Well, I bought myself a rabbit. An almost ready to rally rabbit.

I suppose for some definitions of "almost" it could be almost ready to rally. It may also have been almost completely wired by a monkey with a pile of random scrap wire and a big bag of them plastic quick connector thingies. I may almost feel like a total chump for buying this thing. I may almost feel obligated to fix everything before running it into a tree or unloading it on some other unsuspecting schmoe.

At least this much is almost well established:

It's a not-rusty 84 gti

It has a RA logbook w/ one event in it

It has a 2 liter 16v motor in it with a Haltech e6x ems. the intake is from a scirocco. the fuel rail and injector stuff is adapted from a 1.8t passat or audi. the head is from? The block is a 9a from something mk2 flavored. It has a serpentine belt swap according to some guy on some forum. I'm still not sure what that means.

It has an 020 box of gears from an 83 gti. at least the case says so.

It has a power steering rack that feels not unlike a manual one

The front wheels rotate opposite directions when you turn em up in the air. It's got a limited slip, and I want to believe this because i was told it has one. I haven't tested this theory on the ground as it's still up on jackstands waiting for my not-bent wheels to get painted.

It ran when purchased, then didn't run when delivered, but now runs again!


This wire went to the distributor hall sensor, and it was buried under several sticky layers of tape. it was nicked in one place and nearly severed here. The schematic says the wire should be blue or green or something other than red and black.

Oh, there was also this sensor issue. Or a lack of a sensor. The haltech wanted to see a MAP sensor so that it might determine the engine load for a given RPM. The sensor wasn't broke. It just wasn't there. It's a fairly standard 3 plug gm type thing, so I picked one up @ Summit Racing (20 miles from my house and open til 9, which is nice)

Truth be told, it sounds REALLY effin' good, if a tad bit farty cause of the farked up collector pipe.

Further tasks to be completed include:

Fixing exhaust
Reworking a skidplate
Reworking a motor mount
Hoping the power steering pump I ordered will fit the car.
Wiring in an intake air temp sensor (also missing)
Wiring in an o2 sensor and module (seeing a pattern with sensors here)
Re-wiring of various cockpit bits including gauges and fuel pump and aux lighting
Finishing my shiny new schematic with correct wire colors and labels
installing front wheel studs in them hubs
rebuilding a potentially leaky rear bilstein
Terrortrip sensor

Shootin' for 100 acre wood now that i'm well past the sno drift timeframe. i'll try to update this comedy of errors as i get time and get stuff done.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/14/2011 05:37PM by dirty_d.

The Rabbit make a great road race car and a horrible rally machine. Keep the Mk 1 for the track and find a Mk 2 for rally if you are into FWD. Sorry. I work for VWMS in the rally program.

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Robert.

"You are way too normal to be on Rally Anarchy." Eddie Fiorelli.

truth.

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-Tom
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One of the guys up here rallied a Rabbit in the 80's. Heard some interesting stories from him about those cars...

Of course, that was when the cars were all only a few years old and you could find bits in the junkyard.

Beef up the front strut towers, but good. They would distort and push up even in road racing.

"The front wheels rotate opposite directions when you turn em up in the air." Maybe there is some LSD in the diff, but not the limited slip type.....

If it was cheap, then maybe it will make a good starter car. Fix it to be reliable, and run it into the ground, hopefully not a tree. Part of rally is the adventure, automotive and otherwise.....

Hope you make it to 100AW and do well.
Mark B.

The strut towers are the least of your worries! Have a look at the front mounting points of the control arms.

Mk 1, 2 and the early Mk 3 cars have tapered washers on the outside of the diff bearings. These washers are meant to keep the diff from rattling. The washers can be shimmed tighter to make a "mini limited slip". Peloquin sells a kit. This doesn't work very well and is no replacement for a real clutch plate diff.

I know that the cage and log book are a big deal, but in my experience the rabbit is just past the point that it is worth rallying, no matter how cheap.

