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

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  • irish44j
    replied
    DC Doublecr0ss

    This weekend was DC's annual two-day rallycross, up at Panthera. With the weather looking hot but otherwise awesome, there was a big turnout of around 60 cars, and Mod RWD by far the largest class with 16 entries. In addition to the usual bevy of BMWs (e36 M3, e36, and 6-7 e30s) we also had Chris Nonack come out in his rally Merkur XR4Ti, Andy and Mike finally had their 2ZZZ-swapped MR2 ready to run, a turbo Miata was there, another MR2, and a few other random cars.







    Upon arrival in Mooresfield, WV at the local Sheetz, ran into Eric and Neil, who inconveniently had their windows down when the sprinklers turned on and sprayed right into the car, lol



    Then we all headed up and found the crowded paddock



    The course was hot and dry - and DUSTY. There was a pretty good breeze going, but due to the fact that we used the "backside" course, which snakes back and forth up the hill, the main issue was runnign into your own dust.



    From what we could tell, only Adam Kimmett was fast enough up the hill switchbacks that he outran his own dust in his STi. Shocked. Adam can outrun everything, including dust



    With the sun and dust blowing, all the work stations and the timing station had their pop-ups in full effect.





    The course wasn't much to my liking, honestly, but still managed to do ok, though with a few cones. At the end of Day 1, I was in 3rd, a few tenths behind Eric Eisele and almost 12 seconds behind Nick - who as usual had his M3 in top form and drove totally clean and fast.

    Then we rode around in the dust in the course van and had some beers and picked up cones



    So, we cleaned up and went out and drank for a few hours, minus Nick. As you can see, the Subaru drivers throw down hard...



    Day two was a bit cooler (so, low 90s) and there was rain overnight so that kept down the dust but didn't make the course very slick, thankfully.



    We used the frontside (larger/power course) this time, which is my favorite since it mixes power elements, hard braking elements, and a lot of technical areas as well. I got out to a good jump and immediately knocked a couple seconds off Nick's lead, and then another second. But then he got up to speed and basically started matching me for the rest of the morning, hanging onto about 9-second lead.

    I mean, he has a headband.



    Meanwhile, Kimmett's trunk wouldn't latch, so many straps were used to tie it down since it kept breaking bungees.







    In the afternoon I went out fast and got another 2 seconds back, cutting Nick's lead down to 6 seconds or so in one run. ON the second run got another second back. Then Nick again got up to speed and started matching me. WIth two runs left it was about a 6-second gap. Against most of us, that could be workable due to cone hits and such, but Nick literally NEVER hits cones (none this whole season!), so the only way was to push super-hard and just try to be fast. I let Eisele ride shotgun just to see if some balance woudl help things, but I overshot a braking zone and took out two cones, and that was that. The gap went back to 11 seconds. On my last run I decided to just see how fast I could go running tight lines, and I beat Nick by 3 seconds. Guess I should have done that the run before, and might have gotten very close. Oh well.

    Meanwhile, Eric kind of fell apart and I ended up beating him by almost 20 seconds, with Jeremy Sitar moving up to 3rd in his e36 328i.

    So, that's that. I usually would be a bit annoyed, but it's hard to be annoyed losing to Nick. He has a very fast car, pretty new tires, and "cares" more than anyone there - to the extent that between runs when we're all goofing around and chatting he usually sits in the back seat of his (air conditioned) car and watches his previous runs a few times - so he KNOWS the course really well. When it's blind, I usually can beat him by a couple seconds a run, but once he learns the course he's at least as fast as me, and never hits cones. I drove pretty well, with a few mistakes here and there and more cones than I'd like (5-6 all weekend, I think), but that's the breaks.

    I also used some REALLY old tires on Saturday that were not very good. I switched to some sharper (but still well-used) tires on Sunday and was quicker. I should have switched on Saturday at lunch, but it was really hot and I'm kind of lazy :)



    Minor side note: for the last couple events I've had a vague gasoline smell from the car, usually after turning it off - not really when running. Today it was significantly more noticeable. So I pulled off my underbody armor on the side with the fuel/brake lines, and there was some gas-saturated mud on top of it, which was odd. The HP fuel line showed no evidence of leak. The return line, however, looks like it's been rubbing against the rocker pinch seam for some time, and basically rubbed a tiny hole in it, which progressively got worse I guess (though still really tiny). Anyhow, when the car was turned off it would drip down slowly on the undertray and cause the smell.

    I found a little tiny piece of hose sitting in the trunk of the car and a hose clamp from the parts box and made a temp fix, which seemed to work:



    So, I'll get some hardline and bend a new line in the near future. Otherwise, the car seemed to run fine other than the very noisy transmission bearings (still) and some rear-end clunking that I'll have to take a look for.

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  • irish44j
    replied
    Some fresh Federal Federally G10 tires arrived today. Haven't used these before but the price is right and they've gotten good reviews from a lot of the guys up in New England who have been running them. Went with the 185/65/15 size, which will be about an inch taller diameter than our 14" sets, so that'll be nice to get a little more ground clearance. I'm also getting a second set of these from Jon Kramer, which he used for SOFR last month.





    Side note: These tires weigh almost exactly 30 lbs each. The Mini wheels weigh about 12 lbs each by my scale. So, that's not a terrible combined weight.

