Boosted..

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Not What You Build... It's How You Built It

This is a street car, get off the rwd subject im not too familiar with the handling aspects of that car yet and still want my awd whether y'all like it or not.

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Not What You Build... It's How You Built It

Listen to them. God I wish I would have. (grant, Dave get your I told you so's in now) and my car is about done minus some of johns struts.

And the other thing no one else has seemed to touch on, what sanctioning body runs events around you? If its rally America, forget about running an open class car. Have you read through a rule book yet? RA makes you graduate from a 2wd car or an open light. Without any events under your belt you don't have a chance of being aloud to compete. Provided you aren't a pro skateboarder or bmxer of course . <-see that? Rally social commentary right there.

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Listen to them. God I wish I would have. (grant, Dave get your I told you so's in now) and my car is about done minus some of johns struts.

And the other thing no one else has seemed to touch on, what sanctioning body runs events around you? If its rally America, forget about running an open class car. Have you read through a rule book yet? RA makes you graduate from a 2wd car or an open light. Without any events under your belt you don't have a chance of being aloud to compete. Provided you aren't a pro skateboarder or bmxer of course . <-see that? Rally social commentary right there.

Look I'm doing a search before hand and asking for help and I've gotten some so far, no belts or wins under my skin (yet) but like I said I search, talking to jay as far as the trans goes, I've gotten further enlightenment on that, isn't it better to talk to the pros first? Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm going into this with a car I built from the ground up. I have the ability to fabricate anything I want with the accessibilities at hand. machine shop, parts, and a shop.

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Not What You Build... It's How You Built It

No where am I saying they're wrong, I'm just saying I'm gonna build it anyway, but I'm also taking care of weak points while I'm at it and I assure you its not the motor or proper fuel management nor body fabrications.

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Not What You Build... It's How You Built It

This is awesome... sort of like watching a train-wreck unfold in front of your eyes.

Grant, it's spooky, as I actually had a post written that said "I'll give you $100, no expiry, if this car ever sees an actual stage rally in an awd configuration" and then decided against it.

Good on the OP for wanting to do something different. I think it's clear that he is more a fabricator/builder (or at least, in his mind he is) than a racer, which is fine. He'll learn the hard way after he's spent $10k and gotten nowhere with the car... or he won't and will call it quits.

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Pashka0788

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Listen to them. God I wish I would have. (grant, Dave get your I told you so's in now) and my car is about done minus some of johns struts.

And the other thing no one else has seemed to touch on, what sanctioning body runs events around you? If its rally America, forget about running an open class car. Have you read through a rule book yet? RA makes you graduate from a 2wd car or an open light. Without any events under your belt you don't have a chance of being aloud to compete. Provided you aren't a pro skateboarder or bmxer of course . <-see that? Rally social commentary right there.

Look I'm doing a search before hand and asking for help and I've gotten some so far, no belts or wins under my skin (yet) but like I said I search, talking to jay as far as the trans goes, I've gotten further enlightenment on that, isn't it better to talk to the pros first? Correct me if I'm wrong but I'm going into this with a car I built from the ground up. I have the ability to fabricate anything I want with the accessibilities at hand. machine shop, parts, and a shop.

There are no pros here.

Some good amateurs, but no "pros'.

Final time: we presume you intend to rally. Rally is a competition--who's on First, Whasisname on Second, I don't know on Rhird---you know---a hierarchy of results based on time

A smart person ---in THIS context----looks over the potential victim looking for ADVANTAGES with one eye and DIS-advantages with the other always bearing in mind the expenditure of : Money and TIME...

Whim, or "I have it already" or "I got it so I'm going to do it" are always signs of an impending catastrophe.


This is of course assuming you want to enter events --more than one,

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John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

I understand but its a far cry from the truth, how you gonna down grade someone you never have gave a chance? My racing experience was back road gravel and I wanna take my chance of competing, whether with amatures I can make friends or thy people to hate. It's all a project to me. Like I said I'm set on this build but I have to take into count there is the far and few in between. So I can build this project alone or I can ask for help. I chose to ask for help in the weaknesses, I know where it is but I have that ability to go into it knowing I may fail. Shall I succeed, I have the few to thank. Understand yet?

