InSaNiTy

Sorry to hear guys, we've been following your vids and progress closely too :( I'm definitely a newbie but... it looks to me like you hit that bridge hard enough to throw you a metre off the line, to the left, as you're saying. And I guess that shows just how important having the right line is when you're that fast. I think you were doing well to make it over the bridge at that speed, the road looked rough just before it, things were hairy haha! Definitely re-shell into another one, you guys are our inspiration!

Hey Kev, We'll be down with at least one old Toyota, an original 1979 Toyota Corona RT104 with white walls and Venetians, you would have seen it last year. Maybe bring another Toyota if we can get one running :P We'd like to line up the Rollas if we could this year :) Who else will be there? Cheers

Err... yeah... I didn't do that... :P He's apparently going to daily this wagon when I put it back together... Just picked up new rack ends and a left hand dust boot for it today. We're not really sure, we couldn't get that missing tooth area to get anywhere near a weld... bit of a mystery. One of these days... Sounds like a plan! We're heading to World Time Attack on the 18th/19th but should be all go the second we get back. Didn't turn out too badly at all haha! :)

Finally.... UPDATES! Third year double degree seems to be taking up too many of my rally weekends! Last weekend was lost to the WRC at Coffs... was great fun, getting lost attempting to find spectator points in the new KE70, and then out there cheering on Batesy in the RA40 and Steerfast in the Group B Celica! :) A few weekends ago I had pulled the funny feeling diff out and took it up to our cousin Brian who lives up the road from us to inspect (Brian does all our diff work for Bundy Rum payments- nothing like a relative with years of rally and diff experience with an ARC welder haha- thanks Brian). Turns out that the welds were about half worn in the sun gears and that he wanted to top them back up again, so the diff was left with him. So took the weekend off from uni and headed home! Sorry for not taking enough photos, totally slips my mind when busy! Saturday: Got a flat tyre in my new KE70 daily a couple of days ago (that I grabbed off a 95 year old lady a couple of weeks ago)... so hunted around the farm sheds until I found another R13 155/80 Corolla wheel haha! Then knocked the rubber drain plugs out all through the boot where water had been trapped and rust starting to come though. BTW absolutely loving driving this 1.3L auto KE70, it's such a driver's car,it's so underpowered that it's hilarious holding it flat everywhere, corners or not :P! We have great plans to make this Woolshed Rallying's next build! :) Then, with a spare again and all set to head up to the shed, MORE DISTRACTIONS! Dad needed help to pull a calf out of a cow that was having calving difficulties... Farm life huh! So after wrestling with this 500kg cow to stop it choking itself on it's rope noose that we were using to to hold it still, the calf was pulled out alive and they both lived happily ever after! Pretty rewarding stuff :), a couple of hours later and the calf would have been dead! Straight after, I managed to drag my mate Matty home for the weekend to help (who often helps work on the rally car and all our other cars with my bro and I- thanks Matty!). We headed up to the shed, stopping at cousin Brian's on the way up there to pick up the rally car's diff. Took some photos of the unusual animals playing around the house! Some Guinea Fowl in the trees and a little Angus potty calf with THAT FACE! Hahahaha! THEN STRAIGHT TO THE WOOLSHED... well so I thought until MORE distractions! Visit the old lady Nell with the Datsun ute on the way up, and she tells us that she left her lights on in it and it had a flat battery... So off Matty and I head up to it's shed to switch batteries with the Rodeo ute next to it. Throw the bonnet open to find Keith's floorless air cleaner setup- displayed in photos in the above post, MISSING. A carby with no air filter! MY RALLY SOCK WAS GONE! Then I have a look over the bay... and then down to the exhaust manifold... to find MY RALLY SOCK SITTING ON THE EXHAUST! I pick it up to find it's been HALF MELTED by the exhaust! KEITH!!!! So we switch the batteries while i have a bit of a think about the air filter situation... Then head back to the house to update Nell and ask for some old stocking and some scissors. It's time to get Woolshed! Now next thing was that I had recently sold my 4AGE AE71 wagon to my brother, and under the contract it was stated that I had to return it's front suspension to stock. It currently had a Nissan Silvia S13 front end conversion which included S13 LCAs, rack ends, entire coil over struts and brakes, brake master etc. If I pulled these struts out they are mine to sell and go straight into rallying! I figure I've pulled the front end out of the rally car about 100 times now and with my "boundless optimism" (that Keith uses to describe me) I figured we'd have it all out in a couple of hours... Well you know what reality brings with these sorts of jobs... 6 hours later... ball joints that wouldn't break, stupid brake lines with special key star shaped clamps that you don't have the tool for... All good fun :P Then the LCA to X member bolt wasn't a simple bolt with nut on the end... the was thread in the lca and we couldn't figure out why the hell the bolt wouldn't come out =/ weird new car stuff... This was my first time playing with a steering rack too, pretty cool, learnt lots :) Finished by 10pm, cleaned up, packed the 70 with all the tools and S13 gear ready to sell, then headed back to Nell's Datsun ute and made an epic woolshed stocking air filter complete with zipties. Bet it lasts longer than your setup Keith! :P Then heading up to the woolshed to drop everything off, lock up and head home. By now was pretty tired, casually talking more rubbish to Matty, crusing at like 60km/h packed with