Thanks guys!
So, here is a small write up:
My friend had this car sitting in his garage out in the bunnies for 6 years. The mice moved in and made "Four Seasons" out of it. When I was cleaning the car up, I have discovered the sleeping quarters in rocker panels, nice dining room inside the intake manifold and luxurious restroom in the bumpers! <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
The whole project looked very stretchy in the beginning. I tried to lift the car up and the jack went right through the rocker panel. Started the engine, the fountain of gas came out of the trunk. You name it! But my wife asked only one question:” ..and you are planning to use it for rally?!” I smiled and the project begun!
I don’t work in automotive industry; everything is done inside our garage at home. I have lots of other hobbies and there was no special budget for the rally. I had to find out how I do it in the most economical, but reliable way. As some of you might know, the prices for parts here in Canada are “a little bit” different than in US, so instead of replacing parts I had to make lots of modifications myself. Given that this is a 1991 Galant, I literally could not find body parts here, but it made the project even more interesting.
I started from taking entire car apart. The engine and transmission were in the decent shape, so I left the fine tuning for future. Stripped all interior and cleaned the whole body. We build the FIA compliant cage for it and closed the sun roof (rally rules restrict glass sunroofs). I had to weld in the metal sheet and made the vent, as A/C typically not common for the rallies. Well, as long as you are not running the Paris/Dakar one <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
Once the cage and body was in the good shape we added some reinforcement for the rear struts and made a custom build cups for the front. All linked to the cage. You want your cage not the body to absorb the hit.
Then I cut the holes in the rocker panels and welded in 1 inch tubes, so you can use the custom stands with it. You have only 20 min for service when running the rally, so those stands come very handy. Highly recommend.
Cleaned up all electrical stuff, replaced all required wires, made it reliable. Needed to make bunch of brackets and mounts as roll cage is changing the layout of components inside the car.
Once all body stuff was completed, cleaned up and upgraded all required suspension parts. Used KYBs for the light tarmac rally, and then switched to Jig-Magic. The last one worked well on gravel, although those are not exactly rally coilovers, quite stiff.
All weak points on the body are reinforced, no seam welding though. The under body and the drivetrain is protected with HDPE and ¼ inch aluminum skid plates.
I use DMack’s medium and soft gravel rally tires on (!) Honda wheels. No budget for Compomotives yet.
Long rally wheel studs with long steel nuts (learned my lesson &#61514; ). Stock brake rotors with competition pads.
The car is N/A now, so far so good, but looks like an old grandma running after chicken. Will be building a new engine for it. We are running Canadian Production class. As we were building the car, the rules were changed and now allow turbo-charged engine. I mean, the 32mm restrictor is still in effect, but 250-300hp will do just fine. You do not want to get hurt. It is a boy fun project after all not the fight for the world title.
So far the car went through two rallies. No major issues.
