Gettin dat ass up in the air. 6 days until the next event :)
Gettin dat ass up in the air. 6 days until the next event :)
So, a bit of catching up to do.
First off, quick update on the (not actually mine) chumpcar. After the wreck at Summit last year, they guys have been on and off working on rebuilding it/grafting on a new rear end. A few weeks ago they decided that they want to do Watkins Glen later this month, so they crash-worked to get it done, and it’s done (minus some details and cosmetics). I can’t say I did much work since it’s not too close to me and my time is limited, but it’s good to see it ready to race again. Hopefully I’ll be able to jump in at a later race since I can’t do the Glen. A few pics pulling it out and I towed it up to Jim’s place so he can do the last-second finishing touches.
So some quick pics:
And with the M3
Minor part change on my car. My crappy home-built front strut bar use pretty thin metal and never fit quite right (since it was originally from an e36 before I hacked it up, lol) and used to contact the hood. I had some paypal balance, and Garagistic was doing a GD on M42-specific front bars that wrap around the back of the engine, for pretty cheap. So I just picked one up (non-powdercoated) and painted it up. It won’t make the car any faster, but sometimes you just need to get something non-ghetto.
Ok, on to WDCR event #2. A beautiful weather day in Frostburg, about the best we’ve ever seen. Also a big MR field with 9 cars (8 of them BMWs, plus an MR2). Some of the newer guys are pretty fast, and some of them have fresh tires and rebuilt B25 motors, so their cars are good and I expect they’ll be serious competition this year. Josh S. didn’t quite get the M52 swap done on his, so he skipped this event to finish it up so he can run it at the end of the month at Event #3 and then STPR the week after.
Anyhow…..morning course was as wide-open as I’ve ever seen, mostly because the wet ground was sure to rut up with anything tight (which it did periodically anyhow). But slaloms were wide enough to drive a truck through and the course was extremely fast almost all the way around. Pair that with a surface that felt looser than usual, or so it felt.
And Nick found perfect dandelions
Started off the morning neck-and-neck with Nick and Eric Helgesen, but the car felt extremely loose and I picked up a few cones with the rear end of the car, with it being a bit more frisky than I’m used to. At the break after 6 runs, I was about 3 seconds behind Nick with Eric nipping at my heels and new e30 rallycrosser Eric Eisele (he of fresh tires and freshly-rebuilt B25) also right there as well. Not too concerning since the afternoon courses tend to be tighter and I usually gain ground after lunch, typically.
And right on cue, first afternoon run was fast and I got a full second back. Now I will note that because of the wind direction, the “back straight slalom” area was getting dust kicked up and then blowing directly back down the line at the following car, but the breeze was light enough (rare for this place) that it wasn’t clearing out very fast. On the second run, Andy Thomas’s MF-winning celica kicked up a wicked dust storm and maybe the start spacing was a bit close (we tend to do tight spacing to get a lot of runs, and it’s usually great). In any case, I came around the first main left, where there is a kink-in cone, and I couldn’t see the cone at all until too late. I was on the wrong side of it, so hard on the brakes, hard right and then hard left to clip the cone and stay on course, and between the cone and the deviation it cost me about 5 seconds right there. Which pretty much sealed the deal, even with us getting 8 runs in the afternoon. But against Nick, anything outside of 5 seconds on the big Frostburg courses, and it’s over. In retrospect I guess I could have requested a re-run (Mike Golden said I should have), but I don’t want to be that guy who demands re-runs for anything short of a red-flag (ahem, certain competitors from past years), so I didn’t.
Cone…
In any case, I’ve taken to thinking of that line in Top Gun where Goose is like “Mav, that’s Iceman. They call him iceman because that’s how he flies: ice-cold, no mistakes. He wears you down, you do something stupid, he’s got you.”
So Nick is pretty much Iceman (except he doesn’t get as many girls). Because he drives no –mistakes (or at least, very occasional) and if his competitors make a mistake it’s pretty much over because Nick may not always put up the FTD runs, but he always puts down consistently near-fastest runs and never has any major screw-ups to let you back in once you make a mistake. He actually got 2 cones (in 14 runs) which is unusually high for him, but with the lead he just kept on laying down good run and none of them deviated by about more than 1 second from each other, so that’s pretty consistent on a course with constantly-changing conditions. He also laid down the fastest clean run of the MR class at 46.3 seconds on his last run. My last run I actually laid down a 45.5, but somehow clipped one of the finish cones while crossing the line half-sideways (damn rear overhang!), which didn’t get hit hard, but hard enough to fall over. Didn’t really matter, but would have been nice to at least salvage the “autocross win” with the fastest single run.
