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

[irish44j]

Ok, well progress made this weekend with the wife and girls out of town. So I made a complete and total mess of the garage, but my work OCD kept me going basically all weekend (aside from some time to hang out with friends).



Saturday morning rolled up in the Porsche to Cars and Coffee, not because I love car meets (they're ok), but to meet up with Brian Batocchi to get a piece of DOM tubing for my dash bar. But since it was perfect weather and this is a moneyed area, there was quite a turnout of cars there....

So rolled up there with Jason





Brian brought his rally car













A few 928's and even another 924S (in not as good shape as mine).







The aircooled guys got there early for prime parking...



Then got back home and down to business. Welded the dash bar in, tying in the steering column support and a similar piece on the passenger side. It's been a while since I welded anything, so as usual some not-beautiful beads, but it'll do regardless (plus, it's mostly hidden).

So, with the bar in, I got the dash back in and started putting things together, fabbing up additional parts, and doing a ton of wiring and rewiring. Apologies I'm a bit short on "in progress pics..."





Joining the two dash pieces. I cut out the passenger side to a minimal dash, so as to have access for the bar to mount stuff









The more or less completed product





Windshield back in (never fun to get that spreader strip in, but I got a nice black one off the parts e30 to replace the yellowed/cracked one that was on mine previously)











Still have to re-install all of our electronics and do some accessory wiring, and a few other things. Jim will swing by this week to help out with that.

[irish44j]

Ah, to add to the post above, I actually did take some pics of the dash bar, I forgot. Big thanks to brian battocchi for cutting and notching it perfectly for me!

[econti]

Subaru ahead. Fantastic

[irish44j]

Exerpt from the carbon thread in GRM (this is Chris Nonack's post):

----------------------

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:
Wow, looks good!waffles What's the "Subaru ahead" light wired to?waffles

On your side of the dash, looks like a pretty sharp edge- I would make sure your leg can't get up there or it could make an already unpleasant crash a really bad time.

----------------------

lol, it's wired to the high beam indicator light :)

See, this is why I like to post pics, to get the thoughts of other crazy rally people lol. I actually took a palm sander and rounded every edge of every panel I made to avoid nicks, cuts, and bashes. That panel is actually pretty far back from the driver (farther than my old one). I just tested with myselfwafflesstrapped in, and I can't even force my leg to within 4-5" of it with all my strength - so if my leg does somehow hit that in a crash, my leg is probably already broken in a worse way lol. Point taken though, and I may think about putting something soft-ish around that edge - at very least maybe some door weatherstripping or something, ikd



Meanwhile....at WMWR we took some heat at tech for not having working reverse lights (they were working earlier that day, dammit). Assuming the switch was the issue, I just jumped the wires (conveniently they come up right in the shifter boot) to a toggle switch to get us through tech. ARA rules specifically say they light has to be activated by the shifter itself (not a switch), so got under the car today (removing about 20lbs of dried Summit Point clay in the process) and replaced the switch with one out of my spare transmission. Man, IDK how this stuff gets so dirty above my huge skidplate, but definitely had to take a big brush to it for 15 minutes...







This was the 5th pile...



And voila we have reverse lights again. Yay.

[irish44j]

Jim came over tonight to address "his side" of the car. His long-term plan is to build an assembly for all the electronics, but for now we will use the dash bar in front of him. In addition, since installed the tach has been super-bright at night, to the degree that on night stages I've just taped over it with duct tape, lol. So Jim brought his box 'o resistors and we wired one in to get it to a more reasonable brightness.



Then we stripped out all the old comms and GoPro wiring so we can more cleanly run them.



We decided to move the DME/ECU back behind the bar by the firewall to get it out of the way, so I figured out a way to securely mount it back there tucked up and safe from, well, everything I hope.



Then did a bit of cutting and found a perfect spot for our multi-port USB box (down on the left there), and mounted up our Stilo WRC comms box down on the bar (it was previously up above on the visor bar, but didn't fit well there and was hard to get to the battery access). Not ideal, but it'll work for now. Not like we need to adjust the volume often and I don't need to personally reach it from the driver's seat.



if you're wondering what's up with the dash bar weld at the right, it's just covered with some seam sealer and smoothed out nice so that our door window wiring harness can't chafe against anything since it kind of slides back and forth around that corner as the door opens and closes. Kind of ugly, I will need to think of a more elegant solution eventually (like, uh, just using the stock wiring routing, duh). It's on the list....

