I pulled the valve cover tonight, hoping to find valve train problems as described above. No such luck. Everything appeared to be right, but there was an awful lot of metal powder laying in there. Looks like it's gonna need an engine. I think I probably have to pull the engine and trans out together out the top. It doesn't appear the engine will come out by itself.
Its been a few months, life got a little full with house repairs and my garage became a carpentry shop for a while, but I'm ready to get back into this project. Since my last post I tried one more band aid fix on the engine. The knock was almost nonexistent when cold so I tried changing the oil with three quarts of 15w-40 and one quart of Lucas oil. It sounded good cold but once it got hot it sounded like the world was coming to an end right under the hood of the beloved BARF-1. So I'm back to engine yanking. The reason I'm posting is because as this is my first rallycross car I'm pretty clueless. I intend to make sure its running right and the brakes and steering are in solid shape, what else should I be doing to prep this thing for rally usage?
I'd say, to begin with, just sort out the running/driving/stopping issues then slap on some all season tires and hit some events.
After some seat time maybe put some used snows on the front.
The tires are actually one of the high points of the car. I cant remember what they are, just some offbrand that i've never heard of, but they are like new and have pretty big voids between the treads. They look like they should work really good for this.
Snow tires and either ground clearance or skidplates. That's about it for stock. 90% of going fast in Rallycross is the driver, I've dropped almost 10 seconds off my times just from experience in the cavalier. And yeah, Nationals you will have people complain about everything and anything, I even scared a guy so bad he had to nitpick everything on my car, and all I did to it was hood pins and snow tires lol
The replacement engine is 95% installed. I just have to pop the axle shafts back in and fill up all the fluids. I'm waiting on a belt and oil filter from rockauto to finish it off and try this thing out. The engine replacement was actually pretty easy on this car. I was dreading it because the engine and trans had to come out together through the top since I don't have a hoist and it looked like it was gonna be damn tight but it was actually pretty easy.
IT LIVES!!!!! Fired off the replacement engine today. Fired right and ran good. After running it a while too burp the coolant I took it on about five miles of back road test driving. (No title means no plates, so I had to keep it brief and keep a low profile.) It ran really good, wound up to 5000 rpms without any issues, and shifted great. The next rallyx event in the region isn't until Nov 6 so we have some waiting ahead of us.
We tore the old engine apart to see what was the cause of all the noise and unhappiness. As it turns the tops were broken off of three of the four pistons. I don't know why. I do know it had a new head gasket and new bottom end bearings. I wonder if they might have replaced the rings and had the gaps too tight. I guess it doesn't matter.
Excellent, always good to see another rally-X beast get running!
gearheadmb wrote: The next rallyx event in the region isn't until Nov 6 so we have some waiting ahead of us.
The next event for WOR is October 15 in Middletown.
In reply to EvanB:
Thanks for the heads up. I'll see if I can make that one. I still need to buy a helmet. Are you gonna be there?
I'll be there to help out, not sure if I am going to be racing since it is only a couple weeks after Nationals.
We do have loaner helmets available if you aren't able to buy one in time.
We made a little more progress on the car today. It was just supposed to be a quick check over before racing next weekend and removing the spare and jack. Then we were going to staple up the saggy headliner, but the staples started falling out immediately so we deleted the whole headliner. We also got rid of the muffler and just put in a piece of pipe (angle cut for classiness). Dad had just made hay in the back field and was kind enough to let us try the car out back there. We experimented with a few techniques to get the car to rotate, I had more luck with the hand brake than left foot braking. When we got back we decided the car had too much positive camber. We went as far as the factory slots would let us go, which put us at about 0°. That screwed the toe up so I'm trying to get that to something close to right as we speak. Hopefully we didn't do more harm than good. But we're pretty psyched about our first rallycross this coming weekend.
The WOR rallycross got pushed out to the 22nd instead of next weekend.
