www.kickastra.com

Having crashed the MK 3 Astra in spectacular fashion in the October gravel sprint at Black Bess, the Kickastra Rally Team has had time to assess not only what is salvagable from the MK 3, but also to plan its successor.

Apart from the obvious body damage sustained in the multiple roll accident, the damage list includes but is not yet limited to bent rear shocks,bent rear beam,front left shock ripped out of the wheelhouse panel,broken rightside TCA and severely crushed right side sill which in turn put a small bend in the door bars on that side. Also on the list is a damaged helmet - there is mark on the side of the helemt that matches the B pillar support, stretched seat belts, bent seat brackets and possibly a compromised seat - one of the seat side mount bolts ripped through the bracket leaving the seat anchored by three bolts only.

The safety gear did its job and the seat, seat belts and helmet will be replaced. Thats the easy bit.

This thread will chronicle the rebuild of the Kickastra Rally Car into a MK4 Astra. Enjoy.

While the accident with the MK3 pushed rebuild plans to the fore very quickly, the team had been contemplating a reshell anyway at the end of the 2012 season. The MK3 had proved very reliable mechanically and handled quite well. We had re-engineered the rear beam to make it independant and had softened the suspension all round. One thing we never quite got ironed out was the nervousness in a straight line in spite of making a variety of changes to supension geometry and trying to better locate the now rear beams with additional rose joints.

Ultimately, a reshell/upgrade to the MK4 was more or less inevitable. We would certainly not be in uncharted territory in going this route as it was in a MK4 Astra that the team competed in World Rally GB 2006 and 2007 and then World Rally Finland in 2009.

A MK4 it was then. I searched locally for a suitable donor car, and suprisingly found 3 in short order. One was a 1400 manual, and the other two 1600 automatics. Now while this does not really matter as we would be transplanting our engine and box into the chosen car, we did want as much as possible to be compatible with what we had or were using and so all three were ruled out as donors. A 2 litre car has a larger cooling system and the ancilliaries would fit our engine if needed as the ecotec and xe blocks as essentially the same externally. This basically dictated that a donor car be sourced from the UK.

A look on the UK autotrader website produced a multitude of possible donor cars. Finding a car would be no problem. By now we had decided that the quickest and simplest route to getting back up and running was to bring in a complete driving car under the dutyfree scheme for competition cars. One of the fundamental requirements of the scheme is a welded in roll cage. The choice of cage was easy - the same cage as used in the car in which we competed in WRGB and Finland. It was an FIA homologated cage, readily available and also relatively light. This was quite important as the MK4 is a good bit heavier than the MK3.

Some enquiries were made regarding getting the cage installed in the car in the UK. The prices quoted caused us to re-assess our plans.

The donor car was going to be sourced from in the Essex area with Eddie from Vauxhall Performance Spares Centre acting as our ears on the ground. Eddie was the obvious choice - we have sourced pretty much everything Vauxhall we have ever needed through him over the years including engines and other spares not to mention the recently retired MK3.

So, the word was sent, please find us a 2 door 2 litre manual MK4 Astra without a sunroof. This is what he came up with.

With the donor car picked out, a clean, manual 2.0 SRi attention then turned to the cage. I eventually decided to go to the UK and install the cage myself at Eddie's workshop. The thinking behind this was that since the cage was a prebent and profiled that it should go together quite easily and quickly. Additionally, the car interior and dash would be stripped out ahead of time by Eddie's boys and be ready to work on.

With this in mind, the cage was ordered, plane ticket purchased and mig welder and workshop space arranged. So it was on a cold and windy morning November I found myself at the hired car lot outside Heathrow airport about to set out on the 2 hour drive to Walton-on-the-Naze only to hear the cage had not arrived there yet!

A rather troubled 2 hours later I pulled into the shop to find...a shrinkwrapped cage propped against the wall. Thank goodness! Unlike the cage in brother Jonathan's OPC, this one came with the rear section fully welded up. The rear section consisted of the main hoop, back stays, X rear diagonal and lower stays - basically what you see here.All I had to do was weld in the floor plates and then weld the rear section on to them.



Of course, nothing in life is quite that simple. The rear section could not be fixed until the front legs fitted right. The front legs needed to be properly located in order to properly position the floor plates. The floor plates could not be full welded with the front legs in place. Ditto for the rear section. I lost track of how many times it went in and out. Once all this lot was positioned right, the door bars then had to be added.



Up to this point, nothing was welded apart from the floor plates to the shell. Everything had to be fitted correctly before final welding could be done.

I was joined in the UK by brother Jonathan who fly across from home base Germany to lend a hand and speed things along, and speed we did. The cage was substantially finished by early Sunday afternoon having started on Friday evening.



We left out two things - first the triangulation from the front leg to the front suspension and second the B pillar supports. To fit the triangulation to the front suspension involved drilling or cutting through both the inner bulkhead and the outer lip that separates the blower intake from the engine compartment. The correct tools to do a neat job were not readily available and we decided to leave it until the car got to Bim.

The B pillar supports were a different matter. The tube for this section was supplied with the notches on opposite sides of the pipe whereas they should have been on the same side in order to fit between two diverging members.



The simple solution was to cut the end off and renotch it in the correct way. Unfortunately, this was not an option as this was a homologated cage and changing this piece - especially when it was identified with a measurement on the homologation form was a no-no. Again, we left it out and contacted the cage supplier on the matter.

We heard back from the cage supplier yesterday - they acknowledged that the B pillar supports supplied were not the correct ones and are arranging to get the right ones to us.

We heard back from the cage supplier yesterday - they acknowledged that the B pillar supports supplied were not the correct ones and are arranging to get the right ones to us.

So with the cage as complete as we could get it, the car was left in Eddie's capable hands to refit the dash and steering column and have the car in a driveable condition for shipping.

Attention then turned back to the MK 3. The car had not been stripped since the accident and the team now took the opportunity to do this. Engine and box were removed and examined, and apart from a partially crushed oil filter (caused when the right side TCA broke and the driveshaft gave it a whack)
everything was fine. One of the primaries on the extractor however was crushed when the sump guard had hit whatever launched the car in the air. It does look repairable but will require the offending piece to be carefully cut out,knocked out and then re-welded into place.

After a bit of break on account of shipping the car to Bim, excitement is back in the air - the car has arrived!

Home we go!

So, with the car finally at the workshop, the work now begins to make what effectively a stripped out road car with a cage into a rally car. First thing was to assess what we had.

The interior was pretty much completely stripped out including some parts of the dash that we actually wanted like the glove compartment - always a good place to keep the log book and tyre pressure guage. The car also only had a single seat, the drivers seat that was to replace the one I sat in when I had the crash in October.

First order of the day then was to weigh what we had which would give us an idea of where we needed to be for the class. The M7 minimum weight is 1000kgs, but I also recall that the OPC that my brother and I drove in WRGB 2006 was 1310kgs with a full tank, and now weighs around 1130kgs after a lightening regime right to the limit of group N.

To the scales then...


Not bad considering, but with an already stripped interior and missing one seat and bracket,a pair of harneses and a fire extinguisher, getting close to weight won't be easy...