So I hit the rallycross easy button, 96 Impreza content.

More progress, it's always helpful when it's not 34 miles away lol, so seats are in but did not realize how messed up the drivers seat is so need to look for an actual race seat

Also need to do a solution for the steering rack that pissed all of its fluid out when I pulled the inner boot, heard the STI pre 07 is the way to go

so that's the next big obstacle as of now

Pulled a bumper cover, headlights and hood from a 97 OBX that will make the look a bit better Imho 
 

Now to put the engine back together and mate the transmission.

Also forgot , the entire back of the car is in and ready to go!

So taking the Andy Nelson approach by doing something every day is an amazing strategy, was finally able to get a scoop for the OBX hood and it's starting to look the part.

The battery at one point boiled over (will be more rust repair soon enough) so while in there dropped the front cross member, cleaned and painted it.

I will say the biggest pain in the ass with most of this swap would be trying to find the right bolts to use tbh.

Engine is in!!!! Have to figure out the steering rack before the trans goes in just for ease of installation but I'm getting excited for progress!

WRX got the same steering rack from 05-07 as the STi.

In reply to NGTD :

REALLY?  I thought the Saabaru was the only car to get the quicker rack besides the STi.

This would have been good info when I was kinda interested in a Subaru but didn't want a WRX because of the slow steering and didn't want an STi because they were manual only.

This is a cool project, I've got a 98 Legacy wagon with plans for a manual and H6 swap.  But I've got to finish my MF car first, and actually get a season of racing in.

Knurled. said:

In reply to NGTD :

REALLY?  I thought the Saabaru was the only car to get the quicker rack besides the STi.

 

This would have been good info when I was kinda interested in a Subaru but didn't want a WRX because of the slow steering and didn't want an STi because they were manual only.

My 05 WRX wagon had the same rack, at least dimesionally and design wise. I'm not 100% sure that it's the same ratio as the STi.

02-04 racks don't bolt in to 05-07 WRXs. 

Quick update, this 95 Impreza is now officially a manual!!!
 

Will definitely say I need a trans jack for the next one, pain in the ass doing it solo with 2 jacks.

Wow been a little bit, so had to fix former owners "fixes" which is half the reason for the harness swap.

Ended up just getting a normal rack but put some white line Anti lift's and rack bushings in.

Thanks to Josh I was able to score an actual seat, a half day with some fabrication and we are G2G 

And there is an amazing video I have to post but I have to figure out how lol, will say though it has officially moved under its own power as a MT for the first time in its life!!!!'

Super long time no update, well let's get in to it, here is the beverage holder, works extremely well and is the old airbag controller box, roll of duct tape and masking tape glued together and all held in with nail glue and duct tape.

The day has came where the donor chassis met its maker, it donated 90% of itself to make the 2door live so I can't be mad at it, so long piggy!!

After the start up and initial drive there was a fairly good leak that appeared from the bell housing area, so after many beers and a week or 2 of not looking at the car I ended up pulling the transmission back out and in subarus infinite glory with an 02 3.90 you HAVE to split the case to replace a $20 input seal, on the plus side everything looks good inside of it so that's cool.

^^berkeleying this......
 

First start and manual transmission test (again FML) but after this it is time to gooooooooo!!!!!!!!

To the first adventure, driving 3hrs away to do a 2day rallycross on a car I put less than 50miles on.

For those in the mid Atlantic region 10000% go to any panthera event, was my first event here and fell back in love with rallycross!!

Now keep in mind this was a year ago now but video editing and driver have been improving over the past season, super excited to be going back to this site.

More to cover up to now in a bit, even a wild Josh driving an AWD car??

Well it's been a while, need to post some updates but to tide over here are a few shots.

In reply to JtspellS :

Nice!  Once you drive a Subaru fast on dirt, you just can't get enough.

Okay so picking back up to the first full season when we still had the summit point site, the car felt amazing I just had to get used to the AWD yank the wheel and push the gas but was still having a ball.

Shown above is the one and only Josh when the dirty e30 was down.

Sad the summit site had to go but it won't be the first time unfortunately.

Now a stock 2.2 is a tough beast but not powerful, in the off season this will be stripped for its parts and added to the NA engine though as you will see there's plenty of things that have to be made (yes it's a 2.2T from a 93 legacy which means...)

