1985 BMW 318 Stage Rally Build - 1988 Porsche 924S Street Build - Sequoia Build

So we are prepping for the ChumpCar 12-hour at VIR next weekend. Well, the guys are prepping the car. My task was trailer. So Jim and I bought a trailer. Gatormade 16-foot lowboy, full-deck, so I can also use it for utility stuff and sell my smaller utility trailer. Once that's done I'll buy out part of Jim's share of this one and it will be "mine" with a perpetual "open usage" by Jim and the guys for races I don't go to.

I'm not going to trailer the rallycross car for the moment, but if I go to some farther events like Southeast regionals, I probably will.

Anyhow, here it is. Got it for around $1800, it's a 2010 model with electric brakes, breakaway kit, and a little storage box (not pictured). Should do nicely. Since I don't much want to use the stake pockets for tiedowns I'm installing some big D-rings from tractor supply. Bolted in for the moment but we'll weld them as well. They're set up for angles that shoudl be best for attaching the straps to the e30s. I'll also install a big eye-bolt at either end to run safety chains in addition to the ratchet straps. Can never be too safe when towing!

Nice! Good luck next weekend! If you guys are looking for crew in the future, let me know.

You mean if you go to further events like nationals you will trailer it right?

EvanB wrote: You mean if you go to further events like nationals you will trailer it right?

no, mostly I mean SE regionals since it's only a 5-6 hour drive for me. As long as nationals remain out in BFE midwest, it's unlikely that I'll ever go. For that cost of fuel, lodging, and time to go to nationals I could do an enduro race at VIR or Summit in our track e30....a much better cost/benefit proposition for me and about 50 times the seat time for the same overall price. Moot point this year anyhow. Too many things going on and no spare budget for nationals (or probably for SE regionals).

But don't worry, Chris Nonack will go to nationals this year from WDCR MR, so I'll be able to judge "how I'd do" to some extent by how he does, since he is one of the top MR drivers locally.

More importantly, when are you going to come to a WDCR event now that we're out in Frostburg? It's a 3-hour drive (or more) for most of us in this region to get there. It's only 4 hours for YOU to get there from Columbus. :D

bluej wrote: Nice! Good luck next weekend! If you guys are looking for crew in the future, let me know.

Will do. We're running at Summit Point in June. You'll meet Jim at the next rallycross probably, so definitely bring it up!

irish44j wrote:

bluej wrote: Nice! Good luck next weekend! If you guys are looking for crew in the future, let me know.

Will do. We're running at Summit Point in June. You'll meet Jim at the next rallycross probably, so definitely bring it up!

Sounds good, thanks!

still getting stuff ready for VIR. In the meantime, our new "team" stickers came in....A bit more basic than in years past, but I didn't have much time to design them, so whatever...

So it’s been a busy last couple of weeks. First, a few new photos from the last rallycross taken by AJ at Squared Away Photography, who came out to our event as he often does to take good action shots.

Now, on to the next thing…..trailer. Me, Jim and Stephen (who I rallycross and run Chumpcar with) went in together and bought this trailer. It’s a 2010 Gator-Made 16’ lowboy. Pretty nice overall, but had a few problems (some of which we knew of when we got it, others that we figured out later). First: the ramps are short. Loading for Chump at VIR we actually got one of our harness bolts stuck on the back of it and bent it to E36 M3. Not enough clearance. So we took four 6-foot 2x8 boards to make loading better. More on the trailer later, though.

First, time for Chumpcar. We took the ETA to Virginia International Raceway (VIR) for the 12-hour event there. This was a 60-70 car event, and among the usual Chump/Lemons teams were some other drivers: The Labonte brothers (NASCAR), driving an old Crown Vic painted as a police car; Ken Schrader (NASCAR) driving an old Camaro, and road-racing legend Randy Pobst driving a beat-up Miata with a 1.8 Escort swap.

I won’t bore you with too many details, but the weather was foggy/rainy for most of the day. We ran VIR South Course, which is a ton of fun with a lot of elevation changes. Our ETA is one of the slower cars in the big Chump races, so we try to do well by not breaking and not crashing. I drove first to start and it was pretty slow due to rain and freshly-paved track, with tons of cars off in the grass. In any case, we ran 4 drivers in 1.5-hour stints and finished all 12 hours with no wrecks (though Jim spun into the grass a few times). Only mechanical issue was warping our brand-new Frozen Rotors about an hour into the race. WTF. We changed to some used Autozone cheap-o rotors and they were fine for the rest of the race. Frozen Rotors….FTL!

