Rad Rally (Dodge) Raider (akaMonteroakaPajero) Build

irish44j (Forum Supporter) said:

L5wolvesf said:

irish44j (Forum Supporter) said:

Disappointingly, it was a 4-cylinder (I was hoping to snag some electrical connectors and a few other V6 things). But, it did have all the original dash switches (except rear wiper, since this was a base model that didn't have one), so I grabbed those.

FWIW, I was checking out the local-ish yard today and they have an 89 Raider.I'm going to try to get there next week IF I can. What do you need? Small shippable stuff. 

If it has the headlight sprayers, I need the check valve (it's built-in to the "T" where the reservoir hose goes down to the sprayers, so it's kind of behind the bumper area. 

From the engine, in particular I'd like the plug (and some amount of pigtail) for the igniter -basically at the front/top of the engine and also the one near it (the two in the photo below with arrows to them). That's about all I can think of offhand. Oh also,  there are little black tabs that hold the glovebox from falling down when you open it. They should be easy to pop out of the sides of the glovebox if they're still there. That's about it!

The weather says I'm going to the yard tomorrow. So the enging parts are only if it has a V6 - correct?

Nice work on the project - I'm kinda jealous. 

L5wolvesf said:

irish44j (Forum Supporter) said:

L5wolvesf said:

irish44j (Forum Supporter) said:

Disappointingly, it was a 4-cylinder (I was hoping to snag some electrical connectors and a few other V6 things). But, it did have all the original dash switches (except rear wiper, since this was a base model that didn't have one), so I grabbed those.

FWIW, I was checking out the local-ish yard today and they have an 89 Raider.I'm going to try to get there next week IF I can. What do you need? Small shippable stuff. 

If it has the headlight sprayers, I need the check valve (it's built-in to the "T" where the reservoir hose goes down to the sprayers, so it's kind of behind the bumper area. 

From the engine, in particular I'd like the plug (and some amount of pigtail) for the igniter -basically at the front/top of the engine and also the one near it (the two in the photo below with arrows to them). That's about all I can think of offhand. Oh also,  there are little black tabs that hold the glovebox from falling down when you open it. They should be easy to pop out of the sides of the glovebox if they're still there. That's about it!

The weather says I'm going to the yard tomorrow. So the enging parts are only if it has a V6 - correct?

Nice work on the project - I'm kinda jealous. 

yep, they are V6-specific (and/or Chrysler minivans with the 6G72 3.0 V6, but those aren't as common as they used to be). 

irish44j (Forum Supporter) said:

L5wolvesf said:

irish44j (Forum Supporter) said:

L5wolvesf said:

irish44j (Forum Supporter) said:

Disappointingly, it was a 4-cylinder (I was hoping to snag some electrical connectors and a few other V6 things). But, it did have all the original dash switches (except rear wiper, since this was a base model that didn't have one), so I grabbed those.

FWIW, I was checking out the local-ish yard today and they have an 89 Raider.I'm going to try to get there next week IF I can. What do you need? Small shippable stuff. 

If it has the headlight sprayers, I need the check valve (it's built-in to the "T" where the reservoir hose goes down to the sprayers, so it's kind of behind the bumper area. 

From the engine, in particular I'd like the plug (and some amount of pigtail) for the igniter -basically at the front/top of the engine and also the one near it (the two in the photo below with arrows to them). That's about all I can think of offhand. Oh also,  there are little black tabs that hold the glovebox from falling down when you open it. They should be easy to pop out of the sides of the glovebox if they're still there. That's about it!

The weather says I'm going to the yard tomorrow. So the enging parts are only if it has a V6 - correct?

Nice work on the project - I'm kinda jealous. 

yep, they are V6-specific (and/or Chrysler minivans with the 6G72 3.0 V6, but those aren't as common as they used to be). 

Got good news and other news.

Good – I found the Raider in spite of it being camouflaged, other – no headlight sprayer.

Good – it has a V6, other – the coil etc on top of the engine was already gone.

Other – the camouflaged interior was missing its dash, good – I found the glove box black tabs.

