Flappies and Brakies - Steady Progress

This Saturday and Sunday were long work days. Thankfully, we had good help from Bill, Ian, and Doug P.

Here some of what is now done...
We have new Hawk brake pads and dba front rotors installed.
We have good mud flaps.
We have working gauges. Just need RalliTek to hook up the senders for us.
We have properly adjusted seats and harnesses.
We have a Terratrip mount.
We have a mounted Terraphone intercom.
We have a nicely waxed car.
We have some of the decals on the car.
We have door panels.

We still have lots to do. In particular, the rally computer is being an issue. The transmission came with some random, non-stock wires sticking out of it. However, the don't seem to drive the stock speedometer or the Terratrip, so we need to install another probe somewhere to get the rally computer working.

We also have to mount/tie down lots of stuff inside the car like tool bag, spill kit, triangles, etc etc...

Here are some photos from the last couple of days...

Doug Powell, lightening the shift boot bracket.

Mud flap. Nice work by Dan...

Ian working on the brakes. Ian does nice work. He also brought a cool dog named Zach.

dba rotor, The new Hawk pads are hard to see in this photo....

Joy took this. Apparently this is my best side...

Dan, painting the rear doors white...

It really looks like a rally car now...

Big work day today

Today, we were joined by Gabe and Joe at Gabe's work. They have an AWESOME shop there, including a lift and every machine tool you can imagine. Gabe was kind enough to invite us to work on the underbody protection there. Having the lift made things almost easy.

Dan did an excellent job in selecting the materials for this project. Square tubing, HDPE sheeting, and VHMW sheeting were all used along with some nifty floating nut plates to hold everything together. This stuff will be very strong and easily serviced.

Pix here:

In this picture, you can see some of the new graphics on the car- More on those later when I have a better photo.


Here's Joe hoisting the 100 pound wire wheel...


Gabe pulls up the gas tank skidplate using "Load rated" zip ties. I would think that all zip ties are load rated.... just some are rated much lower than others.


Doug doesn't just take photos... seen here using the lightweight wire wheel--- Joe sneering at me for not using the big one.

Trailing arm protection... These rivets could hold up an Abrams tank.

Almost done. Dan's pleased.


Pretty much the finished product... Need add a few more fasteners...


Almost ready to rally!!

Cardboard Mudflaps and Roshambo

After a couple of beers, it was time to decide who would be driving the car on which days of Doo Wops. Usually, you want to drive on the first day- just to make sure you get a chance. If something breaks, the car might not be ready to go on day 2. But at Doo Wops, the roads on the 2nd day are so much better than day 1, that you generally want to drive on day 2 if possible.

The plan was to do a best of 7 rock-paper-scissors match, with the winner deciding which day he'd drive.

It went like this:

Round Doug Dan
1 Paper Scissors
2 Paper Scissors
3 Rock Paper
4 Scissors Rock

So, Dan took it with a clean sweep and decided to drive on Day 2. Not so bad for either of us, really.

Dan spent the night planning our mudflaps. These cardboard templates are the result.

I spent the night finishing the mounting of the gauge and switch panel. Now that this is done, it's time to start running wires to all the stuff.

This car looks mean

Tonight, we fit the new wheels and tires. No problems. The black wheels make the car look mean.



Dan installed the Primitive skidplate. Look closely, and you can see that Paul applied a "Roll Me Over" sticker to the bottom the skidplate. Very funny.


I made a little progress on the gauge panel. Tomorrow, I'm buying a 2" hole saw. Using a jigsaw and file for the round holes is a huge pain in the ass.

Mounted Tires and Gauge planning

This weekend, we had our tires mounted. Scott Huhn of Black Sun Racing Services mounted up a couple sets of Hankook rally tires on Team Dynamics rally wheels. These tires, with their stiff sidewalls, and these particular wheels are VERY difficult to mount. Scott worked his butt off.

Today, I spent some time planning our gauges and switches. The wiring in the car is still a disaster, with all of the stock stuff laying around, mostly not connected to anything (since we removed so much stuff).

My plan is to use the large space on the dash where the radio and heater controls once were.

The first step is to cut out a piece of aluminum in the right shape... which is usually accomplished by cutting out a piece of paper or cardboard in the right shape, too... In this case, I did both before cutting the metal. A nice rubberized edge piece (Thanks, Gabe!) hides the ugly edges...



It's a great fit. I had to put one bend in it, and I nailed it the very first time... Not bad for a press brake made up of clamps and 2x4's...



The next step is to figure out where everything goes. We have 3 gauges, and 15 switches to mount. Here's my first pass...



Next step will be to carefully drill holes for everything, sand and paint the panel, and then begin wiring. That's going to be the fun part! And a huge pain at the same time...

Dyno Day!

Today, the rally car made a visit to the dyno at Surgeline Tuning. Dyno day is exciting, but can still come with a little anxiety. Did we remember to bring everything we need? Is everything assembled OK? Will this new, barely broken-in motor just explode when revved to redline?

Sean from RalliTek joined us there to team up with Tim Bailey of Surgeline to do the tweaking. Our car uses a Cobb Accessport which is pretty much the standard for Subaru tuners.

The very professional techs at Surgeline strapped the car to the dyno, and Sean and Tim sequestered themselves in the car, armed with laptops.

At first, there was some anxiety- The car only wanted to make 10 pounds of boost at high RPM's. Not good. But then, everyone remembered that the car is fitted with the required-by-rule 34mm turbo restrictor. Ouch. But to Tim and Sean, this just represented another element of challenge. In no time, the proper tweaks were made, and the car was turning out really solid numbers.

Some video of the very first pull:


The final results on E85 fuel:
240 hp at 4000 rpm

and

328 ft-lbs of torque at 3800 rpm.

Dyno Chart:

Surgeline has a really cool site that stores dyno results. You can see the results from you car and many others. Ours is here.

The results are just about what we expected. The turbo restrictor does its job- which is to keep power down so cars don't go too fast.

We owe huge thanks to Sean Sexton from RalliTek and Tim Bailey from Surgeline for the excellent service today. These guys really know how to tune Subarus.

Now, it's time to start prepping the car for the first rally: Doo Wops. We need to wrap up all electrical stuff- gauges, switches for all the rally accessories, and install some serious underbody protection.

Motor runs. Car drives! Sounds like a rally car.

We took delivery of the car from RalliTek today. They did an awesome job with it. The motor is in, and Sean put a base map on the ECU to match our "hybrid" motor. It runs and sounds great.

Here's the motor in the car:



Here's my favorite part:





We can actually drive the car onto the trailer! I thought we were going to wear out our Come-Along and my back. No more manual winching the car onto the trailer.

Next step: Drive the car 500 miles before next Wednesday, which is the dyno day. We need to properly break in the motor before then.