MOT & Insurance Time Again

I haven't been getting up to much motorsporting of late so things have been a bit quiet round here. After 6 months of looking Rachel and I have finally been able to find a house that we like and has space for our lives. Unfortunately it needs a fair amount of renovation so it has been sucking up all my time for the last few months and it will continue to do so for at least a few months more.

But no matter how much other work I have on I still like the keep the Nova road legal. So first job up was to renew the road insurance. My policy was with REIS and, although I've never had to put a claim in against it, they have always been easy to deal with so I saw no reason to change. The renewal quote was £302 but as I plan on doing a good few events during the year I got them to add on on event road section cover which bumped it up to £365. I have previously been buying insurance at each event, which is £18.50 a time, so if I compete in 4 events this year I will have made an overall saving on last year, and every event after that is a bonus.

So with the easy job done the next one is to get a new MOT. I know the Nova is generally solid so the MOT doesn't hold much fear foe me, and if there is play in the suspension parts I would rather change them anyway rather than have something fail during an event. I am lucky enough that Mark next door is a Vauxhall mechanic, he took a look over her and said all was well except my front tyres are done and the sump gasket is weeping, easy peasey.

I picked up a sump gasket, 5L of 5W40, and an oil filter in Fyfes and delivered them to Mark to fit. I could do the work myself but as I said the house is taking up all my time and Mark isn't too hard to pay. Unfortunatly the 1600 Nova engine needs two sump gaskets, one above and one below the baffle plate, so only half the job was done the first night. I rang Fyfes the next day to get another gasket and the first thing the fella on the phone asks is did I know that engine requires two gaskets! Why hadn't I been talking to him the day before and I could have got the work done in one go rather than having to push the car between garages with no sump attached and dripping oil everywhere!

So with that sorted I just had some new tyres to buy. I had been running a pair of Vredestein Quatrac 3's and I had been pleased with them but I had done a few autotests with them and pretty much destroyed them. I only managed to get 974 miles out of them which is pretty shocking but I suppose that is to be expected when I turned so much of the tread depth into smoke. I had heard good things about the Yokohama A021-R's and all the southern autotesters are using them but when I priced them they were €130 each which is just too much to spend on tyres when I have new house stuff to buy. As I don't seem to get much mileage out of my tyres anyway I just took the easiest option and bought the cheapest Kumho's that Modern Tyres had, which turned out to be ecowing KH19's. An eco tyre on a rally car is a strange thing but sure we will see how it goes, no more autotesting though.

Insurance: £365
Gaskets: £7.96 each, £15.92 total
Oil filter: £3.40
5W40: £25.60
Labour: £65
Kumho ecowing KH19: £45 each, £90 total
MOT fee: £30.50
REIS Motorsport Insurance Specialists
Fyfes Motor Factor
Modern Tyres
Kumho Tyre ecowing KH19

Wee Con's Corolla Rally Car

My cousin Con Carey has bought himself a 20v Toyota Corolla AE86 rally car. It hasn't been log booked yet so still needs some work to finish it off but the work that has been done looks good and the shell seems straight and solid so it should be a real good wee car when they are finished working on it. It came with a blown engine but a replacement has already been sourced so it shouldn't be too long before its out on the stages.



Wheel Bolt to Stud and Nut Conversion

I started this job about a year ago and got it half done but then I crashed the car which put finishing the work on hold. I finally got round to finishing the other half of the car last week.

I had bought a full kit of bits from AG Motorsport along with got some permanent Loctite 270 threadlock to hold them in place. A quick clean of the threads with a M12x1.5 tap and I was ready to get stuck in.

There isn't must involved in putting in the studs, just a drop of Loctite and lock two nuts together so than I can wind the studs into the hubs.

AG do a 60mm or 80mm long stud and I went for the 80mm ones. That was the wrong choice!

They stick out so far I couldn't tighten up the wheel nuts as they fouled the socket. So off came the wheels and out came the hacksaw. It was a real PITA having to cut the studs on the car but that will teach me to not measure things up correctly.

As I didn't want to repeat the same mistake when it came to doing the other side of the car I measure up correctly and trimmed the studs in the vice taking about 23mm off. The shorter studs made it a bit tight to get the 2 nuts on but I got them installed easy enough. I'm really pleased with how they turned out and should make changing the wheels much easier. Just for reference, the Haynes manual says to torque the wheel nuts to 90Nm.

AG Motorsport
I bought my studs and nuts from AG but that is just where I found them at the time, I though the price was ok and the service was good. I have since been told that Rally Design are cheaper so that might be a better bet if your looking to source some for your project.

