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

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    Well, let's get caught up a bit. I haven't really done anything to the car recently mechanically, just a few minor electrical things that don't really warrant any attention here. Also ordered six new rally tires (four Dmack Grippas for gravel, and a pair of Maxsport Mud/Grass tires for slippery rallycrosses, as you'll note why below...)

    Anyhow the 2017 Rallycross season started a few weeks ago at the new Rally Farm venue (which we used for some events last year). This year all events (including East Coast Championships) are there - which is going to make it tough for me to repeat, as it's been pretty clear over the past few seasons that I'm faster on gravel than on grass. Guess time will tell.

    First event promised to be a test....because the groun was soft with several very muddy and slippery areas. For as much as I love the Dmacks for most things, mud is NOT where they excel. But that's what I had, so that's what I used.....

    Unfortunately, 2016 runner-up Eric Eisele had a bit more foresight, showing up with fresh Maxsport Mud/Grass tires on all four corners of his 325i. I'm not going to waste much time with a full-event recap because from the start there was little drama at the top. Eric, between his great driving and great tires, ran away with the win by over 10 seconds over 2nd place. But that wasn't me. Jeff Geier came out of the blue to take 2nd (moving up from PR last year). He was not on Maxsports, but did have a rally tire with a more soft-centric tread (IMO) and drove great as well. I eked out a 3rd place with Josh Sennett (in his now-functional M50 e30) and a couple others right behind me.

    In short, this is gonna be a super-competitive season in our class with about 10 e30s all with a chance to win at any given event, plus Corey now bringing back the turbo Volvo, but now with a Ford LSD rear end (so no more breaking?).

    The April event was cancelled due to a ton of rain and we'll have a May doubleheader. Let's hope it's dry!

    A couple pics







    Some other stuff....

    Last weekend I sold my GT6. Just couldn't give it enough time, and it was collecting dust in my shed. It's been in the family for 47 years, but now it will go to a new home (a friend who I know will drive it and enjoy it and work on it). Makes me a bit sad, but happy it will keep being enjoyed.

    The black fleet together for the last time



    Then the next day this happened:





    That's my neighbor's 100-foot red oak....which obliterated my deck and back porch. Thankfully didn't damage the house itself, nor did it hit my trailer parked next to the deck...but it's another thing to deal with.

    But whatever, the next day I still loaded up the car to go to New Jersey for the NASA rallysprint at Englishtown Raceway - a combination tarmac and dirt event..



    A lot of neat rally cars there, some of my regional favorites. The course was about 4 minutes+ long (2 miles on a track and a motocross course). It took a toll on a lot of cars, but we survived with no damage and put up times comparable to or better than most other RWD cars there - most of which were more prepped than ours and with more experienced drivers. But the course (both parts) was tight so the more powerful cars coudln't use their power much, and my car's rallycross chops came into play to make it very competitive....

    So, got about 45 total minutes of on-course time during the day (and evening) with Brian Battocchi co-driving for me since Jim couldn't make it up for the weekend.

    Here are some pics of that:


















    Stage rally/rallycross e30 build/competition journal
    Track/street e21 build
    visit Condor Speed Shop
    visit Motorsport Hardware



    [FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"] 1985 318i/M50 Rally Car - 1988 Porsche 924S - 2005 Sequoia tow pig - 2018 GTI

    Comment


      Where do you rally?
      Paynemw
      1986 Toyota 4Runner SR5 - Sold!
      the ebb and flow of 325is ownership - In RVA
      1988 BMW 535is - RIP but my dream BMW

      Comment


        I'm loving the old Escort and Z, but that sucks about the tree!