In the end, I finished 9 seconds back with 4 total cones. So between the screw-up on course and a few extra cones, that made it too easy for Nick. Eric Eisele finished 11 seconds back of me, with Eric Helgesen in the ETA 4 seconds farther back. Neil Cox (Eisele’s co-driver) 30 seconds behind that, and Rusty Probst in his MR2 was another 30 seconds. Then Alp Seyhan in his soon-to-be-stage rally e30 325i (which I crew for) 8 seconds back of that (I get trash-talking rights for beating him by over 80 seconds, lol. “Team Jeff” (Geier and Holmes) in the other M42 e30 brought up the rear in their 2nd ever event – but running with some generic snow tires and managing to break both their alternator and power steering belts during the event, resulting in some DNFs.
In MR, Shawn in the Miata started out early crushing the class by multiple seconds a run, but then something went wrong and the car had major overheating problems and DNF’d. I let Shawn and Katie drive my car non-comp in the afternoon, which was fun to watch someone else driving it – especially someone like Shawn who I consider to be one of the best RWD rallycross drivers out there. I think they found the car to be a bit twitchy. Shawn was laying down some decent times with a lot of cones, and Katie was all over the place. They attributed it to “all that power” lol…….
Miata fixin….everyone involved
Surprisingly, Jeremy Sitar actually pulled off the PR win in his e36 318i, with Shawn out, but managed to beat Chris and Stephen in the ETA, which I think is simply going to fall apart on course one of these days.
Jeremy did run over his own fog light though..
Anyhow, nice day, had some great runs and one terrible run, and still a bit sloppy with 4 cones in 14 runs isn’t gonna get it done against Nick. Car did a total of 30 runs between the drivers today with no issues once again, so that’s a good thing.
Going forward, I think the rear swaybar (stock 325i bar) is coming off …. I need to settle the rear end down a bit. With the higher spring rates there’s a tad bit more oversteer than I want and all four of my cone hits were the back of the car while “too sideways.” So that’s the wrap. Tied for the points lead after 2 events. I’m happy with my speed, not very happy with my lack of consistency (again). Less than a month until the next event…..
Some other pics from the day
Jim Golden trying to re-attach his muffler
And yet another Subaru exhaust on course…
Katie taking my car in the deep stuff
Katie hitting cones and stuff
The rally Volvo
Colin Bombara’s sick RSTi rally car…
Jon Kramer’s rally GC
The ETA boyz
Awesome recap as usual- I was hoping to come surprise you guys with a new stage rally car but the deal fell through 
Some day...
lol, that would have been a surprise indeed. You gonna be at STPR? Josh S. and I (and maybe Nick) will be there crewing for Jesse Yuvali's e30 and possibly Kimmet/Kramer's Subie (and possibly helping out with whatever Ozgur is running, if needed), and then running the rallycross on that Sunday in our own cars.
Tell me you weren't going for that 500hp Volvo out west? 
Different car out west- an old Toyota, of course. The 500hp Volvo isn't appealing to me since expensive parts are expernsive to replace.
The only surprise car you could get would be something normal like a BMW. If you get something odd it will just be a normal car for you. 
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wrote: Different car out west- an old Toyota, of course. The 500hp Volvo isn't appealing to me since expensive parts are expernsive to replace.
Oddly enough, he's using the rearend I want to use... 9" rear with aluminum carrier... Homer drool noises
From what I understand the car is pretty reliable aside from chewing through tires like you wouldn't believe.
Ignore 3 of the 4 cones on the 4 cone run since those 3 were cones after the finish since I giving it up a bit early to take a faster line into the finish than some other drivers. With that it was just 1-2 cones per run on course. Some of that was just your car getting to where it was going faster than I thought it would get there (I think you have more lowish end torque than an RX-7 or miata and that is why I think it has more power).
I agree it is a little twitchy. Better than my miata before I pulled the rear bar but still a bit twitchy.
moxnix wrote: (I think you have more lowish end torque than an RX-7 or miata
lol, torque and M42 = words that no BMW person would utter in the same sentence 
Yeah, will disconnect the rear bar and see what that does, as well as drop the rear down about 1/2" or so to get more reverse rake. Though, the rear bar is about as thick as 0-gauge stereo wire, lol.