S13 suspension AND THEN A KANGAROO JUMPED OUT IN FRONT OF MY NANNA KE70! My reaction time was so slow, still managed to swerve gently but it just clipped the front left... :( Jumped out straight away to find it had minimum damage :) smashed indicator below the bumper, pushed in front beaver panel, bonnet and grill fine :) had knocked the left hand driving light completely out of it's bracket however! To our amazement, it simply just needed pushing back into it's bracket and was back to normal! It had been one long day... Sunday: Wake up to find Matty's already put Nell's battery on charge and reattached the hanging smashed indicator caused by the roo! We eventually get our shit together and got up to the Woolshed! I'd headed back earlier that week with another friend and cleaned the place up while we were waiting on the diff... It was time to get some work done! Blasted the diff out to get rid of any welding slag with petrol in the SCA degreaser air compressor tool, then Matty got a bit carried away and blasted the diff housing out after I had properly cleaned it out with rags and newspaper. It's a bit of a silly idea having an off centre drain plug on the diff, like I can understand they do it so you can put a jack under the centre of the diff, but it's sort of defeating the purpose of draining the diff when there's still a puddle of oil and crap sitting below the drain point at the centre bottom of the housing.... That's where I managed to find the missing tooth that Brian had told us about off the sun gears. :P It doesn't matter though because the diff locks before it ever reaches the missing sungear tooth. Should have gotten a photo.... After cleaning everything we had to fix a three of the 10 studs (that hold carrier assembly in the housing) the had screwed themselves out when I pulled the diff out a few weekends back, that we had to fix. I worked out the reason they had unscrewed themselves was because they were the three studs closest to the bottom and had copped the usual rally abuse from rocks and the threads were mashed. As I had hurriedly taken the assembly out a couple of weekends back, the nuts only unscrewed so far before getting stuck on the mashed threads and then pulled the studs out with them. So we spent a fair bit of time mucking around with putting the studs back in and then using our cheap arse tap and die set on the studs and nuts until it all went together hunky doory haha. Now I think about it... Would have been easier to run a die over the studs before putting them back into the housing... Instead of trying to get the die straight while lying under the car sideways and then only being able to turn it a third of a turn at a time... lol it's all a good learning experience, very different to uni, but still learning :) Matty and I have mucked around with these diffs before so once the studs were right and we'd cleaned up both surfaces, continuing to use our weet-bix box gasket that's been there since we started rallying, slapped some sealant down and put it back together. Axles back in, brakes re-connected and on and diff refilled. All pretty straight forward. Then mucked around with attaching the terratrip at the front and putting wheels on all round. Then after clearing everything from in, on, around and under the car we got up to the exciting part- how the hell to lower the car safetly from it's high arse custom stands that we got made ages ago. See, usually we just lower it onto our smaller SCA stands and then onto the ground, but Richard's 4AGE wagon was sitting on those... So I decided to employ a Grumpy technique used by many for lowered vehicles... Blocks of wood under the tyres. Eventually got it back onto the ground and rolled it back out of the shed to finally sweep and cleanup. Very motivating seeing the car FINALLY back on it's wheels! :) By now it was 7pm and dad had phoned to say dinner was ready so we cleaned up and got the engine ready to put back in, left the fire going and shed open to ensure we actually came back to get the main goal done (putting the engine back in). Headed home for dinner and got back up by 9pm. By now tiredness was catching up, but the motivation was still there! It all went a bit downhill though... Looked around the shed for a chain to pick the engine up... a strap... steel cable... anything? Nothing... Decided to head over to another shed to steal a chain off the tractor. Nothing there either... Getting pretty cold and late now... had to be back at uni that night too. Finally found a steel cable, although way too long, figured we'd get it to work. Try doubling it up but it kept picking the engine up to one side, tried a few different methods... finally got one where it picked it up high at the front (perfect for putting our engine and gearbox combo back in together)... and then gearbox oil starts pissing out the back as expected... tiredness catching up... stupid mistakes... try to block it with rags while I remember that I sold my yoke for doing this for $50 to some guy on here... regretting it now lol. Figure I'll grab the yoke off the spare car's tailshaft... we go hunting around in the parts shed with torches... only can find one tailshaft to suit RA40. Then I remembered that (I think) I gave Keith my spare tailshaft for him to modify for The Girl's KE70 T series conversion. So my spare yoke is 6 hours away at Orange! Must be time for you to come back up to the Woolshed Keith! :) Gave up at this point, put the engine back on it's stand, rolled the car back in and headed back to uni as it was now 11pm and 9am lectures everyday. After all that, get an email Monday to say that the Coopernook Rallysprint scheduled for this Saturday has been cancelled due to too much fire danger potential from the rally cars interacting ith the dry environment or something ridiculous. So our next aim is Bombala AMSAG round on the 26th October (just one week after uni exams). A bit long winded, but hey, if you actually read all that, top stuff, took ages to write! :P

