I recently aquired a 74 2.0 and plan on building it to rally spec. Nothing to serious, just gravel, clay, and not so rough dirt roads. So, I've been hunting arouund for 914 build threads and have come up dry. Has anyone here had experience with such a build? I realise I'll need to sure up the chassy and suspension. Wondering if I could get suggestions on what shocks and springs to use, anti roll bars etc. Any advice would help. Thanks in advance.
Cheers
Josh

You'll need to add some ground clearance, I know that much.

Yeah a little bit. I'm not looking to climb bolders or run the Baja 1000. I figure new shocks and springs are in order that'll give a little lift. Maybe adjustables but I don't have that kind of bank.

AFAIK, not many people have covered this conversion so you're probably not going to find much firsthand experience. But you'll get plenty of opinions, if you feel like sharing your research and design considerations.

This area is quite interesting to me, and I looks forward to watching your build.

I have a lot of 914 rally pictures if that would help.

Hi there. Before you start you need to build this to the spec of the rally's you intend to enter. The general recipe for a 914 rally car is as follows:

1st (and by a long way) - ROLLCAGE. If you're going to drive this like a rally car should be driven, you ARE going to crash (ask me how I know ). This is where I would refer you to the first statement. You need to ensure that your cage meets whatever required specofocation for the racing 'body' you will be racing under. Here's some shots of mine:








2nd - Skid plates - I've got a front one and a rear one. The front one takes an impact if you hit something, it protects the underneath front suspension. The rear one is the MOST important, and protects the gearbox, engine and exhaust. It goes from the rear floorpan all the way to the rear bumper. It needs to be made of something like 8mm thick strong aluminium. I haven't got any specific pictures of the skid plates but can take some and provide measurements if you're serious. Here's some that at least show you something of what the skid plates look like on the car:





Before I forget.... you need lots of well placed holes cut into the rear skid plate to prevent the hole thing cooking myself (ask me how I know again). This also depends on what exhaust system you are running.

It's very late over here so I'll continue this for you when I get back later this week.

Cheers

Moggy

AH! The man I've been waiting to hear from!(Supose I could have sent a PM) I've seen video and pics of your car, it's the mutt's nuts as they may say where you're from. I'm dead serious about the build, I've been bit by the rally bug . Historic rallying is what I'm aiming for. Thanks for the pics and the tips you've posted thus far, they'll be extremely helpful. I'm gonna get her running first then move on to the cage. Did you build it yourself?

I got my cage from Custom Cages here in the UK. It came pre-bent and needed to be finished off and welded in. Whatever cage you buy it needs to meet the specification required by the racing body/association you will be racing under in your rallies. Put the incorrect cage in now and you'll have to rip it out and put the right one in when you start rallying officially.

One thing you need to ensure is that the base car body is sound. By that I mean it needs to be free of any dodgy (weak) crash and rust repairs.

Once you've stripped out the interior, put a cage in and put the skid plates on you're nearly there.

Here's a shot of how I did the interior





Next you need to counter the added heat that the skid plate is going to bring to the party. First thing is a front mount oil cooler, a big one!! Here's mine







Put some mud flaps on and you're good to start rallying. This got me to the point where I got the first 2 years of rallying in and started having a laugh and learning the ropes, like this



Oh yeh, nearly forgot you'll also need an electric cutoff and a plumbed in extinguisher system.

A 914/6 GT engine lid will also help with the added heat from the skid plate. Here's the one I made, real simple. Take one standard 914 engine lid, a sheet of grill and some pop rivets.

Hey Moggy,
Thanks again for all the input. I've got the interior completely stripped out now including the insulation material from the floor. Once I get it stripped back to bare metal and treat the few surface rust areas I'm thinking of putting in bed liner to save weight and provide to durability and insulation. I need to repair some rusted through areas in the firewall near the hell hole first as well. Then comes the cage and skid plates. I noticed in your first pics with the interior stripped that the cross member in front of the seats is missing. Mine is rusted on the passenger side, did you replace yours? Also, did you ad an Engman kit or anything to sure up the chasis? What sort of suspension are you using? Just out of curiosity, what motor are you running in that? Sorry for all the questions and thanks for taking the time to answer them. Unfortunately there is not much of a rallying community in my part of the states, but I have found some rally cross events as well as some sprint stage rallies through the SCCA. All they require is a sound car and a helemt, roll cage recomended but not required(I'll wait til I have the cage).
Cheers
Josh
Ps. Nice seats

Thanks, That would be helpful. Provide some inspiration any way. There's a sweet video on youtube from back in the day. Lemme see if I can put it up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDXRytMr8iA
Also a sweet vid of Moggy taking a left hand hairpin quite nicely on gravel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SeD-J6JqYY

Hi Silverstreak,

Bravo for building a 914 rally car!

I've read all the postings to date and your work looks very good.

Here's some thoughts I wanted to contribute:

-If the rollcage is in and the doors still close, then you obviously got the tip about bracing the door openings to prevent them closing up when the welding cools.
Whew! That is always an issue.

-Your skip plate looks well thought out and I can't tell from the photo, but I would suggest LOTS of bracing to the frame so that ONE BIG ROCK doesn't push it up and take out the trans or exhaust. If you can jack the car up via the skid plate you are safe.

