Search the Community

So thought I'd put something up here. Bought this car about 8months ago with a friend with the intention to get into rallying a oldschool RWD car for cheap and having some fun (the way they used to with mo's a beer for lunch) as we both have circuit cars as well and came to the conclusion neither of us could handle ever selling our POS circuit cars to fund a rally car. We are planning to do the Daybreaker Rally in 2014, there is a clause in the rules that still state that the co-driver can drive some of the stages if they want. So we are doing stage-for-stage driving the car. Neither of us have any rally driving experience, only rally experience is servicing stupidly custom hayabusa starlets so doubt that'll be much use to us... so will be an interesting learning curve considering neither of us can read notes so will just do the rally blind at this stage. Got the car cheap from down south where it had been running for a number of years. Mechanically pretty sound few bits and pieces we have had to sort but all in all its pretty good. Car just needed a birthday really. A lot of things were done really hory and the interior was a sight to behold.. A bit of TLC is what it needed. It has a COD (certificate of description) which means we can run legitimately in the classic class and also gives the car a bit more value. As we got the car got rid of the racetech 100's that neither of us could fit our fat arses into and mounted the seats from my circuit car. only just fits in there theres a 10mm gap between the seats and each seat just clears the door on the outside of the car. This is what we are aiming for the car to look like by daybreaker; took it for a skid at the farm to test it all out. Goes bloody well! the 4K in it is grumpy as hell got a massive cam, dellortos and revs out over 8K so were pretty happy with that. Has a AE86 diff (TRD plate diff), gearbox and front struts with Bilstein shocks all round so handled it all really well. Was super tail happy so after this we put it on the alignment machine; turns out it was toeing out by 8mm.. nothing a angle grinder and welder can't solve! So the strip down begun, just to tidy up everything as there were bits of rust, birdshit welding and general horiness in quite a few places. our aim was to tidy up the inside and do everything right. As well as sort out the crunchy synchro's in the gearbox which hindered us while testing Some of the good bits.. grp 4 inserts in the front Some of the shit, starting to strip the whole interior of paint ready for a full respray (check out how dented the floor is - this has been a rally car for quite a while!) Tidying up the struts Jase (ekezetec) made me some new footplates New parcel tray to tidy it up So we had a bit of drama with this. We intended to use my paint I used ont he 101 and it just turned to shit. Apprentice painter painted it for us and did a shit job turned out rough and not glossy at all and was never going to cut it. So got some white CV and did it again with a mate Rob at the gun. Damn he's good at pretty much everything and only wanted a 24 box of export for it which we pretty much drank while he painted... what a GC! Had to spend a lot of extra time re-prepping it again which sucked but at least its done properly. All masked up and ready to go for round 2. Rob at work So much glossier than 1st time round. Main thing was it had to be glossy so dust can be cleaned out properly after every rally. Finished result - really happy with how it turned out! New battery mount welded in and nice straps made. Also ran new cables and put a nice sheath over the outer to keep it all looking tidy Toolbox has been restored taking it right back to bare metal and repainted/remounted using some tidy go-kart washers. Also painted the fuel tank while it was out to tidy it up Nick spent heaps of time cleaning up the rear trims. We used expanding foam up the pillars to try and seal the dust out of the cabin. hopefully this will work well along with our new door seals - got a full set of brand rubbers from thailand so that will make everything seal really well hopefully. Dash has been fully re-coed. Looks 10000x better than it did before. Just looking for a small black retro looking tacho to run now so we can get rid of the monster tacho it currently has.. Dash mostly back together now just need to replace the indicator-lamp-oil-light with a nice little LED unit and mount in the new carbon panel. Also had the top panels of the dash repainted and flocked, looks super tidy and definately worth the money to do it properly! Waiting for the foot plates, seat mounts and isolator switch bracket to return from anodising this week to finish off our nice shiny bits and pieces.. Will post more pics when they arrive. Got new Flywheel bolts for it and machined the flywheel properly so the new TRD close ratio box can go in this weekend hopefully. Also have decided to make a new driveshaft. The output of the TRD box has a ae86 spline which we had to change, Nick had a ae86 driveshaft sitting there so thought we may as well use that! just need to shorten by a few mm and weld back together.