Stupid Mustang Question...

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Pete

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espacef1fan
How about using a Cobra IRS to make it more compliant on loose/bumpy surfaces?

That suspension was made so people would quit whining about having a solid axle in Ford's premier sports sedan. It was a checklist item, like how they had to have OHC on their V8s despite not taking advantage of it port-wise, or Dodge has a V10 so Ford had to have it too. Fortunately it used the same pickup points as the solid axle so you could unbolt it and revert it to a suspension that at least sort-of worked.

They have cut the BS anymore and they decided to engineer a decent solid axle into the new Mustang, which embarasses machinery costing twice as much.

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I dont know if that would even be legal for any classes.

As far as suspension I would think only the steeda 5 link would be feasible.( Or a square beam?...hahahaha)

Torque arms are ground clearance limiting and the EvoM trilink is not in production anymore..

I see no reason why an Escort four-link can't be done on a Fox chassis. It's only sheetmetal.

Cost would be a MAJOR concern in this project. I only mentioned the IRS because it can be had cheap.

IF I build a rally car, it will be my first adventure in rally.

I am just looking for something RWD, cheap to run, cheap to fix after crashing and that will let let me just focus on learning to rally.

I have a good understanding and pretty decent amount of experience driving sideways in a semi rapid manner(grew up driving a Mustang in the snow....passed ALOT of Jeeps....haha...)

So I have the basics of car control..but have NO experience in any kind of organized racing.....hehe.

Then you need an early-mid-80's Celica. Cheap and easy to fix, decent power, should be plenty of cars and parts around. RWD....decent cabin size, and other size/weight attributes. I would build that long before a Mustang for a starter/learning/expendable car. Can't tell you about the rear axle: I assume live, but dunno about springs.

Oh, and I forgot to add....A successful Group B rally car!



Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 02/09/2011 08:41PM by starion887.

Here's the basics from Hurst on the Mustang. Yes driver has a bit to do with it, always will. Using Utecht at Idaho is not a good example. That was one event, nothing more. Hurst won something like 17 wins with that car. Utecht still managed to win a few stages at Idaho I believe. Idaho would prove that you wanted an SRT Neon if want to use that example or a Golf or CRX. Always dangerous to use one stage, event or weekend to state a car or crew is good or bad.

A Mustang is cheap and good potential for some people. The one that used to run in the PNW was a stock ex State Patrol car. It had no real mods at all. I think I did the cage. Car did ok and ran a lot of events. Ran mid pack in those days. Certainly had a lot of fun. To go faster and be reliable you'd have to do some of Mike's tricks. To just get on stage and have fun not so much.

I'm sure this will be argued but it is from a guy who has driven many cars, many stage miles and is pretty fast.

From Hurst...

Strength-wise, the fox unibodies are pretty bad.


The strut towers must be reinforced and tied to the firewall or cage
The area where the "frame rail" portion of the underhood unibody terminates at the firewall must be reinforced with outriggers from the cage
The upper rear suspension mounts must be reinforced by outriggers from the main hoop, bolted though.
The lower rear suspension "torque boxes" must be reinforced by outriggers from the cage or weld-in subframe connectors, or both


Even with this all done, and the 351W based engine that added 150lbs over the 5.0, the car weighed the same as an SP Subaru.


If I had to do it over again, I would have stuck with the 5.0 based engine at about 375HP instead of the larger, heavier engine at 440.


Stock V8 front springs on the stock front arms with hard bushings and good moog ball joints. 12" 200lb coilover springs on the KYB adjustable struts, and a 4cyl front sway bar.


The rear suspension was stock geometry, the key was some trick experimental upper axle bushings from Ford. The were cast rubber instead of pressed. The OE pressed ones last about one stage, and the aftermarket hard bushings don't have enough give for what theses arms must do, and everything will break with hard bushings. For lower arms, I used drag race parts that had hard bushings on the axle end and heims on the body end. There was no axle hop with this set-up, but there was quite a bit with the stock parts.


The rear shock were Afco street-stock oval track shocks, with monroe replacement "traction shocks", cut down moog cargo-coil springs from the little LTD (Fox body) wagon, no rear sway bar.


I used Lincoln Mk7 front brakes and master cylinder, and Thunderbird turbo coupe rear rotors with GM metric RWD A-body front calipers on the rear with afco brackets and a pressure limiting bias control. The entire rear brake set-up cost $150 using new or factory rebuilt parts.


