rusty-tim

So I haven’t done anything to the Austin for 6 months. Raceday is about 5 weeks away so got stuck into front shocks. Discovered you can buy coilover threads from spring/shock suppliers so grabbed a pair with nuts and lock nuts. Trial and guess work with various springs and have fitted them up. Have stripped 2 complete sets of lowered Subaru coilovers for hardware and stuff and thrown a pair of the rear springs plus some short cut stiff springs into my coilovers. Also grabbed some old 17” alloys back off a mate who had been storing them for a year or so. Fitted some 265 70 r17 maxxis muds on and made the front end work. Cut some more steel to clearance wheels at extremes of lock. Need to run some bolt on wheel spacers of about 15mm but for half a day’s work I’m pretty happy with that conclusion. Cut more of the damaged bent and now to close front guards and flares off. Removed about 70-80mm more steel. Will grab another oil drum from work and remake my front flares a little bit nicer than round 1 over the next week.

Also because I keep forgetting discussion post.

So I’ve started the long process of reading wiring info and gaining access to wiring and starting the unplug side of stripped. Had a moment early on where I lost dash. Didn’t see when I had removed a dash mount brace there was an earth also connected there. Note that’s a critical earth point. Labelling as I go unplugging stuff. Been able to remove a bit more than I initially expected. Traction control/abs, theft control, heater controls all gone already. Also removed doors, carpet and bonnet to help with access. Doors all unplugged so I’m on the right path. Also took some time off from the shed to plant the Vauxhall in the garden.

Wicked I will have a good read over that. I’ve started by removing dash components to access all the wiring I will need to strip down.

So now the escalation really starts. Picked up one rolled 3s-ge beams altezza a few days ago. About an 8 hour round trip battling holiday traffic and made it home safe and sound. Drained the oil from the inlet manifold, removed plugs and pumped it out of bores, removed airbox and drained that. Removed sump, beat the shit out of it and re-sealed it and then fill with oil and smoke the shed out. Ive been researching where I can for any builds retaining the original ecu, cluster and throttle body but they seem to be very thin on the ground. I don’t want to spent the $1600 for the link ecu and all the extra crap involved I just want to strip the not necessary wiring and extra crap and put it in my Austin. Has anyone on here done that? All the build threads I’ve found seem to involve individual throttlebodies and aftermarket ecu’s etc. Here’s a few pics of said altezza

Are you a Rover Chris? I would love to take it up there for North Island Mudbash one day.

So rather than finishing the drivers door I moved onto the front suspension. I needed to reduce the diameter of the springs on the Vt commodore front shocks to enable me to fit larger tyres without putting stupid offset rims on ( 28” muds is the biggest tyre you can fit under the spring base) and I need to reduce the spring diameter to give me clearance in the front guards. Grabbed a spare front shock and stripped it. Unfortunately they aren’t a removeable shock insert so options for modification are more limited. Thinking of sticking the whole assembly in the lathe and cutting a thread on the body to use as a lower coilover point and then the top ends easy as. However cutting threads on a lathe isn’t something I’ve done since high school. So maybe a good xmas break project with some practice shocks before transferring the learnings to some brand new shocks. Springs rates are likely to be a test and play from the pile large collection of coilover sized springs I have around.

So that build was 13th March to 27th August last year. Pretty pleased with the whole deal but needs a bit more work. I missed Mudbash this year due to being overseas on honeymoon. But wanted to take it to the next level for next event. Not really happy with the seating/steering and pedal situation. The front struts are catching on the inner lip of front guards on the way up and have made a mess of them so need a redesign and then straighten. The doors are pretty ugly both inside and outside. And I always wanted to build it with 3s-ge beams, altezza and 6spd manual not that I will ever need 4th, 5th or 6th gears for Mudbash. I scored a pair of 2door doors. Went to slap the passengers door on. Took me longer to strip the glass out of it than it took to hang it and make it fit. Lined up perfectly. Drivers door I’m going to have to move the pillar back about 5-10 mm maybe but will still be a lot easier than fixing the door to a decent level.

Yes will defiantly do jumps. I’m not as rough as this guy but very competitive so who knows.

So turned up to Mudbash. Only half a dozen people even knew the car existed so when I turned up there was a fair amount of surprise and where did that come from around the pits. I was rather proud of the achievement. Still had a bit of work not yet completed such as sorting kill switch, mounting racebelts, and an air filter (rag zip tied over the intake) then passed scruit and over the race. Started the day slowly checking things worked, hoping it was stable enough to throw it around without breaking it or worse falling over. After a few runs of grappling with the steering I moved the seat in closer and just dealt with the very uncomfortable pedal situation. Video as attached is later on on Saturday when I took Mum for a ride on one of the easier flat tracks. Lots of wheel spin and a bit of sledging not helped by really bad front tyres. I put a lot more caster into the front for Sunday and it helped a lot. Ended up the weekend 2nd overall by 0.2 of a second to a near bog standard Toyota corona. The Ford Anglia is a mates which there is a build thread on here from years ago. Similar concept but he stuffed the running gear into the body rather than building a chassis from scratch and just using the body as a cover.

At about this stage I was 5 months in and Raceday was 2 weeks away. From here it became a case of stand back and throw the parts at it however they will fit. As a result I have the most uncomfortable seating and driving position known to man. I have to pull my leg up by the knee to get foot on clutch pedal if I want to be close enough to the wheel to control the machine. Made the driveshaft myself, the Mitsi shaft slid inside the commodore shaft with about 2mm clearance each side so set it square with some washers tacked in place and then triple checked for square and fully welded. Wiring was fairly well stripped down but I cut to many wires because no gauges worked at all. Finally got it started about 2-3 nights before Raceday and ran it up on the hoist. A pile of finishing jobs and the car drove for the first time out the shed up and down the drive and onto the trailer Saturday morning of raceday.

Interested to see more on this. Will be trying to do this for my A30 Austin. Will be picking up my new Altezza which should be complete and running on 27th. Plan is to leave it in the altezza slowly stripping everything I don’t need until I can pull the lot drop in the Austin and drive away leaving massive rooster tails.

The flares are made from Penrite oil drums and strips of panel steel liberated from the sides and tailgate of L300. Built a driveshaft loop from solid chunk of galv pipe with supports going to each inner sill that I think I also multi used as seat mounts. Borrowed a pair of ST 202 seats off Mum and fitted along with eyelets for the racebelts to clip into. Mounted radiator off the pipe front end, lengthened the doors (how mint do they look) yeah right. Setup gearshifter.

So running out of time and funds real quick before Raceday so needed a driveline. Early L300 with frontal in Nelson. Road trip time and lots of waiting for guy to answer his phone and picked up and home. Very smokey engine and lots of oil leaks but close enough and for $120 couldn’t complain. Fitted easily. Why did I make the trans tunnel so big?