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

[futureficus]

Keep up the great work! The cage looks great!

[irish44j]

A week to go before the season resumes, and I think the car is generally ready to roll for the time being. Unfortunately, Pat and Jason are a bit behind on their prep and were having an issue with a cylinder missing. So I shot out to West Virginia this morning to do a couple hours of work with Pat in figuring out the problem and checking out some other things on their eta.

First we checked compression on the cylinder, which was consistent with the other cylinders, so that was good. Then replaced the distributor and rotor (which had pretty corroded contacts) and plugs (which were pretty grimy). Still had the misfire. Since we didn't have any new wires we swapped a couple of the wires to test that cylinder and it still misfired. So after eliminating the cylinder and ignition, the problem was narrowed down to fuel, obviously.

Pat had gotten some reconditioned/cleaned/tested injectors and replaced the leaky/grimy ones that came with the car. We first checked the injector connector/wiring on that cylinder by plugging it into one of the old injectors. It had the usual audible ticking/tapping and seemed to be working. So that really just left the new injector. After spilling much fuel we got it out and plugged it in....and no tapping. Damn. So put in one of the old ones, reassembled...and no more misfire.

Goes back to the old "if it ain't broke don't fix it" thing, I guess, haha.....



After doing that and a few other things I headed back home on some nice winding roads through the mountains (in the WRX, not the e30).

Once home, looking for something to do. Pat had traded me a red sport spoiler that I thought might look good on my car for my old black one (since his car is blue). But the red one looked bad, lol.

This was a good opportunity to do some painting. My trunk is all scratched up and has several rusty chips in it. Been meaning to hit it with some paint and this was a good excuse. Instead of black, decided to try to match it to the hood color, Delphin Metallic. Of course there is no cross-reference for duplicolor or other rattle-cans.....Did a bit of discreet testing at the store and found that Duplicolor Metallic Gray (formerly 183) is a close match so did up the trunk in a coat of that.



the lighting is off, but here's how they compare. Closer in person, and my hood is really dirty.



also did the spoiler, though I may do the backside/bottom of it in black. Why two-tone spoiler? Because racekar. :D





Since the hood and trunk don't abut each other, when viewed as a whole car the colors look to be more or less the same, so that's a mission accomplished right there, lol



So yeah, pretty much ready for Saturday's test&tune and the main event. Will see what needs to be done after that!

[phenryiv1]

The grey and black motif are looking good.

Thanks again for the help today. Feel free to post the pics of the wire loom in my thread.

[irish44j]

With the car pretty much ready for next weekend, just doing some little detail stuff that I've been meaning to get around to..

First, removal of the OEM toolkit in the trunk. Not that it's heavy or in the way, but might as well since I don't need the tools. Takes about 2 minutes to remove it but the foam backing is on there pretty good. Took a while with a razor scraper and some goo-gone to get it off. And it gives me more room to stick my number magnets.



Second, the driver's door seal was pretty eaten away/disintegrated. Not really a big deal on a rallycross car, but on hot/dusty days on course, if the car is sliding a cloud of dust actually seeps through the door seal and billows into the car. I don't like eating any more dust than I need to, so had to fix that. DIdn't have a new sea and didn't want to buy one, but had an old passenger rear door seal in good shape, so I cut that up and replaced the entire lower section of the driver's door seal with it. Used some tubing connectors to make them "1-piece" and some black silicone.

old:



new:



I know, exciting stuff, right?

MR class for this event is shaping up to be pretty good:
MR class leader RX-7 with 2 drivers
PR class leader RX-7's third driver will drive it in MR
'91 MR2 with two drivers (first time out this year)
Nick's e28 with two drivers
mine
Stuart's 318is (not sure if he's running in MR or PR)
Jason and Pat's 325e (they may just run the test&tune and not on Sunday, not sure)

The other BMWs are in PR and SR classes....2 or 3 more cars with about 6 more drivers.

[silence]

Looking good.

[FunfGan]

Do you mix us up on purpose? ahahahaha.


But looking good! Buy my seat saturday :)

[irish44j]

lol....doh.

[irish44j]

today we had a test and tune. Morning weather was great (overcast and cool), and then the heavens opened up. Some guys got runs in the afternoon (I didn't), but they shut it down early since there were tornadoes in the area.

My car felt fine and drove fine, but the bad news for me is that Gorka (who is currently right behind me in the standings in 3rd) now has ground controls, a taller stance, and brand-new (well, old but unused) rally tires on the RX-7 now.....so I suspect I won't be holding on to 2nd for much longer this season....but we'll see tomorrow how much faster he is now. He looked fast today. That car is also leading the points in PR class with it's owner driving it.

The cool part was that we had 5 e30s, an e28, and an e90 running today -that's a lot of BMWs for a rallycross!

