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

[irish44j]

Have you considered a career in Formula D?

A friend of mine came up with a name for that video. She called it "doing slonuts" lol...

[95maxrider]

There's about an inch of snow and sleet out there. The e30 is sitting on very cold Star Specs. Time to do slow circles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDSTV...ature=youtu.be

I expected more than that :neutral:

[irish44j]

I expected more than that :neutral:

In my defense, I did say "slow circles." With so little traction, and several newer cars parked on the street, didn't really feel like fucking around too much. The last thing I need is to damage a neighbor's car while messing around. The vid was really just to show (for a buddy who is running star specs all winter on his WRX), just how bad they actually are in actual snow. Which I think it did, lol.

I did take the WRX out in my Uncle's farm field today (the only place I could actually FIND any snow - damn fairfax county being so efficient at clearing). But I suspect these photos will not be exciting enough for you either, since I didn't want to tear up his field while he was watching from the farmhouse, lol....

[irish44j]

Working on the e21 at the moment, but took a few minutes to throw on some new vinyl from Blunt Tech :)

[irish44j]

So not much new stuff on this car. It's cold, cold winter here and have been working on the wife's new vehicle (2005 Sequoia) which we cashed in the 4Runner for (for a third row, and better towing).

In the meantime, rallykar is spending 2 weeks indoors at the Washington DC Auto Show as part of the SCCA display :)





car show vandalism





I'm thinking of sneaking my car into the BMW display, which is a little ways down the hall from us, lol

[word is bond]

That's awesome! Funny how they roped them off, considering how beat up they get during the season.

[irish44j]

It's mostly because some of them don't even have windows, so they don't want people touching stuff inside the cars, etc since they're private cars, lol. Mine, I don't really care....

[irish44j]

Not much news since it's cold winter weather here in the last few weeks. But might as well do a super-quick update.

e30 spent 2 weeks at the Washington Auto Show and apparently got a good amount of attention (possibly because it was sitting next to a Boss 302 Mustang, but whatever)....



Carlos at Condor Speed Shop sent me a few new things to install.....solid UHMV bushings for the pedal box on the e30, and bushings for the shift bracket for the M42 that's going into the e21.



and cleaning up the other G240....which was very nasty...



--

So in some other news, I don't think I've mentioned it, but WDCR SCCA lost our rallycross venue at Summit Point Motorsports Park over the winter. Summit sold the land to the State Department training facility next door (which has apparently been in the works for a few years, but held up by budget issues). In any case, over the winter Adam (our chair) and some of the other guys have been in an all-out scramble to find some new sites.

Nothing much official that I've heard, but it sounds like there may be a couple promising venues out a bit farther west than Summit (longer drive for almost everyone except Pat...) that may include a very large mostly-gravel lot, and another one that is basically a giant defunct farm. So perhaps we won't be on the red clay this year (which would be a nice change), but guess we'll have to see how these work out. First event is scheduled for March 15th, so I assume Adam has one locked up for that event in any case.

It's really a shame, since Summit was a great place to run with 3 courses, right next to the road courses with exotic cars and racers going around all day, gas pumps, etc etc. Now we have to "rough it" lol....we've been spoiled.

[Northern]

Just finished re-reading the whole thread since my first read through a year ago or more, This has come a long way! I wish our rallycross up here were as developed as yours. Ours is treated more as a winter "fix" for the autox guys.


If for any reason those front spring spacers don't work out, you could always look into 325ix top hats, they're shaped quite differently than the rwd cars because of their strut mounts, and should give you an inch or so of lift over the oem rwd hats.

Also, if you do end up wanting to go coilovers, you can pick up one of the ebay civic coilover kits for ~50, and then buy appropriate rate/length springs for them.

[irish44j]

Cool. Yeah, the one thing we miss here is the ability to do winter events (Summit Point didn't allow them), but with some new venues, that may be a possibility for next winter (fingers crossed!). If so, I'll have to get some snow tires though. Rally tires dont' like snow.

Thanks for the information - will stash that away for future reference!

