Seam Welding

Started seam welding the front end over the weekend, got about half way through before I ran out of gas.

Note To Self: check regularly that there is gas coming out of the MIG hand piece! I was wondering why my welds started getting a bit crappy!?

Also some pics of the cage anchoring points(pics were taken "before" I attacked all the joins with a wire wheel to get them ready for paint.)

Caged! And some mail!

Cage is done! I picked the car up this morning before work from FabRAIcations. I'm very happy with it! With the double side intrusion bars and the deep bucket Cobra seat I'm going to need a quick release steering wheel kit to make it easier to get in and out of! Will take some more pics later when I get a chance and post back.

Also received some parts in the mail which I ordered last week, a pair of Cusco 35mm RCA's(2nd hand) and some braided brake lines.

Some ROP Progress

Got a call from Rai today to ask if I could pop in and check the seat positioning before finalising it. Managed to take a few pics of the progress so far. Hoping it will be ready by the end of the week! Because the seat is so big around the shoulder/head area, he couldnt fit a triangulation bar between the main hoop and the roof side bars - so instead he's done a diagonal in the roof. The side intrusion bars will have an extra upper bar which is not pictured here - its going to make a little more difficult to get in and out of but is still a good idea for extra rigidity and safety.

The rear legs are also still to be done.

What Rai? Delay?

Popped up to FabRAIcations at lunch time to see Rai and check how my cage was going - was expecting it to be almost done, but as you can see, not quite! Apparently his lead fabricator has been off sick for the last week with pneumonia! So it will be at least another week before its ready.



Rai does some great work from checking out the other cars he had there, I'm sure I'll be very happy with the result when its done. A great bloke too. There are couple of things he does which I really like, the extra triangulation bars at the top of the uprights are a nice touch. I'm also getting double side intrusion bars - the AE86 has a very large door gap so I figured extra strength here wouldn't go astray! I'll also be cutting the side intrusion panels out of the ADM AE86 doors to lighten them so am happy to have the extra side protection. Heres some pics of a KE70 he's building up as a rally car for himself, my cage will be similar I think but without the X section in the roof!



I have already arranged to get the interior/cage and engine bay painted, mates rates through a friend, when its ready. I like white on race cars! I especially like the Subaru white from my GC8 WRX, its a real clean stark white so will use that color I think. I'll seam weld the engine bay once I get it back and shoot it off for paint once thats all done. I'm not going to worry about the exterior just yet.

Some random parts pics

The car is currently at FabRAIcations getting a 6 point cage installed, should be back home later this week I hope! In the meantime here are a few random parts photos.

Surge tank and dual Bosch motorsport fuel pumps, 4.6 diff gear and my bumpers with a fresh coat of black bumper paint an a fibreglass lip installed.

Somewhere to park my half-arse!

Scored a pretty serious seat from a mate in the WRX club, he used to run this in his track WRX before he got rid of the car and this has been sitting in his shed since. Looks like it might just fit!? I'll need a grab handle to get out of it!

Rail repair

Remember earlier when I sourced this shell, I mentioned it has some chassis rail damage as well? Not any more!

N2 Fatness!

Scored a set of TRD N2 flares(well good quality copies)! Always wanted to go N2 widebody but wasnt the plan to start with. I had to grab these though as they were too cheap to pass up! Unfortunately the budget wont stretch for a set of wheels & tyres to suit. I also need the front lip which I know of a couple of sources to get it from. But for the meantime I'll just have to settle for a quick mock up to see how they look before stashing them away for another day!

The DIFFerence

The original plan based on a tight budget, was to use the ADM "S series" diff with the drum rear brakes. Weld the centre locked and try and make the axles last at least the first race meet! One of my mates from AE86DC happened to have a JDM "Kouki" diff he was getting rid of, complete with TRD 2 way LSD centre and JDM rear discs and calipers. I couldnt resist and snapped it up. It was a bit leaky when I got it so I pulled it apart to inspect it and reseal the diff housing before bolting it up to the shell. Here you can also see the AJPS 6kg springs and AGX Excel G shocks in the rear. Also some Whiteline goodies(adjustable lateral rod and sway bar).

No rego = car trailer!