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Robert.

"You are way too normal to be on Rally Anarchy." Eddie Fiorelli.

How about some pictures? I think your going to have a bunch of fun with this thing.

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dirty_d
I suppose for some definitions of "almost" it could be almost ready to rally. It may also have been almost completely wired by a monkey with a pile of random scrap wire and a big bag of them plastic quick connector thingies. I may almost feel like a total chump for buying this thing. I may almost feel obligated to fix everything before running it into a tree or unloading it on some other unsuspecting schmoe.

No surprise there. Most of the wiring for the Haltech was done by Brian Moody when he was still at Champagne Motors (Audi dealer) over the course of about two weeks. Probably much of the wiring was recycled from parts bins.

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dirty_d
It has a 2 liter 16v motor in it with a Haltech e6x ems. the intake is from a scirocco. the fuel rail and injector stuff is adapted from a 1.8t passat or audi. the head is from? The block is a 9a from something mk2 flavored. It has a serpentine belt swap according to some guy on some forum. I'm still not sure what that means.

Instead of V-belts it's running a serpentine belt setup.

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dirty_d
It has a power steering rack that feels not unlike a manual one

The front wheels rotate opposite directions when you turn em up in the air. It's got a limited slip, and I want to believe this because i was told it has one. I haven't tested this theory on the ground as it's still up on jackstands waiting for my not-bent wheels to get painted.

I don't think that car ever has had a limited slip diff in it.

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This wire went to the distributor hall sensor, and it was buried under several sticky layers of tape. it was nicked in one place and nearly severed here. The schematic says the wire should be blue or green or something other than red and black.

Oh, there was also this sensor issue. Or a lack of a sensor. The haltech wanted to see a MAP sensor so that it might determine the engine load for a given RPM. The sensor wasn't broke. It just wasn't there. It's a fairly standard 3 plug gm type thing, so I picked one up @ Summit Racing (20 miles from my house and open til 9, which is nice)

What schematic? I don't think I've ever seen a rally car that had been rewired and had a schematic. What you are looking at could have never been referenced by Moody when he was rewiring stuff. Bummer that stuff is missing, but that's sometimes the 'fun' of buying a 'built' rally car.

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dirty_d
Fixing exhaust
Reworking a skidplate
Reworking a motor mount
Hoping the power steering pump I ordered will fit the car.
Wiring in an intake air temp sensor (also missing)
Wiring in an o2 sensor and module (seeing a pattern with sensors here)
Re-wiring of various cockpit bits including gauges and fuel pump and aux lighting
Finishing my shiny new schematic with correct wire colors and labels
installing front wheel studs in them hubs
rebuilding a potentially leaky rear bilstein
Terrortrip sensor

Not too much of a list! Have fun with it and good luck! I am not surprised that there was a bunch of sensors missing. That car had too many people touching it, probably the more expensive sensors were misplaced.
One thing I will stress is to have it properly tuned! Do not trust any tune in that Haltech. It's going to be old, for altitude, and most likely done entirely off a dyno while the car was sitting, and maybe a few miles of street tuning.
See you in Missouri!

"One thing I will stress is to have it properly tuned! Do not trust any tune in that Haltech."

Words of wisdom right there!

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Robert.

"You are way too normal to be on Rally Anarchy." Eddie Fiorelli.

A beater bunny rally car is better than no rally car. While they may well show a few weakness' when driven hard they will survive the skills of the average ralliest for quite a while. The old Bow Wow Gti of Waddingtons served pretty well here in the NW for many years. Seems like Bill Brooks used to push one pretty good also and later Kevin Gordham I think.

It is pretty amazing how some rally cars (and boats also) get the wiring , umm ..customized..

Worst case might be getting a stocker for nearly free and swapping some stuff over. I can provide you with the factory diagrams from Alldata if that is any help.

