Heres his photo

Looks like a nice looking car.

THe strangest thing is the 1200Coupe user name was never taken before now

The user name thing shocked me too. Just lucky I guess.

It's alllllll mine now - yippeee

Great to see another rally freak joining the club. Sounds like you have a fairly modded coupe and are having some good fun racing!

I also have a rally coupe (see avatar). It is STILL getting the motor built as I am building to a budget (takes time). The coupe is in full rally trim as I bought it from a bloke who rallied it but he took out the A15 and 5spd (yes, A15). I could also crap on a bit about it, but I wont bore you with it. Please spill the beans and let us know the details on your coupe.

Welcome to the club.

Simon

Simon,
Your coupe looks good too.
Unfortunately for me to give details of my coupe would take to long.
The rally regulations require me to keep the 1200 block, so from there everything else mechanical has been highly modified, lots of nismo bits and most other stuff is custom fabrication. I do most of the design and manufacture of go fast bits myself cause I'm an engineer and my budget is also very limited. I'm lucky to be able to do stuff myself and not rely on others because I never get exactly what I want, but I get a buzz from designing and building everything myself.
If you ask me a specific question about its design then I am happy to post an answer.
One day soon I'm going to grab a camera and post some photos.

Good luck with your coupe project.

Paul

hi, im after some adjustable strut tops, just wondering how your front suspension is set up

cheers mate, what state do you rally in?

Hi 1200rallycar,
My front suspension uses 40mm Bilstein inserts into custom tubes. I use adjustable strut tops but they dont mount the top of the insert/damper like stock because the 40mm strut tubes are actually 50mm longer than normal. As you probably know the oil in dampers heats up very quickly and can take hours to cool back down so by running longer inserts means that the damper has more oil to act as a heat soak, in short better suspension in stages that are very long.
This means that once my bonnet is open and you look at the strut tops you see a thing that looks like a stainless steel tophat that extends up past the strut tower of the body by 50mm. All this means that I can run longer front dampers and still close the bonnet with about 10mm clearance.
I used to run rubber inserts in my extended strut tops but found when landing after big jumps that the rubber would flex and drive the damper ends up through the bonnet, not a good look
I use LJ Tonana radius rods which are much stronger than stock and have the strut tops set up so I have good cambers and around 5.5 degrees caster. The idea is to have everything super strong and fully adjustable.
I have just finished redisigning and building all this.
The stainless tophats have spherical bearings fitted and the lower control arms are all rose jointed.
I will get off my ass and organise some photo's after the next round for the ARC because I'm chief engineer for one of the teams.
Oh yeh, i almost forgot, I rally in the Canberra region.

are you using the standard strut?
i have stanza struts in my car, with stock 1200 springs and some pedders gas inserts

it sits higher than standard as the struts are longer than 1200 ones and therefore has positive camber

i need to get lower springs (possibly harder too) to bring it back to normal height, but then need a way to adjust camber and castor, are you in the habit of making and selling stuff?

are th LJ toro castor rods bolt in? or do they require a bit of mods, i was thinking of getting an extra 10mm thread machined in my castor rods shank for a little castor but though this will probably just load up everything else by pulling it forward and make it weaker, thats why im after the strut tops

ive also been told to just redrill the botom arm mount about 10mm out and weld up the old holes to hide em, to achieve some camber

i hate it how the legal way is soooo much more expensive

oh yeah sorry one last thing for now

if i lower the springs i will have less travel right, do you think this is a serious issue for rallying?

are you using the standard strut?

NO, lots of mods.

i have stanza struts in my car, with stock 1200 springs and some pedders gas inserts
it sits higher than standard as the struts are longer than 1200 ones and therefore has positive camber

NO OFFENCE BUT THIS IS NOT A GOOD THING. The geometry of you chassis will be changed for the worst. Its a good idea to use longer shocks but the length must be allowed for up top not down at the lower control arm.

i need to get lower springs (possibly harder too) to bring it back to normal height, but then need a way to adjust camber and castor, are you in the habit of making and selling stuff?

Be careful that once you have your new springs that they dont bottom out in the damper because the damper stroke might crash because the damper is already preloaded in your possible set up.
I sometimes design and build stuff for others but I'm sorry to say that I'm flat out with my ARC committments for this year anyway.

are th LJ toro castor rods bolt in? or do they require a bit of mods, i was thinking of getting an extra 10mm thread machined in my castor rods shank for a little castor but though this will probably just load up everything else by pulling it forward and make it weaker, thats why im after the strut tops

LJ rods need a little work but not much, just redrilling holes to large size and do a little cutting. Once you have a pair in your hands you will see what I mean. They are hard to find so good luck. They are also longer and have longer threaded ends for better adjustment.

ive also been told to just redrill the botom arm mount about 10mm out and weld up the old holes to hide em, to achieve some camber

I wouldn't do it that way, why dont you get rose joints fitted to the inner lower control arms, this will give you the camber and its a much better way of doing things. The rose joint will take any adjustments you need for you cambers as well without placing undue load where it shouldnt be.

i hate it how the legal way is soooo much more expensive

Yep me too mate but thats just how motorsport is.

Your suspension travel needs will always depend on the condition of the stages you compete inn. 1200 rally cars like having their ass lower to the ground because it helps with rear wheel grip. Remember you are limited to useing the shock rear beam arrangements under the rules of rally.

thanks for the info mate,
i guess im waiting for the funds to come round then

actually my biggest prob at the moment is that i dont have a roll cage or harnesses so i can only enter a few novice events