over the windows. Our crew (Katie Spoth and Steve Nichols) were great as well. And of course much love to Ozgur Simsek, who built the cage and provided endless hours of advice to me about how to drive it, how to "do" it, and so forth.

So....pics, full recap, etc later but we're home with a great-running and undamaged car - which is more than a lot of the more experienced entrants can say. Good stuff.

[irish44j]

Here's our in-car from SS4.....Kind of slow at first since we had some slippery gravel tires on the front with some ice still on course...opens up to the spectator jump around 5:00 (in which we get a bit of air), another smaller jump around 9:00, some bad car control around 10:00, and into the big frozen lake (about 3' deep with giant ice chunks floating on top) around 11:00.

Vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6An...ature=youtu.be

[shiboujin]

If it looks slow, it's probably fast. Looks really slow :) Love this man. I'm so proud of you! No homo.

[irish44j]

Speed-wise it was pretty slow but the video doesn't even start to show how rough and slippery it was. Also this was our slowest clean run, where I was hesitant to go to 3rd since I was having a bit of trouble downshifting to 2nd the previous run.....But keep in mind we were only about 10% slower than the event winner, a well-built subaru with an excellent driver.

If you start watching around 11:00 we really picked up the pace significantly and it's much better driving I think...

[irish44j]

2016 WM Winter Rally - Pitchblack Motorosports Wrap-up

2016 Waste Management Winter Rally (SCCA RallySprint)


(Photo by Tim McBride)

For our first stage rally, we entered the WMWR in Wellsboro, PA. This had previously been a Rally America single-day regional event, but SCCA took over sanctioning this year which was good news since we were already SCCA members and it saved us $150 for RA membership. Plus SCCA dropped the entry price by $100, so even more savings.

I crewed at this event last year for Ozgur Simsek, and as you may recall it was blizzard conditions and well below ZERO and windy...with tons of snow on the ground last year. This year, a bit different. Wellsboro got little snow all winter, but it had been cold so the ground was frozen, the mud was frozen, and a crapload of frozen puddles and mini-lakes. This presented a tire issue for most entrants....snow/ice street tires, which would have good grip but vulnerable to flats and sidewall gashes, or rally gravel tires, which would be tough but have way less grip, especially on ice. To make things worse, the temperatures the day of the rally were scheduled to get into the high 40s and sunny, so we'd have to deal with ice in the morning and then an unknown rate of melting so mud/water/ice in the afternoon. As you will see, it was a tough call for all competitors and tire choices (and luck regarding flats) made a huge difference in the final results.

That said, we showed up in Wellsboro Friday for recce. It was freezing temps and the whole course was icy with a thin cover of snow disguising rocks, ruts, ditches, and other gnarly stuff. But since recce is at slow speeds (max 35mph) not really an issue there. We worked on creating stage notes since we didn't have official stage notes from previous rallies like many other teams did who were at those rallies. Car felt fine but even at slow speeds it took a lot of work to stay out of trees and ditches in some area.

I'll stop here and mention that some friends were here. Alp brough the other e30 (with his dad flying in from Turkey to co-drive for him), and Chris Nonack and his girlfriend Sara came in his RX7, a vintage rally car from the 90s that looked rough (normal for Chris) and that he hadn't had much time to put together. Ozgur didn't get his e30 finished in time (trying to cage it and do an M50 swap), so he came to advice, crew, and hang out. Saw some other familiar faces from DC rallycross (Jon Kramer and Jason Smith, the defending champs of WMWR), Nater Kane and Brian Batocci also up there crewing. Our crew was Stephen Nichols (also from DC rallycross) and Katie Spoth, Jim's sister. Alp, Chris, and us were all in the same class (R2U, equal to G2 in rally america), which was by far the largest class with a dozen cars entered. A few other 2WD cars were up in R2O/G5, but the favorite Matt Brandenburg/Brakim Racing had tow rig issues and didn't get their e36 there.

Friday night we hung at Ozgur's cabin with a bunch of teams, and while I had a few beers and chatted Jim worked with Ozgur, Domenic, and a few other co-drivers on notes and strategy, getting some pointers from some very experienced guys.



Saturday we got the car out and saw the start list, with us in 13th position (actually 11th with two cars withdrawing), right behind Alan Edwards in his Neon and the Beliveau Boys, rally veterans in their Golf. Behind us was a G5 Porsche 944 and two Subarus, so we had a bit of worry that they might catch us on stage.

Everyone headed down to the Wellsboro Green for parc expose, with some rally fans out there to check out the cars and chat with drivers. Also the start of the rally.



