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

[irish44j]

Just got back from Southern Ohio Forest Rally, where Chris (nonack) and I rolled down to crew for Dan Downey's e30. Dan ended up on the podium in his class and top-10 overall, which was great. Local rallycross chair Adam Kimmett won the whole thing (beating a bunch of high-dollar, high-power cars in his 20-year-old N/A Impreza 2.5RS).

Anyhow, Chris did a great writeup of it (using most of my pics) and since I was pretty much with him the whole time I won't bother to re-write it, since he's spot-on. So, check out his recap:

https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/trips-adventures-and-get-togethers/southern-ohio-forest-rally-crew-142/154006/page1/

[rzerob]

Lol. Pot of gold in the Irish service rig.

[irish44j]

Lol. Pot of gold in the Irish service rig.

I will totally claim that part as my own quote when I took the pic :)

[irish44j]

eh....some random stuff.

Well, before I do anything, I'm a bit sad. We had to put our dog Finn down the other day. He was almost 15 years old and had worsening arthritis in his hips and could barely stand and walk without noticeable pain, which sucks for an active dog like him. Finn as you may have seen over the years has been with me through many road trips and working in the garage, so i'm gonna miss the little guy.



As to car stuff, which at the moment seems kind of unimportant to me.....

The other day, Eric and Neil came up from Richmond to claim their car. This is the 'spare' shell I bought a couple years back for spare parts and "just in case." It's rust-free, and their rallycross e30 is literally cracking down the middle (seriously). So I offered this up for a replacement since they want to make a stage car as well.

So, we dragged it out of my backyard shed, using my e30, or course



And got it on the trailer so i could take it down to Richmond for them. Since I still may need parts, they are stripping their cracking e30 of fenders, doors, and glass, which will be delivered back to me as spares in case I hit a tree or something....



Speaking of towing. At SOFR whenever I drove in rough terrain I noticed a heavy clunking from the Sequoia's suspension. It sounded like it was form the front initially (leading to a lot of on-site checking of stuff with nothing unusual found and a swaybar endlink assumed as the culprit). But upon getting home and doing some "local testing" I determined the noise was actually from the rear, and then I knew what it had to be, since this has already happened once before (with a stock shock).

Yup, sheared off shock....So, the "nub" was still actually wedged against the body and providing damping, but with any suspension droop it would drop off and then bang back up.

Looks like the rubber bushing may have been too tight and deteriorated, IDK. I've heard about this happening on other Sequoias so may just be some kind of flaw...





Anyhow, new one installed now so all is good.

Today, now that I think I've solved the few remaining Porsche issues, i jumped in the car and took a road trip out to the Bay where my parents live. About 250 miles round trip was a good test, combination of rural highways, interstates, and little country roads.





Happy to say the car was flawless. I had the roof off and windows open on a 90-degree day but with the A/C blasting as well, which is pretty great. The replaced intake boot and now-functional reference sensor plug made for smooth engine and more power than it's had since I've owned it, with no vac leak now. This car really pulls strong in any gear, at any rpm. It's not a speed-demon but there was no tiem i needed to downshift to make a pass or anything. It's equally at home carving up backroads as it is trucking at .....er, the speed limit (heh heh).....on interstates. Definitely made for the autobahn, a legit GT cruiser. With the big turbo tail on it, I have noticed the rear downforce manifests itself above about 60mph and the front gets a little light. I need to install a front spoiler like the Turbo had.

Also, now that i have a functional fuel sender, I actually can pull some distance without constantly wondering where my fuel level is, lol. On this trip I did some mileage calculating and figured out I averaged 29.5 mpg (including some time in stop-and-go traffic near the city and some pretty high-speed work on I-95), which is pretty damn good. Especially considering this car has a 17.4-gallon tank, so that gives it a range of almost 500 miles - perfect for a road-trip car.

[mike.bmw]

The Porsche is looking good!

I saw you are quoted in the latest GRM. Pretty cool! :D

[irish44j]

The Porsche is looking good!

I saw you are quoted in the latest GRM. Pretty cool! :D

thanks, just saw that myself a few minutes ago. Also Nick D (who rallycrosses his M3 with us) is also inside the back cover. DC rally representing :)

[Streichholzschächtelchen]

RIP Finn, he seemed like a chill pupper. Whew, just read all of this front to back on grm, and then here in case r3v had different e30 specific input. I'll bother you about spring and tire questions when my eyes uncross, keep up the amazing work!