[Gary Horneck]

Sucks that you lost your venue. Really hope you guys secure something ASAP. Our season starts in 3 weeks! I have new wheels/tires to race on this season.

[irish44j]

Yeah, I think Adam has a few places lined up, but nothing "official" yet. They've released event dates (first one on March 15th), so I assume they're pretty close on at least one.

In other news, aforementioned Chris Nonack, the fastest driver in MR class locally (in my opinion)....now has (by far) the most powerful car locally. It's a former high-classed fox-body Mustang autocrosser with something like 350hp...which he as raised up and done some fender work to fit small all-terrain tires on. If he can actually keep his car running for once, it may be extremely fast, especially on some of the big/wide-open venues I've been hearing rumors about for this year.....

Unfortunatley, I probably won't be making my car much faster this season, with a number of other financial priorities coming up. So I guess I'm just going to have to learn how to drive faster.

In other other news, we have another new e30 on the scene, a 325i owned by a Turkish guy who apparently used to rally a Ford Fiesta back home and has several e30 verts in his garage. So we'll see how fast he is as well, lol....

[Lof8]

We have a Turkish guy at our events too, also an ex (and current) rally driver. The dude slides sideways like crazy! It's a blast to ride with him. He's also an e30 driver.

[E30NJ]

Nice!

[irish44j]

So a bit of an update, though I haven't done any work on the car:'

The 2014 rallycross schedule has been announced for WDCR, with our first event in mid-March. Happy to say that I laid my whole year out and rallycross doesn't conflict with either of the 2 Chumpcar races I'm running this year, with my Vegas class reunion, or with 2 weddings I am going to out of town. So that's good.

Also they announced the new venue, which has its good and bad sides. It's in Frostburg, MD. The good: This place is HUGE. It's an old FEMA storage site, so it's about a 1/2-mile y 1/2 mile area of leveled land with gravel and dirt, where they used to park all the FEMA trailers. Also some grassy areas around. Since it's right next to a quarry and not near houses or town, we won't need a water truck since dust won't matter. The size is bigger than all three of Summit's courses COMBINED. I will miss the "out in the wild" feel of Summit with the tall grass and dirt. Now it's really more of a "gravelcross." But shoudl be fun, and room for some VERY long courses I'd guess.

Here's what it looks like from Google Earth. The little white lines are 150-foot-long greenhouses that Frostburg St. University uses, to give you a sense of scale



The bad is that it's 140 miles from here, so my drive to rallycross just got more than twice as far as it used to be for Summit. Not a big issue for me since I don't mind driving, but a number of other regulars at Summit sound like they will either run few events this year, or not run at all. In fact, Pat/Jason have their e30 up for sale since neither wants to deal with the drive (they tow-dolly it behind a Comanche, the car isn't street-legal). Spencer thinks he'll only make a couple events this year as well due to it being 4 hours for him now, and the ETA guys, who knows...

This also makes it nearly impossible to go home the night between the 2-day events, so I might have to round up some camping gear since I'm too cheap to stay in hotels for rally-x, lol....

For me, I made sure to up my AAA coverage for longer tows if something goes wrong. Summit was convenient with the shop on-site and no problem leaving the car if it breaks. Frostburg I won't be able to do that if something were to happen. I considered towing for the 2-day events so I could just crash out in the Sequoia (comfy...), but still don't have a trailer. Next year the plan will be to buy a trailer. Can't do it right now due to a lot of $$$ things I have to pay for this year, noted above.

Also it will be interesting to see what competition comes out. This is far enough north/west that we expect some attendance from Pittsburgh and Ohio regions......plus with all this room, it's going to be pretty ideal for Chris's new MR machine......which reportedly has about triple my horsepower....hmm. HOpe they lay out some tight courses, lol.



So, that's about it. More after the first event. There certainly the possibility that we will have multiple venues this year, but for now we'll see what this one has to offer. Kind of worried (about my gravel abilities and the distance), but also pretty excited about how much space there is, no water truck, and the future possibility of "snowcrosses" next winter :)