'85 Merkur XR4Ti Rally Car

Eastwood sent me a shiny new MIG!
Roughly one week from pickup to the replacement being dropped off, and not a penny out of pocket for me- I'm pretty happy with that. I'll hang onto the box this time in case I need to send it in for warranty again.

I also finally got this:

Interestingly, nobody seems to know what a Merkur is. Pennsylvania thinks it's a "Merkel" according to my registration, which as you may or may not know is one of these:
I berkeleying wish!

My insurance company, on the other hand, seems to think it's a Mercury, which as you almost certainly know is Lincoln's retarded cousin. Insulting.

They both have the correct VIN so I'm not particularly worried in either case.

you're going to need to make that legal by finding a Mercury badge from a junkyard (or a boat engine) and putting it on the car...

In reply to irish44j:

The only time a Mercury badge has ever touched one of my cars was when I got t-boned by a Mountaineer.

However, if someone finds me a Merkel I will happily use this plate to compete in a rally with it.

Here are her signs from the election

I am going to call your car "Angie" from now on

This car and my tools don't get along- while I was putting together the rest of the exhaust my Harbor Freight angle grinder died in spectacular fashion:

The exhaust finally got done this morning- yes, it does have a ton of hangers, and that tip is ridiculous. I don't want it to fall off, and the tip started as "let's armor the side pipe" and ended up as "let's just make everything below the rocker out of thick steel"

It sits higher than the floor everywhere other then the tip, which I'm pretty happy with.

Then I mounted the oil cooler and drove it:

It was berkeleying awesome for about 5 minutes- the turbo spooled nicely and it handled about as well as a welded diff can be expected to. Then it stopped making boost

I checked the wastegate actuator and some other little stuff before pulling the intake hose off and verifying that the impeller spins, but has a lot of resistance- looks like I'll be taking this turbo back out. Luckily I have several good center sections I can swap in, but I need to verify what killed this one too.

Oh no. That was short lived.... Crap in the oil line? Did you end up not water cooling?

Problem located: cospatial event involving the compressor housing and the impeller

Closeup:

When I took it apart it was obvious that the bolts holding the compressor housing on were too long- oops on the part of whoever rebuilt this turbo. When I checked them they felt snug because they were bottomed in the holes, but the housing could still move a little. Good thing this is a standard T3 center section!

I put it back together with a new (used) center section and the correct length bolts, then reinstalled along with a new BOV solution- the 944 valve in series didn't move enough to prevent compressor surge, so this check valve from the plumbing aisle will hopefully do the trick.

Drove to the gas station and topped up the tank- I had only dumped 5 gallons in before. Runs well, boost is set at 16 psi for now. The check valve seems to work, although there is still a little flutter when slamming the throttle shut at high boost and rpm.

I have a couple of small oil leaks to track down but it seems happy!

Oh, the oil leaks are them marking their territory .

Mine does all the time.

Oil leaks, shmoil leaks.

I'm glad the turbo issue was straight forward!

Awesome! Those care are so hideous and awesome at the same time.

Went looking for oil leaks, and it looked like the majority was coming from the oil pan. Grabbed a wrench and... surprise! Finger tight oil pan bolts!

That's one leak down.

Happy Birthday, sir!

Happy Birthday!!

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wrote: In reply to irish44j: The only time a Mercury badge has ever touched one of my cars was when I got t-boned by a Mountaineer. However, if someone finds me a Merkel I will happily use this plate to compete in a rally with it.

How 'bout a Merkin

In reply to Wall-e:

I was wondering how long it would take someone to go there, you showed up right on time.

We drove the XR4Ti to get birthday dinner- it runs great! I'm going to try adjusting the drums though, the brakes are not confidence inspiring.

Heard some clunking noises under my car that's gotten worse recently.

Found this.

Time for another rear beam!

Whoa, dude! Happy birthday!

I didn't know until three minutes ago...

hpapy birthday!

Quick question since i'm looking into welders, how do you like that Eastwood mig 135? The price is tempting and the other stuff i got from eastwood has been pretty solid.

