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

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    So we are prepping for the ChumpCar 12-hour at VIR next weekend. Well, the guys are prepping the car. My task was trailer. So Jim and I bought a trailer. Gatormade 16-foot lowboy, full-deck, so I can also use it for utility stuff and sell my smaller utility trailer. Once that's done I'll buy out part of Jim's share of this one and it will be "mine" with a perpetual "open usage" by Jim and the guys for races I don't go to.

    I'm not going to trailer the rallycross car for the moment, but if I go to some farther events like Southeast regionals, I probably will.

    Anyhow, here it is. Got it for around $1800, it's a 2010 model with electric brakes, breakaway kit, and a little storage box (not pictured). Should do nicely. Since I don't much want to use the stake pockets for tiedowns I'm installing some big D-rings from tractor supply. Bolted in for the moment but we'll weld them as well. They're set up for angles that shoudl be best for attaching the straps to the e30s. I'll also install a big eye-bolt at either end to run safety chains in addition to the ratchet straps. Can never be too safe when towing!







    Stage rally/rallycross e30 build/competition journal
    Track/street e21 build
    visit Condor Speed Shop
    visit Motorsport Hardware



    [FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"] 1985 318i/M50 Rally Car - 1988 Porsche 924S - 2005 Sequoia tow pig - 2018 GTI

    Comment


      Do like.
      Patrick Henry

      1989 325iC build: http://www.r3vlimited.com/board/showthread.php?t=316880


      Comment


        Ballin' as usual

        ________________________1988 528e Rally-xmobile___________________
        2014 WDCR Rally-X MR Season Champion, 2014 NE Div. Challenge MR Winner

        Comment


          Originally posted by 95maxrider View Post
          Ballin' as usual
          less posting in my thread and more updating yours, son!
          Stage rally/rallycross e30 build/competition journal
          Track/street e21 build
          visit Condor Speed Shop
          visit Motorsport Hardware



          [FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"] 1985 318i/M50 Rally Car - 1988 Porsche 924S - 2005 Sequoia tow pig - 2018 GTI

          Comment


            still getting stuff ready for VIR. In the meantime, our new "team" stickers came in....A bit more basic than in years past, but I didn't have much time to design them, so whatever...

            Stage rally/rallycross e30 build/competition journal
            Track/street e21 build
            visit Condor Speed Shop
            visit Motorsport Hardware



            [FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"] 1985 318i/M50 Rally Car - 1988 Porsche 924S - 2005 Sequoia tow pig - 2018 GTI

            Comment


              Originally posted by irish44j View Post
              still getting stuff ready for VIR. In the meantime, our new "team" stickers came in....A bit more basic than in years past, but I didn't have much time to design them, so whatever...

              Lookin' good!

              ________________________1988 528e Rally-xmobile___________________
              2014 WDCR Rally-X MR Season Champion, 2014 NE Div. Challenge MR Winner

              Comment


                Originally posted by irish44j View Post
                - tightened up the motor mounts, which were surprisingly loose.
                I've noticed this on my semi-solid motor mounts as well. My only solution was to torque the nuts tighter than the first time.

                A better solution would be to use castellated nuts, drill holes in the studs at the proper height, and use cotter pins to stop them from vibrating loose.
                Originally posted by priapism
                My girl don't know shit, but she bakes a mean cupcake.
                Originally posted by shameson
                Usually it's best not to know how much money you have into your e30

                Comment


                  So it’s been a busy last couple of weeks. First, a few new photos from the last rallycross taken by AJ at Squared Away Photography, who came out to our event as he often does to take good action shots.








                  Now, on to the next thing…..trailer. Me, Jim and Stephen (who I rallycross and run Chumpcar with) went in together and bought this trailer. It’s a 2010 Gator-Made 16’ lowboy. Pretty nice overall, but had a few problems (some of which we knew of when we got it, others that we figured out later). First: the ramps are short. Loading for Chump at VIR we actually got one of our harness bolts stuck on the back of it and bent it to shit. Not enough clearance. So we took four 6-foot 2x8 boards to make loading better. More on the trailer later, though.

