25 hour at Thunderhill check in thread.

[Fooshe]

yep, The Great Pumpkin #28 was my car. We ran in E2 and took 5th out of 12 in our class. 39th over all. If the damn Miata's didn't use us as a guard rail, we would have podium'd in our class. We got his by a Miata and cost us 103 minutes behind the wall. We missed the podium by 53 minutes.

The nice part of the E30 is we could do stints of 2 hrs and 45 minutes if we wanted to with a 3.73 rear diff in the car.

The bad part is that it is a serious underdog in E3 unless you are cheating. In E2, it was still out timed per lap. But if you keep yourself out of trouble, you can stay out much longer and that will work out well for you.

It was great to meet Lance (finally) and some of the other Pro3 drivers that came to the event.

[Lance Racing]

I was just talking to my buddy about that, talk about one hell of a race! Even if you did have a dead reliable vehicle, I cannot imagine racing that track at night with that many other cars on track.

75 cars started the race, but at about 2am I noted "only" about 45-50 cars out on track. That number held pretty consistent for the rest of the race.

[go3go]

That being said, anything is possible in an endurance race..

One thing I am considering next year if I run my own car, is gearing up to try and gain some gas mileage. Perhaps going to a 3.42 or 3.2 something. The other option I had spoken with the other PRO3 owners about, is moving our cars to PTE; which we could actually get a few more mod's out of if we did..

That isn't a bad idea. The TFB "e30" was basically running the same approach (just with a massive fuel cell). They weren't turning crazy fast laps, but with less stops and less mechanical problems they did very well. It's nuts how many cars kill it in the first half of that race and then all of the sudden they're out.

[robgoesvroom]

I thought PRO3 was like specE30 with open suspension rules (except external reservoirs)? Not bad running 2:04s!

[djjerme]

From what I have seen the last few years, they do decent, but the Miata's do eat 'em up. As I said before, there is no competing with a well sorted PTE Miata. My buddies car that placed 3rd was a well sorted PRO3 car driven by some "outsourced" professional drivers. PRO3 cars have more power and better suspension than a SE30 (see differences in another thread) which they threw down a couple 2:04's vs. the fastest SE30 2:08.

That being said, anything is possible in an endurance race..

One thing I am considering next year if I run my own car, is gearing up to try and gain some gas mileage. Perhaps going to a 3.42 or 3.2 something. The other option I had spoken with the other PRO3 owners about, is moving our cars to PTE; which we could actually get a few more mod's out of if we did..

[priapism]

Yeah the orange car was a socal spec e30 effort.

How do spec e30s do in the 25? I know in the enduros down here (Buttonwillow) they're just crazy outclassed by the miatas. Like 5-7 secs a lap slower, with worse fuel economy.

I got some peeps buggin me to run the 25. Really hesitant.

[djjerme]

11th picture down, on the right, that it?

http://www.speedhunters.com/2012/12/25hr_thunderhill/

The orange "stepco" car was driven in part by Steve Foosh and a couple other socal spec e30 guys.
http://www.facebook.com/TeamThunderboltGreaseSlapper

Yep, that's the one..

Our car is the yellow and black E30 in the third photo. Hoping to get my car set up for next year if it works out.

[SkiFree]

From what I had heard, is they basically removed the entire superstructure of the E30.

11th picture down, on the right, that it?

http://www.speedhunters.com/2012/12/25hr_thunderhill/

The orange "stepco" car was driven in part by Steve Foosh and a couple other socal spec e30 guys.

http://www.facebook.com/TeamThunderboltGreaseSlapper

[go3go]

Go3go, were you guys running PTE? I am still not sure how that classes with the rest of E3.. The Miata Cage guys were running faster times than many of the E2 cars in their PTE "legal" cars (2:04?!)

Yeah we run pte for our sprint races. Some of those guys are running crazy fast times! I was seeing those 2:04's pop up and thinking the same thing (how "legal" some of those cars are).

[Nsquared97]

They should have a 25-hour event like this at Mount Panorama (aka Bathurst). Now that would be epic.

Jon

I was just talking to my buddy about that, talk about one hell of a race! Even if you did have a dead reliable vehicle, I cannot imagine racing that track at night with that many other cars on track.

[djjerme]

From what I had heard, is they basically removed the entire superstructure of the E30, and just kept the floorpan and the drive train. There was the roll cage and a couple fiberglass pieces to give it a front and rear shape (picture a Mini clubman with the top cutoff from the rear, and a Miata front end.) IIRC, someone mentioned it weighed something like 1500 or 1800 pounds... Crazy light.

Wish I had gotten some better pics.

Go3go, were you guys running PTE? I am still not sure how that classes with the rest of E3.. The Miata Cage guys were running faster times than many of the E2 cars in their PTE "legal" cars (2:04?!)

[go3go]

I don't know a lot about the race team. I know the guy who developed the car for production as a "kit car". I actually helped design some parts for the car. It's a pretty cool setup. Cord actually wanted to base the car on an e30 in the beginning but ended up going with the Miata for more modern suspension.
They did pretty good for it being the first outing for the car.

Absolutely, definitely a huge accomplishment to do as well as they did (not sure exactly how many laps they turned) with a pretty much untested car. I think they started it for the first time that morning.

The #2 E30 that finished fifth overall - Do you know what engine were they running?

I heard it was a built up m20, but I'm not sure how much validity there is to that. Supposedly they could run like 4 hours without a stop with the massive fuel cell they had. One of the drivers was saying he had to call for an early stop 3 hours in cause he had to piss too bad to keep driving haha

I saw that car one of the first times they ran it and it was super slow. Sounded like they did some work under the hood before this race cause they were running 2:02's.

[funcrew]

The #2 E30 that finished fifth overall - Do you know what engine were they running?

[Red46]

They were pitted next to us. Sounded like they got it together just in time to start the race haha I heard they were doing the wiring at the track. Crazy.

I don't know a lot about the race team. I know the guy who developed the car for production as a "kit car". I actually helped design some parts for the car. It's a pretty cool setup. Cord actually wanted to base the car on an e30 in the beginning but ended up going with the Miata for more modern suspension.
They did pretty good for it being the first outing for the car.

[go3go]

Our buddies that I helped crew for after ours died were running a pair of E30's (PRO3 trim) in E3, and took 3rd and 8th. Not sure how the other E30's (Anil's Red E30, and the Grey SpecE30 #80) finished, but I am pretty sure they crossed the checkered.

The red e30 has an s5x in it correct? They were paddocked next to us (I'm with one of the e3 miata teams, rj racing). Car looked really nice, but when our motor blew around midnight (snapped connecting rod blasted a hole in the block) they were in the paddock with a ton of oil on the top of the engine. Not sure what ended up being the problem.

Wish I would have gone. I know I guy who had a non-e30 car in the race (Miata based Catfish). Looks like there was a lot of e30s there.

They were pitted next to us. Sounded like they got it together just in time to start the race haha I heard they were doing the wiring at the track. Crazy.