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

[irish44j]

All-in-all, I know that I have a lot of room to improve as a driver, and my car certainly has room to improve (rally tires, a functioning O2 sensor, valve adjustment, sway bars worth a damn, spring rates, functioning ABS system) whereas you and Roberto are kind of tapped out (you've got much more experience and your cars are pretty much as prepared as they can get). If I can get those issues sorted by the next event, I think I stand a much better chance of being closer to the top.

Well, I don't know about the "tapped out" part, lol. My car isn't even close to "max prepped" if I truly wanted to make it a pure rally-x competition car. Look at Colin Rogers's e30 on our FB team page. That is "max prepped" far more than mine, but then again he trailers it to events. I could knock 200lbs+ off by taking out the rollbar and bumpers, passenger seat, etc (but I'm not doing any of that). I could get NEW rally tires (which would be a significant difference from either of my well-used sets). Hell, I still have a stereo and speakers in the car, two heavy seats, full dash, door cards, all the glass (could switch some to plexi), and am too lazy to even take the jack out of the trunk mount during events. I'm balancing performance vs. enjoying the car when I'm not racing it as well. But that could conceivably change at some point, I suppose.

Also, if I had the other pair of DMacks on the front I'm pretty convinced I would have been much quicker in the water truck runs and on the looser surfaces. I could significantly feel the difference with the one pair on the rear. But "ifs" don't really help........

What is really tapped out for me is money to spend on this car at the moment. At the test&tune I may play around with unhooking the front and/or rear swaybar to see how the car reacts, for one. Still learning the best tire pressures for the different surfaces as well.

Overall I think I improved my driving significantly this weekend by:
1. being more aggressive on throttle in the straight/semi-straight areas
2. not blowing it at the end by being over-aggressive
3. not spinning out, and handling the mud conditions better than usual.
4. running pretty clean (from the looks of things, 4 cones was extremely low for anyone this weekend....of the RWD cars, only Margarita had less...and she averaged almost 4 seconds per run slower than me, so I don't much care about that).

Inasmuch as you think I have vast experience in this (and I have more than you, but that's not saying all that much), Roberto has several more seasons than I do, and also does rallysprint. I know I have a lot of room to improve - and I know this because Chris was faster than me in a car that should not be faster (your car is great, but it really shouldn't be faster than an e30, due to the laws of physics). So I know well that I need to be a faster driver. I'm less worried about making the car faster than I am about minor tweaks in setup and making myself faster.

As for you, I gotta think that the biggest thing you could do to improve the e28 is remove the cage. That's gotta be about 200lbs sitting in the worst possible place in the car, if not more. But I know you may want the cage at a later time so that's not going to happen. Just sayin.' Rally tires will help in some respects and will hurt in some respects, from everything I've read.

Overall I'm pretty happy Chris (and you) did so well this event though. A few weeks ago you seemed to be on the verge of hating the e28 and wanting to get something smaller (e30 or whatever), but it's good that you're back "in to" the car after a good showing and seeing its potential :)

[irish44j]

I'll also note that I was beaten last season in my own car by Mike Seitz (who was also much faster than me in the LeMons car). And he didn't own an e30 until a month ago!

The lesson being that we all have plenty of room to improve as drivers :)

[95maxrider]

Well, I don't know about the "tapped out" part, lol. My car isn't even close to "max prepped" if I truly wanted to make it a pure rally-x competition car. Look at Colin Rogers's e30 on our FB team page. That is "max prepped" far more than mine, but then again he trailers it to events. I could knock 200lbs+ off by taking out the rollbar and bumpers, passenger seat, etc (but I'm not doing any of that). I could get NEW rally tires (which would be a significant difference from either of my well-used sets). Hell, I still have a stereo and speakers in the car, two heavy seats, full dash, door cards, all the glass (could switch some to plexi), and am too lazy to even take the jack out of the trunk mount during events. I'm balancing performance vs. enjoying the car when I'm not racing it as well. But that could conceivably change at some point, I suppose.

