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

[irish44j]

Prep continues on stuff....

Loaded up the truck with wheels and tires (4 rallycross tires, 3 new tires for the trailer). Gonna put Yoshi to work tomorrow on his tire machines :)



Also decided to check out the trailer bearings and stuff since we've put a couple thousand miles on it since buying it and never checked them when I bought it. One that the p/o said was just replaced was snug and good. The other three had more play than I'd like (the axle nuts were loose enough to remove with my pinky!). I was just going to repack them, but figured I might as well just hit the local trailer place and get some new ones and new grease seals, so did that, reassembled with good synthetic grease (the stuff in there seemed more like motor oil, nasty...), etc etc.







Did a few other trailer projects and stuff, nothing too exciting. Also had a visitor from across the street who came to see what I was up to..

[irish44j]

was watching the kids this afternoon so decided to do a little 10-minute project with their model paints. Because rally tires always look better with yellow lettering :)

And yes, I know it will all be gone about 3 seconds into my first run at Divisionals, lol..

[irish44j]

Washed the car today and put back on my front roundel, which had been reduced to no color over the years. I added some color.

fake shiny paint, the "wet" finish lol



In other news, they've now changed the local schedule to accommodate the NEDiv Naitonal Challenge. That weekend is no longer a points event locally, so it won't be as bad that I have to miss it (saves me a drop event). Instead, they've added a second November event, so we'll be up on the mountaintop at the beginning AND end of November in the wind and cold. I may actually need to get my hands on some snow tires :P

[irish44j]

not that it's exciting or anything, but with less than a week before we head to Ohio, I've finally finished all the messy work of maintenance on the involved vehicles (Sequioa, e30, trailer) so as to hopefully avoid any hiccups on the tow or racing. I literally haven't done any fluid changes on the e30 since I did the engine swap (other than engine oil), so went ahead and drained the diff and tranny and refilled with Amsoil stuff (my buddy Jason is a distributor so got me a good bulk deal). The Sequioa got the full job since we just bought it 6 months ago and had no idea how the p/o had maintained it. So it got diffs, transfer case, transmission flush, timing job, coolant flush, etc (oh and I fixed the small a/c line leak in the rear, which was a major PITA) all with Amsoil too. Rally tires mounted, trailer has new bearings all around and 3 new tires. I'm notorious for putting off fluid changes for too long (except engine oil) so this long-ish (7hour) tow through the appalachians was good motivation to finally get all this crap done.

So, probably no more updates until we get back from Ohio. Should be good times, with the entire MR class made up of GRM members (3 bmws, 4 mazdas) to boot, so we've all been talking to each other for years online, and now get to race each other. Here's hoping all goes well. I feel like it's been forever since the last rallycross so definitely looking forward to it.

[Northern]

I always love coming back to this thread and seeing how much work you get done, but it makes me feel really lazy in comparison.


Two random thoughts I had over the past 2 pages:

If you space the back up enough, you're going to get into positive camber land. The iX comes with a taller subframe bushing washer w/taller subframe bushings and longer tabs that mount to the diff ear to bring the camber/toe back to normal amounts. Not sure if it's worth the effort for you or not, but there's no hurt in knowing.

You've probably thought about it before, but you could make that skidplate much stronger if you welded (or even bolted) a few angles or vertical strips along the bottom/front of the plate. It could prevent you from removing the skidplate to straighten it, but again I don't know if it is worth the time/effort since the current one seems to do a good job of protecting the pan anyway.

[irish44j]

I always love coming back to this thread and seeing how much work you get done, but it makes me feel really lazy in comparison.


Two random thoughts I had over the past 2 pages:

If you space the back up enough, you're going to get into positive camber land. The iX comes with a taller subframe bushing washer w/taller subframe bushings and longer tabs that mount to the diff ear to bring the camber/toe back to normal amounts. Not sure if it's worth the effort for you or not, but there's no hurt in knowing.

interesting you bring that up, as it was being discussed with regard to another e30 rallycross car just yesterday on one of the facebook groups. For mine the rear end is still about 1" lower than stock (or so I estimate) since the H&R sports are pretty soft. According to my Longacre camber gauge, I'm at 2* static negative camber in the back and around 1* static negative up front (with the spacers). I plan to do some fixed camber plates up front when I get around to it as well.

