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

[irish44j]

So let's do a bit of work on the car. As mentioned my high pressure pump is buzzing pretty loud. Usually that's a sign that either it is going bad, that the "lifter" primary pump in the tank is broken, or that there is crap in the fuel line.

Didn't have time to get under the car today, so I just pulled the main tank assembly and lifter pump. The tank, thankfully, looks really good inside. No rust or anything that I can see. The lifter pump screen was pretty clean as well, just a few bits of grit on one little area. I jumped the pump off the battery and it runs fine so that's one problem eliminated. Later this week I'll pull the fuel line from the HP pump and check the screen. Probably good time to change the filter down there too, who knows how old that thing is...

inside the tank:


Also after yesterday's big rain, checked the trunk. A swimming pool in the driver's side "cubby" area next to the trunk. I drilled a drain hole for it. Still not sure where it's leaking in. I'm gonna put a hose on the trunk and try to locate where all the water is leaking from. I can't see any obvious things right now....



And some other photos from Jason Catterson from the last event, of my car, the guys, and a few other good ones.

slideways


the ETA boyz


Jeremy "bumperless" Miller





Shawn Roberts (moxnix)


bump in the trunk


Foci


Nonack's cone-killin beast


Matt Berkebile's H6-swapped Impreza


Jon Kramer's Rally America car


Mike Golden


Steve Czwalga's sweet All-Trac Rally America car


Nick

[irish44j]

Happy Easter, all!

Nothing new on the car, but some garage improvement products. A buddy is re-doing his kitchen so I got some of his old cabinets (I had previously gotten others from him during his first half of renovation, lol).

Spent the weekend "re-habbing" the side of the garage that my wife formerly parked on before we bought her the monster vehicle that won't fit well. This side was previously just a bunch of crappy home depot shelves and generally useless.

So a few old cabinets (repainted black), about $20 in lumber and materials, and a bit of creativity and here's what we have now, which tucks away my hoist and press nicely, and gives me more tool storage. Wish I had some before pics, but it was so lousy that I never took a pic of that side of the garage before, lol...







now I just need to get the girls to organize "their" garage...they have more vehicles than I do!



Also in preparation for expanding the side fence to fit the new trailer, I took down the old front/gate section and dug holes for the new posts (covered by the big pavers right now so no small children fall in them). I'll go pick up materials next weekend. This new size should fit both the big car hauler and the small rallycross tire-trailer nicely.

[irish44j]

Got some good outside vid of me running. Much more fun than the on-car cameras, I think...

[95maxrider]

Got some good outside vid of me running. Much more fun than the on-car cameras, I think...

That's awesome. Did you have to ask him to put that together for you?

[irish44j]

That's awesome. Did you have to ask him to put that together for you?

yeah, just shoot him a message on facebook and see if he has any of you running. He seems cool. He uploaded the normal one on FB and also the HD(ish) one on youtube.

[irish44j]

So for the hell of it, some of us are going to sign up for the WDCR autocross that's the day before our next rallycross. It's at FedEx Field (where the Redskins play), which is a really large venue. The "deal" is that we all run our rallycross cars, they have to use street tires (not borrowed r-comps, lol), and you can't do any significant changes to the car's setup. I think we're all going to run in X-Prepared class since our actual classes would be all over the place, and we're really just doing it for fun and/or bragging rights against each other, not against actual autocross cars.

So I'll be running my 3-year-old 195-width Star Specs, which should be decent on a car this light. Been a couple years since I last autocrossed (I used to do it a lot in the Maxima and WRX).....we'll see how it turns out.

In the meantime, I'm going to finish up the fence this weekend, and then do some things on the car (including further investigation on the fuel pump issue, tack-welding the floor panel that got bashed open at the last event, replace the passenger-side mirror, and a few other things)..

[95maxrider]

So for the hell of it, some of us are going to sign up for the WDCR autocross that's the day before our next rallycross. It's at FedEx Field (where the Redskins play), which is a really large venue. The "deal" is that we all run our rallycross cars, they have to use street tires (not borrowed r-comps, lol), and you can't do any significant changes to the car's setup. I think we're all going to run in X-Prepared class since our actual classes would be all over the place, and we're really just doing it for fun and/or bragging rights against each other, not against actual autocross cars.

So I'll be running my 3-year-old 195-width Star Specs, which should be decent on a car this light. Been a couple years since I last autocrossed (I used to do it a lot in the Maxima and WRX).....we'll see how it turns out.

In the meantime, I'm going to finish up the fence this weekend, and then do some things on the car (including further investigation on the fuel pump issue, tack-welding the floor panel that got bashed open at the last event, replace the passenger-side mirror, and a few other things)..

Who else is coming? Have you signed up yet?

[irish44j]

Who else is coming? Have you signed up yet?

I'm signed up. Josh Sennett is signed up with the turbo ETA. Obviously Shawn is signed up, but he's driving his miata I think, not the rally-rotary. Mike Golden is running for points in his Rotary monster, not the subie. No idea who else plans to do it. My wife and kids will be at the beach that weekend, so i'll do it just because I have the whole weekend to myself :)

And you'd better do it too!

[irish44j]

ok, so I promise this will be the last non-car-related post for a while. Even though it is peripherally-related to the car via the trailers, lol. Anyhow yesterday evening in the rain I sunk new fence posts for the extended fence on the side of the house.

