106 Rallye Prep and Restoration

[octo0072000]

pink reg no

with that reg no it's crying out for a pink paint job(tasteful) of course
keep up the good work you are now finding out all the things you can use the welder for now

 

[Cris B]

Okay been a while since I was on here or in a position to update so here goes. The second car that I bought with the intention of getting it back on the roads in two weeks turned out (as they often do) to need a lot more work than I expected. Welding work was quite straight forward, namely fabricating two chassis rail gussets to repair the damage behind the front wheels. The problem was with other bits like the brakes. Rather than go into details here you can read the whole saga elsewhere. The good news is that for the last month or so it has been back on the roads.

I have made every effort to keep this car standard. It has an uprated air filter and a decent sony headunit, but other than that is stock. It's great because you really appreciate the simplicity of it and the handling and setup from the factory.

With the 8v done (for now as a bit more welding needed in the rear arches at some point) I will shortly be getting back around to the 16v project car. Next job is to get the engine and gearbox back in temporarily so that I can cut the scuttle for the throttle body trumpets. Just need to mod the engine mount for my uprated setup and it will be getting craned back in...

 

[Cris B]

Not updated on here in a while so here's what I've been up to...

Bought a series 1 steering rack for the Quaife quick rack kit, stripped it down and cleaned it up, rebuilding it with the new internals.

When I test fitted the new pinion, the end of it poked out a lot more that the original were the cap used to be over the needle bearing. I had to punch through that to drive the old pinion out. As I need a way to cap this off to seal it and to stop crap working it’s way into the casing and contaminating the grease. My solution was to bond a large domed hex nut over the top with epoxy. I also commissioned some graphics...

The next job was to cut the scuttle for the throttle bodies, so it was time to get the engine back in. And out and then in again. Still got there in the end.

Chopping was definitely needed

Not a great photo, but you get the idea.

The last bits for the engine mount had also arrived...

Baker BM manufacture the engine mount. A good deal of thought has gone into designing this. It replaces the stock 8mm bolt with a machined 12mm setup. Fitted:

So back to today, managed an hour tonight, looking forward to getting some quality time on this over the next few weeks. Seeing as I am going down the heated windscreen route and have stripped out the heater matrix and blower, there was another hole to fill in the bulkhead. Stitched the steering rack support whilst I was at it.

The top of the scuttle is a mess so will need a bit of work. First thing was to chop out this bit

And welded in a new section. Also welded up the seam where the lower part of the scuttle had been cut. It'll look better once I've cleaned it up with a flap disc in the grinder.

I will also need to get creative to fit this in the interior

 

[barny]

Please reconsider having no heater. I've been there and done it, it's bloody horrible.
Have a look at this one

http://www.t7design.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=65&products_id=189

The do a larger one too, trust me even on slightly cold days you will want a little heat.

 

[stuvy]

Barny, what are they like for heat output? i take it you splice into the water pipes and let the rad work its magic as normal?

The motor control valve went in my fiesta last summer, i changed it within a few days as even driving in the evening was freezing!

 

[Cris B]

I did consider the t7 matrix, but the car will be rarely used, even less so in winter. I'll cope with a heated screen and roof vent for regulating the interior temperatures and misting. It'll never be that cold anyway given that a lot of radiant heat is passed into the cabin via the exhaust tunnel.

 

[davenport]

the T7 units are pretty good, a friend of mine had 1 in his stripped mk2 golf, he only had the small unit but even so it did a respectable job of keeping the screen clear and stopping ice forming on the inside (YES, that has happened in the past and trying to clear the screen while he tries to view the road from 1 small corner isn`t advised)

however, i also agree that if the cars only going to be used on "nice" days and has a good quality heated screen there shoudln`t be an issue...

 

[Cris B]

With the Christmas festivities out of the way and with a few days before needing to be back to work, it has been an opportunity to press on with the project. Previously I had fitted a Citroen AX single wiper conversion to the car. The initial fitment had just made use of some of the remaining brackets in the scuttle, a drilled hole and a bit of shaped aluminium tube and some long bolts with nuts. It was an incredibly fiddly setup to fit or remove, but crucially the position wasn't right.

