Open Light Subaru build

Started moving the rest of the RS components over to the '95 tub. Subframes, arms, wiring harness, and pedals. Body parts were reattached too.



Looks like a car again.

Adapting the RS wiring to the '95 tub. Some of the stuff like wipers was a challenge.



Used Sparco steering wheel and center-mount RS gauges. Who needs a dashboard?





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/02/2011 06:04PM by modernbeat.

Tossed the RS fuel tank and fuel lines into the car. Remember when I said it had been painted with bedliner?



Still 30 hours of work to do and only 20 hours until the rally starts!

At the Nocona Rally, the midnight parking lot thrash continues.





And late in the morning, it's almost finished.



Oops, forgot turn signals needed to pass tech.

Keep it comnin jason, more piccies.
Did you guys need a spacer in back for spring to tire clearance?

No spacer necessary with the JVAB struts or the STi struts. We're running a 15x6.5et43 wheels with the 185/70-15 BFG tire. On one side the spring was close to the inner wheelwell at full droop, but didn't touch. On the other side the tire was as close as 1/2 inch to the spring. But no spacer or hammer was used to fit the struts/wheels/tires. I did slightly roll the rear fender lips as a precaution.

But that's a future installment...

We passed tech minutes before the second part of the Nocona rally started, though they noted an issue with the door bar gussets that will have to be fixed before the next event.



The rear window hadn't been glued in yet, and we didn't want it to fall out and break on course. Tech required a window...so we made an unbreakable one.

More photos in the future, but the short of it was:

We had issues.
The ECU was running in "safe mode".
We weren't sure what vehicle speed sensor we should be using and how to wire it into the harness.
The cobbled together STi struts and short springs didn't have enough travel and we bent one during the short time the car was run.
The rear axle nuts weren't staked, worked loose and one broke at the outer splines.
We didn't have time to get the front axles in the car.

To finish preparing the car for 100AW we:

Finished parting out the 2-door RS and used the front bumper and fogs on the rally car.
The 4-door RS was too nice to part out. It was restored and put up for sale.
The STi wing off the 4-door RS was put on the rally car.
Added wiring for driving lights, map light, rally computer.
Fixed an issue with the VSS incompatibility between the JDM transmisison and the 2000 RS wiring harness.
Fixed an intake, throttle body, TPS, issue that caused it to run in "safe mode" by robbing all the intake parts off the daily-driver 2000 Forester including the stock airbox.
Put the heater back in the car and added a console to hold the heater controls and gauges. Added the foglight switch, emergency blinker switch, and a map light.
Welded up a bracket to mount the rally computer to the door bars.
Welded up a bracket to adapt the PIAA Baja lights from Brianne's motorcycle to the car and used military surplus quick pins to hold it on.
Rebuilt the front axle CV joints and reinstalled them.
Installed a set of rear axles from one of the salvaged cars.
Installed a flyweight coroplast dash cover because the interior was causing glare in the windshield.
Built a super-heavy-duty skidplate support slightly lower than the stock lower radiator support to clear the used equal-length headers. Adapted a used 1/4" aluminum skid plate the the new supports.
Built a new one-piece exhaust using a used resonator, a used OEM STi cat and a resonator tip from a stock Honda XR600R motorcycle exhaust that we had laying around.
Added a pair of used tow hooks.

Then, the 4-door RS sold one week before 100AW and:

We ditched the STi struts and bought a JVAB suspension. We kept the well used Group N tops and regreased the front strut bearings.
We bought a second set of wheels for $60.
Bought six 185/70-15 BFG tires in soft compound from Libra Racing because he had them in stock and could deliver to the event.

We threw a bunch of spare arms, spindles and axles in the truck along with a couple bags of tools, some ice tires (bought used) on 16" RS five-spokes, some borrowed fuel jugs, and took off for Salem.

We still had to buy some crew equipment, finish some wiring, pick up the new tires and get them mounted, get the car aligned and set ride height (it was done with a tape measure, but we wanted a better alignment), and we were chasing oil consumption and overheating issues. We replaced the bad thermostat with the only type available, a crappy aftermarket one. It didn't flow enough and we replaced it during service with the bad OEM thermostat with all the guts cut out of it. Because of the oil loss, we used Rotella Synthetic to give the engine some protection when it was low on oil even though the engine wasn't really broken in yet.

The motorcycle lights mounted to the radiator support.



The rear diff mounts. These make it possible to swap the diff without dropping the rear subframe.



The center console before the slab of coroplast was laid on top of the gauges as a "dash".



Pulling apart the original '95 harness to make the subharnesses for the lights, computer and maplight. It's about 2am and we've been working for three days to get ready for 100AW.





