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

[shiboujin]

I actually like leaving that so my springs don't pop out (as often) when I jack the car up. Makes this god awful pop when the springs reseat.

[irish44j]

I actually like leaving that so my springs don't pop out (as often) when I jack the car up. Makes this god awful pop when the springs reseat.

you probably have shorter springs though. These won't pop out at full droop with the swaybar and shock connected, only if I disconnect them, since they're 7" springs.

[irish44j]

So I also picked up some AKG engine mount reinforcements. I haven't had any problems without them, but I noticed they were half-price so for $15, why not. I know I could have just made my own but this was just easier.



After much bending and fitting, managed to get them welded in. It's tight working in there without removing the steering rack and on my back, so even by my standards some pretty ugly welds and lots of splatter. But they should be in there well and provide some additional strength anyways.

For the moment I only did the passenger side since that side has the solid mount and takes the most shock/movement anyhow from the engine. The driver's side has a stock mount so it's not taking as much of a shock load (as you recall, we cut up my other mount to fix Josh S.'s car in Ohio).



Also got the new clutch and related stuff for this weekend's job on the WRX - which will be substantially more work than doing an e30 clutch, for sure...

[shiboujin]

ah yea. I got 5 inch springs.

[irish44j]

No car updates, but some schedule updates today.

First, WDCR draft schedule is out and it looks pretty good. Starts in late March, and the Divisional Challenge event locally will be in late June it looks like. June is nice up in the mountains.

Second, looks like RX Nationals have been announced as being in someplace called Indianola - which is not in Indiana, but in Iowa. I will grant that it's 3 hours east of Lincoln. But it's still approximately 1,000 miles from here, so once again I can cross that off the list of "things I want to do this year." I'd prefer my seat time in the racecar, not in my tow rig, lol.

That being said, knowing in advance that I'm going to skip nationals means I can budget/schedule to get to a few different Divisional Challenge/National Challenge events this year instead. Because frankly there are several that are much closer, and all in places that I'd rather go than the middle of Iowa.

So tentatively, aside from the DC Divisional Challenge, I'm going to tentatively pencil in the NER Challenge up in New York, The Dixie Challenge (if it's not too far south), and maybe one more depending on schedule. Unfortunately the Susquehanna challenge is this coming weekend and I'll be busy doing other stuff, so that's out.

This year there is no "one" NE National Challenge. Instead they're having one challenge event in each region, and the way I read it, you can go to multiple events and rack up points and the person with the most is the NEDiv champ (or something like that). I probably won't get to enough events to do that (seeing as the New England guys already had theirs last month while we're off-season), but will be more fun than going 20 hours to Iowa to get a low number of runs.

Tomorrow is our awards banquet from last year. So I'll get yet another snazzy 2nd-place trophy to go with the other 2nd-place trophies, lol.

[irish44j]

So my Sunday was spent about 2 hours up north of home at Matt Rhoad's place. Matt is an accomplished stage rallyer (the trophies all over his bookshelf attest to that), but more importantly Matt has a lift, lots of Subaru knowledge, and plenty of experience with WRXs. And I needed a new clutch, with my original one slipping a bit at 107k miles (pretty good for an AWD car putting down 280wtq!).

So we did the long, laborious clutch job. Two people, with lots of automotive experience, a lift, and all the right tools and equipment and it still took close to 7 hours (albeit with some stops for conversation, lunch, etc).

Working on the Subie reminds me that the Japanese build things very well (aside from M6 and M8 bolts, which snap like they're plastic and need to be drilled out and re-tapped), but also reminds me that the Japanese find the absolutely most complex ways to accomplish simple things like exhaust hangers, and wedge everything in so tight that 1mm of misalignment of things results in 30 minutes spent trying to actually get the transmission back on the car once we had it partially on....

Meanwhile, 1980s BMW bolts never seem to break, and those teutonic engineers designed pretty much everything in most straightforward, sensible way possible.

But at least now the car has a new clutch, new timing belt/water pump (which I did a couple months ago), new rear main seal, and a few other refreshes. So figure I'll drive it to 200k and then find something new :)

On a side note, in addition to a few Subarus, Matt has about a half-dozen e30s (mostly IXs) around. So you know he's a boss....

[TeXJ]

wow that looks like a suck job. Any pics of his rides?

[phenryiv1]

Josh- What is is ceiling height? And does he have a high-lift garage door? You know how I get excited about in-home lifts.

[irish44j]

wow that looks like a suck job. Any pics of his rides?

Nah, we were working in the bay and his subarus were in a garage, the three nicest e30s were in the garage under covers, so the only three that were "visible" were his three parts-cars IXs behind the workshop, which were nothing worth taking pics of, lol.