Me and Jim with Chris and Sara


Alps' ride


Chris and Sara


And we were off for the first stage. For WMWR, it uses the first stage of Susquehannock Trail Performance Rally (summer) run three times one direction and two times the other. This is known to be a rough, rocky, and technical stage and it didn't disappoint. Total stage distance was 56 miles (so about 7 miles per stage, though it felt like three times that)....

Ready to roll behind Alan Edwards










We began the day on four fresh Altimax Arctic snow tires (and pretty sure every other car also ran snow tires as well)

This being our first stage ever, we were being careful (especially in the ice) and had a few minor close calls but nothign too bad. Jim was working on his call timing and me on my call listening. We made it through in a bit over 18 minutes (1 minute behind the class leader and half a minute ahead of Nonack), and the proceeded to get a speeding penalty during the transit back to the stage start......so newbie lesson #1 learned :/

Secondn stage we went out more aggressively, and apparently everyone else did too, as we came upon Alan and his Neon about a mile in, off the side of a crest with the front of the car in a tree and the rear wheels in the air. Made a quick stop to make sure they were ok as they climbed out of the car, and then carried on. Now that we had a feel for the course and a good pace on notes, we held to a much better clip, posting a 16.280 (even with the stop), which was the second fastest of any 2WD car out there, just a couple seconds behind Beliveau. Charlie Tamaris managed to blow both his front tires in the Porsche and limped in. Nonack and Sara came in about 20 second behind us, but they were held up for a while behind a slow CRX and lost some time there. Meanwhile Dawson and Clute ran a second 17.xx run, so we had four of us in a close battle for first after two stages.

Edwards, post-tree..





We picked up a little friend too



Alp is losing his bumper. He totally lost it later on stage, lol



Stage three started well. We were moving fast as some of the ice was melting. Alp got stuck in a giant puddle, a couple feet deep with 3" thick floating ice chunks (more on that later) and lost some time. I'd say we were well ahead of the pace of our last run and then I started feeling some banging and thunking and knew we had a flat tire out front right. Where we were, there was no good place to stop and change to our spare so we limped it for about a mile to the first viable spot and pulled off. Between limping it for a while with difficult steering and lots of hard bangs of the rim off rocks and changing the tire, we lost a good 8 or 9 minutes. Luckily we pulled off near a spectator area so we just left our jack, flat tire/wheel, and impact gun sitting there off to the side and someone was nice enough to grab the stuff and take it to our crew at service...so that saved us from packing it back up in the car at least. Meanwhile several cars passed us, including Nonack.


(Photo by Tim McBride)

We got back on course and went as fast as possible to the end, posting a 23.700 total time for that stage (while Dawson/Clute pulled mid-16 minutes and Nonack/Sara pulled off a low 16s). Beliveau had some issue on course and we actually passed them near the finish. So after three stages we were sitting probably in 3th place. Of note, Tad Uzzle and Alan Jones, who had been substantially slower than us (and flatted) on the first two runs, were credited with a 7 minute run (which shoudl have been 17 minutes). Remember that, it'll come back to haunt us later. We actually finished the stage right behind Tony Esposito in his WRX, who had left a tire in the middle of the trail about a half mile from finish, and was limping it over the line on a bare front wheel and broken suspension, ending his day.


(Photo by Tim McBride)

Off to service, in a giant mud pit. Our crew had some lunch for us while they checked the car, but aside from the flat nothign was wrong with it and we didn't ahve to fix anything. Decision time about tires. Some teams were staying on four snows (including Nonack), others moving to full gravels as it started to melt and get exteemely rocky out there (and these are big, jagged rocks, not gravel and pebbles). With the temperatures still not all that high and still some icy areas on course, I made the fateful decision to put my pair of gravel soft compounds on the front (to protect tires in turns) but stick with snows in back (rather than my gravel mediums). This would turn out to be a rookie mistake - though we weren't the only team to do this.



Stage 4 (reversed) started and we were moving well. The gravels up front had pretty good traction (though less than snows) and the sidewall strength gave better confidence in rocky areas. Nonetheless, I was being a bit careful (both of front tire grip and rear tire strength) and we were definitely a bit slower here. Midway through the stage I look back and see the yellow RX7 a couple turns back right before we plunge into the large water/ice pit and barely claw our way out, while spraying mud and water through the car and on the inside of the windshield. Fun. But with Chris back there it was decision
time.....find a pull off and let him by, or pick up the pace so as not to let him pass and also not slow him down. Since he was in contention for the top spot, the plan was to let him by if it looked like we couldn't stay ahead. So we got motivated, put the pedal down, and got in a rhythm on the second half. Chris got a bit close a few timed but overall we were able to put a little bit of distance through the runouts and uphills, using the mighty M42 (lol), though he stayed a turn or two back the whole time (he has video of the whole thing from his car). He came across the line a couple seconds behind us with us around 17 minutes and them about 16. So still sitting in 4th place.

