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

[DER E30]

Blue stripe is good!

Semi truck reflective tape for the stripe boarders, really wild wheel colors, just throwing out ideas I want a spray paintable car...:loco:

[phenryiv1]

I see that the subaruaudio.net sticker finally made its way into your rotation.

[irish44j]

There are two on the car, Pat, and they've been there since you gave them to me, lol. Other one is on the hood.

Christian - yeah, having a car that started with bad paint repray made it that much easier to just spray bomb it whenever I feel like making a change :)

Hell, I don't even care if there's a paint run or drip here or there :)

The (rally) wheels are already "safety blue" ... though I may do a different color for the other set of rallycross wheels. I'm going to leave the Euroweaves how they are, since sanding and painting them again is not high on my priority list, lol.

[phenryiv1]

There are two on the car, Pat, and they've been there since you gave them to me, lol. Other one is on the hood.

Not sure how I missed that...

[irish44j]

things that happen when I'm bored after work and have a lot of half-full spraypaint cans and masking tape sitting around.....

[irish44j]

Ok, so the new paint is complete. May do a few more details, but this is basically what the car will look like for the time being.

Funny to think how different it is from how it started in season 1

Then:




Now:

[irish44j]

So some of you know I have a duplicate build thread over on Grassroots Motorsports (to get a different perspective of comments, etc).

In any case, that build got a little short writeup in GRM magazine this month. Though admittedly, it's hardly "hot" these days with not much happening in the build itself for the moment. But cool anyhow :) For those who don't subscribe to GRM, it's really the only automotive magazine worth subscribing for. And this month they have the issue online for free, so make sure to go check it out (there's a link on the GRM forum).

[silence]

i saw that yesterday! Congrats

[irish44j]

Nice weather today, and finally got around to doing some brake maintenance, as they've felt a bit weak recently (or that could be because the WRX has excellent brakes). In any case, did a full fluid flush and pumped out all of the almost 3-year-old ATE Blue, replaced with some Valvoline Synthetic. I'm gonna miss easily getting the blue stuff, since it's nice to have the two different colors when doing a flush.

Also regreased the caliper slide pins, took an emory cloth to the rotors and pads to get rid of any glazing, and checked out the rest of the system.





In other news, it sounds like Chris is going to sell the monster Mustang, after deciding it isn't going to do what he had hoped it would do (be fast and win). Sounds like he's going to bail on rallycross for the season and look for a used Group 2 rally car, since he wants to do stage rally stuff in the future. We'll see what happens, but I'll miss having Chris there to push me and Nick for the last couple seasons.

[95maxrider]

In other news, it sounds like Chris is going to sell the monster Mustang, after deciding it isn't going to do what he had hoped it would do (be fast and win). Sounds like he's going to bail on rallycross for the season and look for a used Group 2 rally car, since he wants to do stage rally stuff in the future. We'll see what happens, but I'll miss having Chris there to push me and Nick for the last couple seasons.

Congrats on the GRM writeup!!

That really sucks about Chris. We need that wildcard to keep things interesting. I guess that title now falls to the other Josh.

[irish44j]

Today we headed out to FedEx Field (Redskins stadium) for the first WDCR autocross of the season to see what the rallykars could do. Perfect weather, giant and fast course, and 180 other cars. You get spoiled at 40-car rallycross events where you get 10-15 runs and after 4 autocross runs it's almost like "wait, that's all?" In any case, it was a lot of fun and probably the best autocross course I've run on in about a decade. Still not the rush that rallycross or road racing gives you, but a good time nonetheless in nice weather and only took up my morning, so plenty of time this afternoon to prep the car for tomorrow's rallycross.

We had about 8 of the rallycross cars out there. Nick and Bobby in the e28, Josh S. in the TurboEta (with terrible tires), Shawn and Katie in the RX7, Jim Golden in his 2.5RS, and Mike Golden cheated and brought his 300hp widebody RX7 on 315 Hoosiers..Also Gabe Dunn ran with us in X-Prepared with his STS-Prepped MR2 so we got an idea of how fast we were against a similar-powered/similar-weight autocross-setup car (and Gabe is a very good/experienced driver as well). All of us were on 2-3 year old Star Specs that get a lot of street use, and are 185-205 width...so hardly autocross-size rubber. Josh S. on some old all-seasons, and Gabe on wider/better tires.