I'm sure all imaginary ideal cars are better, but the mustang is good for when you want to quit dreaming or doing a 10 year build and actually get on the stage and have fun without going broke. I built the mustang from a clean street car in 6 weeks with $6,500 and a Jeg's catalogue...that includes the price of the very clean donor car ($3,900)


....and I've driven a Merkur on rally stages, and as bad as hard as the mustang is to drive, the merkur is worse...as bad as my old FJ nissan was exaggerated by more power , and the fact that Ford spend millions on making the Sierra competitive is nearly irrelevant for the grassroots rallyist...if you think everything those engineers knew about making that car competitive is in some published manual...well...


Did you notice that in the Ford Sierra videos everyone raves about the car appears to have absolutely no forward bite? Chassis-wise the Sierra was a big step backwards from the MkII Escort, it was only faster at the time because of the huge leap forward in power from the Cosworth YB turbo engine.


Ford rallied it only because it was the only thing they had at the time worth promoting with rally.


Mike Hurst
Competition Director
RallyCar


RallyCar rules: http://rally-america.com/rules.php


So that's the story. Car finally died last year after a very sucessful life. Maybe not for every one but I think it is a great RWD option at a bargain price. Argue away....

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starion887
Then you need an early-mid-80's Celica. Cheap and easy to fix, decent power, should be plenty of cars and parts around. RWD....decent cabin size, and other size/weight attributes. I would build that long before a Mustang for a starter/learning/expendable car. Can't tell you about the rear axle: I assume live, but dunno about springs.

Oh, and I forgot to add....A successful Group B rally car!

Mark, you gotta believe me, the open cumbustion chamber with virtually no quench pads and valve canted way over is not something that a guy with limited budget can make decent power out of in normal aspirated form.
Very hard to make even 9.5: compression in a chamber like that without resorting to domes, which means expensive custom pistons, and then you have flame front proagation problems with the dome disturbing things.
So maybe if you wanted to get addicted to crazy high octane race gas, OK.

As a turbo motor, well who needs compression? The block os good, the crank is good, the rods look good, so with some again custom low comp pistons you could have a "pretty damn good' motor.

Some of the buggers had solid axle---as did their GpB turbo car with the 'interesting' twin plug, DOHC 8v motor. Some had IRS---a 7.5" unit.

But there's some hard to work around drawbacks like pick up truck worthy recirculating ball steering box and NO alternate gears ever for the box---which also has pick up refugee ratios.

And then there's the rarity. Sure you say, an Xratty is rare too, but loads loonies hang onto their Xratties. Old Celicas became just old Celicas and they got scrapped and crushed.

Now if a guy has one like the New and Improved Dave Clark over in Yakima then that's one thing, but I'd never suggest a person make efforts to get in one when there are those know dead ends waiting in parts which are hard like gearbox and that head design..

Sorry but the Moose-angst makes a ship-load more sense for a potential car.

Course a Volvo 240 make MORE sense but our new man here Adam i think has a Mooost-angst and has had them before, and that's a plus---if he worked on them.

Of course him being an Xratty guy already makes me think it'd make some good sense to give that some thought, Hurst's obvious bias notwithstanding... wonder how he explains that they did real well even in 2wd form against Lancias Delta Intergrales 8 and 16v, TTE ST165 and ST185 Celica All-tracs, Gaylants, Works Legacys, etc.

And that the even better--done for tarmac rallies---Escort Cosworth which shared everything and was just a shortened Sierra---the only things in the entire suspension and drivetrain different was the length of the rear section of the prop shaft, and the center pipes in the exhaust---both shorter to match. How'd they do so good if the car was so horrible and 'lacked any forward bite"?

John what does a Volvo 240 need to go rallying decently? I've been eyeballing those as well...

-PROS?
-CONS?

Mine seems to work pretty good, and has been driven by some people with quite a bit of experience, and they find it easy to drive, and very potent also. To each his own I guess.

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espacef1fan
John what does a Volvo 240 need to go rallying decently? I've been eyeballing those as well...

-PROS?
-CONS?

Suspension, a GM V8 T5, a Cossie turbo, and depending on how animalistic you are maybe a slightly (or way) stronger rear axle with a ratio around 4.27 ot 4.3 or 4.37.
For more fun, turrets for the shocks which get moved to the axle then the same exact shock I supply for Xratties.

