altezzaclub

Under the bonnet was a disaster- I took a wheel off and noticed the horizontal bolt attaching the LCA to the crossmember was not horizontal at all, it sloped forwards. The sump guard had been mounted onto two towers welded down off the back of the crossmember, but the pathetic KYB shocks with 10Kg gas pressure were the same as the rears and sucked the car down onto the ground. As it hit everything with the sump guard the force drove the mounts upwards and they tilted the cross-member by crushing the chassis where the cross-member bolted on.

Inside, the hood lining was still in the car and the cage was 75mm below the roof, so even lying back in the seat his helmet touched the cage. Having lifted the seat for the Orange rally he was jamming his head up between the top side cage rail and a diagonal. It still had a heater in (disconnected) and the fan didn't work, and all the wiring with its 20-odd warning lights was in there. I could see the ground through the rust around the steering column once I took the cover off. While the brakes had too much travel, the accelerator had a 100mm high pedal stop that left it with about 20mm between idle and full throttle.

The chassis cross rails were smashed flat under the seats, and a hole had been smashed through the floor under the driver's seat. The gearbox crossmember had been smashed shut instead of an inverted "U" shape. The fuel lines were still under the car and amazingly they were intact. The rear brake line ran under the floor to the diff, from the diff into the car then forwards to the handbrake, then back to the diff, so the brake line ran down the car three times! The brakes were soft and the pedal went so far down so they needed pumping to stop.

The diff had been smacking the 2& 1/2" exhaust pipe flat and the diff nose had been grinding into the floor.

Underneath, all the bushes in the arms on the rear axle were completely destroyed, and the bump stops had been smashed to bits.

The rear shocks had moved around so much they had widened each hole where they came through the boot. The shocks were completely the wrong sort, Monroe GT Gas that had 5Kg gas pressure and sucked the car down onto the road at every bump, so completely the opposite to what we needed. The rear wheel arch ride height was 650mm on the passenger's and 625 on the driver's side.

I planned an in-boot tank to solve all that, and put a surge tank below it in the wheel-well. The only way I can make sense of my ideas is to draw them on the back of an envelope then make a model, so I did that...

So I drove the 600km to pick up The Girl from UNE a week early (11th Oct) and stripped the whole car into bits.. what a mess! From the back forwards.. Someone was putting the battery in the boot and drilled clean into the fuel tank under the boot floor. That had a couple of rubber plugs in and was so low the rocks were denting it through its under-guard. Fuel surge had been a constant problem all year with the pump not sucking hard enough

I ran into one of The Girl's boyfriends while up in Armidale earlier this year who said he had an RA40 rally car. I said to bring the crew & stay with me for the Orange Rally on Sept 15th as I'm at home by myself usually. We unloaded the car and the first thing we tackled was the driver's seat position.. Too far back, too leaning back and too low, typical bloody race-car driving style. I chopped up some 1/2" water pipe I had lying round and lifted the back of the seat 50mm, then said I'd come up to his place and sort it out at the end of Uni term. I managed a couple of photos in the Orange rally, and the car did sit low.

Nice gear!! Up with the $400/corner Bilsteins I assume, expensive, but good.

Can we still buy sills for them?? Even if you cut a pair of sills off a wreck and welded them over yours, having stronger rails under the doors will strengthen the whole shell. Cross-strut bar under the bonnet for sure, in the boot if you're keen. I like adjustable ones that you can screw out to put the strut towers under tension, but other people get fixed ones that include a triangular bar back to the firewall. You could also put a bar across under the dash if you can find a spot for it, we've doe that before. Any other bars will be noticeable inside, but really its a large hollow box that will twist under load. A couple of diagonal bars would make a difference to that. I haven't heard of weak points in the body that need reinforcing for racing use. Those pics will be interesting.

What sort of work do you plan for it? Rallying will be different to racing. Are you going to have a cage? They add a lot of strength.

Get a rear muffler from a wrecker, the bigger the better, and make it so you can bolt it on in a couple of minutes. I'd go tri-chamber rather than straight-through. One with nothing in the middle chamber at all, and each end is packed with glass to absorb noise, which is the sort I use on the Altezza and the KE70. I have run a few on the Altezza, cutting them open to see how the insides matched the noise, and basically the heavier the walls are the quieter is gets inside the car, and anything that is not straight-through is a lot quieter. Try this- http://autospeed.com/cms/title_Giant-Muffler-Comparison-Detailed-Test-Results/A_0383/article.html

Go for it then! If you want to sell the whole thing it must be worth a few hundrd bucks. It puts a T box into a KE, which is something I've thought of and I expect others have too.