                  First, time for Chumpcar. We took the ETA to Virginia International Raceway (VIR) for the 12-hour event there. This was a 60-70 car event, and among the usual Chump/Lemons teams were some other drivers: The Labonte brothers (NASCAR), driving an old Crown Vic painted as a police car; Ken Schrader (NASCAR) driving an old Camaro, and road-racing legend Randy Pobst driving a beat-up Miata with a 1.8 Escort swap.

                  I won’t bore you with too many details, but the weather was foggy/rainy for most of the day. We ran VIR South Course, which is a ton of fun with a lot of elevation changes. Our ETA is one of the slower cars in the big Chump races, so we try to do well by not breaking and not crashing. I drove first to start and it was pretty slow due to rain and freshly-paved track, with tons of cars off in the grass. In any case, we ran 4 drivers in 1.5-hour stints and finished all 12 hours with no wrecks (though Jim spun into the grass a few times). Only mechanical issue was warping our brand-new Frozen Rotors about an hour into the race. WTF. We changed to some used Autozone cheap-o rotors and they were fine for the rest of the race. Frozen Rotors….FTL!

                  In the end, we finished 28th overall, which is pretty good considering most of the 35+ cars we beat are faster than our ETA. My highlight: passing Terry Labonte on the inside of a corner (he passed me back on the straight, but whatever). My lowlight: during my afternoon session I got lapped. TWICE. By Randy Pobst in the Miata (which finished 4th overall despite breaking down with half an hour left in the race!). lol.

                  Anyhow, it was good times, and my first time at VIR. I’ll definitely be back. Some pics:

                  Waiting for tech












                  The Stig was there…kinda






                  This Z was so sexy…got a bit banged up on a tire wall though


                  Some say that he doesn’t have a face…Jim, our Stig.


                  12 HOURS DONE!


                  Rage Cage Racing


                  Post-race meal..


                  Then we get home and it’s sleet and snow while unloading. Yay.



                  Jim took a ton of “action” photos with his giant camera setup, so I’ll post some of those up later. These were just off my phone…

                  And back to the trailer. We found out a few things about it other than the short ramps:
                  First, It tows nicely with the car positioned right. The Sequoia is a great tow rig too. Ran 4th gear all the way down and never downshifted for power. Never needed. And we got almost 12mpg towing, which is pretty damn good.

                  The tail-lights (in some bashed-up “armored” brackets) are brutal on the shins. Two of us got bloody legs running into them at night.

                  (with the light already removed)





                  So some trailer projects yesterday and today. First, did some cleaning and painting. We like a bit of style :). Then cut off the old light brackets. I’ll install some LED lights on the back lip that are more out of the way. Also relocated the license plate to the fender (will install a light when it gets here).

                  Cleaned up, ground smooth, painted, and also beveled the rear edge of the side rail so it’s not pointy




                  Some flair…




                  Also used some old stainless steel L-bracket stuff I had sitting around to make a “rack” to hold our ramp-extender wood in place :)
                  Stage rally/rallycross e30 build/competition journal
                  Track/street e21 build
                  visit Condor Speed Shop
                  visit Motorsport Hardware



                  [FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"] 1985 318i/M50 Rally Car - 1988 Porsche 924S - 2005 Sequoia tow pig - 2018 GTI

                  Comment


                    Awesome!!!
                    Originally posted by Ty13r
                    if you scream while doing it you'll gain extra power. worth a try.

                    Comment


                      Good stuff as always!
                      91 318is M50 swapped
                      05 Honda Pilot

                      24V swap thread
                      http://www.r3vlimited.com/board/showthread.php?t=302524

                      Comment


                        A week until the next rallycross, and car is ready to roll. I pulled out the little trailer as well to clean it up from its winter slumber and put the correct gear in it. Nothing too exciting there.

                        If anyone was wondering, the e21 has basically had nothing done to it all winter. HOpefully the warm weather will motivate me now.



