Road Rally MK2 4 Door (XE powered)

[freddy686868]

Re: Road Rally MK2 4 Door (XE powered)

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]

Re: Road Rally MK2 4 Door (XE powered)

unusual to see 4 door

[lukem30]

Re: Road Rally MK2 4 Door (XE powered)

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]

Re: Road Rally MK2 4 Door (XE powered)

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]

Re: Road Rally MK2 4 Door (XE powered)

Looking good mate!

[MCURZON]

Re: Road Rally MK2 4 Door (XE powered)

Good result Luke, well done

[mexicotait]

Re: Road Rally MK2 4 Door (XE powered)

Great photos there

[redhf]

Road Rally MK2 4 Door (XE powered)

Great stuff get some more incar up.

[lukem30]

Re: Road Rally MK2 4 Door (XE powered)

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]

Re: Road Rally MK2 4 Door (XE powered)

What heat resistant stuff did you use ?

[freddy686868]

Re: Road Rally MK2 4 Door (XE powered)

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

[lukem30]

Re: Road Rally MK2 4 Door (XE powered)

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]

Re: Road Rally MK2 4 Door (XE powered)

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]

Re: Road Rally MK2 4 Door (XE powered)

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]

Re: Road Rally MK2 4 Door (XE powered)

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