Josh- What is is ceiling height? And does he have a high-lift garage door? You know how I get excited about in-home lifts.

Don't know offhand, but I could certainly find out if you want. We had the car all the way up above head-height, with the hood up, and the hood was a couple feet from the ceiling. He did have a high-bay door. It was a full 2-story building with an upstairs on one side.

[TeXJ]

Wow that's a nice shop.

[irish44j]

So, in the event that anyone cares, here's my "tentative" schedule for the 2015 motorsports - as much for my own future reference as anything:

Feb 21 - WM Winter Rally (crewing)

March 28-29 - WDCR Frostburg

April 11/12 - Tarheel Sportscar Club (Virginia International Raceway)

May 3 - WDCR Frostburg (though may be out of town for work, we'll see)

May 31 - WDCR Frostburg

June 7 - Susquehannock Trail Performance Rally (poss. crew) + STPR Rallycross National Challenge event (Wellsboro, PA)

June 27 - WDCR Frostburg (NEDiv Nat'l Challenge event)

July - empty/TBD (find an event out of area?)

Aug 1 - WDCR Frostburg

Sep 13 - WDCR Frostburg

Sep 19-20 - Finger Lakes RX (New York) - maybe...

Oct 11 - WDCR Frostburg

Nov 8 - WDCR Frostburg

TBD - Whenever Susquehanna Region has their national challenge event, I'll plan to go.

TBD - Maybe try to do 1 or 2 chumpcar races, depending on available finances and schedule.

TBD - Other national challenge events

Now to go figure out how I'm gonna afford to do all this, and how much my wife and kids are going to kill me......

[95maxrider]

You should post up about the competition in MR this year....it's gonna get ugly!

[irish44j]

You should post up about the competition in MR this year....it's gonna get ugly!

I'm pretty sure I've mentioned it several times in the last couple months.

The competition can get off their butts and update their own build threads ;)

[irish44j]

I'll humor Nick though, since if I wait for him to talk about it, the season will be half-over.

Anyhow, he's referring to our likely MR field this year:

Me

Nick (e28) - defending champ

Bobby (e28)

Eric Eisele - leaving his SA STi and coming to MR with a fresh e30 325i

Eric's codriver - I forget who is codriving with him offhand, but he has one

Alp (325is) will be returning, but with a fully-stripped and caged car.

Ozgur Simsek will be running in Alp's car. Ozgur stage rallies a Sentra, and I think he
rallied an e30 at one point, so he should be fast.

Josh Sennet returning with his e30, but this time the turbo M20 is out, and a N/A M52 engine is in. He was already fast, but his car broke a lot. If the car is more reliable, he'll be even faster.

Rusty will be back with his MR2 after not running much last year and getting rid of the old Supra. The MR2 should be faster. Not sure if he's gonna have a co-drive. I believe this is the only car in the class with less power than mine, but it's also probably lighter and has the weight in the correct place.

Eric Helgesen will probably be running the trusty ETA that carried him to 3rd place last year - though I'm trying to convince Chris (his dad) and Stephen, who drove that car to PR 2/3 finish last year, to bump up to MR this year and let Eric (the rookie) run in PR.

Nonack? - I still have this feeling that Chris will show up with some kind of monster Crown Vic or other totally random car, and then go really fast in it.

Spencer? He may make a few events, who knows.

--

Honestly, it would be kind of fun if Shawn Roberts came back to MR (after winning MR 2 years ago, and winning PR last year), because he's as fast as anyone out there, and would be epic to just have a Battle Royale with a big, competitive MR class

In any case, it's gonna be fun. Almost everyone in that class is a competitive driver with a competitive car. I wouldn't surprise me to see someone different win every single event this year. Obviously I want to win every event, but I think with this field it will be more realistic to try to drive more consistently than last year and go for season points that way. I'd be pretty surprised to see a clear "top dog" jump out this season in MR, so a whole season of consistent top-3 finishes could be the ticket to winning the class, rather than my usual method of "win a few, finish 2nd a few, and totally suck at a few."

[irish44j]

This winter is dragging, and still 6 weeks until any rallycross (though will be crewing at the Winter Rally next weekend, so that should be fun).

Today finally got under the car to make sure the catback didn't separate from the Y-pipe again this season. Had planned to put flanges on there and have it bolt together, but that's a pain in the ass. In the end, I thought about how easy it is to simply drop the whole exhaust at the bottom of the header (those bolts are easily accessible), so no real point to have the catback separate anyhow.

So I just welded that shit together. Done and done (assuming my welding didn't suck, which I can't guarantee).

Then I went inside. Because even in my in-house, insulated garage, it's still only 35 degrees right now.