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

[irish44j]

Nothing too exciting to update concerning the rally car. A few more weeks until the next rallycross and some rumors of a rallysprint in PA in September, but I'm not holding my breath since we can't collectively seem to get our shit together regarding COVID, which is causing a lot of events to get cancelled. So, we'll see how it all shakes out.

In the meantime, today I took the tow rig to get some new tires. I've had a couple sets of Bridgestone Dueller Revo 2's but have found that they don't get half the miles expected before being too worn for me to feel safe. They've also always been a beet "mushy" for my liking when towing in particular - I guess that's the tradeoff for having a really comfortable ride and being very quiet.

In any case, this time around decided to take advice of a few friends and get Falken Wildpeaks, and in the Load Range E (10-ply). So I went and got that done today









They're a good price and look damn nice. Driving around in DC and some highway today....wow. They are MUCH more responsive and all the sloppy handling/ride is now nice and firm, more like a car. They are about 10lbs heavier than the Revos and you can feel it, but I don't see that as being much of a big deal seeing as this is a big SUV and not a sportscar. Kind of looking forward to towing with them to see how much more stable they are than the Revos.

From there I headed into DC to Josh S's house (fellow rallycrosser and crew chief for our rally effort). Josh has an M52 (formerly turbo M20) e30 but is going a different direction now (find his build thread on GRM if you want to read about it). The M52 in the car has low compression and he described it as generally "tired." Anyhow, I wanted the e34 oil pan for a spare on my M50 and he said if I came and took the whole engine away I could have whatever I wanted off of it. Plus it was nice to get out of the house and wrench with someone else. I got there at noon and he hadn't yet pulled the engine, so we turned some bolts...



The nice thing about having a lift is we just dropped it all out the bottom....





Took off the subframe and transmission and other stuff....and a bit of twinning...



Then using the hoist we shoehorned it into the back of the Sequioa with fairly minimal effort.





And I rolled home. The plan is to strip the engine of anything that could be useful as a spare for the rally car and then dispose of the rest in one way or another (i.e. leave it in my shed for a couple years until the next parts shell needs to go to the scrapper, lol...)



Maybe next update will have something more interesting (or maybe not). But that's where I'm at....

[irish44j]

I really like the old rotary phone looking wheels. What is the plan for the Mini wheels you scored on? I looked of GRM and could not find the build of your raider. Can you post a hyper link to that build thread?

The phone dial wheels are also Mini wheels - I like them the best, but they're the hardest to find for cheap. So I have those, I have two sets of other Mini wheels (the 5-spokes), and I have the ones I recently got (the ones that look more like minilites). All of them are for rally use - I have 4 sets of different rally tires right now. Also have 2 sets of snow tires (on bottlecaps). The street tires for the car are on Euroweaves, just like they've been from the start.

The new mini wheels have some Yokohama Mud+Snow Rally tires on them now.

Here's a link to the Raider thread: https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/fo.../160959/page1/

[rzerob]

I really like the old rotary phone looking wheels. What is the plan for the Mini wheels you scored on? I looked of GRM and could not find the build of your raider. Can you post a hyper link to that build thread?

[irish44j]

Honestly, this new board format drives me crazy so I've mostly just been posting updates in the "original" thread over on GRM, so sorry to leave you guys hanging. If you want to catch up over the pst 6 months, just head over there and catch up: https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/fo...5/#post3052217

Cliff notes: I won the season last year / the winter rally was cancelled while they rebuild part of the STPR course / We planned to do Ohio Forest Rally but it got postponed / We planned to do STPR again, but it got cancelled by COVID / I did a rallycross at a new venue early this year and won my class / The first 3 months of DC rallycross got cancelled by COVID / I put a big spoiler on the car / I did a full build of a 1989 Dodge Raider (a full build thread on that is on GRM as well, if you're interested)

Here's a teaser pic of that...



