How Not To Build A Rally Car

[altezzaclub]

No we haven't, it feeds no problem at all through that large tube. I thought about how many seconds of fuel that 350ml would feed the twin Webers for and realised there were no corners that tight for that long.

 

350ml is about a kilometer of foot hard down special stage.

[caibs]

ah nice. i found a 600ml one that will fit nicely and bit the bullet this morning. mine wont be on w.o.t for any real legnth of time so it should absolutely be enough. cheers!

[altezzaclub]

Well, we are all in Orange for a rally tomorrow after another week up at the farm getting the car ready. Some of us left the keys in our overalls after opening one of the other sheds, then left the overalls in the woolshed when we went home... Of course the next day we couldn't get in so a little break & enter was needed with a borrowed hacksaw!

[altezzaclub]

It was typically freezing, being 1300M up, so a fire was needed. The boys had one last year using a beer keg, but their design was lacking.. so I took to a 20L can with a hammer and chisel. That turned out fine, I stuck it on top of the old fire sitting in a rim.

[altezzaclub]

There were plenty of jobs, both repairs, maintenence and new ideas. The sump guard had taken a hammering when some road was not as wide as the driver wanted...

[altezzaclub]

There was a diff oil trail down the back of one rear brake so I stripped that. Yes, the oil was inside too, so we pulled the axle out. Lucky we did that, as the bearing was tight and rough. We stripped out the other and found the bearing worn and loose, so the car got the axles from the spares car.

 

The one axle has the most amazing pattern within the machining marks, making it look like it has been twisted. They are both worn at the splines such that we could measure the difference in spline width between those and the spares car ones. That's a spares car axle on the right.

[altezzaclub]

The toe-in needed checking after the off-roading that modifed the sump guard. This is not hard to do, all you need is a straight bit of wood. I checked this against a solid steel RSJ that not even farmers can bend, and it was 4mm out over its length. The nails have to be put in to the rim width, and exactly the same length, I used vernier calipers to get them under a mm different.

 

Then you get it setup so the nails sit on the rim, I used a paint tin and a couple of bricks, and use a spirit level to mark on the floor exactly where the front and back of the timber is. Repeat it on the other side and push the car back so you can measure across the floor with a tape.

[altezzaclub]

The maths is simple- the 4mm bend in the wood on each side gives 8mm to add to the back measurement, then subtracting front and rear gives toe-in or out over the length of the wood. My timber was 1500mm long, compared to the rim at 360mm.

 

I measured 1780 & 1790, whch became 1798 with the timber bend. So I had 18mm of toe-in along the timber, which is 4mm over the rim.

 

Then you adjust the toe in as needed (the painful part) and push the car forward again a couple of metres to settle the steering. Repeat the measurements until you get what you want. I made it 2.5mm of toe-in after this.

[altezzaclub]

There were more things done, but I have to go to bed as there is yet another 6am start tomorrow... and we have to find Steerfast and TRDKE70!

 

We watched the local news on TV tonight where they were talking about the rally and dang! There goes the red and white Celica across the screen! So we're famous already!

 

More updates Sunday!

[carbonboy]

I love reading this thread, gives me so many ideas on how to get things done & keep it simple. :y:

[corollaart]

Good luck guys :2thumbs:

[altezzaclub]

What a weekend! Where did I get to?

 

Right- the car was always full of dust, it really vacuumed it up as Steve would drive with the windows down. They would open the rear 1/4 windows to get airflow out, but last rally the nav's side one fell out and was hanging by its clip. So a roof vent was needed!

 

I found an old Valvoline oil tin in one of the other sheds and grabbed the grinder. Being razor-blade thin it shaped nicely into a wedge, and the grinder made short work of the roof.

 

I slipped it into the hole and drew the curve of the roof along each side, then transferred that line onto a sheet of paper. Cutting the paper gave me a curve to put on a bit of timber, and a hacksaw gave me a roof curve. I made two of them, clamped the tin edge between them and bent a couple of flaps that matched the roof.

 

A couple of rivets and a reinforcing strip of metal underneath finished the basics. In case of rain while on the back of the truck I cut the rest of the tin into a front cover that neatly read "Valvoline" and it clipped over the opening.

 

Inside a took the grinder to a 20L drench container and made a vent that directed the air to the back instead of freezing the crew. If it gets too hot in summer I'll cut holes in that and make some adjustable gizmo to direct the air to each seat.

[altezzaclub]

I meant to get some detailed photos but it was getting late, so we loaded the car and I spent the rest of the time loading tools, then reversed the truck into the woolshed for a fast getaway. If just fits.. at the front

 

then overhangs the spare 18RG at the back.

 

and you can't walk down the side-

 

So we were all go for 7am-

[altezzaclub]

Now, Leichty is a sly old fox who has been rallying since the 70s with Steve's Dad Pete. He's seen (and probably done) all the tricks I've seen over the same time, and a lot have nothing to do with holding a steering wheel..

 

On Thursday Leichty was talking to Steve's Dad Pete and asked him how Ashley, Steve's navigator, was getting down. She was meant to be coming with Leichty but hadn't formally asked him so there was lots of phonings and carry-ons between the four of them before it was settled.

