irish44j said:who are you crewing for at Sandblast? I'm going down to crew for Zero (Adam Moore).
Some guy who posted about needing crew for his first event on SpecialStage- I figure if anyone will be interesting to crew for, it'll be the new guy with the freshly built and therefore most likely underprepared car 
He's still not signed up yet though, and there is always a tiny chance that I decide to run RallyMoto instead...
mazdeuce - Seth said:You're getting pretty darn good at sticking metal together. What's the rally schedule this year?
I have been bugging him with the same question...
"You should try to be more relaxed about working on the car"
"You should set our schedule for the year before the car is back together"
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:irish44j said:who are you crewing for at Sandblast? I'm going down to crew for Zero (Adam Moore).
Some guy who posted about needing crew for his first event on SpecialStage- I figure if anyone will be interesting to crew for, it'll be the new guy with the freshly built and therefore most likely underprepared car
He's still not signed up yet though, and there is always a tiny chance that I decide to run RallyMoto instead...
ah nice. well doing zero car they'll probably be long gone from service by the time your newbie guy gets there, so I can mosey over and assist if needed.
also, I'm amazed anyone is still active on Special Stage. I figured JVL had scared everyone away, especially newbies lol
In reply to irish44j :
It's a ghost town over there, same with Rally Anarchy, but I check from time to time anyway since occasionally people still post looking for help or selling stuff- for the most part it seems like everything has migrated to Facebook though.
The first thing this weekend was installing all of the coolant and vacuum lines, then color coding them with tape:
What do the colors mean? That's what this handy key is for:
One more shot of the whole engine bay:
Then it was exhaust time- I've said that if I had to remake the exhaust I was going over the roof, but I decided to put it under the car again. First the downpipe needed to be modified for the new turbo location, and I added a wideband O2 sensor bung while I was at it. Somehow my picture of the welded downpipe didn't make it off the camera, so here it is installed in the engine bay with heat wrap and heat shielding installed on some other stuff around it:
Then we chopped up both the exhausts from the parts car and the rally car, and reworked things to be even closer to the floor. We also ditched the giant thick exhaust tip I had made, opting to keep it small and tucked into the body this time and see if it survives that way. Completed exhaust:
Under the car, it has 5 total hangers, all of which are bolted on for simple removal. The cat is tucked into a pocket behind the passenger floor, and the whole thing is higher than the floor with the exception of the very end of the tip:
It just needs a length of 1/4" coolant line and for the TPS to be figured out (Mustang throttle body and Merkur TPS don't seem to work well together) to be "done" engine wise, at least until something goes wrong. We fired it up for another leak check and it seems healthy, so hopefully I can get some suitable line and come up with a TPS solution soon.
Awesome! Looks like it's almost together
In reply to java230 :
It is, the only big remaining question mark is the front struts- it sounds like the guy who has them for rebuilding has been having some non work related difficulties, and I'm kicking myself for not at least taking detailed measurements so that I could fab my own from universal inserts. Still not sure what's going to happen with that, it really depends on what he says when he gets back to me. In the mean time I'm hoping to get everything else 100% ready to go.
We kicked off the weekend by installing that bit of hose we were missing, filling the coolant and power steering fluid, and addressing the TPS issue. By looking up the testing specs for both the Mustang and Merkur TPS, I determined they were the same in terms of voltage output and variation, so it was off to the junkyard, where I found this:
A green Festiva with coilovers! Once I was done admiring it, I walked another 20 feet to find our donor, which appears to have been running well enough to plow into something at speed:
Mustang TPS on the left, Merkur on the right:
It turns out the wires do the same things on both, left to right, so I just spliced them into the harness, added some loom, and you'd never know it isn't a stock part:
The car fired right up and, after adjusting the throttle stop and base timing, idled as well as a car with no idle control valve could be expected to. I even threw it in 4th and spun the whole drivetrain for a bit to prove that it works. Unfortunately, it looks like the turbo feed bung is leaking from a different part of the weld now- I guess welding to oil impregnated cast iron isn't the greatest idea:
I will try to grind it back and weld up that leak, but if it still leaks after that I'm coming up with a new plan. Under the car, I repaired the wires to the reverse light switch which pulled out of their connector when I forgot to unplug it while removing the trans, and welded this sacrificial flap in front of the cat and exhaust tip to hopefully make it live a bit longer than the last one:
We also gave the rear brakes a good bleeding since the lines had been opened up briefly, then reassembled the rear coilovers- the adjusting collars are stuck because they're a berkeleying stupid design that gets filled with dirt and crud, hopefully they will move after a week or so of PB blaster soaking because I'd like to experiment with a higher ride height:
I also chased our intercom issue- I took the actual intercom out of the equation using a microphone, a chromebook playing music, and a practice amp. Precision scientific E36 M3 right here:
Basically, using the chromebook/mic combo as an input, on the other side of a door so I couldn't hear it, I used the amp to power the helmet headsets while I listened to them and wiggled all of the connections. After doing it with both helmets, I determined they were fine and the problem was probably the intercom box itself. I hopped in the car and mimicked that setup using the actual intercom, and quickly found that the problem was the actual power connector on the back of the box- I added a zip tie for strain relief, we'll have to test it on the road but hopefully that was the whole problem, the wires were pulling on the connector pretty hard and making it so that any shift of the box (like from the wires to our headsets being pulled) would cause a small power interruption.
