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

[irish44j]

vid of one run from the morning, before I forgot to turn off the GoPro and ran out of battery....doh.

nothing too exciting, got a bit loose entering the back straight and probably lost a second or two on the recovery, but whatever....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHMJI6Htx-g

[irish44j]

well, results are posted and I'm actually amazed I beat anyone at all. Guess I'll burn my drop event right off the bat.

Here's a rundown of the times. As usual, in the dry I was right up there. The afternoon course layout eliminated two sections that were my weak point and the time on the first afternoon run showed that, as I gained back a bit over a second on the leader.

After the water truck it was total mayhem and disaster. After the first spin I pushed extra hard to try to make up time. After the second spin I just went slow to try not to spin a third time. After the third spin I just said fuck it and started tagging any cone that was guarding a mud puddle. Halfway through the run I had already decided that this would be my drop event for the season due to one single run, so might as well just drive with some rage.

For the last couple runs I was over it and was basically trying to run the full course cone-free while utilizing as many berms and as much of the course periphery as possible. I suppose I could have taken the last few runs seriously and moved up 1 or 2 positions, but again...drop event. Let the guys who didn't fuck it up have the points that I don't deserve. I'm going to think long and hard about how to set up the car better to compensate for my obvious lousy driving in wet clay conditions, which was also the case last season.

If anything, this will give me a nice starting grid position at the next event.

have a laugh:

[phenryiv1]

Like I said: you stiil beat Jason and I.

Though I agree that the water truck situation sucked. Maybe they should run the Rodeo through right after the truck...or one more NO HOONING ALLOWED drive-through for a portion of the grid...or full re-runs for a class bisected by the truck...or toss the "mud" run and use the average of a driver's other runs as an official time for that run...IDK, something other than saying "sorry, you are F'ed" if you are gridded in the wrong place.

[irish44j]

No, they did toss the dry 2nd runs by the rest of the PR field and their 2nd runs that counted were in the wet as well. But, they were running in the wet after all the me, roberto, and the subies went through, which helped matters, as the course had dried somewhat.

In the end, my own fault. Sitting first after the water truck, it was a combination of pride and stupidity that made me say 'sure, I'll run first' thinking it wouldn't be that bad (and wanting to see how my tire changes did in the mud). In reality, what I SHOULD have done was pull out of line and drop to the back of the pack (where my original starting grid position was) behind the other RWD cars. Adam gave me the choice before I ran, but I definitely let some pride get in the way, figuring that it would be fine "as long as Roberto ran right behind me." Again, pride getting in the way since I have long known that Roberto and that car are better in the wet/slick than I am. Complete tactical error.

So no fault on Adam or the organizers, they sorted it out right in the end and gave us the option. I just chose the wrong option so as not to look like I was "scared" of the water truck (which, apparently, I should have been haha).

[spoth]

At least there's some silver lining in your times (hooning! first!). Not much to be happy about for me (or even to have reasonable explanations for), other than only hitting three cones rather than the usual 7 or so.

Oh well, still had fun.

[Danny]

Lol car color: Oreo.

[irish44j]

So after some thinking about some of the "things that slow me down," especially in the wet, I'm coming to the conclusion that the light/tall rear end in particular and the soft front end are letting the car "jack" too much on certain types of turns and get loose. Plus sitting so high with so much lean (and looking at pics of me running) it looks like I'm totally unloading the inside wheels on hard turns and losing much traction.

So, will give something else a try. I have some H&R sports on the way (the ones for the 6-cyl cars, not the 318is model). Though the drop is said to be a bit over one inch, I'm not too worried about it since I'm by far the highest e30 out there and the lower cars aren't having any clearance issues.

The sport model I ordered is "said" to have rates roughly double stock rates, but they're progressive so that means exactly jack. I'm going to give them a try and see how I like them. Worst case I'll just sell em. I picked the H&Rs because they're still fairly soft compared to most other a/m springs out there (and soft is generally good for rally-x), and they have a pretty mild drop. If the drop ends up being too much, I'll get some thicker pads for the rear and a spacer for the front to compensate. But as light as my 318i is, I suspect I'll end up around the stock ride height for the 6-cyl cars in the end. We'll see.

So....will probably do that in a couple weeks. I need to do something about the car setup to compensate for driving style, which isn't yet in tune with this car (daily-driving a WRX probably hurts, since it needs a completely different style to drive fast).

Will of course post and update/thoughts on it once done.

[swingard]

Jim's silver four door that we ran is running brand new H&R sports... We were worried about bottoming out, but it never happened. They performed great. We did have real concerns on the farm course with hitting one of those few cone marked rocks sticking out of the ground... Just an opinion but I think they will work great on your car.

On another note... Of course Jim drove harder than me, he owns the car, and has been driving at Summit Point almost as long as I have been alive! Take a complete newb to competitive driving that is worried about breaking his buddies car...BOOM... my driving! :D I was pretty happy with my times in the afternoon... but definately climbing the learning curve in the morning.

[justlikeyours]

nice

[irish44j]

Jim's silver four door that we ran is running brand new H&R sports... We were worried about bottoming out, but it never happened. They performed great. We did have real concerns on the farm course with hitting one of those few cone marked rocks sticking out of the ground... Just an opinion but I think they will work great on your car.

On another note... Of course Jim drove harder than me, he owns the car, and has been driving at Summit Point almost as long as I have been alive! Take a complete newb to competitive driving that is worried about breaking his buddies car...BOOM... my driving! :D I was pretty happy with my times in the afternoon... but definately climbing the learning curve in the morning.

sounds good, thanks for the input. And mine is an early 318, totally stripped, so it should actually sit a good bit higher than Jim's 325i as well. Plus, I have a pretty solid skidplate.

Funny you say the barn course is the one that worried you. That's the one that never worries me....But then again, we didn't use the roughest part of the Big course the other day (the far end, which is very rocky and rough).

Yeah, you guys did pretty well. PR was bunched up pretty close together top to bottom, and Jim was just behind Gorka, who took 2nd in that car in MR last season (beat me out for 2nd at the last event). Your times were almost identical to Jesse, who is generally very fast (though I think he had one really bad run). All in all, you should be pleased, especially trying not to break someone else's car :)

[justlikeyours]

what engine do u suggest for rally cross? other then 4cyl?

[irish44j]

Of our group, we have all types of engines in the e30s.....ETAs, SuperETAs, I's, M42s..and last year I ran an M10. So you can do it with any engine....the 4cylinders are lighter and make most of their power up high in the band. The 6cyl cars are heavier and have more low torque. Also depends a lot on what diff ratio you're using.

For rally-x there is no "wrong" answer.....you can win with whatever engine.

[irish44j]

random stuff.

A neighbor is re-doing his kitchen and got new cabinets. I scored up most of his old ones. These houses came with nicely-built hardwood cabinets that are great to use in garages. I need to paint them black like the rest of my former kitchen cabinets in there, but they fit nicely.

before:



after:


random e30 shot from the other day when we got a bit of snow:



oh, and the after-effect of my skidplate "spats:" almost not mud or dirt in the engine bay :)

[phenryiv1]

Did you get the h&rs from turner? I can't recall.

[irish44j]

yeah, they should be here tomorrow, though I probably won't be able to get them on til later in the week.