I got sick of having to hire a car trailer every time I had to take the car somewhere to get work done. Even if it was just a quick trip a couple of kms up the road to a workshop or something, the hire places only hired out for min of 24 hrs! So I would have to pay for a whole day for a 10min trip and then again to collect the car to bring it home when the work was finished. I decided to bite the bullet and buy a trailer - it would be needed to get the car to race meets anyhow when its ready.

Flares... now the rear!

The fronts guards turned out so well I decided to give the rears a go. The rears require a little more effort, the inner guard has to be first seperated from the outer guard and cut away a little to provide some room. Then after the flaring is done you need to re-attach(weld) the inner to the outer to provide adequate strength to the guard and stop crap being flicked up into the rear quarter cavity. I drilled the spot welds out, in hindsight I probably should have ground them through to prevent the holes in the lip you see in the pics. It wasnt a big deal in the end because I folded the lip back over to pretty much cover the holes. I also ran a bead of sikaflex along the join where I welded the inner guard to the outer to make sure it was a water tight seal. Once again I was pretty happy with the result!

Flares

Fitting decent sized wheels and tyres means modifying the stock guards. I had seen a few AE86's with hand flared guards which came out looking pretty good, so I decided to give it a go myself and hopefully I could enough clearance to fit the wheels and tyres I had. I started with the front guards as these were the easiest to do and if I stuffed it up all I had to do was source a new guard or buy aftermarket frp guards already flared. I purchased a cheap dodgy hammer and dolly set from Auobarn and set about pounding out the flare. I was suprised with how well they came out! I havent even used any filler on them yet.

Some of those those round things!

Of course a car needs wheels! The old 13" stockers are an embarassment. My ideal wheels for this car are Watanabe RS, in 15", very wide and very low negative offset. But alas I cant afford at this stage to build my ideal dream race car - so I settled for locally manufactured Superlights in 15x8 with -4 offset. I like to call them "the poor mans Watanabe's". They are very similar style.

Whilst deciding on the wheels I looked around for an existing local race series that used the same size wheels, my thinking was that I may be able to source a good supply of 2nd hand race rubber from the racers and keep tyre costs low. The local Porsche 944 Challenge series just so happens to use 15x8 rims with 225/50 Advans. I contacted some of the racers and before too long had guys offering me sets of slightly used tyres for a fraction of new cost!

As you can see from the last pic - this size wheel and tyre do not fit without modification to the stock guards!

Stoppers!

Had seen a few FC RX7 brake caliper to AE86 strut adaptor kits around, mainly in Japan on Yahoo auctions. I liked the idea of a compact 4 spot alloy caliper and larger vented rotor for the front of the Sprinter, so started investigating getting a set of the adaptor plates machined up. As it happens a fellow AE86 owner I knew through the forums had a set he purchased in Japan, he had changed his plans for his brake set-up, so I snapped them up! The kit uses EG Civic rotors which are slighty larger diameter than the AE86 units but much beefier and thicker - should be able to handle the heat of track work much better.

A slight change in plans!

As it happens, I was once again perusing the AE86DC forums during a quiet moment at work and stumbled across a Sprinter bare rolling shell for sale up the road in Geelong, it too had front end damage to a chassis rail but it had concertinaed instead of bending and also did not have a sunroof(bonus!) and basically no rust. I went and checked it out and decided it was a better base to build on then what I already had! I had just wasted a lot of work rust repairing, sound deadening removal and tidying up the other shell! The up side was that I would need all the other panels etc off the old shell to bolt onto this one. I was happy with the decision.

GZE found!

I had tracked down and purchased the turbo - a T28 from an S14 Silvia. Now I was on the lookout for an exhaust manifold to suit and aftermarket management to run it all. There were cheaply available stainless steel turbo manifolds on eBay - they looked good! All shiny and pretty. But I was hesitant to get one, I knew of the problems involved in cheaply made and designed stainless turbo manifolds. Whilst perusing the AE86DC forums on the lookout for parts I stumbled across an engine, a 4AGZE block with bigport head set-up for turbo, complete with Haltech aftermarket management, the only thing it was missing was the turbo which I happen to already have! The next problem was that it was in Sydney and I was in Melbourne! I contacted the seller and organised for a courier to pick it up and freight it down to me in Melbourne. After some stuffing around it arrived - I now had a good solid base for a 4AGTE engine.