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

[irish44j]

So here's a nice pic taken by somebody at the last event.



As to other rallycross stuff - this weekend was the Great Lakes National Challenge in Ohio, which I didn't go to due to already filling my quota this year of visits to Ohio. But who was there were, well, pretty much all the national contenders. England, Vaughn, Evan, Pete, Briana, and several others. More interestingly, our own Shawn Roberts decided to enter MR in his PR class Miata since PR didn't have much competition. Watching the times, looked like Vaughn pretty much had the win in the bag until he broke a shift linkage and lost 6 seconds. he finished 2nd to England. Shawn pulled off a 3rd place finish, beating the reigning national champion (Briana). Not that it matters, or that internet comparisons really work well, but having beaten Vaughn by 10 seconds last week (and Shawn by 0.1 seconds), I'd like to think I could have gone there and fought for the win. Who knows, maybe one of these years I'll go find out (the last time I rallycrossed at that event when it was the Great Lakes Divisional), I finished 2nd by 0.1 seconds. Maybe my car liked Ohio fields :)

On an unrelated note, we decided we are going to do STPR again this year, as some rally friends kindly offered us a couple rooms to stay, which makes it much more affordable. I didn't love STPR the first time (I like the more technical, lower-speed rallies personally), but maybe with more power STPR will be less of a drag. Guess we'll see. I have to order up some new gravel tires soon, to go with all these new 15" wheels....

In the meantime, decided after 5 or so years since my last real rattle-canning, it was time to sharpen up the front end of the car, which has been looking pretty grungy recently. So, after getting a big pack of sanding discs for cheap from Amazon, i got to work removing old stickers and several layers of paint...





Took me a while to figure out what shade of dark red I had used on the rest of the car and then a while to search out a couple cans of it...



Then some taping, and some matte black





Once all done, my daughter helped me cut some new vinyl....



And a new main logo for my friends at Condor Speed Shop, which I designed to go with all my band stickers on the roof :)



The girls were at the beach for the last few weeks, and while there they got me a father's day present, laser-cut out of PVC. Which is pretty cool. Have to find a place to hang it.

[irish44j]

So let's see, what's new here at the 80s chateu.....



1. Ordered a set of new 15" Federal rally tires (for STPR)
2. Also picking up a second, slightly used set of the same tires from Jon Kramer, who used them for half of SOFR or so.
3. Dustin and Dan Yarborough swung by today on their way back from getting some cage work done at Ozgur's place and on the way back down to N.C. They dropped off these for me (which I bought down in NC off FB Marketplace for cheap):

15", 12lb Mini Cooper stock wheels. So now I have two sets of these (Pat Henry picked up a second set for cheap out in W.Va. for me, as well as the set of Integra wheels. So, basically I'm set for 15" wheelsets now.



And they picked up a bunch of my old 14" wheels (bottlecaps and weaves) for use on their Rally Golf. I kept a couple sets for rallycross as well





Made a Home Depot run, because wanted to test some stuff out on the car and make sure it was running well before the 2-day rallycross next weekend



And decided to do some cosmetics in the engine bay



Also helped Jason this week dispose of the Miata shell he stripped. So my trailer got to do another run to the scrapyard. You may recall the e34 shell got about $150 in scrap. Well, a stripped Miata only gets about $35 lol..



I'm also running wiring for a second horn button in the car. Right now only Jim has one on his side, which is fine for stage rally, but in rallycross when I need a horn to signify a down cone, I can hardly reach it. Since I don't want to get penalized for someone else's cone, time to put a button on my side too lol...

[irish44j]

Some fresh Federal Federally G10 tires arrived today. Haven't used these before but the price is right and they've gotten good reviews from a lot of the guys up in New England who have been running them. Went with the 185/65/15 size, which will be about an inch taller diameter than our 14" sets, so that'll be nice to get a little more ground clearance. I'm also getting a second set of these from Jon Kramer, which he used for SOFR last month.





Side note: These tires weigh almost exactly 30 lbs each. The Mini wheels weigh about 12 lbs each by my scale. So, that's not a terrible combined weight.

In other news, got my hands on an old Dinan chip for the 413 DME (for free), so that will be a nice addition. Word is they are good for about 20hp/tq, with a lower peak tq rpm and a raised redline. I alreadly liked the M50, now I will probably like it more :)

Also put some new (cheap) Hella horns off Amazon on the car (since the OEM horns finally bit the dust), and added a 2nd horn button to my side of the car since Jim's is hard to reach in rallycross when I need to beep for a downed cone.



