'85 XR4Ti Rally Car

[MattWatson]

Hey all,

I had hinted before that I had started a rally car other than a Saab... and I’m at a point where I need to share, since I am getting fairly far into this and may need some support, since I have decided building a rally car means you are a little bit crazy.

I ended up chatting with John Vanlandingham a bit about seeing if I could pick up a gear set and final drive for a 900 from Sweden. Once we got into it, I just couldn’t justify the costs. We couldn’t find any gear sets anywhere near reasonable and there were some concerns from some of the people that we chatted with in Sweden that some final drives were of dubious quality.

John steered me onto both Volvo’s and XR4Ti’s due to the fact that both are decently cheap to build. I had dismissed the XR almost completely, because I had NEVER seen one in Calgary, nor had I heard of Merkur before our conversations. Just to keep my options open, I gave a contact of John’s a shout since he “may have” a couple XRs sitting around that he might be looking to sell. In the meantime, I was looking for Volvos since that is really what I thought I would end up with. I couldn’t believe how f’ing expensive they were here. Rusted hulks that didn’t run well (that was the kijiji description) were going for $1200 or so… crazy.

I talked with the guy with the XRs, and he ended up have 8(!) with 6 that he was willing to sell for attainable money. I ended up picking up 2 for 800. 1 full runner complete and one roller with a spare block. The red car is the runner, the Silver is the shell... and I just realized that I didn't take any pictures of the silver shell. I am terrible at this.





I took a look at a couple other cars that he had including a white non-sunroof car, and a white sunroof car with a "complete" cage that wasnt remotely up to spec, and would have needed to be completely redone for current regs and my height. He also wanted too much for both of those cars. So I ended up with the red and silver.

[MattWatson]

I ended up deciding to modify the silver car for a couple reasons:
1. The silver car is just a roller anyway, so it has less to take out to strip
2. The runner will be stored at my parents place, so its nice you can just turn the key and drive
3. I thought it was in better shape.

So begins the build.

I started by gutting the interior which smelled TERRIBLE. Obviously several mice had made a home, and it stunk. Really stunk. I took the harness out complete, but i'll likely rebuild and relocate it.

Finally on to pictures. I ended up doing the sunroof first, since I had the steel available and it was fairly easy. I did it with the 18ga that I bought for doing the cage re-inforcements, and I will NEVER do that again. Way too difficult to form. Enough so that I will have a couple areas that need some bondo since it ended up deforming the roof a bit in a couple areas.

removing the framework from the car to get more headroom:




I used a tape form to get a proper size to cut out using the glass that was in the sunroof:


vicegrips and a piece of steel to make a pizza tray:


After hammer and dolly work:


Slits to allow forming a bit better since it is so damn thick steel:


Dry fit:

[MattWatson]

The 'hot ticket' for these cars for a rear end is apparently a 8" Toyota from an 80's Supra. I ended up finding one here in Calgary for free on Kijiji, so I gave the guy a call. I don't know if anyone here heard of the flooding in Calgary earlier in the summer, but once he gave me his address I found out he was one of the ones that was affected by the flooding. Hence the free.

I ended up paying him for it, since I was going to buy one from John anyway, and he needed the money more than I did.

He was in the area that was hardest hit in the city. He had water up to his eaves and his house was a complete write-off. On top of that, he had a 20's Chevy, GTO TR7 and TR3 all wrecked by the flood as well. It was really depressing to see that.

It's a 4.3, complete with clutch type LSD, all for $140 One step closer to a rally car.

[MattWatson]

On to the roll cage...

Anyone see anything wrong with this?



This is what happens when you measure to the wrong "center" that you marked on the roof of the car... 2" off center. CRAP.

Take 2:

Much Better




Next up were the 1/2 laterals. I ended up using some tricks for this that I don't know if they are common knowledge or not. Since they need to bend into the car to follow the a pillar, then back, the bends have to be offset from each other. In order to do this I came up with this:

I marked a line down the center of the tube by putting the tubes side by side, then scribing them with a scraper. This is guarenteed to mark a straight line 100% on the highest point of the tube all the way down:


In that pic I had already scribed the line, then marked the offset, and was set to scribe that as well. Here is the result:


I then did the layout on both tubes. at the same time to make sure that EVERYTHING was mirrored right. One line was yellow and one was white mirrored. That way, you can 100% see which bend you are supposed to make where. The starting points of bends were marked, starting from the middle:


I then bent them up, marked the end of the bend using a straight edge to find where the gap started, and then measured and marked the next bend on each side. I like this bender. A couple quirks to deal with, but nothing hard once you know how to use it:


Drivers side finished:


Now, here is where I fell down on picture taking... No pictures of notching, floor modifications etc. I will take some more pictures tomorrow to show where I am at right now. Ar the point in the photos, this was around the last week in July, 3 weeks into the build. I took most of August off (mistake, but meh) and got started again in the first week of september.

I have to take a couple pictures of this as well, but I picked up a STACK of parts from John Vanlandingham when I visited him in seattle. Believe it or not, all of the following fit into the back of a 2002 sebring:


[*]5 Soccer Ball Wheels
[*]4 Shelbys
[*]4 JVAB Ford-> SAAB hub adapters
[*]2 Vented Saab Discs
[*]2 Wilwood Superlight calipers
[*]2 Rear hubs
[*]2 Front Uprights, bearings, seals etc.
[*]1 Diff
[*]1 Diff Cover
[*]2 JVAB Rear Coilovers
[*]2 JVAB Front 40mm Struts and Springs
[*]1 JVAB Group N Acropolis Spec skid plate mount
[*]2 JVAB Group N top mounts
[*]2 boxes of Misc Parts (bearings, seals etc)
[*]3 Gallons of auto paint

[MattWatson]

I still havn't gotten a response from CARS regarding the tubes, but I read it as optional, but will put in the ones that everyone else does, just in case.

I finished the 2nd half of the FIA A Pillar bars today, and I have to say, of all the bars I have done on this car, they are the biggest pain in the ass.















I also did some minor surgury to the floors in order to drop the drivers side seat as LOW as I possibly could since I am fairly tall:



Now to finish the gussets. I wanted to be done this on the weekend, but it is so cold here now that I can't work more than a couple hours at a time or I really start to freeze. It's -6c here today, and three long sleved shirts and a toque is starting to not cut it anymore. It's supposed to warm up again for the remainder of the week, so hopefully I can finish the rest off then beg a bay in my parents heated garage in order to paint the damn thing.