If you happen to be fast or the roads are easy, more brakes---just like the Xratty. For MORE fun.

Basically the same thing a Xratty need, or a Moose-angst

My 2 cents... Make your own GrpB Celica replica!!!

-Jon

As sweet as that Celica is, I dont have the driving ability to properly utilize it.

Are 4 door and wagon 240s fine for rally use? I think the wagon would be hilarious especially if there isnt much weight difference....

it is the 240 i would build.

Everybody has their favorites and there are lots of different cars that will work for rally. Always has been.

The first event I actually watched was Olympus 1982. It was getting close to dark when I got to the stage so saw a few cars and heard many more. I'm a mechanic. The one thing I heard and commented on was that if a guy just had a car that ran good he'd do ok. I still think that.

Mustangs are the hotrod of the milenium. They started the pony car craze in 1964. Have dominated that segment forever. NHRA, SCCA, cars shows, movies, police depts and even a few have rallied. Its a reasonable choice that needs little specialized mods to work well. Most people need to worry about getting on stage for their 2 or 3 events a year than trying to duplicate some million dollar 30 year old outdated factory efforts.

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heymagic
Everybody has their favorites and there are lots of different cars that will work for rally. Always has been.

The first event I actually watched was Olympus 1982. It was getting close to dark when I got to the stage so saw a few cars and heard many more. I'm a mechanic. The one thing I heard and commented on was that if a guy just had a car that ran good he'd do ok. I still think that.

Yeah, but that's a given---or should be (the instant I thunk that i recalled when "Seattle Scott" Koch was pulling in to Dave Clark World headquaters to log book that Datsun thing he had he shut it off and it wouldn't re-start. Dave was in "gotta rush cause we are down to the wire and need to leave in _minutes/hours" so he asked me to peak at it since it was dear in the driveway..
Uninsulated, greenish, mushed out terminal on the coil hadn't fallen off, the little 18g wire going to it had rotted off. I remember I saw a wire drooooping down w/ no end and wisecracked "maybe you might wanna look at THIS ---and (lifting it up it JUST made it to the coil, no slack for engine rocking---)" Not even enough slack to strip off and wrap)

Yeah it often helps if engines run.


I hope Adam gets the message that be it an Xratty, or 240 or a Mooseangst---they're all gonna "need" mainly suspension and maybe a little shorter final drive to compensate for the rally tires being 10-13% taller.

after that its all just to be more funner-er.

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john vanlandingham

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heymagic
Everybody has their favorites and there are lots of different cars that will work for rally. Always has been.

The first event I actually watched was Olympus 1982. It was getting close to dark when I got to the stage so saw a few cars and heard many more. I'm a mechanic. The one thing I heard and commented on was that if a guy just had a car that ran good he'd do ok. I still think that.

Yeah, but that's a given---or should be (the instant I thunk that i recalled when "Seattle Scott" Koch was pulling in to Dave Clark World headquaters to log book that Datsun thing he had he shut it off and it wouldn't re-start. Dave was in "gotta rush cause we are down to the wire and need to leave in _minutes/hours" so he asked me to peak at it since it was dear in the driveway..
Uninsulated, greenish, mushed out terminal on the coil hadn't fallen off, the little 18g wire going to it had rotted off. I remember I saw a wire drooooping down w/ no end and wisecracked "maybe you might wanna look at THIS ---and (lifting it up it JUST made it to the coil, no slack for engine rocking---)" Not even enough slack to strip off and wrap)

Yeah it often helps if engines run.


I hope Adam gets the message that be it an Xratty, or 240 or a Mooseangst---they're all gonna "need" mainly suspension and maybe a little shorter final drive to compensate for the rally tires being 10-13% taller.

after that its all just to be more funner-er.

Agreed! I have over the years heard so many cars not run well from dirty gas, old plugs and such as your coil wire observation. One year up in Cnada one of the locals had an old 510 and it was sounding pretty puny at the start of the stage. He was doing th old hot rod trick of revving the snot out of it to make things better....hardly ever does.

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john vanlandingham

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heymagic
I hope Adam gets the message that be it an Xratty, or 240 or a Mooseangst---they're all gonna "need" mainly suspension and maybe a little shorter final drive to compensate for the rally tires being 10-13% taller.

after that its all just to be more funner-er.

I've slowly started to understand that.

I appreciate all the replies....

Now how would someone convince someone to be a co-driver....especially if they are a significant other...lol.....