Weekend Rally car update

[Luke]

Ok so heres the current update.

Friday night I installed the freshly ground flywheel with the kevlar clutch and the std 9000 pressure plate. I had ordered a special pressure plate from clutchnet but they sent the wrong one. Seth came down and we swapped the front springs over for 600 lb tarmac springs. First time I've had the springs on with the wide tires. The car has amazing amounts of grip and suprisingly is not overly stiff. It feels quite supple. The wide tires and stiff springs definatly aggrevate a couple characteristics. The car seems to hunt around and really follow the crown of the road on rough roads. On big compressions it also seems to have some weird bump steer, although always in the same direction. I think a full alignment should be done. I'm going to try to find a shop that can do it in the evening hours, hopefully I can find someone.
We turned to boost down to about ~10 psi. The result is the car is quick and rev's up fast. I would say a nice drivable amount of power. I have an appointment thursday to get the car on the dyno. Hopefully we will be able to work a few bugs out of the tuning and really optimize it.
Seth noticed that the rear panhard mount was loose so we tightened that up. He also noticed that the rear axle appeared to be bent. This axle only has 3 stages and a rally-x on it so its weird that it would be bent. Its almost perfectly arched, maybe 2-3 degrees. Unfortunatly there seems to be some toe out bent into it too. I don't have any more spare axles left so I'll have to make do for RNY i guess. The next axle is defiantly going to be reinforced in some manner.
Saturday night we went for a drive in seths 85 900 with his studded hakkas. Unbelievable grip! For once I got to be scared sitting in the passenger seat at the mercy of the driver. Route consisted of very narrow twisty local roads, some of which were unplowed, with a few creek crossings. One left hand 3 > 2 defianatly had me holding on tight as we swung the nose around a very large tree. We managed to knock the exhaust off on one very rough road but were able to hold it on place with a webbing strap for the rest of the night.
Sunday we welded new rally style spring mounts unto Seth's MSS exhaust. They turned out really nice for such a hasty job.
Finally last night I spun up some nice adapters from stainless to let me use standard bilstein racing shocks in the rear. Came out nice I'll try to take some pic's tonight.

[Geoff]

Saturday night we went for a drive in seths 85 900 with his studded hakkas. Unbelievable grip! For once I got to be scared sitting in the passenger seat at the mercy of the driver. Route consisted of very narrow twisty local roads, some of which were unplowed, with a few creek crossings. One left hand 3 > 2 defianatly had me holding on tight as we swung the nose around a very large tree.

Don't forget thats the car we used in the New England and Vermont Winter Rallies and beat Travis Pastrama, who most recently came in 5th in P-WRC at the Corona Rally Mexico. Maybe its time to start running WRC? hehehe!