Fabia rally car build.NOW TDI POWER PAGE 4.

[TeflonTom]

As a matter of interest jim, why did you go for the mpi gearbox and a felicia adaptor plate? Was it a case of just using what was already there? The 16v fabia box should bolt straight to that engine as it is.. I guess the mpi box has a more favourable diff/final drive ratio then?

afh cylinder head is far more robust in my opinion, they have direct overhead tappets rather than the roller rockers you get in the avy/arc engines, they also have a slightly wider valve inclination angle too so they flow a bit better, you can get one-piece stainless steel valves for the afh heads too from oem parts stock.

[felicia16v]

Urban myth there mate, the AVY will not go to any fabia box the bellhousing is wrong by a long way, the only way of using the 16v fabia box is to reblock the avy into an aua/aub which I have the option of but the fabia 16v gearbox's are a bit weak and I don't think they would be the best bet for lots of abuse. the 8V box is basically a felicia box inside a fancy casing and cable change and as we know plenty strong enough and has the option of a 4.8 cwp from the 1.0 which would suit gravel nicely.

engine will stay standard for now until I get the rest of the car dialed in then we will see about more ponies.

[felicia16v]

Right not had much to update on lately, mainly sorting coolant pipework which I'll get some pics up later on and finalizing the engine loom and battery box, may have had a cheeky nip up the road to check the clutch operation etc too :think:

I have moved the polo immob box behind the dash now and luckily the redundant airbag loom had most of the wires I needed to connect it up and it all lives nicely where the radio used to, unfortunatly I had to do something about the dash panel immob cutting the signal to the ecu so i ended up tracing the pcb tracks in it to the immob chip and cutting it in half with a grinder :rofl: , strangely enough it doesn't interfere now and all the dash still works as normal.

While in the dash I also removed the airbag,steering and immob LED's off the board with a gentle tap with a screwdriver as they were annoying me somewhat (I prefer the simple approach).

The navagator's seat is fitted now and the drivers is next (I should give 16yr old Luke a mention here as he spent all sunday grinding and welding to fit it as he will be sitting in it most of the time :peek: ) then we can get the extinguishers in and mudflaps on so I can get a photo and sort an MSA logbook for it while we finish bits off.

Picking up fabia vrs front hubs and golf mkv calipers with Mintex 1155 pads at the weekend so that should stop it nicely and certainly put an end to me pulling up at the workshop with smoke pouring off the brakes (did I mention it goes well ) so they should be an easy fit hopefully along with disk brake rears.

Think thats it for now we have an acceptance for the rally so we WILL be there its 26th Jan so I have a month left minus 1 weekend due to going trialling the weekend before..

pics soon as I know you all love em :love:

[felicia16v]

40mm inverted Bilstein for the front, actualy a genuine 909 Escort Cosworth front strut casing which I shortened and adapted to fit my felicia, now with the adaptor piece removed it is exactly the right size to fit a fabia hub. Using AVO damping adjustable 40mm insert which i had made to my spec to suit the felicia, these range in damping from softer than the std ones to oh they must be seized .

as luck is on my side it also turns out that they are exactly the same length as the fabia std ones too.

along with the alloy topmount I had to butcher to fit up inside the fabia inner strut mount.

288mm brakes fitted up

unfortunately as the spring is so long the wheel now fouls it when its bolted on so I need a shorter spring so that the lower mount is higher than the tyre and I really need to go harder with the front springs too as they are currently 225lb/in which is a compromise really (6N polo with same engine ran 200 lb/in for gravel and up to 340lb/in for tar so I recon on 270 as a good starting point).

I'm just about out of money now so will have to use whatever I can find lying about for now lol but luckily most of the spending is done really.

more later

[felicia16v]

bad news tonite, it turns out after fitting the ns hub and strut that the drivers side hub is bent like a banana which is why the tyre is hitting the spring, the ns clears the spring by easily 5mm with the same wheel fitted :wall:

just what I need with 3 weeks to go and no cash

At this point I am not sure whether to try and make the std hub work with the 288 caliper and disk or try and get some good pads for the 256mm calipers and run with those or try and track down a hub from somewhere..

[TeflonTom]

my gut instinct would be to go for the smaller brakes, that way you can get away with using 14" wheels..

