Would a thicker diameter sway bar be a better option than the pair? My rx2 has a 24mm unit (I think it is) with the threaded end for castor adjustment. And shouldn't there be a urethane bush on the sway bar mounts...?

Fiat steel.... . I was talking to someone just last week who claimed his father had a rust free 124 model.... we asked if it had been in an oil bath since new. I believe it was the poor russian steel, combined with being shipped on open decked freighters or some such.

 

I've been doing a bunch of measuring and it looks like the back end is so messed up and rusty from being hit numerous times that I'm going to have to do a rear clip on the car. Besides rust in strange places the suspension points were over 1 inch off in back. The front is perfect though, as square as it was when new.

The passenger side floor has been baked so many times from not having heat shields that it crumbled from being rusty from the front seat support back to under the rear seat area including the cross member inside.

Since I was planning on both quarter panels anyway, I'm going to mate a complete rear to the good front end and roof. I became concerned about the car becoming a "number plate" car, the only thing left of the original is the VIN plate. I sent off an email to a good friend that does a lot of racecar restorations and told him what I have. He said,"You don't think the original owners would have done an extensive rear clip if they wadded the car up at a race?" He basically said the soul of the race car transfers quite quickly into the new parts because they get new parts all the time. Instead of cutting apart three cars and then reattaching each individual piece into the old car just do it in a couple big pieces.

Here's a plug for him even though he only does Alfas

http://www.romanautoprep.com

 

A bigger diameter bar would be better than two. I don't know if there were any available when the car was first built. The owners after that probably figured, eh, it works.

One of the problems with the stock design with camber adjustment is you are also adjusting the stiffness of the bar at the same time. I may come up with something that fixes that, maybe a tension rod like the FB's have. I'll have to check the vintage rules. The other option, and it all may end up on the car, is to lose the lower bar and put one elsewhere on the front that it is adjustable.

A bearing for the bar to ride in would be ideal. The easier way is to have the hole in the aluminum mounting blocks be just a few thousandths bigger than the bar so it can move freely but not rattle around. A shaft collar to keep it from moving around helps as well. One item I am going to look into a little is the bushing in the control arm is a solid piece of delrin. The problem I'll be looking for is that as the arm moves up and down it has to swivel on the bearing on the chassis end and the ball joint. If these aren't lined up right it can cause changes in suspension geometry.

 

Camber or castor?

Seen this?
http://www.ausrotary.com/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=71904
Its not overly relevant, but still very cool.

It is an Aussie historic racing class for 1972 and earlier models with limited freedoms for modification. I think when the thread started bridgeports were still banned, though one was being trialled.

(I better check with Dazz as to why his pics have bugged out).

 

Your right, caster. oops I was thinking castor and typed camber.

 

I thought I'd dust off this thread and start updating it.

The car had been sitting outside my old shop from lack of room. I moved into a bigger shop last Nov and I have enough room for most of my cars now.

I built a chassis jig and started organizing things for the project. I have major parts from at least 7 cars for the chassis and a ton of 12A parts to piece together an engine. Besides all that stuff I have all the parst that came off the car ready to be cleaned up and powder coated.

Hopefully the project will move faster now...

 

Lookin good. I'm excited to see some progress.

 

you ever get around to making those fiberglass molds?

 

wow, great pics on the build. Keep up the work.

Wish I could strip mine down to metal and repaint to make her 100% perfect but money and time will not allow and heck, she looks good for having 77K miles.

 

I think respeed might have one

 

Just the trunk skin so far, nothing beyond that. As the car moves along I'll pick a hood to prep to make a mold. Both of them are waiting in epoxy primer. I'm just going to do racecar parts though, no frame work under the hood at first.

 

Im looking for pure race parts. No frame work needed here... I'll give you my Rx2 hood if you want it. Its not perfect, but it will be free.

 

great work cant wait to see it done,

 

Great project! I would love to find out a bit more race history and information on this RX-2. In 1978 there were only a few RX-2s raced in the Mid-Ohio race.... this *may* be the #30 Walt Bohren IMSA RS car... can't be sure without a bit more background. Do you have any further information? Thanks!

-Bern

 

This was Kevin Coffey's car. I found him in Orlando after tracking some leads in all the documentation I got with the car. He is a college professor now and he built it while he was a mechanic at a Mazda dealer in Miami when he was in college.

The best thing about talking to him was that I found out how little the car had changed over the years. I'm the 9th owner and probably 90% of the car as he built it is in my boxes of parts. The last three owners before me never ran the car.

I did the welding on the clip last night, no more vicegrips! I was able to get everything lined up to within 1/16th of an inch of square and level. Probably closer than it was first built. The guy that has the shop next to mine was making fun of me because I had 10 plumb bobs hanging from the car and was hesitating to start welding over that 1/16th. I told him, "I have 10 more plumb bobs, but I can't find a place to hang them that would matter."

 

Here is a scan of the first SCCA logbook with the two polaroid's of the car. This is the livery it ran in IMSA as well. IMSA didn't require a logbook so its only SCCA events listed in the two books.

 

http://www.pbase.com/mwphoto/root

if that was mine, i'd just paint it like the polaroid, it looks great.

very cool project!

ive got plenty of twin dizy engine parts, if you want/need em

 

Wow!! the story and what you are doing just has me at awe!!!! Great project!!!

 

Exactly what I'm going to do with the paint job. I found so many layers of paint on the car I was glad to find out the pics I had showed how it ran the pro races. There was a dark metalic blue under the white and blue that Kevin said was on the car when he bought it. He recalls painting it after doing an SCCA school or two with the car.

I had been gathering twin dizzy parts myself but found out the rules didn't allow them to be bridgeported, then or now. Its going to have a big bridge with a Weber 48 IDA. I also have a stock carb that I will prep by punching out the primaries. I'll see which one makes the power where I want it.

Here is todays progress. This is a rough cut on the quarter panel. I'll be prepping the replacement and then do the final fit and trim. The nice thing about the panel is it doesn't wrap all the way under the rocker to the lower chassis seam. It ends under the chrome trim that runs under the door between the wheels. Looks like a pretty easy skin graph. The final cut will be higher on the C pillar but I didn't have the back window out yet. It will also totally replace the door jamb/latch face and go all the way to the flat inner panel, just like the factory. You can see the area the original panel was pushed in pretty flat. That wheel arch has been hammered out a little already. The quarter was almost flat from the door to the back bumper. It was trimmed for a repair with a torch, I think.

 

Here is a link to a couple race results pages that list the car.

Click on rounds 6 and 7 for the Daytona and Road Atlanta events. Drivers Kevin Coffey/Fred Snow at Daytona and Kevin and Randi Coffey at Atlanta.

http://www.classicscars.com/wspr/res...endur1978.html

 

Hey Bern...the Car & Driver car should be the the Walt Bohren car.

 

You may be right... but I thought the C&D RX-2 was the Downing #63 Duece.

Walt Bohren #30 ride circa 1977


Walt Bohren #30 ride circa 1978


Jim Downing #63 circa 1978




-Bern


_

 

Thanks for all the great info and pics! This was a nice SCCA RX-2 B-Sedan that raced in a few IMSA races.

Keep up the great work!!

-Bern

 

Walt Bohren Mid-Ohio 1974

The C&D RX2 was never Mazda blue.

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Roger Mandeville

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My '73 RX2 at M-O

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Walt at M-O

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Let's try a bigger version.

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For fun...Jim Tanner's one family perfect RX2, I missed this one...sold 10+ years ago w/ only 95k. The only non original part was RB ignition wires.

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