        ________________________1988 528e Rally-xmobile___________________
        2014 WDCR Rally-X MR Season Champion, 2014 NE Div. Challenge MR Winner

        Comment


          Originally posted by paynemw View Post
          Where do you rally?
          Rallycross = The Rally Farm in Catlett, Va (south of DC)

          Rallysprint = Various places on the east coast, but particularly at Englishtown Raceway in NJ

          Stage Rally = where ever we can afford to. This year we are doing STPR (the biggest rally in the country, or so) in Pennsylvania and Black River Stages in upstate NY, and already did the Wellsboro Winter Rally in PA.
          Stage rally/rallycross e30 build/competition journal
          Track/street e21 build
          visit Condor Speed Shop
          visit Motorsport Hardware



          [FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"] 1985 318i/M50 Rally Car - 1988 Porsche 924S - 2005 Sequoia tow pig - 2018 GTI

          Comment


            Originally posted by 95maxrider View Post
            I'm loving the old Escort and Z, but that sucks about the tree!
            the driver of the Z (Greg Healey) has done over 200 stage rallies! That car specifically he said has done "about 40 rallies." I think they are towing to Oregon next week for one - they are running the full ARA championship series all over the country.

            We were putting up times virtually identical to theirs in NJ - though on stage that car is much faster.
            Stage rally/rallycross e30 build/competition journal
            Track/street e21 build
            visit Condor Speed Shop
            visit Motorsport Hardware



            [FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"] 1985 318i/M50 Rally Car - 1988 Porsche 924S - 2005 Sequoia tow pig - 2018 GTI

            Comment


              I had no idea that you guys had any Escorts at all
              sigpic

              (clicky on piccy to get to thread)

              Comment


                Originally posted by econti View Post
                I had no idea that you guys had any Escorts at all
                There are two or three Euro Escorts that I know of that do stage rally. I think they're all driven by Irishmen, lol. And all of them are very, very fast.

                We had the Escort in the US for about 15 years (80s and 90s), but it was a totally different car. FWD, crappy econobox for the most part. The ultimate entry-level car for students when I was in high school 25 years ago haha



                Jim Kelly did rallycross/rally a US-spec later Escort for several years an did fairly well before he crashed it...

                Stage rally/rallycross e30 build/competition journal
                Track/street e21 build
                visit Condor Speed Shop
                visit Motorsport Hardware



                [FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"] 1985 318i/M50 Rally Car - 1988 Porsche 924S - 2005 Sequoia tow pig - 2018 GTI

                Comment


                  So this isn't so much about the car as it's "new" (aka formerly my wife's) tow rig. I got her a late-model CX-9 that she really likes, so the Sequoia is all mine now. So time to have some fun...

                  Ok, so this is not my idea, but unless you follow Chris Nonack's RX-7 rally thread you likely didn't see what he did for a super-budget whole-roof cargo rack on The Chief. So I did the same thing, except with more customization. I'm sure we're not the first to do this, but figured might as well do a little write-up anyhow.

                  Anyhow, was looking for a good full-roof rack and/or basket to mount things like lights, carry tires, etc on the tow rig Sequoia. There are basically three options:

                  1. Off-the shelf or manufactured racks, which run from about $150 (for smaller aluminum baskets) to about $1500 for the nice ones (Bajarack, etc).

                  2. Buy materials, weld them together, make rack. I priced out various types of tubing (square and round) locally and was looking at about $200+ for materials (nothing is cheap in this area).

                  3. What Nonack (and I) did:

                  On ebay, there is a seller called discount ramps. They sell trailer ramps, pickup truck ramps, etc. In particular we're looking at the "triple-folding steel ATV ramps - long"

                  They're 72" and as the name suggests, they are hinged so as to fold up. When laid flat they look like this - though I'm not sure how you walk up them or ride your ATV wearing stiletto heels....



                  and this


                  The good part is that on ebay, you can pick these up for $99 SHIPPED (not bad for 50lbs of steel). Yeah, it's made in China stuff, but it's good enough for our purposes here. Also they arrived in 2 days, which is pretty good for free shipping from Wisconsin to Virginia...

                  When Chris made his, he just folded them out flat and seam-welded opposite of the hinges to make a rigid rack, and used U-bolts to attach it to his Suburban's stock roof rails.



