E30 rally

[madkiwi]

I will get some pics up as and when I can as I do most of my work on the mobile phone
I have been rallying and racing for about 30 yeas and in various cars from Civics to Mazda rx7, mini coopers, toyota gti, westfeild(rotary engined) suzuki swift gti to name just a few.
But about 12 months ago I picked up an ex circuit e30 and decided to have another crack at forest rallying as I hadn't done one of them in 20 years.
Tempest rally last November loomed up fast.
So we/I set about changing the car from roundy roundy spec to sideways between the trees spec.
It's only a 1.8 8 valve and pretty gutless compared to my previous cars so I wasn't expecting a lot. In fact it's the slowest car I've ever raced and that presented amother problem that if I did happen to get into trouble there wouldn't be enough bhps to get me out of touble.
The lead up to the rally went as per usual as far as car prep goes.
One navigator got scared and pulled out (he was pretty useless anyway) and in stepped another bloke who hadn't done a rally at all for 20+ years...so us old folks were a bit rusty.
We started 6th on the road I think from about 70 starters.
This we found before the first special stage and we clocked in early getting a 1 min penalty for our effforts.
Any way the day progressed really well and I knew some of the roads reasonably well as I had helped on the rally for a few years.
We had a couple of goals for the day
1)don't crash. Achieved
2) get to the finish. Achieved
3) to get the old girl sideways. Oh yes we did.
But the one we were looking forward to was the last stage in the dark.
I knew this stage well and we had been over it as stage 2 in the morning.
So we got the 5,4,3,2,1 go and off we went. I pushed as hard as I could and I was leaving my nav behind on calling the notes. We caught the car in front which had started 30 second before us.
It was pitch black and it certainly focuses the mind when you are doing that and can only see where the spots are facing.
We got the old girl home in the top 30 and we're well pleased with no damage apart from the rear bumper falling off.
So what's next.
Ive now got a S50 engine coming and some other fancy shiny bits.
Hopefully be getting stuck into it on the coming weeks before taking the car to wydean rally in November

[madkiwi]

https://www.flickr.com/gp/42144750@N08/5351k8

[steve_k]

well done, good to see an e30 on a rally stage instead of a mk2 escort,

[madkiwi]

Defo.
I won't be as quick as some of them but if I can get the noise out of the m3 engine that I want then that's good enough

[steve_k]

Defo.
I won't be as quick as some of them but if I can get the noise out of the m3 engine that I want then that's good enough

go for it, my ex father in law tarmac rallys a mk1 golf & that thing is insane

[TriggerFish]

Needs more photos!

As said, lovely to see it getting some proper use