In the end, we finished 28th overall, which is pretty good considering most of the 35+ cars we beat are faster than our ETA. My highlight: passing Terry Labonte on the inside of a corner (he passed me back on the straight, but whatever). My lowlight: during my afternoon session I got lapped. TWICE. By Randy Pobst in the Miata (which finished 4th overall despite breaking down with half an hour left in the race!). lol.

Anyhow, it was good times, and my first time at VIR. I’ll definitely be back. Some pics:

Waiting for tech

The Stig was there…kinda

This Z was so sexy…got a bit banged up on a tire wall though

Some say that he doesn’t have a face…Jim, our Stig.

12 HOURS DONE!

Rage Cage Racing

Post-race meal..

Then we get home and it’s sleet and snow while unloading. Yay.

Jim took a ton of “action” photos with his giant camera setup, so I’ll post some of those up later. These were just off my phone…

And back to the trailer. We found out a few things about it other than the short ramps: First, It tows nicely with the car positioned right. The Sequoia is a great tow rig too. Ran 4th gear all the way down and never downshifted for power. Never needed. And we got almost 12mpg towing, which is pretty damn good.

The tail-lights (in some bashed-up “armored” brackets) are brutal on the shins. Two of us got bloody legs running into them at night.

(with the light already removed)

So some trailer projects yesterday and today. First, did some cleaning and painting. We like a bit of style :). Then cut off the old light brackets. I’ll install some LED lights on the back lip that are more out of the way. Also relocated the license plate to the fender (will install a light when it gets here).

Cleaned up, ground smooth, painted, and also beveled the rear edge of the side rail so it’s not pointy http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j85/irish44j/Trailer/DSCF3245.jpg

Some flair…

Also used some old stainless steel L-bracket stuff I had sitting around to make a “rack” to hold our ramp-extender wood in place :)

Looks like a TON of fun! Great finish.

Is it really "cheap" racing? What do you figure your buy-in was all said and done? I've really been thinking about Chump/Lemons.

I have short ramp problems too. I carry two three inch thick cement blocks and drive the rear tires of the truck onto them when I get where I'm going. Makes a huge difference in loading angle and it's more compact than ramp extenders. Classy guys use race ramps or something similar to accomplish raising the rear of the tow vehicle, but I'm not classy.

Awesome stuff. Love the trailer detail. Can you start a separate thread for the Chump car stuff?

VWguyBruce wrote: Looks like a TON of fun! Great finish. Is it really "cheap" racing? What do you figure your buy-in was all said and done? I've really been thinking about Chump/Lemons.

Well, I'm not one of the car owners (two friends are), so I have no "buy in" per se. I contribute time, advice, assistance, the entire paint job of the car (took me a full week while my wife was out of town), and I tow to the races I go to (2-3 per year out of the 6-7 the guys go to). I also have good knowledge of e30s so I'm useful to have around at the track, I guess ;)

I'd guess that my expenses "per race" are somewhere in the $600 range including registration, share of tires and fuel, hotels, etc. Also depends on what race it is, how many drivers we have (either 4 or 5), etc.

I know that the owners have a good deal of upfront expense on the car (cage, fire systems, HANS, multiple sets of wheels, harness, seat, cooling system, etc). So it's not "cheap" per se. It's just cheaper than SpecE30 or SCCA racing or things like that - mostly because the cars are cheaper with less money invested in performance mods, and registration fees are cheaper.

I'd ask around the Chump forums for a better taste of overall expenses, though.

mazdeuce wrote: I have short ramp problems too. I carry two three inch thick cement blocks and drive the rear tires of the truck onto them when I get where I'm going. Makes a huge difference in loading angle and it's more compact than ramp extenders. Classy guys use race ramps or something similar to accomplish raising the rear of the tow vehicle, but I'm not classy.