                  The Sequoia's roof rail spread is a bit narrower (by about 3-4"), and I didn't really want any overhang on the sides. I wanted the side rails of the rack to sit directly on the OEM roof rails (I may make bolt-in feet eventually, but this is good for now).

                  So I cut the three sections apart, and removed two of the longitudinal rails (which you can see in Chris's picture above), and basically welded everything back together in my usual less-than-beautiful style. This has the added benefit of knocking 8-10lbs off of the weight of the rack without really sacrificing any strength

                  I didn't take any "in progress" photos, but here's the end result. Alignment of the ladders is a bit off since originaly everything was pre-tensioned. This is as close as I could get everything using some ratchet straps and clamps.


                  Did some cleaning up of welds, smoothing out the cut-off hinges, and added a piece of angle iron to the front to seal up the open fronts of the tubes other than a small hole for future wiring. Then with the 6-7 cans of dark red spraypaint that Pat Henry gave me a couple months ago for rally car work, I just blasted the whole thing with several coats.



                  And mounted it to the OEM rails. Now the OEM rails have some front-to-rear curve to them (and the rack is perfectly flat) so I mounted the center of the rack down to the OEM rails, and then made some spacers for the front and rear to get the 3/4" or so I needed filled. These spacers are $1.99 for a pack of four at Home Depot....they are the rubber things that you put over the bottom of chair feet so they don't slide. Heavy duty rubber, just cut them shorter and drilled a hole..



                  Also copying Chris, I used China and ebay some more by getting an 8-pack of 18w LED worklights (and two slightly nicer front flood/spot LEDs), all of it for about $60. Gotta love cheap stuff. But we've been using this same "brand" in a larger lightbar on the rally car for a couple years and it hasn't leaked and provides serious light output. So I think these will hold up well.

                  You can see one of our rally car ebay light bars at the top of this pic, actually.

                  The ATV rack conveniently had hook arms on one end to latch over a pickup truck bed. I bent them straight and they're great mounts for the rear lights. I also left the rear end of the rack tubing open so I can run my wiring through it to the front.



                  Front lights were mounted to the upside-down angle iron I installed, which covers up/protects the bolt threads and hides them.



                  And yes, my tilt-up Sunroof still clears by an inch or so :)

                  So anyhow, here's the finished product (other than wiring all the lights, which I'll do next week). Not the fanciest thing around, but it's pretty much exactly what I wanted - cheap, fairly lightweight (40lbs or so), strong enough for my purposes (ramps are rated to 1000lbs supposedly), and low-profile unlike a lot of the roof baskets out there.







                  Again, credit to Chris Nonack here on GRM for the original idea. All told, total cost was under $200 including lights, wiring, paint and some stainless hardware I bought to mount it with. (ok, I did get some nice switches to fit into my stock switch blanks in the dash, so that puts it over $200, but it could have been done with normal radio shack toggle switches or whatever.

                  Also, because Virginia has silly laws about automotive lighting, needed to figure out some kind of covers for these things. So after thinking for about 10 seconds on that issue, and looking at the $5/each covers on ebay....I came up with the "almost free and not too cheap looking" solution:

                  A scrap piece of coroplast leftover from another project....cut to fit the lenses (which have ridges around them, conveniently). Then, add one of the dozens of cheap harbor freight mini-bungees sitting around the garage...and, voila: removable covers that don't look too terrible. And now we're legal....and just remove them once I get across the border, lol...

                  added bonus: people will think I have some kind of weird radar equipment all over my black SUV and that I'm in the CIA or NSA <img src="/media/img/icons/smilies/cool-18.png" class="smiley" alt="" />



                  Stage rally/rallycross e30 build/competition journal
                  Track/street e21 build
                  visit Condor Speed Shop
                  visit Motorsport Hardware



                  [FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"] 1985 318i/M50 Rally Car - 1988 Porsche 924S - 2005 Sequoia tow pig - 2018 GTI

