GavinR's Mk2 Rally Car - FLY

[GavinR]

Re: GavinR's Mk2 Rally Car - FLY

Thanks for the comments

After saying my first event was in February, George phoned up and said she was available for the Carvers Traders Rally on 18th Jan. This event was run by Burnham-on-Sea Motor Club on the lanes around Exmoor which we know quite well, so we put in a late entry.
This meant I had to get on with some of Fly's rebuild...

After removing the tank, large cracks in the boot floor


Even worse underneath, Panhard Rod mount not connected to much


The drivers side chassis rail has collapsed inwards and the bottom of the turret rusted away - years of being pounded by the bump stop has taken its toll


After putting the Panhard Rod mount back to where it should be and welding it to the boot floor, I cut out some of the chassis rail and inserted some thick box section with a notch in the bottom for extra clearance. The passenger side isn't as bad but I'll notch it at a later date


A few years ago I was gently rear-ended and although it straightened out pretty well, it had left some cracks round the rear light and these were going rusty. After a bit more straightening I cleaned them up


Welded the cracks and put plates behind the bigger holes


Ground the welds down, some primer and 4 coats of paint, looks a lot better than when I started. I also welded thick washers on for the main battery earth



So to the rally itself, not particularly good entry even for the South West of just 25 cars. We arrived a bit late after a slow journey from Bristol through some floods, I was glad i was in the van as some were pretty deep. Then we sat in the scrutineering queue for an hour, each car was taking a long time mainly because the scrutineer was very chatty, but we got done in the end

We were given some of the route an hour before the start and plotted it with plenty of time to spare. The rest of the route was in sealed envelopes to be opened at certain controls on the route. The first control was a mile up the road, on a main road just before a tiny road turned off. We queued up and could see the first few cars turning off so I headed in that direction while George opened the envelope and found a marked map with 5 miles of route on. The lanes were quite bumpy but we didn't have any problems getting to the first control with time to spare. The next section was just as easy but Fly started to misfire and coming up a steep hill she cut out completely and wouldn't restart. I grabbed a torch and looked under the bonnet and saw a large hole in the air filter


Assuming this was the problem, I removed it, threw it in the boot, Fly fired up and we were a couple of minutes late into the next control. Something still wasn't right, cruising along a B road on the next section she was still missing a bit and when we got to the next control she cut out again and we only just got her going as our time came up. The next section was down some twisty lanes and even though everything was just about ok flat out, every time I slowed for a corner she would cut out and either stall or slowly spring back to life. George and I agreed we couldn't carry on like this and as we were only 5 miles from the van and trailer we decided to call it a night before we completely broke down in the middle of nowhere!

Even trying to do these 5 miles was a challenge, so I pulled up again and had a better look at everything. To my surprise I found the top half of the carb was loose, 2 of the screws were missing and the other 4 were only held in by the filter base plate. I got a few tools out and tried to screw it down, but there was something in the way so I took the top right off, found the accelerator jet almost unscrewed and a float floating in the float chamber


So I chucked that in the boot as well and screwed everything down tight. George turned on the pumps while I watched but the single float wasn't strong enough to close the needle valve so neat petrol was flooding into the engine, no wonder it wouldn't idle! Anyway after a few minutes she started without the pumps on and we got back to the trailer and home without any further incidents. I assume the float had come off over one of the bumps on the first sectioon and the resulting misfire and petrol going everywhere had allowed the rest of the carb to come loose...

The next day after a quick search I found a DGAS carb on the Scimitar forum being sold cheaeply by a chap I know in Gloucester so I collected it the following week.
I swapped the jets over, checked the fuel pressure, changed the oil and last weekend I went to a local Rolling Road in Yate, JPR Tuning. After a few hours we had a good smooth torque curve and a peak of 140bhp at 6k rpm. They could have got a bit more peak power but we decided it was better to have more torque throughout the range, especially for road rallies

So, fingers crossed for the Bath Festival in 3 weeks...