Hahahahaha thanks :) those photos!!!!! LOL!

Top work fellas, wish we were there to run against you both! :)

Awesome work Ben! I have a 4AGE AE71 wagon which is also silver and I have MA61 wheels for it too. Your wheels came up really well! Interior looks really simple and clean. Keep the pics and updates coming! :)

Yeah, I eventually realised today that there was no way we could get it back together in time. Keith says these apprentices are a bit slow sometimes! :P So many days work after a mistake made in seconds... Ah it's all good fun! :)

Just read the whole thread, top stuff. I have an AE71 high-top wagon with a 4AGE that could use half the attention that you give yours! Keep the pics and updates coming! :)

Yep, Type C from this bloke - http://www.rollaclub.com/board/topic/47313-jdm-fender-mirrors/ They're genuinely old, that's for sure. :) Rally car's been keeping me away from Grumpy. Like my brother, I fell to peer pressure, and also damaged Grumpy a few weeks back. Too much 7000RPM wheel-spin has finally caused Grumpy's dodgy bottom end to knock. We went and hoisted it up on the Woolshed Rallying service truck a couple of days ago, will have a look at it if I can ever get time between the rally car and uni. Rally car build thread is constantly updated unlike this thread, check it out! http://www.rollaclub.com/board/topic/64027-how-not-to-build-a-rally-car/

Just read the whole thread again; simple, straight forward, lots of pics, details and humour! Not bad bro! Might even motivate me to finish Grumpy's build thread (don't tell the wizard haha)! :P We should both cruise up together... the RT104 and the KE30! I'll dig out the calendar and try and talk him into it! :)

Not the Woolshed rally car... but... Still an RA40 with an 18R-G... Look at those revs! This is to all those saying they're too fat and that the 18R-G's too old! EPIC.

Hahahahahahaha

I like your work in your other threads man. Great style and workmanship. All great cars! Some seriously dodgy stuff you had to fix on that Corona! I have a JDM RT104 Corona 'Grumpy', got a build on here but I spend most of my time working on the rally car. Anyway, about your leaf springs. If you remove leaves, yes it will lower it, but will make it even softer and handle even more like a boat. I've had Grumpy's professionally reset and a extra leaf added. I then drove on that for a while and then added another leaf. From all my experience, reset and one leaf was the best- two seems too hard- but that could also be because it's way lower this time because it has blocks too and there's not enough travel to the bump stops. The best option would be one, solid as leaf. This is what they used to run on 70s track cars. It always a consistent spring rate. You don't want to too flat though because it make the leaf more twistable and softer. So one really thick leaf and then massive blocks to lower it so the leaf remains angled, not flat, to retain anti-twisiting.