Also, if I had the other pair of DMacks on the front I'm pretty convinced I would have been much quicker in the water truck runs and on the looser surfaces. I could significantly feel the difference with the one pair on the rear. But "ifs" don't really help........

What is really tapped out for me is money to spend on this car at the moment. At the test&tune I may play around with unhooking the front and/or rear swaybar to see how the car reacts, for one. Still learning the best tire pressures for the different surfaces as well.

Overall I think I improved my driving significantly this weekend by:
1. being more aggressive on throttle in the straight/semi-straight areas
2. not blowing it at the end by being over-aggressive
3. not spinning out, and handling the mud conditions better than usual.
4. running pretty clean (from the looks of things, 4 cones was extremely low for anyone this weekend....of the RWD cars, only Margarita had less...and she averaged almost 4 seconds per run slower than me, so I don't much care about that).

Inasmuch as you think I have vast experience in this (and I have more than you, but that's not saying all that much), Roberto has several more seasons than I do, and also does rallysprint. I know I have a lot of room to improve - and I know this because Chris was faster than me in a car that should not be faster (your car is great, but it really shouldn't be faster than an e30, due to the laws of physics). So I know well that I need to be a faster driver. I'm less worried about making the car faster than I am about minor tweaks in setup and making myself faster.

As for you, I gotta think that the biggest thing you could do to improve the e28 is remove the cage. That's gotta be about 200lbs sitting in the worst possible place in the car, if not more. But I know you may want the cage at a later time so that's not going to happen. Just sayin.' Rally tires will help in some respects and will hurt in some respects, from everything I've read.

Overall I'm pretty happy Chris (and you) did so well this event though. A few weeks ago you seemed to be on the verge of hating the e28 and wanting to get something smaller (e30 or whatever), but it's good that you're back "in to" the car after a good showing and seeing its potential :)

Sorry, I should have said that it seemed like you were done doing any heavy modding to the car. You can obviously always do something, but you have tackled all the major things and your car is very well sorted at this point. And when I said you have much more experience, I'm also including your years of experience owning/driving RWD cars, whereas this is my first, and I still don't have all that much seat time in it. I just have a lot more to learn than you do. Maybe I should take my own advice and take in auto-xing in the mean time. One thing I did notice when riding with Chris was that I'm pretty sure I'm better at managing understeer than he is. I wonder why that is....

I think at the TnT we should all drive each others cars with the owner in the passenger seat so we can all see how others drive. Or maybe that should just be done in Patrick's back yard :mrgreen:

As for removing the cage....I was under the impression that it weighed closer to 150 pounds at the most, but I could be very wrong. I would really like to weigh the car to see how it compares to a stock one. I know adding weight is never good, but I would like to think that the stiffness from the cage is a good long-term investment in the chassis not rattling itself to pieces.

I think the reason I wasn't complaining about the car this weekend was a combination of more open course design and me just getting used to the atrocious body roll. That first event after taking off the lowering springs was a wake up call and I just wasn't ready for it. But the 3.73 also helps a bit too :)

[irish44j]

lol...though you may over-read my "RWD experience." The only other RWD car I've had (other than SUVs) is the GT6....and that gets driven about 10 times per year at this point, and shares basically no handling characteristics with the e30 (the e30 does what the driver wants it to...the GT6 does whatever the hell it wants to, regardless of what the driver wants, lol).

Totally agree on the T&T.

My rollbar alone had to have been about 150lbs all-told. When the package got there it was pretty damn heavy. But that's just a guess. I'm sure you could find out the weight to the DOM tubing used and just multiply it by the amount of tube used in your cage using a tape measure or something.

[95maxrider]

My rollbar alone had to have been about 150lbs all-told. When the package got there it was pretty damn heavy. But that's just a guess. I'm sure you could find out the weight to the DOM tubing used and just multiply it by the amount of tube used in your cage using a tape measure or something.