                        In the meantime, finishing up the "big" trailer with relocated license plate (that won't get knocked off), a license plate light to keep it legal, and new side marker/reflectors in the rear and new LED brake/taillight/turn signal assemblies. Also cleaned up the wiring back there a bit and painted a couple "black boxes" on the rear of the deck where the ramps go for e30 loading. One less thing to deal with at the track :)





                        also did a bit of stenciling on the deck, just for fun.



                        back in its home and not cramming up my driveway. I plan to extend the fence in the next few weeks with a 10-foot gate so I don't have it totally visible there....



                        and garage spring cleaning. What a disaster area....

                        Stage rally/rallycross e30 build/competition journal
                        Track/street e21 build
                        visit Condor Speed Shop
                        visit Motorsport Hardware



                        [FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"] 1985 318i/M50 Rally Car - 1988 Porsche 924S - 2005 Sequoia tow pig - 2018 GTI

                        Comment


                          So all packed and ready for tomorrow's rallycross #2 at Frostburg where I'll try to keep this winning streak going against stiff competition.

                          More interestingly, there is some serious talk locally of a bunch of the MR crew heading to the Great Lakes National Challenge event in August, since it's not too far (5-6 hours for most of us) in Hebron, Ohio, and since it is a STRONG MR region looking, so we can see how we match up on some different surfaces.

                          It's looking like maybe 5 of us (the top 5 MR drivers locally) may do it (me, Nick, Chris, Jim, and Josh S) and take 3 cars (mine, Josh's turbo e30, and either Chris's monster mustang or Nick's e28) and do some co-driving. We're going to do some serious discussion about it at lunchbreak tomorrow at the event.
                          Stage rally/rallycross e30 build/competition journal
                          Track/street e21 build
                          visit Condor Speed Shop
                          visit Motorsport Hardware



                          [FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"] 1985 318i/M50 Rally Car - 1988 Porsche 924S - 2005 Sequoia tow pig - 2018 GTI

                          Comment


                            So today was a really, really long day (up at 4:30, home around 8pm), so just a short synopsis of the day's events that I'll talk about more later in the week



                            1. I won this event by a hair (4.xx seconds) over Nick. We both drove well with no major mistakes, going back and forth in overall time. In the end, it came down to me only having a couple cones on the day, and him having a couple more.

                            2. Chris Nonack continues to be snakebitten by his cars. He laid down the fastest RWD (raw time) run of the day, but killed himself on other runs with high cone counts. He's still trying to tame that wild mustang (pun intended). Then his cooling fan resistor malfunctioned while in grid so the fan didn't come on, and he overheated the car. He retired mid-afternoon since he was a ways back anyhow and dind't want to risk any engine damage.

                            3. The courses today were fun, but also had some VERY rough areas. This is the first time I may have actually thought to myself "I AM going to break a control arm or debead, for sure." But I didn't. Worst thing I did was put a dent in the rear passenger floor somehow.

                            4. I hate brake dust shields. The catch gravel and make me screech all the way around the course. They are ALL coming off before the next event.

                            5. This car was a good suspension height for the smooth clay at Summit Point, but it is borderline too low for Frostburg and its deep gravel. Still fast, but I'd prefer to take less hard impacts on the underbody, and to spend lest time drilling my bumpstops. We'll see what I do about this. One voice says "don't mess with anything, you just won the first two events." Another voice says that is a reason to mess with things, with some margin for error now.

                            6. My HP fuel pump is buzzing loudly since our afternoon runs. NOt sure if it's going bad, or if the filter is maybe clogged with crap from the tank that got stirred up by the extremely rough course, or what. Same thing happened to the ETA guys today too....

                            7. I need to think about additional shock tower reinforcements front and rear.

                            8. I drove 280 miles today, much of it mountainous, towing the tire trailer; did 12 rallycross runs, and spent a good amount of time at idle in grid. I used a total of 12.5 gallons of fuel. By my reckoning that's around 23mpg all told. That's pretty impressive.

