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Old 10-02-2017, 12:39 PM   #101
Chuckable
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Have you driven an STI with the brake feel you're looking for, or just hoping that the mods you do will end up with the feel you'd like to have?
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Old 10-02-2017, 01:02 PM   #102
uofime
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Chuckable View Post
Have you driven an STI with the brake feel you're looking for, or just hoping that the mods you do will end up with the feel you'd like to have?
Yea I have driven my buddies 2012 STI a couple times ( plus sport bikes and a couple different nutty race cars too), need to bug him to drive it again to makes sure things haven't changed in my mind over time. Shoulnd't be too hard to convince him, I still have his tool kit (those were his allen sockets I used)

I've got another track buddy with a 16 WRX running and Essex kit front with RRracing wilwoods in the rear who I don't see as often but would be interesting to compare to as well.

I wish there was a way to quantify "feel" the loose nut behind the wheel wasn't as much of a factor
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Old 10-08-2017, 10:07 PM   #103
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Test drove my friends car which is nearly identical to mine, 2015 WRX premium even same color GBP, which he just finished a brembo swap on and holy crap if feels better than mine. This means something clearly is wrong with mine and it's not the booster. Further investigation is needed, I suspect the front lines leaking at the taper threaded elbow. Hopefully have time to monkey with that this week, gonna have to pull at least the calipers, hoping to not have to remove the line from the car too but it might be more of a pain avoiding it than its worth. I used high temp thread sealer the first time would use regular Teflon tape this time and maybe be a little more daring on the torque.
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Old 10-10-2017, 10:59 PM   #104
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Went to my buddies garage to work on the brakes again today. We were planning to clean the threads with a tap and brush, then add new thread tape hoping to correct any sealing issues. However, when we got in there everything was nice and clean (I'd cleaned up the original mess the last time I was in there). Clearly there is no real leak at least not during low temperature street driving.

Following the golden rule I was not about to tear stuff apart when there wasn't really a problem. So instead I checked the torque on the jet nuts as well as the bracket bolts and both were good. Next I bled the calipers, no air bubbles, through the fluid was kinda ugly from the last track day. Again, no smoking guns here. Still scratching my heat, I had my buddy start the car and mash on the brakes repeatedly while I looked for possible leaks at all of the connections. I continued to see no leaks on either side. I did however notice the calipers flexing some, it was really bad with the rotors loose so I put the lugs back on with the wheels still off and the flexing was still present. Understanding the amount of force on the cantilevered calipers I expected some movement but this gave me pause.

Fortunately there were a couple other cars in the driveway to compare to. I had one buddy who has AP racing street calipers on his 17 WRX, we looked at those and they do flex some too. Next we moved to my other buddies 12 sti and those move some too although perhaps less (this movement is not very quantifiable).

What's all this mean? Honestly I don't know. I don't think this is actually my issue. Even if the caliper moved a little, the hydraulic system doesn't really care does it? I guess it's a "spring" that has to be compressed every time the system is actuated. I'm trying to think why it would even happen at all. If I draw a free body diagram of the system, the only way this happens is if the forces on both sides aren't actually the same, its is not rocking front to back, but side to side, so it's not to do with the trailing pistons, but it could be due to the rotor or pads having some taper/ not being parallel.

For now I'm not going to worry about it. I'll give it another beating at the track then the fronts will have to come back off in preparation for the salting of the earth (winter). I'll have plenty of time to scratch my head and stare at them then. In the meantime I really need to rebuild my stock calipers. I picked up replacement seals and boots, just need to dive in and figure out what it's gonna take to replace them.

Last edited by uofime; 10-11-2017 at 10:48 AM.
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Old 10-20-2017, 12:53 PM   #105
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Four wheels up, bleed again last nigh to no avail
Went nuts and fired up the car on jack stands to panic brake at "40mph" and activate the ABS (very successfully) to see if air was stuck there.
Still nothing.

Oh well, still going to track it saturday!

also, hardware from the Subaru shootout!
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Old 10-25-2017, 04:22 PM   #106
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Had a great time with my buddies out at Gingerman over the weekend. One of my buddies killed another set of powerstops in his 12WRX, another killed some 4000XS rotors on his brembo swapped 15 WRX, another killed some RE71rs in his third track day and a fourth found out the old stock sportmaxxes from the GR generation like to fall apart when you get them hot!

