modena dog boxes are the ones that keep breaking,go with ppg

 

Unbelievably this is the third time that I've tried to post this. Yesterday for some reason the post simply disappeared (maybe I pressed the wrong key) and this morning the computer crashed!

Anyway in relation to the question of whether to strip or dip... UKBOB sent me a build manual, (thanks a lot for that Neal) of which the following are just a few of the pages...





Which makes me think that if I'm going to do this properly then after we've finished with all that seam welding and re-inforcing then we're going to need to paint it anyway, so I think that a call to Surface Processing is in order to see about getting it dipped and primered.

I managed to get hold of those Ohlins/Eibach units on EBAY (that I linked to earlier in the thread) for £230 so they should be good either as spares or tarmac units although I will have to get them rebuilt by Gary Ridgway who used to work for Ohlins UK. It'll be interesting to see how much they cost to rebuild!

I've checked on the gearbox and it's a 752 and I'll take Mr Zens word that it should do the job at least to start with. The car does have proper LSD's front and rear so I wonder if the 1.5 LSD that I bought for the front is in fact superfluous or whether I should replace the front LSD with this one?

As to the brakes. For Group N they have to remain 'standard' so although I can fit the 4 pots, they have to be the ones off the later cars. Does anyone have any please? Just for the front as I've been told to leave th backs as they are.

More later I hope.

 

Nice job done if I may say so.

Glitches with posting on Snet are not un-commen either!

Lots of post 1997 4 pot calipers for sale on eb@y and sometimes on here too.
You can get rebuild kits readily.

Ace brake man is Alyn at AS Performance - Rally Motorsport Specialists (co.uk?) He builds lots of Rally Imprezas.

 

Firstly, best of luck with the build - Just to help...........
Your steering wheel is on the correct side for building a proper car!

I ran a TY752 JDM casing with a dog kit, AP 4 paddle clutch (sprung centre) and STI cover plate without any issues on flexing. The only thing that damaged were the dog teeth on the slip ring, never ever damaged a gear tooth. If you wanted a Subaru dog kit I can put you in touch with a local engineering company who will build a very solid dog kit from proper hardened materials with homologation ratios and better money and spec than PPG or Modena etc.
There are specific homologation ratios for the group N GC8 car - these were my ratios
12 - 35 2.916 : 1 1st
11 - 23 2.090 : 1 2nd
18 - 28 1.555 : 1 3rd
17 - 20 1.176 ; 1 4th
20 - 18 0.900 : 1 5th
1 : 1 drop gears.
This was mated to 4.444 diffs.
Early STi RA's (upto 96)had a final drive of 3.90 (as per Alex's car) and DCCD. I found that 4.10 ratios were far too long with the ratios above so 3.90 would be like waiting a week between shifts. LSD front diff didn't appear until 1998 cars.

For the brakes and all specific parts, I understand that Subaru 4 pots must be used on the front and 2 pots Subaru can be used on the rear. Parts have to match the homologation pages (N5480) However it is worthwhile fitting anti rattle springs inside each piston to stop the pads vibrating off the discs.

Also check that there is a full weld at the top of the rollcage where the B post tubes meet - Its very difficult to weld on the roof side of the cage and Scrutineers do check this section of the cage - if there isn't a full weld you could be thrown out.

I always wanted to build my own car and I know that you are far enough down the road not to change now but really buying an existing car is far far easier and so you can spend more time in the pub! (as per rallycol wise words indeed)

I have some good spare parts for GC8 Group N cars including a turbo (TD05H front entry complete with 32mm restrictor and FIA tag just requires resealing by Scrutineer.) Let me know if you need anything specific, panels, rims etc

Hope this helps for now.
Cheers
Rob

 

Hi Rob,

Nice name (GroupNGC8) as least we know where you're coming from with that!
I'm very interested in the parts you mention and the information about the dog gears, so I'll be in touch in due course. I do realise that it would be easier and possibly cheaper to buy a built car, but I am trying, for the sake of the TV and DVD programmes to do it 'myself' both as well, and as cheaply as possible.

With regard to the cage - don't worry about that, Custom Cages weld the cage with great precision and with regard to the top bars they weld them while the cage is on the floor of the car before pushing it into position on top of the floor mounts. It's very interesting to see, but it's because of what you say that we are making a DVD for them showing people how to properly weld a cage into a car.

Thanks for the rest of the info though, especially in regard to the gearing and LSD's, I'm still interested to see 'what's in my box'!

 

GroupNGC8 you are wrong about Pre MY96 final drive ratio, MY95 was indeed 3.9, the other were not.

---john---

 

Out of interest I do wonder what's involved in keeping the car in left hand drive. My 'donor' car is right hand drive, so what's the easiest and cheapest? To turn the caged shell into right hand drive (for which I most of the bits) or to get the extra bits to replace the right hand drive bits from my donor car?

Does anyone know what's actually needed? If I said, dash and steering rack, how far away would I be? I'm told that the only major job needed to turn the shell from left to right is to replace the flitch panel and drill a few holes in the bulkhead. Does anyone know more please?

 

Take a good look at the Dinges project! But i should add he is mixing model yeas at the same time too.
Personally i would go RHD just to keep re-sale value a bit higher?

 

The decision should be a personal one - do you prefer to drive on the left hand side of the car or on the right hand side? have you had experience of driving on both sides. You need to be completely comfortable in the car. Personally I'd keep it on the left side on the build car (sorry Graham). then I'll buy it off you at the end of the year

 

I've done left and right, on road and hillclimbing and converted my 911 to RHD many moons ago.
Find it tricky in the heat of the moment in LHD (possibly because I'm an old fart)

 

I spent last week filming in the Czech Republic and a couple of those in a LHD Nissan 4 x 4 and while I have no problem driving it I did find that on more than one occasion I put my hand down to the left to change gear, and being left handed myself, (meaning that using my right hand is unnatural) sometimes I even went into the wrong gear, and twice I clipped the kerb, so right hand drive it will be!

 

Ha!
I'm a leftie too!
That missed gearchange in a hillclimb can cost you very dearly in time in a race, esp a hillclimb when 0.1 second is a lifetime.

 

old dog new tricks eh lol

 

Nah! Drove LHD in the 70's when I worked in California for a while, then for 6 years while I worked in Europe, and still changed gear with the door window winder every now and then! I wasn't old then for sure!
30 years on and I'm getting the hang of it now...must be my age!

 

strangely i found riding motor bikes helped with the placing of left hookers on the road.the historic left hookers at work are fairly easy for me to drive,but when i drove a hire car back in november(vauxhall merva?) i felt really uneasy with it,probably because whizzo was telling me to go faster!!!

 

Whizzo Williams?

 

the very same

 

What is it with Scoobynet? For the second time I wrote a really long post, and then submitted it only to find later that it hasn't appeared. Where do they go to?

Anyway, here we go again!

I've taken a good look at Dinges project. It's very interesting and quite depressing at the same time as he's taken so long just to fit his heater after the installation of a roll cage, plus the re-fitting of the steering coloumn and pedals looked a lot more time consuming than it should have been, but at least the rest should be straightforward!

After long and hard thought we have decided that we will dip and strip the car and I've got an enquiry in with Surface Processing in the Midlands about getting that done as soon as possible. The guys who will help me convinced me that not only will I get a better car out of it, but that it will be worth more at the end of the day, even though it will cost considerably more to build in the first place!

Part of the reason for the decision was the Group N build manual that UKBOB sent me. It's very comprehensive and shows all the weak points and wasteful weight on the shell. Interestingly though, whereas people used to chop out unnessary brackets and panels on standard shells, the FIA scrutineers have just recently started to clamp down on this sort of thing and refused to allow cars to start International events if they have been modified in this way. It's obvious that they won't be looking too hard at the GC8 running at the back of the field on Rally GB but imagine how gutted we would be to turn up and find that we couldn't run!

Still that doesn't stop us strengthening the shell where recommended in the manual. and at the end of the stripping and re-painting process we will at least have a perfect shell to start with and we can just build up around that.

After a busy few months with work I'm hoping to be able to start stripping the donor car now, but I've had it stored in a newly repaired garage/shed for the past few weeks and to my horror the interior trim has started to get mouldly, presumably because of damp in the walls of the building. Does anyone know the simple way to remove the mould as I want to sell all the trim to help with the budget?

 

That's because Aram is using the dash, heater, steering column and pedal box from a new age Sti! None of which is a direct fit into a classic shell

 

Ah ha! Thanks for that, maybe I should have read the thread a bit closer!

 

Well I'm behaving like a woman at the moment because I've changed my mind again and started to strip the cars interior instead of paying to get it dipped. The main reason for this is financial. The original idea of the project was to try and build the car as cheaply as possible. I was hoping for less than £5000 and although that might not be possible, I think that £7-£8000 is quite feasible. But it wouldn't be if I spent £1500 or more dipping and re-painting.

So on Saturday in the freezing cold I started the work and it isn't turning out to be as difficult as I thought although it probably would have been a lot easier if there wasn't roll cage bars everywhere!



Fortunately most of the sound deadening panels have come off quite easily and it's been taking about 30-40 minutes per panel. Usually it's a bit at a time....

but everynow and again you get a big bit!

All in all I proably did about 7 hours work over the weekend and there's only a few panels left now, but my chest and arms ache like mad. My chest because often I was leaning against the roll cage, and my arms, simply because I'm not used to manual work!

I'm a bit disapointed though to have only removed about 7lbs of material... hardly worth the work really!


Generally now I'm left with this sort of mess...

What do I do to get rid of that now, some type of glue solvent?

Incidentally when looking underneath the car at the underseal I was surprised to find that rather than a thick black gooey mess, it was in fact a very thin white substance. Have things moved on since I last looked at underseal or could it just be because being LHD this car never had proper underseal applied?

One further thing. The white car (my donor car) has been stored in my newly restored shed/garage for about 2 months and has developed terrible mould.




Can anyone tell me the reason for this and what I can do to a. stop it, and b. get rid of it please?

 

I have just bought a GC8 rally car. It used to be a very good Grp A car at some stage. However, its now got majority standard parts and I am looking at fully converting it to Grp N to do the Kenyan National Championship. Where can I get the homologation papers that specify the GrpN specifications?...Thanks.

 

You can get the papers from your local MSA the number that you want is N5480. The homologation runs out at the end of the year but you should still be able to use if for about 3 years after that in Group N form.

 

Your Newly restored shed is Damp. I'd have it newlt restored again !!!


---john---

 

I removed all the sound deadning from my classic track car last week. I removed every bit I could find, including transmission tunnel and behind the pedals. All in I filled 2 Tesco carrier bags and they weighed 9.7kg.

I did do it a slightly different way, using a hot air paint stripper and a flat chissel. I then used a wire brush attachment on an angle grinder to remove what was left, before wiping it al down with an old towel and some thinners.

 

looking good

I've been there, done that with the underseal removal too and can sympathise with the aches

The mould in your donor car is caused by damp, usually from condensation forming and then not fully evaporating. My cars get it when they go unused for months
If the car is stored under cover, keep the windows cracked open to get some air circulating, that will keep the moisture down. Any of the domestic multisurface cleaners (I use Pine Fresh Flash ) will bring the staining off all your surfaces, even the seatbelts, although I presume you won't be using them?

 

Thanks for that, everything in the car will come out and be sold on ebay, so that's why I don't want it to get too bad. I appreciate that it's mould caused by damp but I'm puzzled as to why it's happened when the car is in my 'newly restored shed' but didn't happen when it was outside, especially as it has a big hole in the boot!

 

You can buy the de-humidifiers for cars, which sucks all the moisture out the air. They are great for cars that are older and in storage because they tend to attract alot of moisture. You can get them from Classic car, kit car and motorcycle restoration - Frost Auto Restoration Techniques and cost about a tenner.

Nice project by the way!

Rich

 

Lack of direct sunlight is why it's now doing it in your shed. The big hole in the boot will actually have helped in the ventilation department whilst outside.

 

I've jsut about finished cleaning out the sound deadening panels now and will tidy it up over the next week. I've found a garage locally in Bala who will spray the inside for about £300 which is ok for budget I think.

One thing I was surprised to see was that the roof seems to be held on by a few bolts. Obviously there must be more to it than that, but how is it held on?

Also I still have the task of converting the car from left to right hand drive. Is it possible to get the bulkhead panel out without too much difficulty as that seems the easiest way to go, to transfer the panels from the white to the green car.