[felicia16v]

I've sorted another hub now mate, I also have no 14" tar tyres but a good selection of 15"'s so its always going to be on 15" or bigger as there is more choice of tyre size and compound and once I have a 4.8>1 cwp in there it will be quite low geared still lol.

[felicia16v]

Update on this, passed mot

hub arrived on tuesday and we fitted it that evening, all good and the tyre now misses the spring which is a bonus.

had a full weekend on the car and removed the rear beam to fit the better vRS bushes and convert to disks, luke cleaned it all off and painted it all to make it look better and while the beam was off we made up most of the exhaust to suit, starting with the flange on the manifold I took the hole in it from 42mm to 60mm (same size as the gti manifold bore at the gasket) on my lathe and found some 60mm exhaust bends to suit it and go under the sump to a smaller bore flexi (52mm) pipe and the rest of the system is 52mm pipe with a single large box and now exits thru the rear bumper wrc style .

Getting much closer now we have brakes all round and an exhaust etc so have done a few miles to settle it all down a bit and get the feel of it especially the new rear suspension which I thought was way to stiff but actually feels good in the car, I'm using progressive rear springs from an octavia lowering kit along with the height adjusters to set the height of the spring and new golf mk2 Spax rear struts with the spring seats cut off (same length and everything lol) the front is now on 2.1/4 14" 225lb linear springs which are a bit soft for tarmac but should help find some grip with the january weather thats forecast lol.

I have decided that the std clutch is not going to stand the abuse for long after trying a hard launch on slicks it just span the clutch up with no attempt at spinning a wheel so I got on the phone to Helix and ordered a 3 pad paddle clutch to suit the skoda splines and to my amazement it arrived next day even tho they said they had no stock and would need 10 days to build one ?

so thats tomorrow's project I have a new pressure plate to fit with it but only a std one as that should be fine.

lots of pictures for me to sort but I'll do that tomorrow eve.

[Tech1e]

Spare gearbox now in my unit should you need it

[felicia16v]

Cheers mate I have a couple of spares here already and I am going to get a 4.8>1 cwp from a 1.0 fabia soon to build into one of them along with a lsd, then we may be testing the strength of the gearbox lol

[felicia16v]

Pictures lol

£178 worth of Helix paddle clutch

part no there if anyone else fancies one

I'm using a std pressure plate and that one was £25 brand new from TPS so not worth bothering with a used one at that price

tarted up rear beam

oh thats luke in the background, not sure why he looks a bit stoned lol must be tired

exhaust from the front

exhaust from the rear

I just need to flare the tail pipe a bit and put some heat protection on the bumper now

fitted the clutch today and found a problem which may have caused a non finish on the event, one bolt that holds the pressure plate on appeared to be loose but on closer inspection the hole it was threaded into was a slightly different depth to the others and it had bottomed out before fully clamping the clutch down, it had elongated the hole in the pressure plate and was starting to fret against the flywheel mounting face.

I fitted new bolts and shortened them more this time so that should not be a problem again (these holes are original from when the flywheel was made and I made a mistake of presuming that they would all be the same depth of thread as the 1 I checked ).

I also fitted the electric cut off switch and horn switch but no pics of those today.

[Tech1e]

Looking good, like the exhaust.

[felicia16v]

Cheers I'm not entirely happy with the exhaust yet but I am having to use whats to hand now, most of it was recycled from my felicia rally car apart from a 5 ft length I had to buy in, swapping to a steel sump tomorrow so will be more clearance and I can then make a support for the front pipe off the rear of the engine block.

I am happy with the way it exits the bumper tho that is how the wrc cars are and it looks tidy just need to do an nice job with the heatproof silver tape now.

[waool1988]

Love it. I am planning to do the same if god may :think:

[TeflonTom]

I was going to suggest a steel sump, but you've thought f that already..

[felicia16v]

Hi Tom

yea I have a sump off a felly 1.6, I just need to baffle it a bit before I fit it, picked up a big sheet of 5mm alloy chequer plate today for the sump guard and spent ALL bloody afternoon removing the side windows and fitting antishatter film on them which is one of the new rules for rallying dunno why when the windows are safety glass to start with grrr.

Clutch all fitted now and what a difference thats made to it much more bite now.

[TeflonTom]

Baffles a good idea, those engines suffer from hideous oil surge problems, and they do breath pretty heavy too, you can get a special doo dah that goes under the oil filler cap that gives you an extra breather pipe.

the felicia steel sump will fit engine just fine as it is but you won't be able to use the original bolts from the gti engine, you need the shorter bolts from the aee engine because the steel one has a much thinner flange profile than the cast aluminium sump.

