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

Last weekend I went out to Summit Point Motorsports Park with the rally car for the "Refrigerator Bowl" - which is basically an autocross but on several of the road course tracks. No cones, no course working, basically each run is about half of one of the tracks, with a few curbed chicanes to keep speeds down. We ran on Jefferson circuit (which I had never run) and Shenandoah Circuit (which I have hundreds of laps on, but it was reversed-direction for this, which was weird).

Car went out "as-is" except with the swaybars on, and my 5-year-old 195-width Star Specs. The courses were a lot of fun and out of 80 cars out there (almost all of which were either "sporty" daily drivers or autocross cars) I actually finished 40-something on Jefferson (more open course where my lack of power showed) and low 30s on Shenandoah (a more technical course where handling is rewarded).

Here's some vid of the two courses in case you're interested:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUVwGqbZ5MQ&t=2s

And some pics:

Alan Claffie caught me running up the hill on Jefferson

Off-camber, over a crest, in a rally car = wheel gapz!

A couple of the rallycross e30s on the tarmac

And some BMWs better suited to the tarmac

New Focus RS, and a CAM car...nice

At lunch went down and watched some action on the Main circuit

Anyhow, that was fun, and was also a good prep for the NJ rallysprint coming up, which is half on a paved track, and half on a dirt motocross course next to it. Decided I really dislike front sway on the track too with this suspension (and definitely on the dirt, as previously noted), so today took it off entirely. Rear I'll leave on and just disconnect one side.

WIth temps dropping into the 40s, today was a good day to switch over to the winter tires (Altimax Arctics) and hide my Star Specs away out of the freezing weather. I also ordered up two more Altimax Arctics so I'll have 7 total wheels/tires for the rallysprint and Wellsboro Winter Rally in February

Also, the black 924, now stripped of everything I wanted, went away last week. Two fellow rallyists - Robert Pepper, who lives near me, and Charli Tameris, who lives up in NY - took it for use as body/glass spare parts for their 944 rally cars. This is kind of a quid pro quo for me that I'll be able to get parts from them in the future (especially interior stuff that they don't need for their rally cars).

Their German rally cars are pretty sweet too

Backwards thru the "pistol grip" must have been fun! Even more blind apex than the usual way.

Hal wrote: Backwards thru the "pistol grip" must have been fun! Even more blind apex than the usual way.

For sure, and unlike an enduro, you don't get a bunch of passes to figure out where the blind line was. I lost the rear end more than once coming through there. It was still fun, but pistol grip the normal direction is one of my favorite parts of any track on the east coast.

Last weekend we towed up to Englishtown, NJ for the inaugeral NASA Rally Sport rallysprint at that location, organized by William Petrow (known for his combination drift-and-rally 240SX, among other things). Unlike many other rallysprints, this one was set up at Raceway Park, using both the road-course track (usually used for track days and drift events) as well as the large motocross complex next to it. The layout was a 2-mile overall course, with about 50-50 on paved and dirt, starting and ending on the dirt section with the track section in between. The track has a number of setup options and the organizers set it up with a number of chicanes and tight features to limit top-end speed (since nobody would be on track tires). Indeed, we were torn between running snow tires (which would have more grip on the tarmac) and gravel tires (which would lack tarmac grip but be much better on the rough dirt areas). For the dirt areas, we didn't use most of the large motocross jumps, instead the course was routed around the big table-tops with a TON of technical features both fast and slow speeds. It was substantially longer and more complex than any rallycross course I've ever been on, exacerbated by the fact that the big tabletops and jumps obscured most turns so you couldn't "look ahead."

Some pictures of the track and dirt areas:

Because of the long course and blind options, there were classes for both solo drivers and for "with navigator," so Jim came up to call the notes. There were no notes made, so he jotted them down during a recce run (both directions), and overall they worked pretty well (aside from one turn that we called out wrong on the notes and proceeded to repeatedly take too fast until we remembered to fix it). The course had a few small jump areas, some banked areas, and several kicks and ran in some places right along the fenceline and other large obstacles. Not as much crash danger as a stage rally, but a LOT more than a rallycross - which is why only logbooked rally (and track) cars were allowed to run. The track section, of course, had concrete walls as well as tire walls and some other obstacles (tires and giant foam blocks).