And this weekend is our big 2-day event. Weather looks totally dry and hot, so it promises to be a dusty and tiring event. The big news is 1) Andy and Mike Golden finally finished their 2ZZZ-swapped MR2 (about 200hp) so that may be very fast in our class, since they're both great drivers. 2) Nonack is brinigng the Merkur, and 3) the Helgesen/Stephen car has a new set of Maxsports on it and a new suspension (a clone of my suspension). So, they may be faster as well. 15 cars entered in class, should be a hell of a weekend1

[irish44j]

DC Doublecr0ss

This weekend was DC's annual two-day rallycross, up at Panthera. With the weather looking hot but otherwise awesome, there was a big turnout of around 60 cars, and Mod RWD by far the largest class with 16 entries. In addition to the usual bevy of BMWs (e36 M3, e36, and 6-7 e30s) we also had Chris Nonack come out in his rally Merkur XR4Ti, Andy and Mike finally had their 2ZZZ-swapped MR2 ready to run, a turbo Miata was there, another MR2, and a few other random cars.







Upon arrival in Mooresfield, WV at the local Sheetz, ran into Eric and Neil, who inconveniently had their windows down when the sprinklers turned on and sprayed right into the car, lol



Then we all headed up and found the crowded paddock



The course was hot and dry - and DUSTY. There was a pretty good breeze going, but due to the fact that we used the "backside" course, which snakes back and forth up the hill, the main issue was runnign into your own dust.



From what we could tell, only Adam Kimmett was fast enough up the hill switchbacks that he outran his own dust in his STi. Shocked. Adam can outrun everything, including dust



With the sun and dust blowing, all the work stations and the timing station had their pop-ups in full effect.





The course wasn't much to my liking, honestly, but still managed to do ok, though with a few cones. At the end of Day 1, I was in 3rd, a few tenths behind Eric Eisele and almost 12 seconds behind Nick - who as usual had his M3 in top form and drove totally clean and fast.

Then we rode around in the dust in the course van and had some beers and picked up cones



So, we cleaned up and went out and drank for a few hours, minus Nick. As you can see, the Subaru drivers throw down hard...



Day two was a bit cooler (so, low 90s) and there was rain overnight so that kept down the dust but didn't make the course very slick, thankfully.



We used the frontside (larger/power course) this time, which is my favorite since it mixes power elements, hard braking elements, and a lot of technical areas as well. I got out to a good jump and immediately knocked a couple seconds off Nick's lead, and then another second. But then he got up to speed and basically started matching me for the rest of the morning, hanging onto about 9-second lead.

I mean, he has a headband.



Meanwhile, Kimmett's trunk wouldn't latch, so many straps were used to tie it down since it kept breaking bungees.







In the afternoon I went out fast and got another 2 seconds back, cutting Nick's lead down to 6 seconds or so in one run. ON the second run got another second back. Then Nick again got up to speed and started matching me. WIth two runs left it was about a 6-second gap. Against most of us, that could be workable due to cone hits and such, but Nick literally NEVER hits cones (none this whole season!), so the only way was to push super-hard and just try to be fast. I let Eisele ride shotgun just to see if some balance woudl help things, but I overshot a braking zone and took out two cones, and that was that. The gap went back to 11 seconds. On my last run I decided to just see how fast I could go running tight lines, and I beat Nick by 3 seconds. Guess I should have done that the run before, and might have gotten very close. Oh well.

Meanwhile, Eric kind of fell apart and I ended up beating him by almost 20 seconds, with Jeremy Sitar moving up to 3rd in his e36 328i.

So, that's that. I usually would be a bit annoyed, but it's hard to be annoyed losing to Nick. He has a very fast car, pretty new tires, and "cares" more than anyone there - to the extent that between runs when we're all goofing around and chatting he usually sits in the back seat of his (air conditioned) car and watches his previous runs a few times - so he KNOWS the course really well. When it's blind, I usually can beat him by a couple seconds a run, but once he learns the course he's at least as fast as me, and never hits cones. I drove pretty well, with a few mistakes here and there and more cones than I'd like (5-6 all weekend, I think), but that's the breaks.