Photographic evidence of old men going for Sunday drives and not moving over. How hard is it to check your mirror once a minute? 15kms later... They were nice people who did stop and push the Celica back over with me when we rolled it though, so I'll hold my tongue... Keith, we're going to have the loudest, most ridiculous, outrageous novelty horn ever installed in a car before the next rally. :)

It's even white... wow, should we be cutting it up instead? Those panels don't look too bad? Hmm... what occupies your thinking?

Good read and photos! :)

It's a very sad day today for rallying and motorsport. Thanks for the offer Rob, there's definitely plenty to do... Keith worked tirelessly for 8 days straight in the freezing cold up at the woolshed leading up to the rally. I helped over the weekend but had to go back to uni. It was this commitment that ensured the car ran perfectly as always, I can't ever thank you enough Keith. Keith's update was thorough so I'll just give a quick summary of the event: Hit the first stage cautiously to settle in, car under steered gently with half worn steers on and new drives. Despite a few rookie errors that both me and Ashley (navigator) seem to always have the first two stages, all was good. Beat Leicthy by 6 seconds. Just settling into stage two and then got a front left puncture 6kms from the end, was pretty annoyed, just kept driving on it. Ash fell off the notes again and we ended up going up the wrong road for a km because someone ran through the tape and didn't put it back up. dodged a head on with the Skyline that had caught us because of our flat tyre. Got to the end and there's dad and Keith, as always the most dedicated service crew I've ever seen, they tour around in The Girl's blue KE70 to meet us at the end of stages even though it means they miss spectating due to it. They helped install the spare, and then we realised we only had 6 rims left. Ash and I drove back to service and got a new drive tyre put on our only spare wheel, so now we were running two new Dunlop drive tyres on the front. Keith and dad went to the wreckers and picked up 4 steelies and then got 2 new steer tyres put on two of them. So we head out of the service park behind Leichty to hopefully run behind him for the next long 36km stage. we get to the start and we're following Leichty as another Datsun (1600) cuts us off and goes between Leichty and I. there wasn't enough room to drive alongside him to say something and the officials had already given them a leave time before we could do anything. So sure enough, don't even get half way though the stage and we're stuck behind two old blokes going on a Sunday drive. I tried my horn, flashing lights, practically denting their rear bumper, but they were either completely oblivious or weren't going to move over. I couldn't pull away from them exiting corners as they had equal power, so we were stuck behind them, and I was getting angrier by the km. This isn't the first time this has happened either for those wondering. They didn't move over until 2km until the end! And they didn't even move over properly at that. Either way I didn't see them after the next corner. Turns out these new drive tyres on the front were incredible compared to the half worn steer tyres we had on previously. Chalk and cheese. No more understeer! We just finish the stage and start heading back to service only to run out of fuel only 3kms after the stage... So once again Keith and dad are back out in the KE70 to save us haha. we eventually get back to service and we throw the new steer tyres on the front as an experiment to see if this whole steer/drive tyre thing was actually worth worrying about. Get out to stage 4 (stage 1 redone), behind a skyline turbo this time to make sure the same thing didn't happen again. We actually won our class and came 10th outright on this particular stage. :) finally things were starting to go well, it wasn't even a push as such, just nothing went wrong for a change. :) Now it was time for stage 5, I'd worked out these new steer tyres were indeed even better than those new dunlop drive tyres as they were supposed to be. Ashley had settled in well, car was absolutely perfect, I found myself hitting 5th gear quite a bit, you could say I was having a push. Generally I get warnings, or moments, where you know you need to back off a bit. I didn't get that. We were flying along but still tidy. There were a series of humps that I'd been getting faster over... Basically I didn't slow down enough for the third one, because of the speed I let the car get a tiny bit untidy around a left hander. Probably should had been in second not third gear... but as Ashley says I wasn't listening :P. The driver's rear quarter hung out just enough to clip something (can't find any marks, I think it was the tyre) a metre or so before the hump. Whatever it hit pushed back causing the navs rear quarter to come out, precisely as we hit the hump, and as we landed the new grippy front left tyre dug in under the car and we did a slow 3/4 roll, with the car stopping in the middle of the road on the driver's side. If I had just backed off a tiny bit, I could have kept it tidy and it wouldn't have happened. Just pushed a tiny bit much at the wrong place. Turns out that only 200m down from our roll, the fatal roll off the side of the road had already taken place by the 180B Datsun and they were stuck there for 30 mins before anyone found them. You simply couldn't see them from the road. We're going to see our panel beater on Wednesday, and if that turns out too expensive, I just bought another shell today. So no need to fear, as I promised to Keith, the Woolshed Rally Car will be back precisely how it was at the start of the stage, in time for John's river on the 24th August- 3 months! Cheers

