Wow did I get behind on my reading.
T-shirts? Man I'm a sucker for a cool t-shirt. Hopefully I can order one Friday.
Wow did I get behind on my reading.
T-shirts? Man I'm a sucker for a cool t-shirt. Hopefully I can order one Friday.
paranoid_android74 wrote: Wow did I get behind on my reading. T-shirts? Man I'm a sucker for a cool t-shirt. Hopefully I can order one Friday.
I bought some for our crew, so I may have one for you ;) TBD!
Also, are you on the face book?
And some other stuff. ....
Well, as it turns out, somehow I toasted my 3.91 small-case LSD at the rallysprint. That's pretty annoying since I rebuilt it less than 6 months ago. Also annoying because I like the ratio and the light weight. So....under the extremely dirty car and pull it out so I can put in the medium case 3.73. Yay. I love dried clay falling all over my face for a couple hours...
Meanwhile, Ozgur dropped off a sheet of HDPE for me so I could finish up my underbody protection. So I cut it and mounted it - two bolts to the rear end of the main skid, and two to the crossmember just behind the trans mount. It's not steel but shoudl provide some measure of protection from rocks and stuff that could hit/damage the transmission and trans mount.
Finally, did some light-aiming
Here's with just the H1 (depo) smilies low-beams
Now adding to the Hella 3000 Rallyes
Now adding the Hella 350 LED pencil-beam bar and the eBay LED flood bar
Looks awesome! Those small case diffs don't really hold up to abuse well - the 4.10 that came stock with my 318is lasted all of a few months after adding boost even just from autocrossing and turn 8 at Putnam Park. After the clutches went, it started getting really noisy, too. I also went to a medium case 3.73, and it's been just fine for years now. Just coming due for an LSD rebuild, but I'm not concerned since it's never been done.
irish44j wrote:paranoid_android74 wrote: Wow did I get behind on my reading. T-shirts? Man I'm a sucker for a cool t-shirt. Hopefully I can order one Friday.I bought some for our crew, so I may have one for you ;) TBD! Also, are you on the face book?
Oh wow, that is awesome! If there aren't enough to go around I'll order one after BRS.
I do have an account on the face book. I seldom with use it, but will for rally purposes!
So, a few more pre-BRS updates...
First...I finally blew one of my Bilsteins, which have been on the car for 5 years of rallycross/rallysprint. It was a rear and not totally blown, but was losing droop travel and felt crappy. So have a pair of new ones on the way to put on this week.
Second, picked up three more 14" basketweaves. I want to use these because IMO they are stronger than bottlecaps due to the spoke design going out to the barrel directly. Anyhow, of course I had to paint them to match the rest of the wheels lol
Last project...I've been meaning to do this for a while but Ozgur was talking yesterday about how bad a location the stock e30 battery is for stage (since it would get destroyed in any quarter-panel hit). Which I agree with. Unfortunately, the e30 trunk with my current setup has limited usable space since the cage crossbar is lower than the height of the battery. So, I went to the only usable space I could find and mounted it there, in a box. With 5/16 threaded rod to large washer plates under the trunk floor. It's more solid than in the stock location, for sure.
The placement also still allows the stock battery positive cable to reach well, and I switched the ground cable to bolt into the old rear seatbelt threaded brackets on the driver's side.
On the upside, this also gives me a good storage area in the trunk for our little bag of bungees and straps, for our impact gun, and for the spillkit - all in the old battery tray.
The jacking board will have our toolkit strapped over it when racing
You coming out to Catlett this weekend?
Gaunt596 wrote: You coming out to Catlett this weekend?
yep, I'll be there. A win locks up the season championship for me in MR ;)
My wrenching session yesterday did not go super well. Subframe is off, but part of one of the bushing sleeves broke off in the chassis. If I can't get that out in the hour or so I have available tomorrow night, I'll probably not be driving it on Sunday.
I'll still come out to drop some stuff for BRS and hang for a bit either way.
irish44j wrote:Gaunt596 wrote: You coming out to Catlett this weekend?yep, I'll be there. A win locks up the season championship for me in MR ;)
Nice. Me and Hyatt are so close in points all he has to do is show up and he beats me out for the championship
I paused from the e30 for a moment today to pick up another (shocker....black) project car for this winter....assuming we keep the e30 in one piece at BRS, that is!