With a monsoon weekend of heavy rain coming, and me heading up to STPR, I decided to leave the Porsche at home :( and just drive the crew rig since it has lights and can get out of muddy fields - and doesn't leak. So stuck the Porsche in the garage with the e30 so they can hang out.

[irish44j]

Ok, last weekend i went up to Susquehannock Trail Performance Rally (STPR), which we ran in this year but this year saving our money for NEFR instead. This year I went up to help out with crew and volunteering, working with Brian Battocchi's Impreza and helping out with Alan Edwards' Neon, and also helping up in the timing tower. Though I've been to STPR several times, this is the first time I got a chance to hike out into the woods (well, not too far) to catch some of the far-away stages, to that was cool.

Anyhow, I'll just post up some of my favorite pictures I took because that's more fun than me just talking, so enjoy (sorry, they are totally out of order)

First night there we were up til almost 3am putting a new gas tank in Brian's Subie after his sprung a leak and failed tech....I did more supervising while the Subaru experts did the real work :)





Parc Expose

Downey's e30 and Alan's Neon



Higgins' SRT car



Stone/Noyes newly-built 318ti (and Amanda Skelly's new Impreza)



Louie Jonas's M3 is always good to see







With the rally masters....Rhoades and Moore



The Beliveau Boys in their supercharged Golf



Got a few good shots at the jump. Here's Sean Burke's CRX rebounding after landing



Edwards at service under storm clouds



Downey vs. Keanna at the super special



Got to watch from the tower with Tony Zanni, whose car was wrecked so he was doing the super-special announcing





ZERO CAR



Some of the fast movers



Brian and Neil



Jon Kramer and Jason Smith, who podium'd on both days, not surprisingly.



Helping Alan's wife Karen out crewing



The SRT team is a bit better equipped



More super special...the MK2's



Erik Pat's e30 (formerly Alp's, if you recall)





Seriously, there was a rainbow...



Jonas going huuuuuge



Barry McKenna, who was beating the Subaru Factory Team cars at the time



My Porsche buddies, Pepper and Mical



Downey and Brolin along with Erin Kelly



Not my shot, but Alan landed a bit nose-down



So, hope you enjoyed those :)

[ahrensNW]

Damn, looks like an absolute blast dude

[jeenyus]

awesome stuff right there!

[irish44j]

I know I'm far from the first to do this, but recently my 924S has been getting a mild "clunk" from the rear on upshifts to 2nd (and the occasional gear grind). I didn't feel like a transmission issue, and the CV axles are in good shape, bolted in tight, etc. Figured it must be the mounts. Note that on the 924S and early 944s, there are mounts on each side of the transmission, which makes it really easy to remove them as opposed to the later cars with the center-mounted bushings and require the subframe to be pulled.

Anyhow, this is a street driver, so after a bit of looking at what others had done I decided to go with 60A rather than the 80A that some people do. The goal here wasn't to get ultimate response, but to just improve the stock bushings (worn or otherwise) and get rid of the clunking.

Like many others, I got the stuff through McMaster for about 30 bucks.



After consulting with a visiting neighbor....



.....I pulled the old, nasty greasy/oily ones. Cleaned them up good and then scuffed up the rubber parts. They didn't seem all that worn or damaged at all, actually, I could make them deflect a bit by hand but I've seen many far worse bushings this style,



Then masked off with some tape and cardboard and mixed the stuff, filled it up and let it dry.....



Voila..





After a couple days I took it for a drive a little while ago and wow...significant improvement. Clunk gone, shifts in all gears are much more positive (note I already have all the linkage stuff from Only944.com), and no grinding gears on speed-upshifts or downshifts. Zero additional NVH that I could feel/hear.

All in all, a highly-recommended and easy upgrade for way less than the cost of a new OEM (or aftermarket) bushing.

[irish44j]

Ok, let's play some catch-up since we're leaving for New England Forest Rally (a 12-hour tow!) on Wednesday. So let's jump back to last weekend for the DC RallyCross double-feature weekend at Panthera tactical traning center in West Virginia.



Adam Moore and I with our matching shirts.


I missed the first event here, so hadn't seen it. But what I did see was the 17-car MOD RWD entry field full of fast-movers and fast drivers. Nick Drymalski won the first event here in his M3, so figured to be a power course venue.





Like I said, huge turnout, especially in our class. The weather was damn near perfect after all our rain-outs, dry with a nice breeeze.