New Tyres

I was in fairly desperate need for some new tyres on the Nova, the ones I had on it were well past their best. I had been planning to just get another pair of Pirelli P6000's but Andy Hughes changed my mind. He had used Vredestein Quatrac 3's on his 106 for the Circuit Retro and was really pleased with how they performed. The Quatrac 3 is an all seasons tyre, half snow & mud and half dry tarmac. I think it should suit the style of rallying I do very well. Most of the nav rallies are in the winter, on dirty back roads, so the more open tread pattern should work well for clearing the mud and water. And the more solid, dry tarmac biased outside edge should help the tyre handle and wear better. The M&S section of the tyre should also be an advantage on the very dirty lanes and farm yards I find myself in on lanes rallies. Hopefully it will be a winner all round.

The tyres were £55 each fitted for a 185/60 R14.

Ciaran

Bit of Work on the Nova

There was some work needed on the Nova before the Orchard nav rally. First on the list was to get some more light. I'd toyed with the idea of buying some expensive spotlights, but then I caught myself on and bought some much cheaper and 80% as good Ring Rally Giants from eBay. Spotlights are much to vulnerable on a night nav car to spend a lot of money on. They would be the first things to get wrecked if I ended up nosing into a hedge somewhere. As there is plenty of space between the bumper and the front panel on a Nova I decided the best/easiest way to mount them would be to weld a couple of plates to the bumper steel and then make up some simple "L" shaped bracket to come up over the top.

All the wiring was still in the car from the previous small spotlights that I had so I only had to ran a bit of new cable to the lights and tidy up the existing wiring and I ready to rock.

I'm really pleased with how the brackets turned out and the lights are now mounted very solidly. I might even get away without having to fit any stabiliser bars.

The next job was refitting my front mud flaps to the new wings. I made up some small brackets from aluminium angle and used Rivnuts to attach them to the car. Rivnuts are brilliant. They are similar to a rivet but have a threaded insert to allow you to screw a bolt into sheet metal. I intend to use them in many other places on the car.

The final job was to make up a bracket to mount my trip and rally timer. I wanted to move the instruments closer to Rachel as she was having trouble reaching them while belted in. The easiest way to do that was with a simple folded bracket.

However this wasn't up to the job. It bounced about and vibrated so much it was next to useless. Rather than scrap the bracket and start again I thought that a brace at the top would hold it all together much more firmly. I made up this wee steady bar and it has done the job perfectly.

So that's a few job checked of the list, but as always there are plenty more to do.

Ciaran

MOT Pass

Brilliant news, the rally Nova passed it's MOT yesterday. All I need now is some road tax and I'm fully legal again. It feels like the car has been off the road for ages so it was great to take it for a drive. I love driving it, it's raw and noisy but I get a kick out of every mile I do in it. There is still plenty of work to be done to tidy the car up but at least I can use it again now. I have bought all the equipment that is needed to build the car up to MSA spec so I can get it log booked, then I can use it in any event I want.

I would never have got it finished without all the work that Niall has done on it. He is really enthusiastic about the rally car and he mechanics at 10 times the speed I do.

Engine Running Again

Got the engine fitted back in to the rally car on Saturday and got it all plumbed and wired. I was very pleased to see that it started first turn of the key and seems to running sweet. The radiator from the donor car has a leak so I picked up a new one today, £54 and they even had one in stock.

The four branch exhaust manifold got bent by the tie bar during the crash and it has closed off one of the branches by about 50%. It doesn't look like it will be easy to fix so I'll leave it as it is for now, I hope it doesn't cause any damage to the engine.

Nearly There

I had another great Saturday. Picked the Nova up from Nigel's workshop near Kilrea and was blown away by the work that he and Hargie had done in only two weeks. I was only really interested in getting the car straight and I wasn't that worried about how the car looked but it's good as new, all the panels have been repaired and there isn't a mark on it anywhere, amazing work. We got the car home and built it back up again from where it had been stripped for painting. Got all the glass back in, seats and harnesses back in, build up the "new" drivers door and other wee bits. Just need to get the engine back in and it should be ready to get back out on the road. Niall is servicing the engine this week and refitting it so when I get down on Saturday it should be all ready to fire up. It's great that Niall is so keen to help out, I wouldn't get anything done without him pushing me on, and also doing the work.

So to add up the costs of the rebuild:
New front panel, £123
Drivers door, £35
Nova saloon donor, £40
Hargie for the bench work, £170
Nigel for body work, £380
Service parts and oils for engine/gearbox, £80
Radiator, £54 + £20 coolant, added 06 June 2011

So a current running total of £902, not including diesel for towing the bent shell about the country, not too far away from my £1000 estimate. I think this was the cheapest option. If I had chosen to re-shell the rally car I don't think I could have done it for under a grand, and I would have struggled to find a shell as solid as mine.