Anyhow, for a while I had thought about buying another e30 to make into a nice weekend cruiser, but it's really no fun just building something you've already built once, I think. So went with something from the same country and same time frame, something that also has 4 cylinders, but something that is quite a bit different from an e30....
My much smaller build thread for this new ride is here if anyone wants to follow it, though it won't have any racing or rally action in it: https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/build-projects-and-project-cars/1988-porsche-924s-build-not-a-bmw-this-time/121739/page1/
1988 Porsche 924S
That's the higher-compression 1988 2.5L....same engine that was in the 944 of that year! 160hp with torque makes it feel like a diesel compared to the 1.8 in the e30, haha...
Meanwhile......
Our friends at Motorsport Hardware sent us some goodies today to replace our 5-year-old open acorn nuts from MH that have held up to hundreds of impact gun hits and abuse. Ryan sent us out some of their extended motorsport lugnuts (which engage more thread), and we asked for them in the anodized rainbow-y color instead of black/gunmetal because these will be much easier to find when dropped in the gravel or grass!
DC Rallycross #6 = Win #5 of the season, and clinched the season class championship!
Today we did the final shakedown for Black River, at DC SCCA rallycross at the Rally Farm in Catlett, VA. Over 55 cars running, perfect weather, and some fast and challenging courses. Since I have a ton of stuff to do tonight and in the next couple days, probably will be a while before any real write-up for this happens. But suffice to say that I drove well today on 12 runs of courses running 70+ seconds, and my mistakes were small and I drove mostly clean and very consistently, while my top competitors made some larger mistakes and were less consistent. Ended up winning MR class by over 10 seconds in the end (not bad since I was 3 seconds out of the lead at lunch). I ran with almost all of our stage gear in the car (minus the jack) and a full tank of fuel so running heavy as well, and the car felt good, had no issues of any kind, and had a nice cruise home on the country roads....
So, that's five wins out of the six events with two remaining, so that (I think) mathematically locks up the season championship win for me, even if I for some reason don't even show up for the last two events (two drops allowed). So, hooray for that.....successfully defended last year's championship in one of the most competitive classes locally, which is full of great drivers (though some cars of dubious reliability).
With that done, the next couple days will be spent finalizing what we're taking to Black River Stages, and we'll depart Thursday morning for the tow to upstate New York!
Congrats on the win! And I'm glad to hear the car is running well.
I'm excited for BRS!
Will update later this week, but short shory:
We finished Black River Stages 2016, our first full stage rally. We weren't nearly as fast as I'd like (wanting to finish our first rally, I drove about 80%), but hey at least we passed an STi on stage (lol). The car made it through with no damage other than possibly a bad wheel bearing....oh and two destroyed wheels.
Pro Tip: when the codriver says "don't cut" when doing a railroad crossing, DON'T CUT! Hitting open railroad tracks at 50mph with the right side wheels = two flats and two severely destroyed wheels.
Good times running with our friends there, especially Chris Nonack (who had an off on the first stage into the trees but still finished the rally) and Dan Downey (who drove his e30 fast and clean and looked impressive, even if his car sounds like a broken-down garbage truck ;) )
A couple quick pics, and time to unload after 980 miles of towing and a full weekend of rally....
Nonack and Sarah
Jim and I
e30 pit with Dirty Downey Racing
wheels + railroad tracks = (they both look like this)
lol third to last picture. "give em the BLUE STEEL"
paperpaper wrote: lol third to last picture. "give em the BLUE STEEL"
ahha.....we have about 10 variations of that photo...bored sitting in the pouring rain waiting for that last stage to start 
Awesome! Good to hear you finished. I think we need more pics 
The rims are junk, but the Dmack's seemed to hold up just fine!
Congrats on the finish...
So I guess it's time for a full recap of Black River Stages.
I headed out of Northern Virginia Thursday morning and picked up Brian B. (one of our crew), where we also checked trailer tongue weight (385lbs measured, but we were picking up a 100lb tool chest and four 5-gallon fuel jugs later).