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/03/2011 02:55PM by modernbeat.

Nice! That's my favorite body style Subaru.

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modernbeat
This a buildup of Brianne Corn's Subaru. It's been built for Rally America Open Light class, which is the naturally aspirated AWD class. This car is being built on a VERY tight budget.

apparently your version of VERY tight and mine are different. 3 donor cars, sti tranny, sti rack, some sort of fancy built motor, jvl suspension, 4 pot brakes, etc don't equal VERY tight in my book. hell, sounds damn near opposite of tight.

Stock motor, stock brakes (not stock pads but still drum possibly), stock suspension, stock gearbox, stock rack, stock everything damn near is my version of VERY tight.

Nice build though. Look forward to hopefully competing against you guys sometime in the future.

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Mark
Nice build though. Look forward to hopefully competing against you guys sometime in the future.

Ha. I was thinking the same thing about the budget.

We could swap the 2.2T stuff into Chester and make your rally car back into an Open Light car. Build up my new $200 Impreza over the next few months and try to get Aaron and Tyler to get their shit together and drag five open (Scott too) light cars out to Ojibwe for some real action! God that sounds awesome! Ojibwe on it's own sounds awesome!

This is good stuff. Thanks for the posts.

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Mark

Quote
modernbeat
This a buildup of Brianne Corn's Subaru. It's been built for Rally America Open Light class, which is the naturally aspirated AWD class. This car is being built on a VERY tight budget.

apparently your version of VERY tight and mine are different. 3 donor cars, sti tranny, sti rack, some sort of fancy built motor, jvl suspension, 4 pot brakes, etc don't equal VERY tight in my book. hell, sounds damn near opposite of tight.

Stock motor, stock brakes (not stock pads but still drum possibly), stock suspension, stock gearbox, stock rack, stock everything damn near is my version of VERY tight.

Nice build though. Look forward to hopefully competing against you guys sometime in the future.

The three donors:

Original '95 tub was bought for around $400.
2-door RS was bought with no interior, drivetrain in boxes and title issues for $800.
The 4-door RS was bought for more, but the only parts used from it was the STi rear wing. An original RS sedan wing was bought and put on the RS and it was sold to fund the suspension, tires and entry fee.

I bought the brakes from an importer for $300 after they tried to sell them for months.
The transmission was bought from another enthusiast for a similar price.
The VLSD rear diff was bought off craigslist for around $100.

We tried a cheap suspension. The 40mm Bilsteins were chosen as it was likely the cheapest suspension that would survive.

The motor was assembled from cast off and used parts. The block was given to us after it was replaced under Subaru warranty. The pistons, rings and rods came out of the discards box at AWD Tuning. The throttle body, airbox and intake piping came off a daily driver Forester - and will have to go back on it. We ran it on the COBB Austin dyno yesterday. It made 84hp and 114 ft/lbs of torque. We did run a stock radiator because we didn't have time or money to replace it, but it will likely get replaced before the next National event.

Brianne isn't racing for giggles. She's in it to win. Some stock parts just won't cut it, and the performance replacements were bought with an eye to the budget. Things like stock suspension won't do the job.

All told, there's less than $6000 in the car including the JVAB bits and the new tires (the first NEW rally tires we've bought). We still have a pile of parts from the '95 tub, the RS coupe and two wrecked wagons we bought for $100 and $200. The flip side it that it took three years to collect the pile of parts even though it only took a few months to build the car.

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modernbeat
The motor was assembled from cast off and used parts. The block was given to us after it was replaced under Subaru warranty. The pistons, rings and rods came out of the discards box at AWD Tuning. The throttle body, airbox and intake piping came off a daily driver Forester - and will have to go back on it. We ran it on the COBB Austin dyno yesterday. It made 84hp and 114 ft/lbs of torque. We did run a stock radiator because we didn't have time or money to replace it, but it will likely get replaced before the next National event.

What'd you end up with compression ratio? Seems quite low on power and was kinda wondering that since you said it was an STI block.
Is the car running hot? It's not turbocharged so probably no need for any fancy radiator.

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modernbeat
Brianne isn't racing for giggles. She's in it to win. Some stock parts just won't cut it, and the performance replacements were bought with an eye to the budget. Things like stock suspension won't do the job.

Well good luck to her. She'll have to make sure and show up to Ojibwe where the roads are tight and technical and where we're trying to get a bunch of OL cars to come out to.
Agreed and good choice on suspension! Though not all stock parts are inferior. For example, the aluminum control arms may be lighter but they also break instead of bend and thus are less likely to be able to limp you back to service.

Keep the pics coming!!!