                  Comment


                    Links to lights and rack/ramp?
                    1990 325is
                    m52b28
                    3.73lsd
                    g260 (1987 325is 5spd tranny)

                    Comment


                      for the lights, just look up "18W LED work light" on ebay. There are about 5 different "brands" but they're all the same. You can buy them in sets of 2, 4, 6, or 8.

                      the ramps are here (though it looks like the $20 discount I got may not be available any more)

                      Stage rally/rallycross e30 build/competition journal
                      Track/street e21 build
                      visit Condor Speed Shop
                      visit Motorsport Hardware



                      [FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"] 1985 318i/M50 Rally Car - 1988 Porsche 924S - 2005 Sequoia tow pig - 2018 GTI

                      Comment


                        Thanks!
                        1990 325is
                        m52b28
                        3.73lsd
                        g260 (1987 325is 5spd tranny)

                        Comment


                          So with constant rain, our scheduled 2-day rallycross was postponed, so I've had a couple days to do stuff.

                          It's a shame, too, since our new Maxsport mud tires just came in from the UK, along with a new set of DMacks which we will use at STPR in 3 weeks.

                          Also a set in here for Josh Sennett




                          Yeah, meaty!


                          Also in the mail, new plates for the tow rig. My wife wanted her customized plates back for her new vehicle, lol



                          With it raining, had to add some shelter to do some work to all three of my cars...



                          Then got down to finishing the wiring and stuff on the Sequoia for the lights

                          Lots of wire (btw, great ebay seller sent me this quality wire (400 feet of it) for like 25 bucks....and it's really good wire with excellent insulation)

                          Also a bunch of connectors and switches and stuff off Amazon.


                          Then ran a bunch of wire (the rear lights wiring went through the rack rails, and I ran it all down the A-pillar under the weatherstripping, and made a panel for the switches



                          You might notice that I put the "big" ebay bar (from the rally car) up on the truck rather than the smaller lights I had gotten and put there initially...



                          So, there's a lot of light now...and this is just the roof lights.



                          And the rear floods



                          That all taken care of, I moved the new smaller LED bars to the rally car top bar.





                          So that's it for the moment. Tomorrow we plan to change out the transmission, which has had a crunchy 2nd gear syncro on downshift that has been annoying for a while. Will swap in one of my spare G240s and see if it's better....
                          Stage rally/rallycross e30 build/competition journal
                          Track/street e21 build
                          visit Condor Speed Shop
                          visit Motorsport Hardware



                          [FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"] 1985 318i/M50 Rally Car - 1988 Porsche 924S - 2005 Sequoia tow pig - 2018 GTI

                          Comment


                            Today we went out to the super-secret Pitchblack Garage (aka a corporate fleet garage that we borrowed) to do some work and swap out the transmission and its crunchy 2nd gear syncro with one of my spares G240 units, as well as a new clutch.

                            It's nice working on a lift! The car on the right is Amanda's rallycross e30 that she was doing a bit of work on as well.





                            dropping some dirt


                            hard at work with Jim


                            Everything came apart fine other than the shift carrier "bitch clip" being a total bitch, and getting to one of the starter bolts (my arms scraped to hell trying to get in there)

                            Transmission out:


                            And old and "new"


                            Nick and Josh stopped by too..


                            Interestingly, I put the old clutch in there 6 years ago and it was used at the time. But still looks like it has a TON of life left on it....guess dirt isn't too hard, especially with a low-power engine....



                            Anyhow, put new clutch in and everything back together. Smooth as butter.

                            Two things we did find: First, the guibo needed to be replaced, so I just ordered a new one. Looks like it was damaged last year when the driveshaft bolts came loose (if you recall) during an event.

                            Also one of the c-clips for the shift linkage was missing so the rod wasn't secure in the bottom of the shifter....happy that didn't fall out!

                            So that stuff will be replaced soon. All is well that ends well, right?

