And she has fought me all the way with the exhaust change.
Nearly a whole day with the wrong sort of tools trying to get old rusty nuts off!
Ended up having to put new studs and nuts in everything to do with the exhaust.
Just got to do an oil change as well then she is good to go for the shootout at the weekend.

As the shootout was looming i decided to get my arse in gear and sort the blowing exhaust manifold. It has had a crack in the collector for ages but as the car still ran i haven't been bothered with it too much.
I have been collecting a few new exhaust parts over the last few months ready for this swap.
The new headers are GT spec '3 bolt' variety matched to a harvey tapered up pipe replacing my old gruppe-s two bolt ones and a H&S 2inch up pipe.

They have taken a fair while to wrap and its not a pleasant job but i think i made quite a nice job of it in the end. I decided to stick with DEI wrap as my last effort lasted a good 5-6 years before it finally fell off and all the ceramic coating i have seen being done has started to flake off after a couple of years road usage anyway.

I have also been paying some more attention to the pipe diameters this time round as the previous setup was just bought and bolted together without measuring anything.

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The primary's of the headers are the same at 38mm on both manifolds but the collector is a little larger on the GT spec manifold. This is compensated for with the new tapered up pipe which actually brings the internal pipe diameter almost in line with the inlet diameter of the turbo now. There is still a 1mm lip mismatch at the moment but i didn't have time to have a go at porting out the turbine housing.
It is however a lot better than before as the inside diameter of the H&S up pipe was almost 6mm too big for the MD304 giving quite a step in the way of gas flow.

Also to be swapped was the downpipe from a H&S open neck with a 2.5 inch taper at the end to an API 3 inch all the way through open neck design.

It all started to go wrong from the first exhaust system bolt.
Every single one bar a couple on the top of the turbo and one on the head to manifold set was corroded up so bad that even a six sided socket was stripping them off round. After many hours of sweating and using tools that should not be used on high performance engines i had managed to get all the exhaust system and turbo off but i was left needing to replace every nut and bolt and stud including the ones in the heads! Bu66er!

New tool buy of the week are a set of stud extractors from machine mart, worked an absolute treat on the manifold studs.

http://www.machinemart.co.uk/shop/pr...-extractor-set

Didn't bother with the usual easy out fare as i was advised they were all rubbish but for 20 quid these were worth a punt and worked great, because of the grip design you can even use them to re insert the new studs without damaging the threads.
The studs in the turbo were not budging for anyone though and seen as i don't have a gas axe to heat up the turbo exhaust housing to get the studs out API came to the rescue at short notice and drilled them all out and installed new ones for me, cheers David ;-)

Fitting the new parts up was a much nicer affair, and this time i covered all the studs and bolts in a nice generous amount of copper slip to make my life a bit easier next time. I also took the time to do a few things that i never did the first time i fitted this turbo like grinding a little bit off the block bell housing to clear the water pipe rather then crush it! and make up an adaptor cable for the Bosch wideband lambda sensor so it uses standard plugs now.

Attachment 60486

Once it was all fitted up and the new wideband all plumbed in next was a quick oil and filter change to make sure the oil was in best condition for SSO then off for a little road test 'private of course' with my not so willing test pilot driving to check out the calibration on the wideband.
Also needed were a few WOT runs with the det cans on before i let the Motec loose with the fueling control!
Hopefully i'm going to install the knock block permanently in the car soon so i can use the 0-5v output from it to log a knock signal into the Motec.

I loaded up the car on the saturday afternoon ready for an early leave on sunday morning up to elvington.
Made good time on sunday morning, doing the run from solihull to elvington in about 1hr 50mins.
Pitched my tent, got all the crap out of the car changed my tyres and signed on.
The wind was pretty bad in the morning and i had to tether the poor little tent to my road wheels to stop it blowing away.

I decided to do a few drag runs first as most people were queuing for the handling track early on, first run, dial up 5krpm and smartly bring up the clutch and plant the throttle. It just goes right round to the limiter, the clutch was slipping!
A couple more sedate goes and i realise that i pretty much can't launch it at all but as soon as it was in second and going the clutch bit fine.

I thought my day would be over but i decided to have a go on the handling as i was there and surprised myself with a time good enough for fourth in class at that point in the day, so my day was back on! ;-)

I ended up doing about 7 runs on the handling course and i think ended up with 21st FTD with a 38.85.
Drag was a low 13 due to not being able to launch it and top speed was 126.7 good enough for 4th in class on the top speed too!

