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

[kts]

Congrats on the season win and the new project car!

You have a very understanding better half, if I ever brought up getting another project car I'm sure my wife would have me sleeping in the E30 for a week. ;) (that said I do still keep an eye out for a project Porsche.)

[irish44j]

I actually got in a bit of trouble....even though I called the guy over a week ago, I didn't pick up the car until the evening before my wife's birthday. She wasn't amused that I "got myself a car for her birthday" lol....

That said, the e30 is hardly a "project car" at this point. It's mostly status-quo now in terms of upgrades and stuff....most projects on it going forward in the near future will probably revolve around repairing damage from rally, etc....

At least the Porsche will be something my wife and kids might actually want to ride in when it's done. They sure as hell won't get in the rally car lol.

[kts]

She wasn't amused that I "got myself a car for her birthday" lol....

Doh bad timing! I hope you got her something nice for her birthday!!

That said, the e30 is hardly a "project car" at this point. It's mostly status-quo now in terms of upgrades and stuff....most projects on it going forward in the near future will probably revolve around repairing damage from rally, etc....

Yea I'm pretty much at the same spot w my E30, until I have the $ and money to do something silly awesome like throw an M60 in there all I have left to do is drive it. That said if I said I wanted another fun/project car my better half would point to the E30 and say "not until that one goes" So I'll just have to 'settle' for the E30 for now. ;)

[irish44j]

Will update later this week, but short shory:

We finished Black River Stages 2016, our first full stage rally. We weren't nearly as fast as I'd like (wanting to finish our first rally, I drove about 80%), but hey at least we passed an STi on stage (lol). The car made it through with no damage other than possibly a bad wheel bearing....oh and two destroyed wheels.

Pro Tip: when the codriver says "don't cut" when doing a railroad crossing, DON'T CUT! Hitting open railroad tracks at 50mph with the right side wheels = two flats and two severely destroyed wheels.

Good times running with our friends there, especially Chris Nonack (who had an off on the first stage into the trees but still finished the rally) and Dan Downey (who drove his e30 fast and clean and looked impressive, even if his car sounds like a broken-down garbage truck ;) )

A couple quick pics, and time to unload after 980 miles of towing and a full weekend of rally....





Nonack and Sarah


Jim and I




e30 pit with Dirty Downey Racing






wheels + railroad tracks = (they both look like this)

[silence]

Glad to see you guys made out relatively unscathed. ��

[95maxrider]

Jesus Christ, that must have felt awful :( I remember hitting a pothole back when my I30 was stock and below out both 15" tires on the passenger side, and it felt so bad. I can't imagine what it felt like to smash two wheels. Was this before you figured out your rear shock was dying?

[irish44j]

Jesus Christ, that must have felt awful :( I remember hitting a pothole back when my I30 was stock and below out both 15" tires on the passenger side, and it felt so bad. I can't imagine what it felt like to smash two wheels. Was this before you figured out your rear shock was dying?

The rear shocks were replaced a few weeks ago. This happened at Black River last weekend! And no, it didn't feel great lol. Several other cars did the same thing and got the same result.

[irish44j]

So I guess it's time for a full recap of Black River Stages.



I headed out of Northern Virginia Thursday morning and picked up Brian B. (one of our crew), where we also checked trailer tongue weight (385lbs measured, but we were picking up a 100lb tool chest and four 5-gallon fuel jugs later).



Then headed up to Jim's to get the codriver and Stephen (taking his 4Runner for extra carrying capacity)



The trip up was uneventful and we got to upstate NY by late in the afternoon..



Headed to the early registration and tech. Tech makes me nervous just because I'm paranoid about forgetting something or having something "wrong" but we went through tech easily, with just one comment about our forward tow strap mounting location. Got our NRS stickers and new numbers!





And checked out some of the other nice rides around





There's Dan Downey, we had a bit of fun with his car while he was trying 3 time to pass tech due to a missing seat bolt...






Then off to the evening parc expose on the river....



former WRC car there running exhibition




our crew stylin





There was a night shakedown stage which we ran pretty conservatively to aim the lights, etc....no drama... we followed Downey on the transit





Then went in to have some Genny Cream ale at the Harrisville Rod and Gun Club, the Rally HQ. Good times...





In the morning there was another parc expose before everyone took off for the stages. Since we were starting 37th, we had a long time to wait, haha. But the Black River is so scenic...











So I don't have many action photos so far (hopefully some people caught us on the stage, though we weren't going "huge" over jumps like some people were....). First couple of stages were uneventful, just feeling out the car driving at 80%. We did come across Chris and Sara off in the woods (plus a couple other cars) but we wouldn't have been able to tow any of them out so we proceeded.

Third stage was a reverse of the 2nd stage, and here came my first big mistake. They told us beforehand about the metal plate over a rail crossing and to stay to the left of it. Jim called out the "don't cut." But I couldn't see the plate due to sand on it and I cut too much and dropped the right wheels off the side right onto the open tracks at about 50mph. After brain-rattling bangs, it was immediately clear both tires on that side were flat. We limped a little ways and pulled off in some deep sand (got stuck). Carrying only one spare, Jim had to lift up the car to get our jack under it and put the spare ont the back. The nice thing about rally tires is that they have a pretty stiff sidewall, so we were able to limp for the next 3 miles on a flat front without too much issue at about 20mph and off the stage. Unfortunately we were late for service and not up on our "bogey rules" for times so we took multiple penalty hits (total of like 10 minutes) on top of our 20-minute stage on the flat tire (most cars were running it in about 5 minutes)....So by then we were out of the running, if we were ever really in it anyhow.



