RX-3

Quote
hoche
Hm. Took out the rear springs, jacked up the diff and measured. Six inches of travel at the wheel hub. That's about what my Golves have, but is that sufficient for a RWD car?

Actually, there was some binding somewhere; the pass side has 6 1/2", the driver's side has 5 3/4". Might be the bent upper link mount, might be the bent panhard, might be shock inner-stop variance, might be a bent something else.


It'd be nice if I could find a Volvo shock that allows a little more range. I don't really want to redo the shock towers.

In other news: I haven't taken the rear axles out but I looked at the 240 manuals. What the hell holds the axles in place? The manuals make it seem like you can just pull on them and they'll come out but that can't be right.

How do your Golves only haz 6 Hinches? The ones I suspend have 9.3"-----
that's 50% more and in fact its more free! with every purchase

Is you garage that messy you lose things?
I'm often saying "Shore would be nice if i could find this #!**&! thing I know I have...somewhere in here gawd-dammit!

Did you have some nice shock that you can't find?
If you din't have it howdya 'spect to find it.

Here's a thought! You haz all those golves laying around, rob a rear shock off of one of them...Measure length and travel and report if you coul;d poke it in..

OR

Quit your whining and just do what I told ya.

---

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.

Michel,
I finally went to a KYB Gasajust on the Nissans rear axle back in the day. They were off a late 70s early 80s F-150 rear. Bolted in with the correct travel and worked perfect on stage. Never had a failure, car never skipped around on rough roads.

Quote
heymagic
Michel,
I finally went to a KYB Gasajust on the Nissans rear axle back in the day. They were off a late 70s early 80s F-150 rear. Bolted in with the correct travel and worked perfect on stage. Never had a failure, car never skipped around on rough roads.

Now try and imagine how much fun you would have had with something good.

---

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.

Quote
john vanlandingham

Quote
heymagic
Michel,
I finally went to a KYB Gasajust on the Nissans rear axle back in the day. They were off a late 70s early 80s F-150 rear. Bolted in with the correct travel and worked perfect on stage. Never had a failure, car never skipped around on rough roads.

Now try and imagine how much fun you would have had with something good.

Ya but Reigers are kinda pricey...

Quote
heymagic

Quote
john vanlandingham

Quote
heymagic
Michel,
I finally went to a KYB Gasajust on the Nissans rear axle back in the day. They were off a late 70s early 80s F-150 rear. Bolted in with the correct travel and worked perfect on stage. Never had a failure, car never skipped around on rough roads.

Now try and imagine how much fun you would have had with something good.

Ya but Reigers are kinda pricey...

Yep and at out level it is folly to believe that there is any competitive advantage to those compared to "lesser' things...Nice to pretend we're soooooooooooooooooooooo sensitive that we "need" them but realistically most of us could probably muddle on with suspension essentailly identical to that as used on WRC cars in the mid-to late 1990s.

---

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.

Quote
john vanlandingham

Quote
heymagic

Quote
john vanlandingham

Quote
heymagic
Michel,
I finally went to a KYB Gasajust on the Nissans rear axle back in the day. They were off a late 70s early 80s F-150 rear. Bolted in with the correct travel and worked perfect on stage. Never had a failure, car never skipped around on rough roads.

Now try and imagine how much fun you would have had with something good.

Ya but Reigers are kinda pricey...

Yep and at out level it is folly to believe that there is any competitive advantage to those compared to "lesser' things...

Sometimes a few weeks delivery time can be a competitive advantage.

---

Grant Hughes

On the Golfs, it's 6" in the rear and somewhat more up front, but I haven't really needed much more in the rear because there's hardly any weight back here.

The Golf shocks mount differently - threaded rod instead of through-pin, although that's the way the original towers are set up so I can try it.

The F150 shocks are appealing. I put new shocks on my van last year and I think I have the old ones laying around to see what range they have.

---

Self-righteous douche canoe

So yeah, the Golf has more like 8" in the back, which makes the short travel on the RX3 even more worrisome. Maybe it works fine as is. One way or another I need to figure out how to get the current shocks out and figure out what they are. Both of the bottom shear bolts are bent and rusted and even my impact has refused to budge them more than a couple of turns. I'll probably have to cut them off and then go get more from a Volvo at a junkyard. No worries; stand by for more questions.

---

Self-righteous douche canoe

Even on my RX-7 which has the rearend that was made for the chassis and shocks that were made for the car, I said screw the OE shock mounts and made my own. So don't worry about getting fabby with it. Cut slice and weld to your heart's content. In my case the shocks weren't close to bottoming out before other things did, but they topped out long before anything else did, so I relocated the mounts higher up on the rearend so I can get more droop travel. Now there's something like nine inches back there. Make heaps difference even driving on the street, if you'll believe that.

I also put together some 8" travel struts for the front but I think it handled better with the old 6" travel setup. Front end seems to bite better with only one tire actually on the ground.

