Pitchblack Rally Recce Raider Build

[irish44j]

So on the trip up to PA last week I also found that my rack/fairing STILL makes an annoying resonanace at highway speeds, and I'm pretty sure it's the fairing itself making the noise because it's not stiff enough. So time to try something new. The old fairing went to the front of the roofline above the windshield, but decided to move it back and "gap" it from the roof itself. The whole goal of the fairing is for stuff going over the roof, so fine to have wind go UNDER the rack.

Also wanted to make it more stiff, so got some angle iron and some small square tube and made a solid frame for it.

The tubes are offset on the backside, so the fairing can basically be "slipped into" a slot in the frame from one side and doesn't need any bolts to hold it in (though I did put one). Anyhow, we'll see how this works

You may also notice the light bar isn't there. I'm working on a new idea for mounting it. Just don't like it hanging out over the front of the roof the way it was.

 

[irish44j]

So yesterday as I was about to jump in the shower, my wife comes and gets me because our mail carrier got her truck high-centered on a pile of snow across the street, and apparently my other neighbors are helpless when it comes to giving a tug or push. So I grab the Raider and pulled out there. Initially didn't want to get straps out and figured I could just give the mail truck a push off the snow. But that didn't work, it was really stuck up there, and in the process I somehow clipped one of my Hellas on the front bumper and cracked the base off....

So, that really sucks since these things aren't exactly cheap or all that easy to find these days. So busted out the plastic weld/epoxy stuff and laid down a ton of it, clamped everything tight, and eventually put it all back together. Seems to be fine now, I guess we'll see....

On the topic of lighting, finally got around to putting my LED bar back on, uising the new mounts I hid behind the fairing. I think the positioning now is much cleaner than before, and hopefully less out of direct wind/noise.

 

[irish44j]

For anyone not following my (admittedly pretty boring) rally trailer build, here's a couple shots from today. Making progress!

 

[Salonika]

How much thought went into your light bar selection? I’ve been thinking of adding some LED’s for a while now, but I see too many different versions on other vehicles and I can’t decide what I really need.

 

[irish44j]

How much thought went into your light bar selection? I’ve been thinking of adding some LED’s for a while now, but I see too many different versions on other vehicles and I can’t decide what I really need.

So, for the rally car (where we need long-distance and clarity since we're going 80mph through the woods at night), I use higher-end Hella and DIode Dynamics bars so we don't "outrun" our lights at speed (a common problem in rally).

For the Raider, where anyplace I'm offroad at night I'll be going slow, I just got a cheap ebay bar since it provides MORE than enough flood/throw for anyplace I could possibly be. I really don't understand people who get super $$$ lightbars for ORVs when ultimate distance doesn't really matter due to slow speeds. I have a similar (though double-row) ebay bar on my Sequoia, which is used regularly at moderate 30-40mph speeds on fire roads in pitch black night at rally events and it is MORE than enough light even at those speeds (it also has a full surround of ebay small floods on the rack for lighting up our service area/camping area at night). These Jeeps (and other trucks) I see with 6 lightbars on the front end and ditch lights everywhere are totally ridiculous. In my view, might as well get some Pep Boys fake vents for the side while you're putting on pointless accessories lol

In short, my criteria for a lightbar on a vehicle like this is 1) the length I want to fit a particular space (in this case, 42" to fit between the rack bars), 2) height to fit the space (in this case, a single-row so it's low-profile), and 3) cost - I'm not out to impress people with my wallet by having Diode Dynamics stuff all over the truck, just need something sufficient for the basic task of lighting things up in the vicinity of the vehicle.

The ebay bars tend to occasionally leak and get condensation inside, so when I get them I take them apart and seal up everything with silicone and haven't had any issues. They hold up well and if I damage it offoad (tree branch?), I'm only out $50 or so, not $500 for some fancy name-band bar. I see absolutely no reason to spend big money on this stuff. The cheapest ebay lightbar is still 10x better than a high-end Hella rally light from 20-30 years ago, and somehow the Camel Trophy and Dakar guys got by just fine with them lol...