Then headed up to Jim's to get the codriver and Stephen (taking his 4Runner for extra carrying capacity)
The trip up was uneventful and we got to upstate NY by late in the afternoon..
Headed to the early registration and tech. Tech makes me nervous just because I'm paranoid about forgetting something or having something "wrong" but we went through tech easily, with just one comment about our forward tow strap mounting location. Got our NRS stickers and new numbers!
And checked out some of the other nice rides around
There's Dan Downey, we had a bit of fun with his car while he was trying 3 time to pass tech due to a missing seat bolt...
Then off to the evening parc expose on the river....
former WRC car there running exhibition
our crew stylin
There was a night shakedown stage which we ran pretty conservatively to aim the lights, etc....no drama... we followed Downey on the transit
Then went in to have some Genny Cream ale at the Harrisville Rod and Gun Club, the Rally HQ. Good times...
In the morning there was another parc expose before everyone took off for the stages. Since we were starting 37th, we had a long time to wait, haha. But the Black River is so scenic...
So I don't have many action photos so far (hopefully some people caught us on the stage, though we weren't going "huge" over jumps like some people were....). First couple of stages were uneventful, just feeling out the car driving at 80%. We did come across Chris and Sara off in the woods (plus a couple other cars) but we wouldn't have been able to tow any of them out so we proceeded.
Third stage was a reverse of the 2nd stage, and here came my first big mistake. They told us beforehand about the metal plate over a rail crossing and to stay to the left of it. Jim called out the "don't cut." But I couldn't see the plate due to sand on it and I cut too much and dropped the right wheels off the side right onto the open tracks at about 50mph. After brain-rattling bangs, it was immediately clear both tires on that side were flat. We limped a little ways and pulled off in some deep sand (got stuck). Carrying only one spare, Jim had to lift up the car to get our jack under it and put the spare ont the back. The nice thing about rally tires is that they have a pretty stiff sidewall, so we were able to limp for the next 3 miles on a flat front without too much issue at about 20mph and off the stage. Unfortunately we were late for service and not up on our "bogey rules" for times so we took multiple penalty hits (total of like 10 minutes) on top of our 20-minute stage on the flat tire (most cars were running it in about 5 minutes)....So by then we were out of the running, if we were ever really in it anyhow.
Nonack doing what he always does....fixing
Our local friend Sergei running in an Escort
Got back to service and the guys rotated two undamaged new tires (175s) to the front and our two old 185 spares to the back and we were off again. As the day went on I was still tentative (much to Jim's frustration) but looking at times we were running pretty similar to most of the other low-power 2WD cars (other than the top dogs), so I feel less bad.
We didn't have any other crash drama, but saw plenty of other cars crashed, including Peterson and Kessler's civic on its side after the big jumps at Goose Pond, with another car trying to pull them out. Due to the caution triangles on the jump, we went over it at about 10mph, lol.....probabbly for the best, I guess, but no cool pictures there. Saw that both of the Porsches were crashed (makes me sad, an both drivers are great guys) and attrition was setting in.
After a couple more service stops and uneventful stages, we got to the last group as darkness fell and the rain started. Due to our wheel issue, we were now 2nd to last in line of all the cars left in the rally (28, out of 40+ that started), behind an Subaru driven by a mother-daughter team, which is pretty awesome. In any case, my attention to lighting paid off as we were able to see well and ran the stage reasonably well, catching them with about a mile left. We sat on their rear bumper for the end of the stage and tandem-drifted the last turn into finish. Hopefully will look cool on video, lol.
For the last stages (same stage run twice) we jumped ahead of them and behind an STi driven by another rookie rallyist (hillclimb racer) that had been running similar times to ours all day. At night, though, again the lights paid off and we caught them halfway through the stage. They were nice enough to pull over on the only real straight area and we snuck by on the left in some deep sand and ran away from them. So at least we passed a Subaru with more than double our power :)
On the last stage with the rain pouring and lightning flashing, we asked to jump them as well and started right behind Nonack and Sara, which is where we hoped to have been all day. Didn't catch them but we did run a similar time to them, and at the final finish it was nice to caravan on the last transit back to the rally HQ.