The strut situation continues to be unknown, but I have several plans:
A- Have the existing 41mm struts repaired and rebuilt as previously planned.
Pro: I like these struts. Minimal work on our part.
Con: No idea if it can actually be done or what their status is. Unobtanium inserts, housings, and components.
B- Build my own struts using 40mm inserts.
Pro: Readily available inserts and components. Should perform just as well as old 41mm struts.
Con: Lots of work. Possibly more expensive than option A. Might berkeley something up in design or execution.
C- Slap stock struts and springs from parts car on it.
Pro: I have them here right now.
Con: No bump stops, lousy damping, use lousy stock strut tops, weak.
D- Convert stock struts to coilovers using the sleeves I have on the shelf.
Pro: I have all the parts here right now, gets me adjustability and proper springs and bump stops.
Con: Lousy damping, use lousy stock strut tops, weak, a bunch of work for a half measure.
E- Buy road racing coilovers for a Tarmac setup, worry about rally stuff later.
Pro: Should be good for hillclimb, VIR rallysprint, tarmac rallies.
Con: Spending money on non-rally stuff.
It's probably going to be A or B, based largely on whether I can actually get any form of contact about the 41mm units I sent out two months ago.
The rest of the weekend was spent tearing my Buell in half.
Hate to ask a question here.
I need to run just a larger return line back to the tank, and have no idea what it looks like back there. Do you know if any fittings will mate to the stock return feed on the tank?
In reply to Shawnb :
The fittings at the tank on a stock Merkur are standard Ford quick connect pieces- I'm not aware of any commonly available aftermarket lines that accept those, but there are adapters like this to attach AN lines:
Personally, I don't like having extra potential leak points, so I had AN fittings TIG welded to the feed and return hardlines at the tank instead.
If you have other questions ask away, that's what forums are for!
In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :
Thanks!
Basically the same fittings that are under the hood. I have two of those on the stock lines in the engine bay. They did leak at first...
Giggling about Lime Green Festiva’s on coils for the Stance crowd. Marine grease is the trick for keeping the coil overs unfrozen as you move forward. There are also some replacement perch nuts so if you need to sacrifice the frozen one with a whiz wheel there are options,
Hey look, we're famous!
In reply to 84FSP :
The problem isn't the threads themselves, but the 5"+ of unthreaded length inside the top perch which has filled with solidified crud. Hopefully it starts moving after enough PB blaster, if not I'll at least wait until we check the ride height with the new trailing arms to determine whether it's time to cut stuff off, since there's no point adjusting it if it's fine as it sits. Then we can just worry about it next time the car is apart, or just replace the whole shock when we inevitably destroy these somehow.
Can you thread it in the other direction to expose the crud?
In reply to Ian F :
It will not move with a pipe wrench, in either direction, so not yet...
I just placed an order for plan B parts 
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:I just placed an order for plan B parts
So you'll be ready for WMWR this Saturday then, right? 
bluej said:¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:I just placed an order for plan B parts
So you'll be ready for WMWR this Saturday then, right?
I thought that was this past weekend. oops...
In reply to bluej :
If by some miracle it all crosses the Atlantic in a day and arrives tomorrow, and you know somebody with a lathe and some 4140 who wants to pull an all nighter, I can make that happen- otherwise probably not
Unfortunately my friend who made the adapters and stuff last time has moved so I no longer have free access to a machine shop.
In other news, Ford has announced that they will be offering a contingency program for ARA events- the announcement specifically excludes badge engineered brands, but I have sent an email asking for clarification; namely, if my car is entered as a Ford Sierra, is visually identical to a Ford Sierra, and has all of the appropriate Ford emblems and decals, am I eligible?
I think the answer will be a firm "no" but I figure that it doesn't hurt to ask!
On struts, I haven't read everything but chain lube is good for getting into the threads on gummed up struts and, if you have to, heat and a large pipe wrench can help to work them off slowly but take the inserts out first.
What's wrong with the 41mm stuffs? Pretty sure the insides are the same as the 40s but if the housing is bent that might be an issue. You probably could pull out the existing bushings and press in new ones to support the 40mm inserts. I wonder if John was boring out the 41mm housings a little more or just making the bushings a little thinner. If you talk to Bilstein folks they can tell you your options. If you buy anything you have to go through a 3rd party distributor as Bilstein will not always sell direct but it shouldn't be an issue if you have all the part numbers in hand.
In reply to HFmaxi :
The problem with the 41mm struts is that one of the inserts is damaged and all of the bushings were out of tolerance- they went to a shop to have the rod replaced and be rebuilt while they're at it, and the shop has gone completely quiet while holding both of the struts and housings. At this point I'm considering them a lost cause, no money has changed hands other than what I spent to ship them, and if the shop starts communicating again I'll have them just repair the one insert assuming the price is reasonable and I'll keep them as spares.
The new struts will be made with universal housings, a couple machined parts, and standard 40mm inserts and bushings that I can order from a number of different vendors- I'm sick of having to deal with businesses that are difficult to work with, so at this point, much like I did with the diff mounts and adapters, I'd rather do the work myself.
I don't know if I'm just bad at communicating or something, but from here on out I think I'm instituting a "one and done" policy- if I try to pay for a part or service, and it doesn't happen first try, I'm moving on. It's not worth the frustration when I can figure out a different way to do it.
In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :
...and in the meantime, start trolling CL for a mill and a lathe...
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