[TeXJ]

sorry to hear about the puppers :(

[rzerob]

My condolences for the pup.

[irish44j]

RIP Finn, he seemed like a chill pupper. Whew, just read all of this front to back on grm, and then here in case r3v had different e30 specific input. I'll bother you about spring and tire questions when my eyes uncross, keep up the amazing work!

you, sir, are a glutton for punishment lol.

[irish44j]

So, not a whole lot to update. This coming weekend, assuming the weather holds, I think I'll do two rallycrosses - Susquehanna's event at their new venue on Saturday, and our DC event at Panthera on Sunday. Only reason i'm probably going to Susquehanna is that really-fast-dude Vaughn Micchie will be there (and also at our event) in his super-light Porsche 924S. It's one of the few MR-class cars in this country that is actually built to the full allowances of MR class rules (most of us just have modified street cars). His car is super-light, super-quick, with rear weight bias for traction and a good driver to boot. A few years back I beat him badly at Frostburg, but in the few meetings since then he's dominated all competition (and took 2nd at nationals last year).



So, we'll see. Susquehanna he'll have a huge edge, since it appears to be pretty soft and tight, and vaughn carries a bunch of condition-specific rally and mud tires with him - while I'll just run on regular ol gravels. Panthera, if it stays dry, could be more competitive since it will reward my additional power and i know the course/surface. Whatever, for Saturday it doesn't matter, just for fun - and for Sunday all I care about it beating the other guys in local points races, really.

What else?

The other day cruised out in the Porsche following Jason's minty Chevelle for a bit. Car has done almost 400 miles flawlessly since figuring out my reference sensor issue, but had another hiccup coming home, with a random total loss of throttle input for about 10 seconds (and then was fine after that). So, guess I'll be chasing more electrical gremlins. I love driving this car and most everything else about it, but man, these little electrical issues drive me crazy - especially in a car meant to do long-distance road trips.





Today did a little project. As much as I love how the Hella Ralleye 3000 floodlights look, they're pretty "meh" on stage. If we do STPR this year there will be night stages so I need lighting. Figured I'd mess around with some solutions. So, first I moved the Hella pencil-beam small bar inside the bumper, after some cutting and grinding.



Then I added a 31" curved ebay light bar, with outside floods, to try to get some better cornering lighting. We'll see if this is enough lighting. It was only 45 bucks, so worth a try, and it fits nicely on the bumper's curve. More on this once I get a chance to test it at night. i still may add something else, we'll see....

[irish44j]

Well well, I guess its time for some competition update. Today a few of the DC folks ran up to Harrisburg PA to try out the Susquehanna region's new huge venue, since we found out our event tomorrow is posponed due to the big storms coming.

The bonus for the small MR class was that Vaughn Micchie came down from vermont with his ultra-light Porsche 924S, which is one of the true "legit" Mod RWD cars in the country, in my opionion. And Shawn Roberts bumped from his usual PR class into MR to play as well. So there i was against two of the fastest RWD class rallycrossers in the country (both have had runner-up finishes at nationals and many challenge/divisional wins). I fully expected to get my ass kicked, basically. I know Shawn is always fast, and Vaughn killed all of us at East Coasts 2 years ago in some softer conditions.



The Susquehanna venue was very large and hard-packed field. Also very dry, so dust was an issue. I only brought four tires with me - two old Dmack gravels for the fronts, and two old Maxsports for the rear. They worked fine, but four gravels would probably have been preferable, I think. Oops, that's what I get for being lazy.





So anyhow, the morning course was set up very reminiscent of the old Summit Point "Big" course from back in the day. Very fast, very flowing, with a few hilly areas. In short, it was a "power course" I would have done poorly on with the M42 engine, for sure.

As usual, i came out of the box on the first run full-on, counting on my car control to keep me out of mistakes. For the first few runs i was clean and fast and jumped out ot a nice little lead as Shawn and Vaughn picked up some cones pushing hard to make up time. On the 3rd run, I came too hot off the fast transition and pitched the car full sideways into the "moon dust" on the outside and started to go around in a spin. Somehow I managed to go hard lock and out of the corner of my eye I noticed the outside cone wall was actually pointers (no penalty), and just clutch-kicked the car and somehow spun it back the other way, while taking out the whole wall of pointers and continued on. It cost me 3-4 seconds probably but no penalties. At lunch I had a 6 second lead on Shawn and almost 15 on Vaughn. So, that was pretty nice, and pretty unexpected.