On the upside no one had any major problems and we all drove our cars home.

As for the pig, I dropped a second and a half from my previous trip here nearly reaching my 1:45.XX goal at a painfully close 1:46.07!


Looking at the video and at my synthetic best I've still got time out there. If it put all my best sections together I'd be in the 1:44s and that's pretty fast for my fat car with relatively simple mods.

I've got plenty of ideas swimming around in my head for what to do with the budget I'm setting for the offseason, but honestly watching the video and chatting with some drivers who are far better than me, it is clear that the number one thing is need is just more driver mod.

My goals for the event were to figure out turn 10, turn 5/6 and to learn to use all my braking power. I'm pretty happy with how I did with 5/6, turn 10 is still a mixed bag because its better but I'm just not consistent there. As for the brakes, I definitely worked on using them all, but at the cost of corner entry speed. I need to work on finesse, it was pointed out that release should not be a point before turn-in, but more a gradual thing that happens as steering is wound in.

I'm familiar with the string from wheel to pedal analogy for acceleration and I think I do a decent job of that, but its time to learn to do the same for braking.

With track season at a close, I'll just have to save that for next year or maybe try applying it to ice racing!
No reason that shouldn't work right?
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Old 11-20-2017, 12:50 PM   #107
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Warm days are done for the year so last week I pulled the wilwoods off the front so I could fit my stock wheels and snow tires on and then got those mounted.

To do that I rebuilt one of the calipers with new seals and boots I got dirt cheap off rockauto. It was kind of a pain to reassemble and those seals were rather tight, but since it wasn't on the car there was plenty of time to fool with it in my kitchen

the other caliper I just bought a replacement for since the bolt sheared off in the bracket when I was installing the Wilwoods months ago and no one sells the bracket individually as far as i could find.

Installed them with stock pads, some used rotors off my buddies car (I think they're stoptechs, my 4ks were usable, but pretty cut up and he offered them so I took them) and stainless lines.

while I had the opportunity I compared the weight of the stock set up and the wilwoods.

Stock total installed weight (caliper, bracket, lines, pads): ~36.5lbs a corner

Wilwood total installed weight: 25.5lbs per corner (11 lbs less)

stock rotor only: 21.75lbs

KNS 2pc custom wilwood rotor only (ring, hat, hardware): 17.5lbs per corner (4.25lb less)

So the kit saves 22lbs of unsprung weight on the front without loosing any endurance performance, seems to have gained slightly in practice.

It'll be interesting to see what the bell alone weights when I take the rings off to replace them before spring. just to judge the "wasted" weight in the centers of the stock rotors.

Other than that lots of thinking about what I want to do mods wise with the car over winter. I semi-arbitrarily set a 2k$ budget to play with to get the car ready for next season. I know I need new rotor rings and while I might get away with them for one more event, do want a backup set of front pads too. Other than that I can look back at what I said 5 months ago and see if I still agree.

Quote:
Originally Posted by uofime View Post

For the future

#1: more drivermod!


#2: Finish up the projects I've got, oil cooler and oil pressure sensor.

Longer term: add an AOS, and some upgraded engine mounts.

Even longer term: Coilovers of some sort, FMIC, flex fuel (in that order[probably])
#1. not really considering events in this budget, but still towards the aim of driver mod I've been looking at some datalogging equipment. There are a couple paths:

Option A

Dedicated GPS datalogger: AiM SoloDL seems to be a popular choice. ~600$
+designed to do the job
+operation is simple press one button and go at the track
-no native video
-pricy

Option B

10hz GPS receiver to tie into phone and work with Harrys laptimer ~100$
+cheapest
+uses existing equipment that works.
-adds one more thing to connect and fiddle with,
-still uses my crappy old phone with limited accelerometer data and
-limited storage

Option C

Upgraded GoPro hero5. ~500
+this has GPS, accelerometers and has similar functions to harrys for overlaying video
+lots of cheap storage
+easy over shoulder view can see driver inputs
-one more thing to fiddle with would still run harrys
-requires post processing effort
-still not really designed for the task (no easy sector times, corner min speed, synthetic laps times) is software to do this in Post, but not uselful "live"

#2

Yep, still need to finish Oil cooler
oil pressure sensor.
have added STI steering shaft joint, STi brake booster.
"cooling stack" inlet ducting in with this. should be as simple as some 1.5mm thick plastic sheet bent and rivited togthere with some seal bulb on the edges sealing the radiator/oilcooler to the bumper inlets.
wrap in heat tape and install new intake box
(really need to stop adding to this list and start finishing these.....)