The other downsides of this initial setup was that the rear of bonnet had to be modified to clear the aluminium arm on the motor and then without the wiper arm fitted also touched the windscreen (actually having scratched it during the initial fitting). Fundamentally it just wasn't very secure. So the plan was to created a permanent means of being able to fit the setup without needing to modify the part in anyway. That way should a replacement be required in future it should be simple to fit another on straight in.

So the remaining brackets were taken out saving half a kilo, although of course two new ones were going to need to go back in. Getting the necessary position required the bottom of the scuttle cutting so that the mechanism could fit. With this chopped it was possible to work out some of the positions and create the first bracket.

This was then welded on, but for various reasons it didn't give the position needed for the wiper. A bit of modification to change the angle and a height increasing spacer welded on gave the correct setup. So with the main bracket fitted, a smaller one was made for the other mounting point and also welded on. Both brackets feature captive nuts to aid simple fitting.

AX mechanism fitted:

The reason the scuttle had to be chopped! The next job is to box this in to restore the bulkhead. I had also forgotten that when I took one of the initial brackets out of the scuttle, I had managed to tear the bottom of the scuttle panel and that this had then needed a skim of filler. I used today to weld this up and a few other holes to neaten things up. The last job was to remove the cracked from the exhaust tunnel that the left hand steering column support mounts onto, saving another 400g - it'll need a bit of tidying up further down the road.

Bit more progress today... Fabricated up a box for the scuttle.

Test fitted

Welded up

Tacked in place after this it was ground down to fit.

Also put the bonnet back on to show the clearance...

Photo of the finished box in the scuttle for the wiper motor.

Spent a bit of time cleaning up some of the recent welds. Here is the blanking plate over where the heater motor air inlet was. From this:

To this...

Next job is to modify the steering column support so that I can get the welding in this area finished off. So time to crack on with the Corsa EPAS conversion.

I also treated myself to a Christmas present...

 

[octo0072000]

wiper box

are you going to end up with a wiper motor sitting in water
or are you putting in a drain in the wiper box
but looking good

 

[Cris B]

Wiper motor will be inside the sealed 'air box' section of the scuttle feeding the throttle bodies.

 

[dboy]

I just love the sound of a tu engine running bodies. Is the engine running standard compression and are you also changing the cams?

 

[Cris B]

It's cammed. Not gone high compression yet, but that is the long term plan. Engine is currently 165BHP. Engine builders like the legendary Sandy Brown are now consistently achieving up to around 220-225BHP for the very best optimised engines. This coupled to a car weighing around 750kg is a quite potent combination

I have recently been working on getting the Corsa C EPAS unit fitted, nearly there now. Just need to reinforce the chopped original steering column support back to the bulkhead and fabricate up some proper mountings.

 

[dboy]

Yeh have only ever heard good things about sandys work. I used to use John @ gmc for all my engine work, now just do it all my self.

 

[Cris B]

Progress Update

Not updated in a while so here's a bit of a progress report from the last few months. Finally took the plunge and cut the rear bench to drop the fuel cell container in. Need to weld in some proper supports for it now.

I'm going to make to "L" shape legs out of box and then weld on another section at the back onto the cross member that supports the front most rear beam mounts and the floor plan. The two legs will be tied onto the bulkhead behind the front seats where there are already two tabs that support the tank on the chassis. Something like this:

Once its in bolt the alloy container to the box section legs and to the bulkhead. Steering Column support for the EPAS is pretty much finished:

I have finished off the reinforcement of the steering column mounting as I had all the sections made up and just needed to finish welding them on. I am just working on the secondary mounting point for the column. It's currently attached with two M10 bolts and I am going to add another two. So a bit of cleaning up of the welds and I will get that fitted and the whole thing painted up. The missing piece of this puzzle is a Borgeson double universal joint which I'm just waiting for to come in.

