Well, its been a while since my last post, so an update is in order….
I entered the Ada River rally (Western district car club event, brilliantly organised) back in May in the VCRS with Seth in the nav seat. This was the cars first outing in an actual rally, all other events to date being the shorter khanacross / autocross / rally sprint formats, to give the car an airing and show up any dramas and shortcomings.
We managed to complete the whole event without mishap, and even managed not to finish last, so I would call that a good result. The main thing was that it was enormous fun. The only problem occurred when a thin split pin holding the clevis pin securing the clutch pedal to the clutch master cylinder shaft parted company, allowing the said pin to back out of its position, causing a terrible clutch pedal feel, whilst also pressing hard up to the steering column, causing super heavy steering, once the pin had backed out completely, the steering felt good again, but no clutch for the rest of stage 3 and stage 4……. Repaired before stage 5 and the last stage, 6.
Last weekend (21st Sept) we (my old navigator Glenn) entered the VCRS Valley Stages Rally (Nissan Car Club organised, a terrific event). Unfortunately, during the latter stages of stage 6 (last stage) the front right lower ball joint parted company on a sweeping left hander, causing the car to become seriously hard to control. Fortunately, we came to rest without slamming the car into a rock encrusted earthen wall, happy days! Incredibly, the front spring (standard height plus one inch and 400lb) was sufficiently stiff to force the lower control arm well down preventing the body work from scraping along the ground as we came grinding to a halt, the only damage was to the bottom of the said ball joint, which in any case was already stuffed. The lower control arm and bushes were completely undamaged, not even a scrape! here's a few pictures.
It would appear that I either may have over tightened the nut, or just a bit of bad luck, I think probably the former…
Anyway, after a great deal of effort, we managed to get the car back onto the trailer (took four blokes around a hour, a pesky job… ). Only a tiny bit of paint off the inner lip of the guard, and otherwise no damage.
I repaired the car on the trailer before driving it off and parking it back in my workshop. I used an old crappy ball joint as a temporary fix.
I will be getting a couple of new high quality ball joints from Ashley Yelds shortly, and hopefully don't get to experience this sort of failure again!
