Now since I had some “free time” I was chasing what I thought was a rear main seal or the o-ring that goes around the stationary gear oil leak so to do so you need to pull the engine. (for either one of them)
But when I pulled it I realized it was the pan gasket and the rear main/rear stat gear o-ring was fine! No witness marks and dry as a bone! So I pulled the engine and ordered up an oil pan brace and new hardware to hopefully stop this pesky leak. I had to tear apart the baffle and the oil pan constantly cleaning and scraping it was aweful. It took a few days of keeping the garage at 60 degrees and letting the carb clean evaporate and ensure no dirt or dust or oil was left on the gasket surfaces, chase all threads with your taps and add blue Loctite to each new bolt and follow the RTV torque procedure – lets see if this lasts me more than a year. Part of the reason is that I think my solid engine mounts are too stiff so its shaking bolts loose. I may opt to a poly or mazdaspeed hardened rubber in the near future because oil pan gasket leaks are a multi day labor intensive process to do it right and I hate every minute of it. So with that all settled a few days later I still had the engine out of the car I had ordered up a new spec clutch.
This is WITH the optional aluminum billet cover ($200 extra) which was a waste of time and money, the weight savings was negligible and I would not do it again if I had an option. That being said this is the stage 3 cutch which is a sprung hub multi puck design but it is not an organic disc so you can slip/bang/heat the crap out of it and it will hold pressure fine. This is easier on the flywheel and longer lasting.
With the engine re-installed it was time to move on to a lot of little things that I will gloss over required for rally like fire extinguishers, spare tool bag, spill kit/first aid and co –driver light etc etc etc except this part…
You need DOT triangles and these things are HEAVY, they have metal dust in the base as an achor, but the rules let you empty them. Which dropped a lot of mass – then to attach them I used a small section of C-channel from earlier and welded it to the floor face down but I kept a plastic geartie in the channel so I could tie it together and I just jammed all 3 right next to the co –driver so he can hop out and deploy them quickly if (when) we get stuck on stage.
More rally spec stuff required so we had to add a catalytic convertor…
But you will notice if you are sharp that there is some extra goodies on the exhaust – went to V-band to avoid pesky gasket failures (sick and tired of these gaskets ALWAYS POPING!) and a small flex section to release some stress from the engine studs since this exhaust is pretty heavy. This cat glows like a Newport – pretty snazzy looking but because of I trimmed the bumper a bit where it goes inboard to the car and added a thin aluminum heat shield so I don’t melt the bumper or set it on fire as it already started to melt in some spots on the several mile commute back from my buddies place where we did the welding.
It quieted it down a bit to the point where we may remove the resonator…
So after that I got some help and fine tuned the engine installed the door panels (pics to come soon) and we were ready for an alignment!
Gave a little more for the rear due to the suspension geometry and it really payed off, car felt fantastic – all the R&R of the subframe and replacing the front ball joints for new ones (just for safety sake) an alignment was needed.
Then only 1 day before Recce we have the car on the trailer and all the gear loaded up with the spares… sno*drift bound!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yes there is no snow there and yes I did bring mud tires just in case but we ended up not needing them. Tuesday night we had made and attached the front mudflaps and tossed all the stickers on - #74 was taken by someone else so I will be using 174 from now on.