Since I got the car hauler, I haven't had a place to really put it out of sight, since it won't fit through into my back yard due to the lot layout. My neighbors don't really mind (or so they say) but this isn't the kind of neighborhood where people just have trailers and stuff out in view. I already push it by having the rally car and occasionally the stripped e21 out in the driveway, and prefer to be a "good neighbor." So a 16'foot trailer next to the house in the yard is kind of embarrassing to me, I suppose. Also there's the security thing (though this is a low-crime area). I'd rather not have it disappear one weekend while we're out of town...

here's the before:


So got to building


and the finished product






it fits both trailers nicely, with plenty of room to spare :)





So.....I promise, back to car stuff soon!

[DER E30]

Nice work on the fence! My e30's trunk thingy fills with water too! I think its from driving as she sits under a roof when I'm not driving both at home and school...

[irish44j]

On mine it only happens when I back it into the driveway, and the incline causes the water to overflow the trunk seal and drip into the sides. I made some drain holes today on each side, so now I don't really care :)

[irish44j]

ok, so back to some car work....

First....at the last event I had a hard impact on something on the rear driver's side floor that "punched up" the big drain piece.

from under the car


So I banged the floor back down with a BFH, tack-welded the panel back into place, and sealed it up with some silicone (didn't have any seam sealer, dammit)

(that's just a drain hole I drilled in the middle of it for washing out the car with a hose)


That done, investigated my broken passenger side mirror, which now will only point downward.

hmm....it appears that the "guts" of the mirror are totally shot


then attacked the rear dust shields on the brakes, that always catch gravel and cause horrendous screeching sounds...

you can see where gravel has jammed itself in there and scraped around


cut that off.


also, patched a few small holes in the driver's floor and repaired one of the fuel line underside anchors. Just used some random scrap metal pieces I had sitting around. Also changed the position of my dead pedal so I can stretch my leg out farther during the long drives to the track.



drilled some drain holes in my very wet side "pockets' in the trunk...grr




and cleaned up the rockers, where rock chips were causing some rust to start. cleaned them up and hit them with some bedliner (also did part way up the rear wheel arch).



Oh, and got the sanding discs and compound out to de-yellow the wife's Sequoia headlights. Good as new now:

[phenryiv1]

Bedliner on the arch looks good.

[irish44j]

Back to work....after patching the floors and the other stuff mentioned previously, tackled the one remaining issue that I wanted done before the next event: the loudly-buzzing fuel filter.

A lot of people seem to think that the buzzing means it's about to die. I guess that may be the case, but I'm not sure why. In any case, before I replaced it I thought I'd try out something. On the early e30s they were fitted with a "fuel pulse dampener" after the pump. It looks like a little fuel pressure regulator down there, but it isn't (well, it may use the same theory of operation, actually, but whatever...). In any case, only the very early (84-86) cars had these, and then BMW got rid of them and just put a regular fuel line there. Probably because the piece didn't work, wasn't needed, or restricted fuel flow. IDK. But knowing that the post-86 cars didn't have it, I decided to delete it, as it was probably an original part and could be clogging things, making the HP pump work harder (and buzz).

So I took it out. I needed a short piece of fuel pipe to take its place, and of COURSE my crappy local chain auto parts store didn't have fuel pipe (WTF??). So, I went ahead and cut a short piece off the e21, since I'll need to replace that anyhow someday when I do the fuel system.

Yeah, I know....this is exciting stuff. But the long story short: The HP pump isn't buzzing anymore. So....looks like it worked. Yay.

the old....


the "pulse dampener"


new line

[img]


In other news, I picked up another set of DMack rally tires (again from Kevin Turner, who sells me his used sets after stage rallies...which is nice since almost nobody still uses 14" tires it seems). These are the same tires I have now, but have way more tread than the current ones did when I bought them last year. And the current set is getting worn pretty quickly from the new surface here.

In any case, Chris Nonack is nice enough to pick them up for me up in PA while he's at the Kempton rallycross this weekend. Likely I'll use them if I go to the Great Lakes regionals, since they're pretty fresh.

[irish44j]

So after I got all my house chores, yardwork, family time, and a visit from my cousin and his baby daughter, I was thinking about how the car this season pretty much looks exactly the same as it did last season. And that's not much fun. So got out the paint and tape and made some modifications to the passenger side (driver's side to come later once I decide what to do with it).

Since I'm cheap and don't want to have to buy new vinyl numbers, and also have some stickers and stuff on the car that would be hard to get again (ok, not that hard, but I'm lazy too), I did mask around some areas and just paint around the stickers. Not what I'd do on a high-end racecar, but this is a rallycross beater. So it doesn't get $$ vinyl wraps...it gets rattle can :)

In the front, I've always disliked how I had the white area with a diagonal line in front and a vertical line at the back edge. So I turned it into a fat white stripe, basically. Once I get the new (used) side mirror in, it will be white as well.



And on the back, I took off the few stickers there (which I'll replace with new ones) and did some retro-ish white and blue striping of sorts. Also changed the lip spoiler to blue, since it was then "too white" back there and it was nice continuity with the blue stripe on the fender.





Other side of the car I'm not sure what I'll do. All my stickers from other rally clubs elsewhere are on the rear quarter panel there so I don't want to take them off and ruin them (and don't want to have to ask for more of them). I know, cheesy.....but whatever, this is my car and it's the only car I can have fun with stickers and paint on :)