Anyhow, here are some pics and stuff until tomorrow. Will have a bit more stuff to say after we get some timed runs in and such. Weather forecast looks good!

the dIrTy e-tHiRtIes











































more in this album, and other cars that were there

http://photobucket.com/rallycrossSEP12

[phenryiv1]

Nick's poor car...

[spoth]

More E30 photos:

[irish44j]

nice! I knew yours would come out better than mine :)

[phenryiv1]

Thank God I painted the mirrors yellow or we'd never know which car was whose!

[irish44j]

ok I'll do a writeup of the weekend this week when I get a chance.

cliff notes for now:
Once again Shawn took 1st by a wide margin.
In the morning on the wet/loose I was way behind Gorka in the other RX-7.
In the afternoon on the hardpack tarmac-ish surface (my fastest surface) I clawed back and had a 1.5 second lead going into the last run over Gorka. My last run was faster than his by 0.8 seconds.

But I hit my only cone of the afternoon and ended up losing 2nd to take 3rd by 0.17 seconds (really!) on a day where comp times were over 900 seconds. Talk about close match!

So that leaves me tied for 2nd in season points with Gorka. We each have two 2nds, two 3rds, and a 4th on the season.

Teaser vid to keep all of my 2 rabid fans occupied until I do a full writeup:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O59zR2JaDQ&feature=youtu.be

lots of pics to come later too.

[silence]

Rabid fan #1 here, nice vid, looks like you were having fun out there...

[irish44j]

Ok, finally I'll get around to reviewing the last event......thought I'm still annoyed about it.

After Saturday's rain-soaked (but fun) test and tune, Sunday turned out to be a beautiful day with nearly perfect weather. Blue sky, 75 degrees, nice light breeze...couldn't ask for better.

The course for the day was the "barn course" which is my personal favorite because its long and it flows well but has good technical sections as well. Also because it's not very deep dirt and I'm faster when there's less dirt (the autocrosser in me, I guess).

The setup was great and VERY long....using pretty much the entire course and then some. The longest course I've done this year, IMO. In the morning it was still a bit wet from the night's rainfall, but it was graded and pretty smooth. There was a grass crossover section as well which proved to be very slippery (and my downfall in the end) when it was wet, especially since it was uphill turning right in the morning.

Here's a map of the course:



As luck would have it, the MR and SR cars ran with PA in the first session, so it was still wet-ish and fairly slippery (though not terrible). I had some traction issues, but mostly killed myself in a muddy switchback area (top left in map above) every time. Also coned on 4 of the 6 runs. After the morning session I was sitting 3rd behind Shawn (a ways ahead) and about 15 seconds or so behind Gorka in the other RX-7 (with fresh rally tires on it, so he was biting well into the softer surface where I was not).

In the afternoon we ran the same course reversed (clockwise), but by then it had hardened up and dried out considerably. Since we ran 2nd in the afternoon, it was pretty much like a tarmac surface filled with potholes and loose dirt here and there. Here's the surface:





Over lunch both Gorka and I considered swapping to our street tires (mine Star Specs, his Azeniz 615s) but I guess we were both too lazy. Chris Nonack in his MR2 did switch over and was almost as fast as Shawn in the PM (after being far back in 4th in the morning). Chris was too far back to catch the top 3, but if we had had a few more runs he might have gotten up to 2nd.

Roberto Moreton's PR-leading RX-7, also driven in MR by Gorka Arrieta


Chris's MR2


Anyhow, this kind of surface is my strong point and I started putting up runs just a bit slower than Shawn (who was already way out ahead) and much faster than Gorka, since his new rally tires weren't really helping here. After 5 runs I was about 1.5 seconds up on Gorka with one to go, and I had been faster on every run than him. I was going to take it a bit careful since I had found a fast line and the car was feeling great. Made the run, and it was one of my best times, and better than his last run by 0.3 seconds. This put me 1.8x seconds in 2nd.

BUT.....I got my only cone of the afternoon on that run. So I ended up losing second by 0.17 seconds. This after 967 seconds of comp time for the day!!!! Looking back it was a dumb cone too, at the end of the downhill left grass section where I just cut the turn a bit too tight and the rear end didn't slide like it had been doing all day, thus getting the cone with the back wheel. Pretty frustrating to say the least.

Anyhow, it was a fun day and now Gorka and I are dead-even on season points for 2nd place. Shawn will not be caught barring him just not showing up for the last two events (and maybe not even then).

Anyhow some pics from the day, though I have none of me running yet.

Stuart's 318is, running in PR.


Carl's burple peeling probe, first in SF


Adam Kimmet's two GC 2.5RS's (welded into one), currently holding 2nd place in MA


taking a break by the barn with Jesse Reitz's nice SR 325i, which won the class over the reigning champs Scott and James in the ETA


DCRallyDave Shindle in the obnoxious-blowoff-valve rally scout DSM


The ETA boyz


Old Man Scott


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