Good – the checkout girl didn’t charge for them.e

Hah, perfect. What's your email and I'll paypal you a few bucks to mail them to me and for the effort :)

irish44j (Forum Supporter) said:

Hah, perfect. What's your email and I'll paypal you a few bucks to mail them to me and for the effort :)

Check your PM

L5wolvesf said:

irish44j (Forum Supporter) said:

Hah, perfect. What's your email and I'll paypal you a few bucks to mail them to me and for the effort :)

Check your PM

Don't see anything. For some reason the GRM messaging thing doesn't like certain email types (like Yahoo).

My email is (my username) *at* Yahoo.com

So the other day on our mid-atlantic rally facebook page, an old-school rally driver (who stopped racing around the time I started) posted up a number of items for free (plus shipping). Anyhow, i managed to snag a couple things:

So on the right is a Terratrip 303 rally computer. It's missing the cord and doesn't have any sensors with it, but I touched base with a friend who is a long-time rally guy and electroics whiz and he's going to hook me up with an old pigtail for this thing and possibly a speed sensor. I figue maybe I'll install this in the Raider for if we want to do a TSD rally and/or just for stage rally reconnaissance. Don't reallly *need* it in this day and age of GPS and smart phone rally apps, but it's kind of period-correct for the Raider, so I might put it in just for the hell of it, we'll see.

The other thing is an old-school OMP rally map light on a flexible stalk. I mean, it's pretty much just like the one we use in the stage rally car, except this one has an actual light bulb in it rather than an LED, and an old-school pushbutton on/off button. Like i said, old-school. But it works and at the time was actually a pretty high-end product used by pro rally people.

It has a standard bulb in it:

And a tubular red "visor" that you twist the knob on top and it turns around and makes it into a red light (for night stages, etc).

Since the rally car already has one of these, this one is definitely going in the Raider. So, took a bit and found a good place for it that would be out of the way when not in use but also accessible for driver or passenger as needed. Didn't take a photo of the exact setup, but basically I bolted it onto the underside of the armrest I built, since it has a steel (grounded) frame and positions the light well. In addition, I had a spare power wire in the center console (powered on the dash lighting circuit, since it was originally the illumination for the automatic transmission selector). So that made it so wirign took about 2 minutes, and the light is powered when any of the car's lights are on (because why would I need a map light if the car doesnt' have its lights on, anyhow?). 

When not in use, just flex it down next to the little cargo bin in the console and it's out of the way. 

Had my daughter test it out:

In unrelated news, I went ahead and filed a claim with PayPal against Lokka. I placed an order for a front Lokka 2 months ago and haven't gotten a confirmation and have not been able to contact them via any means (phone, email, message, through the website, on facebook). So that sucks because I really wanted to get the product, but since I have no idea if they'll ever send it, I'd rather just get my money back and look for some other option. Getting some kind of locker or at least an LSD in the frony diff is a priority for me (frankly, I feel a front locker/LSD is more important than a rear one in a 4WD vehicle). In any case, guess we'll see what happens there. 

Is that red light powered full time? Seems super handy if you ever do camp in the car to pop on in the middle of the night and not be so jarring.

johndej said:

Is that red light powered full time? Seems super handy if you ever do camp in the car to pop on in the middle of the night and not be so jarring.

Right now it's 'just powered on the lighting circuit since that's the wire that happened to be available nearby, but wouldnt' be hard to switch it to a constant power circuit, and I'll probably do that eventually. . The Raider also has two low-power map lights up with the main roof light that are very dim. Hey, these days just swipe your cell phone on for some low-intensity light lol. 

Hope you all had a good Christmas. I'm winding down now, so I guess I'll recap a few things that resulted from mine:

My birthday was about a week ago and my parents sent me some new headlights (I had mentioned it to my dad and he came through!). This is the same conversion I did on my Porsche, swapping out the old sealed-beams for some H4 housings with replaceable bulbs. On the Porsche, this greatly increased output and with a much-improved beam pattern and cutoff, so I expect it will do the same for the Raider.  However, it's way too cold out to deal with electrical stuff, so I'll just post a photo of the box lol

So for Christmas, my wife and in-laws threw in and got me an ARB 48" awning. I have the much-larger one on the Sequoia, but wanted a smaller one for the Raider.

Anyhow, I knew I was getting this, so I had already built the mounts for it during my previous rack modifications, and happy to say my measurements were correct and it bolted right up into place.

