'85 Merkur XR4Ti Rally Car

Post up a picture of the caliper, the main ones for the swap seem to be 87-88 Ford Thunderbird Turbo Coupe or 90-92 Lincoln, Taurus, or Sable.

http://www.key-ideas.com/DG_RearBrakeUpgrade.htm

Doing the swap on my car this winter.

I just have the adapters, no calipers. They look like the ones from your link though, any chance you could measure the hole spacing for the caliper on yours?

The pile of stuff not attached to the car is growing:

Tonight was fender removal night- whoever decided those things should be attached with 80 berkeleying spot welds should have to buy every XR/Sierra owner a pair of fiberglass ones:

I'm sorry I didn't get to meet you last week. These cars look like a blast on dirt

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wrote: I just have the adapters, no calipers. They look like the ones from your link though, any chance you could measure the hole spacing for the caliper on yours?

The bolt hole spacing is about 3.850"

In reply to GPz11:

I'll have to check mine after work today, but that sure looks like what I've got (although mine are silver). Thanks!

3.850" it is! Thunderbird rear brakes then, and I have PBR calipers for the front too but I'm not sure I really want to use them.

Mustang brake parts are a lot easier to find than XR parts at most part stores.

Sorry the camera on my new (terrible Chinese knock off) phone sucks. More stuff off the car:

Exhaust is holding up, but I should rework the tip for more clearance. The coilovers are hopefully OK, but need a thorough cleaning. I don't really like the way the front suspension on the car goes together, but there's not much I can do about that without spending a bunch of money.

Time to list the crap I intend to get done on this beast:
-Add extra safety features to cage (extent TBD)
-Strip undercoat/seam sealer
-Seam weld
-Double skin rocker panels
-Reroute fuel and brake lines
-Fix brake bias and swap to rear discs
-Go through suspension and fix anything worn out
-Swap in Supra diff (needs rebuild)
-Swap in T5 trans (needs driveshaft)
-Reinforce rear subframe/trailing arms
-Make new skid plate
-Make new mud flaps
-Lexan door windows OR fix pass window motor
-Make new light bar/improve headlights
-Gut more weight from hood/hatch
-Improve ergonomics for driver/codriver
-Make cracked wing hold together/more functional
-Make engine/turbo stop leaking oil from everywhere
-Power steering cooler?
-Reengineer fuel pump for easier replacement?
-More underbody armor?

Well listing it sure doesn't make it seem easier
I'm trying to lean a little more towards the "do it right, do it once, schedule be damned" side on this one than I typically do- we're willing to miss WMWR and Sandblast if it means the car will hold together a little bit better than the RX7 did.

Did you learn anything new about running sans guibo? I tried to research it some and didn't find any clear answers.

I have a T5 with matching yoke, so I'll have a driveshaft made to mate that to the supra differential- that will make it two U-joints, no more guibo.

Got it!

Busy weekend! Drained and dropped the tank, cleaned some stuff:

Disconnected absolutely everything and pulled the engine and trans:

Pulled the trans off:

Lit the rubber in the T5 yoke on fire to try and remove the bigass damper thing that's around it:

For the trans swap, it looks like I'll need a new friction disc and throwout bearing but everything else inside the bellhousing should work. In a development that should surprise nobody, a couple of the bellhousing bolts were missing and several others were loose.

I hope we get one really cold day soon so that I can crack all the undercoating junk off the car. I'm waiting on brake parts so that I can see where my reinforcements for the rear suspension need to run, then I can plan all that stuff out and drop the rear subframe.

Awesome, Cant wait to see it improved and back together!

Swapped my friction disc out to a new one for the T5:

Got my brake parts and decided to figure out the caliper adapter deal- if you put them on the way they're supposed to go, they hit the coilover and the brake bleeder is too low

So then I flipped the adapter, putting the caliper up top instead- it should bleed this way, and clears the coilover, but it hits the inside of the wheel well at full bump:

But, with careful application of the BFH, adequate clearance was gained:

It's not the way that it was "designed" to work, but it was also supposed to have the bleeder way below the piston so I'm pretty confident I can out engineer the guy who came up with it. With that out of the way I could finally remove the rear subframe:

The rest of my garage time this weekend was spent removing random stuff, and the car now has no fuel system whatsoever and is pretty much stripped down to a shell. I won't have a ton of time to work on it in the coming weeks, but it's more or less time to start seam welding when I get a chance.

We need to pitch in and buy you a camera with a flash or something, lol...

Also, your progress is making me feel like a slacker with both the rally car and the Porsche project. When do you expect to have it on the road again?

BTW, obviously you're not driving, but you going to come hang out at the NJ rallysprint in 2 weeks?

In reply to irish44j:

My phone camera is complete garbage, I should just bring the point and shoot in the garage with me.

I would have kept the car together (or hung onto the RX7) for the NJ rallysprint, but unfortunately I'll be out of town that weekend.

I'd love to have the car back on the road for WMWR, but willing to miss it to avoid halfassing it together- I don't want to have to weld this one back together after every event!

haha, yeah for sure. Do it right the first time so it survives, let that dictate the rally schedule!

Although I was away last weekend, and will be away this weekend, I have been chipping away (sometimes literally) at the seam sealer and undercoating that's in the way of the impending seam welding. No pictures because no fun, but looking forward to getting the seam welding knocked out so that things can start going back onto the car, which will at least feel like progress.

Seam welding sucks donkey balls.

Im doing it to the challenge car.

I knocked out the seam welding in all four of the wheel wells today- progress will hopefully pick back up again now that we're done with three consecutive weekends of social events.

Step one for each wheel well was to coat it in nasty chemical paint stripper (not shown).

Step two was to attack with the oscillating whatever tool and the wire wheel:

Step three is to clean with some more nasty stuff, which I found out the not-fun way makes you feel like death if you accidentally inhale the smoke that it makes when you set a rag on fire while welding.

Step four is to zap many many 1" ish welds onto all of the seams you just cleaned.

Step five is to clean with the nasty cancer juice again.

Step six is to cook the entire wheel well with a space heater since it's 28F in the garage:

Step seven is to retrieve the spray paint which has been living inside to keep it warm enough to use, and paint the wheel well.

Step eight is to put the space heater back on it once the fumes have cleared.

Then repeat for the other wheel wells. Hooray!

Next will be double skinning the rockers, then floor/interior seam welding.

Sweet!

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ wrote: I have a T5 with matching yoke, so I'll have a driveshaft made to mate that to the supra differential- that will make it two U-joints, no more guibo.

Any more specifics on this? Are you having the diff yoke modified, or? Do you know how much it's going to cost to have it done?

At $200 for the Toyota guibo I think a custom driveshaft/ guibo delete is in order for my wagon.

In reply to Crackers:

I'm planning to have the driveshaft modified (or a new one made) to accommodate stock parts for the transmission and differential- so the front end will take a 1310 u-joint for the T5 yoke, and the back end will take a Moog 285 u-joint for the Supra pinion yoke OR use an adapter for the Merkur pinion yoke.

Before I can line everything up and take measurements, I need to finish seam welding and my JVAB differential kit needs to show up.