There were awards and food and stuff
Anyhow, we had a great time at BRS. The local organizers and NASA Rally staff did a stellar job keeping things on time and running smoothly, and the stages were really a lot of fun and very smooth and easy on cars aside from a number of yumps and jumps and kicks that took out some of the really fast cars. In the end, we finished 25th overall (out of 40 started), which sounds better than it was since only 28 cars finished haha....But....had we only flatted one tire and not gotten all those penalties, we would have been around 20th based on our times. But that's rally. There are no bogey stages, no toss-outs. What you do is what you do and it all counts which is what makes rally awesome. IF anything, the car held up well and I didn't do anything else stupid, and we finished. And since more than 1/4 of the cars that started DIDN'T finish, that's a good thing in my book.
As to car damage - other than the two destroyed wheels, the front right wheel bearing is also shot (probably from the train track hit too). But other than that....nothing. No body damage, no suspension damage, no seam cracks or anything else. Hooray. Means I should have driven harder I guess!
Did manage to get a flat on the tow rig (Sequoia) from a RAZOR BLADE in the sidewall, of all things.....so that sucked but the crew had already changed it by the time we were off the stages..
So by the time we got back , our awesome crew was all packed up and we drove the car up on the trailer, had dinner and beers, and got some sleep, and headed home in the morning. 950 total towing miles @12mpg kills the wallet. Hell, the rally car itself only went through about 12-15 gallons of fuel during the entire day!
Once again, special thanks to my codriver Jim Spoth, who called the notes great and didn't get too pissed at me. And our stellar crew (which we shared with Nonack) - Ozgur Simsek, Katie Spoth, Stephen Nichols, Brian Battocchi, Josh Sennett (our crew chief), and Brian Morse (Nonack's crew chief)
So, that's the wrap. We'll see what's on tap next (local rallycross and then....?)
Ozgur checking in here...
Glad to be able to help you guys thru and very glad you guys had an incident free (minus the flats...) event. Good job on the finish. Results will improve sooner than expected!
thewizard wrote: Ozgur checking in here... Glad to be able to help you guys thru and very glad you guys had an incident free (minus the flats...) event. Good job on the finish. Results will improve sooner than expected!
Me being a numbers-crunching analyst, I did some crunching on the stage times (minus our one bad stage and penalties) and we were almost identical times to Russo and Amber in a 2WD car with similar power - as well as some other cars in that range. So I know I can press harder for sure, but happy we were at least in the ballpark with similar-ish cars with more experienced drivers/navigators.
Our vids from Black River Stages are up! Check them out here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd57LdciKsB0_Vts7-wq5Mw
My personal favorite is Goose Pond Out (SS6), where there are plenty of jumps (which we take a bit carefully lol) and the last couple minutes spent on the rear bumper of a blue subaru eating rocks and dust lol
Looks like a blast!
Awesome stuff man. excellent first time out. proper geared diff you will be mighty quick out there ;) .
2 tires and one blown stage is miles better than a transmission and no sleep! good Job keeping it on the road. experience then fast(as I am now trying to do)!
Yeah, I really need to find a 4.10 because the 3.73 really seems between powerbands most of the time. I mean, for whatever power we actually have in the M42 anyhow. Next rally will likely take place in snow, though, so the 3.73 may actually be better there so I have all winter to find a 4.10....
Though I don't think we were particularly fast, I was mostly feeling the car out and getting tuned in with Jim on the notes/learning to trust them, so I'm not all that worried. Even not pushing hard we were pretty similar in times to other experienced drivers in low-power 2WD cars like Rob Russo (Jetta), Ian/Matt (Civic), and really not all that far off Beliveaus except on the night stages where they were booking. Looks like on average we were about 10 seconds (give or take) slower than you guys on the majority of the stages so that's not too bad with less experience and less power.
Definitely already planning to do BRS again next year though - really great stages, fairly easy on the car, and generally a good time. It's a shame all those great rallysprints you guys have up there are such a long haul for us....it's harder to get seat time around here with limited opportunities above rallycross, though we may run more with the Bolivian guys and see if SCCA will do a sprint at the Rally Farm....
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