#3

Kinda changed my mind to using catchcans over AOS, car doesn't have a ton of blowby to begin with, don't really want to return to sump especially with future plans to add flex fuel.
Front runner is radium's dual set-up. Really like the quality of the plumbing the use.
Least favorite thing about these in general is fear of cruddy plumbing causing vacuum/boost leaks that are impossible to trace and cause reliability issues down the line.
No reason to complicate things with coolant lines for this set up either. simpler is better IMO

Totally nixxed motor mounts. Not convinced they're really necessary and am already annoyed with the level of NVH in some circumstances.

#4 (probably not going to happen)
coilovers: still not sure what I'd really do for a set-up/ not convinced I really need them/ honestly not sure how much longer I'm going to play this stupid game and pretty sure I won't want them once I quit it

FMIC: favorite is TXSFMIC, looks like its sized right, fits well, priced nice even new. Not sure I'll want it long term, if if found a screaming deal might go for it still

Flex: sort term I'm tempted to just pay for an E30 track tune. downside is I've flirted with running timeattack with buddies in the gridlife series HPDE+ class and this isn't (currently) legal in that class

#5 (new stuff)
Heard a rumor Verus engineering (formerly Velox) might release brake ducts for my car, pestered them on facebook and they confirmed they planned to do it by the end of this year. Similar in design and price to their BRZ kit which I like and is quite reasonable (410$)
If its as well put together, seamless to install and low key in appearance, I'll probably do it.
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Old 04-10-2018, 12:53 PM   #108
PDXREALTOR
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Quote:
Originally Posted by uofime View Post
From the DIY flex fuel set up I linked, they show the pinout for the TGV connector:



5v
Ground
Sense

They're all there.

From the sensor's instructions we get this pinout:


Need to order the tgv connector in order to plug into the car's engine harness, this comes with the crimp on pins and weather seals:

Its a little pricey so I might look and see if I can find it for cheaper, but it is all there for less than 10 bucks.

Can pick up the ancillaries at the local autoparts store, 3 colors of wire, some heat shrink tubing, and maybe a little convoluted loom tubing if I want to get fancy.
Tagged. I'm doing the same with fuel pressure and have the pressure sensor and matching harness from AEM. Just need to tap the TGV wires with wire taps
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Old 07-16-2018, 01:23 PM   #109
uofime
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Default STi Steering linkage install

For anyone wondering, no I haven’t sold the pig, gave up on NASIOC or died I’ve just had some matters that demanded attention be placed there first. Anyway, with those finally squared away to my satisfaction attention has returned once more to working on the blue pig.

I started light or at least I though I was, working on installing the sti steering linkage that I purchased from a local part out last summer. Access from beneith is good and the whole thing is only held in place with two bolts. Unfortunately, the devil is in the details.



There it is, as seen from below, nothing but a couple U joints and a giubo on a shaft. However as you may have guessed from the title things did not go smoothly. Fortunately if you’d like to avoid the 5 hours of madness this brought me I have a few pieces of advice and if you follow them you might get to keep your sanity and gave this be the sub 45 minute job I thought it’d be.

First key piece of info: be very careful to mark both ends of the linkage and shafts for alignment. I would recommend wrapping four pieces of masking tape around the joins and using a fat felt tip marker to make CLEAR indexing lines at each end.

Second key piece of info: the shafts are keyed around their diameter, meaning the pinch bolts have to come all the way out or the linkage cannot be slid on the splined shafts at either end.

Even with the bolts removed the linkage doesn’t exactly pop off. In order to get it free you must push the linkage up the steering shaft. In order to mechanically persuade the linkage to actually do that you’ll need a medium size pry bar. Then the linkage will come free of the rack and you can back it off the steering shaft to fully remove it from the car.