You bought a pre-fab bar, right? It should be very easy to verify how much that weighs from the manufacturer. 150 pounds for that little things sounds like way too much. I would be surprised if yours weighs more than 90 pounds. And without knowing the wall thickness of my cage, I can't accurately guess the weight....

[irish44j]

You bought a pre-fab bar, right? It should be very easy to verify how much that weighs from the manufacturer. 150 pounds for that little things sounds like way too much. I would be surprised if yours weighs more than 90 pounds. And without knowing the wall thickness of my cage, I can't accurately guess the weight....

yeah, I'll see what I can find. That's just a guess on my part, including the backing plates (probably 5lbs each), hardware, etc. I doubt Kirk lists it on his site. He builds nice stuff but isn't much for communication/etc.

If your cage was built for LeMons, it would have to meet the required spec for that....so you could at least calculate a minimum weight and measure the diameter (assuming they used the minimum legal thickness):

3.1.1: Rollbar Tubing and Spreader-Plate Specs: Minimum tubing size for cars weighing under 3000 pounds as raced is 1.50" x .120" or 1.75" x .095". Cars weighing over 3000 pounds as raced must use a minimum tubing size of 1.75" x.120". Properly bent, racecar-grade and -quality tubing is mandatory: no stretched or crushed bends allowed. DOM mild steel is very strongly recommended over ERW (seamed) tubing. All spreader plates must be mild steel, at least 24 square inches, and at least .125" thick.

[irish44j]

A few pics from the event from Miller Roberts...

Can't wait, as usual for AJ (the pro photographer) to post his shots up. Apparently he took 2,500 photos at the event :)



Spencer and Jesse




Chris driving Nick's car


Pat on a scout lap

[irish44j]

Not much new to report. Been doing some minor things on the e21 and some other projects in the last few weeks.

With the midseason WDCR season break, thinking about some things that I want to do with the car this year. This summer I'll do some gauge work and a few other things, but this winter I'm thinking of doing a full cage in the car, so when I'm ready I can jump into some rallysprint and some low-level stage rally perhaps. I know an e30 can't really be competitive in the 2WD classes these days, but if I do it, it won't necessarily be to win but to have fun (since I can't afford to do much of it). Anyhow, we'll see how that goes. With a cage I could also do hillclimbs and track events too, so that would be cool.

I think the e21 is going to be for fast street/trackdays only, with full interior, since it's such a complete car that I have and really an e21 isn't as good of a motorsports car as an e30 anyhow. So the e30 will serve as multi-purpose racekar from here on out.

Next weekend there is a non-points WDCR event at a new venue that we're trying out to see if it's worth using for season points events. 40 car cap, and it's on a driving range (and some grassy area next to it), so I'm expecting it to be a tighter, slower autocross-style course as opposed to the mini-stage-rally style stuff that we run at summit. The site is about half the size of any of the three courses we run at Summit, so we'll see.

While doing other stuff today, took a break to paint all of my wheels, since I rather liked the blue on the "new" set.



also painted the chrome rub strips blue, just for the hell of it. That's the last of the chrome.

[phenryiv1]

Liking the blue...

[irish44j]

Had a nice day at our non-points "tuner" event today. With a field of around 20 cars (many people autocrossing or on vacation this weekend I guess), that meant tons of seat time.

The venue was a still-operating driving range. It's about to be converted to a moto-cross course or something (I guess the range doesn't make enough money) and this is a possible future venue for WDCR points events it look like, maybe next year. Who knows.





The part we used was about half the size of any of the 3 courses at Summit POint where we usually run, but there's a lot more room there if they mow the other half of the field. As it was, the course today was set up on nice grass, pretty smooth, and the AM and PM courses were tight and technical, with average times around 45-50 seconds. Also cool that the site, instead of having the red clay underneath that we're used to, it was nice loamy DIRT. Much softer than the clay and instead of getting concrete-like ruts, it just kind of piled into these thick, soft fluff piles that bogged everyone down and made for some big dirt-roostertails, lol.

fluffy!


