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**atxE30** · 01-15-2018, 03:55 PM

@irish44j,

OK, I hear everything you are saying. And I'm not giving up on rally. I had an absolute blast out at the Rally Ready facility. Loved the vibe. In a lot of ways it seemed very similar to the MTB scene I've raced in off and on over a long time, i.e. pretty chill.

I am a total newbie to racing cars. I'm not new to racing in general, done that in sailboats since a kid and bikes (road and mtb) for the last like 18 years. But cars? nada. I need to maximize seat time in racing scenarios in the near term as much as possible. For that I can race once a month in Miata's at track 30 mins from house in a field of 20+ and chump at least 4 times a year all within 2-3 hour or less drive.

The lack of rally events near me is a real issue. I've been in niche sports that required a lot of travel to compete forever, and right now just don't have the desire to do multi-day travel...yet...in the meantime i'll figure out a way to participate at the one or two events that are being talked about at the RR facility and pile on the seat time.

I'm hanging up the power meter and the zipp's after a long, long time to start down this path so i'll figure all this out sooner or later :)

In the meantime, I'm having a lot of fun working on the car! (and referring to your thread to keep me from doing a lot of stupid things...heh...)

**irish44j** · 01-15-2018, 05:06 PM

lol, got it. Is there no rallycross in Texas near you? I wasn't saying not to do Chump...we love chump. I was just saying that e30s aren't all that competitive any more in Chump, unless they are really built to the max.

I'm starting to lean toward trying to do "all motorsports" with my e30....especially if I M5x swap it at some point...I want to do wheel-to-wheel racing ont he track, ice racing, hillclimbs, etc in addition to rally. And the great thing is that the e30 is "good" at all of those things if not "great"....all it takes is swapping out wheels and some suspension stuff to be able to do different motorsports.

I'm really surprised in the lack of rally in Texas though.....all that freaking space! Sure, maybe less woodland rally but IDK why there isn't more baja-style rally out there (toned down for regular stage rally cars). That would be cool.

**atxE30** · 01-15-2018, 06:17 PM

Originally posted by irish44j View Post

lol, got it. Is there no rallycross in Texas near you? I wasn't saying not to do Chump...we love chump. I was just saying that e30s aren't all that competitive any more in Chump, unless they are really built to the max.

I'm starting to lean toward trying to do "all motorsports" with my e30....especially if I M5x swap it at some point...I want to do wheel-to-wheel racing ont he track, ice racing, hillclimbs, etc in addition to rally. And the great thing is that the e30 is "good" at all of those things if not "great"....all it takes is swapping out wheels and some suspension stuff to be able to do different motorsports.

I'm really surprised in the lack of rally in Texas though.....all that freaking space! Sure, maybe less woodland rally but IDK why there isn't more baja-style rally out there (toned down for regular stage rally cars). That would be cool.

I think I have a decent idea of what I'm getting into with the chump thing. With the car coming out of the blocks with a VPI of 450, there's not a lot of wiggle room to add stuff under the penalty bar. headers and free flow exhaust help (25 points), then i'm kinda torn between the z3 steering rack and strut bars. The cage tied into strut/shock wells maybe is enough to obviate the need strut bars?? Might also take the approach IE did with those re-enforcing plates that weld on to front strut wells. I can fab a set myself and call it garage mod.

W.R.T. rally in TX I was very surprised when I went looking for it here. It seems like it would be a great fit culturally, and good god, we have an **insane** quantity of gravel roads and in west Texas some of the roads would be nuts! I think historically there was more rallycross, now not so much.

Before I bought this car I found that youtube saga of some guys that bought an e30, set it up for rally, did a stage race then pretty much just swapped shocks and struts and wheels/tires and did a chump race. Thought that was great, and I keep that switch out model in the back of my mind when i'm buying gear. i think there's a little bit more to it than what they did to do it right, but i still can't see where it'd be more than a day to do the complete change out once you've done it a few times???

This car really does seem to be a Swiss army knife platform. Modularity is key to making that work. I think electrical is the biggest hurdle since rally has to be street legal and chump not, I have not stripped wiring harness yet. That's gonna take some thought...maybe separate dash/clusters that are swapped in/out with some kind of adapter for wiring harness that makes that simple...

**irish44j** · 01-15-2018, 06:41 PM