I’m pleased to report that we set the car on it’s own feet on Sunday for the first time in many months!
Wiring is coming along nicely. The rear of the car (lights, fuel pump, interior light) is completely wired. The interior lighting and instrumentation is mostly wired. All that remains is the engine management and some final testing and tweaking. Brendon from RalleyTuned is doing a fantastic job!
We also installed our shiny new JVAB custom coilovers and, quite simply, they are amazing. We probably spent a good hour just staring at them and imagining the forces necessary to damage them at all. These things are well-engineered tanks. They also extend the travel of our suspension by inches, requiring some “customization” of the top of mounting point for the A-arm. A couple install/remove/re-install cycles, a little heat and a lot of hammering got the offending piece of metal to behave and allowed the axle to roam free from full compression to full droop.
On top of doing a ton of wiring and installing the suspension, we also installed the intake, fuel pressure regulator, sealed up a leak in the rear lexan, put on the mirrors, and started the install for the crank trigger ignition.
Here are a couple pictures. More in the build gallery!
THE American two-wheel drive Rally Series updates and refines its already impressive format. The Demon Rally Team will be competing at Rally Idaho, the Max-Attack series Western event, with hopes to qualify to compete against the nation’s best Two-wheel drive racers in Michigan on August 28-29.
Next weekend is the Olympus Rally and it’s pretty clear we’ll be missing our second chance to go run the Doo Wops roads and fight off challengers for our record for the Brooklyn stage. Nevertheless, it’s important to get our car set up right for our Max Attack challenge in Idaho. We hope to be able to shakedown the car at Oregon Trail before heading out there, but with 70 or so hours more of wiring work to be done and only one day a week to work on it, even that goal now looks unlikely.
Despite the gloomy outlook, work does progress. Last Sunday we installed the washer bottle in a custom location, welded up more holes in the passenger compartment, installed the map light and strengthened the handbrake mount. We’re looking forward to making more progress this weekend. Here are pictures of last Sunday’s work:
For more technical pictures of the Golf, check out the build gallery.