The Nova is Straight Once More

I got the good news yesterday that the jig work is finished on the Nova and everything (well not everything, but the important parts) are back pointing in the right direction. I haven't seen it yet but my brother tells me that Hargie has done a great job with it, and for £170 I'm delighted. Niall and my Dad did me a huge favour last night by collecting the car and taking it round to Nigel's. He previously sorted out the bodywork and painted it last year, he did a great job in 4 days so hopefully he can work his magic again. There is a fair bit more work this time but I'm not in a rush so he can take as long as he needs.

Very Productive Day

Yesterday was a great day. I spent it down at my parents house helping my brother to make some progress on the Nova rally car. We removed the engine from the rally car and stripped all the parts that I need to fix it from the Nova saloon donor car. Everything came apart easily with no headaches so we has all the machanicing done in a few hours.

Bent chassis leg:

The donor Nova looking sorry for itself:

Unfortunately the man that we had lined up to do the pulling work had a heart attack around Easter time so he is out of commission for a while. We were given the number for another local man who has a good reputation so gave him a ring on the off chance. He said he had space this week so to bring the car round straight away, happy days.

Bent car, straight bonnet:

As I don't have my trailer test yet I had to wait for my Dad to get home from work so he could tow the car round for me. It's a weird feeling being a fully grown man but still having to get my Dad to drive me places, it's been a long time since that's happened. I'll have to try to find the time over the summer to sit my trailer test. I'm planning on doing a lot of events in the future so being able to tow will be essential.

Nova Saloon Parts Car

Being off work on Friday for the Royal Wedding was great, it gave me a chance to finally pick up the Nova saloon that I'm going to use to repair the rally car. The saloon has a rally history of it's own as it was campaigned with success in the NI nav rally championship by Neil Anderson and Andy Hughes. It's last event was the Dawnbreaker Inter-Association Rally in 2004 where it took a class win. It was then parked up in a garage in Ballywalter until I dragged it back out so that, at least some of its parts, can hopefully go on to future class wins. The saloon wings are different from the hatchback wings but they will do for now to get her back on the road.

It's still wearing its competition numbers from its last rally.

A big thank you to Richard Swanston for giving up his day to tow the car home.

Just out of interest these are the results and report from the saloon's last outing.
http://www.anicc.org.uk/Resources/Documents/20041112_NIMC_DawnbreakerRally_Results.pdf
http://www.anicc.org.uk/Blog.aspx?b=210

Nova Accident

There it is, looking sorry for itself. Unfortunately I had an accident while driving the Nova last week and it's put my plans for the year back a good bit. There was a fair bit of damage done and every panel has been damaged to some extent. I plan to rebuild her as it's still a solid shell underneath and solid Nova's are very hard to come by these days. I think it will take about £1000 to put her right so it will be beans on toast for dinner and no nights out for the next few months. I have just recently bought the parts that are needed to upgrade the car so I can get it MSA log booked, but now I have no rally car to put the new parts on, and no money to fix the car, not a very good situation.

Couple of new parts have been ordered. New complete pattern front panel (GM 90 320 506) from a shop on eBay, £123, and a new genuine thermostat housing (GM 90 234 805) because the original one got broken in half in the crash, £35.98.

http://stores.ebay.co.uk/Crash-Repair-Parts?_trksid=p4340.l2563
http://www.vauxhallworldparts.com/partsearch/partdetail.php?partid=1878

Getting the Nova ready 2011

With January over it's about time that I started getting the Nova ready for the year. There are a few small jobs that I need to take care off, nothing that would stop me starting a rally, just things that need tidying up.

First on the list is a blow in the exhaust. I have a full Ashley Exhausts system and it's always had a slight leak round the joint between the 4 branch and the centre section. There was no mention of it when I bought the system but there should be a gasket on the joint. It's a standard Vauxhall part (9044 8071) so I picked one up today and it only took a few minutes to get it fitted. So a nice handy job to get me back into the way of things, lets hope the rest are as straight forward.

The rally Nova

It's about time I introduced you to my rally car. Actually calling it a rally car at this stage is a bit of a stretch if I'm honest. It's really just a stripped out road car with some safety gear added for my own protection but it puts a huge smile on my face none the less.

The glamour shots:

These photos were taken on the hill climb section of the Knockalla stage of the Donegal International Rally 2010 (the day before the real rally cars got there). At this stage I'd owned the car in its component parts for about 4 years but the build had stalled quickly after the initial burst of energy. Finishing up my University course and then trying to build up some money after getting a proper job meant that I hadn't looked in the direction of the "rally car" for nearly 3 years. But with a flurry of activity brought on by a week off work for Easter my brother and I (well mostly my brother, hes the mechanic of the house, I hand him tools) started into the Nova and got the new/other engine fitted and the car back on its wheels. So with a lot more small jobs done, a cheap respray and a pass from the nice MOT man the rally car was finally out on the road where it belongs.