One thing I didn't think about, really, is that the awning itself is 48" wide (the same width as my roof rack). However, I didn't consider that the actual frame and cover for it is about 52" wide. So it sticks out a couple inches from the rack at each end. This really isn't a big deal, but actually kind of annoys me - mostly because of the possibility of tree branches or something hitting the end caps which otherwise would be protected by the rack if it was wider.

So I came up with a (free) solution of just making some little "deflector" plates, which will also hopefully reduce any major wind noise this thing would produce. 

Some scrap HDPE sheeting, a saw, a vise, and a heat gun:

And I end up with this:

Which then go here (ignore the ziptie on the forward end, that's just temporary)

So, that's that.....and yeah, I did this when it was like 25 degrees outside, because I'm impulsive.

I like it!

Didn't have much to do today (still waiting on a package that's 2 weeks overdue now), so did a little project I've been meaning to do. So this actually feels a little bit poser-ish, but for those of you here on the East Coast, you know that the trails tend to be pretty overgrown in a lot of places, and the Raider's windshield definitely took some branch hits last time out. These things are old and the windshields aren't easy to find, from what I hear (no idea if Safelite has them or whatever). So cutting to the chase, decided to make up some limb risers to use when on the trail (they will NOT be in place when not on the trail, since that's both stupid and poser). 

So as always, the goal is to do it cheap and well. So the parts list:

- 1/8" aircraft cable (coated). Most places you have to order this in bulk, but I only needed about 10-12 feet. So picked up a dog tether kit at the pet store. It's 1/8" cable, already with swaged eye ends, already with plastic coating and it's 10 bucks for 20 feet of it (so cheaper than buying the cable by the foot). Yeah, it's red, but who cares. 

- Two springs from the hardware store (I think they're for fence gates or something)

- A couple extra eye loops and swages

- Two maritime turnbuckles (stainless). Basically the things you use to tighten your mast stays on a sailboat.

All in all, about 20 buck in materials.

You may recall I already planned to do this and put anchor eyes at the front of the hood and up on the rack. So I cut the cable in half and used the eye ends to attach to the spring and turnbuckle, which then gets attached to the front eyes. Then loosed the turnbuckles out about 75% and looped the open wire through the rack anchors (with the cable eyes already in place) and tensioned them by hand. Then swaged the upper loop (so it's attached to the rack permanently unless I cut it), and tightened the turnbuckle until I got a slight amount of tension/preload on the spring. 

So, here's the lower and upper setup. On the lower I may switch the spring to below the turnbuckle just for cosmetics, but it doesn't really matter:

Upper. My swaging tool is pretty lousy, so this isn't too pretty, but it'll work fine. I will probably get some large shrink wraps so I can pretty it up a bit. 

So the idea is that when I'm not on the trails, I'll detach the front end and pull them to the back of the rack, where I plan to put another mounting eye tomorrow. So usually they'll just run along the side rail of the rack and not be in the way or a danger to pedestrians or anything :)

like so

So, that's that. Here's what they look like in "operational" position, which they won't be in very often. 

Just finishing up the branch risers. Changed the "stack" order of the spring and the turnbuckle for cosmetic and routing reasons, and welded on a couple little tabs near the back of the rack. So now when not on the trails the risers will just run back on the rack and out of the way.

So, that project is done.

Also got the new Hella H4 headlights installed, but haven't had a chance to try them out yet. I know they'll work fine and have good light/cutoff since I have the same ones on the Porsche.

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

I think I'll be stealing you branch riser idea. Thanks!

Toyman01 (Moderately Supportive Dude) said:

In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :

I think I'll be stealing you branch riser idea. Thanks!

steal away, certainly wasn't my original idea haha...

So only loosely related to this actual thread, but today I did some road-tripping in the Sequoia, with the trailer. I wanted to pick up something in PA for a future project, and as it happens Thomas Helgesen's Volvo needed to get to a nearby town for its rally cage to be installed next weekend. So, he gave me gas money and I hauled it up there for him. You may know it from his build thread here on GRM...

Picked it up at 8am today at his place 

And trucked 200 miles to Nonack's rally garage, which some of you here on GRM may also be familiar with

Chris had a very difficult time getting it off the trailer, sans driver's seat and apparently a tricky shifter (he first went forward and almost hit the trailer's front end lol)

But eventually made it into his garage

So Thomas's car and Chris's BRZ will both be getting caged by Adam Brock next week...

