LDR XR Update

Thought I'd share our progress on our XR4Ti rally car with the group.

The car's been on the lift for the past week. I've stripped the interior and gotten most of the sound deadening off the floors. Couple spots aren't cooperating and we might have to get some liquid nitrogen so I don't destroy my wrists/shoulders trying to chip it all off.

We've started seam welding and will work our way from the rear forward. There was a fiberglass patch in the spare wheel well, so I decided we'd cut the whole floor of the wheel well out and replace it with fresh steel. Makes for a nice flat surface if we decide to mount fuel pumps there.

Engine and tranny are ready to come out and should be by the end of the week. We'll check the health of the engine then.

Sunroof has been removed and the sunroof surround. Nice to get that weight out of the car. I'm going to mount a compact heater unit on the tranny tunnel under the dash, so removed the bulbus spotwelded bit in the center of the dash. We'll plate that soon to restore some rigidity.

I spent an hour cutting out metal circles to weld all the plugs shut on the floor of the car. We welded covers over 12 of those vent thingies just from the rear seat back!

We tried TIG welding the seam in the rear hatch area and it worked well. We'll use TIG for the window openings as well and MIG most other seams.

Anyway, we're keeping the thing rolling while we work on the chassis in case we need to get the Subaru in for any prep work.

Forgot to mention that our sills are in fairly good shape. Some rust where the seams come together. We'll end up either plating down there from the inside and/or attach some angle iron on the outside to bridge the rusty seam. No rust under the body cladding!

I'll keep posting in this thread as we make progress. Trying to get a bunch done before the cold weather comes!

What were they thinking spotwelding those front fenders!? ;-)

Cheers! John

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http://www.lastditchracing.com
http://www.triplecaution.us

Oh yeah, drilling out the fender spot welds, big fun... around 50 per side IIRC

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www.rallyrace.net

I think the key question you've failed to address is as follows:

What colour is the car?

I think I'm the only person without a factory black XR...also, drill the fender OFF the supporting wing which sticks out infront of the wheel well. I just took the whole thing off and getting it to fit right afterwards is kinda tricky.

Car is silver. Not sure of the factory color name. I'm hoping that we can put the fender back on with bolts or some other method when the time comes. :-)

Cheers! John

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http://www.lastditchracing.com
http://www.triplecaution.us

Been awhile since I've updated here.

We did a couple things in the barn today.

1.) More seam welding inside the car. As with all cars that use the seam goo, we're having trouble welding some seams that we can't get all the goo out of. I'm thinkingn of buying a needle scaler from Harbor Freight to see if that will get into the small areas. Anyone have some suggestions for the difficult seams?

2.) We stripped the engine down today. All looks good. Some nastiness in the water passages.

I realize that JV will give me shit, but I have some engine performance questions:

Any benefit to a dual plug, roller cam head from a Ranger on our turbo beasties. I've read there are differences between early and later dual plug heads. I've read the dual plug heads don't flow as well as the turbo heads, but dual plugs are sexay! ;-)

Cams!? Which one. Esslinger, stock, Ford motorsport? What's the hot setup?

Oil pump. Any mods necessary or does the stock one flow fine?

Oil pan. Anyone baffle theirs to prevent slosh?

Water pump-I'm thinking of replacing with a stock Ranger pump so that I only have one ouput rather than two to simplify the plumbing.

I'm turning to the wise collective here to guide me!

Cheers! John

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http://www.lastditchracing.com
http://www.triplecaution.us

More seam welding today. Cut the upper intake manifold down so that we can rotate and weld it.

My shoulders are thanking me for the hacksaw work! ;-)

John

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http://www.lastditchracing.com
http://www.triplecaution.us

John,

Photos please.

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Cheers
M.Samli
Phoenix AZ
Gaylant VR4
EVO III GSR (Stolen)


Rallies are no place for traitors

I'll see if I can take a few tonight. Can I post them directly or do I need to host them somewhere first?

Cheers! John

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http://www.lastditchracing.com
http://www.triplecaution.us

I think you have to host it somewhere first.

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Cheers
M.Samli
Phoenix AZ
Gaylant VR4
EVO III GSR (Stolen)


Rallies are no place for traitors

You can actually post them directly here, provided they're not too huge ( <200kB per file). See "attach" by the regular "post" button for more details.

Some pictures:

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http://www.lastditchracing.com
http://www.triplecaution.us

More pics

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http://www.lastditchracing.com
http://www.triplecaution.us

And a couple more:

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http://www.lastditchracing.com
http://www.triplecaution.us

Hopefully that will satisfy you guys for a bit! :-) Forgot to add the pic of the cut intake and will do that in a sec.

You can see the Subaru tranny in the background of the last pic. We had the torches out to get the engine apart. The hot wrench works good!

Cheers! John

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http://www.lastditchracing.com
http://www.triplecaution.us

John !!!!!

What do I see under and behindish that engine ???

That outfit is not fire retardant, Mike Hurts will have a cow (misspelled on purpose).

Keep the piccies coming and I have to admit, you are a brave man welding with the wiring loom in the car. I tried that only once and ended up messing the wires up.

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Cheers
M.Samli
Phoenix AZ
Gaylant VR4
EVO III GSR (Stolen)


Rallies are no place for traitors