American Rally 86 UPDATE

[dazed_driver]

Ok ... I've actually been doing work! Unfortunently, I dont have the before pix... I was a bit preoccupied sand blasting all my front suspension parts to take pictures. Why? Well, for one, I like inhaling the dust and getting that wierd feeling in the back of my throat (just kidding). The other reasons are one, its good to be rust free and protected and two, they are gonna look sweet freshly painted black. I also scored the entire suspension assembly out of an 86 in the pull a part. Struts (for the spindles to make spares for the my coil overs), control arms, caster tie rods, cross member, and the steering rack. And yes... the engine is still standing! *takes cheesy bow* Thats pretty much it for suspension stuff.

Onto..... Weight stuff!

I've been trying to reduce this thing as much as possible as I have to put a really heavy cage in it (something like 230 pounds ). To make it seem a bit less like a loaded school bus, I've been doing some house cleaning. And parts swapping. Obviously its gutted. I mean SUPER gutted. There is NOTHING on the shell but the rear end and the front crossmember. Not even the wires. Well, there is glass... but not for long. The doors arent even on it. Here is the list of weight savings.

Race seats, no sound deadening, MAYBE lexan side windows, CF hood, racing wheel (does that count? lol), door bars are being removed as I have the 3 cage tubes which actually mount to SOLID points, versus being contained JUST in the door. plus physics tells me that things gonna have inertia when it smacks the side of my cage.... Lets see... I think that may be kinda sorta it. Besides the unsprung weight savings!

I'm replacing the brakes on the car with some Wilwood goodness, as being able to stop would be nice. Here is some random information I have found. The stock Unsprung weight (meaning rotors, calipers for the whole car [and hubs for the front]) is 61#. With the Wilwood Dynalight 4 pot calipers up front and 2 pot in the rear running Bigger front rotors on aluminum bells and stock supra rear end width rotors on bells in the rear its 43.8# unsprung weight for the car. That includes the stock hubs. Now obviously this doenst include the half control arm, half strut, and half tie rod. This is stuff that I can manipulate at the moment. this also doesnt have the custom mounts I have to machine for the calipers. (I bolded and underlined stuff if you dont want to read it all! hmm... too late... oh well)

And finally, I picked up some Toda valve springs from Bob at Drift Office! I got my head back from Rob at Action to do a bit of port clean up then it goes back to him for the final valve cut. Pics on that later. Pics on other stuff too.