A few weeks ago I ordered up an FIA specification battery kill switch with Teflon lined T-pull including the resistor.

Once this turned up I was in a position to finish off the scuttle. The top lip needed a couple of sections chopping out and new sections fabricating and putting back in.

Following this I was able to build a panel and reinforcement bracket for the electric kill switch and a eventually the fire extinguisher activator.

Seam welded the panels and following this put the hours in to clean things up and prep it for finishing and then painting it with POR15. After two coats it was time for etch priming. High build primer will go straight onto this.

I fabricated a pair of bumper and wing panel mounting brackets last April. Finally fitted them on this weekend.

One of the things that I have been wanting to do for ages is to replace the tow eyes. The rear one needs to be replaced because the chassis leg it mounts onto is rotten so it'll need to come off so that it can be tackled and the section replaced. This was going to leave the two eyes odd front and rear so the front was going to need some thought.

Old one off...

Used some cardboard to make a template and then cut it out of plate and tacked it in.

Then worked on the supporting section:

Fabricated it up and welded it all in and trial fitted the tow eye. Went for OMP alloy ones from YB Racing. The mounting has a piece of 5mm steel in it with three M8 tapped threads for the bolts to thread into.

 

[rocketron]

Very nice job indeed. I suspect you are fitting a bag tank within the container. IF you are doing MSA events, the flex tank MUST be completely isolated from the habiticle (ie the cab). You should not be able to see any flex material from any where from inside of car. Fuel filler must be isolated from cab. Filler must have drip tray and piped outside. Tank breather if not metal must be isolated. Consider one way valve at its end, not compulsary but good idea. This end must be lower than tank bottom, otherwise fuel will run out if car is inverted and valve is not fitted or not working

 

[Cris B]

Very nice job indeed. I suspect you are fitting a bag tank within the container. IF you are doing MSA events, the flex tank MUST be completely isolated from the habiticle (ie the cab). You should not be able to see any flex material from any where from inside of car. Fuel filler must be isolated from cab. Filler must have drip tray and piped outside. Tank breather if not metal must be isolated. Consider one way valve at its end, not compulsary but good idea. This end must be lower than tank bottom, otherwise fuel will run out if car is inverted and valve is not fitted or not working

Yep, ATL Fuel cell going in the box so all that will be seen will be the metal plate on top of the cell and I will be running a pipe within a pipe setup for the external filler. Tank breather and one way valve also in hand...

After a lot of hours I have the majority of the engine bay in POR15 primer. See if you can tell what else was chopped before going under primer I've left the lowest sections of the bay in a rough state because there still some work to do to bring the shell back to bare metal and treat it properly with POR15.

The next job will be to start sitting some of the components and parts back on to make sure no more adjustments or modifications are going to be needed before the final top coats go on. With this bit of work paused, it's been back into the interior to work on the exhaust tunnel. As I am definitely going to be running the Satchshift, decided that I might as well do a proper job of it. So started to tidy things up.

Butt joined in some filler plates and welded in the Satchshift base plate. Needs some tidying up (and some better photos taking), but you get the idea that it should be a bit lighter and neater than a big metal plate bolted on.

So this:

Will now sit directly on this:

The problem with working on the exhaust tunnel is that you need to be able to get to both sides of it and the underside is a pain to work on. It would make sense to have a facility to be able to turn the car on its side but that's not an option. So on Friday night I spent a couple of hours messing about with the trolley jack and the engine crane and raised the chassis another 8 inches on the chassis rig that I made up. This makes it possible to get under the car to work on things.

As of today I've now done some work to tidy up the tunnel and bit from the Satchshift mount forwards to the bulkhead is now all finished. So it was time to work back towards the fuel cell. One of the problems of having previously removed the plate for the original seat mountings over the tunnel is that you loose a lot of strength. So with the handbrake fitted there is a fair bit of play left to right and when it's pulled. The plan is to reinforce the mounting point with a reinforcement panel.

So took off all the paint to start work and found some bad news...

