The Frankenprotege rallycar worklog

[808]

Good luck to you guys. When's John gonna be back on stage? Any indication on that?

[jay]

He said he's gonna try to make Wildwest. Which is good cuz I owe him one there...

[808]

Sweet. I'm hoping to hit WW next year (WW 2011). I just bought a house and haven't even had a chance to even put the rally car in a garage I own. I still have some rally debt to Weaver too, actual money not like you owe John. I gotta get VanLandingham to build me some struts.

[jay]

We didn't get as far as getting the thing in the car today. Doing final assy, we didn't like the feel of 3 of the xfer case bolts. Who knows how much abuse this stuff suffered before we got it rebuilt.. In any case we chased threads on one, but decided to put timeserts in the other 2. Which meant removing everything, of course. Also decided there was still interference tween the xfer and the pan. You know the area where you have to put a cap screw in the case and then grind some off? Well, we did that, and then we beveled the pan right there as much as we dared, then took more off the case, to the point of grinding flat that side of the bolt head and exposing the threads on the fastener and only then did we get the tiniest amount of clearance. I have no idea why we had so much more trouble than anyone else in this area. It's an ST205 box but everyone says they're identical to the st185. In any case it all fits and it's all back together and with any luck at all it's going in the engine bay tomorrow.

[therieldeal]

dooooo eeeeet

[pikespeakgtx]

Sweet. I'm hoping to hit WW next year (WW 2011). I just bought a house and haven't even had a chance to even put the rally car in a garage I own. I still have some rally debt to Weaver too, actual money not like you owe John. I gotta get VanLandingham to build me some struts.

I need to JVL to build me some struts too, so we should team up on this.

He'll probably need a GTX to mock it up on, since he doens't have plans/jigs or anything.

Also from Tim Taylors experience we know that his strut tubes are 4" too short for the back struts.

And front struts are 185mm travel rears are 210mm


Also Jay, MOAAAR PICS!!! MOAAR PICS!!! MOAAR PICS!!!

[808]

I have one or two of those gtx things he could borrow... He might have plans I thought he did Chris Baldini's suspension...

[pikespeakgtx]

I have one or two of those gtx things he could borrow... He might have plans I thought he did Chris Baldini's suspension...

Oh Yeah he probably has,I know he's done Derek Bottles and Tim Taylors and I forget who elses GTX, but doens't mean he has plans/jigs. :-)~....

It's JVL we're talking about here, and I quote , "I had more drug sex and cheap thrills by 30 than any normal human could survive..." - JVL

You getting gravel suspenders? He can get the 40mm stuff right now. I'm ready to buy, when are you planning on ordering?

He is making a whole bunch right now. We'd have to o rder up the tubes from bilstien and wait for them, and if we catch it right, he'll already have enough strut tubes made up so he could fit the tubes in the struts and then weld on the ears and call it good.

Are you going to use mazda strut tops or subie or something else?

[808]

Hah it is JVL, I hadn't really decided yet on the strut tops probably mazda for my ease.. The rally car still has about a year and a half before it hits stage as I just bought a house, so I won't be ready to purchase for... a year probably. I'm broke!

[jay]

Ya might have a chat with Dave Clark, he built the suspenders for thishere rallycar and they are fantastic...
So today we got the car lowered over the drivetrain and it looks like this. Jon, I'd really like to see closeups of your engine bay, especially where the speedo cable is and why it doesn't interfere with the rack (cuz sure as hell it's interfering with mine), and even more important, how your halfshafts look in relation to your control arms. I have a baaaaad feeling that the gtr arms are different from what I'm dealing with, and prolly different from yours, unless I just have the wrong halfshafts. Length to centerline looks fine but they are hard interfering with the LCA's right now and I *think* the engine's awful close to where it's supposed to be...which prolly means we're making some new LCA's that have a touch lower profile.

[pikespeakgtx]

Jay, that's so freakin awesome, you're almost there, but seems like you're hitting every snag along the way. Keep going, you're almost there. Good luck man.

I love this picture that shows the gt4 gearbox next to the mazda box. No wonder they don't break. Look at that beast! Any idea on the difference in weight? I know the mazda box is heavy for a gearbox, but man that toyota aught to be 30% heavier at least.

[therieldeal]

jay, to me your engine looks awfully low in the engine bay, tilted down towards the drivers side significantly. think raising it up will let the axles clear the LCA's without an issue. several GTR owner have done this swap down in NZ and whatnot using all stock suspension.

as far as the rack vs. speedo gear situation.... i had no issues, but the 2wd rack is lower than the 4wd rack. it ends up pretty close to the rack though. if it wasnt getting dark here i'd take some pics (car is outside, and doesnt run right now). i will try to remember to get some pics tomorrow.

i have a feeling there will be a spot thats "just right" where everything fits. it took me a while to find it but it does exist!!

[ftjandra]

Hey Jay, maybe these two pics will help (click for full res). I am using a different adapter plate, but the axle location should be pretty much the same. I am having a hard time picturing what part of the LCA the axle is interfering with unless they are drastically different from the 2wd ones - I have never seen a pic of them. I am using MX-3 LCAs.





--Ferdi

[SgtRauksauff]

It's kind of an awkward shot, but this is on the driver side, when I was trying to put my GTR transmission in my 4WD. You can see the tie rod coming through just a small peephole there, because the rack's up on the firewall.

I think that extra bit of body/frame that is below and in front of that is where the LCA bracket hangs onto. that whole area isn't there on the FWD, because it uses the crossmember to hang onto the rack AND the LCA. Which sort of puts a damper on clearance, a little.

And speaking of JVL, do you mean some suspenders like this?




I had him make these up for me awhile ago now, but I still need to test fit 'em up, and make sure the ears get tacked on in the right place, then dis-assemble, properly weld the ears on, paint, and re-assemble. Bilstein 40mm, I think they're 300 front/200 rear, 14" springs (and I told him I wanted 10-12, since they would be spending more time on asphalt than gravel. That was before I obtained either of my 4WDs... I sent my FRS dampers, a spring, and a front and rear cusco and stock mount, so he could figger things out. I'd have just driven my wagon there for him to measure with, to do the ear welding, but, well, I'm like 1500+ miles away.

Currently planning to use the Cusco front/rear camber plates, but they apparently have a wimpy teeny little pillow-ball, so I should upgrade to something better.

In the first pic, those are the Ford Racing Suspension, using 45mm dampers, made by Dynamic Suspensions, and apparently these are the ONLY dampers they made that have really no way to service them. they built them in some sort of vacuum box, and machining/modification is needed to do squat to them.

--sarge

[jay]

The problem I have with these halfshafts has nothing to do with engine placement yet. We stuck em in the hubs before we dropped the car onto the engine. The inner CV's ride hard on the fronts of the LCAs, toward the front of the car, you know the part that sticks out forward. They might not interfere when the suspension isn't at full droop but that doesn't help at all. It ain't like the car has any more than stock amounts of suspender droop either, so I'm hoping at this point that the store sold me the wrong halfshafts. But again the distance between the ends looks to be OK so I don't know what to make of this, yet. but Ferdi's pix throw some light. Those LCA's look just like BF GTX, and are totally unlike BG awd protege. Shyte. Mine are in the way and that's that and raising the trans only makes the articulation problem worse. Looks like we "get" to make new control arms.............................................. ........................