From Nonack's car



(Photo by Tim McBride)

Stage 5 (reversed) we went out of the box fast, wanting to make up some time and get on the podium. Running well and running fast, we had to almost stop as class leader Derek James in his focus was sitting sideways across the stage with the front of the car smashed up. Snuck around him after we saw the OK sign and continued hard on, now shooting for possibly second in class with James out. Then about 2 miles from the end, a hard hit into some rocks and right rear tire FLAT. Almost noplace to change tires at this point so we decided to limp on and try to finish. The big problem being that this part of the course was still pretty icy, VERY rocky, and had several uphill hairpins. And we're trying to do it with one-wheel drive and a 25% lockup LSD diff. After a few minutes, we saw lights and pulled off to let Nonack go by (as it
turns out he had a flat on the same wheel as us but I guess was being more aggressive) and limped 2 miles going pretty damn slow and across the line with a 21 second time. I'll also mention it was dark by this point.



So, goal #1 successfully completed: WE FINISHED. Without damaging the car (except wheels and skidplate, as I'll show later). Only 10 total cars finished all five stages, and only 6 cars in our class finished. So pulled off and did a tire change, and transited back to service and then to the fairgrounds/finale meetup.



So that's that. We figured the second flat took us off the podium and when provisionals were posted it didn't surprise us to see ourselves 4th in class and 8th overall (with Jon Kramer and Jason Smith once again winning the event overall). Checked our times and they more or less matched up with Jim's log, so we hung out and chatted for a bit and watched the awards, with Nonack and Sara taking 2nd in class and 5th overall, less than a minute off the class winners Dawson/Clute - who had NO flat tires or any other significant issues all day. So that's impressive.

Rotary fools...


As we were leaving after the awards, someone noted that we should be 3rd. Huh? Yup, looked at the times and Uzzle/Jones in the Mazda2 had been credited with a 7-minute run on SS3, which shoudl have been a 17-minute run. By fixing that, it woudl have put us 5 minutes ahead of them, not 5 minutes behind in the standings. But in rookie mistake #2, we didn't look at his times during the provisional period, and once final results are posted, they're final. Lesson learned. So on the official record, we are listed as 4th in class and 8th overall. In reality, we were 3rd/7th. Kind of a bummer that
something so dumb could be overlooked both by the organizers and by us. Uzzle/Jones weren't at the ceremony (probably thinking that they had finished 4th), else I'm betting they would have self-reported the wrong time once they saw it. Oh well....that's on us for getting caught up in the post-race hanging out/loading up and not looking closely at the provisionals.

So we headed out, cleaned up, and went to the one local bar open at 10pm to throw down many PBRs with WMWR champs Jon Kramer and Jason Smith along with Alan Edwards and his team/crew, listen to a DJ spin 90s rock, and take in the local scenery at a bar you can actually still smoke in, lol.



And the drive home...



All in all a good time, and our damage list is pretty slim:

1. big dent in the skidplate and in the .095 DOM support bar (!!!)
2. lots of muddy water inside the car
3. two destroyed bottlecaps and snow tires, which the hotel let us chuck in the dumpster before we left
4. one broken exhaust hanger.
5. a short in the horn assembly someplace that kept going off at random times until we disconnected the wiring at service

Our custom Red46 stainless skid took a monster hit and saved our oil pan....bowling-ball-sized rock going fast enough that we bend the support brace as well!



Car is sitting in the garage after a rinse and probably won't touch it for a couple days, then will put it on stands and do a full inspection.

"To Do" List before the next rally:

1. a few minor cage tweaks (not necessary, but things I want to do)
2. better door seals on Jim's side since water was spraying in
3. seal up a few small holes and openings in firewall and shift boot to avoid future spray-in
4. check out suspension and brakes for functionality
5. rear shock tower and front shock tower reinforcement (no issues at WMWR, but don't want any in the future)
6. mic plug for the intercom to GoPro
7. GoPro car power so we don't run out of battery again
8. TBD.

Else pretty happy with how the car handled, drove, and worked overall. Next up is VIR 12-hour race for Chumpcar (in Jim's e30 race car) and then a few WDCR rallycrosses as I fine-tune the car.



