Fiesta XR4 (aka Spac’s latest half baked race car idea).

Spac · 2019-05-12T09:17:17+00:00

I got it home at 1am this morning after a big day collecting and offloading stuff. And drinking caffeine for the first time in two years and then laying in b...

Philia_Bear

how come an upper cross bar but no lower cross bar?

Spac

Philia_Bear
how come an upper cross bar but no lower cross bar?

Lower cross bar makes it difficult/impossible to get the hoop into the car. Double diagonals make it largely redundant anyhow.

Upper one is for the harness straps.

Spac

Pretty much done! Sainz bars and some paint are all that’s left.

Ex850R

Do they require full welds?

On thick compensator plates like that I would just stitch it on to thinner metal , even bolting it would be better if allowed as the weld creates a weakness in the sheet metal and I'd expect it to just pop out in impact , ripping out all around the welded area.

Philia_Bear

@Spac

possibly a dumb question.... but if you roll the car.... what prevents something from poking up through the floor and squishing you to the top of the car?

eg you roll onto side and then a car comes along and plows into the underside of your car....

Ex850R

Philia_Bear
@Spac
possibly a dumb question.... but if you roll the car.... what prevents something from poking up through the floor and squishing you to the top of the car?
eg you roll onto side and then a car comes along and plows into the underside of your car....

And (only cos ive never looked at this stuff before) , you roll onto roof , the points you affix the cage to are not rated to take that load so they pop around the weld effectively sandwiching you btw the floor and a cage all around *a bit far fetched i know....

Mebe some heavier sheet formed with cross breaks all over as a floor but gee , its gonna get heavy......

Spac

Nothing except for probability, really.

A mate broke five vertebrae in a multiple rollover in a rally car - one of the rolls landed upright on top of a rock under his seat which pushed him/his seat up into the roof. Then his helmeted head bashed into the roof on the subsequent rolls.

It was a massive crash that was a mix of bad luck and trying very hard. Neither he nor the mate who was driving have rallied since.

The Fiesta has a lot of headroom, and the seat is mounted on a 5mm aluminium plate, which will give me a lot more safety margin than most cars, if I am unlucky enough for it to be relevant.

Spac

The feet I have put on the car are all larger than the full FIA spec - WAY over the CAMS minimum spec. And this is a relatively light car - what I've done exceeds the regs for a 1600kg Evo or an 1800kg Falcadore.

The hoop meets the floor in a particularly robust part of this car. It only has to mount to the single, thin sheet floor, but it mounts to the much thicker, boxed section behind the seats/under the rear seat.

Edit: A mate rolled m old RX-5 rally car - more weight, much more flimsily built car with smaller feet on the cage. Annihilated the car, but no sign of the cage wanting to punch through the floor.

It's almost like the cage regulations have been built on decades of experience! :D

Dauntless

How much time do you think you've put into fabricating the cage? It looks like it would be very time consuming for someone who doesn't build them for a living.

Spac

I am probably at 25-30 hours.

The next one will probably take about 2/3rds as long.

I would make the joiners in a way that could be jigged up more easily, commit to having three angle grinders from the start (one cutting wheel, one grinding wheel and one flapper disc), and a few other tweaks to the process.

Buying the tacos would also save a chunk of time.

Philia_Bear

Spac
I am probably at 25-30 hours.
The next one will probably take about 2/3rds as long.
I would make the joiners in a way that could be jigged up more easily, commit to having three angle grinders from the start (one cutting wheel, one grinding wheel and one flapper disc), and a few other tweaks to the process.
Buying the tacos would also save a chunk of time.

mmm tacos

Ex850R

Philia_Bear
https://ozvolvo.org/discussion/comment/195736#Comment_195736
mmm tacos

Taco Bell. I drove past one near me I totally forgot was there....

Spac

Actually managed to do some work on it again today.

Trying to work out if I can ditch the ABS module or need to keep it plugged in to stop the ECU from cracking the irits.

Spac

New engine mounts are unavailable from Ford Australia.

Nobody has found an aftermarket source in Australia (they all want to sell you 1.6 mounts).

The solution is to spend lots of money on an aftermarket part from the UK.

Or this:

Spac

Fog light covers, Mark1.

...and they were a fail. Whole bunch of reasons, but the short version is that I under-estimated the complexity of the shape AND I only had much thicker material than I wanted.

This made them way more difficult to work with, and they actually weighed more than the plastic the were replacing. I could have made them work, but wasn't inspired to do so.

On to Take 2, accepting that they were going to take more work than I originally anticipated.

Not perfect, but good.

The satin black seems to work well with the graphics, and the thinner material (1.4mm vs 2.0mm) makes them about the same weight as the plastic surrounds and a lot lighter than the complete assembly with the lights included.

rado

Nothing constructive to say , it's just every time I see xr4 I think Sierra XR4I ?

Spac

Serpentine belt after AC removal was interesting…

Here’s the standard belt path - missing AC compressor should be at the bottom right of the photo.

Here’s what I assumed would be the non-AC belt path.

It all looks pretty good, except…

…the belt wants to run through the middle of the CAS. That’s it behind the 260mm mark on the rule.

Spent ages trying to work out possibilities. The most promising was to use the standard belt path and space the PS pump forward (to the right of the photo) so the belt between the crank and the PS pump would clear the water pump pulley.

Then I saw the clearance cast in the timing cover, and realised that it ran an idler… Grabbed the idler from the original motor.

Had to mess around with spacers to get the alignment correct.

…but still wasn’t happy with the smooth pulley running on the ribbed side of the belt.

Then realised that the tensioner pulley is what I needed.

Easy!

Spac

Working out the correct length belt. Note vice grips in bottom right of photo.

Seems that nobody who knows wants to say, but it looks like the answer is 6PK2110 - I have not googled to see if it actually exists yet…

Spac

More slow progress. Urethane bushes are in the arms, and the arms are back in the car.

My main motivation at the moment is to get the garage floor space back…

Still need to take the flywheel to be balanced, which is a challenge during lockdown.

New water pump and serpentine belt fitted.

I had stuffed up the spacers under the idler pulley, which became obvious once the correct belt was fitted.

Fixed by ferreting through the box of spacers and some trial and error.

Spac

Brand new strut tops lasted less than 10 seconds with the weight of the strut on them…

The urethane is just garbage. Crumbly.

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