Road Rally MK2 4 Door (XE powered)

[lukem30]

Progress on the car has been slow lately, trying to grab an hour here and there. The lack of a timing belt cover has been bugging me so I picked one up and made a point of getting it fitted. At the same time I change the front crank oil seal and the camshaft oil seals. I also put a new timing belt kit on for piece of mind and fitted a new alloy alternator pulley. The back pads were looking a little low so on with new discs, pads and piston dust covers too. My next job to sort is the heating system as the front screen has been misting up bad.

[lukem30]

Here is a short clip from the targa rally;

http://youtu.be/UH9n2vfnBBk

[jonsey]

Going good. Are you doing the motokhana in December? Regs were out last Wed.Its using part of the main circuit same as the targa and the gokart track. Its on 2 seperate days 14th and 15th - £35.

[lukem30]

Sounds great, is there anyway I can enter without coming to club as Kidwelly is over 1 hour and a half from me. When are you out next?

[Stuart Mchugh]

nice mk2 excellent read many thanks keep up the good work

[jonsey]

I'm doing the Sunday. The rule is you've got to come to so that regular club goers don't miss out. They only take phone bookings when there are places left over. Only the Sunday regs are out at the moment. I think Saturdays will be out a week Wednesday. The rule helps keep regular club attendance instead of 10 people normally and then 100 when an event is announced.

[redhf]

Get more in car up luke

[lukem30]

Thats a good way to keep the club goers happy, its a shame i live a bit further away. If there are places left closer to the date drop me a pm

I got plenty more incar but its so cringy watching myself, next time i won't include the cockpit - put it on the dash instead.

[redhf]

I prefer the

[redhf]

I prefer the cockpit view as I think your running a 4.6 with 5 sp tranx , I'll be running the same set up but with a 170bhp pinto, it seems to work well what's it like in the upper gears?

[freddy686868]

I prefer the cockpit view as I think your running a 4.6 with 5 sp tranx , I'll be running the same set up but with a 170bhp pinto, it seems to work well what's it like in the upper gears?

Abit short but gets there quick enough!

[hesus2003]

unusual to see 4 door

[lukem30]

I went back up to the rolling road recently to map my car around 4.5 k to try and make it less noisy for the road rally noise test. Vince got straight to work but he was having trouble with the fuelling. He quickly diagnosed a faulty fuel pressure reg which was letting to much fuel in, so a new fse fuel pressure reg was ordered and I was booked back in the following week. On my return he fitted the reg and spent a few fours remapping the car with the correct fuel pressure and cleaned up the rev range around the noise test level. On the way home I saw a massive improvement in mpg, £33 on the way up before mapping and reg, and £12 on the way home

Now the car was running great I thought I'd give it a bit of a shake down at a local gymkhana at Walters arena, and it made light work of the 24 tests with no problems. Really enjoyed chucking it about on the gravel too. All hands to the deck now to sort the last few bits and I'll hopefully be out on the mel harries memorial road rally.

[lukem30]

With loads of buggering about I finally fitted a heater out of a mini, and it worked brilliantly - kept us nice and warm and demisted the screen.

We went out the weekend before the rally to get some mileage under our belts in the dark, i'm glad we did as the manifold cracked, the steering rack came loose and the steering wheel cracked. If this had happened on the rally we would have failed to finish.

After a few late lights we manged to get the car all sorted for the Mel Harries Memorial road rally.

Onto the rally, we were pretty rusty for the first few miles as we hadn't been out in the lanes for over a year. We picked up 2 fails near the start but after that everything seemed to get back to normal. The lanes were very slippy, wet with a lot of mud and leaves on the roads. This contribited to us understeering pretty hard up a banking, but we managed to carry on with little damge. The leader at petrol fell victim to the same corner but unfortunatly retired due to the damage. We took it pretty easy after that and made it to the finish in 17th o/a, 4th semi expert. Would have been better without the fails but we were really happy just to get to the finish.

[lee edwards]

Looking good mate!

[MCURZON]

Good result Luke, well done

[mexicotait]

Great photos there

[redhf]

Great stuff get some more incar up.

[lukem30]

I took a quick look at the car as it's been parked up in the garage since the rally. Gave the area which took the impact a quick look over. I found the engine had dropped about 1/2" on the one side and it was leaning on the steering rack. The cause was a badly cracked engine mount which had started to seperate. There was also a pool of oil under the car which lead me to find a pin hole in one of the sump welds.
I couldn't see anything bent on the front suspension so I'm a bit stumped on the miss aligned steering at the moment.
My tension strut kit and anti roll bar kit has also arrived in the post so hopefully my turn in will be sorted once I get it fitted and set up.

That's enough to keep me busy for a while.



Repaired engine mount



Repaired exhaust manifold



Painted exhaust manifold (heat resistant coating)

[mexicotait]

What heat resistant stuff did you use ?

[freddy686868]

Thinking about it like check your steering knuckle it might have spun on the splined part it clamps too.

[lukem30]

I had the manifold painted by a friend who works painting aircraft parts, not sure exactly what it is but if its good enough to fly its good enough for the more door.

