1995 Compact Rally Build in Colorado

[DaveK]

After running an Evo IX for a couple of seasons of hillclimbing in Colorado, I've gotten the itch to get out and do some stage rallies. Knowing full well the Evo is just too expensive to rally, I've recently located a 318ti which I'll be building up for gravel rallies.



Here's a shot of it on the scales. 3100 lbs on the nose with 2 people in it. It weighed 2820 with an 1/8th tank of gas. Waaaaay to heavy, so lets get started!



This is what she looked like after a day in the garage. Most of the interior is gone, but I've yet to tackle the dash and associated wiring.



Motor & transmission finally out. Pulled everything as a unit, still attached to the subframe and suspension.



Empty engine bay.



Still working on the interior.



Shot of the car from the back looking to where the rear subframe used to be. Its getting lighter, and I can now lift up on the frame rails and move the car.



Finally got the dash out and just about everything is off the firewall. Wiring is still a bit of a mess, and I need to spend a bit more time labeling everything before I try to string it through the hole on the driver's side.



After another afternoon working on the car, I removed the ABS module, windshield, hood, hatch, and finished fishing the wiring harness through the little hole in the firewall. Even did a bit of vacuuming to remove all the leaves.



Dave

[DaveK]

Here's a picture of the engine we'll be using once things start going back together. Its a 1995 S50 B30. This engine will give us a few options for what class to race in thanks to the 3.0L displacement. We'll probably keep it pretty tame this year to help cut down on expenses. 250ish HP should be plenty to keep the car sideways on gravel.



Dave

[DaveK]

Spent a cold weekend working in a non heated garage in 15f degree weather.

Useless brackets removed from the interior. The weight just keeps coming off.



What the floor looks like now.



Shots of the front and rear shock towers, lots of misc. brackets removed, and any mounting tabs or bolts that I won't need anymore have been cut out too.





Dave

[DaveK]

Last weekend, the goal was to prepare the car for seam welding, which means getting all the seam sealer and tar off the car. Since I'm short on time, I brought an assistant.



Playing with liquid nitrogen is dangerous, so don't try this at home. We used a 3-man team to get this done in the most efficient way, and cycle out one person when their arms got tired, and to make sure nobody was freezing off any body parts. Below are Grant & Mitch at work.





Here's a shot of the car on the rotisserie. We didn't measure out beforehand, but ended up with about a mm of clearance on the rear of the car when rolling the car over.



Here's the rear wheel well just after we got started.



Here's a shot of the front wheel well as we are about done.



Here's a shot of the underside after the majority of the undercoating has been removed.



Here's what the floor looked like when we were done, what a mess!



I swept up all the material removed and put it in a box. There was probably another 4-8 lbs of sound deadening that I ended up vacuuming up from the interior, and we've still got a bunch of material still left in the car.



Thanks for following along!

Dave

[is-si]

Thats excellent, thanks for sharing

What primer/paint system are you going to use?

[avtovaz]

oh i that looks fantastic so far!


watching with interest ))

[alan1272]

good stuff

there's no way i could use liquid nitrogen without titing about

[bruvs1]

don't fancy a "ranolph fiennes" type digit losing accident, so stick with the slow way!! impressed how clean and quick it brings it off though..

[K3vin]

That looks really nice! It took me a lot of nights to take the undercoating off with a grinder and various knot wheels, but it didn't look half as good as your car looks now. A friend of mine has had his car acid dipped, but that also removes the zinc layer and makes the car very difficult to rustproof. Look like a really good solution to do it this way!

[ultegra]

out of interest can we even hire this kind of kit in the UK? I have never seen it advertised but these guys might be a good start: http://n2nitrogenservices.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3&Itemid=4

[bruvs1]

i think it could be possible to get from b.o.c they do all weld gases, once an account has been opened, which is straight forward enough

[DaveK]

We looked at a couple different ways to get the job done. The three were Liquid Nitrogen, Acid-Dipping, and Soda-Blasting.

Acid dipping was out because nobody within 1,000 miles has a tank large enough to handle a unibody chassis. There were some downsides to this method as mentioned above.

Soda-Blasting sounded good, but I couldn't get a reasonable estimate. The local guys charge $100/hour to do the work, but nobody would commit to how long it would take. The advantage of the soda blasting is it would take the paint off, leave a protective coating to inhibit rust, but it isn't able to get down into the seams and remove the sealer, so it doesn't do much to help with prepping the chassis seam welding.

So, Liquid Nitrogen became the next best option. Overall I'm happy with the results, but it cost more than I would've liked. Total cost with tank rental and the gas ended up about $600, plus about 6 hours worth of work from 3 guys.

Now I've got a question for you guys. What do most of you end up doing for cages? T45 (or other chromoly) aren't legal in most series in the US, but we do accept homologated cages, so basically my options are, use the FIA kit from Custom Cages, or do a "shop built" one-off cage out of DOM steel. The CC kit is nice because of the light weight, but the downsides are that the cage design looks a bit dated, especially as compared to the CC kit I fitted to my Evo IX. Any input appreciated!

Dave

[bruvs1]

my opinion is do your own thing, like us you can design and use whatever you like, are's is pretty much like a group A e30 cage but with more work on the front turrets and rear turret boxes as you've seen. we've got a good spec of tube and a few smaller diameter tubes to save some weight but not expecting the job to be too heavy.

[DaveK]

That's sort of what I'm leaning towards now. The only real downside is that for 'one-off' cages, we aren't allowed to use alloy steel, so the cage will likely be a bit heavier.

These are the minimum specs of the cage for use in US events, based off FIA, but tubing thicknesses for DOM steel:

http://www.rally-america.com/info/2008_Rollcage.pdf

Looking at some of the cages my cage builder has already done, and using thier general measurements for a "Spec M3" cage, I'm guessing the weight of the tubing will be at least 130 pounds, so that'll be 30 pounds more than the Custom Cages kit. Guess I'll have to go back thru the car to find some more weight to remove.

One of the things I've always disliked about the homologated cages is that they don't allow for fitment of an extra bar along the rocker panel. Sliding off the road and catching a tree stump in just the wrong place is a pretty easy way to end up with serious injury, so a 'one-off' cage will allow us to utilize that extra bar down low. I think with modern cars, the thing to be most mindful of is side impacts. My cage builder has advised trying to emulate some of the 2009 design elements from the Ford WRC cars, as they've certainly proven themselves in big wrecks. I wasn't able to find any good pics online, but he's got a few in a magazine that he'll be showing me shortly.

Dave

[is-si]

like this >



we'll try and get some wrc photos from the autosport show in a few weeks