Old-School Tuning Part 3: A solid foundation

Old-School Tuning in the 21st Century Part 3

Part 3: A solid foundation

Like the wise man who built his house on rock versus the fool who built his on sand, any good project car should be built on something solid.

Everything else that follows will only be as good as the car you start with. A bad body will not be able to cope with increased power levels. Handling will be compromised by a chassis that flexes too much. Layers of paint and putty will not be able to disguise crap hiding underneath it. And lets not forget the safety aspect too.

Certain body designs are more favorable than others although anything can be used and improved as needed. Two door sedans and hatch backs are the best- naturally being stiff and light compared to other body types. Four door sedans would be the next choice. Avoid two door hard tops (like the Dodge Colt, one of my fave cars) because the hard top design meant a lot of weight was added to reinforce the body due to the lack of a B-pillar and yet this is not as strong as a two door post. Wagons are worth a special mention because although they are much heavier they do provide excellent weight distribution specially for rear wheel drive setups.

A solid foundation for a tuned car starts with a good body. Ideally start with something very fresh, free from any rust in structural areas like the chassis, door posts, strut towers and suspension pickup points. A little bit of surface rust here and there is fair game for old-school cars. If what you have is not quite like this (or you can't find one) don't worry because anything can be fixed- given the right kind of budget and a specialist shop of course.

The best is to strip the car down to the bare shell. No matter how fresh and clean a car looks there's bound to be something hiding underneath. I know this from experience building my '79 Lancer. I started with a car clean enough to have won 'Best Original Stock' in the Mitsubishi Classic Concourse in 1997. Yet, when I took it apart I was surprised at the amount of yucky hiding under the years of paint and undercoat. Strip it to the bare shell and metal and build it up from there. A good tin smith will be able to fix all the rust and make it good as new. It's a good idea at this stage to scrape off all the old insulation and undercoat and rust proofing. We filled about two big trash bags worth of that stuff when we stripped the Lancer. Imagine the weight advantage! Modern paint systems, rust proofing and insulation are way better and weigh a lot less. A good quality paint job with modern urethane paints will last a long long time and is a good investment for your project.

Seam welding is an option. Adding more spot welds to the original body will greatly increase it's rigidity. Do so with caution though as doing it wrong can warp the body. For the Lancer we did so in certain places only- not the whole car. Mainly this was done for aesthetic reasons. Seam welds do look ugly. There is a second and probably more important reason though. Race cars are meant to be used and abused for a specific period of time then they are thrown away or re-shelled with a new body when the old one dies. Seam welding the whole body will make it super stiff but this will also eventually make it crack when metal fatigue sets in. In the racing world this is an acceptable trade off, but for the enthusiast this is not. I want my car to last forever so what we did was seam weld in certain structural areas only so the body retains a little bit of it's flexibility but definitely much less than stock.

Once you have a good solid body- just as good or better than the factory intended it to be you can go one step further by installing some bars. Additional reinforcement stiffens the body and lessens flexing. A body that does not flex with movements allows the suspension to do it's work more efficiently. The bare minimum would be a strut tower bar. Commonly used for McPhereson strut designed front suspensions. Designed to connect the two opposite strut towers to increase rigidity that improved handling and prevents warping. Ideally go with the full regalia of reinforcements there are bars that connect various parts of the body together for additional reinforcements; room bars, fender bars, upper and lower tie bars and all depending on the car and it's suspension design. What I would go for though is a well designed roll cage.

Roll cages or roll bars usually classified as safety equipment. Designed to stop the roof from crushing in on you should you screw up bad and flip the car. A well designed roll cage though goes beyond just that. By linking the critical chassis points of the car it makes the chassis very stiff much better than if you added all the individual little bars everywhere. I run the Lancer with a half roll cage that triangulates the chassis rail to the main hoop of the roll bar that sits right on top of the chassis crossmember. Lucky for me is that 1st gen Lancer's need so little additional reinforcement because the original body designed- which from the beginning was intended for Rallying is already very good. The ideal roll cage design varies per car of course with some needing more 'help' than others. There are different types of roll cage, bolt in or weld in. A weld in cage is of course stronger but it can't be reversed should you want to take it off. It'll also pretty much cut into most of the interior like go thru the dash and all. A bolt in cage is more apt for a tuned car. if ever it can be easily removed- to go back to stock or sold to a buddy should you change your mind. A bolt on cage can be made to go around most of the interior parts and for the most part is adequate for a high performance street car and even most race cars for that matter. A mean looking roll cage also shows you mean business!

Doing the body right to establish a good foundation for future tuning represents a significant investment into a project car. Don't be misled by the claims of idiots. I once got into an argument in the forum with some guy who was insisting that his body repair that uses fiberglass to patch over rust holes was better than a proper tin smith job and that it was so good that the car would not need a roll cage. It's just a funny story now, but imagine if you were stupid enough to believe? Not only would you have wasted money, you would have also made it alot harder to repair the car properly now having to remove all the crap plastered over the rust holes. There are no short cuts to this part. The best really is to save up and do it properly the first time and everything will be so much if you do.

My '79 Lancer circa 2009 undergoing restoration. Stripped to the bare shell undergoing tin smith work to remove all the rust and bring the body back into perfect condition.

Good as new!

With a fresh new coat of Anzahl Car Show Finish urethane paint it looks even better than when it rolled off the factory assembly line.

Our roll cage is the bolt in type. While not being quite as stiff as a fully welded in roll cage it is more than adequate for street and mild motorsports use without destroying the body or intruding too much on the interior.

We based the Lancer's roll cage on the original Mitoy-C Safari Rally Spec Roll bar which was a 3 point hoop and then we added a little modern flare with some diagonals and side anti intrusion bars for more safety and for better chassis reinforcement- so it's new and old at the same time.