[mexicotait]

Re: GavinR's Mk2 Rally Car - FLY

Did you previously run a single 45 ?
Is the dgas performing better ?

[GavinR]

Re: GavinR's Mk2 Rally Car - FLY

Hi,

I ran the DGAS for many years before switching to a set of splits when I moved to Wales. I sold these on when I stopped doing many events and replaced it with the single 45. At the beginning of last year I sold the 45 and went back to the original DGAS after having it rebuilt.

The power output between the 45 and the DGAS are very similar on my engine, but the DGAS fits in the engine bay better

Thanks

[GavinR]

Re: GavinR's Mk2 Rally Car - FLY

Bath Festival Road Rally - 22nd-23rd February

There was a full entry of 50 cars for the 3rd running of this event. After the previous 2 years car problems, George and I were hoping for a troublefree run and that's what happened. There were 7 special tests and a regularity before petrol, then a longer regularity followed by 80 miles in the lanes to the finish. I was expecting the road sections to have a greater bearing on the results than the tests so went on a new set of A021R's that had worked so well last year, but this meant being sensible in the tests which started with a couple of short tests run twice each. After these we were lying 13th but it was all very close.

The next 3 were in forests, the first one we did twice and had done it last year as well. We got going better on this one, it was smooth and mainly dry. The last one was the longest at 3 miles and we had done a shortened version the previous year. It started off quite muddy so I was being careful but the final half was good and dry. Our time of 6m59s was 5th quickest.

Onto the Regularity, up a private tarmac road and back down a yellow, we were quickest here only dropping 9s which left us 5th overall at petrol, but only a few seconds ahead of Cars 1 & 2 - although we didn't know any of this at the time.

The regularity out of petrol went back through the forests we'd used on Test 5 & 7 but we were given a road book with tulips describing the junctions and distances at each one - George did very well interpeting this despite me forgetting to reset the trip at the start (I can usually add up well but going through a forest in the dark trying to calculate the differences between mileages to 0.01 of a mile was a challenge!)

We were lucky not to get held up that much, the only car we caught was car 10 who pulled over quite quickly, just before a LWR triangle in the forest - I thought we were earlier on but George shouted left at the right moment and we just made it round the triangle and into the control. At the last Passage check of the section we caught Car 12 and then again at the finish but it's difficult to know how much time we lost. All this allowed cars 1 & 2 to make up their seconds and end up ahead of us.

Out on the road section, George was doing a great job - we didn't have a single wrong slot and found all the numerous LWR's, just a couple of hesitations but we were never more than 30s into our minute and usually got it back on the next section by pushing a bit harder to be waiting outside the control board. It was raining quite hard at times and there was some mud in places but the tyres were working well and we didn't drop a single minute over the 80 miles

As we headed back to the finish we weren't sure how we would have done - it looked like cars 12 & 14 were clean as well so for all we knew there could have been 15 cars clean which would mean the results were all down to the times in the forests...

As it turned out, only 6 cars were clean, quite a few dropping time on the very last section which was a 1/2 mile down a muddy white.
We finished 6th Overall which is the best result George and I have had on a night event

A couple of pics from Andy Manston
On the first Test


Near the end of the road sections, a ford not far from Glastonbury


Next event will be back in the forests on the Somerset Stages, after some more chassis repairs for the MOT...

[Graham]

Re: GavinR's Mk2 Rally Car - FLY

fantastic stuff and a brilliant write up as always well done

[mexicotait]

Re: GavinR's Mk2 Rally Car - FLY

So you would rate the 21r then
Great writeup as usual gav !

[GavinR]

Re: GavinR's Mk2 Rally Car - FLY

We didn't make it out on the Somerset Stages in the end as George was out of the country, although this gave me time for various repairs and a general tidy up...