---

Pete Remner
Cleveland, Ohio

1984 RX-7 (rallycross thing)
1978
Silence is golden, but duct tape is silver.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/30/2014 07:53PM by Pete.

Today's update:

Windshield came out in one piece, but it's starting to delaminate around the edges so it might be done. I cleaned up the windshield frame and I'll definitely have to do some patching, but the rust holes are all pinholes. The passenger's side of the A-pillar was mashed at some point and covered in Bondo. It's straight on the inside though. I may just re-Bondo it, or may see if I can pull that out.

Pulled the carb, started cleaning it. Weber 48 IDA. It still had gas in it and the accelerator pumps still worked. So far the seals and jets all look good and everything unscrewed without a fight, so once it's done soaking I'll just put it back together as it was.

The Panhard is bent because it smacked into the spare wheel well. There's a mashed section there to match. Once we figure out the shock-length issue, I'll either have to put bump stops on the shock or maybe just make a place to install the Volvo frame-mounted ones. Other rear suspension things I noticed: the "bent" upper link may actually have been shaped that way on purpose to clear the vent on the axle. If so, it's held up fine and probably doesn't need reinforcing. Dave? Do you know if that was intentional? Finally, the springs clearly come free of the upper perches when they unload and don't always reseat properly when the axle comes back up again. They're pretty mashed. Maybe I can solve that by making longish cones out of some hard rubber or something, but it'd be nice to have a fully-captured spring as in a coilover. So I'm looking more into the custom tower thing.

The steering is something over three turns lock-to-lock, but the tie rods bang into the swaybar at around 1.4 turns, giving it a 2.8 turn range. That'll have to be solved (and a quicker rack too...John has mentioned some sources for that).

Engine, trans, and pedal box come out tomorrow, and then I have to start the actual rebuilding plan.

---

Self-righteous douche canoe

I don't think the RX3 with rear leafs had massive travel either and we ran stock fronts with Tokico inserts. I'm sure anything you or JV comes up with will be a great improvement

I'll have to look thru the old vids and see if I can find your car in action.

Engine's out:



Can't tell much about the insides until I take it apart.

I left the tranny in the car for another day, and started taking the pedal box out. That's proven to be more of a chore than I thought as much of the wiring harness is wrapped around it like a starved octopus and unravelling that has taken some time. Someone went crazy with the electrical tape.

I talked to Kennedy Engineering about a T-5 adaptor and they said they can make them but their version requires the bellhousing out of an RX-4. I told them I have an RX-7 bellhousing (two actually) and they weren't sure it would work and didn't seem very interested in the whole thing. So I talked to G-Force and the T5-guy there happens to like rotaries and knew what I was talking about and we had a long chat about things. End result: they have the CAD for one that mates to a Turbo-II bellhousing and uses the Mazda throwout and clutch slave. Only difference is the clutch has a different spline count. If I use a stock Mustang gearset I'll have to shave down the nose of the input shaft to be a little shorter, but if I use their gearset it's already shorter and should just work (with the new spline-count clutch). They're going to make an adaptor and send it to me - it should be here in a couple of weeks.

Found a guy in upstate NY with a car that's already half cut apart. He's willing to cut off the remaining sections according to my drawings and ship them to me. His price is reasonable but shipping quarterpanels might get sort of expensive so I'm trying to figure out a way of getting them from NY to here for cheap.

---

Self-righteous douche canoe

Turbo II transmissions were based off of the RX-4 transmission.

Without having had the grimy bits in my hands for comparison, the main difference in bellhousings is that the Turbo II unit has a larger diameter flywheel so the starter sits further out. The Turbo II transmission had a 240mm, 23 spline clutch disk, while the nonturbo stuff was 215/225mm disk with 22 splines.

A 3-liter Ranger or B3000 has a 225mm disk with 23 splines, so no need to get the readily available "adapter" disk that, for some damn reason, is unsprung. You would still need to figure out the starter situation, although it can't be too bad since people have done it before.

---

Pete Remner
Cleveland, Ohio

1984 RX-7 (rallycross thing)
1978
Silence is golden, but duct tape is silver.

My notes from the conversation say he said their gearset uses a 26-spline clutch, so I guess it's GM. No mention of the size. We'll see when it gets here. Now to find a T-II bellhousing...

---

Self-righteous douche canoe

Well, I got the pedal box out:


The masters are Tilton 74-series, and one needs an overhaul so I'll do both (the kit is $25 each). The balance rod is bent so I'll have to get another.

That leaves nothing but the brake lines and coils in the engine bay and then I can start really cleaning it.


Ditto with the inside:


Transmission is out too:


Here're a couple of shots comparing it to a Mustang T5:





You can see that the T5 is a little wider and somewhat longer, but shorter in height, and the shifter is in about the right place, although the bellhousing/adaptor plate might change that. The input shaft for the Mustang box is way back so I'm not sure how that's gonna work. I'll have to wait until the adaptor plate arrives and I can find a Turbo-II bellhousing.

---

Self-righteous douche canoe



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/07/2014 01:50AM by hoche.