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

[irish44j]

^^ he managed to have an issue with his cooling fan conking out, and then blew a strut and did his last several runs in the Supra, but he was reasonably quick mid-pack of the e30s.

[irish44j]

Rallycross #6 coming up this weekend. Though I don't much like having a co-driver, I'm letting Chris Nonack co-drive my car this weekend. He blew up (and sold) his very fast V6-swapped MR2 rallycrosser earlier this year, and last event tried out his "new" '85 celica but bent the control arms or something. He's very fast, and I suspect he'll actually beat me in my own car, lol. Well, as long as he beats Roberto as well that's ok. I need to beat Roberto, and this event should be on my best course, so we'll see.

I am curious to see how fast Chris is in my car, since he drives much differently from me - I'm more technical, and he's more of a "power" driver. Will be a good datapoint for me to try to improve my own driving.

I haven't done anything to the car at all - instead working on the e21, being furloughed thanks to the idiots in Congress, and racing at the Pittsburgh ChumpCar double-7s. Well, did a writeup on this in the track section so suffice to say we finished both races (15th and 11th) in each, and here's a few pics.

[kts]

How'd the 4Runner do as a tow vehicle?

My mom has the previous generation to your 4Runner and I keep debating about if I should buy it from her if she ever decides to sell it and use it for hauling stuff and a potential tow vehicle.

[irish44j]

Actually it did great. We towed a 1700lb trailer and the 2400ish lb car. I have a brake controller and the trailer had electric brakes. Also installed a tranny cooler just to be safe. 4Runner pulled great and was stable while running 70mph through the Applachians.

I have the standard hitch on my V6 (not the weight-distributing one that comes on the V8), and didn't use sway control. No problems at all, no issues, etc. Only time it struggled a bit is when we had to take a rural highway that was VERY hilly and I got caught a few times at the bottom of hills by slow cars and couldn't keep up speed. But otherwise sometimes I forgot the trailer was even there. As you can see in the pic, it sits pretty level. I loaded the trailer to get a tongue weight of 400lbs or so (my estimate) so it wasn't too much hitch load, but not too much rear trailer load (which causes sway).

That said, i did make two passes of slow cars on the rural highway, which was kind of fun with a trailer, lol.

All in all, it did much better than I expected. I also towed the e21 home from W.Va. on a Uhaul trailer (those are like 2300lbs + 2400lb car, so a heavier load and only surge brakes). That was a bit slower but still a pretty easy tow.

I think the 4Runner is great for many things, and it's just fine for towing here and there if you're towing a light car/open trailer. Now if you want to tow 6k lbs or something cross-country or all over the place, something bigger and/or diesel is probably the way to go. Or the V8 4Runner.

[capn]

Haven't read through the whole thread, is that your E36 M3?

[irish44j]

Haven't read through the whole thread, is that your E36 M3?

no, that's Jim Spoth's (the owner of the chumpcar). My daily is a tuned/full suspension'd 09 WRX.

Would have been hard to drive my 4Runner and an M3 at the same time, lol.

[kts]

I think the 4Runner is great for many things, and it's just fine for towing here and there if you're towing a light car/open trailer. Now if you want to tow 6k lbs or something cross-country or all over the place, something bigger and/or diesel is probably the way to go. Or the V8 4Runner.

Sweet thanks for the info. I'm going to have to let her know to talk to me before she sells it. Now I just need to clear it with the wife... (HA!)

This is long term planning but it would probably only be to Summit and NJMP, maybe eventually VIR. Just the E30 and tools/extra wheels would go in the back of the 4Runner. And maybe even me for sleeping.

[marshallnoise]

How'd the 4Runner do as a tow vehicle?

My mom has the previous generation to your 4Runner and I keep debating about if I should buy it from her if she ever decides to sell it and use it for hauling stuff and a potential tow vehicle.

[thread jack]
Just speaking about the 3rd Gen 4Runner: Bullet proof truck. I have a 97 Limited still on stock everything. The only modification I would make to it for towing is a separate transmission cooler. The stock tranny cooler is integrated into the radiator and over a couple hundred thousand miles, tend to crack where they are joined, thus mixing the coolant with the transmission fluid. Guess what that does: Look up "strawberry milkshake 4Runner."

I would also upgrade the front brakes to 1st Gen Tundra units. I used 231mm ones that require Tundra wheels to clear. Or you can go with the 199mm units from the early 1st Gen Tundra. The stock wheels will clear them. The larger brakes are more for the thickness of the rotor than the robustness of the caliper. But it prevents warping of the rotors. And that is a constant problem on stock braked 3rd Gens.

That said, it will tow anything...slowly.

[/thread jack]

Read this whole thread and am super impressed Irish. Love your "do it cheap and right as you can" attitude. That's how I will be doing my car (not rallycross). Thanks for the great read.

[irish44j]

[thread jack]
Just speaking about the 3rd Gen 4Runner: Bullet proof truck. I have a 97 Limited still on stock everything. The only modification I would make to it for towing is a separate transmission cooler. The stock tranny cooler is integrated into the radiator and over a couple hundred thousand miles, tend to crack where they are joined, thus mixing the coolant with the transmission fluid. Guess what that does: Look up "strawberry milkshake 4Runner."

I would also upgrade the front brakes to 1st Gen Tundra units. I used 231mm ones that require Tundra wheels to clear. Or you can go with the 199mm units from the early 1st Gen Tundra. The stock wheels will clear them. The larger brakes are more for the thickness of the rotor than the robustness of the caliper. But it prevents warping of the rotors. And that is a constant problem on stock braked 3rd Gens.

That said, it will tow anything...slowly.

[/thread jack]

Read this whole thread and am super impressed Irish. Love your "do it cheap and right as you can" attitude. That's how I will be doing my car (not rallycross). Thanks for the great read.

thanks. and you should do rallycross once before you put non-stock suspension on yours. You'll be hooked!