I'm regretting having paid to have welding work done on this car a couple of years ago. Having skimmed the paint off the quality of the work revealed is not to a level I now consider acceptable so I have had to do a lot of additional repair work. All this was hidden behind filler and primer and the big hole in the right of the picture had been really crudely patched from the under side. Rather than make a lot of progress I spent 5 hours today starting to make good the repairs.

 

[Cris B]

Handbrake Reinforcement:

Took more paint and filler off the tunnel and found more holes and naff welding between the rearward seat rail and the eyelet bolts. i'm going to reposition the rear eyelets so that the spreader plates are properly fitted to the shell. They were just tacked on with two blobs of weld and when i removed the eyelets, the spreader plates both just fell off!

I've started putting it right but it's slow and depressing work, repairing work that I'd paid to have done previously by some one else. In working to repair the mess on the parts of the tunnel I mentioned last time, I was left chasing holes in the affected sections. So despite getting it looking pretty good, it was full of thin metal sections and pin holes.

The underside told the true story - things were not good.

Only thing for it was to chop it all out and weld in a new section. Stronger, lighter and satisfaction knowing it's been done properly now.

 

[Cris B]

Two more bottles of argon mix and we're ready to crack on again.

Over the last week I've started working out the runs for the braided lines through the car. So Master cylinder and servo are temporarily back on, bulkhead has been drilled and the rear line run along the tunnel. I've started to fab up a mounting for the Wilwood bias valve, but ran out of time again tonight to finish it off and weld it in. I'm going to need some new parts for the lines due to the ATL fuel cell and having to run the lines around it, so will be putting an order in for parts shortly.

I've started a check list for parts and jobs needed to get the car mobile again as a rolling shell. It's going to be seeing daylight again soon for the first time in a long time.

Having worked out where the bias valve was going to be mounted, I decided that the tunnel needed a final bit of tidying up so took this area which was all dented and patched:

Marked it up, chopped it out, formed up a repair panel and welded it in:

Ground down the welds and then fabricated up the mounting for the bias valve and welded that in:

Finished up by painting the tunnel inside and underneath in POR15 so it's primed. There's plenty more work that is needed inside, but at least this will keep the work completed so some protection.

The first job on my list to get the shell rolling was crossed off on Saturday:

Picked up a new pair of handbrake cables...

Need to finalised my order with Speedflow for fittings and get that on the way now, in the mean time back to finishing off the EPAS and getting the inside of the firewall bulkhead finished up and in primer. This will be involved

 

[davenport]

love it....

as i`ve said on RR forum.. your weldings come on considerbly since this project started mate....

 

[Cris B]

Update

Well seeing as Davenport has updated his thread...

Progressed with work to get the EPAS fitted. The Borgeson double UJ has two what are known as DD fittings of different sizes ( 3/4" DD / 1" DD ). I ordered mine to get the closest match to the Quaife pinion and then because they didn't do one to match the splines on the Corsa column, I went for the biggest DD size so that I could trim the original Corsa UJ down to create an insert into the DD.

Quaife pinion modified to fit one end of the UJ.

What's left of the original Corsa UJ.

It fits.

Mounted up in the car and check lengths on the pinion and column are right. Had to chop a bit of length of both the pinion and the steering column, but the EPAS is now fitted and has eliminated the unwanted movement in the column...

Finally finished welding on the steering column to make sure it has plenty of support.

Reworked the seat mountings on the seat rails - positioned, drilled, compression tube welded in, ground down and primed. EPAS is now ready to be chopped and have the Lifeline boss welded on, which gave a steering position at last

Did some technical drawings for the machine shop. Not the final iteration, but you get the idea.

After a bit of a wait picked up the parts ready for welding. A TIG expert from here is going to weld it up later this month

The top hat is the bearing carrier for a roller bearing that supports the column inside an outer tube. It needs to be removable to replace the bearing and will be held in place with a roll pin. The weld-on Lifeline steering wheel boss and column are also drilled through so will be mechanically joined as well as welded.