Course-working gangstas



In actuality, the first day we used the "backside" of the venue, which was a long course but tight and technical, with tons of hills, off-camber turns, and blind crests making for challenging driving with little room for error. I tried to go out fast and did pretty well. Over the day we did 8 or 9 runs, though dust was an issue with the course winding around itself so you'd get multiple other cars' dust coming from other directions. Nonetheless, the course was made for my car and other than a couple early cones I drove pretty well, managing to finish the day in second place, 0.5 seconds behind Stephen Nichols in his 325i and with Matt Huffman in his Miata right behind me - and about 8 other cars within 10 seconds.





Everyone got together that evening at one fo the local houses and threw down a bit, talked rallycross and rally, and had a good time.



The next day, Adam Kimmett (our rallycross head and stage-rally fast guy) set up one of the biggest rallycross courses that SCCA has probably ever seen. Well over a mile long, using the frontside of the mountain with massive uphill climbs and rocket-like downhill runs, as well as a downhill hairpin back to an uphill, and then into a tight and technical section near the end. From the start I figured I was dead on this course, as the power cars would definitely gain a ton of time on the uphill sections versus my little M42. I went out hard again, but several guys were runnign faster than I was, even with clean runs on my part. Luckily, most of them could not keep it clean. Except Stephen. He was running a bit faster than me and ALSO clean, and quickly took a big lead over the whole class, well over 15 seconds at lunch break. Meanwhile, the rest of the field packed up in time, but somehow I managed to hang on to 2nd place at lunch, with several of the more powerful cars right on my tail. WIth the afternoon course reversed, I knew there wasn't much room for error. The car was running well and handling great so I pretty much just pushed it as hard as I could and trusted my hands to keep me off the cones. In the end, I couldn't reel in Stephen (though I cut the deficit in half) and I managed on the last couple runs to put a bit of space between me and the built 325i that was in 3rd to take 2nd on the season.

318i M10 power!


M10 2002 power!


So here's the final results in MR class:




So as it stands after 3 events, I'm tied for first in points with Stephen (one win and one 2nd place each), so that's not too terrible. We'll see how it shakes out from here on out.



Here's some video of the afternoon course....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LiGu0ZiHLI

Now on to prep for NEFR. Had a few things to take care of:

New passenger front bearing/hub



Rebuilt all four brake calipers since I haven't done it in a couple years. And replace the old fuel pump, which was covered in dried mud, ugh.



Also reinforced the fuel tank crossover pipe shield, since it's vulnerable to rocks and NEFR has lots of them.



Other little things, just getting stuff ready!

[econti]

The first shot in the field is very aesthetic.

Must say something about your driving if you're able to consistently keep ahead of the more powerful cars, even on a course which favours power.

M42 goon squad!

[irish44j]

The first shot in the field is very aesthetic.

Must say something about your driving if you're able to consistently keep ahead of the more powerful cars, even on a course which favours power.

M42 goon squad!

I'd like to think so, but who knows :)

Results in stage rally are much different though - even assuming I'm a decent driver, the M42 just is so weak on power it makes it hard to be competitive (and also my stage rally driving isn't as aggressive as my rallycross driving).

[irish44j]

Ok, let's see if I can get through a New England Forest Rally recap.....quite a bit to say and show.



Before I get started, here's a recap of the miles we spent in vehicles:
- 1,498 miles in the Sequoia towing
- 300 miles (approx) in Dan Downey's WRX for recce
- 250+ miles in the rally car doing transits
- 100 (?) stage miles in the rally car
- 2.5 miles being towed by Heavy Sweep
- 5 miles being towed by a van towing another car on a trailer
- 1 mile being pushed by above van
- 100 miles (approx) riding among the cargo in a v10 service van with no seats
= over 2,250 miles total over five days!

So yeah, my 22 mile commute tomorrow isn't gonna seem too long :)

Anyhow, here's the recap:

We left from DC area wednesday for a 13+ hour tow up to Team O'Neil Rally School to meet up with Dan Downey and pick up his WRX for recce. Also got a quick high-speed tour of the facility in one of the rally Fiestas they use there, which was fun.





Met up at our air bnb house a few miles from Rally HQ. we shared a house with Downey/Brolin in the e30 and Pullen/Erin Kelly in their Impreza (incidentally, they did an engine swap during the 2nd day of the rally in under an hour!!)



Good times were had...





Thursday was recce day...about 9 hours of long-haul driving in street cars and doing the stages at slow speeds to check notes, etc.









On to Day 1 one of the rally. We got nice placement at Parc Expose, right next to Ken Block's awesome Cosworth Escort RS



if you followed this rally at all (or car sites in general), you would have seen got in a wreck on SS3 and burned to the ground, sadly.