I'll try to make an effort to get this one going again going forward now that DC rallycross is back in action. So here goes (and yes, this is a carbon copy of the GRM build thread, so there are some GRM references that you can ignore):

Finally back to some action. This weekend we had (finally) the first DC rallycross, making up some earlier missed events with a doubleheader (two individual events). Turnout was huge – 75 entires, which may be the most our program has ever had, and a monster entry in MR class as usual, with 16 or 17 drivers signed up. The usual bunch of BMWs, a Miata or two, a couple MR2s, and a couple BR-Zs, including Chris Nonack doing some testing in his BR-Z (er...FR-S) before he cages it for stage rally.

First a socially-distanced driver's meeting..





Then off to grid..





We were back at Summit Point this time and the weather broke dry and fairly hot. Saturday we ran the smaller course (which has no “name” yet), which is really a handling course. I used to love it with the M42 in this car because the more powerful cars couldn't use their power on it. Now I have a powerful car, so no more advantage lol.





As expected, the top 10 or so in the class came out of the box on full “go,” and throughout the day the top half of the class swapped positions repeatedly for the most part. Most of us were out there on Maxsports with others on gravels. Josh Sennett had two studs break/back out while setting up, and since he couldn't use his spacers with the shorter replacements, he had to run on his street tires, which really hurt him in the morning. He went out at lunch to try to find some others and couldn't get back fo rthe PM due to part of summit point being locked down because some gunfire had (hit?) a Porsche on the main circuit at the big PCA track day. IDK if it was hunters or what, didn't hear what they found out.





In any case, we battled it out, but nobody could catch Stephen Nichols, who held on for the win on Saturday, with me taking 2^nd. About 5 other e30s followed up, and Nick didn't have a good day in the M3, actually hitting several cones right off the bat (He hit one cone last SEASON and I think none the season before). It was a tight and slippery course for his “big” M3.


Other GRM builds were there....like, about 5 or 6 of them.....





Also fun seeing my old “backup shell” rebuilt into Eric and Neil's new rallycross car (still hasn't had its paint job done, so still has remnants of my old door stripes and stuff). It was less fun when they were both beating me midway through the day, but I managed to pass both of them eventually.





Incidentally, Shawn (the hundred-time MR/PR champion) in his PR Miata running at the same time as MR......beat our entire class by 6 second. Doh. Happy he stayed in PR for the season haha...


Sunday we moved to the huge Barn Course, which is generally high-speed, hard-pack, and favors the powerful cars.








We worked first. It was hot





Pretty much everyond stayed with their setup from the day before (Maxsports), but with the sun baking the clay, I thought my Federal rally gravels might be better, so I swapped them on. During the recce run I felt like things were not that grippy, though. So my first run I was extremely tentative, which is odd since I usually go out of the gate full-blast to try to get a lead. But after the first run.....yikes.....I was slow. 8^th place slow. Behind every other BMW in the class, ugh. No time to change tires, so in an effort to get more grip I basically just dumped air. Usually I run the gravels in the mid-20s psi, but I dumped the rears down to 17-18 and the fronts to 22, which is pretty borderline. It gave immediate results (with some improved lines from me) and I got some time back on the 2^nd and 3^rd runs. On the fourth and final run of the morning I put down the fastest time in the class and jumped into 3^rd place, with Nonack (who had been leading the class) getting a couple cones and dropping to 4^th – leaving Stephen in the lead....again.








Off to lunch we went. Someone mentioned possible rain in the PM so after lunch I hauled my Maxsports out to grid to do a quick change if needed, and our group went out to work the course. As luck would have it, 2 runs in to the other run group, the skies opened up and the temps plummeted form mid-80s to mid-60 and we all got soaked to the bone, and the wind was cold. Not fun.





Event was put on hold to see how fast it would blow over and we trudged back to the paddock area. After about 20 minutes (with three Stock FWD cars stuck at the now-flooded start area), one of the Mod AWD subies did a course test and was all over the place – so it was decided to call the event. Which kind of sucks, since I'm pretty good in mud and had brand-new Maxsports sitting there, but it is what it is. So I finished 3^rd, Stephen 1^st, and Neil (in my old shell took 2^nd).