[NoSmokeNoPoke]

Exhaust looks great - Very 'motorsport',

[Trev.]

Love this build!

[felicia16v]

nearly there now folks, the entry list has been published now at http://www.crswrallies.co.uk/main.html

car 51 with a turbo 4x4 ford anglia behind lol ..... also there is a rather interesting sounding Fabia at car 80 ,its in the same class as the 4x4's and says 2.0 as the engine size so I will be interested to see what that is.

spent ages fitting little bits like the fire extinguisher and cable pulls etc and all the fiddly little jobs that need doing like making a thermostat for the cooling system and fitting MSA legal mudflaps etc so I can get it MSA logbooked before the rally,

the main bits left now are the under guards for the engine/gearbox and the fuel tank altho this event is all smooth tar it will need some protection and I am making the sumpguard from scratch with a big piece of 5mm alloy chequerplate and some rollbar tubing for the front supports and some kevlar sheet for the fuel tank protection from sharp stones etc.pics tomorrow hopefully lol

[felicia16v]

Just about done now ready for the rally :think:

I am taking her to be MSA logbooked tomorrow which basically involves checking the safety gear is all in place and correctly installed etc. We had a busy weekend as the trial was cancelled due to the snow we had so that helped a bit and allowed me to get the sumpguard made up and mounted as I wanted rather than rushing it, also I made up a baffled steel sump to fit in place of the alloy one that came on the engine and upon removing the alloy sump I found a long M10 bolt with no head :sweat: just rattling around in there, this was from no 4 main bearing cap and the head had sheared off allowing the theaded bit to unscrew .

good old ebay engines lol.

checked the main cap and bearing to see everything was ok so I replaced the 2 bolts for it and fitted the sump back on lol, it seems fine and has good oil pressure so I will give it a set of new bolts and big end shells after the rally when time is less pressing.

I made the sumpguard from some 5mm alloy chequerplate a friend had lying around and bent it in my metal bender

its pretty hard stuff to bend cold and I had no means of getting a sheet that big heated enough the bend easily so used the 5 ton jack and the lift at the work lol, did the job fine.

This evening I made the drivers side engine mount from scratch as the std one just allowed too much movement and caused wheel hop when trying to put the power down in the damp, I used a solid bush from a nissan navara front wishbone (had one lying around that was bent lol) so its pretty solid now.

I'll put some pics up tomorrow of the finished car and some more technical pics too

[TeflonTom]

Haa i love the ghetto metal bending rig... Reminds of where I used to live there was a telgraph pole and a lamp post right next to each other and I used them as a mandrel fr bending tubing quite often until one day the fecking thing fell over...

loving the build still, do you have to have fire extinguishers plumbed in for the msa thing?

[felicia16v]

yea gotta use whats available lol.

basics for stage rallies are min 2.25 ltr AFFF extinguisher with piping and nozzle to the engine bay and triggered externally and internally by both occupants while fully belted up, 1.5 ltr AFFF hand held extinguisher (I have a 2ltr one), must have a battery isolator switch fitted again externally and internally triggered, anti shatter film on all side windows, seats and belts FIA approved and in date, and the really serious kit...

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

mudflaps on all wheels 4mm thick and 40mm out from the tyre lol

fuel tank must be protected and thats about it for the logbooking stage.

basically because I've been in a bit of a rush to build it for this weekend I have left lots of bits to do in the future like the brake lines and fuel line are still underneath and could get damaged if I do any forestry events etc but this weekend will be a good test hopefully and give me something to build from as long as the bloody snow buggers off lol

[felicia16v]

passed logbooking this morning he couldn't find anything I had missed apart from not having yellow on the battery -tv lead

I picked up 8 wheels today from out and about and they all rub on the bloody springs which means a small spacer is needed to make them clear so as I have no time left I cut up a pair of old brake disks and machined them in the lathe to make a spacer out of them lol, then we fitted the stud conversion studs and found that a couple of them fouled the bearing housing when screwed fully in safe to say its been a trying evening and there is still a few little jobs to do like intercom wiring etc. it needs to be on the trailer tomorrow night ready to leave friday morning so there is likely to be a bit of happening lol.

[NoSmokeNoPoke]

Finished pics needed