Insane.

Unbelievably lucky actually, the things that happened because I tow started some old guy's (with a beard) Altezza with my JDM 1975 Corona in between two lectures at uni! :P I'm sure the photo's here in this thread somewhere! But seriously, words can't express how thankful I am, I've learnt more over the last 6 months than... ever? :) Yeah we were running 17th I think until the puncher. I almost expected something to go wrong though because nothing went wrong after running up the bank Keith mentioned... It was stupidly lucky- too lucky, something had to go wrong somewhere else to make up for it! :P The Oberon Pacenote rally and Mt George were both amazing rallies. At Mt George- It's the little things like the V8 commodores and EVOs beating me by 30seconds on the uphill and then me cleaning them up by a minute on the same stage downhill! It's all about the downhill people! It's INSANE! Flat out in 4th, in the middle of the night, down some blind road you can only see 300m in front of you, even more exciting when your navigators calls are something 500m late or the roads goes left after they call right! At Jenolan- The highlight of the rally, if not of Woolshed Rallying's entire career, was the look on that old guy's face when he realised that his immaculate Escort complete with it's LED/HID lights, perspex windows, fibreglass panels etc. was beaten by 40 seconds over a short 20km stage by some hot head 20 year old that's only done 7 rallies, in some homebuilt, out of scrap metal, in a Woolshed on a farm, rusty yellow peeling Celica! Complete with duct tape holding the left rear quarter window in (where it decided to fall out 1st stage hahaha). That really was the definition of driving it like i stole it though, as I said to Keith, I don't think I could have been a second faster if you'd paid me. Makes you wonder how driving like that only gets you 14th... with the likes of that RX2 still being 30 seconds faster! Sheesh! Guess we'll find out in a few rallies time! Made my day, nah scrap that, made my WEEK. :) That was definitely the best weekend I've ever had! I'm serious when I say I wouldn't be rallying without you Keith, hardly a point of saying thanks though because I know all you really care about is that list! And I'm on it! :P Already found the cheapest fire extinguishers I can and rang Sydney shocks... All with a 1500 word essay due tomorrow! Also thanks to my dad for giving up his weekends, driving the farm truck for hours at all hours (12am-3am drive home from mount George etc) all around NSW and his wallet for this great cause! This is Woolshed Rallying! XD

Bahahaha loving your method of putting the oil in the diff, I actually lol'd. We've always got that Tom Thumb pump in the Woolshed, but when ingenuity is required... :) Great write-up!

Clean AE71 dude, look after it. Those jelly beans are way cooler than cheap chinese superlites btw- they're so overdone, not original or old school,13s > 15s imo, same width. Your choice though! :) Keeping your eye out for a whole manual donor car I guess?

Those bastards! Fix her up man, don't lose faith in her! I drove an RT81 for 2 years, loved it. Spares are a bitch though. We have a brown RT81 sitting around with the same smashed up front passenger fender as you- we gave up looking for one :(

Future plans for it bro? We probably should have a bit of a look at the rear leaves when we have a chance- for all those people thinking about flipping leaves it does work but it's really dodgy. The leaves spring in opposing directions and it looks quite worrying after 1000kms...

Good idea.