One of the guys on the team is going to extend the ramps (he's a metalwork/welding guy), so hopefully it won't be a problem in the future :)

Adrian_Thompson wrote: Awesome stuff. Love the trailer detail. Can you start a separate thread for the Chump car stuff?

maybe. My main problem is that most of the work on the car is done when I'm not there, and the guys don't take many photos or document it like I do in my threads. So it would be a pretty boring thread unless they decided to get more involved (which I doubt). Plus I only go to a few events per year (maybe half of what the other guys do). I can hardly keep this damn build thread up to date :)

look up the John Allen Special team on revlimited.....that's a GREAT e30 Chumpcar/lemons thread, to be perfectly honest.

A week until the next rallycross, and car is ready to roll. I pulled out the little trailer as well to clean it up from its winter slumber and put the correct gear in it. Nothing too exciting there.

If anyone was wondering, the e21 has basically had nothing done to it all winter. HOpefully the warm weather will motivate me now.

In the meantime, finishing up the "big" trailer with relocated license plate (that won't get knocked off), a license plate light to keep it legal, and new side marker/reflectors in the rear and new LED brake/taillight/turn signal assemblies. Also cleaned up the wiring back there a bit and painted a couple "black boxes" on the rear of the deck where the ramps go for e30 loading. One less thing to deal with at the track :)

also did a bit of stenciling on the deck, just for fun.

back in its home and not cramming up my driveway. I plan to extend the fence in the next few weeks with a 10-foot gate so I don't have it totally visible there....

and garage spring cleaning. What a disaster area....

After randomly finding this websight via some searching for autocross related things i read this whole build thread and found it quite impressive. Now i have a huge urge to rallycross my DD. since my project will never see this kind of dirt beating!

Wow man, just spent the last few days reading this thread.....amazing work!! I want to go after work and see if I can pick up a cheap Neon/Sunfire/Golf and see what there is around here for rally-x!! Again, nice work buddy!!!

I'd lean toward the Neon first, they've done well nationally from what I can tell. Don't know much about Golfs, but the prepped one that runs with us is most certainly not fast.

Actually in WDCR the last two FWD champs have been a 2nd-gen Ford Probe and an old Ford Escort GT in the only classes that had any competition. Both were pretty damn quick, and well-driven.

This year the Civic hatches are taking over the FWD classes locally. Much like autocross, they are great for rallycross as well.

Where are you located?

Canada, northern Alberta

So all packed and ready for tomorrow's rallycross #2 at Frostburg where I'll try to keep this winning streak going against stiff competition.

More interestingly, there is some serious talk locally of a bunch of the MR crew heading to the Great Lakes National Challenge event in August, since it's not too far (5-6 hours for most of us) in Hebron, Ohio, and since it is a STRONG MR region looking, so we can see how we match up on some different surfaces, since from what I can see those guys race on more grass/dirt, which is an alien surface to us for the most part with our hard clay and gravel.

It's looking like maybe 5 of us (the top 5 MR drivers locally) may do it (me, Nick, Chris, Jim, and Josh S and maybe pick up a 6th) and take 3 cars (mine, Josh's turbo e30, and either Chris's monster mustang or Nick's e28) and do some co-driving. We're going to do some serious discussion about it at lunchbreak tomorrow at the event. Stay tuned.

So today was a really, really long day (up at 4:30, home around 8pm), so just a short synopsis of the day's events that I'll talk about more later in the week

1. I won this event by a hair (4.xx seconds) over Nick. We both drove well with no major mistakes, going back and forth in overall time. In the end, it came down to me only having a couple cones on the day, and him having a couple more.

2. Chris Nonack continues to be snakebitten by his cars. He laid down the fastest RWD (raw time) run of the day, but killed himself on other runs with high cone counts. He's still trying to tame that wild mustang (pun intended). Then his cooling fan resistor malfunctioned while in grid so the fan didn't come on, and he overheated the car. He retired mid-afternoon since he was a ways back anyhow and dind't want to risk any engine damage.

3. The courses today were fun, but also had some VERY rough areas. This is the first time I may have actually thought to myself "I AM going to break a control arm or debead, for sure." But I didn't. Worst thing I did was put a dent in the rear passenger floor somehow.

4. I hate brake dust shields. The catch gravel and make me screech all the way around the course. They are ALL coming off before the next event.

5. This car was a good suspension height for the smooth clay at Summit Point, but it is borderline too low for Frostburg and its deep gravel. Still fast, but I'd prefer to take less hard impacts on the underbody, and to spend lest time drilling my bumpstops. We'll see what I do about this. One voice says "don't mess with anything, you just won the first two events." Another voice says that is a reason to mess with things, with some margin for error now.