Third key piece of info: the STi joint has the pinches clocked differently, you have to be very careful transferring the clocking marks to the new linkage from the old one. I’d love to know why they did this, but it likely is due to the fact they’ve been using this part since at least 2005.

With everything carefully marked on the bench Install is the reverse of removal. That said no longer having the giubo means getting those pinch bolts back through their keyways can present some challenge. The trick was to bolt the steering side then wedge the pry bar between the joint and firewall to pry while inserting and spinning the rack side bolt. This is one of those times a third arm would have really helped though I’m not sure there was room anyway after you do it say five times it becomes really easy

As you might have guessed by now I had some trouble... I couldn’t get it free, I didn’t do as good a job of marking as I should have, which made transferring even harder and I wasn’t as careful as I should have been. As a result it took me 5 try’s to get the steering wheel and tires lined up correctly.

When it isn’t aligned correctly the vehicle dynamics control, abs and hill start all give warnings in complaint to tell you something is wrong in case the crooked steering wheel wasn’t enough of a hint

Enough with the gory details U of I ME, what are the results?!!?

I have had this done for about two months now. Keep in mind that I still haven’t tested it in anger on a track or AutoX course. That said, on the street the difference isn’t exactly huge. You do get a little more feel and directness. With that comes some extra vibration from the wheels and over uneven pavement (none of that in Chicago) the car does feel a little nervous. I do understand why they don’t come this way from the factory.

I still want to do steering rack bushings at some point, judging by Subaru’s durometer choices on some of the other chassis mounts there might still be a lot of slop hiding there. Now if only someone would confirm fitment for the 15+ EPAS racks. I did have a local guy who had bought some and said they were gonna try, never did hear back from him though.
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Old 09-07-2018, 12:11 PM   #110
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Quote:
Originally Posted by uofime View Post
[*]Install GR STI front sway bar
Were you ever able to do this?

I bought a GR front sway bar the other day and tried to install but it didn't clear the power steering

Were you successful?

I also noticed that the end link bolts are smaller on the GR sway so the 15 end links wont fit.
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Old 09-11-2018, 03:42 PM   #111
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Quote:
Originally Posted by violentleaf View Post
Were you ever able to do this?

I bought a GR front sway bar the other day and tried to install but it didn't clear the power steering

Were you successful?

I also noticed that the end link bolts are smaller on the GR sway so the 15 end links wont fit.
I thought I posted about it, but either way I thrived and ran into the clearance issue with the electronic power steering motor and scrapped the ideal. If you really wanted to do it using spacers on the mounts may get the clearance you need but I never tried that.
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Old 09-13-2018, 11:22 AM   #112
uofime
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I know this build log has been a little slow this year, but I have made real progress. Over the summer, about 6 days of working, I was able to finish fabrication of my front mounted oil cooler. I did a couple of different things to some people, I'm using abs plastic sheeting and EPDM seal bulb to make my shrouds out of, sealing the core to the condenser and currently have the front open. I'm still proving those out to myself (and the friends that said it wouldn't work) before I go giving to many details.

I've been signed up for the Subaru Speed Expo since those tickets went on sale a couple months ago and addition to the oil cooler the other big ticket item I needed to take care of was my ComC strut tops. Those (or something at least) had been making some increasingly serious clunking noises since ice racing this past winter. I've been poking around the suspension, looking for anything loose, all summer trying unsuccessfully to figure out the cause. Finally on one of the nights driving to my buddies garage I started hearing a new groaning noise while steering. That prompted me to look closer at the strut tops again and I found one had some increasingly severe cracks in the rubber.

Fortunately Whiteline was very willing to send me some free replacements once I showed them pictures of what was happening. Those things are a real pain in the butt to replace since the front springs on this car do not have 2 full coils on them to grab a hold of with spring compressors. Still 2 weeks before the event, once the oil cooler was replaced I spent two hours swapping those out. In addition to the cracks in the rubber, on both of the mounts the bearing was failing. Spinning them bearings you could feel grittiness, they were cogging and had puked grease out through their seals.

