Event Recap:
The car drove fine up to the site. with the improved rear suspension, and slightly quieter exhaust, I've accidently made a decent cruising car! I showed up on site early, and got to chat with some other participants, I really like the social aspect of the sport, and everyone I meet at these things are genuinely nice folks, and everyone's willing to share whatever is needed. The day was on the verge of cold, 40-50 degrees with a huge blowing wind from the west. I haven't seen cones move on their own since I left Kansas, I'd guess gusts over 40mph throughout the day on top of the ridge. Regardless, I still can't get over how beautiful this location is, nestled in the mountains:
(this dust is all from wind, not a car on course)
I didn't take a lot of pics, but the place was swarming with photogs so hopefully some good ones turn up!
For the car:
The rear suspension was night and day! The back of the car was actually touching the ground, and more importantly, I was much more capable of transferring weight by leaning on the throttle and squatting the car over the rear tires. Somewhere around the beginning of the afternoon runs, the front struts blew. It's hard to see in the pics below but the strut shaft was wet, and you can see the moisture of the shock fluid running down the shock body (caked in dirt).
Also, I hadn't had a good look in there with load on the car, that's not a ton of travel!
The engine held up through the event, but it still seems off, with more power at the top of the powerband, and not the torque hit I'm used to from a 'truck motor' I'm trying to remember if the secondary throttle 'swirl valves' are in the intake or not. I checked timing over the break, but I do need to investigate a few thing on the engine side to see why it feels a bit down on torque. But all the fluids stayed in the motor, and it tolerated quite a bit of redline time, so I can't complain too much!
On the inside, I kept hitting my helmet off the sunroof and it would close on me, bouncing off my helmet for the rest of the runs and slightly distracting me.
I was also struggling with getting the car to naturally rotate, it would understeer, or oversteer, but never had that nice pirouette feeling. It's hard to describe in words, the the E30's I was watching out there just kind of rotated into the corner, then could transition into throttle on the way out. It seemed like I was fighting the car to get turned in, and the only way I was getting to to work was initiating a slide too early, and sitting on the back tires spinning on full lock to to rotate. I'm not sure if it's the front suspension, the diff not locking up, alignment, or the idiot at the controls. That brings me to the other thing:
The Driving:
So at the last event, with the car just pogo'n everywhere, I was 10-20 seconds off the pack during a ~60 second run, not even close to competitive. This time, the car was much better, but my driving was even worse, and again I was 10-12 seconds off the pace. I was struggling to place the car, trying to find the 'line' through corners had me outside a bit too much, and as a result, when things got a bit squirrelly, I'd massacre a whole cone wall. (sorry corner workers!) As previously mentioned, I wasn't able to get the car to rotate, and as a result, I was 'goosing' it to try and get a bit of turn-in before the turn. But mostly I was understeering into a corner, trying to bleed speed too late, and then oversteering on the way out. The ideal wrong line, like teaching someone how NOT to drive.
But then somewhere halfway through the afternoon runs something clicked. I quit trying to drive the car I wanted to have, or thought I had, and drove the pile of E36 M3 I was sitting in. I relaxed a bit, and tried to feel out the bounces and undulations, time the compression strokes to turn in, actually looked at the course to see where the lighter swept areas of grip were, and worked on placing the car there instead of outright speed, or some ideal line that doesn't exist in RallyCross. The other thing was throttle modulation, instead of throwing full pedal at it to try and blow the dust off whatever terrible line I was on, I was modulating better, keep the the slip angles down. I still screwed up plenty, but all the sudden the times started to improve, and one run I was only something like 4 seconds off the pack! I'll take that victory! While it felt slower than all the other runs slinging dust with the exhaust banging off the limiter, it started to feel familiar, and right.
I still have a lot of improving to do as a driver, and a few tweaks to work into the car... but some 16 year old kids stopped by at the lunch break and told me my car was their favorite, so I can't be doing everything wrong 
A quick glance over the shoulder revealed an entire gallon of pre-sullied oil flowing around in the back of the car. My nose instantly identified this batch as the karmically appropriate motor-death batch from the 240's previous engine as it was ladened with gas and bearing material. In the following three corners before I could turn off onto a side street, it sloshed back and forth, pooling in the spare tire, oozing down the back seat lip, and I could see it roll forward as I broke for the side street all the way to the firewall in the passenger footwell. I re-attached the cap to the offending jug, and proceeded into town. Thankfully Autozone sells pigmat, but not before about half the fluid trickled out the drain in the quarter panel.