I'll also note my headlights are converted to e-code H4's, so they are MUCH better than OEM sealed-beams in terms of spread, range, and cutoff. I'd never even need to use the lightbar unless I was in the middle of the woods on a moonless night, honestly.

 

[irish44j]

Went to visit a buddy downtown today so took the truck since DC streets are pretty much offroading....

Did some quick sightseeing along the way

Then worked on another e30 for a while

 

[irish44j]

Took the trailer down the street for its maiden voyage. Happy to report nothing fell off, and no issues noted. The Raider doesn't really notice it there when it's empty, which is nice. And it matches well

 

[irish44j]

Not much new going on with the Raider, but the last few weeks I've noticed a loud metallic sound coming from the engine bay when driving, which was pretty easy to pinpoint as bad bearings in the alternator, which is who-knows-how old and came off the parts truck when I built this thing. In any case, ordered up a new Delco unit and had it installed in about 10 minutes. Much quieter. I may rebuilt the old one just for a spare.

 

[B-Line Performance]

Trailer looks exceptional. Did you toss the bed on a trailer frame? ALso what bed cover did you use?

 

[irish44j]

For no apparent reason I was searching around on international ebay and found some new corner pieces for the bumpers (from Colombia). The corners on mine are cracked, mashed, and generally ugly. Not *really* a big deal since they're there to get bumped and mushed, I guess.

Anyhow, picked up some new ones (defintely aftermarket), and the fronts arrived today

First things first, had to get the old ones off. There are 5 bolts holding them on, all of which were excessively rusty and took a good amount of penetrating oil, creativity with tools, etc.

I couldnt' re-use the carriage-head bolts since I had to destroy them to get them off, so just used standard bolts to replace them. Not quite as pretty, but should be way easier if I ever have to do this again.

You may notice that these are substantially lower-profile than the originals. Here's one of the originals. note how much it sticks out.

The new ones sit much more close to flush, which I think gives a much cleaner look. Hopefully the rears will be similar.

 

[irish44j]

Trailer looks exceptional. Did you toss the bed on a trailer frame? Also what bed cover did you use?

I scratch-built a new frame for it. I originally considered using the pickup frame and axle, but didn't like how heavy all that was. So built a frame and put a 3500# trailer axle with 6-lug hubs on it. The cover is just a cheapie from Amazon made to fit an old S-10 pickup. It's not a perfect fit and needed a bit of minor modification, but it's good enough for my purposes and was cheap.

I did a full built thread for it over in the trailer section. Here's a link: https://expeditionportal.com/forum/...port-trailer-build.221647/page-5#post-2908079

 

[irish44j]

So the rear end caps came in today (from Medellin, Colombia...I half expected there to be a brick of cocaine hidden inside the box). They're aftermarket (oddly, stamped "Montero" even though I thought they were sold as Pajero down there). Of all the curious things, all the captive nuts used to mount them to the car, none of them seemed to have the right thread for the standard M10 bolts. Hmm. After trying out some stuff, come to realize they're SAE nuts. WHAT THE ********. So had to dig into the hardware box and find some bolts that worked (most of my SAE stuff is long-gone since I sent it all away with the Triumph years ago and have all metric cars now).

So here's the old corners. Cracked and mashed up from some kind of collision

(sorry for the blurry)

On the driver's side the entire bumper had been bent in from whatever someone hit with it, so I took a ratchet strap and pulled it straight(ish) using the rally car as an anchor.

That done, and the correct bolts located, put the new ends on. I still think these look kind of goofy and I thought about actually getting steel out and making some kind of plated corners, but in the end that seemed like a lot of work with no real upside, so will stick with these. At least they're not cracked and mushed up

 

[irish44j]

I've been mostly working on the rally car getting ready for a heavy rallycross/rallysprint/stage rally season that is getting started, as well as my Sequoia tow rig (frame rust repair and new headers - both of these a major PITA on a rusty old Toyota (is there any other kinds?)).

