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How To Build A Rally Car


altezzaclub

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Ah, so much happening!!

Mao is sitting in the Woolshed with no shocks, the Bilsteins are in Sydney being rebuilt.  That's fine as Steve's wrist is slow to heal and he can't handle the heavy steering in there anyway. Instead we started on a stores shed to take some of the junk currently in the tank shed. Between that and the mezzanine we should be able to clear the tank shed and get a 100sqM slab poured.

The shed was full of shit and some nice but old and rusty 50x50 angle & 1" steel box. We cleared all that out and found the 4 middle post had rotted at ground level. Those we ripped out, cut off the bottoms and stood them back on timber slabs. We found an old wood fire, which will be used, and a gas fire that won't.59536e9a01174_shedpostfixing.thumb.jpg.1add874e8515f7fcdc07439cd314b839.jpg

Then we bolted 4x4 rails along the top and 6x2 braces across the middle. That allowed us to put a 4x2 down the center so each sheet of iron only had to span 1.4M or so.  The wind just tore the old frame's nails out of the top of the posts, so we're hoping to avoid that again.

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We used Tek screws on some old iron roofing, then fitted a window, fixed the hole at the back where a tree was growing through it, tightened up the walls and started on shelves.

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The steel will make shelf framing, a lot of ex-shop benchtop will be the shelves, and we washed out a stack of chemical containers then split them as shelf containers. We'll pile a couple of tons of things like gate hinges, bolts, screws, tynes and farming stuff.  Any room left will be for KE70 parts!

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Edited by altezzaclub
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Steve was working mornings driving a concrete truck, so we had afternoons and weekends. Each day he'd catch up with me at the Woolshed and we'd head down to the caravan.5953714466650_Strippingcaravan.thumb.jpg.86af6b4d7eccb2f401cccc27ff9a50a8.jpg

It only took a couple of days to strip the inside out and then we decided the door was too small for a big guy, so we took that out. We found a full-szed door on an old shearer's cottage, and re-skinned one side of that.

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With a bigger door we could fit in a full-sized kitchen unit, also courtesy of the cottage, so we cut the back at an angle to follow the front of the 'van.

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Then we re-did the door frame trying to make it much more rigid and strong enough to hold a fill-size "timber" door.

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..and that's where I left it.. On the way to becoming a batchelor pad instead of a holiday home! In a month we'll be back into it all!

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(Look at that! I take one lousy photo with him in and then he takes dozens of me! He shoulda been busy!)

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  • 1 month later...

Another week on it! Kitchen bench is in and holding the door jamb in place, wall panel replaced, mudguard box done and the TV stand re-made.

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The couch fits fine. Next is to sand & varnish the floor, then make a bed down the side opposite the TV cabinet.

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Back up in a week or two, when we start technical details like plumbing and siting it.  Maybe THEN we can get into shed clearing and workshop concrete!

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  • 4 weeks later...

Well, slowly slowly..  Mao has rebuilt Blsteins and Steve has a road car..    Pete's Maxima that everyone borrows has a new LCA bush & doesn't knock any more..  and we did some gardening.

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Then we sort-of finished the caravan, no water plumbed in yet..

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and moved it in by the Woolshed.

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We finished the steel store except for a door.  We made the steel door-frame but haven't found hinges yet...

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Steve bought a drill seeder off Great-uncle Neville, so we went out to fetch that.  Way to big to fit on a truck..  Luckily Neville is an engineer and had handy things like several 3/4" socket sets!

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..and a tractor big enough to lift it!

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Sadly both the farm tractors are smaller adn lighter, but we got it to sort-of fall off.. That's another giant project to get working in a few years time!

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So now we can concentrate on emptying the stuff out of the big shed and finally getting a concrete floor laid!

Meanwhile we've agreed to service for Leighty in his 240RS for the Orange Rally next month. If you're around look us up!

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  • 1 month later...

Well, another trip up there..  This time the caravan was in place so we organised some poly pipe for drainage..  Except the ground is like rock and it will need digging in after some rain!59cb589a63e56_Drainagesolution.thumb.jpg.41bbe72167137b21bfb71b02a625fb18.jpg

We swiped a pump off a well that hadn't been used for years and hooked that up to a tank, so the van has pressurised water and someday a drainage system! 

A complicated brotherly swap saw us get the red AE71 back. Steve's little bro dailyed on the 4AC and he cut the rust out of the boot area, but then found other stuff to do. Into the shed with the other dozen KE70s!

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We needed to paint the van door before it rotted out, so we hung a temporary curtain over the doorway. Now, that morning we'd driven about the paddocks in Mao to see how many calfs had been born, and when we saw one lying flat on the ground we drove over. The one beside it got up and moved away, but this little white one stayed dead still until Steve got out and nudged it. Then, POW! it was off and running! We let it go while we checked the rest, & assumed it got back to Mum.

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That night stacks of moths slipped in around the tarp until Steve couldn't stand it and went to bed, listening to the wind bang the alloy bar on the awning against the van. Late at night there's an enormous "MOOO.. " at the door, so he staggers up to get a torch and there's the white calf..

Of course it took one look, realised "Arrgh, there's the human who wants to eat me", and POW, it was off again!

Like a good farmer he found his shoes and some rope, and went off across the paddocks to one-handedly lasso the calf then drag it back to the right paddock half a Km away!

