Rallye Project

All builds have some degree of ‘acquiring parts’ involved. Mine is no exception.

I now have a full exhaust system thanks to Neb’s mate selling this Janspeed 16v manifold and Mark Yates of 106 Parts doing me a stellar deal on a full 2″ Scorpion Pugsport with the motorsport cat. The manifold might be inline for some ceramic coating in the future, but that’s not a priority.

I also picked up a pair of Sparco buckets before Christmas and in the New Year sales managed to get a pair of side mounts for them. There’s some decisions to be made about the interior and how the seats are going to me mounted to go back in, but that’s quite low on the priority list and will have to wait. It’s looking like the tunnel being modded as per my S2 and new seat bars going in.

Aside from a few bits of trim, next on the list are polybushes all round and then I can get the front end built back up. After that it’s a rear beam refurb. As always the availability of funds limits progress on the parts front, but the big thing now is time – making forwards progress on the shell is about having some availability to do so.

Seeing as work around the house and garden shedding means the garage workshop now has a bench top work surface I can see and use for the first time in 9 months it’s time to crack on with the car again. So out with the angle grinders and spark up the MIG, let’s get back to it!

As part of fitting Colin Satchell’s strut brace, there’s a need to mod the inner skin on a standard bonnet to clear the brace. The thing is that by the time you do that the end result has weakened the structure and if your effort is anything like mine it will look gash. So I’m working on tidying that up and putting a bit of strength back in.

Roughed out

Fabrication in progress

Finally bought some new bits from Baker BM. They’ve tweaked the engine mount design since I bought one of the early ones. Looking forward to getting this fitted, but it needs some work on the car first.

To sort out the front struts, I opted for the fixed spherical bearing top mounts:

I then needed some new 2.25″ coil spring top caps which I drilled out to 12mm.

Consulted the hive mind over at the MIG-Welding forum and found an amazing new-to-me precision engineers in Liverpool and had the Bilstein B8s machined to lower the shoulder and give more threads for the fixing nut.

Fitted it all together, so nearly there on these legs now. May look at getting some helper springs. Also need to modify the steering arms on the legs to take Tommy’s rose jointed arms. Bought some rubber gaiters for the rose joints to keep those running smoother for longer.

Have done a bit more on the shell, but only putting in 30 minutes here and there.

Big hole patch done, will need a little bit of filler before final painting.

Smaller hole in the inner wing (same side of the car)

Cut out and replacement made last weekend and welded in tonight.

Progress is slow at 30 minutes here or there but is moving forward.

An update! So after months of walking past every time I was in the garage looking at this I decided that it was time to give the car some love.

Before I could sort the big hole I needed to make a patch repair:

Bit of CAD

Then transferred to steel and welded in. With that repaired I did a similar job on the big hole and welded in a plate there too. Was up against it time wise so no pics of that yet.

On my summer holiday in the beautiful south west I met Colin Satchell and picked up some bits. Fitting them has been on the cards for a while but time has been needed elsewhere.

Anyway whilst back in car mode, I consulted the oracle of all things 106 Rallye related and this awesome forum delivered the answer once again. Yes, both the top mounts were domed which is why these plates didn’t sit flat.

The solution to this was some precision engineering with a BFH, after which I have this:

Which meant I could try and fit the cross brace. Of course that didn’t fit because the seal lip on the edge of the scuttle stuck out too much. So a bit of trimming and refolding and a lick of paint sorted that:

Got a few bits on the way to progress a few other jobs on this car. I’m not sure it quite has momentum again as a build but if feels good to be sharing some updates again.

With the pedal box back in, time to sort out the steering column, as you’ll know if you’ve stripped the dash these were never painted from factory so the bare metal rusts up over time, more so if the interior has been damp. Mine was a poor state so was taken back to bare metal and primed up and satin blacked.

The original insert fittings were missing so ordered some M8 stainless rivnuts and pressed those in. Stainless rivnuts are a LOT harder to fit than aluminium ones. Might have bent the arms on my tool using box section to get more leverage.

End result is that the car has working steering for the first time since I bought it. Feels like progress!

Also dug the out the modified handbrake I made 3 and a half years ago. It was rattling around in a drawer in one of my tool boxes. I’d shot some primer on it but never finished it so decided to put that right.

Means I can modify the tunnel to fit this (currently wrapped in bubble wrap in a box full of spares I held on to on the basis I might need some day):

Started work on prepping the donor sill, lots of under seal to get off with a knotted wire wheel first!