@Mafdark arent you who I bought the goldish Impreza from? Custom color, Signed wing? If you know the guy you tagged, have him get ahold of me. I’d love to talk with the local guys and try and work together to be sure everyone has a successful event.
Mounted the battery box. I have a 200A ANL fuseholder mounted to the side of the box. Im not thrilled with the mounting hardware that was included with the box, but for how seldom I will have to remove the battery, it will do.
After that, it was sanding, sanding, and more sanding.
I then mocked up the rear firewall with cardboard.
The aluminum sheet that I have coming isnt super thick, so I made a brace for the middle to be sure it is sturdy. Its just tacked at this point to be sure it fits. I was too tired to finish welding it and went home.
Cut out the firewalls. Not a lot to say about that. I used 0.04 aluminum and its a really good thickness choice-- not too flimsy but not too heavy.
Ryansways was generous enough to let me borrow his wheels to test fit so I can pick an offset. He doesn’t have sti front control arms so my track width is 20mm wider than his. Lets just say that these don’t fit. I wish this worked because they look absolutely badass.
In other news, shit just got real. Mike Harvey and I are officially entered in the 2014 Brock Yates One Lap of America! If you want to sponsor absolutely anything, let me know.
What is your name sir? I have been running in the OLOA for a few years now. Adam Hennessy and I run with my sister and the Dubler crew in a host of different cars…HHR SS, camaros, CTSV wagon (RIP 
) If this is your first event you better be ready to get hooked…we will meet in South Bend and have a beer!
Awesome! My name is john Stuart but the registration is under Mike Harvey. We just registered a couple days ago so it will be a bit before we are listed on the site. You’re running the HHR’s again this year right? This is our first time and the reality of what we are getting ourselves into is slowly sinking in. Still have a lot to do before may!
I may shoot you a PM in a few days with questions that we have, mostly pertaining to how each day is run.
John, better to send me an email to Rennessyfabrication@gmail.com. far easier to get in touch with me through email than on here. Feel free to write and ask away. This is my fith year, but my sisters ninth and roberts 22nd!!! Its one hell of a fun event that drags you back year after year.
Look forward to meeting you guys this year
Thats me, I was trying to figure out why your username looked familiar.
Very cool project.
So yeah, I havent updated in a while. A lot is getting done but most of it really isnt picture worthy. Prepare yourself for a wall of text! Ill try and make it interesting.
I borrowed a 18x9.5 +42 wheel from 1qikz (from nyspeed) for a more reasonable test fit after the +17 monster you saw above. I was able to determine that I want around a +35ish offset. I have chosen to run (and have ordered 6) rota grids in 17x9 +42 (flat black) and will probably run a +5ish spacer. I had a 2 month long battle with myself between grids and enkei rpf1’s. The icing on the cake was that rpf1’s require a 18mm spacer (on a 17x9 +45) JUST to clear brembos. I have only really seen one documented track failure from grids, and unfortunately it was the RochesterDSM team at One Lap of America in 2012. If youre interested, click here. They lost 3 (yea, I said 3) wheels to cracks during the event, which resulted in tirerack employees driving to bring them a set of rpf1’s to finish the event. I am ignoring this and betting my money on the many other racing teams who have successfully used rotas without issues. Wish me luck!
I forgot to get a picture, but the other night I was staring at the car and realized that the rear camber was positive. A quick check with the camber gauge showed a +1.5, which clearly isn’t right. After some painful research to the depths of the internet, there is some sort of suspension geometry issue with running stock sti struts with sti lateral links. Long story short, I cant use the sti struts (camber is non-adjustable). Time to bust out the credit card.
I have decided to order a set of custom valved Feal 441 coilovers. I did quite a bit of research over the past few days. Every person who has ever comment in a forum post says “OMG spend 2500 on RCE t2’s or kill yourself”-- then you realize that all of these people have never used those coilovers and drive '97 automatic wagons. With what harvey has learned with his car, his RCE t2’s are lacking independent ride height adjustment. IRHA as I will call it allows you to adjust the ride height without effecting the spring preload. I won’t get into details because I don’t even understand all of it, but this is a good thing (just take a look at all the $$texas motorsports coils and they have this feature).
The issue with this feature is that its absent on every $2000-$3000 coilover system which every forum junky says you must buy for your racecar. In comes the feal 441.