With all that done the car was good to go for the expo which was held last Saturday, September 8 2018, at the north course of Autobhan Country Club. Overall the event went great we had over 50 Subarus out there tracking together which I think is awesome and I'm really proud to having had a hand in making happen. We had beautiful weather for turbo subarus, hanging out in the 60s and cloudy all day. It had been raining the previous day so the track was very green and due to a drainage issue there we had water going across the track on corners 8 and 9 as well as some mud thrown up on the inside of those as well. We had more that a few cars spin out in that corner during the day, including me in the first session

I was adding speed gradually, and had gotten some small but controllable wiggles out of the car on the first five laps. On the sixth one right near the apex the rear caught some water, started it sliding and around it went into the infield.


You can see I counter steered, trying to save it, but once the car was perpendicular to the track it was time to use the phrase "in a spin, both feet in" because there was no saving it. The car got a nice baptism of mud as it gracefully 180'd its way into the infield. Fortunately the car was completely unharmed, it didn't even stall (both feet in,) I was able to ease it out of the mud without any assistance and drive it around the track gently to pit in and get my explorer sticker. When I did I felt how un balanced the wheels were and was informed in the pit I had a lot of mud and grass in my wheels. There for my session was over and I took the car to find a hose so I could clean it off bit.

For the next session I solicited some help from one of our instructors, Jon Yu. He essentially has the 2016 version of my car (same mods, different brands), but he definitely has a great deal more driver mod than me, having done a bunch of events over the last couple years including some time attack with the Gridlife series. He rode along for the second session and gave some great pointers on line stuff. I picked up a whole lot through the esses, 3,4,5 by entering 3 sooner and using a whole lot less brakes. He also advised easing up and keeping it a bit tighter though 8 and 9 which I really like to try some more when the track is dry. I fought with turn 2 all day, its really tough to get your entry speed and turn in point just right after getting thrown around 1.

Jon coached me to my fastest lap of the day, a 1:15.23. Due to a SNAFU with my go pro and intentionally not running Harry's video, not expecting much from the session I don't have any video of that lap. I did run the Harry's video for the fourth session where I was laying down fairly consistent 15s and 16s so I do have a vidoe of the 1:15.55 from that, which was a pretty good lap though there is clearly still some extra time out there.


Overall the car did great. Like I said earlier it was a really cool day so really not a great test of the cooling system. Regardless my oil temperatures did not go over 210 all day, from previous experience I'm fairly certain that if the car did not have the cooler it would have been in the 250 range. Additionally the coolant did not go much over 200 while on track either. It does have the same behavior where those will actually both go up a little when coming off the track due to the decrease in air flow, but quickly settle back down during the obligatory paddock parade for cooling the brakes in order to not melt off wheel weights.

Some additional details, the car is still running 5w40 motul x-clean oil, the cooler adds just under an extra liter of oil capacity to the system. Unlike last year's track season I'm no longer running water and water wetter in the coolant, instead it was flushed last fall with factory Subaru blue coolant.

Since my trip to the track last year I had added the FHI 2 pot rear brakes and those have mostly eliminated brake fade, though I did take a couple half lap cool downs throughout the day because I could feel the friction drop off just a little and experience has taught me that having a little mechanical sympathy is a good thing for sure since those cool downs let the car run its fastest laps right after them. As a result of this there was no undue smearing at either end of the car. I would still like to throw a set of the Velox brake ducts on the car as much as anything in hopes of getting a little more life out of a set of brake pads. This was the third event for my pads and after the fourth session they looked to have only about a mm and a half left on them so I elected to not run the final open session.

If you watched the Harry's video above you may have noticed the telemetry looks nice and smooth, the sync of the accelerometer data to the video is now pretty spot on. I will attribute that to the 10hz "Bad Elf" Glonas GPS dongle I was running this event. I haven't had a chance to dive into the telemetry from Harrys, but just judging from the overlay I'm expecting it to be a lot more meaningful than last year. Which is a good thing because I really want to get my driver mod done as much as possible. From my ride along with Jon its clear that with the major driving line issues sorted what I need now is to work on the details and for that I need some good data.
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Old 09-13-2018, 02:02 PM   #113
SirBrass
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I just finished reading all 5 pages. Excellent read! I really can't wait to get myself back into a WRX now. Yours sounds like it's been an absolute blast so far to drive.
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Old 09-13-2018, 05:48 PM   #114
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Originally Posted by SirBrass View Post
I just finished reading all 5 pages. Excellent read! I really can't wait to get myself back into a WRX now. Yours sounds like it's been an absolute blast so far to drive.
Thanks, that's nice to hear. I made this build log because I've really enjoyed reading though other's logs over the years and wanted to contribute my own.