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Not What You Build... It's How You Built It

BJosephD -

Hell yeah its getting AWD! Right after the 2JZnoshit gets here in a burned out stoopra atop a flatbed towtruck. HaHAHaaa. My buddy Dom has a shop where his ADD mechanic Jessie is gonna do the work. I just hope the cops don't get him for drag racing or hijacking semi truck loads of electronics before my car is finished.

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"America is all about speed.
Hot, nasty, bad ass speed."
Eleanor Roosevelt, 1936



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/19/2012 08:00AM by Gerrex.

Okay, I'm bored at work so what the hell. As I see it there's two ways of doing this.

The smart way would be to do your really cool project just as a street car. Don't rally it, don't risk wadding it up into a tree, don't spend all time and sweat trying to be competitive. Either way you're going to have a lot of work and bucks into it, and more one-off parts than you really want on something you're rallying. What I'd do if I were married to the idea of having this for a street car is find a wrecked 323GTX for a donor. I'm willing to bet the Escort doesn't miraculously have the rear end setup to take the GTX rear subframe, so get out your spot weld driller and transplant all the portions of the sheetmetal that contain the strut mounts and where the subframe mounts to. Then use the GTX transmission, rear end, hubs, etc. This is a lot of work, there's bound to be stuff that doesn't match up making you have to fabricate solutions to bridge the gaps, but it's doable relatively inexpensively. Then you can do whatever you want with the engine too.

The non-smart way is to try to make a competitive, top flight, open class rally car. I'm going to talk about Rally America regs because there's an advantage there - they give the 1600 BP turbo engine a weight break. So start from that - no stroker kits or anything else. Don't worry, you'll be dumping enough cash into it soon enough for a full out build. You can do less if you don't care about having a car that is as powerful as the top Evos and Subarus.

Now, you're going to need headwork and cams - Cat Cams in Belgium does profiles that look suitable - I'd be looking at their 3701207 grind or so, which is 266 degree advertised duration, 231 degree @1mm, and 10.5mm lift. I think John or someone would possibly chip in if that's about right - I'm cross referencing across other rally cams - or you could talk to them about it. I'm sure they'd also advise you on suitable valvesprings. You're going to need forged internals and relatively high compression to make the most of what air comes through the restrictor - 10.5:1 may be a good starting point. O-ringed block is probably also necessary to hold the cylinder pressure, along with water injection. E85 is probably the most affordable fuel option, though I'm not sure what power is like compared with the purpose built rally fuels VP and others make. Give up on the megasquirt idea - it's a false economy at this level and the code branches with functioning antilag are pretty rudimentary. Motec or something is a better bet, but talk to your engine builder/tuner. As for turbos, a full competition TR30R is closest to ideal for sucking through the restrictor, but those are pretty big bucks. For off the shelf, if you can live with paying this much for something that is now a wear item due to antilag, the GTX2860R looks like about the right sort of compressor map - only $1200 for a replacement CHRA. Might want to put it on a smaller turbine wheel than they come with, but I'm not going to research that too hard right now. Now, if you want a more affordable option, build the turbo manifold to end with the right flange for it and run used Evo 8 turbos - for the price of a single GTX2860R you could probably have a small pile of spare Mitsu turbos, and you can get those rebuilt.

That should end up with an engine that will put out competitive power and toarks. If you do all the tuning and building yourself but use quality parts you're probably looking at maybe $10k of work if you never hurt anything during the course of tuning it. If you farm it out, double or triple that.

Rest of the car now. In my not so humble opinion, the only sensible transaxle option is to figure out how to make a 5-speed Evo box bolt up to the BP. Others may have other views - from where I sit though, it's the only transverse AWD box that is available in this country, with a production active center diff available, support in terms of diffs, and the ability to handle torque. You could save money at the start by using a viscous center and swap in the active stuff later, I think. So from that, it's a matter of bolting that to the BP engine, then making it fit into the Escort. I'd use Evo uprights personally, with custom subframe front and rear and custom lower control arm. In the rear especially I'd think hard about using Evo front uprights with the steering arm tied into the control arm - then it's just a matter of having proper strut tunnels cut into the unibody and tied into the cage. It'll take a bit of fiddling with halfshafts to have everything match up, but those will probably have to be custom anyway to be the right length. Brakes will probably have to have some work done to adapt the off-the-shelf Evo gravel stuff rears to the front uprights, but that can't be too hard. Struts will be custom too (talk to John) but those would pretty much be custom anyway. What all this work will get you is a driveline that won't be a huge weak link with unavailable parts. I mean, except for the stuff you have to fabricate to make it fit - subframes, control arms, etc. Make lots of spare control arms, and make records of every single thing you do so when something breaks you don't have to try to remember what it originally came off of.