                            Here are a couple vids of today's runs. First one was my slowest run, and it's pretty clear why. Got out of the line, and out of rhythm from the start and spent a ton of time trying to recover the car (though somehow I hit no cones and still put up a pretty decent time). Worst steering form ever. crossed myself up everywhere, lol.



                            And here's an exterior view of a better run, albeit with plenty of sideways still. The gravel at this venue is so deep and shifts around so much between runs (especially with the M4 cars running at the same time), sometimes the area that had good traction last run is now a washout area.

                            Stage rally/rallycross e30 build/competition journal
                            Track/street e21 build
                            visit Condor Speed Shop
                            visit Motorsport Hardware



                            [FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"] 1985 318i/M50 Rally Car - 1988 Porsche 924S - 2005 Sequoia tow pig - 2018 GTI

                            Comment


                              Ok, so here's the rest of the last event recap...

                              A few of our MR regulars were missing this time, due to schedule conflicts or other reasons. Nonetheless, four of the top five points cars in the class were present (minus Josh Sennet in his turbo ETA), so while we're used to bigger MR classes here, the main competition was still present.

                              The first big improvement was the weather. 70s with "light" wind (at this venue, that means under 20mph). So that made everyone's morning much more pleasant than last month's arctic blast-fest....

                              The morning course we worked first and ran second, letting the entire field of AWD cars tear up the course, adding large ruts and bumps. The new venue is a lot of fun with a ton of space, but the deep gravel and substrate is going to take some time to compact down so it holds up better. Rome wasn't built overnight, and neither is a fresh rallycross venue in this case.

                              So on to our runs. The course was rough. Brutal rough, indeed. I can honestly say that this is the first time I've rallycrossed where I was quite certain that there was going to be a major suspension component damage (LCA, shock tower, or something). Spent lots of time on the bump stops, and took a lot of hard hits on the skid. In one area there were some less-prepped cars getting a big bounce into the air (the course was corrected soon thereafter). And there were a few places where the wrong line could very well lead to a debead, though I don't think anyone did.

                              From the start Nick was neck and neck with me in his e28, which he's added a few new things to and subtracted some more weight from. We went back and forth for the lead all morning, with me taking a 3-4 second lead into the lunch break ultimately (5 runs). I only got one cone all morning by some minor miracle (my video shows a ton of very near misses that were closer than planned). Nick had one or two also.

                              Chris in "the Beast-stang" once again had his hands full. The course had a lot of fast sections that entered into some very loose sections, especially if you went wide. For the smaller cars we managed to keep it fairly tidy (though I spent some time in the deep stuff myself)



                              Chris was having control issues though. Three cones on his first run and a whopping seven cones on his second. AFter that he laid down a couple fairly clean (+1 cone) runs with fast times and looked like he might be getting a handle on the car and the course (also had the fastest single raw time run of the day for RWD classes). On his last run of the day I'm not sure what happened but after a pretty dirty run he came sideways through the finish and punted about half of the finish box side cones, for a +8 on that run. Overall, he was running slightly faster times than Nick and I, but had 20 cones after the morning session (compared to 1 for me, 3 for Nick, and 1 for Eric in the ETA), so he was pretty much out of it by then.

                              I spent my last two runs with a rock in my brake dust shield, deafening everyone on course with high-pitched screeching for two runs (and annoying myself into a couple distracted sloppy runs).



                              In the afternoon, the course setup was better, going through a lot of "shrubbery" areas that were a bit more firm, but still with some deep, loose areas. I really enjoyed the PM course and it lent itself well to getting a good rhythm and dancing the car through the transitions. But Nick had the rhythm too and beat me on all of the first four afternoon runs. With us only separated by tenths of a second going into the 5th run, I tried to focus a bit more on my lines and knocked a full second off of run 5 and a further 1/2 second off of the final run (6). Nick seemed to plateau after his 4th run and his next to were more or less the same time, and I pulled off a win by 4.6 seconds overall.