Also worth doing again if I haven't done it recently is a big thanks to:
Jim Spoth for great co-driving and calls and keeping me in check, Ozgur for building the cage, Katie and Stephen for crewing, Josh S. and Nick for moral support and rallycross competition, our friends at Condor Speed Shop for their awesome material and moral support, Red46 Sump Armor for the protection, and my family for putting up with endless nights in the garage and greasy hands on the door!

Also a shout out to the organizers from SCCA and WMWR who did a great job (aside from some minor hiccups) and my man Steve Hyatt for pressing hard for the SCCA rallysprint program for a long time!

[econti]

That's awesome! Shame about all the flats but them's the breaks
Driving was smooth and clean as well

Thought about doing an E36/46/Z3 rack conversion? It makes it a lot easier to countersteer, and just nicer to drive in general.

[irish44j]

That's awesome! Shame about all the flats but them's the breaks
Driving was smooth and clean as well

Thought about doing an E36/46/Z3 rack conversion? It makes it a lot easier to countersteer, and just nicer to drive in general.

we have an e36 rack..one of the first things I ever did to this car when I started the build! It kills me when I drive someone's e30 who still has the e30 rack and school bus steering wheel lol.

[irish44j]

Starting post-rally inspections. First thing I found is the reason it seemed we lost an inch or so on the rear suspension....



Yeah, the wimpy upper spring perches bowed inward. The center nub basically rests on the outside of the frame rail, which was mashed in a bit. Sooooo.time to do some cutting and replacing with stronger metal and some thicker plates to spread out the load. The lower perches on the trailing arms are very slightly bent in, but not enough that I really need to do much other than add a bit of plating over it. Going to use some beefy 1/4" that won't easily bend, but since I have adjustable perches for the springs, I can get rid of that 1/2" by dialing them down if I want to..



flattened out the stock perch and will re-use with the 1/4" backing disc. Should alleviate the issue going forward, hopefully.

[silence]

Congrats on the strong finish!

[irish44j]

Thanks! Next up is VIR 12-Hour Chumpcar next weekend....then some rallycrosses, and this summer Susquehannock Trail Performance Rally (one of the longest running rallies in the country). So have some work to do before then.

Also, I think I need to rob a bank or something, lol.

[roguetoaster]

Also, I think I need to rob a bank or something, lol.

Do what everyone who seems to get heavy in to racing does, sell all of your other cars. If you guys need a spare hand or spare parts (I have way too many spares) for the Chump race just let me know. I'm happy to volunteer as it looks like AC Schnitzel isn't hitting the track any time soon. I'll even consider bringing my whole 318i or is as a spare so you can have that on hand.

[irish44j]

Do what everyone who seems to get heavy in to racing does, sell all of your other cars. If you guys need a spare hand or spare parts (I have way too many spares) for the Chump race just let me know. I'm happy to volunteer as it looks like AC Schnitzel isn't hitting the track any time soon. I'll even consider bringing my whole 318i or is as a spare so you can have that on hand.

My other cars are:
My wife's Sequoia (paid off and with 100k miles), which doubles as my tow rig
My WRX (my daily driver, beat up with 125k miles and probably not worth all that much)
My Triumph, which I'll never sell and which isn't worth much anyhow.

So basically, I have nothing worth selling! It's not that I'm broke, it's just that not all of my expendable income can go to racing, since i have a house and a family that cost money ;)

I think for Chump we're probably good, but thanks for the offer. Jim and the guys have multiple parts cars and a billion spares, and in the past we've hardly had to fix anything during the races. I just drive and sometimes help out on the car though - the other three guys are the actual owners.

[DER E30]

Looks like a fun time!!!

[irish44j]

Mostly rebuilt the rear mounts (a bit left to do), and while picking up some new plates from Brian Battocci I said something about figuring out spring rates for the rear, and he says "here, I have two old e36 M3 rear springs that I can't give away, try these." I did a few test-fits and did some calculations and research on the rates and these may work well, actually. Direct fit, about 1/2" shorter than my stock springs but based on my measurements and calculations they have almost 50% higher rate (somewhere around 350, which is slightly higher than the ground controls on there now). More importantly they're beehive style so won't bind before the bumpstops arrest compression, which is probably why we bent the mounts (the GC springs were clearly binding).

So, hopefully will test-fit soon....spent today over at Jim's working on the Race Cage chump e30 that we'll be running at VIR next weekend :)

[irish44j]

Did a bunch of stuff today, which I'll review in a bit. In the meantime, keep yourself entertained by my awesome ghetto modding

video:

https://youtu.be/X3n8jLpSKGU