Yes it's a closed deck!!!!! Issue will be getting parts as money allows and trying to figure out what silly combo I can do.

So after the mid season break score this lead me to try and see how hard we could push the OE 2.2

Still love this site!

Big thing I need to still get used to is cones but not this occasion

One of the last events we had a weigh in and I can't be mad about this, sad I'll be adding more but have not gone wild with weight reduction yet..

Another one, this is an EJ205 with rolled crank bearings but for $100 I could not pass it up I wanted the heads and intake manifold for the 2.2T slow build and tbh the block still looks like it still be used possibly, HMU if anyone wants the block.

Off season which means work begins...

BPV block off turned in to a spacer so I could fit the BOV  thanks to the super large STI intercooler will likely go to a stock BPV once I remake the intake 

Single port life so had to make headers (to stay cheap) these V1's were hacked up before a week of looking at them

Here is V2 set up, much better looking and made from a scrap single port hence the 2 different metals

Almost looks professional, if they only knew over half was junk.

In reply to JtspellS :

Love this!  Glad you are doing updates.  Sadly I'm going to press the east button on this super soon.  I wanted to build a dedicated mod AWD bugeye but buying one is a lot cheaper.

In reply to AnthonyGS (Forum Supporter) :

100% I've never had the room to build a car so that's why I'm going for it. There's plenty of complete stage cars out there which makes the jump from rallycross to actual stage much easier.

So this part was the most nerve racking and TBH should have done while the engine was out, the notch and making the box was okay but welding the box was ugly AF but functional, def using a turbo crossmember when the time comes but that will also decide the steering rack and lower A arms

You can see my cardboard aided design for the box always suggest it when possible, being the cheap build this is im reusing the O2 bung and flex pipe to fit the downpipe

The downpipe is a junkyard special no name aftermarket that was crimp cut for its cat, NBD though just broke out my 8lb hammer beat it back out to fit the 3" pipe I had lying around and put a 2.5 reducer on that to adapt to the old flex pipe 

All dolled up now

So that's the exhaust, have to figure out how to fit the big ass intercooler where it was not supposed to be.

So after some poking around I found this intercooler from a FB Subaru junker for a good price but did not realize the sheer size but decided to cut and paste as needed, now I had to shave both the IC and the TB to make it fit the OE 22e manifold as well as break out the ball peen and 8lb hammer again to massage the firewall back enough for clearance, brackets still need to be made but for now tolerances are good enough it can sit with no major (yet) issues

also making the cold side pipes were a bit more of a guessing game causing me to miss the first RX of the year but after a little bit of screwing around I was able to get something to work

So the BPV/BOV was just going to get blocked off but I was not trying to beat up the VF11 too bad so after cutting the CC adapter on the TB I was able to get the SSQV to fit, though tbh it surges hard and does not really blow off until full throttle 5-6psi so when the intake is figured out that will also be redone

So then the intake, I still want to run the OEM box but was running out of time for event 2 so it was time to make something happen, remember that 2.0 junker? Well it had an OEM turbo inlet that was screwed anyway that I could make the 90 for the 90 from the turbo, with the ol hacksaw I went to work making it fit, issue then was it was only hard plastic so what do you do to clamp down? Old exhaust pipe that was "press fit" (8lb hammer to the rescue again) so I could clamp an adapter to it. Last issue was I was not able to make angles within time for the stock NA box so  I went through my shed of random Subaru E36 M3 and found another MAF that now is acting as my pod filter adapter. I'm kinda proud of this conglomeration of trash but will be a #1 source of fixing on summer break or this off season.

Add gauges made out of the gutted airbag box and volia you have a thing that looks alright 

Though I still need to run the voltage gauge and properly mount the temp (did not have the proper BNPT-NPT adapter and I was not running it back through the fire wall) thermocouple but again make E36 M3 work.

So that puts us to this season.

Wow I swear I will be consistent in posting again one of these days. Right so we left off in 22 season just after getting boosted, was able to run a few events but we were also starting to gear up to buy a house so Subaru things were mostly put on hold. Here are a few event pictures from that timeframe.

^^my absolute favorite picture of this car so far.