After the course was picked up, we got do to some “fun runs” in the mud and giant puddles. About a dozen cars stuck around, only two of us RWD – me and Thomas Helgesen's Volvo. Needless to say, we had a good time:





After I took a couple, I let Brian Battocchi (fellow stage rally driver and the day's MA class winner) take a run in my car since he'd never driven an e30 before, and I ran out to take photos....he seemed to enjoy it





Adam Kimmet in Mike Julian's car chased him down on course and did a bit of tandem drift action before passing him lol...







Packed up and headed home, really muddy, overlooking the track where the Porsches were probably not muddy, lol.





So....as expected, the class is fast AF this year once again, but even deeper in fast cars/drivers. Which is awesome, but is going to be tough to win events. Stephen is already driving great this year.....Nick having a hard time so far, but that won't last. And another half-dozen guys who can win any time.


Takeaways: switching back to the IX rear springs from the e36 M3 springs was probably a good idea. Car felt balanced with nothing in the trunk (but one spare tire in the back seat on the passenger side), so I'm happy with that choice.


The big trunk spoiler, not sure. I mean, I was pretty fast today but hard to say if I was getting any real downforce back there. However, several people said the spoiler was putting up a pretty big “dust vortex” when I was on course, so it's definitely getting some air to it at least. Obviously it's mostly intended to be used in stage rally, whenever we get to do one again.


Speaking of which, there were quite a few stage cars there this weekend besides mine and Brian's Impreza (both regulars). Roberto Moreton (who you may remember from about 7-8 years ago in this thread as the RX-7 driver who beat me my first couple seasons) returned, but with an old SCCA Pro Rally VW Golf, and promptly won a large MF class on Saturday. Anthony Burden, from up in New England (I think) showed up in his old Turbo Jetta (which is an ARA/current rally car) and won MF on Sunday with the more open course. Our buddies Alan Edwards and Baker (who you've seen many times in my recaps at WMWR and STPR, also showed up to test out their new motor in their stage rally Neon. And some old B13 Sentra with CARS markings (Canadian Rally Series) was there too, but not sure what the story with it is (its skidplate fell off on course, so it may need some love lol).











All in all, happy with the car's performance other than the coolant temp a bit higher than I like (it was a hot day, with long runs) and I think if I had the PM session today I might have been able to reel Stevie in. Oh well.


Today I got out the powerwasher......and remembered how sticky Summit's red clay is....

[econti]

Where's the damn updates?

[downforce22]

Thanks for documenting this thread so well. It is helpful for me as I have been working through an 84 318i going to an m42 swap. Updates?

[Nick_S]

Always love seeing updates in this thread.

[econti]

American autumn is beautiful.

Great results, here's hoping you take the series win

[irish44j]

Event #7 and #3 (makeup) Recap


This weekend we had a double-event up at Panthera, our last at that location for the season. This was the regularly-scheduled Event 7 and also the make-up date for Event 3, so a lot on the line. The weather forecast looked sketchy, with a big storm expected there over the weekend. For that reason, only about half or a bit more of the typical attendees showed up, but among those were all of the Mod RWD top drivers with our class being one of the few with a several-car points race still underway.


So headed up into a the beautiful autumn mountains, arriving above the morning clouds in West Virginia.


[img]





Because this is rallycross, all the usual oddballs competitors were there...





And of course the usuals....








The morning session on Saturday started off as usual, with everyone full-throttle and Adam casting spells on the cones





Right out of the box, Nick, me, Stephen, Eric, and Jermy laid down similar first runs, foreboding a tight competition all day. Unfortunately, Jeremy's e36 threw its serpentine belt and soon after its LSD diff became an open diff and he had to retire.





Jason Smith was co-driving with him and while Jeremy felt ok with just calling it a day, I offered Jason a co-drive with me for the day. For those who don't know him, Jason co-drives for Jon Kramer in a very fast NA class stage rally Subaru (which wins a lot) and also has rallied both a Volvo 240 and his e36 as a driver, so he knows his way around a RWD rally car, and he spent the entire day laying down runs pretty damn close to my own.




