'85 Merkur XR4Ti Rally Car

Holy crap. $2k for that?

Then again I wouldn't have bought it because I don't know enough about tuning :(

It was 12 degrees F this morning, so naturally I went to the junkyard!

Scored a driveshaft (that makes two when you include the parts car):

Got some potential replacement bumpstops for the rear (original ones are damaged), I find that large FWD American turds have the biggest and cushiest (PT Cruiser and Milan were the turds of choice today). If they fail I guess I'll know I have to spend real money on some good ones:

Also snagged banjo bolts from several different Fords since my Thunderbird calipers don't have any. The ones that ended up fitting came off of a Grand Marquis, I think? This style appears on lots of the early 90s Ford calipers:

Then I put the turbo back on with the spare E6 manifold that came with the parts car- this time I'm trying a copper washer on the oil inlet and copper RTV on the outlet. I'm yet to find a combination that doesn't leak but hopefully this is it:

Finally, ran the new AN fuel lines and cut a big access panel for the fuel pump:

The nice thing about this is that the spare tire will also hold the panel down if the fasteners vibrate out or something (that threaded rod is the tie down). I don't understand why these access panels aren't factory on everything- all my Japanese vehicles have had them or not needed them, but so far I've cut holes in two Fords and a Saab because the manufacturer wanted me to drop a gas tank on myself instead.

At this point I called it quits since despite the weather having warmed up to a balmy 21 degrees F, my fingers weren't obeying me anymore. Luckily I have a E36 M3 ton of little jobs to do that I should be able to knock out after work during the week.

So much awesome progress!!

Fittings installed onto lines installed onto pump assembly:

Since I'm using -6 line for both lines so that I only need one size of spare line/fittings, I differentiated them by anodize color- red & blue on the high pressure line, black for the return. I have a unique (wrong) way of assembling these things since I refuse to buy a fancy line cutter or the plastic vice tool- wrap tightly with electrical tape, cut with 4.5" death wheel, unwrap tape, jam end of line into a funnel to taper it down to fitting size, screw red fitting on, then blue fitting in.

Then I tied the things down with some cheap cable holders, hopefully the lines don't saw through them. I put grommets on the lines anywhere I thought they were in danger of abrading something important.

I'm going to assemble the front end of these after the engine goes back in since I'm not certain where my fuel filter is going to end up or what length I'll need.

We're having a small rally down here the third weekend in February. Six stages 40 miles. It'll be warm...........

Sara and I both put in a berkeleyton of effort this weekend and many things got attached to the car.

All the rear E36 M3, installed!

Big aluminum shield for the only spot where the fuel lines are below the floor:

Parking brake cable too long for your new calipers? Here's how we fix that for less than a dollar:

Clutch cable now fits the T5 pivot thanks to an angle grinder:

Oh look an engine!

Luckily the T5's shifter ended up in a not-totally impossible location, am using a short shifter so that I can make a really long lever and get it near the wheel without having a truck-sized throw:

The front suspension on these cars, if you've never had the pleasure of working on one, is a total E36 M3show of binding garbage and impossible angles- going to poly bushings compounds this, and it gets worse when you put longer struts on it too! When tightening the sway bar one of the weld nuts inside the body started to spin; having had enough of the car's E36 M3, I did what was needed to access it so that we could tell the offending nut what we thought of it:

Then tightened that up, and with more swearing and hatred of the car we managed to assemble the front suspension the rest of the way:

We told that how we felt as well:

Working on this thing sure makes me miss the RX7, good thing driving it makes me forget again

My Rockauto order that arrived yesterday included this magnet...

Also, I am glad to see you are addressing issues with this car in your usual unorthodox manner ;)

In reply to irish44j:

That magnet needs moar black and red sharpie

Awesome! I love that your both giving it the finger together

Looks like a lot of good progress... Winter Rallysprint at E-town.......?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wrote: Sara and I both put in a berkeleyton of effort this weekend and many things got attached to the car. Parking brake cable too long for your new calipers? Here's how we fix that for less than a dollar:

I have the exact same solution on the Capri, has had it for like 7-8 years, works great! As a coincidence, it has a Sierra rear suspension too :-)

As for the front end - are you allowed to convert to compression struts and a separate blade type ARB? I did than on the Capri (that has sort of the same kind of front suspension, only "reversed" with the ARB in front). It has made it a lot easier to work on and the added adjustability is great. Also a great way to make an even bigger mess of the alignment but that's all part of the fun, right?

Gustaf

mazdeuce wrote: We're having a small rally down here the third weekend in February. Six stages 40 miles. It'll be warm...........

Where at? I'd like to spectate.

Ross413 wrote: Looks like a lot of good progress... Winter Rallysprint at E-town.......?

Most likely, either with this or a motorcycle. We'll see how things pan out, the big question mark is the transmission mount at this point, and we're reaching that last 10% of the project that always seems to somehow take 90% of the time.