The night before we unloaded and then had a few beers in the on-track "bar" which is really an old barn with some heaters, lol

Parked with Petrow's 240SX

The turnout for this event was about 20-25 cars, amost all of which were experienced rally drivers - including some of the fastest guys in the region like Jon Kramer (Impreza), Paddy Brennan (Evo), Barry McKenna and Michael Gillespie (Mk1 Cosworth Escorts), Lajos Jonas (M3), Brian McNamara (Impreza), and a bunch of other cars, including Alex Jagger and Ryan Symancek in Alex's 240SX Drift/Rally car, and Tad Uzzle in the Mazda2 that we ran against at the winter rally last year. Also there was a local (Bobby Calhoun) in his Lexus V8-swapped 240SX drift car. Bobby was actually suprisingly fast in the dirt areas and very fast on the tarmac, but eventually hit a wall at high speed and wrecked the car near the grandstand area. For the most part, there was only minor damage to other cars (some bashed fenders, lost bumpers, etc) other than Constantine Mantoupolis's beautiful vintage Audi S2 rally car, which had a mechanical breakdown on the recce lap and couldn't run.

You can see Jonas's M3 and Contantine's Audi in the background

Also a Ken Block clone and a legit Lancia Delta were there hanging out

We started out a bit cautious, and the e30's low power was a real liability on the tarmac track, especially with the lack of traction through the corners with the skinny rally tires (which did allow us to do some drifting, at least). As the day went by I got a better feel and we were more confident in both the track and blind dirt areas - and we were happy to see that every single run (a total of 11, each about 4 minutes long), we were faster by a few seconds, and never had a run slower than the previous. So that's always the goal, right?

Werkes Automotion photo

Emanual Mozes photo

In the end, we finished 11th overall and were only about 10% slower than the fastest cars out there. Granted, a lot of the drivers were there for seat time and were doing a bit of showboating - but it's not like rally drivers to just let off....and on our later runs once we got in a groove we were pretty competitive with most (though not all) of the 2WD cars out there. More importantly, we didn't break anything on the car and got a lot of experience using it on the tarmac surface with the gravel tires, which may come in handy later.

Emanuel Mozes photos

Chris Ludwig photo

Stephen Nichols photo

Also thanks to Stephen Nichols and Amanda Pemberton for coming out in the cold and wind to crew for us. Happy that you didn't have to do any fixing!

We did miss out on the final DC rallycross the day after (too much towing and too much stuff to do at home, so I had to bail on it. However, since I already clinched season points for the class, at least it didn't hurt the season effort). Next up: Wellsboro Winter Rally in February (unless anything local/interesting comes along in the meantime!)

Also here's a video of the course at speed. Sorry, forgot to crop it so just skip to about the 3-minute mark

https://www.youtube.com/embed/OKEx_foymE0

Also, here's some great drone footage of Paddy Brennan's evo running the entire course, if you want to see what it looked like in full

https://www.youtube.com/embed/o9e027Cjpc8

The guys with the pickup on top of the table top jump must have had a cool view. Love the drone video!

NGTD wrote: The guys with the pickup on top of the table top jump must have had a cool view. Love the drone video!

Yeah, that was Gary DeMasi, who normally rallies a V8-powered Ford Ranger but didn't have it ready for this event so he was doing Heavy Sweep instead. It was fun watching him drive up and down that hill in that big beast :)

Wow! That video is awesome! And the facility looks a bit like heaven!

That looks like it was a blast!

It figures that the one time somebody schedules an event near me, I have to be in St Louis while it's happening. Looks like a ton of fun, hopefully they run it next year.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wrote: It figures that the one time somebody schedules an event near me, I have to be in St Louis while it's happening. Looks like a ton of fun, hopefully they run it next year.