The steering knuckle looks pretty good tbh john.

[lukem30]

I had a bit if spare time last weekend so I fitted up the tension strut kit and took the car to melvyn evans to get it set up. While going through the car they spotted that there was hardly any front suspension travel which lead me to stripping down the front legs when I got home. When I got the inserts out I found the legs were full of water, thus stoping the insert from compressing and stopping suspension travel.
I think this was the main contributor to my recent understeer problems and probably played a part in the damaged engine mount. I've ordered new bushes, seals, teflon grease and coilover covers to prevent water entering the leg in future. I'll probably end up changing the tca's while is apart as the ball joints are on their way.

[lukem30]

Legs have been rebuilt with new bushes and seals. I also replaced the top mounts with the grp 4 fabrications spherical bearing items.

New bushes



Legs all built up



I had to make some nuts out of my old tca adjusters to fit the new top mounts



New tca's with spherical bearing ball joints

[GavinR]

New tca's with spherical bearing ball joints

Hi Luke,

Where did you get those from?
I go through ball joints rather quickly so a spherical bearing would be better

Thanks

[freddy686868]

Hi Luke,

Where did you get those from?
I go through ball joints rather quickly so a spherical bearing would be better

Thanks

pm'd you gavin regarding this.

[lukem30]

Looks like Freddy has beat me too it again lol

Here's another pic of how the bearing fits gav

[stuartf]

I'm interested in the spherical TCA's - where do they come from?

[lukem30]

Jeff skitt engineering, there is a group buy going ahead in the parts for sale section

[lukem30]

Update time. I took part in an autotest organised by Bridgend motor club for a bit of cheap fun and to burn up some old tires, and for the money what a good fun day - will hopefully try and enter more as they come up.


I put an entry in for the gremlin road rally, so I thought it was about time I upgraded the lights. My first stop was the fully relay the headlights. Meaning as I stripped out the old headlight wires to run new, I could take a lot of the old unused wire out of the loom, which made it look a lot tidier.

New relays and fuses added to the dash


Engine loom looking a lot better with the old unused wires removed


When I stripped the old headlights out, they were a little worse for wear, stained and scratched lenses, rusty chrome rings and split mounting bowls just about hanging on.
Meaning as the cars primary use is going to be road rallies, I thought I would buy the best lights I could afford, which was the historic rally sport piaa headlight kit. Now they are fully fitted up and tested, I find them fantastic, like driving on 4 spots.

[lukem30]

On to the rally, we entered semi expert class and were seeded car 44. I was looking forward to testing out the changes I had made to the car.
We didn't get off to a very good start, with a wrong slot and forgetting to get two coad boards signed for, but things got better quickly. The route was very enjoyable to drive, with lots of whites and farmyards to flick the car about, but it looked challenging to navigate. The car felt great, all the understeer had gone and I could get a little confidence to go quicker. Unfortunately, after petrol this lead to is hitting a cautioned jump to fast, we landed hard and the heater matrix burst. With steam and water filling the car we quickly stopped and called it a night. Managed to limp to the finish for a quick breakfast before heading home.

[MCURZON]

She's looking good Luke. Logbook next? She'd go well in Road Rally Class I bet!

[lukem30]

Cheers math, get a few more night events under my belt and a log book won't be far off

[lukem30]

Not a lot happening at the moment, I replaced the heater matrix and the car is pretty much ready to go again, got an entry in for the bro preseli in April next, anybody else doing it?

[lukem30]

Bro Preseli road rally

Last weekend we competed on our first TVMC event, and what a cracker it was, I can see why all these west Wales events fill there entries straight away with 10 reserves waiting to go. Cracking lanes and ran like clockwork.
Our run didn't get off to a great start. First of all we were put in the wrong class and seeded car 47, we got the class changed but had to stay at 47. We got going not long after midnight and caught the car in front on the first few miles, he wouldn't let us past so we both caught the car in front of him. The car at the front immediately pulled over at a junction and as I went to pass them both the middle car whacked my rear quarter area. I wasn't best pleased but the car was ok to continue, just a bent wheel and a few scuffs luckily. We were going well till petrol, still catching cars and dropping less than two minutes.
I was really enjoying the second half and the car felt even better in the dry. Then I over cooked a hairpin and slid up a bank giving us some really bad toe out and a lot of lateral steering wheel movement. The alignment was that bad we had a small amount of tyre squeal driving in a straight line. After that we backed off a touch to make the finish. We made the finish at about 5am and ended up 11th overall. The route was fantastic and well marshalled, we will definitely be back.

Said damage




A couple from the gremlin I forgot to upload

[MCURZON]

Great result Luke, well done

[dorianwills]

Have you had a go at bro caron or cilwendeg they ar awsome night out

[lukem30]

Have you had a go at bro caron or cilwendeg they ar awsome night out

Not yet but I'll chuck and entry in again this year as always, closest I have got to the cilwendeg is 5th reserve

[GavinR]

Good result Luke

[dorianwills]

Not yet but I'll chuck and entry in again this year as always, closest I have got to the cilwendeg is 5th reserve

Ye you got to fast you will get there one day