                            Stage rally/rallycross e30 build/competition journal
                            Track/street e21 build
                            visit Condor Speed Shop
                            visit Motorsport Hardware



                            [FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"] 1985 318i/M50 Rally Car - 1988 Porsche 924S - 2005 Sequoia tow pig - 2018 GTI

                            Comment


                              So some quick updates as we are now only a few days from leaving for Susquehannock Trail Performance Rally (STPR)!!

                              First....we finally had a DC rallycross last weekend after 2 months of weather delays. It was great weather, and a great turnout. Mod RWD was strong as always, and PR 3-time champion Shawn Roberts joined our class for the day as well since he had to safety steward the opposite run group with a bunch of people off at the Ohio Forest Rally.



                              Andy Thomas set up an awesome course (very 2WD-oriented) with Adam Kimmett at SOFR. Adam tends to like more wide-open courses and Andy likes more technical detail, as do it.

                              Anyhow, long and short of it is that it was a shootout all day between half the class. In the end, Stephen Nichols pulled off the win in his 325i - beat me by 0.7 seconds....all attributed to an ill-advised 1st gear downshift on one of my late runs that threw the car out of sorts and picked up a cone. Figures....I was trying to pick up time and I lost time on that.

                              I actually beat Shawn by less than a second as well, which is pretty rare. Shawn picked up 8 or 9 cones all day (I had 1 or 2 and Steven had 2 or 3)....so that tells you how fast he is in the Miata that he almost won despite hitting a lot of cones.

                              Anyhow, car felt good and ready to go to STPR I think :)









                              Except for a few things....so let's review those real quick:

                              First, spray-bombed some weaves before mounting up the new DMacks for STPR





                              Then, did a bunch of work on the WRX that it was sorely in need of. I forgot how little fun it is to work on this car (because the e30 is so easy)





                              Then took my fire extinguishers to get re-certed (required annually for rally)



                              Then had my driveway taken up for two days while some guys put a new roof on my house....



                              Then Jeff Geier rode his motorcycle down from Maryland to give me a spare e30 battery cable.....



                              ....which I needed to extend my stock setup to finish up the kill switch. I woudl have liked to use compression crimp fittings, but time didn't allow it so just used a distro block splice instead. After, it is wrapped with adhesive industrial-thickness shrink wrap as well as plastic wire protectors....it's not going anywhere, hopefully..



                              had to do a lot of wire routing. Not much fun with this heavy 00 gauge stuff!







                              Also a few other little things that I didn't take photos of: Added some fuel pump protection under the car (more specifically, the line itself which is the lowest part), cleaned out the interior, made a few little changes to the trunk/gear setup, re-labeled some of the dash switches, removed our SCCA banner and numers in prep for ARA/STPR stuff, and a few other little things.

                              Almost packed up, early, which is nice..



                              Finally, put the new wheels/tires on the car. And now time to clean up...

                              Stage rally/rallycross e30 build/competition journal
                              Track/street e21 build
                              visit Condor Speed Shop
                              visit Motorsport Hardware



                              [FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"] 1985 318i/M50 Rally Car - 1988 Porsche 924S - 2005 Sequoia tow pig - 2018 GTI

                              Comment


                                We competed in the Susquehannock Trail Performance Rally (STPR) last weekend. We weren't terribly fast, but we completed every stage, did no serious damage to the car, and had a great time seeing our "rally family." I'll do a complete recap in a few days when I get a chance, but in the meantime here are a few pics to tide you all over (more interesting than my babbling anyhow!)



                                Matt Stryker photo


                                Tim McBride photos




                                Evan Sanders photo


                                Up against Dan Downey in the Super Special Stage friday evening
                                Last edited by irish44j; 06-06-2017, 06:48 PM.
                                Stage rally/rallycross e30 build/competition journal
                                Track/street e21 build
                                visit Condor Speed Shop
                                visit Motorsport Hardware



                                [FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"] 1985 318i/M50 Rally Car - 1988 Porsche 924S - 2005 Sequoia tow pig - 2018 GTI

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