Rally Racing, part 1: Building the Car
This is the first of three articles on Rally Racing. I intend to cover car set-ups, driver training, different classes, and whatever else I may come upon. This part will show a built of an Open Class rally car, which is essentially a race car based on a production car, but with the least restrictions placed on it. For instance, the engine has to use the original block, but otherwise is only limited by a 34mmx3mm restrictor plate.
Helping me write these series of articles is Bacon Motorsport. Bacon Motorsport is a privateer family race team from Chemsford MA. Team drivers are William Bacon Jr and Peter Watt. Bill has more than ten years of racing experience and Peter was the Canadian rally champion in 2004. The team has recently finished in third place at the Sno*Drift Rally in Michigan.
The first step in building of a proper rally car is… stripping. The car. This is the emotionally difficult part (at least for wimps like me). You get to take your new $30k+ car and strip it down to the bare chassis.
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Everything has to go: interior, including dash, all windows, doors, engine, EVERYTHING.
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Once everything is removed, you’re going to start adding. First things to add are chassis reinforcements, especially around the suspension mounting points.
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Next to add are jacking points. These are needed not only for on-the-fly tire changes but also allow for easy lifting and transport of the chassis during the built.
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Scaffolding is next. Obvious reasons for the roll cage are safety and chassis strength. Unlike roll cages of yesteryear, the current trend is to integrate the cages into the chassis for further added strength.
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One last thing to do before sending out your new chassis to the paint shop is to make sure that all the under-chassis protections fits well. Bill, along with his father, have performed most of the built in their own garage. Here they are fitting the kevlar carbon weave protection.
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Once your chassis is back from the paint shop, looking all nice and pretty, it is time to start putting stuff back on it. First thing is the engine.
While the engine was out it received several improvements of its own. Factory camshafts were replaced with units that work better with the mandatory 34mm restrictor plate. Connecting rods and bearings get swapped for units that can handle racing abuse and the constant 30psi of boost. Stock Evo IX turbo gets a new ball-bearing center which can handle to anti-lag better and spool quicker.
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Continue bolting stuff up. Stuff such as these rally-spec adjustable coil-over springs with external reservoir shocks.
The factory EVO brakes are pretty good, but unfortunately they won’t work well for rally racing. Here you want to use Brembo’s Groupe N 300mm rotors with 4-piston calipers – the advantage of using these is that they fit nicely under a 15″ rally rim.
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Keep spinning those wrenches. You still have to add the dogbox transmission, RalliArt LSDs, engine management system, fuel system, fire suppression system, required safety equipment, and all the million miscellaneous other crap.
Oh yea, don’t forget all the doors, windows, and other body panels. Inside you will need two race-seats and harnesses. Race steering wheel, pedal box, vents and gauge cluster. And probably million other things.
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So now you are several months and Lord only knows how much money into it. Car looks great, and you think that it is going to be really competitive and so you are ready for some racing!! Well, in short, NO, you are not!
To Be Continued…
Full EVO built gallery below. All pictures are courtesy of Bacon Motorsport.
Related:
New England Forest Rally – See the Bacon Motorsport Evo in action!
Rally America Rule Book – What you have to know. It’s long. You know you want to read it. 
A nice article, Kamil, but I have to admit, it makes me very, very sad.
As someone who doesn’t have an $80,000 budget to build an open class car over the summer (which is probably a full 99% of the people who currently rally or want to get into rally), I’d offer that you only mentioned 2 items here which you actually *need* as part of your prep.
1. If you are going to build an all wheel drive turbocharged car, you’re going to be saddled with the buzzkill turbine inlet restrictor. 34mm for open class, 32mm for PGT. The powers that be seem to think that FWD/RWD cars can’t possibly go fast enough to get into trouble, so there are no restrictions on turbochargers for those cars.
2. The roll cage is pretty much the only thing you NEED in order to go rally mentioned in this article. Build it per the more strict Rally Amerika rulebook and rest assured that you’ll be legal for NASA competition as well.
You don’t need a $7000 dogbox transmission. You need a healthy trans with a good clutch.
You don’t need $5000 worth of uber-rare Ralliart LSDs. LSDs are nice, but not required.
You don’t need carbon kevlar skidplates. Heavy duty plastics or aluminum sheeting is more common.
You don’t need a $10,000 Ohilins suspension set up. You can do suspension for under $3000 easily.
And you *damn* sure don’t need to buy a brand new, $30,000 Evo or WRX to rally today.
That’s the biggest misconception about rally today. People think you need to buy a brand new Evo or WRX and drop fifty grand into it if you want to rally. Tell that to the guys with the beat-ass, 20 year old Volkswagens who give the deep pockets open class teams a run for their money from Group 2. Tell that to the couple with the 130hp, bone stock Dodge Neon who took Production Stock class three years in a row. Tell that to the guys in the old Ford Ranger pickup trucks, the late-80s Camaros, and the probably tens of thousands of Swedes running old Volvos and Saabs.
Plain and simple, what you really NEED when it comes to rally is a clear-cut understanding of your goals. If you’ve paid your dues, busted your ass, and find yourself sitting flush with funds to go balls deep on a no-expenses-spared build like this so you can spend the year towing the car, spares, tools, and crew all over the country to seriously campaign for open class national glory, then this is a damn good way to do it.
But if you want to get into rally beyond watching it on Discovery HD or jerking off to some video game, then you need to find a solid platform on the cheap. You need to consult the rules to make sure you get the bare minimum safety requirements in the car for a log book – cage, seats, harnesses. You need to budget to get the bare minimum safety equipment for your own ass – suit, helmet, HANS (rent it). You need to do the bare minimums to make sure you finish that first rally, even if you come in dead last – skid plates, brakes, tires. And you need to make sure you’ve got the $2000 or so it’s going to take to enter that first event, get the car to MTC, and home.
Always love a bit of rally coverage, but just be careful with the wording. This looks like one hell of a nice build and I don’t begrudge anyone who has the means to live the dream like this, but to suggest that this is what rally is all about is doing a great disservice to the many, many people out there who will run an entire season (including prepping a car) for what these guys have spent in just this article.
Looking forward to the next installment.