I've definitely enjoyed my time with the car, I've made good friends, had way to much fun at events, learned a whole lot about driving and working on cars as well.
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Old 02-12-2019, 02:11 PM   #115
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Default spacers and studs

For this winter given that the pig no longer sees daily driving and I've had other folks I know get away with it I decided I was going to just leave my track day brake calipers on. The pistons are stainless steel and even if the seals get damaged by the salt after rebuilding my stock calipers last year I'm pretty confident I can rebuild these easily.

Leaving the track calipers on means I'm going to have a fitment issues with my stock 17" wheels. For years I looked for the right set of 05-07 STI BBS in silver, good condition for a nice price that I could move my snow tires to but Id pretty much given up on that.

Given that those would have cost me 400 minimum to buy and another 100 to sway the tires on I have motivation to find another way.

Thankfully I decided to do this back in october so I had some time to figure it out. The first step was to test fit one of my stock wheels an see how bad the interference was with the caliper. I dinged one of my calipers last year so this year I covered the caliper in painters tape before test fitting.

Indeed there is a bit of interference between the spokes and outer face. It seemed small enough that a simple spacer might accommodate it so I dug through my increasing spare parts containers for some washers that would fit over the wheel studs. Fortunately the washers I bought after discovering that STI and WRX calipers bolts are a different pitch, a pitch only available in bolts an inch too long at the local hardware store were the right ID to serve this purpose.

Then I started stacking washers up on two of the wheel studs and test fitting the wheel until I found that 6 washers or just under 8mm would give the clearance I needed. This did make one other issue clear as well, with those spacers installed I'd have about 2 threads of engagement on my lug nuts. So those are going to need replaced too, not the end of the world, Subaru studs have a bad reputation and a few folks have suggested to me before that given the use of the car I ought to replace them.

With that I was off to the internet to find some appropriate replacement parts!
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Old 02-13-2019, 03:45 PM   #116
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Picking up where I left off, with the knowledge that I needed an 8mm spacer and would need longer lugs to accommodate what ever spacer I used I started searching for parts. I started by looking at spacers, there are sort of three types, super cheap, non hubcentric universal ones that seem to come in 5mm increments, I think I saw some 3 mm ones too. there there are more expensive spacer kits that do include lugs as well as hubcentric spacers, I found these is 10mm, 15mm sizes, all larger that I really need. These are not super cheap typically over 100$ per axle for the set. The third option are the bolt on spacers that have a second set of lugs on them, these are available starting at I think 15mm and go up in fives. Again these are all larger than I need.

While I was doing this I posted in the track midwest facebook group looking for other options and peoples opinion on hubcentric vs non for a winter setup.
I was surprised at the variety of responses, people swearing on both sides that you needed it or "sending it" was fine for winter.

Amid all the noise a couple people suggested a company called motorsport tech that would make custom spacers with whatever thickness, inner and outer hub diameters you wanted. Spec'd the way I wanted (8mm x 56.1mm x 56.1mm) the cost was only ~75$.

To go with either the non hubcentric stack or the custom spacer I was planning to use ARP extended studs (despite stating it in my post TMW was also insistent on this ) and those were 32$ a wheel on amazon.

Also one tip further validated while writing this, don't look at items multiple times on amazon, I bought them at 32, looked yesterday they wre 36 and again today they are now 40. Gotta love those cookies!

Anyway, its basically an extra 35$ to go from cheesy stack of not great to "the correct" solution that's also support small made in America manufacturing. I'm a bit of a sucker for those things so I ordered the motorsport tech spacers. I did find that they have a slightly hidden 20S&H charge which in the Amazon era seems egregious, but I get it they gotta make some profit somewhere and handling on one off orders isn't easy.