Anyhow, we all got 30-35 runs (depending on session) total, so that's a TON of seat time! The people at the Autocross in DC probably got 4 runs :)

The event was timed, but the courses were constantly changing to accomodate a few ruts that formed and also to improve the lines. Only three MR cars were there - Roberto, Me, and Russell in da Supra. Not sure who won, and it's not for points so doesn't much matter. All three of us were pretty close in times it seemed, but whatever.

and I flexed, yo


Oh, and the other thing. This being and old driving range. THere were thousands and thousands of golf balls buried in the dirt. As the day progressed, they started getting dug-up. Occasionally one would shoot out behind a car. But most of the time they were banging off floorpans and making for some interesting corners. Actually I much enjoyed it, as it made it pretty easy to slide the rear end around hairpins :)

outside of a turn, what kicked out...


Anyhow, have a few little projects to do here in the near future on the car and trailer, so will keep it updated. Also some e21 stuff in the other thread.

a few other random pics I took, mostly of GRM people who were there..

[E30_Pare]

Rallycross looks like fun

[irish44j]

California Rally Series near you is worth checking out! There are a couple e30s running there too.

[irish44j]

....and Jeffrey Amman was nice enough to shoot some nice shots of the ride with the new blue wheels at today's event. And I'm even kicking some dirt up for once, lol...

[irish44j]

Though the event last weekend was a "tuning" event and not for points, they did keep times. However, the course did have some tweaks here and there that may or may not have been directly between run groups. Though Roberto, Russell, and I all pretty much ran in order so I don't think it was much of an issue for us.

Roberto and me also got 3 more runs in the morning than Russell did for some reason, so I tallied up the times using only our first 14 runs from the morning and 11 runs from the afternoon.

I'll also note a few things:
On one of Roberto's runs, he somehow forgot to put his helmet on (it was 95 degrees, I can see why) and noticed about 1 gate into the course. He stopped and put it on. So he lost like 10 seconds on that run. He also had an off-course at some point that cost him about 15 seconds on his overall time. So for the sake of a more valid time comparison, I kind of subtract 25 seconds from his total time to see how we ACTUALLY matched up.

For mine, I ran pretty much straight-up except one run in the morning I did in 1st gear only, just so I could hoon sidewayz the whole way around the course. It was a pretty slow run compared to all my others.

Russell was closer to us last weekend than usual. He's learning the car better and maybe he liked the tight, technical courses. I know I did, and it showed in my times. When the courses are tight I tend to be faster than Roberto, and when the courses are wide-open (or muddy) he tends to be faster than me..

So, unofficial results that don't matter for much of anything:


Josh morning (first 14 runs): 619.920 + afternoon (11 runs) 550.282 = 1170.202
Roberto morning (first 14 runs): 674.111 + afternoon (11 runs) 557.938 = 1232.049 (-25 seconds as mentioned above) = 1207.049.
Russell morning (14 runs): 642.136 + afternoon (11 runs) 606.893 = 1249.02

On the day, cone count. Because there were a lot:
Russel: 4 morning + 18 afternoon = 22
Josh: 4 morning + 5 afternoon = 9
Roberto: 6 morning + 15 afternoon = 21

So, whatever.....I'll call it a win for me, in a completely meaningless way, because hey, this is my build thread :)

[irish44j]

I ordered some gauges today, so hopefully in the next few weeks I can start putting together a new gauge cluster where everything actually works. It's not that I *need* a speedometer, but when I'm driving several hours to different events, it's kind of annoying having to calculate my speed based on tach rpms. The last thing I need is to be speeding (well, speeding too much) since this car already attracts some attention when I'm towing a trailer :)

Other than that, nothing much to report, just a lonely and naked M42, in the garage on a Saturday night. I finally got off my ass and cleaned the disaster area that the garage had become over the last couple weeks. The M42 here is for the e21 project, but I need to find a new crank for it. This one has way too much wear on the thrust bearing side surfaces to make me comfortable....