Pitchblack Rally Recce Raider Build

[irish44j]

More damage inspection today, pulled off the gas tank skidplate since I knew I dented it pretty good. To call this thing a skidplate is pretty generous, as it's not very thick or rigid, frankly. I mean, I guess it saved the tank from any direct rock edges, but it took a beating

And did not prevent the gas tank from getting dented

It's flimsy enough that I was able to straighten it out by just stomping on it a bit (and with my hand on the edges). In short, it's pretty worthless, so I'll have to get myself more steel plate and make one myself that can hold up to some hits since I apparently like hitting things with the gas tank...

I also shortened up the rear swaybar endlinks since they have a bad habit of catching on things since they sit pretty low, so I chopped an inch off the sleeved section and got my die out and threaded the bolt an inch more so it would work

So now it's above the level of the trailing arms so should be a bit more out of harm's way

 

[Salonika]

It’s like a leather glove for your gas tank. I’d say it did the job. Everything is a compromise......whatever you modify will end up being heavier than stock more than likely.

 

[operator john]

Just went thru your build. Awesome !! All ways liked the Dodge raider. They were ahead of there time but not much love from after market support. Tuff from factory ! All over built Great 4x4 in stock form. The only thing i would add is a third brake light to your antenna bracket ! Just for SAFTY on the road . Just a suggestion. Thanks for sharing. John

 

[irish44j]

Just went thru your build. Awesome !! All ways liked the Dodge raider. They were ahead of there time but not much love from after market support. Tuff from factory ! All over built Great 4x4 in stock form. The only thing i would add is a third brake light to your antenna bracket ! Just for SAFTY on the road . Just a suggestion. Thanks for sharing. John

Thanks. That's good thinking, and I actually have a spare LED rear fog light in a box someplace so maybe I'll try to mount that up as a brake light when I need a project. Good thought though.

 

[irish44j]

Been a while, not too much going on with the Raider as I've been working on some other projects and running the stage rally season in the e30, which has needed to have some stuff fixed. It gets a bit rough out there....

Anyhow, at a rallysprint last weekend I was chatting with a friend/competitor and noted that the new awning for my Sequoia was being held up on a ship someplace offshore for 3 months now. So he says "I have an old Yakima awning on my 4Runner over there I never use.....if you take it off, it's yours." So off it came (I'll send him some good whisky soon). It's a 6 1/2-ish foot length awning, so shorter than the one actually going on the Sequoia. I thought for a moment about just putting it on the opposite side of the big boy by the water tank, but that seemed kind of pointless. So what to do with it? Decided to mock it up on the Raider just for the hell of it. The Raider alreayd has the small awning off the back but if I use this thing for camping or whatever, could be useful to have a larger one. As luck would have it, the rack I built is 6 1/2' long, so figured what the hell.

The awning came with some fancy aluminum mounts for the nice aftermarket rack Matt had on the 4Runner, which of course aren't made for my tubular rack. After looking at the scrap metal I had around, decided I'd just modify the mounts and attach them via bolts.

Here's what they look like. The lower groove goes in the back bracket of the awning, and the upper uses bolts. The Yakima awning uses the same rear track as all the other big ones (ARB, Ironman, etc.)

So I modified it with a grinder

So it sits like this:

On the underside I used some angle iron with bolts through under the crossbar to hold it all on (no good pics, but it's not rocket science). So here's how it's mounted with the awning:

I intentionally offset it about an inch from the side of the rack to maintain access to my tiedown ears and so my orange side floods could tilt down to light up under the awning.

Anyhow, it's on there now. Fits fine, looks ok, may come in handy. Maybe looks a bit poserish to have two awnings on a little truck like this, but whatever....it was 100% free, so not like I dropped cash on something I may or may not use much.

 

[CharlieNorth]

E30s are cool but the body structure tears apart to easily. I maintained a Rally Newfound runner for years till it just was no longer piratical to fix. And that was on tarmac. Nice driving cars though once they are right.
Your shorty looks nice.

 

[irish44j]

E30s are cool but the body structure tears apart to easily. I maintained a Rally Newfound runner for years till it just was no longer piratical to fix. And that was on tarmac. Nice driving cars though once they are right.
Your shorty looks nice.