Meanwhile, Nick, Stephen and I battled for the lead as Eric Eisele had some issues with his own e30 losing all its oil over the morning runs and he ended up finishing the day driving Shawn and Katie's turbo Miata (I think)





Meanwhile, Nick and I were going time for time while Stephen quietly pulled away from us in the lead. In the afteroon, Nick's uber-reliable M3 finally got a chink in its armor, breaking the connection for the clutch slave cylinder to the pedal (BMW makes this of PLASTIC??) and unable to finish in his car.





IIRC he also finished in the Miata, but hurt his times somewhat learning a totally new car. At the end of the day. Stephen took a commanding win by over 20 seconds, which was pretty strong since I thought I drove pretty well taking 2^nd. That said, Stephen went out on four MaxSport grasstrack tires and I was on less sticky, stiffer, and heavier Federal gravel rally tires. With intermittent rain and the course staying damn, the Maxsports were in their element. At one poitn I thought about swapping on my own (heavily worn) maxsports but the small run group didn't really leave time to do a tire change with two drivers running the car, and it was probably too late by then to try to catch him anyhow. In the end, we did 18 total runs over the day for over 1200 seconds of course time (that's 20 minutes of runs, autocrossers ;) )





And I got to take pics of my own car in action with Jason driving...











Final results were me 1^st, Stephen 2^nd, Eric 3^rd (I think?), Nick 4^th or 5^th, not sure – results aren't posted yet. Jason ran in “X” class so as not to mess up class ponts race since he isn't usually here, but not sure where he would have been in the final if he had stayed in MR. I'll note that Nick's car is usually rock-solid, and when cars break there's usually another similar BMW to jump into. But with the smaller turnout and the three remaining BMWs already having co-drivers, Nick had to jump into something unfamiliar and will drop this event from the season points. Of course, it's worth remembering that I also too an 8^th place finish earlier this season when my car had electrical issues and I spent half the event “trying out” all the other cars in my class (I think I drove 5 different cars). So, that's the breaks. Like most motorsports, rallycross is half about the driving, and half about the car not breaking – or at least not breaking badly enough to DNF – whether it's just a dumb-luck think like Nick's clutch pedal or dumb-luck like my electrical stuff.


To add insult to eric's oil issue, one of his wheels came loose somehow coming down the mountain at the end of the day and came off, screwing up his hub and lugs (though a tap and die, and some loaner lugs from me fixed the issue)





And Chris spent some time re-attaching his and Stevie's exhaust





Kimmett, as usual, put on a show while taking FTD in his STI








Then we all headed over to some rental townhouses that Panthera owns to clean up, went out and got some Mexican dinner at a 20-foot-long table, some shots of Tequila for MF-class leader John Royer's birthday, and then back to the houses, where Shawn and Katie, as usual, brough out their large selection of moonshine, liquor fruit balls, and spicy things and everyone partied til after midnight (well I bailed a bit earlier as I was pretty tired).








VTEC was kicking in, etc.







Day 2.


Well, first we had NIGHT 1. Once everyone got to sleep, the forecasted storm arrived. Around 5am I woke up to torrential downpour on the metal roof of the house. Great. The rain was forecast to stop by 8am, and so it did. With no available makeup date for this event we were gonna run it anyhow, regardless of course conditions (and rain at this VERY hilly venue makes for some really slippery stuff). With bright sunshine and a warm breeze arriving behind the rain, the decision was made to start the event at noon to let things dry up, and just run one giant session (no am/pm) for each run group.


With Eric's car out of commission, I had offered on Saturday to let him drive mine Sunday, since Jason was heading out and we were staying at Eric's rental house. The upside of this turned out to be that he offered up his tires – a nice set of MaxSports – so we could compete against Stephen in the wet ground. I had planned to mix and match my MaxSports with a pair of cut snow tires, which may or may not have done well. With all the BMWs taken, Nick jumped in with Dan Gugger in his sometimes-troublesome Porsche 944. The course was on the “drier” side of the mountain and an uphill climb of S-curves plus a few flat-out sections. Wiht a few very wet sections, but much of the course drying out fast, it was going to be an adventure.