Then there's all the rest of the normal rally car stuff - cage and other interior stuff, wheels, cooling and intercooling, skid plates, etc etc etc. Cost for the driveline, suspension and shell will vary wildly with how fancy you get on brakes and diffs and stuff, whether you do the cage yourself or farm it out, etc. Doing it right is going to be a pretty huge chunk of extra work over normal rally car prep, which is itself quite a bit of work.

Anyway, that's my take. Do whatcha want.

I understand ? understand what but its<-- what? It's refers to what? a far cry from the truth, how you gonna down grade someone you never have gave a chance? ( NOBODY so far has downgraded you... It should be a clue that EVERYBODY is spending a lot of effort trying to explain that your IDEA and choice of CAR is wrong in every single point for the goal assumed--since you have not answered directly of clearly)

My racing experience was back road gravel ( racing to racers means entered in some for of organised, actual racing. Blasting down logging roads even at 100+ may---or may not be racing..., so wanna try again?) and I wanna take my chance of competing, whether with amatures I can make friends or thy people to hate.

Well take your chances, but choose a fucking car that there are parts for.

It's all a project to me. (no shit)

Like I said I'm set on this build but I have to take into count there is the far and few in between. ( take into account the since the late 90s there are no new parts for the trannies which were SHIT trannies with SHIT ratios, weak as fuck, and since it was such a pool of watery shit, and was clear by 1990 that they were watery shit, there's virtually no chance of finding anything aftermarket for it---that! to anybody with a little judgement --SHOULD kill the idea)

So I can build this project alone or I can ask for help. I chose to ask for help in the weaknesses, (and people have polite enough to explain the folly--and there is no evidence that you have given any consideration at all to what people have pleaded with you to think about)

I know where it is ( where "it" is?? WTF you talking about?) but I have that ability to go into it knowing I may fail. (So you have no qualms about asking a million questions, hoping to get information and then after people take THEIR time to explain bullshit like buying a Stroker crank for a car with a shit glass tranny is uhm er let's say "Silly", when the whim fades and you leave the project undone, it's all "Like---whatever"---in other words you feel OK shitting on the time others give?)

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Shall I succeed, I have the few to thank. Understand yet?

Paul, if you expect help, then you must learn to answer back to questions posed.

Sometimes the are crafted so that a brief yes or no is a good answer, sometimes the need honest answers.

Try it.

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John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/19/2012 10:47AM by john vanlandingham.

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Pashka0788
I understand but its a far cry from the truth, how you gonna down grade someone you never have gave a chance? My racing experience was back road gravel and I wanna take my chance of competing, whether with amatures I can make friends or thy people to hate. It's all a project to me. Like I said I'm set on this build but I have to take into count there is the far and few in between. So I can build this project alone or I can ask for help. I chose to ask for help in the weaknesses, I know where it is but I have that ability to go into it knowing I may fail. Shall I succeed, I have the few to thank. Understand yet?

Yes, we understand. You're going to build it no matter what. Whether it is a good idea or not, whether you ever actually finish it and compete in a rally with it or not. No matter how many people who have been rallying for years and made the same mistake you are so insistent on making tell you it's a bad idea and how they wish they hadn't so stubbornly wasted a ton of money on some oddball car just to be different.

What you don't seem to be understanding is that the people that are saying it's a bad idea are just trying to look out for you and guide you in a direction that will actually get you competing in rallies in a sustainable fashion. Perhaps that's being presumptuous on our part that that is actually your goal. Maybe you don't care how soon (or if ever) you get a car out onto the stages or how much it costs or if it's even competitive with the other cars in the class or reliable. Maybe actually driving rally cars is not important to you and you just like to build cool, different, one of a kind stuff. Then go ahead, knock yourself out. Just don't be under the impression that that's the best path for your first rally car if you actually want to go racing.