Gustaf said: As for the front end - are you allowed to convert to compression struts and a separate blade type ARB? I did than on the Capri (that has sort of the same kind of front suspension, only "reversed" with the ARB in front). It has made it a lot easier to work on and the added adjustability is great. Also a great way to make an even bigger mess of the alignment but that's all part of the fun, right?

Yes, we can do that and I'm aware that kits exist. But I'm cheap and we have spares for this arrangement already, so it may wait until the mounting points take enough damage that it becomes the same amount of work to add new mounts for the fancy control arms as it would be to put the same old junk back in.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wrote:

Ross413 wrote: Looks like a lot of good progress... Winter Rallysprint at E-town.......?

Most likely, either with this or a motorcycle. We'll see how things pan out, the big question mark is the transmission mount at this point, and we're reaching that last 10% of the project that always seems to somehow take 90% of the time.

Do WMWR! Not that it's relevant to you, but we may actually not do Englishtown - it actually ends up costing more then WMWR for us with the tolls to get there and back and this WRX is killing my car budget. Plus I'm really at a loss as to tire choice for a winter event there, which would use the track too (I've been on sub-freezing tarmac, it is sketchy and there is no way I'd use gravel tires on it)

John V has weld in plugs for those messed up ARB mounts. I've had to install one of them in my car. Pretty sure they are the same plugs for the Supra diff installation.

In reply to GPz11:

I'm just going to weld the existing nuts back on from the inside, I already cut the floor out! I have to call John to find out what happened to the Supra diff kit he was supposed to send me over a month ago.

In reply to irish44j:

Knowing what we now know about WMWR, I think that we're going to sit it out this year. We don't have snow tires for this thing, and it's a relatively high risk rally, especially in a high powered car that has a bunch of new untested stuff on it. We have a trip in the works for May and I would prefer not to have to scramble to have our (different, scary, also untested) vehicle ready for that AND get the rally car back together at the same time.

In reply to ¯_(ツ)_/¯:

Easy trick when working front struts is to leave the sway bar hooked up and loosen or remove both top strut washers so the whole suspension droops, buys you a few extra inches and is easy to play by hand makes strut changes 5 minute ordeals.

On the rear, did you strengthen or build new mount points since the rear towers are thin?

In reply to Raze:

The rear mounts are heavily tied into the cage and made mostly of 1/8" steel, I'm pretty happy with them. Front towers are tied into the cage as well.

That droop distance you're talking about up front is mostly taken up by the extra travel of the shocks- they're definitely longer than stock. We ended up having to pry each control arm down with a big breaker bar and insert the strut and knuckle as a unit since the ball joint doesn't need as much room to get lined up and inserted.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wrote: In reply to GPz11: I'm just going to weld the existing nuts back on from the inside, I already cut the floor out! I have to call John to find out what happened to the Supra diff kit he was supposed to send me over a month ago. In reply to irish44j: Knowing what we now know about WMWR, I think that we're going to sit it out this year. We don't have snow tires for this thing, and it's a relatively high risk rally, especially in a high powered car that has a bunch of new untested stuff on it. We have a trip in the works for May and I would prefer not to have to scramble to have our (different, scary, also untested) vehicle ready for that AND get the rally car back together at the same time.

I hear you, that's a good point. I already figured you weren't going to do it anyhow. What is this other scary untested vehicle?

In reply to irish44j:

Big dumb RV, it'll get a build thread when I actually get to work on it.

Is Chief still in the stable?

In reply to paranoid_android74:

Yep, had to redo the exhaust for inspection so now he sounds good too!

The big news from this past weekend is a bit of a bummer- I did lots of useful stuff on the car which I still need to get pictures of BUT:

I was tuning the MS on the parts car- got it to start nicely (needed a little more cold start enrichment and spark advance at lower revs) and to stop bogging on throttle application (needed a little less accel enrichment) and was tuning it so that it was smooth throughout the rev range in neutral with no load, just sitting in the driveway. After about 30 mins of total run time between all the tweaks and my learning the tunerstudio interface, suddenly it started making a berkeleyload of top end noise and the oil pressure read zero . I shut it off, checked the oil (full) and looked for external leaks (none)- I guess that's all the tuning it's getting for now.

I think maybe the oil pump drive stripped or came loose, it's typically driven off of the distributor but this engine is running a different spark setup and the distributor has been eliminated so who knows what is in there now. We probably won't get to open it up and look until the summer, but suddenly I don't feel so bad about shoving this car in the garage and tearing it apart. Sometimes I have to make like my username- just shrug, say berkeley it, and keep going.

In reply to ¯_(ツ)_/¯:

ugh, hopefully its something simple... I know its just a parts car, but engine parts are handy too....

Whoops. At least it didn't puke oil everywhere, leaving you angry and with a mess to clean up