¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wrote:
While everyone is having fun at STPR, I'm still here working because I have no vacation left after the RV trip!
I finally made Chief fully legal- technically the red lights and fire department decals could have gotten me in trouble, so the red lights got black plastidip, the white strobes got yellow tint, and the decals got removed. This was my first time using an eraser wheel, and I have to say it was $9 well spent- it took off 20 year old decals easily and left the paint looking better than before:
I also finally made a new lightbar for the rally car- I wasn't a fan of the halogens or the way they were mounted, so I made a rack out of some angle iron which mounts to two of the holes from the old bar, and two spot under the hood. The top mounts are low enough profile to close the hood over, and it's pretty beefy and doesn't shake at all:
The lower bar is the curved one that Brian gave us, and the two upper ones are supposedly ultra long range units- I've found that most LEDs throw a buttload of light but struggle to throw it far enough, so hopefully they do the trick. I have room to add more if needed, but I like that this arrangement doesn't obstruct the grille at all. It certainly seems bright in the garage:
I have a pair of those smaller "long range" ones on my car (replacing the big ebay bar I had). I foudn that they put out really good light and pretty good range at STPR super specials - the only time we really used them. Four should be even better :)
I fired the car up again after work today- the intake seems structurally sound but is still leaking slightly from the cracked area. I sealed it up with some butyl tape to confirm where my leaks were- I'll pick up some of the Steel Stick putty type epoxy to seal it up.
The technique I've had success with in the past is mixing the epoxy putty, then applying it with the car running and letting the vacuum both show me where the leaks are and draw the epoxy into the cracks. That will hopefully last until I can put the parts car engine or at least the Megasquirt on this car, since the parts car's fabricated intake is nice but lacks the bungs necessary to run with the stock computer.
what is the next rally you're planning on - BRS, ESPR, or NEFR?
BRS if possible, hopefully with rallycrosses before then- but we're moving in late July/early August and that's going to decide a lot of things for us in terms of time and budget.
Ah, right. Pretty sure BRS is the plan for us as well. And Ozgur is gonna debut his e30 there as well. And Alp sold his e30 to one of Ozgur's buddies. So we'll have a lot of RWD there :)
How far away are you moving?
Not far, possibly staying in the same exact town, but if the place we're trying to buy (currently under contract) doesn't work out it's going to be a bit of a scramble to find a new rental instead.
So, I've been driving the car a bit- apart from the taillights failing repeatedly (annoying) and the line to the manual boost controller getting a hole in it (26 psi!!!) it has been doing fine. I decided it was time to do something about the taillights, so I ditched the horrible 80s circuit boards that control them and attached small LEDs to the wires instead, then drilled new holes in the taillight housings and taped over the old ones. They seem to work well, hopefully they hold up better than Ford's original junk.
Then I stole Sara's fancy camera and tried to take cool pictures, but didn't notice it was on portrait mode so they aren't as good as I had hoped. Oh well...
I need to put some more miles on it with the East Coast Rallycross Whatever Championship/Not a Championship thing coming up in VA. The boost seems to be lower than before the broken MBC line, maybe there was a small crack in it when I last set it.
Me and you will have the oldest cars at East Coasts......both '85s. So let's win it ;)
In reply to irish44j:
It's going to be interesting to see how rusty I am- with this car I shouldn't really have a shot unless the courses are really fast and I'm not sure I remember how to dodge cones anyway!
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wrote:
In reply to irish44j:
It's going to be interesting to see how rusty I am- with this car I shouldn't really have a shot unless the courses are really fast and I'm not sure I remember how to dodge cones anyway!
IIRC there is an award for cone high score
Gaunt596 wrote:
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wrote:
In reply to irish44j:
It's going to be interesting to see how rusty I am- with this car I shouldn't really have a shot unless the courses are really fast and I'm not sure I remember how to dodge cones anyway!
IIRC there is an award for cone high score
^^^^ This would be my mission 
paranoid_android74 wrote:
Gaunt596 wrote:
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wrote:
In reply to irish44j:
It's going to be interesting to see how rusty I am- with this car I shouldn't really have a shot unless the courses are really fast and I'm not sure I remember how to dodge cones anyway!
IIRC there is an award for cone high score
^^^^ This would be my mission
Well, it certainly took Chris awhile to remember to avoid the cones. He got 20 cones in the morning 4 runs. 
Grand total at the end of the event was 25, which I believe was the most hit by anyone, although Bee Thao probably would have surpassed that had his RX7 not broken.
It was nice to meet you, Chris! I'm sorry I had to duck out of our conversation, but the cats needed herding to ensure competition started on time on Sunday.
Hey, look -- another XR! Looks good, man!
It ran well! Wheelspin everywhere, even with the boost turned down, combined with a welded diff and two years away from rallycross made things interesting for sure. On top of that, I was the first car on course so I got to experience the muddiest conditions on my decade and a half old Michelins.
I was dead last in the 13(?) car MR field until my very last run, when I caught up and grabbed second to last place 
My raw times were reasonable but it's hard to come back from nearly a minute worth of cones- but the announcers got a kick out of it and got to spend the whole weekend making fun of me for being such an asshat. The winner in MR was the awesomely lightweight 924 seen here:
All in all, it was a great weekend and it was fun to see all of my old DC rallyX friends and meet a few internet ones in person. The car worked well and didn't blow up, which was all I really wanted- I have to get it clean and up on stands to see whether anything is wearing oddly or loosening up since so much of what's under there was untested prior to the event.
A few more pictures courtesy of Josh (irish44j):
Stage rally car pits:
The SR field:
An excellent Civic:
Moxnix's glorious unicorn Miata on its' way to a PR win:
The PF winner/day 2 course designer in action:
The MA winner/king of DC region RallyX:
Paddock goobers:
Evening course testing:
E30 theft shenanigans:
Making a graceful exit:
Like I said, fun weekend
See here my special "all the damn cones" award:
Ian F
MegaDork
7/12/17 8:00 a.m.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wrote:
In reply to irish44j:
It's going to be interesting to see how rusty I am- with this car I shouldn't really have a shot unless the courses are really fast and I'm not sure I remember how to dodge cones anyway!
Imagine those cones are trees.
After the rallycross, the car developed a misfire above 4k rpm under boost- I spent the better part of two weeks banging my head against the wall chasing it. Plugs, wires, cap, rotor, coil, TFI module, VAM, TPS, oxygen sensor, fuel pump, fuel filter, every ground, every possible check or spare parts swap, and it was present and berkeleying unchanged every time. Luckily I had nearly all of those parts so all that was spent was my time (and sanity). Finally, as a last ditch "well it's the only stuff I haven't checked" effort, I pulled the fuel rail... and the injector nozzle for cylinder #1 disintegrated. Swapped on a spare injector, and the car is happy again- hooray!
SOUnds like my troubleshooting for the misfire/boost lean on the WRX recently....tried everythign that made sense and nothing worked. Then for no reason happened to jiggle the MAF connector and now everything runs fine again. It's always something dumb and always the last-ditch thing you check.
So, this hasn't been updated in a while since we've been busy moving- but Black River Stages is next weekend, and the car is hopefully ready. I've changed the oil, topped up the fluids, and put some more test miles on it, so with any luck we won't blow up or crash too early this year
Can't wait to see what you break at BRS! 
May all your yumps be free of triangles!
Man I wish I could make it. 
I think we may have found our oil pressure problem- this is apparently a common issue on 2.3Ts with high volume oil pumps. I need to determine what the solution will be, but the important thing I learned from this is that the rest of the engine is probably relatively OK, meaning that we don't have to be as careful with the one the rally car currently has installed at Black River 