I also used some REALLY old tires on Saturday that were not very good. I switched to some sharper (but still well-used) tires on Sunday and was quicker. I should have switched on Saturday at lunch, but it was really hot and I'm kind of lazy :)



Minor side note: for the last couple events I've had a vague gasoline smell from the car, usually after turning it off - not really when running. Today it was significantly more noticeable. So I pulled off my underbody armor on the side with the fuel/brake lines, and there was some gas-saturated mud on top of it, which was odd. The HP fuel line showed no evidence of leak. The return line, however, looks like it's been rubbing against the rocker pinch seam for some time, and basically rubbed a tiny hole in it, which progressively got worse I guess (though still really tiny). Anyhow, when the car was turned off it would drip down slowly on the undertray and cause the smell.

I found a little tiny piece of hose sitting in the trunk of the car and a hose clamp from the parts box and made a temp fix, which seemed to work:



So, I'll get some hardline and bend a new line in the near future. Otherwise, the car seemed to run fine other than the very noisy transmission bearings (still) and some rear-end clunking that I'll have to take a look for.

[irish44j]

And here's some vid from the event

https://youtu.be/TVXoKaBOiZA

[rzerob]

Man that looks fun as shit. I would love to do it but probably never will because I would get addicted to it. And I don't have the extra time nor funds and my health is failing. So yeah, I will live vicariously through you for now. You even drink my favorite beer but I prefer long necks to cans.

[irish44j]

Man that looks fun as shit. I would love to do it but probably never will because I would get addicted to it. And I don't have the extra time nor funds and my health is failing. So yeah, I will live vicariously through you for now. You even drink my favorite beer but I prefer long necks to cans.

hah. Though the beer came from Andy Thomas. I like Yuengling fine, but my beers of choice are German Pilsners (Bitburger, Hofbrau, and Warsteiner in particular), and always in bottles or steins :)

[irish44j]

I'm sure i'm a bit behind on stuff, but here's some updating. Last weekend I was NOT at New England Forest Rally, where a number of our e30/BMW friends and non-BMW friends were running. Kind of sad, since last year was our first DNF at this rally and would have liked another shot at it, but just couldn't do it this year.

Apparently it was a rough go for many, though the BMWs largely made it through without major destruction. Stealing a few pics of the carnage, just because you've seen enough of my car sitting in my driveway, right?

Sadly, our friend Adam Kimmett, who runs our rally-x program locally and won SOFR Rally outright last month, was running near the top when he got out of sorts coming off a big kick and did some rolling, totalling the car. Adam is an awesome driver, so this goes to show that even the best can crash hard.



Another Subie had a steering knuckle break at high speed and had a similar result



Even the lower power cars had issues.



And the red 80s RWD croo...



----

So, now that I'm sad not to ahve been there, a few things going on here...

I built a new rolling storage workbench. Yay.



Then headed over to pick up a pair of from subframes from my buddy Viet - we go back way back to the Maxima days when he was 16 and had just gotten his license. Now he runs an import shop and drifts...



One subframe for me, the other for Ozgur, who cracked the ears off his rallying (on the white 318 shell that I gave him a couple years back, as you may recall)...



I had originally gotten a free subframe from another local buddy but he didn't realize it already had wrecked mounting ears and was in bad shape:

So yeah, not gonna use that...



The new subframe I got had already been reinforced with some seam welds at open seams, and also powdercoated.



Before using it, I am going to further reinforce everything. This is also going to be the setup to mount my new skidplate H-Frame to increase its strength. More on that later once I get fabbing.

Also got in a set of new front control arms. I've had the same arms on this car since the original build 8-9 years ago and they're holding up fine (they had Moog balljoints pressed in at the time), but probably time to replace them. Got the Lemforder ones, which generally seem to be the best-regarded ones.



Interestingly, they are a lot more heavily built than the (stock) ones on the car, with less "holes" and a thicker casting. Curious.



So that's it for the moment. Some things going on in terms of strengthening. More later.

[irish44j]

I keep forgetting to update this thread since my primary write up is on Grassroots Motorsports forum (catch up on the things I've done recently here: https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/fo...3/#post2786713

So quick recap of stuff you can see details/photos of at that link:

1. We signed up for STPR and will be servicing alongside Cooper/Stephens M50 e30, Tony Zanni's VW, and Rob Pepper's Porsche 944. An all-German vintage crew.

2. Got another new subframe (not the one above) in better shape, fully reinforced it, installed with new control arms and lollipop bushings, etc.

3. Built and installed a new skidplate brace/frame

4. Made some new splash guards and improved the underbody protection

5. Installed some LED cornering floods under the front bumper.

So, I'll try to get back to posting my carbon-copies here going forward. Apologies to those of you following this thread, but please go catch up on the other forum if you want to!