So with things on the back burner I poked at a few projects to include the stock intake attempt which did not take as much effort as I expected but still needs plenty of refinement.

As you can see still janky but not AS bad.

For an off season test I went to an autocross with VMSC with only 1 modification from standard set up which was normal all season tires and had a good time for forgot how few runs you get in autocross...

Keen eyed viewers will see the wheel and trailer changes but more on that next.

So in the 22 season I did some consolidation which included selling 2 cars, my former DD P5 and RX8 but gained a trailer and a new to me DD from a fellow rallycrosser. 

Longest car I had at 10 years...

Former PA rallycross MZ3 DD with LSD fun breaking in our new driveway, but more on that later.

In what ended up being my extended sabbatical from racing I tackled a few other things on the Subaru that I had parts laying around for starting with an 03 front subframe swap to replace my janky cut & weld job as well as a good excuse to install an 06 STi steering rack, for good measure while down there I also ended up doing a later (04-06 if I remember correctly) oil baffle, pick up, and oil pan (all stock STi parts picked up for cheap from friends)

Also installing some thicc boi sway bars to see how they work, from 02-06 WRX front and rear.

The exhaust manifold held up fantastically well which I will take some pride in, the up pipe was a little beat up from my "precise" cuts...

 Installation was going fantastic until it did not....

For context this is where the drivers front A arm mounts to the body and is just a threaded block that's deep in the body, berkeley my life a few times over. After taking a few weeks off of the project and making an attack plan I knocked a few more little things I wanted to do out of the way.

Exhaust was a bit more quiet with the turbo on so with some left overs and scraps from my old titan exhaust I made a 2.5/3" cat back and it now sounds a lot more subabro now but tbh I like it....

Short clip here soon.

After research I decided on a plan of attack for repairing this pain in the ass fix, step 1? Cut in to the damned frame rail area....

Step 2 get an appropriate sized bolt and nut, thread said nut on the top of the block with your bolt then put as much weld as you can fit in there, ensure good engagement and then hammer your access panel back in place then weld everything up.

Step 3 realize you could have taken out the panel by the dead pedal vs cutting on the side that is exposed to the elements say E36 M3 berkeley motherberkeleyer I berkeleying hate this berkeleying bullE36 M3 and then grind down as much of your mistake as you can then lay heavy layers of truck bed liner and hope for the best.

There you are done! So install an easy softball so you can heal your ego.

Prep for more lightened GC.

Surprisingly no dry ice used, just kept smacking with the soft hammer.

And paint.

Paint...

paint....... Looks amazing but lots of work, used hammered rustolum from Home Depot in case more applications will be needed at a later date.

And finally this puts us up to modern times. I bought one last thing I've always wanted before our big move and installed it once we got to our home, but yay here is our new home!!!!

After things calmed down I finally got to installing my 00's piece...

BIG WANG GANGGGGGG

hnnnnngggggggggg

Will probably eventually add the 2.5rs front end but that will be later.

So aside from fixing a busted cam signal wire and doing once a month drives we are to now (no thanks to buying a house and recovering after that) and it runs and drives fantastically still, NA/T and 260k+ on stock EJ222 internals and single port heads. 

Im hoping to make some WDCR and possibly some Tar Heel events as well but the current hold back will be making the trailer less "holy"

Yay projects.....

So almost no events be in the cards this year so why not do improvements?

Started by just putting street wheels/tires on and thinking I was going to do some driving around and maybe an autocross just to keep the dust away.

But I've also noticed some smoke on start up lately and recently noticed some leaking from the turbo area, could have possibly been when I put the STi oil pan and pick up in and unintentionally over filled it (likely) but I also wanted to atone for sins in the past as shown.

In my defense both the turbo oil return and the janky intake pipe worked perfectly with no issues but it's ugly and I have time to make it better so why not do that? 
Also had to take a picture of the stock Subaru turbos of the 90's and early 00's that I've acquired over the years.

For reference (left to right) VF11 from a 90s legacy turbo and the current turbo used, TO4 which just about every WRX used this for 10-15 years, and VF38/9? (Not completely sure which but came with one of the piles of crap that I bought over the years) from early 00s STI's. Do not have have proper engine management (using stock 96 pcm still) so doubt I'll go bigger at this time.