                              In the meantime, after his first run of the PM, while we all idled in grid waiting for the next run, Chris's electric fan cut off due to a bad relay, and nobody heard it since his car is so loud. Unfortunately this resulted in the coolant massively boiling over. He went back to paddock and wired up a direct line for the fan to stay on all the time, added coolant in, and came back out to run, but apparently it was longer than the allowed mechanical break and he was docked a DNF run. Kind of a moot point since he was out of the running due to cones by that point anyhow, but kind of sucks to have insult added to injury there. After that he decided to call it a day and put the car on the trailer, not knowing if the engine was ok after the overheat and not wanting to risk it. That sucked because we love running against Chris to see if we can keep with him on raw time, in particular. He did stay to work the course in the second half of the session.

                              So that's the competition wrap, really. Eric is making progress on driving the ETA as well (for a guy who's had his license for less than a year, that's pretty good). And that car has new springs on it and looked better on course. Next event we should have closer to a full turnout, with some of the regulars hopefully coming.

                              The we went up a hill to take some photos of the cars and the venue.



                              and came down the hill...



                              So....I haven't taken any pics yet, but there was some damage/issues to the car from the beating the morning course laid down on it, and some things I need to do soon:

                              1. The rear passenger floor is dented in a few inches. I must have landed it on a pile of gravel or something. It actually popped the center "drain" panel out halfway and it was open about 3" when I noticed it. I was wondering how I was getting all that dust in the car during runs, lol. Shoudl be a pretty easy fix...I can pound it pack down and tack weld it. Not an issue.

                              2. Another issue is the high-pressure fuel pump is buzzing. Loud. I don't think that it's the usual "because it's dying" thing. I think the extra-rough course combined with me running a lower than normal fuel load (~1/2 tank) might have allowed some junk in the bottom of the tank to get sucked into the system. My visual inspection of the tank when I first set up the car didn't show any rust in there, but who knows. The plan this weekend will be to pull the rear filter and check that, check the pump screen, and check for other possible clogs. I didn't notice any fuel starvation on course or on the drive home, so hopefully it's just a minor issue. If not, I have another (used but working) HP pump that I'll throw in the toolbox in case this one dies.

                              3. The course broke my passenger mirror. Really. Didn't break the glass, but the mechanism that holds it in place is totally shot, so now it just points at the ground. That's annoying......

                              4. Cut those damn dust shields off.

                              5. Think about spacers to get me an inch or so of ride height. At this venue, this height is going to result in a lot of dented floors and who knows what else.

                              6. After my battery tray and the little cubby on the other side of the trunk were both about 3" deep in water after sitting for 2 weeks (a few days of rain), I need to redouble my anti-leak efforts around the trunk/taillights, and also make some drains. Thought I had all that solved last year, but apparently not.

                              And I'm sure I'll think of a few other things later. A few photos by Eric Helgesen...

                              ETA boys


                              Shawn/Katie and the RX-7 of doom


                              It has to be tow-started...but still took second in PR


                              It wouldn't be a rallycross if Jeremy Miller didn't lose his front and/or rear clip. On this occasion it took down a cone or two on its way off the car....


                              The Miester


                              Nick with his course-work goggles (much-needed)


                              2-1


                              Alp running in PR


                              Chris discussing the Stang


                              We roll R/V style
                              Stage rally/rallycross e30 build/competition journal
                              Track/street e21 build
                              visit Condor Speed Shop
                              visit Motorsport Hardware



                              [FONT="Franklin Gothic Medium"] 1985 318i/M50 Rally Car - 1988 Porsche 924S - 2005 Sequoia tow pig - 2018 GTI

                              Comment


                                Great recap! I had a lot of fun on both courses, and I must say the car felt much more tossable than last time, which I attribute to probably not having the RSB attached last race. I think the rest of the season is going to be very entertaining, and hopefully a close race!

                                ________________________1988 528e Rally-xmobile___________________
                                2014 WDCR Rally-X MR Season Champion, 2014 NE Div. Challenge MR Winner

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