Today decided to mess around with the plasma cutter and cut myself some steel tiedown eyes for the Raider (freehand, so they're not as pretty as if I had a plasma table, of course)

And then welded them to the rack in the appropriate positions, because having plenty of tiedown points is always a good thing (yes, I could use the holes in the rack "legs" for that, but wanted some that came up above the level of the rack floor).

 

[irish44j]

We had a rallyspint scheduled at Rausch Creek (in the rally car, not the Raider), but it got postponed and I had a non-refundable hotel room...... So, I put the rally car and trailer away and loaded up the Raider and headed to Rausch in it instead. Trucked about 200 miles Friday night to the motel that I already had paid for, so might as well use it, right? Not a lot of action there, hoped I wouldn't be murdered in my sleep or something but turned out to be a nice, clean, and basic motel.

After checking in I jumped in the Raider and cruised another 70 miles on PA's terrible I-78 (bouciest highway I've ever been on) and then some nice country roads to visit some rally friends Chris and Sara at the ANY% garage. I beat them home by a few minutes so had to scope out the cross-country Caddy project Chris is working on....it's big. Like, twice as long as the Raider.

After we hung out for a bit we decided to go to dinner over the river in Jersey via all the awesome gravel roads out that way. I gave Sara the keys to the Raider and we headed off

Chris had to do a few things to the Rally BRZ and left a while after us, but still managed to beat us there (a rally car vs. the Raider in the twisties isn't a fair fight). So we parked downtown in some little scenic place.

After dinner, Sara took the Raider again and I jumped in her codriver seat in the BRZ (a tight fit, since I'm 6" taller than her!). While she took paved roads back, Chris showed me some of his favorite gravel roads for rally testing, at a good clip.....I'm not a great passenger in cars in general, so that was both fun and a bit fearful for me lol

Then we popped out the other side, right behind the Raider. Kind of fun to see it on the road from behind...

After that I headed back to the motel and got some sleep, then headed out in the morning to meet up with Jim (my codriver for those who dont' follow the rally thread) and Andy Thomas, who we rallycross with and who leads a lot of trail ride groups up there. Jim brought his new Tacoma to test it out (bone stock) as we took on some green and blue trails.

Andy flexin

Near the top of the power line run, basically an uphill mile of bowling-ball-size rocks. At the top with a big lip I had to bump the throttle to clear and the truck went damn-near vertical with the Pajero Salute, according to Andy....who didn't get a photo of it. I was looking at the sky until it crested and came back down lol

The Raider doesn't flex much lol

I enjoyed having to take totally different lines from the guys in the long-wheelbase trucks. I can't bridge some of their gaps, but I can weave through obstacles in a way they can't. The rear LSD got some work as well. It will be nice to have a front locker on this one of these days, because with the short wheelbase that will really help it climb these off-angle areas.

Also ran into this nice Trooper (and a Bronco II behind it)

Then we wend down to the water pit area. You may recall this from January when it was all ice-covered and I towed a Subaru out of it. This time, no ice but the water was deep so we did some playing

Some Jeeps came through and joined in

Anyhow, great day to wheel, and of course it didn't rain until we were leaving (which is why the rallysprint was cancelled). Go figure. Raider did well, no issues whatsoever, and I headed 200 miles home afterwards. Incidentally I got 18mpg for the trip, including the wheeling, and did almost exactly 500 miles round trip.

I did run this time without the front swaybar, which was much more comfortable on off-angle stuff. Then I got soaked in the rain and hail trying to put it back on before we left, which is a bit of a hassle.

 

[irish44j]

DId a quick post-wheeling inspection today and apart from a couple dents in the skidplate, the only real damage I can find was exactly where I expected it, which was from a large rock submerged in on of the water crossings that I got hung up on with the front of the rear trailing arm mounts.

So, that's supposed to be round...

I assumed this area was going to take some hits and should have designed some kind of protection for these mounts previously, but now I'll get off my ******** and fab something up soon.

In other news, took the rally trailer out for a drive today at near-highway speeds and it towed well, no drama, no bouncing (though this area has really good roads so nowhere to really test that). Anyhow, happy with that.