6. My HP fuel pump is buzzing loudly since our afternoon runs. NOt sure if it's going bad, or if the filter is maybe clogged with crap from the tank that got stirred up by the extremely rough course, or what. Same thing happened to the ETA guys today too....

7. I need to think about additional shock tower reinforcements front and rear.

8. I drove 280 miles today, much of it mountainous, towing the tire trailer; did 12 rallycross runs, and spent a good amount of time at idle in grid. I used a total of 12.5 gallons of fuel. By my reckoning that's around 23mpg all told. That's pretty impressive.

Here are a couple vids of today's runs. First one was my slowest run, and it's pretty clear why. Got out of the line, and out of rhythm from the start and spent a ton of time trying to recover the car (though somehow I hit no cones and still put up a pretty decent time). Worst steering form ever. crossed myself up everywhere, lol.

http://youtu.be/K_8ei8btpNo

And here's an exterior view of a better run, albeit with plenty of sideways still. The gravel at this venue is so deep and shifts around so much between runs (especially with the M4 cars running at the same time), sometimes the area that had good traction last run is now a washout area.

http://youtu.be/VrV-Z-3HyIU

Ok, so here's the rest of the last event recap...

A few of our MR regulars were missing this time, due to schedule conflicts or other reasons. Nonetheless, four of the top five points cars in the class were present (minus Josh Sennet in his turbo ETA), so while we're used to bigger MR classes here, the main competition was still present.

The first big improvement was the weather. 70s with "light" wind (at this venue, that means under 20mph). So that made everyone's morning much more pleasant than last month's arctic blast-fest....

The morning course we worked first and ran second, letting the entire field of AWD cars tear up the course, adding large ruts and bumps. The new venue is a lot of fun with a ton of space, but the deep gravel and substrate is going to take some time to compact down so it holds up better. Rome wasn't built overnight, and neither is a fresh rallycross venue in this case.

So on to our runs. The course was rough. Brutal rough, indeed. I can honestly say that this is the first time I've rallycrossed where I was quite certain that there was going to be a major suspension component damage (LCA, shock tower, or something). Spent lots of time on the bump stops, and took a lot of hard hits on the skid. In one area there were some less-prepped cars getting a big bounce into the air (the course was corrected soon thereafter). And there were a few places where the wrong line could very well lead to a debead, though I don't think anyone did.

From the start Nick was neck and neck with me in his e28, which he's added a few new things to and subtracted some more weight from. We went back and forth for the lead all morning, with me taking a 3-4 second lead into the lunch break ultimately (5 runs). I only got one cone all morning by some minor miracle (my video shows a ton of very near misses that were closer than planned). Nick had one or two also.

Chris in "the Beast-stang" once again had his hands full. The course had a lot of fast sections that entered into some very loose sections, especially if you went wide. For the smaller cars we managed to keep it fairly tidy (though I spent some time in the deep stuff myself)

Chris was having control issues though. Three cones on his first run and a whopping seven cones on his second. AFter that he laid down a couple fairly clean (+1 cone) runs with fast times and looked like he might be getting a handle on the car and the course (also had the fastest single raw time run of the day for RWD classes). On his last run of the day I'm not sure what happened but after a pretty dirty run he came sideways through the finish and punted about half of the finish box side cones, for a +8 on that run. Overall, he was running slightly faster times than Nick and I, but had 20 cones after the morning session (compared to 1 for me, 3 for Nick, and 1 for Eric in the ETA), so he was pretty much out of it by then.

I spent my last two runs with a rock in my brake dust shield, deafening everyone on course with high-pitched screeching for two runs (and annoying myself into a couple distracted sloppy runs).

In the afternoon, the course setup was better, going through a lot of "shrubbery" areas that were a bit more firm, but still with some deep, loose areas. I really enjoyed the PM course and it lent itself well to getting a good rhythm and dancing the car through the transitions. But Nick had the rhythm too and beat me on all of the first four afternoon runs. With us only separated by tenths of a second going into the 5th run, I tried to focus a bit more on my lines and knocked a full second off of run 5 and a further 1/2 second off of the final run (6). Nick seemed to plateau after his 4th run and his next to were more or less the same time, and I pulled off a win by 4.6 seconds overall.

