Mawk's Evo 3 New build

[Mark]

After smashing up my old Evo 3 back at Bateman's Bay in September 2006, I finally got enough money to buy an imported black race/rally Evo 1 in late February 2007. The aim is to swap across all mechanicals and body kit onto the E1 shell and turn it back into an E3 with some of the lessons learnt from the old shell.
There is a more detailed few articles in some of the editions of the LCCC's Wheel Wobble this year...

I thought I'd chuck up a few of the photos of the story so far:

-Photo 0:
New car

-Photo 1:
New car minus engine and various other parts

-Photo 2:
Using the 'Simey' patented Liquid Nitrogen Tar removal technique, Fro and Simey smack out the (double layered in some parts) tar from the floor. The three of us stripped out 17kg in about an hours works. Thanks to Simey and BOC for the Liquid Nitrogen and Fro for the extra hands - all on a Saturday night.

-Photo 3:
Frinky seam welding the car. I asked Frinky what are the key areas i.e. the wheels wells to seam weld, expecting a concise technically minded answer. Instead I got one out of the two: "I dunno, let's just do it all" So between the strut towers he seam welded it all as well as a few spots that the old car had shown up. Frinky gave a solid two days, 12 hours worth of his time over a long weekend. Champion effort Frinky. Thanks to Daniel Andres as well for the emergency bottle....

-Photo 4:
The mess that unfolds when you pull a car apart.

-Photo 5:
The old and the new...

-Photo 6:
Rod Kilby made a cage for me, just up the road in Hall. The design I used was kind of stolen from looking at Batesy's S2000 car - specifically, the use of an inverted V in the roof and main hoop supports from the rear strut tops - I figured Batesy probably had a idea of the perfect compromise between weight, stiffness and safety. The cage design isn't the latest and greatest but it a compromise between cost, weight, stiffness and safety. If you look at the old cage that was in the old Evo 3, it didn't have the Sainz bars, diagonals in the main hoop and only one diagonal from the rear right strup top to the main hoop. All up, about 34m of metal. So, I think the car will be heavier than the old unfortunately.

Thanks to Fro for getting the formal approval from CAMS for those inverted V supports and letting me know what was and wasn't legal. As much as I wanted to run three bars to the front strut tops or run a support down to the rear diff...

-Photo 7
Different cage view again. The Frinky seam welding of the door followed by my painting...

-Photo 8
Cage painting. My next door neigbour, Rob, runs Fusion Painting, who pre-domaintantly paints buildings using Dulux paints. He got his hands on some
paint and offered to paint the car to stop me gibbering. The paint he used is a two-pack, non-porous, epoxy-based paint designed for painting industrial machinery! It is sprayed using this special high volume, low pressure compressor.

-Photo 9
90 minutes later, the primer is down on Saturday evening. The car starts to look like a giant model kit!


Next post for more photos and more gibberish....

Mark

[Rallyray]

Mark,

You need to be a member of the BMSC to use this section!!!!

[Mark]

-Photo 10 - 13
...So the paint goes down. Thought I'd try and get a colour similar to the works Citroens and Mitsubishis and we ended up with this colour called: 'sparkling aluminimum'. It's pretty funky. The advantages are:
-It's pretty cheap in terms of cost.
-It looks freakin awesome as it is metallic based.
-Being non-porous and epoxy-based, it is similar to a workshop floor and hence oil/petrol and rough treatment won't damage it.
-Took under an hour to put the coat on, as seen here.
-Dry to touch within a few minutes, which means when you're crawling around a car spraying from different angle you're less likely to stick yourself in some wet paint.

What you're seeing here, is the first coat. There is another coat to go onto tomorrow followed by a gloss overcoat to protect it even more. One concern is whether it will be too reflective so we might have to go the black paint surrounding the windscreen from the drivers point of view.

Next point of investigation is to figure out whether to get the outside painted in a spray booth or just keep rolling the home grown dice and find a suitable paint as per the inside.

So, other than that the car will be pretty similar mechanically to the old one. I've stripped the wiring harness of a few wires around the A/C and stereo and saved around 3kg but will have to see if the car will still start when the times comes.
It needs a new roof skin as there is rust where the old glue has trapped moisture and rusted out quite badly.

Mechanically, the turbo is due for a rebuild and Richard Leitis is the current guineau pig for improvements to the induction and exhaust so we'll see how he goes on the dyno this week to see if I'll step up to that plate to try and keep up with Ray Day (when he gets running next year) and Daz, when he gets his hands on some PooDrive nitrous or something similar.

The old seats probably need replacing: there are some funky OMP ones with headrests down in SA for around $750 each:http://www.autosportdirect.com.au/ompseats-1.htm
I saw a twin pack of Sabelt 6-points seatbelts from Demon Tweeks or Rallynuts for around $600 all up as well.

So that's about it for now.

Enjoy.

Mark

[Mark]

Originally Posted by Rallyray

Mark,

You need to be a member of the BMSC to use this section!!!!

Shouldn't you be polishing your ball vent(s?) or something Ray

Mark

[tortfeaser]

That interior colour looks the shiz. Good stuff. That Fro just pops up everywhere.

