Homemade Group B - '81 Nohda Assent GTX “Hurricane”.
(Props to @Dorifto_Dorito for the car!)
I’ve been in a car related movie watching spree these days. I rewatched Blurred Vision for the third time, then moved on to Le Mens by Steve McQueen and finally Days of Banter.
And I got inspired by these movies, and started looking for a theme that hasn’t really been used in movies. I finally decided to go for Group B rallying, even if a movie about it was released in 2015. So I started calling my buddies at Motornation and they brought me some offers for cars from the 80s. In between all these offers, I saw this ad for a Nohda Assent GTX and decided to go for that one. I drove a couple hundred of miles and came back home with a quite rusty, but still restorable, Nohda Assent GTX from '81, for $500. Not bad.
Poor little Nohda arrived at our HQ like so. Fucker selling it tried to make me not lowball because “he knew what he had”.
So I began working on the car. You know the flow: removing rust with an agent is the first step, then removing the rear seats, and this time I only left one bucket seat in the front, clean the dirt that can be found inside (I found some suspicious clear stains below the rear seats. Won’t ask any questions.) and take the engine out.
And then I had a pleasant surprise. The rear suspension was a solid axle! Finally, I was already expecting another fancy independent system torturing me, so good news. I bought a set of nice strong dampers and softer springs, perfect for rallying, and installed them in each corner of the car.
I then took a look at the 1.8 liter engine, dual overhead cam. Seemed to be in good condition, so I thought of storing it and swaping in a Shromet big block or a Merciel engine to turbocharge it…but then I decided to keep the engine in place and modify it.
So I replaced the worn out components with forged pistons. I also cleaned the exhaust manifold and decided, as this was going to be some sort of homemade Group B car, cut the manifold and manipulate it to house a turbo. I did so, bending the pipes, and then installed the turbocharger.
Remember I mentioned I had a mechanical fuel injection system laying around? I decided to used it for this project. After all, carburetors only get you so far with a turbocharger.
I then put the engine back in place and the exhaust, as well as a new gearbox with a mechanical LSD. I removed the catalytic converter (before you kill me, I am aware of our emissions testing, this is not supposed to be road legal.) and only installed a glass pack muffler to slightly strangle the noise.
Next thing was the styling modifications…I’ll leave you guys with a photoshoot, as an image says more than a thousand words.
Yes, we dumped the exhaust headers through the bonnet.
Specs-wise, the car is making 300hp; these 300 horses push the 2360 pounds from 0 to 62 in only 5.3 seconds. Quite tame for Group B indeed, but I don’t have the kind of tech these guys used back then; I had to work with what I had. Top speed is quite low, with the 5 speed manual transmission topping out at 111mph; however, keep in mind my intention for this car was to make it a rally car of some sort.
I am too scared of the turbo lag in my creation, so I might send it to one of the professional drivers we have at the general HQ; that way, we can have some second thoughts as well. But one thing’s for sure: Nohdas are easy to tune and reward you greatly, so I’ll definitely be tuning more of them in the future. Now I should get back to my next project…