As to the 4Runner, agree with everything you said. Ours is a 4th gen Sport Edition. I added a tranny cooler, and the SportEdition is nice because it comes with the massive 4-pots calipers and front brakes that the SR5 (and Limited) don't get. So they are definitely up to the task!

[irish44j]

So, a quick update from today's event. This is series event #6 out of 7. Coming into the event I was sitting in 2nd place, but to have a chance of winning the season I needed to win both of the last two events, or at least finish ahead of the class leader Roberto.

Today's event was expected to be on the "Barn Course," which is my fastest course and which I've won both times we've run on it this year. Unfortunately, due to all the rain last week Barn was heavily rutted and couldn't be used. Also due to post-ponement of the last event about 15 cars dropped out, giving us a smaller field, so they decided to use the "Gravel Course," which can only handle 40 or so cars due to a limited paddock/grid area there. Also unfortunate is that usually Gravel is my worst of the three courses, as it is usually very loose and deep/fluffy stuff and IMO is more of a "power" course than a finesse course.

Got lucky today though - all the rain really firmed it up so not much loose stuff. Also still damp enough that we had no water truck visits and the course ended up by the afternoon being hard-pack and rocky - more my style :)

Also today I had a co-driver. Chris Nonack, who ran his V6 MR2 very fast the last 2 seasons (but kept on breaking it) and then ran his 85 Celica at the last event before bending the control arms. He said he wanted to know what all the hype was about with e30s so I let him co-drive with me. I'll add that he is a better driver than me, I already knew that. But he had never driven my car so that should be an equalizer, right?

Long story short....we did 13 runs today with overall comp times running about 700-800 seconds, so a lot of seat time. In the end, Chris edged me out by 12 seconds to take first place in my car. He was actually about 1-2 seconds faster a run than me but coned alot. He drives in a "flatout" style rather than the "precision" style I try to run. So he had 10+ cones on the day and I only had a few.

More importantly, I managed to edge out Roberto in the end by about 2 seconds total (though I had a 8-second lead with 3 runs left so I drove "carefully" with no cones, while he grappled back going all-out).

So that puts me in a position where a win in the last event would give me a tie for first on the season series. Hardly a foregone conclusion. THe last event will be on a VERY long "Big Course" that Roberto is generally a bit faster than me on. So it'll be mostly on the conditions to see who can pull it off. 3 weeks from now.

On the other plus, Chris noted that of all the MR cars he's driven locally (including the RX7s, MR2s, and others) mine is probably the fastest and best set-up. So this goes along with what I've always thought about myself: I'm very good at building a car "for purpose" but I still need to improve my driving aggressiveness. Building has always been a stronger point for me than the actual driving, annoyingly.

I have no power/handling mods that I can get done before the last event, so I'll probably put a bit of effort into shedding some more weight and go all-in......rear door glass will get Lexan'd perhaps (if I have time), passenger seat will be coming out for sure (it's pretty heavy), and I may do a few other small things. I don't think it will make a huge difference, but maybe it will be a mental assist.

Anyhow, some pics from today.

Full album here with the Subies and other non-e30 cars:

http://s78.photobucket.com/user/irish44j/library/BMW%20318i%20RallyCross%20Project/WDCR%20Rallycross%206%20October%202013?sort=3&page=1

great pic by Dan Hurwitz from MachV Motorsports :)



The ETA boys, locking up a 1-2 finish in PR and also a 4th place in MR.


Spencer. I took some photos from up in a tree for fun


afternoon finish gate was tight tight tight




Erika Detota's Atlantic-winning FWD stage-rally car. Nice


crew


Jim red-flagging his own teammates due to a Subie spinning out up the hill...


the slide riot


Adam K, one of the M4 front-runners and head-dog for WDCR region

[phenryiv1]

Congrats on the solid performance this weekend. I wish I could have run but it was a long, busy weekend.

[spoth]

(Your last photo is of Mike Vess)

(It's okay, black Subarus are boring and all look the same)

(Oh, you fixed it in your second post)

Still though, fun event. Glad I didn't drive too terribly, and that we actually made it out after scrambling to get the clutch master repaired the day before.

[irish44j]

In interesting news, Roberto has been shopping the class-leading RX7 to sell because he wants to go back to AWD classes. And he sold it today, to someone in Oklahoma.

So not sure if he's going to drive it at next week's event before shipping it off, or if he's going to use another car, or just bail on it....

That said because we have one drop event each (mine was event #1 where I finished 5th), he's already guaranteed a share of the season championship even if he doesn't show at all. And to tie him I have to win the event outright regardless. So I guess it doesn't matter in the end. I had to win outright anyhow to even have a chance, and would need him to finish 3rd or worse, which he's only done once all season.

All in all, happy to not have to hear that damn rotary anymore, but it's been a good neck-and-neck season with him that has pushed me to drive better so I suppose the car being gone (and him to another class) is somewhat bittersweet. We've each beaten each other 3 times this season, so that's about as even as it gets. I'm sure Chris and Nick and Pat, and Jason, and Spoth will all bring it next season, so the competition will still be strong in MR locally. Maybe we'll have some more new guys.

So that's it for now. Busy building the M42 for the e21 this week. Another update after the event on the 10th as to how this all pans out.

[Beske]

Damn, this looks like fun! Really enjoyed reading your thread.

I wish we had something similar in the netherlands!

[irish44j]

Damn, this looks like fun! Really enjoyed reading your thread.

I wish we had something similar in the netherlands!

It's not in the Netherlands, but it's not too far away. Check out http://www.rg318is.de/

they run a rallysprint-style setup, and it's a spec series for mostly-stock M42-powered e30s/e36s :)