Downey/Brolin and us



Other teams look more professional (because they are)



Meanwhile, Josh S. was loading up the crew rig for service



I don't have any action pics yet, since I obviously couldn't take any, but here are a handful of my favorite pics from the stages (mostly on transits and before starts)











Day 1 went fine, though the 4th stage was cancelled due to Block's car setting the woods on fire, so we did a super-long transit on some back-roads back to service. Day 1 is the faster stages and with my car being slow and me not being very aggressive, we were pretty slow. Is what it is, but I'm still not very confident on fast stages with a lot of 5s and 6s. On the very first stage I overcooked the Right-4-minus at the spectator area, lost grip, and slid out into the shrubberies, having to back up and get going again. No damage, but definitely got me even more tentative.

Day 2, a much longer day, started at the crack of dawn...





Hooper's Lexus is so awesome..



I thought we picked up the pace a little, but were still only mid-pack on our class and slower than I'd like to be. Somewhere I went too wide through a hard left-hander and as I tried to accelerate hard with the car sideways, we went into the outside shrubberies and hit something hard. very hard. I thought it had hit the rear wheel, but as it turns out it hit the side of the car right behind Jim's seat area. We kept going, more on that later......





At the beginning of SS8 we were sitting a few seconds back of 5th place in class (IIRC) and I saw one of the class front-runner's cars broken (we would join them later). With a shot at the podium, maybe I pushed a bit harder in the super-rough and rocky stage, which we were running for a second time and it was even more torn up by the front-running cars. Hard rock hits everywhere, and for some dumb reason I didn't exactly slow down to the car's capabilities. About 3/4 of the way through, we came around a turn and plunged downward into a compression with a big rock in it. BANG! The hardest hit I can remember on the skidplate ever. I immediately thought of my oil pan, hoping the beefy 3/16" stainless skid and support bar took the impact. A turn later I was about to say to Jim "check the oil pressure gauge" since I couldn't see it while watching the rapid turns and roughness, and then the oil pres light comes on. Damn. Go aroudn the turn, see an open area on the left, and shut the car off and coasted to a stop.

Got out to put our triangles up the course so nobody would hit us, and there is a trail of oil coming from the turn all the way to where the car is, and a puddle under the engine. We're done.





Also noticed that our muffler had been ripped from the rest of the exhaust and some other big dents on the sides of the rockers/doors that weren't there before......

After waiting for the remaining cars to pass by, the Sweep team showed up and we got a tow over two more miles of rocky stage to the end



He dropped us at the end of the stage, while the other sweep truck was dropping Jesse Witsell's VW.



We were left there to await our crews (almost 50 miles away at service) to bring trailers....

Some local campers stopped by to provide beer and talk rally..



Eventually, Downey's van and trailer showed up to get Jesse (with someone "on the way" to get us since our trailer was at the house 100+ miles away)



But, since rally is rally, they tried to use the van to push us the 6ish miles to the main road to make it easier to find us.



Did that for a mile, but Dave was worried about airbag going off, so we hooked our car to the back of the trailer. Keep in mind the Van has no seats, so Jesse and his codriver were riding IN their car on the trailer, while we were being towed behind...





So we got to the main road, and eventually a guy we had never met, in a big white van, showed up to pick us up. Again, the van had only one passenger seat, so I got to ride for 100 miles or so on twisty/rough roads at high speeds back on some tarps and blankets piled on toolchests and tires and a Subaru bumper. This must be how they do it in 3rd world countries!







So, that's how our rally ended. We didn't get back to rally HQ until after the awards/party were pretty much over....



All in all, it was a good time, and disappointing to not finish (and to be so slow before that). We'd like to do it again sometime, but maybe when the car is built a bit more extensively and my driving is ...uh... not so sucky. The towing distance is pretty substantial too.....and at 10mpg towing, gas aint' cheap.

Left in the morning and towed 13 hours home....dropped Jim at the Rage Cage garage, and headed home to sleep....



Anyhow, thanks to our crew chief Josh Sennett (other crew couldn't make it) and the guys from other crews who helped us out (and whose names I forget some of), including the white van guy, an old-time rallyist named Dave. If you read this, you know who you are!!

I'll do a more detailed fix-up post later, but a few pics of damage....

[TeXJ]

Was wondering if you were at the race where the car went up in flames :(

[irish44j]

And some action pics! Thanks to the great photogs there!

Richard Bouchard photos:





DaggerSlade Media photos:









Andrew Pascarella photos:

(our weak-ass jump on Concord Pond)







Edward Best photo: