(Budget) Historic Rally Car Project

[Kman1600]

Hi,

Just thought I’d quickly post a picture of project Historic Rally car. The car is way better than I thought it would be, I’ve all 4 wings and sell covers off now and although it’s seen some repairs over the years it is not going to be a weld-athon to get it together.

The car was last on the road in 1998 and was taken off the road because of a gearbox failure, it then sat outside for a year or two before being rolled into the corner of a disused chicken shed!!! where is lay until I pulled out free at the weekend.

I’ve been in touch with Alan at Beech Grove Eng. and the first job tackled will be shell strengthening so despite having a solid car to start with the welding torch will need be used in anger.

I’ll keep you posted as things progress, time and money are both limited so progress will hopefully be steady but not crazy quick.

Thanks

Tim

 

[chrisyork]

Glad Alan is on the case! He has two standard mods I'd heartily recommend. The "Australian" mod, devisde and engineered by the Rover Club of Australia, was designed by them to combat front chassis leg cracking on power steered cars used on poor road surfaces. It incorporates the factory "police" hockey sticks, used to reinforce the lower front damper mounting. In this context I would expect it to sharpen up the steering slightly through reduced front end flex as well as be a usefull shell reinforcement. To go with this Alan also fits a much more satisfactory bottom spigot for the shock.

If Alan hasn't already discussed them there are a number of other mods I would do.

First off is to reinforce the de dion elbow to top link fixing lug (on the elbow) and also the top link pick up on the boot side. Simon Owen has done a neat bracket to fully enclose the link for this one - see his project thread. While in this area fit one of Alan's reinforced diff brackets if using the Rover diff - or go the Simon Owen route with a Jag diff. Alan and I have an unresolved debate as to how to manage the Watts linkage onto his diff bracket. I should like to see either two separate bars or a triangular bar with two fixings at the diff bracket, with the objective of reducing twist under load.

If you come across crash testing shots of the P6 you'll see that it compares extremely well with modern cars. There is one major weakness though. The roof rail above the front doors is prone to collapse allowing the front bulkhead and screen to pivot back around the bulkhead to chassis joint. This also traps the front doors shut. It isn't as seroius as it sounds but if you're going to have to fit a cage then it's as well to bear it in mind.


Webmaster Richard also devised a neat mod for the sills to cereate an additioanl box section, probably worth the small effort required!







Chris

 

[Guy Engelsman]

Tim

I will be watching with intrest as I am planning to turn my long suffering brown car "Pooh" into a track car. I am still in the process of chasing down what I can and cannot do to the car. There is no use building the greatest car in the world if ther are no classes for it to race in!
I will be going for a full roll cage as a matter of course, if it saves me once then it was worth the cost. There is an old saying "Speed costs money, how fast do you want to spend?" The biggest performance gains are just in losing weight, the interior comes to mind!

Good luck with the project, there are not enough Rovers in racing (in Australia at least), and when put up against an American tank with live rear axle, drum drakes and suspension off a covered wagon, they look pretty good.

Cheers

GUY

 

[sowen]

Here's the extra metal welded around the top link mount beside the boot floor Chris mentioned above before and after:

I'm sure the v8 will have the cranked top links, which will have one bushed end larger than the other, which I assume goes to the boot floor side where I've boxed mine in, so a slight deviation from my design would be required, but nothing too drastic. Someone else should be able to confirm this. Also as Chris says, reinforcing the existing elbow leading and trailing arm mount points is highly recommended.

Simon

 

[DaveHerns]

Nice bit of welding but you've had plenty of practice !

 

[sowen]

Nice bit of welding but you've had plenty of practice !

The only serious welding I've done is to one land rover chassis and my blue rover, never had any professional tuition, just picked up the gun, pointed and squirted

Simon

 

[Kman1600]

Hi,

Short update on the Historic Rally car project.

Before I took the auto box out and spent a moment or two and got the engine running, fresh petrol and cleaning the points was all it took and it runs very well indeed, which is good. A quick test of the gearbox confirms it’s goosed but that’s no great loss as it need converted to Manual anyway. Box is now out, as the rear diff (so I can work on the rear brakes easily) and I’ve stripped-blasted-painted the front callipers. The pistons were a little pitted on these so I’ve new ones ordered as well as seals etc… same process is needed at the back.

The rad. also leaked badly right alone the top edge once under pressure so that is away getting the biggest possible modern core inserted in it, hopefully that will help cooling.

No shell prep work as yet, I’ve ordered both the strengthening kit and the lower shock kit from Alan and as soon as those arrive the plan is to get right at it. I didn’t want to start on the shell until I say what came in the kit.

I’ll take a few more pics and post them as soon as I get the time!!!

Tim

 

[Kman1600]

Hi All,

Haven’t posted progress for a while so though I stick something up here quickly. I’ve fitted the driver side “Australian” strengthening and pretty much got all the suspension back in place. I now just have the passenger side to do!!! It’s all cleaned down and zinc primed so I’m hopeful it will be plain sailing now that I’ve done one already. Suspension spec is more fast road than rally or race, usual springs, dampers, bushes, ARB etc… all the Stuff from Alan. Needs to be strong and reliable for the events I’m hoping to compete on, if it can be quick as well that will be a bonus!!!

As well as all the welding the car is now fitted with a Late SD1 5sp, although I’ve still to sort out the flexible hose and convert it back to mechanical speedo.

Once the front is sorted the car will be back on its wheels temporarily to allow me to turn it round, this will then let me get stuck into the rear. Similar philosophy at the back, simple, strong and hopefully reliable.

Thanks for the help so far on things like the cutch master cylinder arrangement etc… without it this project would be even harder!!!

Thanks

Tim

 

[BBLongman]

Suspension looks good, i've just fitted the same dampers from Classeparts and i'm really pleased with them. What method did you use to replace your front springs?

 

[Kman1600]

Hi,

To get the spring in I used my trusty coil spring clamps to compress the spring as far as they could but that wasn’t quite enough to get the shock into place so I simply jacked the end of the rocker arm up the last couple of inches. I understand this isn’t exactly the safest way of doing it but I took my time made sure everything was nice and squire and only jacked it the minimum it needed to get the shock in, I’m happy enough with it as a method.

Tim

 

[Kman1600]

Hi,

It’s been a while since I posted, I’ve been busy!!

First event was last weekend (West Cork Retro Rally) and was very entertaining if not completely successful
Slight mishap with a damper toward the end of the first day, correction well in hand. I’ve a couple of pictures to hand but hope to round up a few more there seemed to be plenty of cameras on both days.

Autotesting a P6 is certainly a challenge but surprisingly enough it works quite well, by the end of day 2 I was beginning to set some pretty respectable times.

There is now a bit of a “must improve” list forming but more of that later

Tim

 

[chrisyork]

Hi Tim

Really glad to see you're getting some fun out of your project!

I'm a particular fan of the "unusually competent technically but slightly shabby to look at" approach!

Chris

 

[Oracle]

I'm a particular fan of the "unusually competent technically but slightly shabby to look at" approach!

Chris

I'm another fan of
"It Looks A Little Rough - But It's Put Together Right" :wink:

 

[Kman1600]

Hi All,

Just thought I’d add a little meat to my previous post regard the West Cork Retro rally.

This form of Rallying dates back to the 50/60’s and predates what we now see as “Rallies”, i.e. stage rallies. Retro Rallying uses basically 4 different disciplines within its make-up.

Regularity sections:

Typically the route is handed to the navigator 3 minutes before you are scheduled to leave, it will be in a simply to follow form, tulip diagrams, herringbone diagrams or the likes. Typically the whole route can be plotted in the 3 minutes by an experienced navigator without issue. You then have to drive the route at a very specific speed, normally ranging from 20 to a maximum 30 mph, obviously the roads are chosen to make even these low average speeds a challenge. Your progress along the route is then checked at intervals and you lose a point of every second you are wrong (early or late) up to a maximum of 30 points per control. In one section (maybe 15 miles) you might have to average 4 or 5 different speeds making the mental arithmetic needed quite a challenge. Good crews are +/-5 or better at each control!!

Tests (Autotests)

We’ve probably all seen autotests before somewhere? These are timed to the second and involve you driving forward, back (sometimes sideward!!) around cones to follow are specific path. The good guys seem to move seamlessly between forward and backward never seeming to be stopped!!! Minis & Midgets are the tools of choice for the front runners but the points (penalties) on the event are handed out based on class position not time so if you choose to use a Mini then you’ll be up against other Minis etc… The P6 is a “large Saloon” which rather jokingly means any saloon not a Mini!!! So in my class there was a Vauxhall Chevette, a Datsun 100A and a Mk.1 RS2000, I was definitely “large” compared to them!!! Penalties are 0 for a class win, 2 for 2nd, 5 for 3rd, 7 for 4th and 10 for 5th or above, it’s a wee bit more involved than that but you get the idea.

Special tests (selectives)

Special tests are the fore runner of special stages, they are longer than the Autotests, driven blind but with your navigator in with you. These are laps around a quarry or industrial estate, maybe even something on grass. They are timed to the tenth of a second but this time you lose penalties (in seconds) to the class winner up to max of 30.

Night Navigation

Done in the dark as the name suggests, route handed to the navigator in some sort of “cryptic” form as the clock used to measure your average speed is started, no 3 minute grace period, referred to as “plot and bash”. Typically you’ll be driving the route before it’s completely plotted in the hope that you don’t make a mistake and have to retrace your steps. Timed to the minute and penalties are not dependant on class position, just simply minutes late or early (often double penalties for being early). Each rally seems to have it’s own interpretation of how this works, some allow queuing without penalty, these become very like stage rallies as you tend to just charge to the end of the section as quick as you can then wait for your minute.

We did pretty good on the regularity sections, quite good (getting better as the days went on) on the Autotest, again quite good on the Special tests but our broken damper prevented us from doing the night stuff.

I’m hoping to round up a few more “action” pictures from others who where their with cameras (I was rather busy driving) but as yet I haven’t got any

Thanks

Tim

 

[richarduk]

I'm a particular fan of the "unusually competent technically but slightly shabby to look at" approach!

Chris

I'm another fan of
"It Looks A Little Rough - But It's Put Together Right" :wink:

Me too, in the late 80's I had a Mk3 Cortina GT 2000 with a 'tweaked' low mileage engine out of a Mk5, looked a heap but would launch well at the traffic lights, would give the odd VW Golf driver a shock!

 

[GrimV8]

I'm a particular fan of the "unusually competent technically but slightly shabby to look at" approach!

Chris

I'm another fan of
"It Looks A Little Rough - But It's Put Together Right" :wink:

Not sure what you guys are on about, my daily driverP6 isn't that smart
Bet that's bags of fun to drive 8)

 

[Kman1600]

Hi,

A couple of "action" pics from the weekend.

Tim

 

[chrisyork]

Excellent!

PS, what was the problem you had with the damper?

Chris

 

[Kman1600]

Hi All,

It’s humble pie time!!!

Having finally got the time to strip the front corner off the car it is very apparent that it was my fault that the damper lower ring failed, see attached pics. I left a weld un-dressed behind the damper and never noticed, almost without out doubt this is the cause of the failure.

Alan @ Classeparts is just simply playing a blinder with regard to helping me out and despite it clearly being my fault he’s doing his level best to minimise my costs etc…. what a guy. If you’re not using him for this sort of stuff you should be!!!

Better run, car to be fixed!!!

Tim

 

[BPK973H]

What a brilliant thread!
I have a 1970 2000TC which I purchased recently to compete in a "budget" Mille Miglia event - we leave on June 23rd via Dover to start in Calais - then going Calais/Zurich/Brescia/Ferrara/Rome/Brescia where it end s then to make our own way home.

I chose a 2000TC as many years ago, before they were considered classics, I owned and ran a 1970 2000SC and then a 1973 3500 auto as daily drivers and always loved them. Also I couldn't see my wife enduring an estimated 3,000 + mile round trip in either an MGB or a Mini!!

Well impressed with the 2000TC modifications to date are a period rally look by removing the hubcaps and applying the rally plates and a few period stickers!! Seriously though, this rally is more a sort of driving treasure hunt and with no time available my only mod really will be to fit the continental boot mount kit so we can carry two spares.

However - on our return I intend to sprint and hillclimb her so then we will be looking to modify......

If you think her a strange choice for sprinting and hillclimbing read on please....

We got involved in sprinting and hillclimbing 5 or 6 years ago when I stopped roadracing motorcycles - I intended to compete myself to gain experience of four wheel competiion with a view to classic racing - hwat has really happened is that somehow or other my daughter talked her way into the driving seat and I have been chief mecahnic, sponsor and dogsbody not yet having competed myself! We compete with the Auto 66 club in the Yorkshire Speed Hill climb and Sprint series - we started with a bog standard 1275 (re-shelled) 1969 mini which over the years has progressed to a full blown 1380 straight cut box etc. Still taxed and tested we ran in the Historic (Pre '74) class which has been brilliant fun in a friendly series.
Unfortunatelt since back end of 2008 we haven't competed following a disastrous breakdown, total engine rebuilt and Dad the mechanic not having enough time to finish off the rebuild.
In 2009 - for some reason - the historic class was ommitted - bit unfathomable as it had been well attended, although with a hard core regular entry mainly of minis and a TR4 with occasional appearances by Fiats, MGB's, Triumph Vitesse.
For 2010 in order to re-instate the class and promote the Historic racing I have sponsored with prize money for this class alone at the end of the season.
The club runs events this year at Croft, Cadwell Park, Olivers Mount (Scarborough), Elvington, Barbon, 3 sisters, Harewood, Mallory, Aintree and Anglesey - so it has moved from a local East Coast base to covering a wide area. Hopefully it will cover still as big an area next year, and I will be not only sponsoring myself but also attempting to gain other sponsorship to increase the prize money and interest.

So after all that my reason for deciding to enter the 2000TC - basically because my duaghters mini is stillout of action and to giver her outings again and get back in to the feel of things........
Also to encourage others to have a go in a variety of cars - to show that you don't have to spend a fortune to have a go and can basically bring out your daily driver to have a bit of fun!!
I will keep monitoring the thread because I ma sure some modifications will be made and I like what I see so far!!!