About time I updated this to show the damage and repairs required. Got it back on the road on Tuesday just in time to go racing tomorrow, weather is foul so maybe it is a short lived repair!
So here is the tally.
Steering RackRipped it completely of its mounts, both shattered. This is the rhs but was pretty much the same on lhs.
Steering ArmsOne bent completely out of shape, the other seemed ok.
RHS Stub AxleThis was bent and had a run out of 0.028" when measured on the spigot that goes into the hub (no photo)
PanelsBoth carbon panels punched out, the rhs had minimal damage. I think this was the strength the bulge for the rack added but the lhs was broken into three pieces.
Surprisingly Undamaged PartsI checked the suspension arms and apart from a slight bend in one they were dead straight, the bend could have come from previous incidents, I know there's been a few!
Same with the mounts, the rhs rear mount was bent slightly back on the tabs but to be honest I've seen RTR mounts with more bend in them when new!
I know the force was directed straight through the rack but I am sure that the supports I put under each mount went a long way to give the strength to support the impact so I am pretty pleased with that mod and would suggest anyone with a bare chassis or undertaking a refurbish looks at doing this mod.
mevowners.proboards.com/post/101659/threadRepairsRackI found a used rack in NZ which surprised me, in fact I had a choice of four or five and if I had read the post about the Sierra Cosworth would have bought that one as it apparently is a quick rack as stock. However my quick rack internals fitted nicely. There was a difference in the nuts holding the gear in but I got around that. Will post in technical about that as I've not seen anyone mention the type I encountered. Checked the height of the rack before fitting to ensure i was not going to encounter bump steer problems.
Steering ArmsReplaced both with new from RD along with new tie rods and SS bushes.
Stub AxleReplaced the bent one. RD never cease to amaze me with their QC, the two bearing journals were 0.15mm undersize, I ended up centre popping them to get a nice fit for both races.
PanelsErm, lets just say over heating through lack of air to the radiator should not be a problem tomorrow.
I did, however, replace the front floor panel which I had worn through over time from using too soft a suspension setting with hard braking resulting in it grounding and wearing away. Now have a nice new shiny one in place.
Replacing Like With LikeWhen rebuilding I had this cunning plan that see me think that if I replaced old parts with new of the same type all I would need to do was ensure parts were assembled to the same measure points and all my settings would be the same. After all the rack length was the same as before, as was the rack height, the steering arms came from the same supplier and the tie rods ends could be screwed to the same point on the tie rods.
I put this all back together and went on a test drive, wow it was so bad that anything over 40kph saw me all over the road. I returned and decided to measure the settings and found I had one wheel pretty straight but the other was toed in by about 70mm over a 1m length
Corrected this the next day and it was back to normal which was a big relief.
So all in all not too bad, and nowhere near as costly as I anticipated.
pic of the offside bones? Are they still attached?