In the meantime you ask for help and advice but then get bent out of shape at the people that are offering you the best advice of all: Don't build this car if what you want to do is to ever actually drive a rally car on stage. Or build it as some fun side project but buy Dave Kern's old GTX to actually go rallying with. It's a well sorted car and can be had, with trailer and spares, for a small fraction of what you'll end up spending to build an oddball car that won't be any faster than it.

There is something I once said about 20 years ago in reference to Dave LaTourette's very cool AWD turbo VW Bug: Do you want to develop or do you want to go racing? Pick one. The Bug was silly fast and neat piece of engineering but everything was one-off and it only ever finished a handful of events over the years. Seems like something was always giving trouble or breaking, or else he was rolling it into a little ball. If he had just left it RWD he would have finished a lot more events but in his case I think he just enjoyed the Dr. Frankenstein creation process as much as the actual driving and the DNFs were just part of the process. Maybe that's where you are coming from as well, Paul, I dunno.

Wot they said. I'm a dreamer and an engineer, so I have what I call 'paper builds' - shit that I sit and figure out how it could work, what off-the-shelf crap could be made to do the job, etc. Some people watch TV for fun, I dream up car shit. One of my favorites for rally shit include cramming a lifed out Roush Yates NASCAR V8 fitted with throttle bodies and EFI in the back seat of a fuckus, with a transmission in the front (RS200 style) with a cobbled together active AWD system and so on, and running it in Open class (hee hee, no restrictors on NA engines!) It's fun to think about crap like that! You know when I'm going to start buying parts to build it? About a week after I win the lottery.

So I mean sure, dream up whatever you want, but realize that a lot of us have a pretty clear idea what is on the practical side of things, and what's on the dream side.

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Doivi Clarkinen

There is something I once said about 20 years ago in reference to Dave LaTourette's very cool AWD turbo VW Bug: Do you want to develop or do you want to go racing? Pick one. The Bug was silly fast and neat piece of FAB WORK but not engineering but everything was one-off and it only ever finished a handful of events over the years. Seems like something was always giving trouble or breaking, or the POS Holley 4 barrel carb was pouring gallons of fuel down the throat when cornering one way and starving out when cornering the other BUT HE WAS MARRIED TO THE HOLLEY!!or else he was rolling it into a little ball. If he had just left it RWD he would have finished a lot more events but in his case I think he just enjoyed the Dr. Frankenstein creation process as much as the actual driving and the DNFs were just part of the process. Maybe that's where you are coming from as well, Paul, I dunno.

Gawd why'd you bring that up?
You should point out Dave was, and is a careful welder and knew enough engine and trans shit to assemble a good pile of parts--AND THERE WERE AFFORDABLE PARTS
Fuck just look at the comparison
...............................................BUG........................Ford-da
Ring and pinion stronger
right ratio....... .......................Cheap.......................never was
alternate gears...........................cheap...................millions (25 yeas ago)

Crankshaft.............................stock or cheap...................millions
Rods.....................................cheap..............................$400+
race valves............................$8 ea.................................millions
clutch HD................................69....................................n.a.
Suspension, steering, hubs, brakes...found I wonder where? millions



Just look at that chart! VW 4wd (aside from the STOOOPID CAR easy
Maz-dord, or Ford-da or whatever. Impossible AND expensive. There you have it.

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John Vanlandingham
Sleezattle, WA, USA

Vive le Prole-le-ralliat

www.rallyrace.net/jvab
CALL +1 206 431-9696
Remember! Pacific Standard Time
is 3 hours behind Eastern Standard Time.

I see a nice looking early 90's Escort GT that you've put some attention into, good for you.

I see a car that has a turbo, which if you intend to be a novice and rally with the turbo, means NASA events until you build up coefficient points.

I haven't read where you've actually spent time in a service area, or shot the shit with the local rallyists finding out what they're running for equipment.

I have read that you claim to have skills for fabrication. Remember, two is one and one is none. Along with that, you'll find more open light guys are going to be as fast, if not faster than your turbo car, due to newer technology cars.

How fast do you want to start rallying? 6 months, a year, two years? More people start a build, get bored, discouraged and sell a half finished project. Are you going to be that guy?

Build what you want, how you want it.

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It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favour of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.
William Ralph Inge

TANSTAAFL