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

[irish44j]

I've been gone for a couple days on a work-related trip. Some new brake pads and a few other little things showed up while I was gone.

In the meantime, here's a few pics from my travels that you might enjoy

First, a wierd tow truck made from an e21 bmw....spotted down near Yorktown, Va. what the hell....



At the Hermitage art museum in Norfolk, where I used to hang out as a kid.



On the flightline at Oceana, the Navy's Master Jet base.....F/A-18s are louder than anything you've ever heard when 15 feet away and at full military power...

[irish44j]

got the A035's mounted. Damn this setup is heavy. And loud. Drove just down my street on them and my neighbors must have thought it was a big rock-crawling 4x4 coming by, haha...



then, for no reason other than "because rally car" I painted the bottlecaps. Didn't have more than half a can of any paint color in the cabinet, so just did two black and two white. Hey, why not, lol....

[FunfGan]

You and your fancy rallycar tires... She's lookin' good :D

[shEck3lls0]

Wow.... im slacking.

[irish44j]

You and your fancy rallycar tires... She's lookin' good :D

Will make it twice as embarrassing if I lose to one of the other e30s "not" on rally tires, lol...

Wow.... im slacking.

yes, yes you are. But then again, I only have one car project at the moment.

[FunfGan]

Will make it twice as embarrassing if I lose to one of the other e30s "not" on rally tires, lol...

Challenge accepted

[irish44j]

Deep thoughts: Just an offhand guess, but I think I've spent maybe $3500 on this entire project, including the purchase price of the car, SCCA membership, season of rallycross pre-paid, a set of rally tires, a set of Star Specs, and a pair of used and a pair of new Konis. Add that in to all the smaller stuff and that's my guesstimate of overall cost. I've also sold off about $500 worth of parts that came with the car. Not too bad. Were I to sell the rally tires and the euroweaves, I could be pretty close to the GRM $2012 Challenge budget, actually. Not that this car would do well in the GRM Challenge...

Anyhow, another quick one: install of the rear mudflaps. I used the RallyArmor basic universals, so had to do some trimming and fab up some basic brackets. All in all they turned out pretty good I think.

the brackets



installed. I'll put some rubberized undercoating over all the bolts once I'm sure everything is lined up how I want it.











had so have a bit of fun, just because this is not a serious car, so it shouldn't look too serious.

[irish44j]

I know this car is for rallycross and a good audio system is not necessary or desired. But I have to drive to the track, and the Blaupunkt deck that came in this car is simply atrocious. The sound is simply pathetic and it can't even drive the so-so Infinity speakers in the front kick panels. I've always hated Blaupunkt and been amazed that anyone ever bought them.......So went digging into the parts cabinet to pull out an old Pioneer deck that was pulled out of my 1992 Accord almost a decade ago (it was a nice deck at the time). Had some display issues, which I fixes with a little ghetto-work with the soldering iron. Hooked it all up, and damn....the 2-speaker system actually sounds very good now. me = pleased. Still no iPod input, but I have about 600 CDs in cases in the hosue, so I'll just listen to old-school stuff to and from the track.

Also disabled the security tabs so I can pull it out quickly before the event starts and put it back in easily afterwards.

old:


new(er)

[shEck3lls0]

I will have full interior and be almost completely stock and still beat you. :nice:

[dnick]

ooo im going to have to make a trip up to summit.. .

[irish44j]

you'll be sidewayz around every turn, and then your trunk will fall off....

and it's not me you have to worry about. I'm not in your class. It's the eta with the two drivers who won that class last year you have to worry about, lol.

aside from the fact that I"m more or less just as much a n00b at this as you are, in a car with way less power and a little bit less weight. So really, you *should* beat me.

but you won't. ;)

and if you do, I'll make some excuse about my clutch slipping or something out of my control. lol.....

[dnick]

dem fightin words yo.






jk this shall be interesting!

[irish44j]

Hey spencer, is stuart going to drive too? I didn't see him signed up.

[FunfGan]

Hey spencer, is stuart going to drive too? I didn't see him signed up.

Yessir, signing up this week. And man! We even had almost had the same head units in our Accords

[irish44j]

forgot about a few other little things I did today. Pretty small stuff, but might as well post it up anyways.

First....I left the car outside yesterday during the big downpour and found that I still had a leak, since there was a ton of water on the passenger floor (which luckily is Rhino-linered, so no big deal). Thought I had fixed all the leaks, ugh.

Luckily, the dust on the inside of the firewall showed exactly where the water trail came from - the seal around the HVAC unit. Hmm....not going to rip apart the whole dash to pull it and replace the seal, so investigated from the frontside access panel to the heater fan. Clearly leaking through the foam seal, which sits only like 1cm above the drain route from the intake vents.....so any heavy rain overwhelms the drain. Also cleared some junk out of there that probably didn't help with drainage.

Ended up just using some leftover silicone from recent bathroom caulking work and just put it all over the top of the seal, in the gaps, etc. It's really tight in there so used a small flathead screwdriver to smooth it and make sure it filled all gaps. Dumped a bucket of water in to the vents (slowly) and no leaks, so we'll see if it's a good permanent fix



Second. Thinking back to an eduro I crewed for a few years back, where our front-running car's day ended when a chunk of asphalt kicked up and pierced the gas feed hardline. The e30 hardlines for gas and brakes are pretty exposed. THe rally flaps will help, but wanted a bit of secondary protection on that side of the car. So, cut out more of my trusty plastic storage bin top, lol. bolted on with a second nut onto the bottom of one of my seat bracket mounts.



More on those lines, the fuel line wraps around the front of the subframe runners right behind the front wheel, totally unprotected by the mudflaps when turning left, and prime for a hard gravel/rock kickup (am I sounding paranoid yet?). So I cut out some hose from an old fluid transfer pump, and wrapped the line (held in place with zipties). Probably pointless, but peace of mind at least





and a few other random pics I took with the car out of the rear mudflaps, etc









oh, and painted the front center caps black, just because...