Gaunt596 said:Some spare nuts/bolts probably isnt a bad idea, in case you lose hardware holding an important part in or on.
yeah we carry a little plastic case that has one or two of pretty much every nut or bolt size that this car uses... Especially CV axle bolts and driveshaft bolts since those two seem to come loose and get lost occasionally on this car. Plus a couple spare lugs and lug nuts
Replaced original handbrake master cylinder (hewn from pure Chineseum) with the genuine Wilwood part it was a copy of. Brakes work better, handbrake works MUCH better- I'm a little suspicious of the main master cylinder, though, because it felt a little odd while I was bleeding the brakes. We'll see if things stay consistent.
One thing I've always thought about, but never tried:
Paint each piece of hardware a specific color. Like all hardware that takes a 10mm socket/wrench red. 12mm blue. 14 green. Then paint the tools the same. Would really speed up service in the pits.
In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :
I’ve seen combination wrench sets that are anodized different colors for this same reason. It makes total sense to do this on a racecar!
I have wanted to do the wrench-by-numbers (colors) thing for a while, I agree it would be awesome. Annoyingly, though, on this car you'd need like 11 distinct colors.
Boom rainbow socket 
I kid only halfway..... I had one (lost apparently) it worked surprisingly well.....
Brakes seem to be back to their old, kind of spongy but functional selves. Handbrake is awesome. Master cylinder is now on the "some day when I feel like it probably" list.
Also went hunting for a throttle cable in the junkyard- looks like Crown Vic ones are a little long, and 5.0 SN95 Mustang ones are a little short, but both work. So I have two sources for spare cables.
Dusterbd13-michael said:One thing I've always thought about, but never tried:
Paint each piece of hardware a specific color. Like all hardware that takes a 10mm socket/wrench red. 12mm blue. 14 green. Then paint the tools the same. Would really speed up service in the pits.
of course, suspension hardware on a rally car won't stay painted for long ;)
Drove the car again and the brake pedal was spongier- that master cylinder needs to move up the list. Found a brand new one on eBay for $35, so that was a lot cheaper than I thought given that I was seeing them in the $200 range.
Also finally added some door pulls, since everyone but me complains that the car doesn't have them. Just some nylon strap riveted to the door at the top:
They're placed so that the door bars sandwich them when the door is closed, so they don't flap around even though they're really long:
New brake master cylinder installed, test drive confirmed that we are back to locking up all four at will and the proportioning valve adjustment works. Success!
2019 off to a promising start, happy new year!
Amazing thread!!!
Best of luck to you, I hope the work really pays off.
You have also officially frightened me, right the hell off, of Merkurs and SVOs, FWIW... Future thanks?
In reply to HyperspaceTurd :
Thanks! I hope it pays off too, fingers crossed- I have to admit this car has put me off of this era of Ford almost entirely, I understand why people built them when they were cheap and plentiful but with the supply of cars beginning to dry up I certainly wouldn't prep another one. If you want one buy one that somebody has already done all this stuff to.
In other news, we're registered for WMWR. The only other entrants so far are some weirdos with old BMWs...
We should just start calling 2wd "Group A leftovers" or something.
In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :
Hi,
Yeah, I used its several parts, but locally to find it was a bit difficult, then I found a guy who was providing spare parts altgradauto
I got all the things which I needed, so I hope you can also find the solution to your problem.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:In reply to HyperspaceTurd :
Thanks! I hope it pays off too, fingers crossed- I have to admit this car has put me off of this era of Ford almost entirely, I understand why people built them when they were cheap and plentiful but with the supply of cars beginning to dry up I certainly wouldn't prep another one. If you want one buy one that somebody has already done all this stuff to.
In other news, we're registered for WMWR. The only other entrants so far are some weirdos with old BMWs...
We should just start calling 2wd "Group A leftovers" or something.
We could call it "cars my crew have worked on in service" lol...
Added some cargo area lights to Chief:
Testing of the car continuing, so far so good although the heater is weak:
"Rough Road" describes everywhere that hasn't been re-paved in 10 years around here. And now when they pave it they delete the crown so the whole thing ices in a sheet.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:Added some cargo area lights to Chief:
Testing of the car continuing, so far so good although the heater is weak:
I remain thoroughly unimpressed by my heater too. I think with all the insulation gone and the car basically a metal box, all the heat just gets cooled so fast it's hardly useful.
Are the cargo area lights switched separate from Chief’s interior lights? They look great!
CN, just curious.....when you have squeezed the last out of the Merkur.....what keeps you up at night for the next venture?
In reply to paranoid_android :
Yes, the idea is they can be left on for a while without draining the battery so you can get service stuff in/out. The switch is really just jammed into the dash at the moment, which I should probably fix, but it works for now.
In reply to 759NRNG :
Lots of things. The next rally vehicle is going to fall into one of the following categories: seriously fast and built from scratch/ extremely common, tough, and mostly stock/ capable of desert racing so we can run the Mexican 1000/Sonora. I also want to get back to racing motorcycles more. I also want to build a hillclimb car and eventually go to Pikes Peak. And a One Lap/UTCC competitor. And a bunch of non-racing adventure type stuff. There's a lot I want to do and not nearly enough funding for even half of it!
In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :
Just wait till the house projects start getting in the way and berkeleying with your car budget!
In reply to hobiercr :
My friend, who owns/drives a rally car, was recently looking at houses. After running some numbers, he decided to keep living in an apartment with his mother. That way there would be more money for race cars.
#priorities
CN, can you expound on "seriously fast and built from scratch/ extremely common, tough, and mostly stock" ......what possibly hits at least two of these....way curious????
759NRNG said:CN, can you expound on "seriously fast and built from scratch/ extremely common, tough, and mostly stock" ......what possibly hits at least two of these....way curious????
I think he means "either" seriously fast and built from scratch OR common/tough/stock.
Because unless you have a E36 M3load of cash for an prepped Evo or something, those two are fairly mutually exclusive.
I feel like something like this is in Chris's future for rally
or, finally building a true deathtrap on the rallybike side
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