Petrow sounds like he has a good relationship with that venue and has plans to run a number of future events there, so you should be in luck.

That does look like an incredible venue, long runs too!

irish44j wrote:

NGTD wrote: The guys with the pickup on top of the table top jump must have had a cool view. Love the drone video!

Yeah, that was Gary DeMasi, who normally rallies a V8-powered Ford Ranger but didn't have it ready for this event so he was doing Heavy Sweep instead. It was fun watching him drive up and down that hill in that big beast :)

Is Gary fixing the Ranger? I saw a post from him after ESPR that alluded to him being done with Rally.

NGTD wrote:

irish44j wrote:

NGTD wrote: The guys with the pickup on top of the table top jump must have had a cool view. Love the drone video!

Yeah, that was Gary DeMasi, who normally rallies a V8-powered Ford Ranger but didn't have it ready for this event so he was doing Heavy Sweep instead. It was fun watching him drive up and down that hill in that big beast :)

Is Gary fixing the Ranger? I saw a post from him after ESPR that alluded to him being done with Rally.

Not sure, he wasn't saying and I didn't want to pry. As Gary always is, he was too busy telling lots of stories and giving lots of advice :)

How rutted/choppy did the dirt get by the end of the day? I may try to bring some RallyMoto shenanigans to the February event.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wrote: How rutted/choppy did the dirt get by the end of the day? I may try to bring some RallyMoto shenanigans to the February event.

It wasn't very rutted at all, the surface held up well. There were a few sketchy areas, but thy were places that were still wet when we started, and very minor. That said, there was only one rallymoto guy there and he certainly wasn't going very fast and I remember someone else talking about how it was not a course for bikes, which I would totally agree with (though, then again, I don't moto, so maybe I'm wrong). A LOT of tight stuff and few places to really be able to open it up on a bike in the manner that you maybe can with a car. Also he looked very cold with all the standing around between runs, lol...

IDK, you saw the video above though, so maybe you can tell.

You should just push faster on the car and do this an WMWR back to back like we tentatively plan to do in Feb .

In reply to irish44j:

I'd be bringing a pretty low-power bike so maybe the tight course would work in my favor, and I've got heated gear so not super worried about the cold.

We'll see if the car is ready by then, I'm trying to come up with backup plans so that I can avoid rushing- I'm still working on the thing all weekend every weekend but it needs the seam welding finished, brake and fuel plumbing, trans swap and diff swap all done before it goes back on the road. I can have that all done by Christmas if you want to pay my salary so I don't have to spend 60 hours away from my garage every week

lol, pass!

It wouldn't really matter if the course worked in your favor anyhow, since you'd probably be competing against yourself, lol. Perhaps you could rent Alp's e30 for the winter events? As far as I know he's not doing anything with it, and it's not the best build in the world, but should be fine for WMWR and/or a rallysprint. I think it even has snow tires on it. IDK...

The video looks pretty awesome - I forgot what an unboosted M42 sounded like power-wise, haha. Do you still have the stock E30 steering rack? It looks like you would benefit immensely from a Z4 rack from watching your hands. Making me want to build an E30 rally car!

gearheadE30 wrote: The video looks pretty awesome - I forgot what an unboosted M42 sounded like power-wise, haha. Do you still have the stock E30 steering rack? It looks like you would benefit immensely from a Z4 rack from watching your hands. Making me want to build an E30 rally car!

its an e36 rack, and I'm pretty happy with the ratio. On dirt I don't want it much quicker, to be honest. I'm just a bit sloppy with the hands lol...especially transitioning between surfaces like that (and rally tires do not grip AT ALL on cold tarmac!). That course had about 5 different surfaces so it was a constant adjustment, hence the bad hand-work :)

Also remember that on the dirt, it takes a lot more steering angle to turn the car since there is side-slip....so the wheels are turning much sharper than any given turn angle. If I took the same turn on grippy tires on tarmac, there would be a lot less steering angle. It's hard to see in the video, but I'm at full lock on a number of occasions. It's not the rack being too slow, it's just there being a lot of steering inputs!