(random pic of the FTD-winner Mike Julian, handing Kimmett a rare defeat)





I got the jump on Stephen from the start by a bit, but for the first handful of runs, Stephen, I and Eric traded times, with Dan Gugger almost matching us in the Porsche, with Nick somewhat slower in another new car (and he hit his first cones of the season, three in one run). Meanwhile, Jesse Reitz showed up in his M42-powered, Red-baron-looking e30 for the day as well and kept pace with the more powerful cars, suprisingly. Chris H., codriving with Stevie, as usual put down consistent times just a tad slower than the front of the class but always a threat. With more rapid-fire runs, the Porsche was having some overheating issues and mashed its front core support (repaired with big zipties), so Dan kind of shut it down and Nick stopped co-driving so Dan could try to finish with more “cooldown time.” Meanwhile, we continued battling and in the end I took the win, pulling away by about 10 seconds over Eric, also driving my car. I think he might like it. Stephen came in 3^rd just behind Eric, and Nick got a DNF (which will be his 2^nd drop for the season – I've already used my two drops, grr).








Meanwhile, the Jeep Comanche took first in Stock RWD, and looked cool doing it.





Kimmet threw his Sti around so hard trying to catch Mike Julian in M4, he shattered the rear glass in the middle of a run. That's extreme rallycross lol.





Then just when we thought everything was over, We all pulled out to the highway to see Eric pulled over trying to fix something on his e30, for his long drive back to Richmond.








Because rallycross, like 8 cars and trailers pulled over to help or hang out, and we got him back on the road and headed on our way, and that was the weekend.





So, that's the weekend, which worked out well for me in terms of points. With the 1^st and 2^nd place finishes, that gives me 3 wins and 46 points for the season (42 subtracting my two lousy drop events), while Nick also has 3 wins and 44 points for the season (minus dropping both of this weekend's events). Stephen has the other win but is probably out of striking distance since he had to miss an event earlier in the season. So basically it comes down to the last event. If I win it, I win the season. If Nick wins it and I finish 2^nd, we tie. If Nick wins and I finish 3^rd or worse, I'm 2^nd in points.


Kicker: The last event is the day before I leave for a work trip to Canada. If weather postpones it until the next weekend, I'll have to miss the event and will finish 2^nd in points. That would suck, but after my work trip I'm going to the Rally of the Tall Pines up in Bancroft, Ontario to crew for Dan Downey and Kevin Brolin, which will be fun enough to make me feel less bad. But, I still hope the event happens. Fingers crossed..........

[TeXJ]

Congrats on the podium!

[mike.bmw]

Congrats on the podium finish!

[irish44j]

So, totally forgot to cross-post my recap from STPR here. It's was a good event and we ended up on the podium (2nd place in Open 2WD regional class), which is a big accomplishment for us against a very competitive field. There were a lot of crashes in this rally, and weather was hit and miss, but the car came through it flawlessly. I can't really copy my GRM post with all the details (since the image code gets all messed up), so please head over there if you want to read the details.

https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/fo...7/#post2828503

In the meantime, here are a few pics to keep you satisfied

No helmet, because we are on a transit, not a competition stage here...

















Here's a shot of Brian Battocchi towing out Paul and Ozgur's car after the crash. As you can see, it was a very hard hit but the cage did it's job. Ozgur had a pretty bad arm injury, but he's out of the hospital today and heading home, which is great news.

[irish44j]

lol, these are fake ellipsoids, I woudln't risk the real thing. That said, these actually have outstanding output, especially the lighting depth, on the low beams. I don't even use the high beams, honestly.

Guess we'll see how all the new lighting is at STPR next week, since there are several night stages :)

Side note, fixed the driveshaft noise. Looks like the CSB slipped and lost its preload. Once I positioned it correctly again, the slack in the ujoint went away and no noise again :)

[Kershaw]

If more lighting is ever an issue, swapping in 5 3/4" LED flood lights for the high beams is really easy. Takes a bit more to fit Hayley Daymakers into the lows, but I know you can knock it out in an afternoon. You remember my lights, right? No reason to run ellipsoids when you can sell them off and switch to LED light systems for $0.

[irish44j]

Yeah, it's almost certainly the rear u-joint on the driveshaft. It only makes the noise when not under load. Any load, and it's silent. So. I guess I'll just have to make sure to be on the throttle all the time at STPR :)