Thread: Alpine Rally www.alpinerally.org.au

Ohh another Pic of one of my old BABY's.....

When i had it it was only 60k old....



Then years later after i sold it and it was turned into a real car....lol




Then i built one of these


Then bought the Ex Round Aust 1979 Volvo




Then i built my Last rally car...
The Volvo 164, Damn it was tough..

GOOD LUCK, in that mav

Originally Posted by mns488

GOOD LUCK, in that mav

Will need it......

We went out last night to set up the Tripmeter and Lights.... OMG... the power is frightening........

take of from the lights..... then let it grab 2nd.. then punch it and 4wd tyres smoke.... all 4 corners with lockers on.....

And the side stepping when its in 2wd.... OMG... i want one..

Originally Posted by sclarke

Only a sparkie could love it

Clarkie,

I've had a few good old ones too, a fantastic original 144s, a couple of 244's and my neighbour has about 15 of them in his paddock...142's, 240's etc. Between him and his son they have 3 242GT's, one about to get a Rover V8 conversion. Had a customer with a 350 chev in a 240, and one guy up north in Tas apparently has turboed his 244 and runs 13's with an auto box...

They may be ugly,(Some think so, I don't) but they have character and are indestructible.

I would've loved to have one for a rally car way back, you could be assured of finishing the event unless you hit something big - or got lost

JC

There's a house not far from me with Volvos breeding in the yard. I'll have to stop and take some photos for you. I haven't had a good look but most look to be around the 240 era.

Sounds like your going to have a good time doing sweep in that beast. I haven't had much to do with rallies for at least 10 years but I have done sweep for a QRC round. Unforunately we had too much fun and just about put the engine through the bonnet when we missed a call for a causeway. It came up several hundred metres earlier than the notes had it. We hit it going hard in top. Didn't touch the entry at all, but hit the exit real hard.

Stay safe, you nutter........

The outcome......

The Mav went home on a Flatbed........



The story....
We were doing recovery for a few stages, the Sweep car nosed over with overheating (turbo 4.2 patrol) then we got moved up the ranks to Sweep... Then the 1st recovery and us took it in turns to Sweep and recover...
80% of the time it was full noise knowing there was no broken down or crashed cars...
As a recovery vehicle, you dont get the rest brakes like the compeditors. so we had 15 mins in total from 10am sat morning to 5am Sunday morning... the rest was flat out drving or recovering...
5.30am sunday off to bed, back up at 9am for a 10am start.... then all day more flat out driving.... and finished at 5.30pm Sunday....

Well the interesting part. The Mav went great for about 5 hours, then it started to run low on oil pressure.... the Big Eight was not happy.. a BRAND new engine and only a few hundred k's old it started to nose over.. the Sat night and sun moring were very tiring and the driving was fast, about 2am we heard a load crack from the front as we exited a tight LH corner at about 5000rpm... the Front LH CV or manual locking hub broke, so we were back to 2wd... Now the fun started..... lots of HP in 4wd is fast and controlable, but 2wd is hell fun... i loved it... the spectators loved it... the Big Eight at full noise with a 3" exhaust sounds great at full noise...
Sunday at 9am we checked the car over to find...... a leaking front brake line and the Flex plate was noisy on idle, but we had a job to do and i was a passenger so who cared if it blew up.....
1st stage was a blast.... the time we ran was faster than half the feild and i was nervous a few times, but the places we gained time was the fords and wash outs....
after stage 21 we cooked the mav, 10 mins later we had fired it back up to find it missing and stalling on low revs.... bugger it... back into it at full noise.... the last stage was 30km.... and i have never had so much fun... after we passed a service crew on the outside of a corner at a spectator point we knew it was flat out or nothing... we were told later there was 1 foot of air under the front wheel of the Mav.
This quote was from the photograper. "The crowd was leaving one of the speccy points when they heard the V8 thru the bush and looked to see lights blazing and a dust cloud like a WRC was on heat, then you launched thru the corner in a style that was far from smooth or undercontrol and exited in a fashion that would have made Colin Mcrae cringe" Yep Dave was not happy with the beast and the driving had me smiling like a kid in a candy shop.
about 6k's from the end of the last stage i called the corner 200m before the corner as i normally did and dave threw it sideways into the corner really early and we both noticed the Culvet on the exit at the last moment. All i thought was "we are going over" and as we slid sideways over the bush befroe it we left into the air and landed in the culvet on both the LH wheels with alot of body roll.... as we still had about 40kmh of sidewards momentum it threw it into the air and looking out the side window all i could see was dirt...., we still dont know how it landed on the 2 LH wheels and sat there for about a half second and then landed on all 4 really hard, but it did... the Crowd went nuts.... Dave looked at me and said "SHEIT" and proceeded to start the beast and light a ciggy at the same time.... the bad part... engine was really noisy... we drove out fast, but not as silly and got to the last transport stage.... 7km to the hotel.... and guess what.... as we were coming up the hill the engine rattled, wheezed and gave its last backfire before we rolled to a stop....
switched it to Gas and tried to start it... then fuel and still go go... after 3 mins or so and the engine slowed its gurgles down we got it fired on fuel and hit the loud button... the noise was so bad it hurt. we got into the finish control and out comment was...... Winners finish the Event....
We moved it to a quiet place to listen to it cooling down... the crackles and pops were interesting to say the least...
Then off to the pub for dinner and war stories.....

This morning on a flat bed and in a rental we went....
It wont be a cheap fix. but as its not mine... hey i'm still smiling....