All in all on a good day with it all working its still a top20 all round car at SSO so im well pleased with that giving that the spec has not changed significantly for a long time and 330-350bhp is very old news now adays!
If you go by the points scored i was in 18th place overall out of a field of 50ish.

I reckon there would be more to come time wise on the handling with a better rear diff as it currently still has the standard UK open one and it was definitely picking up a rear corner and spinning away the power out of the slow corners.
Would a stiffer rear ARB help sort this out too?

Next thing is to pull the box out whilst doing the clutch and get the 3rd gear syncro looked at as it has crunched for ages.
Hopefully that will happen soon so i can get the box into API when i'm away and get it sorted.

As usual a big thanks to David and the lads at API for supplying parts and services at very short notice even when half the workshop were off on holiday.

Found one pic of me at the shootout that some nice person took, they must have been looking for the sleeper cars that looked slow:D
Not the most exciting angle but hard for me to do any better whilst driving the thing! ;) thought i would re post for completeness anyway.

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nice results given the circumstance then :)

Well since i toasted the clutch at the shootout and it needed replacing, this seemed the ideal time to get the PPG box overhauled as it has always had a crunch when selecting 3rd gear at high revs. This has been documented quite a bit earlier on in this thread but i never got a solution for it.
The crunch had been getting steadily worse over the last few years and getting farther down the rev range too so it was time to remove the gearbox and get it sent to API to get looked at.

The box came out relatively painlessly apart from one of the bolts that holds the starter in sheared off in the block leaving only about 20mm sticking out! :brickwall
I thought, no bother i have these great stud extractors that i linked to above, got them on it and it was turning but 'crunch' and it all went slack.
The bloody stud extractor had broke!
Anyway, the broken one is off for a warranty replacement and i decided to try this one instead, again worth a punt for 20 quid.

Laser Impact stud extractor

The jaws of it self tightens as you use it with an impact wrench, went slowly at first fearing that i might shear it off flush in the block, but it did the trick and removed it!
A few more mins work with a M10*1.25 tap and it was good to go again.
disaster averted :cool:

The report came back from API that the box basically needed a full set of new syncro's but the expensive PPG kit was essentially as good as new.

So i collected the box yesterday and a new Comp clutch stage 2 clutch and my freshly skimmed up flywheel all ready to fit.
Now taking a closer look it seems like the oil separator cover is weeping a bit so that needs taking off and re sealing.

Need to get some loctite then, cant remember what variety is recommended for Subaru engines, anyone have the number to hand?

Bump, thread resurrection.
Hopefully with a bit of luck and a prevailing wind i'm going to try and do the 22b sprint series this year so will hopefully have some more stuff to post about soon.

Also going to be selling off a few older bits and bobs that i have in storage to pay for some new mods that will be coming up as well.

Well i have booked and paid for the first two rounds of the MLR/22B sprint series so its full steam ahead to ready the car for the first round which is on the 31st of march, so here is what i have been up to.

Luck would have it that the normal service interval was pretty much up anyway so its been a full service, including a cam belt!
Its the first one i have done on a scoob and i must say i was very happy when the key turned and it did not self destruct!
Whilst i was under the car all the easy to get to bushes have been lubed up and freed off.
I spent a goof half a day freeing off the inside pots from my AP 4 pots as well, seems as though its always the inside pots that get sticky for some reason?
Anyway all of them are free now and with a new set of PF pads it don't half stop better :thumb:

I had always felt that even though the original seats were very good, but now the car has so much cornering potential i was ending up hanging onto the steering wheel more than i should be to try and stop myself falling out of the seat. So some haggling later with a very nice ebay seller and a pair of these landed in my workshop

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Even better they are made of this and only weigh 6.5kg each :cool:

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Anyway I tried to get hold of some proper bride sub frames but they seem very hard to get hold of and the only ones i could find were for the passenger side, so ended up with an ebay special which is ok but a bit on the heavy side. Only ended up with a 5kg saving over an OEM seat but now at least i am held in properly.

Well its been quite some time since i did an update on here, and my wish to do some sprinting has been fulfilled. Since my last post i have completed four out of the seven rounds of the Bright Green Detailing 22B sprint series run in conjunction with the MLR sprint series. It was lucky that i could make four rounds as that was how many rounds you need to qualify for an overall points total for the year.