So you have the K motor, the K-T bellhousing, the T box and the hydraulic setup for the clutch? Should be all you need, you can fabricate the g'box crossmember and sort the driveshaft. Its better than the K box, and there are no other options really if you're using the K motor.

but the end result it worth it. Cops never stop a car on stockies!

So many skills to aquire....

So... Repco had 3cans of spraypaint for $5 and there was one simple job we had never tidied up...

Brainfade.. I meant an 18RG... Insanity has a few of them. Actually, there is one for sale on here currently.

3TG would be the right period & maybe they were an option so don't need engineering. PM Insanity and chat to him, he's a Corona freak. Those Holden motors were just boat anchors. much better, buy a KE70, get McPhearson strut front and a 5-link rear, rather than 2tons of cross members and wishbones in the front and Roman cart axles behind. Bore it out to 1500cc 5K size and bolt on carbs cam etc... still P-plate legal, more or less.

When they get redhot they will boil the brake fluid, and the bubbles just collapse when you pusjh on the pedal rather than compressing the pistons. When they cool the bubbles re-dissolve and they work again. The big question is... why were they red hot?? When will they fail again?? You are lucky to be alive really, as I am after my Mini Cooper dumped the +ve battery lead out through the brake lines many years ago.

Just caught up with this project, like all of them it seems late and over budget! ;) My first build took three years, from when I was 15 to 18, no wonder I did so badly at school and so good at mechanics! Still, it must be great to hear it running. If you want a wiring diagram PM me. The option to your oil pressure cutout for the fuel pump would be a relay from the alty via the ignitiopn light, so it trips the relay when the red light comes on. The pump doesn't wotk unless the alty is putting out power. Either way, you should add an over-ride from the 'start' position of the key, the starter solenoid activcation wire, so when you crank you power the pump.

Lol Dave! I do remember seeing that, but I don't know what has happened since. Nothing in 'settings' I could find. Imports & exports really should have nothing to do with a Govt, but they grabbed that control umpteen hundred years ago when they wanted to raise taxes to go to war. Seeing they couldn't tax income and the nobles were not too keen on putting money into a bad scheme the King started excise duty and controls to raise money. That and land taxes were the main form of State income until the industrial revolution meant company taxes, and finally the 20th century saw income taxes. American Govt spending went from 3% or GDP to 36%, although you can pay 45% tax there now in some States. Your comment about it not being wise to discuss gun ownership in public is a brilliant example of the tyranny I am trying to demonstrate. Ownership of a piece of machinery should not be subject to any constraints in discussion, that is still censorship and shows how people accept that thinking or discussing some things will get you into trouble with the State... so much for "free speech" You may think what we have is better than a free society, but have you really measured the cost of this "civilisation"?. here's a cute one- Gosh, a Communist Govt would like the world's largest democratic population disarmed.... who wudda thought it!

I can't see Dave's signature, in fact no signatures show on my screen, so I'm at a bit of a loss there. Sure, everyone should have the means of self-defence, otherwise you don't own anything. However, we had firearms for hundreds of years without problems before the Govt decided they wanted a monpoly on force and restricted them The strong and the cunning don't rise to the top unless they have some unfair advantage, usually an army behind them in an unarmed country. Now while young men are usually the ones keen to do things they later regret, that is only noticeable in a country with welfare where your negative outcomes are plastered over by the State health system. If you suffered the direct consequences of your drunking antics a lot more people wouldn't get drunk- there would be plenty of examples begging in the streets. Gangs are no fun when your victims are armed and you get killed. Sadly the world is heading in the opposite direction, and this latest puppet-show in the USA will see the UN's agenda for disarming civilians pushed through in America. Your generation will be serfs to your 'leaders' in a way that mine or my parents never were. The freedoms are taken away so slowly no-one complains. oh- No-one invades Switzerland or the USA because everyone is armed, and Indonesia would have an easier time knocking Aussie off right now than if we were an armed populace. Here's a graph released by some researcher from Canberra yesterday. The USA may have a lot of guns, but their gun homocides are not high. Most the Western world is in the mess typed in the corner of course, low numbers of guns and low deaths.

Great! Welcome in! You've picked the best way to learn to drive. Let me know when you want to weld the diff up.