In the meantime, after his first run of the PM, while we all idled in grid waiting for the next run, Chris's electric fan cut off due to a bad relay, and nobody heard it since his car is so loud. Unfortunately this resulted in the coolant massively boiling over. He went back to paddock and wired up a direct line for the fan to stay on all the time, added coolant in, and came back out to run, but apparently it was longer than the allowed mechanical break and he was docked a DNF run. Kind of a moot point since he was out of the running due to cones by that point anyhow, but kind of sucks to have insult added to injury there. After that he decided to call it a day and put the car on the trailer, not knowing if the engine was ok after the overheat and not wanting to risk it. That sucked because we love running against Chris to see if we can keep with him on raw time, in particular. He did stay to work the course in the second half of the session.

So that's the competition wrap, really. Eric is making progress on driving the ETA as well (for a guy who's had his license for less than a year, that's pretty good). And that car has new springs on it and looked better on course. Next event we should have closer to a full turnout, with some of the regulars hopefully coming.

The we went up a hill to take some photos of the cars and the venue.

and came down the hill...

So....I haven't taken any pics yet, but there was some damage/issues to the car from the beating the morning course laid down on it, and some things I need to do soon:

1. The rear passenger floor is dented in a few inches. I must have landed it on a pile of gravel or something. It actually popped the center "drain" panel out halfway and it was open about 3" when I noticed it. I was wondering how I was getting all that dust in the car during runs, lol. Shoudl be a pretty easy fix...I can pound it pack down and tack weld it. Not an issue.

2. Another issue is the high-pressure fuel pump is buzzing. Loud. I don't think that it's the usual "because it's dying" thing. I think the extra-rough course combined with me running a lower than normal fuel load (~1/2 tank) might have allowed some junk in the bottom of the tank to get sucked into the system. My visual inspection of the tank when I first set up the car didn't show any rust in there, but who knows. The plan this weekend will be to pull the rear filter and check that, check the pump screen, and check for other possible clogs. I didn't notice any fuel starvation on course or on the drive home, so hopefully it's just a minor issue. If not, I have another (used but working) HP pump that I'll throw in the toolbox in case this one dies.

3. The course broke my passenger mirror. Really. Didn't break the glass, but the mechanism that holds it in place is totally shot, so now it just points at the ground. That's annoying......

4. Cut those damn dust shields off.

5. Think about spacers to get me an inch or so of ride height. At this venue, this height is going to result in a lot of dented floors and who knows what else.

6. After my battery tray and the little cubby on the other side of the trunk were both about 3" deep in water after sitting for 2 weeks (a few days of rain), I need to redouble my anti-leak efforts around the trunk/taillights, and also make some drains. Thought I had all that solved last year, but apparently not.

And I'm sure I'll think of a few other things later. A few photos by Eric Helgesen...

ETA boys

Shawn/Katie and the RX-7 of doom

It has to be tow-started...but still took second in PR

It wouldn't be a rallycross if Jeremy Miller didn't lose his front and/or rear clip. On this occasion it took down a cone or two on its way off the car....

The Miester

Nick with his course-work goggles (much-needed)

2-1

Alp running in PR

Chris discussing the Stang

We roll R/V style

i love reading the updates in this thread, makes me want to try it!

hmmm, you've given me much to think about in terms of how much abuse this site dishes out. glad the weather was so much nicer. I spent sunday riding around cherry blossoms (hains point) on a bicycle with my parents and gf thinking about how nice a day it would be to rallyx!

a friend of mine in LA (state) is signed up for this: http://www.delta-scca.org/2014/04/28/triathlon-challenge/ how do we make one happen here?!

Interesting...we've thought about that before. I would imagine the WDCR autocross board would have to have some say in it. Karting would be easy, we do a karting competition at the end of the season awards anyhow. Though I woudln't want that included since some guys here (Adam K, for one) kart all the time and are very fast, whereas I never Kart, lol.

I've kind of been hoping we could do a rallycross+autocross weekend, would be fun. Problem is that some people have good tires (I have Star Specs for my street tires) where others probably use all-seasons. So it would involve more expense if one wanted to actually win the event...

Don't sweat the site. My car is lower than yours for one. There was a lot of banging around, but I didn't hear of anyone breaking anything, just minor things, other than a VW Golf getting a flat tire, which could happen at any venue. As the weather warms and the surface gets dry and compacted, I think that will be less and less of a problem.