-THE BIG ISSUE will be what the suspension will do when you raise the car. Once you move out of the DESIGNED range of operation, behavior will change a lot.
I have a V8 conversion car for road course play and had to start from scratch on the suspension settings as there was no "record" of how to set such a car up. I've learned a lot and would recommend reading the Paddock posting: "Alignment specs for V8 DE 914". I posted a lot of info on what the suspension does through its travel:
It is a certainty that when the car is raised, the rear will TOE-IN seriously (.200" for 2" of travel).

With the car raised, the front camber and toe setting will also have to be looked at and bump-steer corrected . Just as a thought: you could install SPACERS to lower the entire front suspension as a unit to gain 1" - 1-1/2" ground clearance with minimal affect on the range of operation of the lower suspension arm.

Best of luck!....send more photos as you progress.

Terry

Hey Silverstreak,

OOPS! I need to make a correction: When the rear suspenions droops (or the car is raised) it moves in a TOE-OUT direction. When it travels upward, it goes TOE-IN.

Regardless of direction, the rate of change is huge: 0.200" for 2" of travel.

Best of luck,
Terry

Thanks... the seats were £40 off E-Bay.

The usual is to have nothing on the floor inside. Just strip back to metal and POR15 the whole lot - job done. I also, like you, had to weld a few patches on the firewall. You can see them if you look carefully in some of the pictures.

The cross members you refer to were removed to enable me to sit the seats on the floor. Depending on the seats you buy, you'll probably find you'll have to do the same. My co-driver is 6foot 3 so sitting the seats and leaning them back some was essential to fit him in. BTW have you got a mate mad enough to sit in the passenger seat and read the notes yet?

For the first 2 years I had NO Engmann Kit, rear boxed arms etc or in fact anything that strengthened the suspension and/or bodywork. HOWEVER!!! this winter I stripped everything back to shell and found that there was a bad crack in the usual place on the longs (i.e. just by the handbrake) and I found both rear arms were bent. SO I'd advise you install a Engmann Kit (or similar). Here's a picture of mine welded in (you can also see one of the patches I had to do on the firewall):



On the rears I got a set of strengthened arms from PMB Performance (awsome quality!!), and a rear suspension brace kit from Tangerine Racing. Here's a few shots of that lot:







While on the subject of rear suspension.... I'd advise you go with 180lb springs on the back and a set of Bilsteins with adjustable perches. However, DO NOT buy the 180 springs from any of the usual 914 specialists, they will ALL lower the car. Simply take (send) your standard springs to a spring manufacturer and ask them to make you a set of 180s that are the same length as the standard springs.

Before I forget.... also, ALWAYS use rubber suspension bushings. The suspension takes such a pounding in rallying anything else gets destroyed and passes too much grief onto everything else. Go to Elephant Racing for the rubber bushes.... very good quality and they come a handy kit to help you get them on:



The front suspension I would recommend you go with good condition standard front arms, bilsteins and standard 914-4 torsion bars. Too stiff on the front and the front will understeer badly on the gravel. Also, I found that it's best NOT to use an anti-roll bar on the front on gravel but on tarmac attach it but only on the lowest setting.

If you're just starting out in rallying just go with a good strong original 2litre with Webers on. Keep it simple and strong so you can concentrate on learning how to drive and forget about the engine.

You mention that the rallying you want to get into states that a roll cage is recommended but NOT required. I find this VERY strange what kind of rallying are you getting into here? have you got a link to one of the rally's you are hoping to enter?

Hope this all helps

Also... before I go. You WILL need a central, hydraulic handbrake. You can see in one of the pictures above the mounting plate we welded in ready to mount the handbrake on to.

Yeah, the comment of no cages caught my eye too...

Are you talking Rallycross? Not Rally? Big difference. Rallycross is an autox/gymkhana on dirt/gravel, Rally is fast with big trees in the way...

The former you can run cage-less, the later you can't.

-Josh2

After the deaths in the Classic Adelaide rally last year I have almost decided to retire the teener from tarmac rallies. The cage is not sufficiently robust and I dont want to chop the car up to fix it. Might do a 2 litre motor and go historic racing.

Recent experience down here indicates that in a rally you are most likely to be hurt by something immoveable coming through the door, so when doing the cage maybe you should think about some huge Nascar style intrusion bars going into the door shell.

I was always going to move that cross beam on the floor a few inches forward as it would make the seat mounting easier, but never got round to it. If you do move it you will have a convenient place to mount the extinguishers.

Rear chassis reinforcement kit would be a good idea. Otherwise, all you need is lots of grunt, big brakes and big balls.

Cheers, H

And you do need to find a slightly unhinged kind of critter to sit next to you and read the notes and keep it all in sync. Falling off the notes can be somewhat fraught. I wouldn't be a navigator for quids.

H

Hello everyone,
Thanks for all the input. BTW that's not my car in the pic's. That's Moggy's fine piece of kit. I was also skeptical of the roll cage thing. So I went back to the site I found the event on http://rallyflorida.org/ and realized it says it is NOT an SCCA sanctioned event. It's a sprint rally with 6 stages, anyway you can read for yourself on the site. It's being held at "The European Rally School" in Starke FL., so I'm guessing they have some sort of training stages with minimal trees, probably none at the turns. I'm still trying to get my car started (waiting on Dellorto parts from across the pond) so I'm putting off the rally build work until I know I have a good motor. My rally mechanic/rally buddy has a Mitsubishi Eclipse GSX (AWD, Turbo) we're going to enter in this event. I'll be his co-driver and once my car is done he'll be mine. I'm 6'5' Moggy so thanks for the heads up on the seat mounting. Anyway, wish me luck, I'll keep you posted on the car.
Cheers
Josh