Seth and Jason came out last weekend and we dragged the rally car into the garage to do some updates. Last year it was sort of driven hard and put away wet, so we wanted to do a little TLC in preparation for another year of rallying.

The NASA rules now require a "sill bar" on the cage, so we needed to add that. It was a bit trickey since the cage is so tight fitting to the pillars but with a little bit of wiggling we were able to get them in.

We also started the process of wiring the fuel pump circuit a little different to take load off the main bus bar on the fuse panel, as we had some issues with the contacts there.

Finally, the rear shock mounts had stress cracks from the fatigue over the years. I was never really happy with the dirt-track inspired setup that we had with regards to serviceability or aethetics, so we came up with a new design to make the upper shock mounts easier to remove and install.

I'll post a few pics in a few but wanted to thank Seth and Jason so much for coming out and helping. It was the first time we've had more than 2 people working in the shop for a few years and all the sounds of grinders and drill presses running was terrific.

Sill Bar Added:

New Custom Upper mounts for the Bilsteins



Modifing the upper mounts:

Loving your work wish I could do that kind of thing :)

Sill bars look great. Interested in seeing the final design for the rear suspension mounting, looks like it's going to be a sweet setup!

KPAero wrote:Sill bars look great. Interested in seeing the final design for the rear suspension mounting, looks like it's going to be a sweet setup!

The new design is useable...meaning you can actually remove the upper coil-over mount bolt easily. The old setup was even a pain to removed with the two of us in a relaxed situation in the garage with plenty of light. The other advantage of the new design is that there is not a steel tube running between the rear shock towers....that steel tube made it almost impossible to move around in the back of the car if you had to crawl in there for one reason or another.

Other achievement for the weekend was to pick up a new Bell Vision driving suit

Shown here being modeled by the Stig

Come on Luke! post up the pics of that elegant new incarnation of the rear perches. It came out quite purdy if I do say so myself!

Bump. I wanna see.

Where did you tap into for the new fuel pump circuit? The ailing pump I put in the white car made this issue obvious to me as well, I'll re-do that relay block to it doesn't mess with the lights as much. I'm getting almost 1.5v drop at the pump compared to the voltage up in the engine bay. Not so good.