The drivers chassis under the footwell had been squashed a few times on road rallies and doing a few forest events over the past few years had made it even worse
So I cut the bent section out


Cut a replacement section from a 4 door floorpan


Welded it in and plated some other rot


Then fashioned a skid plate from 2mm sheet


Front view


The passenger side chassis was fine so I just made a skid plate and welded it on

[GavinR]

Re: GavinR's Mk2 Rally Car - FLY

Then onto more tidying of the bodywork

The boot lip was cracked and going rusty in places so I welded in a new section


Passenger door was getting really bad - I'd repaired it in the past with filler and fibreglass but the rust was coming through again, so I cut the bottom of the door skin off and welded in a new section. The front and rear corners had gone almost up to the swage line


Filled the door


And the boot lid


Taking the door off revealed a rotten door pillar - it's double skinned round the hinge holes and a lot of this had rotted out


Part of a replacement sill made a good repair panel and I removed the wing to get access all round


I still had a few litres of cellulose left over from previous repairs, so mixed it up and sprayed the boot and door


Then the door pillar


And as it was going well and I had some paint left in the gun, I gave the front panel a few coats (I'd wire brushed and primered it a few days earlier)
While I was there, I fitted an oil cooler (just waiting to be plumbed in). I've also redone the radiator cut out and replaced the rear silencer with a bigger one as I was on the noise limit on the last event


My next event isn't until the end of May but I need to get Fly out of the workshop to start on the next project which is respraying the Scimitar. Doing this work to Fly is good practice although I need to spend more time and effort on the filling and sanding if I want the Scimitar to come out well...

[alladdin]

Use a good coat of 2k primer filler Gavin, it's amazing what you can flat out of it .

[azz259]

Re: GavinR's Mk2 Rally Car - FLY

How did you get on at this years classic tracks? I navigated in a bmw compact and was a very good day, that first stage at spencers yard was something else !

[GavinR]

Re: GavinR's Mk2 Rally Car - FLY

Thanks for the reminder, I was just getting round to doing a write up...

[GavinR]

Re: GavinR's Mk2 Rally Car - FLY

Classic Tracks Rally - 25th May 2014

My 6th time on this event and it gets better every year

Same as last year, the event was based at Jamie Jukes' farm in Penrhiwllan near Llandysul and there was a full entry of 75 cars plus reserves
Carrie was navigating for the first time since this event last year, and Guy and Chris Clark were marshalling for us

Looking clean and tidy at the start, but having the fuel pump wiring fail going through scrutineering wasn't a good start, I managed to rewire it to the cut out switch and this lasted all day



There were 20 Tests, with the first one round the gravel tracks at the start venue which had been extended from 2013 to give a 2 mile test, with some steep hills, some fast downhill sections, a shallow ford and a couple of yumps! A great way to start the day although the damp weather made everything very slippery, I've never used the handbrake so much on the tight corners



The organisers had also been out with machinery on some of the more well used tracks on other farms making them smoother and keeping the farmers happy

Some sections were rather muddy though...



We had many moments throughout the day, being flagged down on an early test when the car in front drowned out in a ford, luckily there was enough room to go round them, getting very close to a number of sheds, barns, bales, hedges and banks, and overcooked a couple of hairpins, our rally nearly ended in a large log pile at lunch time, but we got away with them all and Fly never missed a beat, only a slight rumble from the front end on the last road section gave us any cause for concern (traced to a knackered wheel bearing)

All the tracks and farms were laid out very well, plenty of arrows and tape, making sure we all went the correct way
I think this picture is from Pant-Sod farm which has been very tight and narrow through a shed in the past, but a new route this year was great fun, I got Fly swinging nicely round the double hairpins through the tyres



Overall we had a great day, kept it tidy on the slippery bits and flat out on the rough stuff resulting in a clean run through all the tests

We finished 4th overall, just 16s behind 3rd but 4-5 minutes off the top 2 crews, both in Mk2's as well
Carrie did a great job on the maps and thoroughly enjoyed the day, many thanks to Llandysul Motor Club for putting on this unique event, and thanks to Guy and Chris for giving up their time to come and marshall