[fro]

Luckily the car has no driveline componentry for me to destroy just yet. I'm not allowed near it once it gets a driveshaft/diff/gearbox/crankshaft installed.

[Matt Dyne]

Mark, good to see you getting back on the horse. It can be a long and tedious road, but supposedly is worth it in the end.

Have you got a goal in mind for when you'll next compete?

M

[Mark]

Thanks Matt.

No goal in mind-a stress-free approach is the mindset. I'm trying to do it 'right' this time without shortcuts or rolling it out when it isn't ready. I've got to get that reliability right to make it more cost-effective.
Hopefully, I'll have the self discpline to organise a test day before the first rally and shake the damn thing down.

Mark

[Daz555]

Originally Posted by Mark

Thanks Matt.

No goal in mind-a stress-free approach is the mindset. I'm trying to do it 'right' this time without shortcuts or rolling it out when it isn't ready. I've got to get that reliability right to make it more cost-effective.
Hopefully, I'll have the self discpline to organise a test day before the first rally and shake the damn thing down.

Mark

"Do it Right" you say... I'd have left the Aircon in then and the protective carpet for that fancy new paint.... Apart from those couple of over sights it's looking good....

[tamsey]

Originally Posted by Daz555

"Do it Right" you say... I'd have left the Aircon in then and the protective carpet for that fancy new paint.... Apart from those couple of over sights it's looking good....

[Martino]

Originally Posted by Daz555

"Do it Right" you say... I'd have left the Aircon in then and the protective carpet for that fancy new paint.... Apart from those couple of over sights it's looking good....

The car originally came with TV aerials. However Mark took them off. He was muttering something about me not paying attention on transports as it is

Looks like Mark and Fro was to place my seat so low I will need a periscope to see over the dash. Up side is there will be an A pillar between me and the shrubbery.

[Daniel]

Originally Posted by tamsey

Not everyone can have a broken down Corona with 4 flat tyres in their driveway to be able to pretend to their neighbours they own a rally car Tamsey...

[Bogan]

Is that why you sold yours Daniel? Got sick of pretending?



I know, I know, the pot and the kettle and something...

[Rus]

Originally Posted by tamsey

Looks the biz Mark, can't wait to jump in the silly seat...

[Mark]

Thought I'd just put up a few more photos of the build. I've got the car running and managed to reverse it today into the next garage bay - to get the wreck out onto the driveway, from the backyard (Thanks Paulie!). I got it running about two weeks back on the second attempt: just had to tighten the positive electrode onto the battery so I was pretty happy with that effort.

I started sanding back the outside of the body yesterday (thanks Spac for the advice) and that will be the main entertainment over the long weekend.

The longest single bug bear in going from when it was painted a few months back to getting the car running was simply running the old brake and fuel lines into the car and securing them properly. All up it was also 3 days effort getting the bends in the right place. I was a bit rusty in the re-assembly order in some spots so sometimes it was two steps forward, one step back. Doing a thorough job cleaning out the intercooler and pipes with water and then thinners then using a cloth and deciding which pipes to use from the old or new car took about a day and a half. I also repainted them in an effort to reduce heat soak but whether it makes a difference or not, well, it's probably pretty trivial. I tried to do the job properly and just cleaned and painted as many parts that looked tatty from the last car. Repacked the driveshafts as well.

The other good thing with the car starting on its second go and launching straight into it's rotational idle routine meant that I at least got the basic part of my wiring loom hacking right. Before- and after- photos as attached.

The old roof was rusted in some key places and I thought I might as well do the job properly so I went and saw Thomas Barrett at TTS and got loaned a spot weld drill bit and some preparation paint as well as some advice (-Thanks Thomas!!!) on how to replace the roof properly. A fun filled saturday night was spent drilling out the 100+ spot welds... So, the new roof panel is pretty much glued on with Sikaflex and few key pop rivets front, back and sides. I think I put a slight dent in it (the roof panel) lifting it out of the support cradle that it came in but it doesn't look visible once it is on. It was a two man job to fit during the week, so I got my mum over to give me a hand with fitting the roof.

I wanted to lose some weight with the battery with the current unit weighing about 12+kg and needing a battery box. I found a cheap and lighter alternative to the Odyssey at http://allpurposebatteries.com.au/?p...b8f14b706665cf
Weighs around 9.5kg and seems to still punch out enough amps for the first 20-30 seconds but only time will tell. Running the old battery from the boot was costing me 1.2V over the length of the 3.5m long wire so this will allow the battery to sit behind the Nav seat with less voltage drop as well.

That's probably enough gibberish for now. Next step is to prep the outside of the car and figure out a good way of securing the auxiliaries inside the cabin like jack, battery, i/c tank, triangles, torch, wheel brace etc as I've never been happy with the old mounts I've used in the past. Recruit the brother-in-law, Simon, to run a separate wiring loom for all the rally-specific wiring such as Terratrip, Terracom, fuses etc so it can all be 'de-bugged' easily.

Still no rush or any event to aim for but I'm still thinking another six months to do the job properly and blow everything up in testing...

Mark