Nice. I like the rx7, it's amazing. I'm really interested in the all wheel drive swap. It's so cool to see how different people make it work.

Hopefully starting it tomorrow. Car still needs a lot of work though, 35 days until the race.


There's a lot of issues i've had to overcome.


-Stock driveplate that bolts to the engine/tranny clear didnt even come close to fitting. Cut and modified it, made a bracket, so I could still use it and bolt it to the engine on the backside.

-Clutch didnt fit, hit on the inside of the bellhousing. Took the stock dust plate off, made a copy out of 1/8" steel. Ground a little of the inside of the bellhousing. I'm not sure what the deal is if the 3sgte flywheel is thinner or what. I used the 5sfe flywheel with a 5sfe pressure plate, and a clutch disc that has the same diameter of 5sfe, but e154f splines.

-Had to make my own rear engine/tranny mount bracket to fit with the stock cross member and subframe. It was tough fitting it in there with the steering rack and how the transmission is set up.

-Front wheel bearings were seized, took forever to press them out, even with a 20 ton; had to heat them for 15 min.

-Found out that my front A-Pillar bars in the cage were bent the wrong way. I was using a saved PDF of the cage rules on my computer. It said it could be bent from a frontal view no more than 20 degrees. There's a supplement that says front should be side view. Had to cut the bars out and remake them.

-Found out my surge tank setup is illegal. The fuel cell has to be FIA FT-3 approved, apparently a 1 liter surge tank is still considered a fuel tank...... I think it's bull **** but nothing I can do. End up cutting the entire area out to save some weight since I couldnt use it.


That's just all the stuff on top of the normal build of the car.... i'm sure there's more.

This post has been edited by czwalga: Apr 29, 2011 - 7:25 AM

i think i may stop up in a couple weeks. give it a look see. coming along great!

It lives! Still have a lot of work to do though.


Had to make new rear sway bar mounts for the GT4 stuff. I also had to make longer tie rod ends so they wouldnt hit the GT frame when they flex. No pics of the tie rods though.








Fuel cell, without the tophat i made.




Took the tire guys forever to put the wheels on.... There machine wasn't strong enough to push the sidewalls in. The side walls are 3 times thicker than a street tire.










AWD....

great work !

if your races are not too far away I wouldn't mind checking the car in action.

how does it feel with the 5s being awd?

>



I haven't really driven it on the street yet, wasn't registered no insurance, no seats, windshield etc. haha. I'm sure it will be slow as hell with all 7 hp at wheels it will have. 1 cyl in my rx7 will put out more hp to the wheels than this entire car... I'm going for slow though. I just want to finish the first few races.


Honestly unless you're doing what i'm doing and require an NA car, I wouldnt consider doing it unless you did the 3sgte swap as well. The amount of grinding/fabb'ing **** to make it work was very time consuming. The bellhousings are similar and thats about where it ends.


I will say though, when I first pulled the car in the garage i ripped a big patch in the grass with one wheel trying to pull it in. It rained most of the day saturday and with the AWD other than a quick initial slip I was able to move in the wet grass like nothing.

This post has been edited by czwalga: May 9, 2011 - 2:32 PM

>



Ill be at STPR in Wellsboro PA, June 3rd/4th and RallyWV in Elkins, WV August 12th/13th. STPR is a national event and draws all the big names.

Well I really drove it for the first time today. Leaked a bunch of coolant; I'm pretty sure it was just too full and coming out of the overflow tank.

After about driving it for 5 min the idle kept dropping, not getting enough air at idle if dropping from a higher RPM range and wanted to stall. Makes a real loud whining noise at idle, I'm pretty sure I have a vacuum leak somewhere, but cant figure out where it's coming from. I haven't got under the car though, i'll go over the whole vacuum system tomorrow... hopefully i find something.


As far as the AWD, i think the fastest I only got up to about 45/50 mph, but seems to drive smooth no problems with the driveline.


Speedo gauge doesn't work though....


This post has been edited by czwalga: May 15, 2011 - 6:49 PM

If anyone cares to see pics without the head of the AWD tranny bolted up. Here it is.

Long story short, radiator cap was busted that came with the car. Once i found that out and pressurized the coolant system, white smoke was pouring out of the engine.

Took the head off, figured it had to be warped as the headgasket was brand new. Got the head resurfaced. Hopefully will be back in business by tomorrow. Getting down to crunch time; 2 weeks from today I leave for the race.

Well I've been so damn busy I havent taken many pics. Race is a week from today, still have lots to do...







This is actually kinda funny to me...

Awesome! That not only looks the part, it is the part.

So did resurfacing the head solve your smoking issues?

wow, car looks awesome, looking forward to good results on the race.

Yep resurfacing the head fixed it. It had better because if it didn't I really had no idea what the problem could have been. The head was warped .006".




As far as good results hahaha..... i'll be satisified with finishing. I've had a lot of drag racing exp, limited road racing exp, and absolutely nothing related to dirt/rally. On top of that the car is slow as hell haha. Itll just be a learning/fun experience.

Dave Mirra ? whaaaat

>

What does BMX have to do with Rally?



Just teasing, but I think you meant Collin McRae, or Ken Block, or Travis Pastrana, or Tanner Faust.

any way we can convince you to mount a camera inside the cabin to record this thing in action?

x2 ^

wow...really cool, win it for the team....when you're completely done with this car...sale it to me...or donate...yeah! GOOD LUCK

This post has been edited by chacha: May 29, 2011 - 2:26 AM

Well unfortunately you guys will probably have to wait until august for video. It's not very high on my list right now in terms of what I need to get done. I do plan on mounting a camera though, just not going to make it in time for this race.

Wow your car has come together very nicely!
amazing amount of work and time went into this, and in a very short time period.

Good luck in the race...I might show up to the one in WVA, its not too far from DC.

flawless work!!!

What is your opinion of the AWD setup now that it's installed? Oversteer? Understeer? Light in the corners or grip of days? Any changes to your suspension? Sway bars? shock springs?

>


It's hard to get an assesment of that, considering I haven't driven it extremely hard on the street. Keep in mind I have gravel tires on the car. They are basically snow tires on steroids. Plus I've never really driven it in stock form other than a highway drive from when I picked the car up.


No front sway, don't really need one for rally. The rear is the GT4.

As far as my suspension, it cost 4 times as much as I paid for the car. We'll see how the front A-Arms survive. Hot-Bits coil over system. 30 step compression adjustment and 40 step rebound adjustment. They are rebuildable, which is key.




My opinion on the AWD is that its slooooow. Haha, it was to be expected, but yeah. It will be good for me though, hopefully i wont kill myself with speed.

This post has been edited by czwalga: May 31, 2011 - 9:04 AM

Car passed tech. Survived the practice stage. Mirra was getting tech'd in beside me.... he's looks bigger on tv. Car was badass though.



It's really underpowered though. I launched at 5k dumped the clutch and couldnt spin the tires on gravel... haha.

This post has been edited by czwalga: Jun 2, 2011 - 10:06 PM

I feel like this has been covered but why cant you add power?

just think, once you throw a build 3s in there you'll definitely be the underdog since your running the slow 5s right now haha

I'm sure it cant be worse than the day my ct20b turbine shaft snapped and I ended up driving a 2.0L NA AWD with 8.0:1 CR and a loud death noise lol

This may be a stupid qeustion, but since you added the all wheel drive system and roll cage, is the car considerably slower than before?
Or does the weight reduction kinda cancel out the added weight?