The afternoon course was far different. No real uphill sections of note to use my power. Several very tight transitions, and a LOT of close cones. Usually I do fine on that kind of course, but on my first run my eyes got lost in an uphill "sea of cones" that I hadn't looked at well on the dusty drive through, and I ended up pointed at the wrong end of a pointer wall, about to be way off-course. Went both feet in and snapped the wheel and somehow managed to flick the car back to the right and then on the throttle hard to go back left and....wow, actually cleared it. But, it really slowed me down coming into a fast section, and the first afteroon run time was lousy. I also threw a second spare tire in the trunk to try to settle the rear end down. This usually works, and it did again. Just a bit too much spring rate in the back for an empty trunk.

Meanwhile, Vaughn had taken off the fancy Lithuanian gravel tires he was using in the morning and put on these fancier Belgian grass-track tires, which were super-gummy. The top dogs at nationals all carry a lot of funky tires to suit specific conditions.



After three runs Shawn had picked up 4+ seconds and Vaughn 6-7 seconds. And then last run was called, with me leading Shawn by 0.6 seconds, and he had beaten me on every afternoon run. Ugh. I decided running clean was the real key, so I hit the course and made a fully effort to keep my lines tidy and the car in line. Ran my best time of the afternoon by far. But Shawn was faster, and also clean. But....only 0.5 seconds faster. And so, I won by 0.166 seconds. Vaughn finished about 10 seconds back of us.

So, good event. And I'm pretty pleased I was able to beat these guys, since that's always a tall order. I think that brings my head-to-head record against Shawn over the years to something like 3 wins, 15 losses lol. Vaughn, I'm 2-2 against now, for what it's worth. The course and hardpack surface definitely helped me put down the M50 power, to boot. But still need to work on not making dumb mistakes. I feel like I make two major dumb mistakes at every event these days and have to drive extra-good to make up for them, which doesn't always work.....

--

sadly during the event one of our friends and long-time competitors blew the engine on his WRX (shocker, I know). Being 100+ miles from our neck of the woods, that was an issue. It's his daily driver. So Shawn says he could trailer it back , but his Miata is on gravels and he has no street tires with him. As luck would have it, when I changed tires at home, i just tossed my street tires in the truck since it was closer than the garage. And, e30 wheels fit Miatas. BUT I have pretty big tires on there. So we test-fit to see if it would work...and it did, barely. They had to set their suspension to full stiff to keep it from rubbing hard on bumps. So, Shawn headed out towing the WRX, and the Miata took off with Katie driving (hey, at least it has AC since it's a PR car). This is "rally family" in action, and why rallycross is great.

Euroweaves on a Miata? barely...

[irish44j]

And some vid from that event

https://youtu.be/dKunQfVlYgQ

[econti]

How different are their cars compared to a stock example? Is it comparable to your level of mods?

[irish44j]

How different are their cars compared to a stock example? Is it comparable to your level of mods?

Shawn's miata is actually a prepared class, so it has good suspension, good tires, and otherwise mostly stock other than seats. He's just very fast - 5-time DC PR champion (and 3-time MR champion before that). He rarely loses, no matter what class he's in.

Vaughn's car is totally gutted - no lights, no bumpers (those are just fiberglass shells), no interior, all lexan stuff. Even his fuel tank is gone - he has a 3-gallon fuel cell under the hood and that's all the gas he carries for rallycross. His shocks alone cost more than everything on my suspenion. He has a 944 turbo transmission so he has good gearing for rallycross as well.

My car is heavily "modified" for sure, but most of that stuff is for stage rally and not very beneficial for rallycross.....even my suspension is set up for the weight of 2 spare tires + 2 people in the car and a bunch of gear at higher speeds, so not ideal for rallycross. Then there's all the extra weight from cage, bracing, safety gear, etc. My suspension is pretty basic (Bilstein HDs + some Ground Controls up front), and sure I'm engine swapped so that's the big plus. But I have all my lights, bumpers, etc etc. Rally car has to be fully street-legal. Vaughn's car is nowhere near street legal.