I desperately need a rear end lower. got the full drag race hot rod going on right now. (rear up ready to pounce)
In reply to ¯_(ツ)_/¯:
The purple one fall through?
irish44j wrote: lol, torque and M42 = words that no BMW person would utter in the same sentence
Good thing I am not a BMW person.....
Driving mazda's pretty much anything has low end torque. But damn that rev limiter is low 7200 RPM stock on the miata and higher on the RX-7.
Hey, with the 3.91 rear I still almost never hit the top of 2nd, so it's not an issue. I assume the Miata and RX had to run courses in 2nd as well, yes?
Yeah on the miata first is good to about 40 and second until about 65 with the dmacks.
4.10 rear on the generation miata I have.
moxnix wrote: Yeah on the miata first is good to about 40 and second until about 65 with the dmacks. 4.10 rear on the generation miata I have.
Yeah, my first is really short....It's good to maybe 25, but 2nd is good to a bit over 60, so basically I can only use 2nd on course :P
How did the Volvo 240 do compared to the rest of the field?
He is a SR car that self bumped so he would have some competition. But his times were not bad. A little back on raw times but he had almost as many cones in the afternoon as I did.
Results are here to see actual times for PR. https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B_F51r2HvaR-ZHFNZFluaWhHRDQ
Some little things this weekend. First, got around to working on the tow rig by replacing the front shocks with some Bilstein HDs (the rears I'll do later since they will be a major PITA and I'll probably have to cut the shafts since the top hats are rusted solid and are very hard to access). Should have been an easy job as the front is double-wishbone, but I had to hacksaw off the top bolt. Damn northern cars.
yeah, you could say the lower bushings were kinda shot
But, they're in now. One less thing..
Then did some tinkering on the e30. Though I love the way the new suspension rates feel, the back end feels a bit more "on edge" than before and Shawn also noted that it wasn't ideal for the kinds of rallycrosses we run. Taking after what he did on his Miata, I disconnected the rear swaybar to see if that settles things down. For the time being I just have it tied up out of the way in case I hate the change and want to bolt it back up mid-event next time.
While I was at it I turned the rear coil seats down about 1/2" to bring the rear end down a bit, since that had good results last time I did it.
and some other little night work things...
Something that no autocrosser would allow, lol
You'll love the no sway bar in rear. a balanced car needs it on pavement but on dirt letting the rear wheels have full range to stay in contact with the ground helps tons.
Yeah, with the old softer rear springs I felt like I needed it, but the new spring rates more than make up for any amount of body lean anyhow, so hopefully this will be am improvement. Not looking to have a 4-cone day again because that won't win, so I need to get this ass end under control.
paperpaper wrote: You'll love the no sway bar in rear. a balanced car needs it on pavement but on dirt letting the rear wheels have full range to stay in contact with the ground helps tons.
TROOF
That is why I love the absolutely sick travel that a properly free-moving live axle allows 
I think there's like 9-10" in the rear (giggity) and if you pop the springs out and balance the center on a jack you can articulate the suspension with finger pressure. Then run ridiculously stiff spring rates so it doesn't drag ass when hauling gear and rally tires in the back...
Also understeer is faster on dirt. Feel free to try to prove me wrong, especially if we're competing against each other 
Now that I have a trailer, this might just happen some time this season.
Knurled wrote:paperpaper wrote: You'll love the no sway bar in rear. a balanced car needs it on pavement but on dirt letting the rear wheels have full range to stay in contact with the ground helps tons.TROOF That is why I love the absolutely sick travel that a properly free-moving live axle allows
IDK if you're talking to me or to Dan, but I doubt we'll be competing against each other on dirt this season. If you're referring to our venue, that ain't dirt...
I was gonna ask if you got a trailer when I saw that you welded the diff, guess so...
Well I bought a Harbor Freight trailer. I plan on trying to go to more out of region events now that I have the ability to haul more stuff and won't need to spend time packing before leaving home, just hitch up and go 
Build thread soon. Soon as it stops raining, that is.
Ah, ok. So you think with the locked diff everything will be ok on long pavement trips? Anyhow, you should definitely come out our way, you'd enjoy it I think. And not too much of a hike for you.
To be honest it is almost exactly the same as with the limited slip, it's just different when it is dry and the hatch is full of rally tires and I'm in the city, as those were the only street driving conditions where the diff ev!er unl!ock!!ed. The only thing that worries me is that I'm more likely than not to break another axle, for which exactly zero replacements are available.
On course, it's... different. I wouldn't not do it again. It's definitely not a detriment on our types of surfaces. Not sue how well it'd work up in Michigan but we shall see.
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