Also ordered ARP 100-7728, that is spec'd as 1.95"UHL which is nearly exactly 8mm longer than stock. Perfect!.... except it isn't because in that length ARP counts the "nipple" which it turns out is also almost exactly 8mm Worse still I didn't realize this until I'd installed all of them.

Reason being that because I as so on top of things doing this in October I received the studs in 2 days. Since I had the time I threw them on long before needing to put the spacers on winter wheels on.

Anyhow as I found out 6 weeks later the correct part # is ARP 100-7729 which has a 2.535" UHL. There's your top tip if you want to run up to a 10mm spacer get these and if not the first ones are the best option.


Fortunately the second time around I'd gotten pretty good at replacing studs and I can put the others in the rear at some point. The rear is much less easy for anything over OEM length so I'm in no hurry.
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Old 04-03-2019, 12:37 AM   #117
uofime
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Track season has come again!

That can only mean it's time to rush and get everything ready only made worse because I pulled the trigger after waffling for weeks and bought entry to an event a week away.

Installed a set of Verus Engineering brake ducts which was not at all an easy install and felt a lot more like fabrication than engineering.
The backing plates fit pretty well, though the ABS wire gives me a little concern with it rubbing the duct and hose.
There is no nice way to attach the pancake duct so I just poked some holes in the fender liner and ran zip ties through.
Next on the forward sections everything is in the way, the intake on the passenger side massively interfered and necessitated redrilling the lower bracket hole to pull the elbow forward. Then with the washer bottle on the drivers side there is just not really enough room to fit the hose underneath like they tell you to, but never the less with some stretching plastics, a little crushing the hoses and a lot of profanity I was able to get it all on.

I just hope I never have to take the bumper cover off again.

I also picked up another set of XP12s for the front from KNS since the old set were worn out.

Then found out when I went to reinstall my summer wheels that my extended studs are just ever so slightly to long to fit with the lugs I was using without the spacers so I had to run and pick up some open ended ones. Thankfully the guys at TFWorks had stuff in stock.

Though all that I finished getting the car buttoned up today just in time because I leave home for a couple days before I'm heading to Gridlife's event at Mid Ohio this weekend!

Last edited by uofime; 04-03-2019 at 11:25 AM.
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Old 04-03-2019, 07:25 AM   #118
JRowland
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Have fun, come back with vids. Looking forward to the evaluation.
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Old 04-03-2019, 11:31 AM   #119
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Have fun, come back with vids. Looking forward to the evaluation.
I’m pretty much out of excuses on the car, this will be an evaluation of my driving more than anything
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Old 04-03-2019, 12:04 PM   #120
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Hope you have nice weather for the event! We got rained/froze out of two events at VIR. That was torture.
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Old 04-03-2019, 01:06 PM   #121
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Hope you have nice weather for the event! We got rained/froze out of two events at VIR. That was torture.
Ken, those Hawk pads I just got from you are great. Jammed the Tail of the Dragon this past weekend a few times and I really liked the way they felt. Thanks again.
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Old 04-08-2019, 01:05 PM   #122
uofime
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Had an awesome weekend at Mid-Ohio. The weather held out pretty well all things considedred, it was 50s in the mornings and 60s in the afternoons. The rain only came at the very end. Definitely added a little excitement to the last sessions on Sunday, trying the wet line and getting the courage to push and move back to the dryline.

This is definitely my new favorite track, it is just a ton of fun adding the elevation changes in with the curves. Definitely a little more scary than Gingerman because there are some places where you reallllly don't want to have an off.

As far as the Pig, it worked flawlessly. The cool temperatures meant that the engine gets hotter sitting in chicago traffic than it did doing 125mph on the back straight here. I datalogged a session I'll take a look at later and probably share here.

Overall the driver worked OK. I snagged a few laps on a friends VR iracing sim (before getting sick) and that was my only prior "driving" experience with the track coupled with a couple lapping videos and a C&D article. Sp I started out with a lot of "respect" for the track and dropped a lot of time in the Saturday session. Ended up running a best of 1:47.5 on one lap where I caught some red mist for a Nissan Z. Was never able to quite repeat that lap on Sunday but on the second and final fullly dry session I did run a string of very consistent 1:49's. Borrowed a buddies Solo2 Sunday so I'm looking forward to being able to (learn to0)review that data and compare what that gave me to the lesser Harry's w/10Hz gps I was running in parallel.