Not sure of the final times yet, but I think I just eked out a win over all of the rallycross cars (though all of us were within about 1 second of each other). About 2.5 seconds behind Gabe, but that's pretty good in my book. The car handled great but had massive body lean with these little sways.

Oh, and I did beat a GT-R (true story!). Don't tell anyone that he was really, really slow ;)

Bobby may have some pics later, but for the time being here's a vid....

[irish44j]

Nice photo from Alejandro Aviles from today

[irish44j]

After today's rallycross, I almost wonder if the autocross screwed me up. More after I get some sleep, but suffice to say that Nick took his first ever Rallycross win today decisively. He led from the start, drove like a boss, had a power/speed course that worked well for his car (and less for mine), and I helped him out in my push to catch up in the afternoon by spinning the car and coning several times more than usual. A frustrating day to say the least, though he drove great and probably had the win without my screwup anyhow.

On the plus side, after 11 runs the MR standings were pretty much locked up, so we too the opportunity to make timed runs in each others' cars for the next 4 runs (I drove Nick's e28, Josh's TurboETA, and Flick's Celica.

More on this tomorrow, plus vids and pics of course. And some commentary about some things I may need to think about with regard to my car setup at this new venue, and some changes that may need to be made....

[irish44j]

So, here's the full recap from yesterday...

Action-selfie, yo.


Adam was busy prepping the course with the skid-steer



We started the day with another long-ish drive in caravan through the mountains. At least there's some good scenery along the way and fast speeds...





About 40 cars there. Damn there are a lot of blue subarus, as usual. Weather this tiem was pretty decent. Not as windy as usual there.





After the course drive-through, a few things were apparent. First: that the course was pretty hard-packed for once, except a few very hard turns that were pretty loose. And also that it was a VERY fast course, that was going to be advantageous to the bigger/more powerful cars compared to more tight/technical courses. In fact, Adam (our Rally-X chair) commented that it was the fastest course that WDCR had ever run. I probably was hitting the rev limiter in 2nd at least 3 times on each run, which I've never done before.

Aaaaaanyhow. MR was pretty small yesterday, with Nonack selling the Mustang, a few other regulars missing, and so only three of us in class. As the gridding would have it, though, for once we gridded with PR as well, which has former MR champ Shawn Roberts (moxnix) and the ETA boys (who have several SR and PR championships among them). We've never run all at once to see how the time compare. MR was just me, Nick in the e28, and Josh Sennet in the turboETA, who had been having some fuel management issues in the previous days.





The course was fun from the start, but it was clear I had too much tire pressure and not enough weight in the back from the start. Usually I start the day with a full tank of gas. Today I started with about 1/3 of a tank....I think that was a mistake as my traction wasn't good in the back and the car was very tail-happy (more thank I like). I ran my typical style (which won me the first 2 events on a more tight/technical course), without any major mistakes, but after 5 runs Nick had a 12-second lead. I was also running slower than Shawn and Stephen in PR by a bit. With one run left in the morning I turned up the aggressiveness notch to full, cones be damned. And whadya know.....I put down a monster clean run, the fastest of any RWD cars all morning. Got me back to around 10 seconds of Nick at the lunchbreak.

The one turn that kept killing me was the switchback, which was loose and deep and exactly the wrong speed to keep the M42 in any kind of powerband. I tried drifting it (the gravel was too heavy with the entry speeds). I tried ebrake. I tried left-foot braking. Just couldn't get a line that had a good combination of enough traction and enough speed to keep me in the powerband. Basically just kept having to dig out of it stumbling in low 2nd gear.....

this turn


In the afternoon, we knew we'd get about 9 runs on a reversed course. I had to push harder to try to catch Nick, who was just driving his ass off, and not making mistakes. First run I beat him by 1.5 seconds on raw, and he coned. 3.5 seconds back there. Second run he edged me out on raw but I coned. So he got most of that back.