I haven't had any issues (fingers crossed).....9 years of rally, about a dozen full stage rallies (and almost 100 rallycrosses, plus a few track days) and I've still not found any cracking areas of concern. Only thing we've ever broken was an oil pan (very big rock at 70mph that also killed the skidplate) and sheared the rear shocks off and lost a spring (the photo above, due to upper mounts binding). Plus we've hit a few things. Structurally the car has held up fine (and it's not even seam-welded). Granted the front and rear suspension towers are tied into the cage and plated, and the cage is tied into about 10 chassis points. The nice point with rally is although the cars take a beating, the lack of grip means there's not as much twisting force on the chassis as tarmac cars, so gravel rally stresses are usually on the suspension point areas.

I do intend to seam weld the front cowl area this winter, which is a weak point for the e30s like mine with the bigger engines swapped in.

But yeah, one guy who runs one in rallycross locally actually had it splitting right down the b-pillar after about 150 events - but that car wasn't caged.

If one can afford to run Rally Newfoundland, one can afford something better than an e30 anyhow

 

[CharlieNorth]

I recent years I have mostly worked on E36 bodys.

 

[irish44j]

Haven't done much of anything to the Raider in some time, as I've been on other projects and haven't done any wheeling recently. But, I did get this sweet new RTT:

We got a bit of snow (around a foot, not really that much...)

normally this would be a post where I put up sweet pics of the rig doing cool snow stuff, but I didn't really get a chance to use it as I had to get to work and for that task my other 4x4 is more comfortable (and, frankly, more capable in urban street snow)

The other upside to the Sequoia is that it's far more capable as a rescue/recovery vehicle than the Raider thanks to the 3 tons of snow-crushing weight (and 400+ hp compared to the Raider's 150). So after work I did pull a few stuck people out, including this F250 super duty who couldn't get his 4WD engaged (manual hubs were locked, just wouldn't engage), so I dragged him about 1/4 mile up a fairly steep hill and dropped him in front of his house. Would have been funny to try it with the Raider, but not sure if it would have had enough traction, honestly.

I do have a few plans for it in the spring at some point, but we'll see. I have a few other projects ongoing that are turning into more work than expected.

 

[irish44j]

Ok, had a bit of snow today so took the Raider out. It wasn't much and it could get around find in 2WD (which let me had some fun). Though I did use 4WD as well just to keep everything all lubed up. Nothing too exciting, but it's the first time I've really driven it in the snow. Braking = not great without ABS and with fairly fat tires on a fairly light vehicle, but acceleration and turning grip was fine. And took a few pics...

 

[CharlieNorth]

Personally I hate ABS in the snow, I would rather have good grippy tires and limited slips. Last thing anyone needs is to have their braked turned off by confused electronics.

 

[irish44j]

Been a minute since I've posted anything on this rig, mostly because I've just been driving it and working on other project vehicles. But this winter I plan to do a few things on the Raider as well. In the meantime, one thing that's always annoyed me about it is the overly-soft front suspension, that when combined with the larger tires really exacterbate body lean (especially on-road) and nose-dive under even moderate braking. This truck has the stock torsion bars and the cheap KYP Gas-Adjust shocks I got initially mostly to get it on the road on a budget.

Still considering what I want to do regarding torsion bars. There are some options ranging from OEM 2nd-generation Montero bars to a few aftermarket options of mostly-unknown rate, so it's mostly going to be based on secondhand opinions (on the internet) rather than any real calculations (the way I prefer to set up suspensions on my other vehicles).

While I decided what to do there, figured I'd take the first step and upgrade shocks. Just the fronts for the time being but the rears soon as well (maybe hold off for some holiday sales or something). To that end, ordered up front Bilstein 4600s, which I've used on many vehicles (though my Sequoia has 5100s), with the hope that the firmer damping will improve the front-end handling/feel a bit. They came in yesterday so naturally I had to install immediately....in the rain (since my garage is housing a pair of e30s at the moment).

Not a terribly tough job, though the KYBs have a metal "boot" at the top so it takes some prying to make them get to the angle to slide out from between the upper and lower A-arms (since I didn't want to pop the upper balljoint or steering, which would have made the shock easier). In any case, the new ones are in now

Took a quick drive and it feels a bit firmer up front, though not "night and day" by any means. The back is still pretty mushy so we'll see if shocks firm things up a bit back there, eventually.

 

[z168]

Love the thread. I skipped to the end so I find myself reading backwards. Keep em coming

 

[CharlieNorth]

You need to address the rear spring rate for this to turn in and grip through a turn, been there and never had a problem running away from well driven Vettes and any other car through the twisties. I ran larger disks with 4 piston calipers up front with generous discs in back. I also had pocketed the balljoints allowing for max travel up front allowing for great trail manners.

 

[CharlieNorth]

Oh, I tossed the Bilstiens due to a rather poor balance between compression/rebound. The KYB were far better.