Overall a really cool event pretty relaxed, lots of bigger names around to chat with a little and check out their cars. Gridlife HPDE can be a crapshoot, with people picking run groups they have no business being in, but this was one of the best run groups I've ever ran with. Never had to wait for point bys, no one doing anything foolish and getting sessions black flagged. With the two day even I actually got to know the drivers in the group too, even that darned Z owner, who turned out to be a nice guy.

This is definitely a track I will be going back to, but the question on my mind now is what track is next
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Old 11-27-2019, 10:38 PM   #123
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For anyone wondering, no I haven’t sold the pig, gave up on NASIOC or died I’ve just had some matters that demanded attention be placed there first. Anyway, with those finally squared away to my satisfaction attention has returned once more to working on the blue pig.

I started light or at least I though I was, working on installing the sti steering linkage that I purchased from a local part out last summer. Access from beneith is good and the whole thing is only held in place with two bolts. Unfortunately, the devil is in the details.



There it is, as seen from below, nothing but a couple U joints and a giubo on a shaft. However as you may have guessed from the title things did not go smoothly. Fortunately if you’d like to avoid the 5 hours of madness this brought me I have a few pieces of advice and if you follow them you might get to keep your sanity and gave this be the sub 45 minute job I thought it’d be.

First key piece of info: be very careful to mark both ends of the linkage and shafts for alignment. I would recommend wrapping four pieces of masking tape around the joins and using a fat felt tip marker to make CLEAR indexing lines at each end.

Second key piece of info: the shafts are keyed around their diameter, meaning the pinch bolts have to come all the way out or the linkage cannot be slid on the splined shafts at either end.

Even with the bolts removed the linkage doesn’t exactly pop off. In order to get it free you must push the linkage up the steering shaft. In order to mechanically persuade the linkage to actually do that you’ll need a medium size pry bar. Then the linkage will come free of the rack and you can back it off the steering shaft to fully remove it from the car.

Third key piece of info: the STi joint has the pinches clocked differently, you have to be very careful transferring the clocking marks to the new linkage from the old one. I’d love to know why they did this, but it likely is due to the fact they’ve been using this part since at least 2005.

With everything carefully marked on the bench Install is the reverse of removal. That said no longer having the giubo means getting those pinch bolts back through their keyways can present some challenge. The trick was to bolt the steering side then wedge the pry bar between the joint and firewall to pry while inserting and spinning the rack side bolt. This is one of those times a third arm would have really helped though I’m not sure there was room anyway after you do it say five times it becomes really easy

As you might have guessed by now I had some trouble... I couldn’t get it free, I didn’t do as good a job of marking as I should have, which made transferring even harder and I wasn’t as careful as I should have been. As a result it took me 5 try’s to get the steering wheel and tires lined up correctly.

When it isn’t aligned correctly the vehicle dynamics control, abs and hill start all give warnings in complaint to tell you something is wrong in case the crooked steering wheel wasn’t enough of a hint

Enough with the gory details U of I ME, what are the results?!!?

I have had this done for about two months now. Keep in mind that I still haven’t tested it in anger on a track or AutoX course. That said, on the street the difference isn’t exactly huge. You do get a little more feel and directness. With that comes some extra vibration from the wheels and over uneven pavement (none of that in Chicago) the car does feel a little nervous. I do understand why they don’t come this way from the factory.

I still want to do steering rack bushings at some point, judging by Subaru’s durometer choices on some of the other chassis mounts there might still be a lot of slop hiding there. Now if only someone would confirm fitment for the 15+ EPAS racks. I did have a local guy who had bought some and said they were gonna try, never did hear back from him though.
Hey man can you check your pm's i have a question
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Old 12-01-2019, 02:27 AM   #124
siickwrx
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sweet ride man!
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Old 12-01-2019, 07:12 PM   #125
Rally344
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Nice car man! love that blue!
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