In past events, sometimes taking a passenger has helped me focus and run better lines (for some reason). As it happened, one of the PR guys who drives a very ..um..."loose" old Celica wanted his girlfriend to ride with me to see what a "fast" car felt like. So she jumped in. First section of the course I totally nailed, got a bit sloppy transitioning into the second section. Then on the turnaround, which I had nailed the last 2 times going this direction.......I came in too hot, got into the deep stuff, and almost spun out. Managed to save it just enough to tag the apex cone and continue, but by then it was all but over. Lost about 5 seconds with those shenanigans and Nick laid down a monster time running right behind me. I'm betting he actually could see me spin it, lol.

here's a vid of that:



With it all but settled, my next run I just went ultra-aggro, ran an ok time while being very sideways and getting 3 cones (I thought I got about 5, but guess not).

With Nick holding a 20 second lead with 5 runs left, and Josh S. well behind me due to his fuel pressure problems, We called a parlay. For the next 3 runs we drove each others' cars all for the first time (except NIck, who has driven mine several times).

Nick laid down a run in my car around what I had been running. I managed to drive his giant boat a bit slower, but still decent. The torque really helped in the problem sections, but it doesn't really "dance" at all and I coudln't get a turning rhythm. Then I drove Josh's car. Stock rack, school-bus wheel, and his fuel issue meant that the turbo rush didn't come on until about 3 seconds after you mashed the pedal (keep in mind, my DD is a tuned WRX, so I'm used to some turbo lag). In fact, the boost would usually get there right about the time the car needed to slow for a turn, lol.

After that I also did a run in Flick (Brendan Flicker)'s celica, in all it's 80s Japanese stock-ish glory. It was a blast to drive but damn near uncontrollable, even as slow as it was. I think driving my car may have motivated him to get modding on that car, lol.

We didn't really notify the timer of all this switching around, so the final times aren't really very accurate. It's worth noting that NIck ran an total time of 899 seconds (including his run in my car and Josh's car). That was actually about 8 seconds behind PR winner Shawn in the RX-7, and about 10 seconds ahead of the PR e30s. But we already knew Shawn is fast. That's why he won MR 2 years ago with that very same beat-up RX-7 (when he beat me with my M10-powered car).

So, that's the competition wrap. Only other real notable thing was that in the ultra-competitive M4 class, Matt Berkebile's H6-swapped impreza took first over Adam K's GC by a grand total of 0.125 seconds. Over 833 total seconds. And he did it via Adam coning on the last run of the the day, lol.

Adam's car:



Afterwards, Josh's car wouldn't start. At all. After an hour of trying various fixes, we towed it across the lot (with my car) and left it with the support vehicles. He'll go back and get it later, and rode back with me.





So my own takeaways here:

I did some damage this time. Dented my passenger front floorpan pretty good somehow. One of my door lock cylinders actually fell out, Part of my front wheel liner got shredded, and one of my metal side-covers from the skidplates got ripped of and left on course. Plus I did an awful lot of hard-hitting on the bumpstops late in the day. This suspension was ideal for Summit Point and Family Fun Park, both of which are fairly smooth and soft (respectively). I'm starting to think it's a bit too soft, and a bit too low for this new venue (even with the 1" spacers in front). IDK, I am going to explore some options for changes. I also am going to do some more weight reduction in the near future, including ditching the passenger seat for our 2-day June event. It's not light, and I won't want a rider during that one if Nick is as fast as he was this week.

my Gopro got a bit dirty:



So, that's about it for now. I'm sure I'll think of some other stuff. In the meantime, some of the few photos I took:

Dodge Daytona wheel. Made it 14 runs, and he finished the 15th run with it like this:

[Mark 42]

A quick off topic question...
I'm thinking of getting a newer & more reliable car as a daily driver.
I'm considering a WRX - since you have one, would you prefer a WRX as
a daily driver and occasional autocross car? I'll read any advice you have
about buying one, too.