A short video of one track

Next event is a Targa Rally over in Essex run by West Suffolk Motor Club this weekend

[GavinR]

Re: GavinR's Mk2 Rally Car - FLY

Debden Targa Rally 8th June 2014

Run by West Suffolk Motor Club at Carvers Barracks near Saffron Walden, I'd been there a couple of times before for gymkhanas and targas and its usually a good event.
This year the regulations came out late and they only had 38 starters including various hot hatches, a couple of endurance cars and 4 crews in MX5's including my brother Derek who has recently sold his Rover 200 and bought an MX5 instead

Last year there were 3 tests laid out, but one test area was out of bounds due to noise issues this year so we only had 2 tests, but this was better for me as the test they couldn't use was mainly tarmac and the others had various sections of gravel
Each test was run 3 times in both directions so a total of 12 throughout the day

I was quickest on the first test but beaten by a couple of MX5's on the next one, then went a few seconds quicker when they were repeated, and quicker again on the 3rd run through to be leading by 26s at the lunch break from an MX5, a BMW 318 and another MX5, all of which had 10s penalties for hitting a cone.

Derek was not doing so well, his MX5 had cut out on the way back to the paddock after the first 2 tests, and although it restarted fine once it had cooled down, it cut out on the second loop halfway through the second test so he decided to retire rather than breakdown in a difficult position, but he was navigating for me so still had an enjoyable day

With the tests reversed in the afternoon, I tried to keep everything tidy and every test went well, I gained a few seconds here and there and avoided hitting any cones despite getting close on a few occasions

Final result - 1st overall by 44s from the BMW after nearly 30 minutes of driving - I turned 2 sets of worn knobblies into slicks on the back, and Fly ran faultlessly all day. Thanks to Derek for a great job on the maps, and thanks also to the organisers and marshalls for a well run event

Next event will probably be another Targa rally in Essex

[GavinR]

Re: GavinR's Mk2 Rally Car - FLY

After the last Targa I spent a few weeks doing some upgrades to Fly...

I'd run Monte Carlo discs and calipers on the front when I was hillclimbing and still had the calipers and some spare discs on the shelf so I thought I'd put them back on. Unfortunately when I looked at the discs they were well worn, so I got some new ones from Peter Lloyd together with some DS3000 pads and fitted everything up, carefully spacing the caliper as far back as possible which means some of my 5" & 6" Wellers will fit - the Princess 4 pots and discs will be up for sale shortly



After having wheel studs snap on Fly and Dvy in consecutive years, and after some advice from Simon (Gp4), I decided it was time to move up to the twin taper fully floating set up. I bought all the parts from Grp4 Fabrications with Group 1 studs instead of the Group 4 studs
Removed the Quaife Hubs



Chopped the bearing carriers off as far out as possible and pressed the new stub axles on, after a lot of measuring to make sure the wheels would be in the same place



Welded them in place a little at a time with frequent checks for squareness



As Fly's axle is rather narrow at 47.5" casing width, but I still wanted to use the XR3i calipers, I knew sorting out some discs would be interesting
From the left, Rally Design discs for Princess 4 pots, XR3i discs, Mazda pickup discs (6 stud but the same 108 PCD so would only need 2 holes drilling) and Peugeot 406 260mm discs, showing the difference in offset of them. If I tried to use the XR3i discs, the disc would be in the middle of the rear shocks...



Tried the Mazda ones on, not bad as 20mm thickness and no offset



But settled on using the Peugeot ones as they were the same thickness as the XR3i ones (24mm) so fitted the calipers better, and only had 4mm offset. I machined the bore out to 71mm, turned the diameter down to 250mm and enlarged the stud holes to 15mm so they were a good fit over the studs



Once the discs were on, I positioned the caliper brackets and welded them on before heading off to another Targa Rally on 13th July...

[Graham]

Re: GavinR's Mk2 Rally Car - FLY

cool, thanks for the update