So I've completed my first Rallycross. How did I do, you may be asking yourself. Well, DFL as a matter of fact. Andy, who was also driving the car beat me soundly, so I need to work on my driving. A lot. His best time was about 2.5 seconds faster than my best time. But good God almighty what a good time. The car had some good points and bad points. For the good it ran really well and gave us no problems, except there a whine coming from under the hood by the end of the day. I think it was cooking the power steering fluid because the noise was gone once the car cooled down. The coolant temp stayed right in the happy zone and the drivetrain gave us no greif. The bad was the suspension. Some of the comments from bystanders were that it bounced around like an old caprice classic and one person asked if we actually had any shocks in rear. Well technically, yes. There were shocks in the rear, but 23 years of faithful service made them somewhat ineffective. So that was we focused on yesterday. A new set of shocks and struts from rockauto were installed. The fronts weren't original to the car and seemed to still be in okay shape so they Got put on shelf as backup spares. The rears were another story. I was able to go from fully extended to fully contracted, by hand, in less than a second. We took the car out on a hilly backroad and it feels a lot more composed over the humps and bumps at 75 mph than it did before. After shipping cost and a mail in rebate the final cost of the shocks and struts were $103. Pretty good, but I'm not sure how I feel about putting $103 worth of shocks on a car that I payed $100 for, but whatever. The way I figured it, so far with car, replacement engine, shocks, fluids and misc, we are into the car for a total of about $350. And we can go race. How awesome is that?
Going to attempt the string alignment this weekend that I read about in the achives. I'm going to set the camber at 0° and reset toe. It seems pretty straightforward, but if you know of any hidden pitfalls let me know.
I've heard that some toe out works well in the dirt.
We got out and raced again yesterday. It was an awesome good time. Something crazy happened, Andy won SF class. I was running in PF, but after each of us had nine runs I was only .5 seconds slower total. I kind of figured he and i would always be cellar dwellers in that car, and that we would just be racing each other, its awesome knowing we are actually competitive with other people.
Stupid question, perhaps ... but where are you running at?
the event was put on by the ohio valley/western ohio regions. The event was in greenfield ohio. I got to hobnob with celebrities like evanb, Knurled, and eastsidemav. Its nice to meet some of these dorks in person.
Thanks for coming out again. Sorry I didn't have more time to chat with making sure things happened somewhat on schedule. It was the most cars we have ever had at an event and I think it went fairly well.
Likewise. I remember we talked for a little bit but when an event is happening, I usually have so much else on my mind that my socialization skills are even more underperforming than normal. And I'm not even an event official like Evan is. (Except for days when I manage to wake up on time and get there early enough to run tech, which isn't even "official" so much as "gofer")
Don't forget "wae" and his kablamariffic half-blue balf-black half-baked Neon. Shame that Jerry couldn't make it, or that "nization" hardly posts here enough to constitute being GRM, else we'd have had ourselves a little mini-meet.
EvanB wrote: Thanks for coming out again. Sorry I didn't have more time to chat with making sure things happened somewhat on schedule. It was the most cars we have ever had at an event and I think it went fairly well.
I totally understand, im sure it wasnt easy trying to herd cats all day. I thought the event went great, you did a good job.
Knurled wrote: Likewise. I remember we talked for a little bit but when an event is happening, I usually have so much else on my mind that my socialization skills are even more underperforming than normal. And I'm not even an event official like Evan is. (Except for days when I manage to wake up on time and get there early enough to run tech, which isn't even "official" so much as "gofer") Don't forget "wae" and his kablamariffic half-blue balf-black half-baked Neon. Shame that Jerry couldn't make it, or that "nization" hardly posts here enough to constitute being GRM, else we'd have had ourselves a little mini-meet.
I didnt know that was wae, i would have went over and said hi.
Congratulations on your win, you and evan.
Was great to finally meet you in person and put a face to the user name. The Beretta looked fun out there, made me miss the Corsica a bit.
In reply to eastsidemav:
Oh its a hoot. Since you raced a corsica let me ask you a question, did you ever try running it without a front sway bar, if so how did the car react?
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