Feal uses the strut bodies of BC coilovers (proven to be very strong) and obtains the rest of the parts from different manufacturers. By picking and choosing, he can use the “best” of the cheap parts that are available. For $1550, you get to choose your own spring rates (swift springs), and they are custom valved to that rate–they even come with dyno plots for each corner! I have a feeling that custom “cheap” valving will be better than expensive off the shelf generic valving. We will see.
The rules for One Lap of America require you have a fire extinguisher with a quick release in reach of the driver. Those 2.5lb ones are like pissing in the wind, so I picked up a 5 pounder. I could not find any quick release brackets under $70+, so I started making one. I don’t have time to make it as pretty, but it was modeled after this
This is the extinguisher side. The slot slides into a “stud” thing on the car side brackets.
This is it mocked up with the car side brackets on either side. Pull the pin and out it comes.
Welded up. This is really my first time welding steel-- all my practice was with AL or SS. Definitely a bit easier to pick up than AL.
Mounted to the extinguisher.
I was worried about the intake being in the bumper with no fender liner. I made a little shield to protect the filter from major splashes, and I think I will get a filter sock thingy. Pretty sure both of those combined should keep me protected enough.
I started working on the cage. Got the landing plates made-- they fit better than they look, its just hard to get them to stand up on their own in place. After these pics, I got all of the seam sealer and paint out of there. This is definitely my favorite thing to do in the wholeeee world. /sarcasm
Made some ducting for the oil cooler out of the scraps from the firewall. I will probably re-make these after OLOA when I can afford to buy a whole sheet of material versus welding together bits and pieces of scraps. This isnt 100% done yet but its close enough for pics.
The hole on the left flap isnt a tow hook, its just the access hole to get to the headlight bolt.
RedRocket was generous enough to donate a trailer to the cause. Its a little 4x4 utility trailer. It needs some help, but we will probably be building a box on it to store spares. I dont have a pic of this but it will be on here eventually.
We have picked up our first sponsor! Buffalodips is sponsoring our plastidip. We are still working out what color to do-- this is what they had in mind when I said I wanted blue. What do you guys think?
I like the Blue and it certainly pays homage to Subaru. What color Rota’s are your buying? That may influence my thoughts on the blue…
:word:
very awesome build , you must be proud . Did a ton of work . Cant wait to see how it looks when it all dipped.
Wheels are black. Only other options were white, grey and chameleon
Please like our facebook page to follow team Awesome on our journey during the 2014 Brock Yates One Lap of America! I will have slightly more detailed updates there than in my forum posts.
www.facebook.com/OneLapofAwesome
Got the hitch installed. Amazon had the best price of $115 shipped/taxed. Trying to decide on a trailer situation. We had a harbor freight 4x4 trailer donated, but it has been sitting for a LONG time and needs bearings, tires, and a light kit. For the price of these items, I am about $20 away from just getting a new one from harbor freight.
Look who showed up a day early? 17x9 +42’s. Probably going to run around a 5mm spacer to get better fitment/coil clearance. I need to wait until its regularly above freezing at night before I order tires. Don’t want them to freeze in a truck, as Dunlop says this will negatively effect even the compound of the direzza z2’s.
I had a friend bend me a main hoop for my rollbar in anticipation of me doing the rest of the work. The bending was done from bendtec based on measurements without the car there. Unfortunately, the hoop was slightly off. I tried to adjust a couple of the bends and screwed one of them up due to me not being familiar with the bender that I used, so rather than risk not having the rollbar done before may, I dropped it off at the cage guy for him to blast in this week. For the amount of money I have spent, I should have just bought a bender.
Hotels are all booked.
All we need now is a few days of rain to wash the salt away!
You are buying them from Tire Rack right??? 
Looking good. clocks a ticking sir! Shouldnt talk myself, i still gotta pull the one HHR in for some front end clicky clack diagnosis. Typical GM quirks.
Yeah, tirerack conformed this week that our tire choice cannot be subjected to below freezing temperatures without negatively effect ting the compound. The discount helps too. How long does it take to get the rebate back?
You’re lucky. In 42 days we are driving a car across the country and to this day, the car has not been driven on a road. Starting to realize how crazy that is. My ability to build a car correctly is definitely going to be tested!
Lol, the car will be tested but so will you mental stability as well. Hope you really like your co driver hah!
Rebate doest take long. Just wanted to make sure you were buying them from TR as whatever tires you have must have the sidewall branded with their OLOA 2014 stamp to be event legal. Theyll do that prior to shipping to you.