I also run power steering, so not sure if a Z4 rack is compatible with that (aren't they non-powered with an electric assist?). For road racing an unpowered rack is good, but I definitely do NOT want that for rally. Just too much work. We do 10x as much steering in rally as we do in our road racing e30 (also with e36 rack).

In reply to irish44j: obviously my experience is limited with rally/rallycross driving, haha. Good point about slip angles. I only really know what it's like on sticky tires, and that's what I look like in the Lemons car with the stock E30 rack. Good point on the power steering too; I never would have thought of that.

Yes, the Z4 rack is a manual rack, with electric assist mounted in the column above the rack. Sounds like you're not the right audience for that rack, but it allows pavement pounders like myself to run manual steering without dealing with potential torsion spring breakage in an unpowered E36 rack.

gearheadE30 wrote: In reply to irish44j: obviously my experience is limited with rally/rallycross driving, haha. Good point about slip angles. I only really know what it's like on sticky tires, and that's what I look like in the Lemons car with the stock E30 rack. Good point on the power steering too; I never would have thought of that. Yes, the Z4 rack is a manual rack, with electric assist mounted in the column above the rack. Sounds like you're not the right audience for that rack, but it allows pavement pounders like myself to run manual steering without dealing with potential torsion spring breakage in an unpowered E36 rack.

Yeah, I think it has been discussed at one point with some e30 track guys (I also drive with my co-driver Jim and a couple other guys on their chumpcar/AER team, which is an e30 (325i w/e36 rack). Pretty sure it's out of Chump budget though.

Today we registered for the Wellsboro Winter Rally, an SCCA event. This is the one that had no snow (and lots of rocks) last year, so we're hoping for more snow this time around!

IN the meantime, we had a 60 degree day here today to bring in the new year, so that meant car work!

First I went to do the inner tie rods on the e30 and discovered I ordered e36 inners instead of e30 inners.....I have an e36 rack, but use e30 tie rods. So delay on that one!

Instead, I set up my new purchase, an 18" cherry bomb. On stage and track, the car is just too quiet. I can't even hear it with the STilo helmet on, and I like to hear it. But on the street I want it relatively quiet and not droning. So the solution was to cut off the muffler and weld in a flange on both the car-side pipe and then matching flanges on both the cherry bomb and on the muffler I already had on the car. After a couple hours of work, here's the result....the CB sounds good, like a 4cyl race car should sound. I also sedt it up so both would still use the factory exhaust hangers.

and with the old muffler back on

Also did some work on the WRX.....new rotors and Hawk HPS 5.0 pads. I've used HPS for years, and the 5.0 is just as quiet, but has a LOT more initial bite. I really like them in the little bit of driving I've done on them so far.

yeah, it was time to replace

On the downside, I confirmed the WRX steering rack is leaking from the input seal (145k miles, and this is a problem that usually happens a lot earlier), so will probably get a reman rack for it and try to make it last 50k more miles before I look for a new car...

Not much to update other than we are now licensed/registered for American Rally Association (ARA) - So now that we've done that, we're pretty much locked in to doing STPR rally (the big one) this summer, since it's the only ARA rally in the mid-Atlantic.

The last few weeks have been spent working on the Porsche project and repairing various things that are starting to go wrong with the WRX at 150,000 miles (steering rack, center diff, turbo inlet, etc).

But today I did do something I've been meaning to do for a while. In past events, especially when running lights (particularly if the heater or engine fan are on) we've gotten a voltage drop with the stock 60A alternator where we weren't getting a positive charge. Since we're running some considerable amperage, that's one thing I wanted to upgrade. After a bit of research I figured out that the stock 105-amp alternator from the 92-94 e36 318i (the M42 cars) is a direct fit but with substantially more amperage.

So, picked one up a Delco unit and installed. With all accessories running (all lights, fan, heater, etc) still charging almost 14v on my voltmeter, so that's exactly what I wanted.