Pitchblack Rally Recce Raider Build

[irish44j]

I've been following your build for a while and love it. The winch looks great. I'm in the same boat right now but i was thinking of tucking it underneath the bumper.

I probably would have gone that direction too except for I already have that crossbar there and it would have been a ton of work to remove. Plus i like having the front receiver. But yeah there's a lot of room down below for sure, It would easily fit this winch and probably a every larger one.

 

[irish44j]

Not much new at the moment as I work on some other projects (and am lazy in the winter). But after CONTINUING problems with regular no-start once again, decided to investigate more. I've replaced the ignition key contacts, the starter, and checked the relay, and I was still having issues with starting. When It did start, it felt...."weak" and half the time it just clicked (relay click) as if the solenoid didn't have the juice to engage the gear. So this has to be a wiring issue or a weak relay contact. So I decided to workaround it. No photos, but essentially I installed a new relay in the engine bay, wired to the battery (+ and -), to the starter solenoid, and for the signal wire I tapped into the wire from the OEM relay to the solenoid. So basically I have two relays in-line, with the OEM relay signaling the underhood relay.

Long story short, it works great. Starts are much more "powerful" now. TBD whether it eleminates the no-start problem entirely, but I have confidence this solved the issue, which was one of my major concern points every time I drive this thing (and moreso on trail).

So since I don't have any pics of exciting wires and relays, here's pics of my skidplates off the car with some scrapes and stuff, because what else am I going to take pics of...

Here's another project I'm working on. This thing whngine for the first time today. So that's nice.

 

[irish44j]

Headed up to the MD/WV border to check out Wolf Den Run state park, which has a lot of great new trails and is making more. It's only $12 entry, so way less than Rausch Creek ORV park, and is only 2.5 hours away so that's pretty close for this metro area. The weather was perfect and after a ton of rain yesterday dust wouldn't be an issue (but water?) Anyhow, met up with Andy Thomas (rallycross national champion and featured earlier in wheeling in his big-ass pickup in this thread), and Andy just picked up a Montero Sport (stock except tires) and wanted to test it out before he does a larger build on it. His buddy RJ came as well, in a nicely-built Jeep Gladiator.

Note: just the cab of the Gladiator forward of the bed is the size of the Raider, which is pretty funny. That thing made big rocky areas look easy but did have some trouble in the tight woodland areas (the opposite of the Raider, basically)

Overall, the Raider continues to be a great little rig for blue-trail wheeling. Great maneuverability and traction, it's really sure-footed and adding the spacers actually makes a big difference in terms of how stable it feels on off-camber and off-angle stuff. Didn't have any issues all day other than a handful of hard bangs and drags over rocks due to its relatively low clearance. I definitely need to build a strong gas tank skid (said that before and didn't do it....) since I took a couple hard hits there dropping off ledges....sucky gas tank location on this thing....

I'm still having an issue with a loud "pop" sound that I can't seem to locate whether it's front or rear and only happens when (it seems) the front right wheel goes to max droop or max compression. I thought previously it was the swaybar but it still did it with the front sway removed so....will have to look into it again. Doesn't seem to actually cause any issues but it's pretty unsettling on trail.

Andy's Monty Sport did pretty well, though lack of rear LSD showed itself a few times and he had hard hits too since his clearance is about the same as mine.

Plenty of water as well, some areas maybe 2 feet deep, so not too bad

Cruised with this couple on the way home, guess they were out camping but I was looking at all their gear on the highway for an hour....

Anyhow, a few other photos

 

[irish44j]

We got new HVAC at the house last week. Instead of having the guy haul the old furnace and stuff away, I took everything apart for scrap (got about $140 out of it, so worth the hour of effort). Anyhow, haven't used the Raider Trailer much recently, so this is perfect

Figures my scrapyard pic is blurry.........

Here's one that's not, because I look so overland-y rolling with this trailer here in the suburbs.....

So yeah, that's it. Just taking the opportunity to post some pics I guess

 

[MontySquareo]

is that trailer made from a mighty max? it fits and matches your raider really good, same body lines and everything

 

[irish44j redux]

Oh hey, I'm back. Apparently someone hacked my account and posted a bunch of spam or something (IDK), so they banned the account and I didn't know about any of this because it all went to my email spam folder :/ I talked to the Admin/CTO and they approved this new account, so IDK if I can get back the old one or not, but whatever. Guess I need to do some catching up on things!