[formyhealth]

Nice work as usual!

[irish44j]

Spent today finishing up some projects that I've been meaning to do.

First the sloppy shifter. So, the Z-3 shift lever is two pieces. There is a lower part (that has the pivot ball) and that goes inside an upper part, and there is rubber filling the area between the two pieces (to reduce vibration). Over time the rubber on mine has worn out, causing a lot of slop in the shifter (even though everything else in the linkage is using hard-durometer bushings), which was just annoying.



A new Z3 shifter runs about $120+ so forget that, let's investigate things:

After heating it with a torch, I managed to separate the two pieces.



Then shaved most of it off, except for the very tip (which I kept there for positining)



Then, got my hands on some 80A liquid urethane (same stuff I used for the Porsche transmission mounts, incidentally.



Then mixed it up and poured it in, and set the shifter in a vertical position for a day until it dried





So, it's back in the car now and feels really good. More direct than it was even when new. So, that was a successful repair for a fraction the cost of buying a new one.

--

Second project has been to make a better "trunk system" for rally. Already decided to stop carrying the aluminum racing jack and just carry a scissor jack (with or without impact knurl, TBD). I've always been a fan of the way Brian Battocchi has the spare/jack setup in his Subaru, so took that idea and more or less copied it, with a few changes.

To make it work, I had to lift the spare up a bit, since if it sat flush in the spare well like stock, the straps wouldn't have enough leverage. So, cut up an old ski tuning rack to get some square bar and welded them in:



Annoyingly, I ran out of Argon right as I started and can't get more on the weekend, so had to bust out the flux core...And .035, which is thicker than I would have liked using for this, but whatever...



Test-fit of the larger Federal FedeRallyl tires to make sure they fit fine, they do.



A $15 SFI-certed window net:



On the back end, ran some 3/8" steel rod through the loops and held the rod with a pair of eyebolts right across the back of the trunk, with pins/washers to hold it in. SO this is the "base" of the system.



At the other side, we'll use cable. So got some coated cable and swaged some eyes. This end will hook to an eyebolt up toward the mid-front of the trunk on the passenger side.



On the other end of the cable is a ratchet. So, cut out the original strap and drilled out the original pin that held it, and replaced with a bolt and nut. Now, since there isn't enough clearance to run the eye loop "into" the ratchet body, I had to make up a little metal "extension" to give it enough space.



So, with all that set up, here's the arrangement:

Empty bay (the net won't be like this in actual use when open)



Test-fit with one of my mini wheels (imagine a tire is on it). It will sit upside-down so I can put the spill kit inside:



Then the "soft-surface plate" for the jack (i.e. when jacking on sand or something, need a big base), cut to fit on top (now using one of my snow tires, I was testing to make sure everything fit). Jack just gets stuck on top in whatever position we throw it there in. You can see the net in the "open" position here, with the steel rod attached and only the front left hook open. Since the cable bends, it swings out of the way against the rear of the trunk, entirely.



And then just pull the net over, hook the ratchet-end of the cable, tighten, and everything is held in place securely, and can be taken out by simply popping the ratchet strap handle and unhooking one corner.



So, hopefully we don't get a lot of flats, but if we do this should save a good 30 seconds on tire changes on stage, if necessary, compared to the old setup (if not more). Time is time.....and I put a good bit of thought into this for once, lol. Took Brian's idea and think I improved it a little bit.

[econti]

Didn't know the shifters were 2 piece.
Do you think it'd be possible to turn a piece on a lathe to make it all solid, then weld together? I will do something to mine before it goes in the good car

[irish44j]

Didn't know the shifters were 2 piece.
Do you think it'd be possible to turn a piece on a lathe to make it all solid, then weld together? I will do something to mine before it goes in the good car

I'm not sure if all of them are or not. I lent my OEM e30 one to a friend at a rally last year so can't check, but he swears it's all solid, with no rubber. But maybe he's not looking in the right place, IDK.

I don't see why not, as to lathin. Though the upper section of the shifter is aluminum and the lower section is steel. So then you need to determine how much weighting you want. I assume this is like this to give whatever throw weight BMW determined was best for the Z3....

[econti]

The one I have is either Z3 or E60 M5, I can't remember which. I'll definitely have a look then, thanks.

[irish44j]

wow, really not a fan of this new layout here. Also makes it harder to actually find my own thread and get to the end of it.