Oh, also saw this thing while on the road.....pretty sweet.

After that, with the trailer empty I headed about 40 miles away via some really fun country roads (well, less fun in a big truck with a trailer....

...and ended up at this long, long driveway

Anyhow, the item in question I wanted to pick up was way down behind his house in a totally muddy field. Apparently a person who picked up another car there yesterday got his F250 stuck and had to be towed out with a tractor. So, put the Sequoia in 4WD and locked the diff and headed down the hill (with much banging and clanging by the trailer). 

Oh, and this guy builds funky lowriders. I know he has some crazy 6-wheeled thing that was at SEMA last year, but I didn't get a chance to see it. Did see this thing sticking out of a shed

So, what did I get? Well, a few things.

1. the bed box from a Mighty Max pickup (as you may know, the Max is the close cousin to the Raider, as well as the Dodge D50)

2. the rear axle (not sure why, but pretty sure it has the same hubs, brakes, etc as the Raider. Don't think this one has LSD, bu since it was free I figured I'd grab it for future use (or for $5 at the scrapyard). TBD. 

3. he had the full Mighty Max frame there which I didn't want to haul. But thought maybe the rear section for under the bed could come in handy (or be useful just for heavy steel material). So the guy pulled out a super-long extension cord and a grinder and just chopped it in half for me, which was pretty cool of him since I know he just wanted to get rid of this stuff and I was only taking half of it (he still has a Mighty Max cab sitting there....)

Anyhow, loaded up and strapped down and headed 200 miles home...

And tucked away in my side yard for the night after some backig assisted by the Sequoia's rear floods :)

Sooo. what am i doing here? If you haven't already guessed, probably some kind of trailer. TBD on what it will be/be for at this point, but I thought it would be cool to use a Mighty Max bed since the body lines and wheel wells match the Raider. So, once I start on that project I'll put it here as well. Possibilities are: general utility trailer (since the big one is a pain in the ass to get out just to haul mulch or whatever); expedition/adventure trailer (not sure why I'd need that when I can fit everything I need in the Raider, but it seems to be the trendy thing to do these days); Rally service trailer - I like this idea since the big trailer can't go into service and having a small trailer like this to carry parts and tools would be convenient. Or maybe a combination of the three. Really it's just something that will hopefully be a very inexpensive way to practice some skills, try out some ideas, and maybe it will turn out cool (or maybe it won't, lol). 

In unrelated news to the above post....but more related to the Raider...

So after ordering a front lunchbox locker from LOKKA in September, I never heard from them, couldn't get in touch with them, and eventually tried to go through PayPal. Still was hoping they'd come through with delivery, but today I got a refund for my payment, so I guess that's the end of that idea for the moment. So will have to look into other options for the front, since I would really like a front locker of some sort....in any case, that sucks. 

Got any pics of the awning open and the rear door open? Great idea! Maybe we should try mounting ours on the rear, but I think its a bit too long.

engiekev said:

Got any pics of the awning open and the rear door open? Great idea! Maybe we should try mounting ours on the rear, but I think its a bit too long.

Here you go, took some today for you. As you can see, when open the antenna base clears the awning. When closed they are simply flexed off to the side. 

Nice corvette 

can't wait to see the trailer 

After 28 days, my Priority Mail package finally arrived! Took 3 weeks to get out of New York, and another week of bouncing around 3 facilities within 20 miles of my house to finally get here lol. 

Anyhow, here's what's in it:

A pair of mirrors for a Defender 90/110 (the old one, not the new one). Picked these up fairly cheap. They're aftermarket, not OEM, but seem to be VERY good quality (light years more solid-feeling than either my OEM Raider mirrors or those other ones I installed and then took off last month). The OEM ones just generally suck...tiny size, flat mirror gives almost no view of traffic, they are noisy in the wind, rattle, and don't hold their position if you go over about 50mph. The "JDM-style" ones I got after that had good view, but had TONS of wind noise and (IMO) looked kinda stupid on a truck this small. 

So after a bunch of browsing, decided to go with these. 