Now, for those guys who are going with taller IX and even IC springs, I think that would be more of a concern (though the RG318is Cup series in Germany uses IX springs on most of the cars with the stock subframe, so it must not be too bad).

but yeah, good ideas

You've probably thought about it before, but you could make that skidplate much stronger if you welded (or even bolted) a few angles or vertical strips along the bottom/front of the plate. It could prevent you from removing the skidplate to straighten it, but again I don't know if it is worth the time/effort since the current one seems to do a good job of protecting the pan anyway.

I've definitely thought about it, but the part that gets bent is actually the very rear corner of it, generally (which is an unsupported edge). When this car (eventually) starts to morph into a stage rally car, it will definitely get a more substantial skidplate, for sure. For the moment, banging it back straight once a season isn't really a problem since I have to take it off to do oil changes and stuff anyhow.

Also I need to improve my welding skills before I want to work with stainless. Because I still suck at welding, lol.

[cm0180]

You could also mount the condor camber correction bushings that they sell for lowered cars upside down to accomplish the same thing. I know they fit, since I accidentally put mine in that way at first and had to drop the whole subframe again to fix it

[irish44j]

^^good idea!

So in other news, I got a package today .... from SCCA headquarters (?)

Turns out a month or two ago I posted a photo on the SCCA rallycross facebook page in some GoPro giveaway contest, and it turns out my photo won.

this staged, faux dramatic photo, lol



and this is what showed up....GoPro 3+ Black Edition. Not bad for posting a photo on facebook :)



guess I'll have to shoot some vid this weekend!



In other news, my non-rally car (09 WRX) turned 100k miles today. It literally has had NOTHING done to it in the last 90k miles other than fluid changes and timing belt/water pump (just recently). Not bad for a car I drive hard on bad roads every day, pushing 18lbs of boost and 285tq at the wheels...

[irish44j]

the wife and her craft vinyl cutter made up a name tag for Nick for this weekend :)

[irish44j]

Back from the Great Lakes National Challenge in Ohio. More of a write up later, but MR class was a competitive group with everyone running similar times, and the day was mostly decided by a few runs, a few cones, and a few mechanical issues throughout the class. I spun my first run of the weekend (gridded 4th overall in wet grass) so after one run I was down about 15 seconds from the rest of the class. Over the weekend I managed to claw back into contention. With one run left I was down 2 seconds to the leader and one second to my co-driver Nick. I put down a fast run and got within 1/2 second of the lead and 1/2 second past Nick and took 2nd in MR (Nick took 3rd). Lost again to an RX-7, this time Kevin's 2nd-gen from Detroit region. Great weekend and great course. More later.

Here's a vid of my best run on Saturday, which was the fastest run in the morning course for any of the RWD cars out there:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi7MAzSJkLE&feature=youtu.be

and a couple quick pics of the MR class

Josh Sennett, me, and Nick


Evan on the left with his turbo miata, Kevin's winning RX-7 on the right


My car with Pete Remner's fast RX7, which fell out of contention after a de-bead


Josh S. spent a lot of time trying to fix broken things on the turboETA


Nick driving my car to a 3rd place finish

[phenryiv1]

Congrats on the solid finish!

[irish44j]

thanks....I'm getting in the bad habit of screwing up my first run. That's 3 events in a row I've finished 2nd due to my over-aggressive first run spins. Gotta tone that down. If I had just driven the first run more in control, I probably could have walked away with a 10+ second win in Ohio :P

[phenryiv1]

Slow is fast, particularly on the first run.

[silence]

That's a big time deficit you came back from, great driving.

[irish44j]

Thanks Carlos. Oh, and a few photos you may be interested in if you didn't see them on FB....Josh S (with the turboETA) sheared off both motor mounts at some point, causing his fan to hit the shroud because the engine shifted 2" to the left. With no place to get any and no other M20 cars there, we dug my spare M42 mount out of the parts bin, took a hacksaw to it (broke the blade 3 times), and used the two original offset bolts in the middle hole with some washers to get him back in action (though it was fairly short-lived due to a fuel problem.

Also Mike Cessna's stock-class e36 broke his tranny mounts. I suggested he call you when they move to modified class next season

that's not supposed to look like that...


subie guys lending some muscle after I sawed for 15 minutes with a metal-cutting blade.


"new" M20 mounts lol


installed