Last time I posted, I’d posted about the crazy idea spawned by Nathan and I to build a rally car for ARA use. Yesterday I did some work and got quite a lot accomplished. This morning I’ll be trying to finish the step 1 process.
Updated - We just got the full interior out including sunroof glass, headliner and non-used wiring
Yesterday I got the seats, e brake assembly, seat belts, plastics and more out of the interior. Removing the automatic seat belts was quite time consuming and something I’d actually never done on a DSM so it was fun to learn. Today, I need to pull the rest of the plastics out of the hatch area, get the speakers out of the car and pull the carpet.
Our local store (Kroger) that sells dry ice was out of stock, so I’ll have to achieve the end result the old way to get sound deadening out. I’ve also removed all bolt on brackets, modules etc that aren’t necessary to the function of the car. You’d be very surprised how much weight I yanked out in just a few hours yesterday.
We ordered the inner and outer tie rods from Rockauto, and we are going to de-power the rack while we have it out of the car. We have the full poly bushing kit so we’re obviously tackling that too.
The big news is this; I’ll be going AWD for my next DSM build. That means anything FWD specific on my Talon is being cannibalized for the sake of the rally build. The Comp stage 3 clutch, coilovers, solid engine mounts, DSMLink, all of that is going onto this Laser. It’s a decision I was super comfortable making for the sake of the common cause, and because this is a huge goal for us.
At this point we’ve ordered many of the essentials (rally starter kit from Rally.Build) so we need 2 fire extinguishers, a main power kill, seats, HANS devices and we’re ready to construct our cage. It’s all very exciting and I am ready to post more updates as they come.
A lot of discussion and updates was done on our podcast, so feel free to give it a listen. Don’t mind the 93 pound pit bull in the background that makes a cameo every week.