 

[irish44j redux]

So playing catch-up:

is that trailer made from a mighty max? it fits and matches your raider really good, same body lines and everything

sure is. I did a build thread for it too: https://forum.expeditionportal.com/...ity-rally-support-trailer-build.221647/page-3

 

[irish44j redux]

more catch-up:
Hey, let's do a little update here. First, a few pics of the last Rally-X. Since I was not driving my car, I rolled out to Summit Point in the Raider and used it as a basecamp

and corner-working station/photog platform

and recovery rig for brokedown Subaru rally car...

Andy was there with his Monty Sport as well (seen previously in this thread) and got to do some towing as well. Not a great day for Subies...

--

Now, on to some other stuff. So I think I mentioned before I picked up another pair of WRX seats - same as the ones I currently have in the Raider (except not yet dyed tan to match). I had gotten rid of the old grungy bench seat in the back when this build started and built a storage platform back there. I have to say, it was really well-built and I'm still pretty proud of it - but I found it to be a bit inconvenient for some purposes, and I've also wanted to have the ability to carry a third person in the truck on a few occasions - also handy if I ever use this thing for Rally Sweep duties, which is another future plan, where a 3rd person aboard happens on occasion.

So, out came the platform, parts of which will be repurposed in the future.

First order of business was to cut off all the odd Subaru brackets on the seats, which are all funky and not flat at all...

Then I welded on some square bar stock as mounts since I needed a bit of clearance for the adjuster and other crap under the seat (not pictured).

The back of the Raider is just slightly not wide enough (by about 2-3") for two seats side-by-side, so here we go - the "Dakar Navigator" seat, lol. Single in the middle. Through-bolted with backing plates under the floor (still have to make some seatbelt mounts). The wife tried it out and give it tacit approval...

Plenty of legroom for me (6') and it can slide up right near the front seats for more cargo space. I'll dye it tan to match the front seats when I get around to it.

In any case, the plan will be to have the bazooka tube on the right of the seat (it fits) with a small platform over it mounting storage racks or something (TBD). The left side will be for access - since both my front seats have the suspension bases, they don't tilt so the backseat-rider will have to get in from the back - actually pretty easy if you're not elderly lol...

So more on that setup once I figure out what the plan is.

--

Side note - a couple weeks ago was driving and the clutch pedal went to the floor (I had to rev-match to shift for 10 miles home in suburban traffic...fun). So I put in a new master cylinder and got that bled/adjusted better - I think the old one didn't have the stop in the right place and maybe I was over-compressing the piston and blew it out....IDK, or it was just a cheap/crappy piece. In any case, new one in there now and everything is fine again.

 

[irish44j redux]

more catch-up, from last month..

Project time - because what's better than welding and plasma cutting on a week with a bunch of 100-degree days, right?

Anyhow, I have a couple 2-gallon rotopax jugs. But of course I'm cheap so don't want to buy the mounts, so mostly I've just put them inside the rig when needed, but then I have to hear them slosh around. So let's build some stuff out of random scrap tubing, DOM, and plate I have around the garage....

Did some cutting of some old steel and some leftover tubing from when I built the rack. weld weld and we get these

Then take off the spare tire mount and do this:

And that goes on like so:

So that's the "base." I wanted to make this so it's removable, because I'm not all about the suburban overlander look driving around with my rotopax on the rig all the time....that's lame, plus someone might steal them.

So, the outer mount is a larger DOM tubing piece that can slide over the tire mount piece...both scrap pieces leftover from the rally car's roll cage build years ago. So it goes on like this, and a bolt holds them together.

After making sure the tubes were the right spread, I put a "cap" on them, with a weldnut in the middle one. This is basically a fabbed-up copy of the actual rotopax extended mount, if you're familiar with that.

I built a little screw-in handle of sorts. This is probably temporary until I make something a little better. In any case, it's again, the same concept as the actual rotopax one.

So with both cans loaded up and locked in, here it is:

I have a few other small things to do on this project, but they're uninteresting so that's about it.

Side note:

 

[irish44j redux]

Final catch-up post and we're back to today

Well, guess I should update stuff. First, headed up a few weeks ago with Andy and some other guys to camp out at Green Ridge State Forest and then wheel at Wolf Den Run. For those that know me, I"m not historically much of a camping type, but I'm tyring to learn (and quickly accruing the right gear for car-camping). In any case, the Raider is fine for a solo or 2-person trip using tents, and the little awning is nice to have (though it didn't rain)

The next day we got the crew together to tackle some wheeling, with a lot of mud.

The Wolf Den Run blacks are mostly do-able with some good effort by the Raider and some of the other rigs, but we also had some first-timers and some stock-ish/lower clearance vehicles with us so we stuck to the upper greens and blues.