 

We left Walcha at 7am Friday morning with time to hit the wrecker and get the 3SGE motor out of the early FWD Celica down there. While Steve was in the KE70 with me following the truck, Pete rang him and said Leichty had just phoned and they were waiting to leave Port Macquarie but there was no sign of Ashley, so Steve better phone her. When he did her father answered and said there was no Ashley living there, then asked him who the hell he was, and what did he want with his daughter, then said she was freezing standing outside waiting to be picked up. So more phoning around and back to Leichty, who just burst out laughing and said he'd got Steve good! They had left with Ashley & Ben hours before and he was bored, so he set up the whole prank with Ashley's phone. So Steve and I spent the next couple of hours planning counter-attacks on Leichty!

 

Anyway, we hit Orange about 2pm and started at the wreckers. That was as bad as feared and three hours later they were about to let the dogs out and go home even if we weren't finished. Finally, we ripped it out with the forkhoist and put it on the truck. We checked in at the Bowling Club HQ and did the paperwork, but could only get scrutineered at 7am Sat morning at the start.

 

We got up Saturday 5.30am to leave at 6.30am and I noticed the canvas on the back of the truck had been moved. Some prick had stolen the 50 litres of rally car fuel in the plastic containers! So much for this being a safe area. When Pete jumped in to take the truck to the start, the diesel had been siphoned! There is a puddle of that on the road by the gutter. ...and of course when I had raced off to get rally car fuel we found they had siphoned the rally car dry as well.

 

Anyway, they made the start and off they went. We followed them up Mt Canobolas, the same stage as last year that drops steeply to the right near the summit, and found everyone waiting as someone had already gone off a couple of Km in and they wanted to clear the car first.

 

So we went all the way around to the Cadia road and just missed them at the end of One, and caught up at the end of Two- with a puncture, which destroyed the first of the set of gold mags off the spares car. We changed that and sent him off to the 15min refuel at the showgrounds to buy another tyre from the Dunlop truck while I stopped at the wrecker with Pete to get Corona rims. 4 for $40, to hell with alloys now! (we've gone from $100 mags to $25 mags to $10 steelies now...)

 

They had dropped position for stage 3, a 36Km all around the back of the mountain, and got caught behind someone slow that they couldn't get past, so when he got off the stage he was furious. Then a lunch break so we bought two new steer tyres for two steel rims, and he had 4 new tyres on the car when they repeated stage one. He moved from 17th place on the stage to 10^th place, taking 50seconds off. It also took the smile off Leichty's face as he'd got a couple of minute up on Steve with the puncture and slow driver.

[altezzaclub]

Straight into stage 5, the repeat of two, and I had the camera at the end for photos... but no, he rolled it up in the top of the hills. So we waited to see what eventuated and the following guys helped tip it from its side onto its wheels and stop it blocking the road. They were the same guys he was furious with for holding him up earlier in the day.. kama always strikes!

 

He'd come to some nasty drainage humps that the road was full of, gone over one sideways and the front wheel dug in on the second, so it rolled over onto Ashley's side while sliding, then must have got almost airbourne and landed heavily on the front driver's corner and ended up lying on his side.

 

 

The Recovery 4WD were going to go and get him as he was blocking the road, then the crew that helped arrived and sorted it out. It was vaguely OK but losing coolant, so I poured 10L of fuel into the Corolla and zoomed off to find a creek or a puddle to fill up the jerrycan. He drove it out with the radiator leaking and we were looking at it when the recovery 4WD went up anyway as they couldn't match the number of cars at the end control and the start control. We were standing there when they came racing back down and said to get it the car and follow them to give a hand, a car had vanished miles down the cliff. So Steve and Ashley & I left Pete with the bent Celica and we raced up the mountain in the KE70, once again doing stages in the road car.

 

A 180B Datsun that had gone before Steve had slid off a yump on a downhill corner and just continued over the edge into the trees down the bank. Apart from the tyremarks if you knew where to look, it would never be seen, it was a good 20M down and upside-down against a tree. The navigator wasn't bad, but the driver had spinal injuries and had trouble breathing. They couldn't get him up the hill without 10guys in a firefighters line who climbed from the bottom to the top after they passed him onto the next guys. I didn't think they would ever get the car out of there, but we saw it later that night after prizegiving. anyway-

 

The lady from the recovery 4WD met us 50M down from the crash site and asked us to go back down and guide the ambulances up, she was road control as they wouldn't let her near the wreck. We were to tell anyone else coming up to turn around and go down to keep it clear. So Ashley volunteered to stay with her, two woman are always better then one, and I managed to turn the car around on a narrow muddy steep pine forest track with a 45deg bank down one side and a 45deg drop down the other, both side covered in trees. Steve and I went back down to Pete & when two ambulances arrived they followed us up, but got stuck in the muddy section. So Steve jumped out, we emptied the Corolla and the ambos grabbed their packs and all piled in. I took them up the first gear track to the crash site. The first girl in said “How can you get this car up these roads,?” Then said “well, you're older than me I'll trust your driving!”

 

They got to work and I was asked to go back down and bring the firies back up, so it was the 5-point turn and back down for the firies walking up, as the ambulances were blocking the road and their fire truck was only 2WD too. So I hauled the firies up The next were the Police walking up and I was asked to run them up before I'd even got down to the ambulances, so I turned back up and called out “taxi”. The girl got in the back, looked a the mixture display and said “Oh, I see the meter is running already!” When we got to the top she got out and told the guy “you pay the driver”... he said “We'll take if off his next ticket!”