1. Size comparison. They're not THAT much bigger than the OEM ones, but they seem a better size. They also look nicer. 

2. They have convex mirrors, so they have a really, really nice wide view of traffic around the vehicle.

3. They have a spring-loaded post with 3 positions: straight out (for towing, I guess?), angled back (normal), and folded flat against the side of the truck (for offroad, parking, whatever). In any case, they feel nice and solid. 

4. They absolutely in no way fit this vehicle. But I'm gonna make them work anyhow.

So, first thought was to make a bracket off of the stock mirror bolt holes. The stock mirrors have the bolts oriented horizontal, and these mirrors have them vertical. Plus, the D90 mirrors require the bolt to come from the back and screw INTO the mirrors. So I cut out some brackets to see how I'd like them (just a mock-up with random hardware)

So this seems to work fine, but it puts the mirror at the same place (or even a bit further back) than the OEM ones. I've always thought the OEM ones were too far back on the door, and just don't really want them there. On the D90, the mirrors are mounted at the very front of the door (so basically even with the base of the windshield). On the Raider, putting them there would give bad visibility since the quarter window vertical support would be right in the middle of the mirror. 

So screw it, I've never been scared to drill some holes. Figured out a good placement where they wouldn't interfere with the quarter windows, about halfway between the OEM mirror mount and the front of the door. 

Again, this is a mock-up. Unlike the D90, which has pretty much vertical sheet metal in that area, the Raider curves in. So either I just bolt it up and have the mirror arm angled upward (tried it, looks bad), or I try to level it. 

So that's the angle I need to "fill" to make them fit vertically. 

In any case, I shot off this sketch to a buddy who has a 3D printer and he's going to whip up a couple of these for me. So, will finish off this project once I get them from him. 

With you having a big family and raider being set up for two 

is it just a vehicle for you to get away from wife and kids ? 

mr2s2000elise said:

With you having a big family and raider being set up for two 

 

is it just a vehicle for you to get away from wife and kids ? 

I mean, it's not *that* big of a family, I only have two kids. In any case, my wife has pretty much no interest in any of my adventuring stuff (especially involving driving any of my old cars), and right now my daughters are young enough that anything their mom isn't interested in, they are not interested in (though I hope that will change as they get older) .

In any case, if I need to go off the beaten path with the family, I do have another vehicle quite capable of doing so :)

You come to this thread for the sweet short wheel base off-roader action, but you stay for the antique rally computer, the sick branch deflectors, and the finnicky custom side mirror fabrication... 

I wouldn't worry too much about the front locker. In my mind, you typically get stuck going up hills, and on a 30 degree grade in  something with that high of a center of gravity, your rear wheels are doing 60-65%+ of the work. I lost that argument with my dad and brother in our 1st gen 4runner. Open rear with a lunchbox up front, I don't feel like it helps much in the really tough stuff. 

Bizwacky said:

You come to this thread for the sweet short wheel base off-roader action, but you stay for the antique rally computer, the sick branch deflectors, and the finnicky custom side mirror fabrication... 

I wouldn't worry too much about the front locker. In my mind, you typically get stuck going up hills, and on a 30 degree grade in  something with that high of a center of gravity, your rear wheels are doing 60-65%+ of the work. I lost that argument with my dad and brother in our 1st gen 4runner. Open rear with a lunchbox up front, I don't feel like it helps much in the really tough stuff. 

Yeah I am not sweating it too much. That said with the Raider/Montero SWB propensity to lift a front wheel when off camber, that basically removes all front end grip whenever that happens,. A locker would mitigate that quite a bit seeing as the rear ends doesn't flex all that much either. Frankly speaking I would rather have a front locker than a rear! There's actually a really good YouTube video by some Australian guys who do a bunch of comparisons using front rear and no lockers in a short wheelbase Toyota, And it's pretty impressive how much more useful the front locker is than the rear for a lot of Rocky and uneven surfaces.

If this was a Jeep with a lot of articulation and flex I definitely would agree with you and not even bother with a front locker. 

In any case if I ever get enough people together to do an order from Aussie lockers in New York, I will do that because it's fairly inexpensive as well. But for most of my wheeling I agree with you it is probably not something I really need, as I tend to enjoy trail running more than rock climbing, And this thing is proven extremely capable at that kind of stuff.