Storage Unit Rally Car Build - Week 13: Axels & Heater Lines
AXLES
One day we are going to find a new building and will have to push this thing back out and into the trailer. With the axles out the wheel bearings flop about so we didn’t want to struggle with it again like we did, pushing it in. We decided now was a good time to reinstall the axles, even though we haven’t refurbished them yet.

Don’t worry, we cleaned them up a bit. We’re not peasants.
When we dug them out of hiding it soon became apparent that there were two long ones and two shorter ones. But where did they go, front and rear, left and right, where? It turns out, opposite corners!

We’re sure there’s a good reason but just for giggles we did try to install one in the wrong place, just because, well, we’re idiots to be honest. It was too long.

HEATER PIPES
The 45* bends we were waiting for from Pegasus Racing came in so we got to finish heater pipe installation.

We’ve also located a brand new double grommet for the bulkhead!


Week 14 of the Storage Unit Rally Car Build
IACV (Idle Air Control Valve)
Yep, we’re now struggling to find things we can install while working in the storage unit. Picking at straws so to speak. Next on our list is therefore the idle air control valve. IACV. If you don’t already know, this ECU controlled valve bypasses the throttle at idle to allow it to, well, idle. Of course, with our fancy aftermarket intake manifold it won’t just bolt back in place. There is a connector for it at the back of the manifold be we’ll still have to tee into the intake tract before the throttle at some place. Here’s the valve with its rubber mounting ring and the nifty bracket that it sits on.


It is quite heavy so we think we should try to mount it using the OE bracket if possible. The inlet to the manifold is towards the back directly underneath, but whatever the IACV mounted off before is no longer apparent. So, we contrived a bracket extension off the engine mount arm as there were already three threaded holes in that. Engage CAD design mode.


We’re not really setup to make this in our storage unit so we’ll either make it later or outsource it. The inlet is a straight-ish shot to the back of the intercooler end tank but we’ll need to weld a bung on for it so, job stopped!
SEALS
Our searching through various boxes for various parts revealed the window and aperture seals so we decided to take inventory and install some because, well, we’re running out of things we can do and we have to keep moving forward somehow.
Door seals

Windshield seal

Under hood cowl seal


Trunk seal

The rest of the window seals are already on the respective windows hidden away, somewhere. These pieces seem to be still in good shape and were surprisingly satisfying to install.

Week 17 of the Storage Unit Rally Build: A Sharp Intake of Breath
We’ve been back and forth on what to do about an intake system for the car for ages. We’d like to have our cake and eat it too but we just can’t see a way to get there. This is what we’d like to have:


As used on the works rally cars. It looks iconic and sucks air from the high pressure cowl area where, conveniently, there are louvers in the hood above for that very purpose. There are a few problems with this. Firstly we have a MAF sensor to incorporate in the intake track, ideally in the stock location as we have an aftermarket U shaped intake tube that houses connections for all kinds of other bits and pieces that we need. This really doesn’t mate up to that.

Secondly, if we did this it really would have to be made of carbon Kevlar to pass muster and making one from scratch would be very expensive and time consuming. You can, in theory, buy one but we’ve heard it’s of dubious quality and it still wouldn’t mate to our MAF sensor.
We tried prototyping an alternative route to the cowl that goes down the bulkhead to an existing 3” hole before doing a 180 into the passenger compartment and back up through another existing hole in the cowl. We think we could terminate this into an oval shaped pancake filter with a lid. It would probably work and we think we could make it look half decent but our fear is that it would just look like a poor substitute for the original.




We could just whack a bloody great cone filter on the end of the MAF sensor and declare “job done” but there are a few problems with that too. It would be sucking air from right next to the turbo and also be right under the hood louver that lets hot air out of the engine bay and, not great, water in. So we dismissed this too. Here it is mocked up with a small filter.



We looked at modifying some OE intake boxes but they don’t seem to be suitable either.

So we’ve settled. Settled on another U bend with a cone filter behind the headlight. This is not under the louver so should stay dry and it gets a good cold air feed from the grill and light surround. We also think we can shield it from the engine bay quite easily and, although it is a bit rigged it will hardly be visible so it doesn’t matter if it looks it.



If nothing else it will do to get the car running. Maybe we will revisit this later, or not.
Prepping for Custom Stainless Exhaust and Skid Plat Design
We are honored to have a friend of ours agree to build us an exhaust. It’s going to be 3” stainless steel with one muffler at the rear and as similar looking to the works cars as possible. Of course, that meant we had to build a skid plate! Well, not exactly but we did need to see how much room we would have around it so we mocked one up.
First the rear support bar which spans the chassis rails behind the gearbox. We used some rather flimsy aluminum tube we had lying around which made it really easy to flatten the ends.


Our surrogate 3” exhaust tubing fit through but it might need to be lower.

Next, we turned our attention to the front support. We thought we would see if we could mock up a reasonable facsimile of the works support using PVC conduit, even though that would be a little larger diameter than the steel tube we’d ultimately be using. How hard could it be?






Not bad eh?


Next, we need an actual plate. Fortunately, we are a Corbeau seats dealer and their seat boxes are perfect for mocking up skid plates. Our plan was to try to replicate the molded Kevlar are whatever exotic material this one was made from, but in aluminum plate. This might be a three or even four Hobnob project!

Well, you don’t know until you try so we put the kettle and our thinking caps on and had a Hobnob. First, we made a masking tape mold off of our 1:18 model. Then we put that on the photocopier and hit x18! (no, we didn’t)

As convoluted as the works plate appears, if you study the it carefully you can make out many flat looking facets to it. Most obvious is the center section that is about two feet wide. We realized that if we took a long piece of box this wide and put two bends in it we would have the essential structure down. Moreover, if we weld some 2” wide rims on it might look quite similar. So that’s the plan.




We were pretty happy with this so far and decided that maybe this idea had some legs. We pushed on with mounting the cardboard plate to the PVC support bars so we could remove the box and axles stands. To do this we made some clips out of some thin aluminum sheet and bent them around the bars. They worked rather well unless there’s a slight breeze or somebody sneezes too closely!




So that was the basic structure sorted. Now we just needed to widen it; and form the upturned sides! A bit more Corbeau cardboard and loads of Hobnobs and Yorkshire tea later we had this:






Lovely. Right; what shall we work on next? Mud flaps? First, we’ll have to put the kettle on!
