Hey all, I have an 83 fb that i am looking to get into rallying with. I havent found much information about "budget " (I use the term loosely since nothing about building a rally car is cheap) suspension setups or parts in that case for rallying an fb. I'd like to hear some insight from you guys because I've searches high and low for setups on the stock subframe and rearend for these cars, much appreciated - Austin

 

search for Peejays posts, he's been rally crossing for years.

 

There's a big difference between rally and rallycross. For rallycross, you can do fine with bone stock suspension. The stock ride height has plenty of clearance and the suspension is soft enough to absorb the harder bumps but stiff enough not to bottom out. It's a good place to start if you're new to the sport. If you're wanting to do stage rally, which may have some jumps, you'll need a beefier and adjustable setup - coilovers. There's not a whole lot of options these days unless you can fabricate. I believe Stance still sells a kit for the FB, as does TechnoToyTuning (T3). The latter is pretty expensive but they offer a lot of different components.

 

Yeah, comparitively, stage rally seems to favor stiffer more complicated struts, rallycross favors sheer grip over roughter terrain and the ability to change direction quickly. i run significantly stiffer springs in the rear than stage rally guys would, and a correspondingly large amount of antisquat geometry in the rear suspension (vs. the neutral squat favored by every link suspension stage rally car from the first works Mk1 Escorts to the Group B Celicas - and this includes the Group B RX-7s which had equal length parallel arms - see my Group B info thread for pictures if they are still there) and actually slightly softer front springs than a lot of stage rally guys use, it's kind of a compromise between getting the car to rotate and getting the rear end to bite. My driving style is very much a chuck it in and power out so I bias everything towards being able to put power down more so than a neutral driving experience.

My car would be scary to drive in stage rally. I hit 70+mph in rallycrosses, in a stage rally I could easily see 110-120+ happening and the car is very squirrely even on pavement at those speeds.

A common thing I keep reading about stage rally cars is to take the car's total vehicle weight, divide by ten, and that's your front spring rate, and make the rear rate about half that. This with rally specific struts (usually revalved Bilstein internals with beefy tubes, for privateer level suspension). I'm on 175lb front and rear with a 2450lb car without pink meatbags in it.

Admittedly, I had been running 250lb springs in the front with the 6" travel front struts. When I went to 8" travel struts, I went to the 175lb springs. Rear suspension has the shock eyelets moved up an inch or so (as much droop travel as I can get before the driveshaft bottoms in the trans) and while taking measurements the other day I noticed that the spring perches left dents in the chassis rails...