Life's never dull at Woolshed rallying!

 

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  • 1 month later...

Well, another 10day trip up there, full on busy but no damm rally car building!  It started with a mate of Steve's changing the head gasket on his Cressida and not having it idle afterwards. I figured the stepper motor must be crook, but I'd never seen one before...  Anyway, we stripped it to bits & the water from the blown HG had seized up one tiny ball bearing, so some careful lube had it running just fine.

That meant Matty was a volunteer for cleaning the Landy!

I've been trying to sneak some work in on the Landrover spraymobile that desperately needs suspension and steering upgrades, so Matty waterblasted it clear of 50years of grease and dirt while Richo & I pulled the 200B out of the donor Datsun. 59f848bc5cd4f_Clandyonlevel.thumb.jpg.8dd1d4936ebe9ab25f10015952702889.jpg

The Landy hauled the shell back to the paddock (anyone want it??)

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and then the motor went into the orange 200B wagon.

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Steve & I finished cleaning up the car trailer we've used for a few years now and that is ready for sale now (anyone want THAT??  Around $2k) 

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We headed up to Brissie for a day trip buying a new lightweight 'KE70 only' tilter and tried it on another mates KE70 on the way home.

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That was because they headed for Sydney the next day to buy an AE71 for Ronnie,

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and a 4AGE as well on the same trip! The trailer went just great, tows well and is lighter than the old one, but we can't haul anything over a ton on it.

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Meanwhile we'd been off getting yet another scarifier as the big one we bought last time needs too much work. That ones a seed drill actually, and this one is simpler. Steve's little bro Richo & I spent a few days welding and engineering it generally, and hopefully with new tyres it will be out there in a paddock cutting grooves for crop sowing later this week. 

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That only left a detail on the caravan.. Steve bought a gas shower and was all excited, until I looked in the water tanks... 

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The Woolshed has sunk over the 50 or more years, and the tanks are on a concrete slab that hasn't, so the gutters are lower than the top of the tank. On one tank we chiseled out the concrete liner for a space, then cut down the steel wall to lower the 'downpipe' below the tank top. That's being held down by the length of rusty steel pipe, you can see the other little downpipe aiming upwards on the second tank.

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That left only one problem Steve had with hanging up his washing...

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Anyway...  The Girl's 'Beast' is running beautifully and a joy to drive!  LoL, she can't have it back!

Maybe rallying next trip.. Oh, hang on..  WRC Coffs harbour!!!

 

Edited by altezzaclub
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  • 3 weeks later...

Another trip up a couple of weeks later and into it! We started on the steel scrap pile-

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and cleared at least the corner to the right in the photo-

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Then more distractions. A flight to Coffs Harbour last Thursday, luckily we squeezed through between cloud on the mountain-tops and fog in the valleys-

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..and we joined all the Jetrangers, Hughes, Eurocopters and other multi-million dollar choppers flying works teams supporters around.

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I did have to learn how an ipad works & how to navigte with GPS to find a hole in the forest to drop into, not all pads were nice open fields like this one.

 

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So that's been the last 4days watching the world's top drivers out in the dirt.  I don't usually take photos, but shot a few to show that we were there..

This was a fast left-hander in the first dry days- JML, "Luckless Latvala"JML.thumb.jpg.8b6292fc5e5158f3ddcef04af7051c4d.jpg

Mikkelsen

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and Tanak..  well, probably, I can't remember the order I took the photos in!

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Sunday it poured down in the morning and we luckily flew in to where Steve and his mates were camping in the bush. This meant there was a little tent to stand under as the drivers learned about clay roads in the wet.

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It didn't slow the top guys as much as the slower ones, but all the WRC cars had 'incidents'

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Steve ran into TRDKE70 & the crew in the KE70, they've managed to build another one and go rallying before we're even halfway built!  Back to Orange now, back up in a couple of weeks and into it!

 

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Here's the famous Welsh's Creek 33km stage in-car from TRD KE70! 

A big shout out to Tony and Chris (and crew) who managed a second place outright (against many 4WD turbos with 3x the $$$) in this round of the Queensland Rally Championship last weekend at Rally Australia - Coffs Harbour!!! This is how they do it!!!

There's another two vids they've put up next to this one too when you're finished watching this but need more KE70 4AGE gravel goodness!!!

As Keith's updated - hopefully we'll soon have a workshop and our own 4AGE *E7* to run against you guys! We're aiming for next year - providing my scaphoid bone in my right wrist has finally healed!

 

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Tony and Chris are certainly talented crew ,having watched over the weekend they embarrassed a lot of other crews in big dollar outfits.

I was stuck in service park most of the weekend but ducked out on some of the closer stages.

My boy done quite well to in car 121 mighty excel !!embarrassed a few wrx  people.

Although he broke an engine pipe saturday last stage ,but the rally community helped out and fixed it and some other problems we never saw.

Big thanks to Mal Keough and Gary crew.Hoist Keith you need one of these for woolshed rallying so much easier .

The top guys are so fast it really is F1 in the forest

If you guys have never seen the wrc cars in full flight you need to get to coffs next year (maybe the last year at coffs}

IF not to see the wrc but the woolshed guys debut 

No pressure guys HA HA!!!

Rob

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