RE: Bill Brooks - My dad co drove for Bill in the "Factory" GTI - they managed to DNF most of the time because the car was weak and or Bill was an animal - no mechanical sympathy. I might have the same rep

Bill is now a real estate broker in Spokane. Talked to him about a year ago. My parents keep in touch with him.

All cars can be fun for a while and a lot of the bits will bolt into a MkII/ III shell if you like them.

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derek
RE: Bill Brooks - My dad co drove for Bill in the "Factory" GTI - they managed to DNF most of the time because the car was weak and or Bill was an animal - no mechanical sympathy. I might have the same rep

Bill is now a real estate broker in Spokane. Talked to him about a year ago. My parents keep in touch with him.

All cars can be fun for a while and a lot of the bits will bolt into a MkII/ III shell if you like them.

My first rally..Olympus 83, I passed Brooks on the inside of a corner, acute downhill right intersection I think. There was a hole in the apex and he hit it with the front wheel and ripped the suspension loose. Kevin did ok in that car for a while and held his own.

You bring up a good point about driving styles , and luck also. I usually managed to miss the big holes and rocks, ditch hooked very little and finished most of the time. Other guys could break a sledge hammer in a sandbox. I remember dale Beard ripping the rear suspension loose in an old 510 and tearing the inner fender open. No easy feat.

We used to remeber the old bunnies for being tippy more than falling apart. Seems like they used to roll a bit on the easy side. The Golf was amazingly better in that department, at least back then.

Gone are the days of having to drive to save the car and finish. Thanks to YouTube everyone thinks they can drive flat out like the WRC guys and damn the car and service crew.

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heymagic
Gone are the days of having to drive to save the car and finish. Thanks to YouTube everyone thinks they can drive flat out like the WRC guys and damn the car and service crew.

We can cure that. New rule: New competitors are not allowed to use trailers to bring car to events or take debris of car home. Only flat towing or driving the car to/from the event is allowed for your first 3 events.

More drivers with an excuse to go slow...just what we need.

Cars are consumables. If you have to push the car into the final control, you know you've gotten all you could out of it.

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starion887

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heymagic
Gone are the days of having to drive to save the car and finish. Thanks to YouTube everyone thinks they can drive flat out like the WRC guys and damn the car and service crew.

We can cure that. New rule: New competitors are not allowed to use trailers to bring car to events or take debris of car home. Only flat towing or driving the car to/from the event is allowed for your first 3 events.

Well my 2nd event was a small event on Vancouver Island. There was a Mazda from Olympia area that drove up. Something broke and they ended up pushing the car onto the ferry to get back to the states. They were standing at the ferry dock with forlorn looks as everyone drove away stateside.

Honestly there has been a large change in the smoothness of evnts since the early 80s. We"organizers" are stuck with the roads available. When we do end up with a rough road you hear lots of squealing from competitors. Even some of the national cars have complained.

The ORV park just up the road for example. It gets a bit rough, but the speeds are contained by the size of the course. We ran it a lot back in the day, both on Olympus and as a C1 event. Decent turnouts. The pic at the top of the page of the flying Dave Clark Omni is from a small jump at the park, pretty much the only jump we ever used. Most of the time it was just slugging thru the loose dirt. Course is about a mile long or so.

Nowadays if we try to hold a rally event at the park, there is lotso squealing and no partcipation. I think we had 3 cars show for a sanctioned C1 there about 4 years ago. There were about 20 RallyX guys showed up with street cars and they survived the RX event the same day. My son has dominated that event with a $200 300k 1983 Camry, very stock and worn out yet the rally cars with suspension and skid plates find it too rough. Hmmm.....

Anyhow, while a bunny may not last Burress or Derek forever, it might last the average driver many events. He has the car, it is caged, nearly done. I'd say because of the bit of frailty it might even be ideal for a first car. Learn to drive, learn to look for the right lines, learn to slow down to go fast, learn to be smooth, learn that poor judgement can be expensive, learn to maintain the car properly and watch for failures before they happen. Its got to be better that the Datsun 1600 roadster I started out with....