    In other news, got my hands on an old Dinan chip for the 413 DME (for free), so that will be a nice addition. Word is they are good for about 20hp/tq, with a lower peak tq rpm and a raised redline. I alreadly liked the M50, now I will probably like it more :)

    Also put some new (cheap) Hella horns off Amazon on the car (since the OEM horns finally bit the dust), and added a 2nd horn button to my side of the car since Jim's is hard to reach in rallycross when I need to beep for a downed cone.



    And this weekend is our big 2-day event. Weather looks totally dry and hot, so it promises to be a dusty and tiring event. The big news is 1) Andy and Mike Golden finally finished their 2ZZZ-swapped MR2 (about 200hp) so that may be very fast in our class, since they're both great drivers. 2) Nonack is brinigng the Merkur, and 3) the Helgesen/Stephen car has a new set of Maxsports on it and a new suspension (a clone of my suspension). So, they may be faster as well. 15 cars entered in class, should be a hell of a weekend1
    Last edited by irish44j; 06-27-2019, 06:53 PM.

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  • irish44j
    replied
    So let's see, what's new here at the 80s chateu.....



    1. Ordered a set of new 15" Federal rally tires (for STPR)
    2. Also picking up a second, slightly used set of the same tires from Jon Kramer, who used them for half of SOFR or so.
    3. Dustin and Dan Yarborough swung by today on their way back from getting some cage work done at Ozgur's place and on the way back down to N.C. They dropped off these for me (which I bought down in NC off FB Marketplace for cheap):

    15", 12lb Mini Cooper stock wheels. So now I have two sets of these (Pat Henry picked up a second set for cheap out in W.Va. for me, as well as the set of Integra wheels. So, basically I'm set for 15" wheelsets now.



    And they picked up a bunch of my old 14" wheels (bottlecaps and weaves) for use on their Rally Golf. I kept a couple sets for rallycross as well





    Made a Home Depot run, because wanted to test some stuff out on the car and make sure it was running well before the 2-day rallycross next weekend



    And decided to do some cosmetics in the engine bay



    Also helped Jason this week dispose of the Miata shell he stripped. So my trailer got to do another run to the scrapyard. You may recall the e34 shell got about $150 in scrap. Well, a stripped Miata only gets about $35 lol..



    I'm also running wiring for a second horn button in the car. Right now only Jim has one on his side, which is fine for stage rally, but in rallycross when I need a horn to signify a down cone, I can hardly reach it. Since I don't want to get penalized for someone else's cone, time to put a button on my side too lol...

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  • irish44j
    replied
    So here's a nice pic taken by somebody at the last event.



    As to other rallycross stuff - this weekend was the Great Lakes National Challenge in Ohio, which I didn't go to due to already filling my quota this year of visits to Ohio. But who was there were, well, pretty much all the national contenders. England, Vaughn, Evan, Pete, Briana, and several others. More interestingly, our own Shawn Roberts decided to enter MR in his PR class Miata since PR didn't have much competition. Watching the times, looked like Vaughn pretty much had the win in the bag until he broke a shift linkage and lost 6 seconds. he finished 2nd to England. Shawn pulled off a 3rd place finish, beating the reigning national champion (Briana). Not that it matters, or that internet comparisons really work well, but having beaten Vaughn by 10 seconds last week (and Shawn by 0.1 seconds), I'd like to think I could have gone there and fought for the win. Who knows, maybe one of these years I'll go find out (the last time I rallycrossed at that event when it was the Great Lakes Divisional), I finished 2nd by 0.1 seconds. Maybe my car liked Ohio fields :)

    On an unrelated note, we decided we are going to do STPR again this year, as some rally friends kindly offered us a couple rooms to stay, which makes it much more affordable. I didn't love STPR the first time (I like the more technical, lower-speed rallies personally), but maybe with more power STPR will be less of a drag. Guess we'll see. I have to order up some new gravel tires soon, to go with all these new 15" wheels....

    In the meantime, decided after 5 or so years since my last real rattle-canning, it was time to sharpen up the front end of the car, which has been looking pretty grungy recently. So, after getting a big pack of sanding discs for cheap from Amazon, i got to work removing old stickers and several layers of paint...





    Took me a while to figure out what shade of dark red I had used on the rest of the car and then a while to search out a couple cans of it...



    Then some taping, and some matte black





    Once all done, my daughter helped me cut some new vinyl....



    And a new main logo for my friends at Condor Speed Shop, which I designed to go with all my band stickers on the roof :)



    The girls were at the beach for the last few weeks, and while there they got me a father's day present, laser-cut out of PVC. Which is pretty cool. Have to find a place to hang it.

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  • irish44j
    replied
    Originally posted by econti View Post
    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.

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

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  • irish44j
    replied
    And some vid from that event

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  • irish44j
    replied
    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...





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  • irish44j
    replied
    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....







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  • irish44j
    replied
    Originally posted by Streichholzschächtelchen View Post
    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.

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  • rzerob
    replied
    My condolences for the pup.

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  • TeXJ
    replied
    sorry to hear about the puppers :(

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  • Streichholzschächtelchen
    replied
    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!

    Leave a comment:


  • irish44j
    replied
    Originally posted by mike.bmw View Post
    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 :)

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  • mike.bmw
    replied
    The Porsche is looking good!

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

    Leave a comment:

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