Fitting the dash and saving weight

Tonight, Dan tackled a fun task- Fitting the dashboard. The rollcage was built with the dash removed, and the only way to fit it back in was to cut it into two parts. We deliberated for a while about where the best place would be, and then Dan went to town with the sawzall. We still have some work to put it back together, though.





Dan also spent some time using a spot-weld cutter to remove unneeded chunks of metal (like the big heavy brackets needed to mount the rear seats and seatbelts.




I spent the night installing the driveline, rear axles, and straightening suspension link.s The car now has a complete drivetrain... except for the motor.


Next on the agenda is to run all the brake lines and start thinking about electrical.

Welding Training

Dan and I spent most of Saturday working on the new rally car.

We had help from Liam, Dan's son. Liam was quite interested in welding, so Dan gave him a nice lesson.


Here's a picture of what Dan was welding.


Here's a picture of the box that Dan built to hold the hydraulic handbrake. It's not very exciting here, but Dan did a nice job, and this will let our car have a cool feature.
I spent the day doing less exciting things, like building a custom castle-nut to replace the one I stripped last week. And I gutted the stock mechanical emergency brake setup- we won't need it once the hydraulic system is working. I also pulled out a rear axle that was messed up.



Today, I made a run to Subaru John's and picked up some goodies. I got some replacement rear axles, a flange to make our driveline work, and ...... AND.... John found us the motor that we've been waiting for. This is a blown motor that has all the parts we'll need to finish our nicely built motor. So, it was a good day!

Aluminum control arms!

I made a great find on Craigslist- Front aluminum control arms. These replace the stock steel ones and are much stronger. They're expensive, but I picked them up for about half the price of new.

So, these went on last Thursday.


Dan also spent some time welding up the bracket to hold the hydraulic hand brake. (Don't look directly at the weld in this photo... you could go blind!)


Progress is slow. We just haven't had much time to work on the car. Hopefully in the next two weeks, the braking system will be done, and the car will be down on all four wheels. Then, we can start bodywork, wiring, and thinking about getting the motor in.