Stock 2nd Gen Sequoia did respectably, even on street tires - though he bypassed some of the tougher stuff

But Mike actually did all the blues in his Outback wagon lol

*goals*

Though the Raider did the bigger obstacles a lot easier than he did since I coudl choose basically any line lol

In any case, the Raider did fine all day and for the 150 miles of highways each direction (which is more tiring in the Raider than wheeling lol). That said, I was still regularly getting the loud pop/creak/bang sound on flexing up front, which didn't seem to hurt anything but still annoying/embarrassing.

So after getting it all cleaned up I decided to investigate further after some tippers from the Montero group. First I greased up all the balljoints in teh suspension and steering, which all seemed fine and weren't too dry. Also did the upper control arm inner mount, which was pretty dry and I've heard can make odd noises. Then I pulled the steering idler arm since the boot to it has looked bad for some time, and this is what it looked like - and didn't seem to be fully seated in the taper of the linkage (!!)

So that looks like a good case of metal on metal and possibly causing the popping/binding sounds, perhaps? In any case, I had a spare (different style balljoint setup on it, so maybe it'll be better, and also greasible. So that's installed

Scientific testing on my curb and ramps didn't cause any noises, so fingers crossed....

It also tightened up the steering well, so that old idler arm definitelhy must have had some slop, happy it didn't result in anything breaking. Need to inspect things more closely going forward with this rig.

 

[irish44j]

With a few trips coming up, time to finally get around to beefing up the gas tank skid, which is pretty flimsy and has already allowed a few dents in the tank.

Rather than scratch-build, figured I'd just plate the OEM skid with some 1/8" steel, which I had sitting around in the form of the base of my old home A/C outside unit

Cut the edges off...

cut some relief lines and did some bending. Since I don't have a press brake, have to improv...

and then just basically wrapped the OEM skid and welded it all together, long story short

cut some drain holes (same as stock) and test fit. Had to do some bending since the assembly flattened out a bit during welding...

A few coats of paint

And, installed

Down the road I'll probably build an even heavier-duty one from scratch, but that'll wait until I happen to have some good steel sitting around for free, since I'm cheap

 

[Salonika]

What are you cutting with?

 

[irish44j]

Last time out wheeling I noticed my GMRS reception was pretty terrible, even at close range. I've been using a shorty Baofeng antenna that seemed to work fine, but suddely didn't. After checking it out, there's clearly something banging around inside the enclosure, so it's probably just broken. This was a good excuse to finally relocate the antenna from the little platform by the spare tire (along with the radio and CB antennas) back up to the roof with something a bit more effective.

Initially I planned to put it on the edge of the rack, so I had ordered up an RFMAX RBC450 no ground plane 36" antenna. The dog picked it up for me.

In the end I decided to do it through the roof itself with an NMO mount directly, since I don't much care about drilling the roof on this thing. Of course, there's a rack in the way with the chicken coop flooring, so had to cut a notch in that for the antenna and spring base to pass through it. I put it right behind the gearbox up front - specifically so I could use the interior light switch assembly to hide it and not have sloppy wiring.

And through the roof...

There's a metal support seam for the headliner there, where the roof "bumps up" toward the rear, which ended up to work well to hide the wiring without actually taking down the ancient headliner whose foam dissolves upon touch...

So, all set now. We'll see how much improvement it gives in a couple weeks when we head out to the trails again.

 

[irish44j]

What are you cutting with?

for the reliefs? Just an angle grinder, by feel

--so--

I'll apologize here for the lack of updates. For some reason ExPo forum is GLACIAL over the past couple of months for me. Like, I have super-fast internet and everything works really fast online (including all other forums), but for some reason this forum takes like 30 seconds+ to load every page, which is super-frustrating (and I grew up with dial-up!). Sometimes it just times out for me. So I'm not sure what's going on with that, or if other people are having the same issue, but it makes it near-impossible to functionally post stuff on here.

I've done several pretty good trips in the past couple months (wheeling + camping) and have several other projects ongoing with the Raider (a lot of interior storage stuff, new swing-out and substantial bumper modifications) but since I've had so much trouble getting this forum to load I've mostly been documenting this stuff in the other two places I document my builds

So hopefully whatever the issue I'm having here gets fixed and I can get back to posting in here. Until that happens, if you want to catch up with what's going on, here's direct links to the other thread, depending on which forum format you prefer:

combination thread for the Raider and Sequoia: https://www.overlandbound.com/forum...raider-2010-sequoia-and-my-other-stuff.47708/

and basically a carbon of the thread here, on GRM: https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/f...ider-akamonteroakapajero-build/160959/page27/

a few highlights:

 

[Salonika]

No, I meant what were you using to cut the edges off the A/C unit base?