My partner will probably spend most of his time sleeping :p. We both have similar personalities and similar viewpoints on most things so there shouldn’t be an issue. I’m a paramedic-- I spend 12 hours a day in an ambulance so I am used to sitting in a car all day.
We are going to run direzza z2’s. We had great luck with the z1’s.
Got the car back from the cage guy. I added a bar to his work (didnt want to pay him to do something I was capable of doing). I have been a bit upset-- with all of the money I spent, I could have just bought a bender a month ago and done this all myself. Oh well. I added the diagonal bar in the back. I have a new appreciation for people who can weld rollcages in quickly. Took me about 2 hours to weld just that bar-- trying to maneuver my skinny body around the cage back there while still being able to operate the foot pedal was a bitch. It is probably WAY easier with a flex head torch and a torch switch with ramp settings.
There was a slight leak from the tailshaft. A replacement seal was only $4 so I figured I would replace it before it became an issue.
New boost gauge is installed, as the old one was toast. I didn’t splurge-- just a run of the mill mechanical gauge.
Replaced the rear lateral link bolts. Preventative maintenance thing-- just in case I need to get them out for some reason. Not sure if this takes the cake for worst job to do on a subaru-- I think a turbo inlet is still reigning champion.
I found a bad rear brake line-- right at the fitting. Not sure what route I’m going to take with fixing that.
Coilovers get here Friday. I am getting the windshield replaced at the beginning of next week. I REALLY need the weather to improve so I can order tires.
The Feal 441 coilovers came in and I got them installed. I opted for 12k/11k rates. I was worried that the rates would be unbearable, as they are well over double the stock rates. I am satisfied with my decision. The valving seems to match the rates pretty well and it stays flat over bumps. I was worried that the 3400 mile drive would be on a set of pogo sticks.
Got my nice shiny new windshield put in.
After driving the car for a couple days, I found a few issues that needed to be resolved.
-First, the STI gas pedal is drive by wire and does not fit in the GC chassis. I previously made an adapter out of 1/4" aluminum to fit the pedal in the car, and found out that the bracket flexes like crazy. I remade it out of steel with a bunch of bracing. Also found out very quickly that the DBW pedal hits 100% at around 75% throw of the pedal. When you go enough past 100%, it disables the pedal, throws a code and you need to clear the code before driving the car again because it deactivates the pedal. This isnt an issue on a stock car because there is carpet and mechanical stops that prevent the pedal from going that far. Since I have no carpet or anything, it became violently clear the first time I pressed the jam pedal that I needed to put in a mechanical stop. I put in an adjustable stop and I am no longer having issues.
-Second, I overboosted and hit boost cut the second time I got the car up to 6700rpm. After that, the car felt like it was running poorly. I did visual checks looking for boost leaks and found nothing. After running the situation by Mike at Innovative, he suggested that a boost leak is probably the cause. With no visual issues noted, I made a makeshift boost leak detector and found that the compressor housing on the turbo was leaking like crazy. The turbo was bought second hand. I took off the compressor housing and found that the previous owner had used sealant on the housing. When I clocked the turbo, this sealant obviously got gummed up and caused leaks. This was cleaned up and resealed. I’m currently running on wastegate pressure and will slowly turn the boost back up.
- third. My re-booting of the front axle didn’t hold. Found axle grease all over the place. Took the axle to fleetpride for them to throw a new band on it. It is still leaking a tiny bit past the band, but I think the boot might just be over filled. I’m going to monitor it and see what happens. Axles are $400 a piece new and the parts stores ones wont hold up to track abuse, so I am not sure what we are going to do about that.
In other news,
Spent a little time making radiator ducting.
I picked up a trailer from harbor freight for cheap. Built a box on it and plan to fork mount the bikes to the top of the trailer. For those of you who are wondering why we would need bikes, there is a “track walk” before the events. I’m skinny and do not plan to walk 2+ mile tracks.
The fartcan exhaust had to go. Welded on a magnaflow in place of the vibrant and the car is a little more tolerable. I ordered kartboy extended exhaust hangers to clear the trailer hitch, as the muffler tip is currently wedged up against it.
Got around to test fitting the wheels with the coilovers. Might need a small spacer for tire clearance on track. For the record, these are 17x9 +42 grids, Feal 441 coilovers.
TIREZ!
Hoping to get to the track this week for some shakedown. Running out of time!