Nonack doing what he always does....fixing



Our local friend Sergei running in an Escort



Got back to service and the guys rotated two undamaged new tires (175s) to the front and our two old 185 spares to the back and we were off again. As the day went on I was still tentative (much to Jim's frustration) but looking at times we were running pretty similar to most of the other low-power 2WD cars (other than the top dogs), so I feel less bad.









We didn't have any other crash drama, but saw plenty of other cars crashed, including Peterson and Kessler's civic on its side after the big jumps at Goose Pond, with another car trying to pull them out. Due to the caution triangles on the jump, we went over it at about 10mph, lol.....probabbly for the best, I guess, but no cool pictures there. Saw that both of the Porsches were crashed (makes me sad, an both drivers are great guys) and attrition was setting in.



After a couple more service stops and uneventful stages, we got to the last group as darkness fell and the rain started. Due to our wheel issue, we were now 2nd to last in line of all the cars left in the rally (28, out of 40+ that started), behind an Subaru driven by a mother-daughter team, which is pretty awesome. In any case, my attention to lighting paid off as we were able to see well and ran the stage reasonably well, catching them with about a mile left. We sat on their rear bumper for the end of the stage and tandem-drifted the last turn into finish. Hopefully will look cool on video, lol.





For the last stages (same stage run twice) we jumped ahead of them and behind an STi driven by another rookie rallyist (hillclimb racer) that had been running similar times to ours all day. At night, though, again the lights paid off and we caught them halfway through the stage. They were nice enough to pull over on the only real straight area and we snuck by on the left in some deep sand and ran away from them. So at least we passed a Subaru with more than double our power :)

On the last stage with the rain pouring and lightning flashing, we asked to jump them as well and started right behind Nonack and Sara, which is where we hoped to have been all day. Didn't catch them but we did run a similar time to them, and at the final finish it was nice to caravan on the last transit back to the rally HQ.

There were awards and food and stuff



Anyhow, we had a great time at BRS. The local organizers and NASA Rally staff did a stellar job keeping things on time and running smoothly, and the stages were really a lot of fun and very smooth and easy on cars aside from a number of yumps and jumps and kicks that took out some of the really fast cars. In the end, we finished 25th overall (out of 40 started), which sounds better than it was since only 28 cars finished haha....But....had we only flatted one tire and not gotten all those penalties, we would have been around 20th based on our times. But that's rally. There are no bogey stages, no toss-outs. What you do is what you do and it all counts which is what makes rally awesome. IF anything, the car held up well and I didn't do anything else stupid, and we finished. And since more than 1/4 of the cars that started DIDN'T finish, that's a good thing in my book.



As to car damage - other than the two destroyed wheels, the front right wheel bearing is also shot (probably from the train track hit too). But other than that....nothing. No body damage, no suspension damage, no seam cracks or anything else. Hooray. Means I should have driven harder I guess!

Did manage to get a flat on the tow rig (Sequoia) from a RAZOR BLADE in the sidewall, of all things.....so that sucked but the crew had already changed it by the time we were off the stages..

---

So by the time we got back , our awesome crew was all packed up and we drove the car up on the trailer, had dinner and beers, and got some sleep, and headed home in the morning. 950 total towing miles @12mpg kills the wallet. Hell, the rally car itself only went through about 12-15 gallons of fuel during the entire day!

Once again, special thanks to my codriver Jim Spoth, who called the notes great and didn't get too pissed at me. And our stellar crew (which we shared with Nonack) - Ozgur Simsek, Katie Spoth, Stephen Nichols, Brian Battocchi, Josh Sennett (our crew chief), and Brian Morse (Nonack's crew chief)



So, that's the wrap. We'll see what's on tap next (local rallycross and then....?)

[irish44j]

Our vids from Black River Stages are up! Check them out here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd57LdciKsB0_Vts7-wq5Mw

My personal favorite is Goose Pond Out (SS6), where there are plenty of jumps (which we take a bit carefully lol) and the last couple minutes spent on the rear bumper of a blue subaru eating rocks and dust lol

[lemansguy]

awesome video. it was cool briefly chatting with you at the stop light yesterday. Car looked good!

[irish44j]

awesome video. it was cool briefly chatting with you at the stop light yesterday. Car looked good!

Thank you sir, you too! do you have a build thread going for your swap?

[Nick_S]

This is still the best thread on r3v.

[lemansguy]

Thank you sir, you too! do you have a build thread going for your swap?

no not yet. im still building my motor. been doing maintenance and prep work on the e30, but nothing worth posting about. im not gonna start pulling the car apart until I have a the motor and trans built and all ready to drop in.

[squidmaster]

Been following since page 1. great stuff
I need to get a rally car setup again, this thread is making me miss it too much.

[irish44j]

A great shot of us on Goose Pond yumps by Matt Stryker