I'm not saying the RX7 was dead, but......holy cow it was close. I'm happy to see this thread pop up now that I'm back. These are cool cars.

Rufledt wrote: hpapy birthday! Quick question since i'm looking into welders, how do you like that Eastwood mig 135? The price is tempting and the other stuff i got from eastwood has been pretty solid.

It has worked well (apart from the recent issue) and their warranty service was good. It does leave me wanting for more power on thicker material, but I think that's just the nature of 110v MIGs.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wrote:

Rufledt wrote: hpapy birthday! Quick question since i'm looking into welders, how do you like that Eastwood mig 135? The price is tempting and the other stuff i got from eastwood has been pretty solid.

It has worked well (apart from the recent issue) and their warranty service was good. It does leave me wanting for more power on thicker material, but I think that's just the nature of 110v MIGs.

IDK, I've had no problem with thick material with my Hobart 140. Probably the thickest I've done is the beefy D-rings on the trailer, which is pretty thick. It had no problem with those using a short-ish high-capacity extension cord.

Went through the whole car and checked all of the major fasteners- I found a few more loose ones in the front left suspension, but everything is snug now.

Then I set out to fix my brake issue, and removed the DS rear drum to find the adjuster was stuck. Some PB blaster and a few hits with the hammer later it's moving again, there was a bunch of slack it needed to take up. Went for another drive and the brakes are now pretty good!

Then installed the intercom, which as far as I can tell only had a failure on one of the jacks that goes to the helmets:

Mounted the front extinguisher (there was already a rear mount in the car) between/just behind the seats this time, with an extra release buckle since we previously had issues with an extinguisher escaping when it was mounted in the footwell:

Also stashed the warning triangles, the first of which needs to be within reach of the codriver to pass tech- we attached it behind the codriver's seat:

The other two are tucked into the quarter panels, where they fit very nicely and can be slid straight out of the bungees that are holding them by reaching past the seats:

I've been driving the car a bit and have tracked my primary oil leak down to the drain plug on the oil cooler- I'll make sure the copper washer is clean and anneal it with a torch when I change the oil.

It also gets HOT in the cabin when the car is stationary- it's all coming through the firewall and trans tunnel. If I have to remake this exhaust it's going over the roof, but in the mean time I may try to add some heat shielding.

I took the car to work and weighed it- this is with a full tank of gas, tools, jack, and spare tire:

Not too heavy, and although the cross weights are a little goofy these scales aren't very consistent so I don't think I'm going to mess with it.

I also tried out the lights that came with the car, which are a pair of Hella 4000s and a pair of 500s.

They're OK, but I think I'll be switching to LEDs later- the current draw of bigass halogen lights just isn't worth it now that the price of decent LEDs has fallen to a reasonable level.

I also had the DMacks from the RX7 moved onto some of the wheels that came with the Merkur, which was a complete fiasco. The owner of the tire shop laughed and said it would be no problem when I told him they would take 150psi to seat the beads, so I let them have at it. A few days later the guy calls me and bitches about how he had to pay some other shop $100 to air them up, since his compressor only goes to 138 psi, and tries to charge me triple. We negotiate, come to somewhere in the middle, and I still overpaid to get my E36 M3 back because he was being an unreasonable shiny happy person and threatening to dismount everything. Maybe listen to me next time, or call before you get your berkeleying panties in a wad, tire shop owner.

Today I painted some of the wheels, since most were white but a few were still silver.

BRS is getting close!

I was just thinking about your broken intercom yesterday and forgot to ask about it. I'm glad you were able to fix it!

If you want to lose the Hellas I can prolly bring a few extra bucks to BRS

That's insane it took that much pressure to mount yours (15s?) I think we seat the beads on every set of mine I've had done (by Shawn) with about 50-60psi at most. But mine are 14s.

In reply to irish44j:

Yep, 15s. They took 150 psi the first time and 150 psi this time, which isn't a big deal as long as your compressor goes that high and you have a clamp on air chuck so that you don't have to be near the thing when it finally seats.