First round was Silverstone on the stowe circuit, bar adding the Cobra seat and a four point harness with a bar the car was in the same spec it has been in for quite a while. I was convinced that i would be nowhere in the running as Silverstone would be a power biased circuit but to my delight the stowe circuit turned out to be quite technical really allowing me to bag a 5th in S2 class on my first sprint outing three seconds off the leading pace in my group.
It did however highlight a few things that i really did already know about the handling of the car ie: it rolled too much and kept lifting the rear wheels and spinning away power when trying to exit a corner.
As you can see below, quite a bit of body roll!

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Round two was at Oulton park on the rally circuit and only a couple of weeks after Silverstone so not enough time to get anything major done on the handling side of things but i already had a good idea of what was needed, all the wheels pointing in the right direction for a start! and some thicker ARB's.
A bit of searching of the for sale section found me a whiteline 24mm rear ARB with stout mounts and ally drop links but this was not fitted before Oulton as work got in the way.

The Rally circuit at Outlon park is intentionally very low grip tarmac and even with that warning on board it did not prepare you for the complete lack of grip that happened in the first corner, just under steering towards the tyre wall was the order of the day! There were however some life saving patches of concrete littered around the outside of the circuit which you could dive onto for a bit of grip and allow you to stand on the brakes without locking up.
The upshot of the lack of grip was having to learn to drive the car in a completely different manner and stretching my hand brake cables quite a bit in the process :lol1:

Once i had started to get a feel for the car whilst going sideways the times started to tumble plus as the day progressed the track really rubbered in and gave more grip in places where there was little or none before.

My Best time was a 1.08.14, good for 4th in S2 Class only 2.2 seconds off the class pace of 1.05.86 set by John Felstead. But more importantly, faster than some of the S3 drivers with much tricker machinery too :thumb:

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My fondest memory of Subaru ownership is flying around Oulton Park in the passenger seat of your car :eek: :D
All the best for next season buddy :thumb:

LOL, i remember that, you thought we were going to crash.
So did i at one point:D

Have you sold yours then Abbas?

Yep :cry:

How do you plan on toppling Paul and John next year? T'was a great series and I'm sure it's only going to get more competitive.

Shame to hear you had to sell it.
As far as next year goes i have some plans but i'm waiting on the regs to be released before i dive head long into it. Hopefully if the class structure stays fairly the same then ill be looking to stay in S2 but with a bit more power under the right foot :cool: I don't think ill be catching Paul of John though, not unless i get a few driving lessons first, CJ on the other hand is in my sights :D

The next round was held at Blyton Park, a former airfield in Lincolnshire, which has been turned into a really great and fast little circuit.
There was a break of four weeks in between Outon and Blyton so my plan for a few handling improvements was well underway.
First on the list was ARB’s, the car had a Whiteline rear ARB anyway but was still running on an OEM front, which was a contributing factor to the large amount of body roll during cornering. So both front and rear ARB’s were swapped for thicker Whiteline items, the rears with alloy drop links for a small amount of weight saving and the front with adjustable steel links to remove any pre load from the bar. Eibach camber bolts were also added to each corner to aid adjustment and get the cambers set correctly.
An appointment was then booked with Simon at Cheveron Motorsport up in Stafford to get my Geometry done. I have to say Simon and the lads at Chevron have been ultra helpful, even letting me stay and ‘help’ during the set up process.
I’m sure I am more of a hindrance but I learnt more about suspension in one day there than I have in years before learning on my own, it also seems I was entered along with the rest of the workshop into the all England tea drinking championships, boy those guys can drink some tea!, Phil you make a great cuppa :thumb:
After some time measuring and adjusting settings on the chassis setup bed we managed to dial in a reasonable sprint setting around the limitations of my chassis setup. Well I say ‘we’, Simon did all the thinking and I just did as I was told with a set of 19mm spanners ;)
In the meantime the lads had been working on John Felstead’s car putting a new return to sump catch can on it, and I must say it took a lot of effort not to start on a wind up sending John a few choice photos ;)
So now the car had all the wheels pointing in the right direction it felt quite different, but in a good way. The steering angle needed to turn in had vastly decreased making it feel much better in the corners and it had a nice balance front to rear where as before the rear end used to be very unpredictable.
Race day came and Blyon was by far the fastest circuit we had done yet, even at Silverstone I had not got out of 3rd gear. Along the back straight at Blyton we were well into 4th before monstering the brakes into the 2nd gear chicane.
With the car now feeling so much more planted and responsive and the fact that my brakes really do work well I managed a 4th in class with a 1.04.49 only 1.8 seconds off the class leading pace. That time was set on my third competitive run during which I seemed to fry my lambda sensor. A quick phone call to Bob Rawle had me disabling the wide band fueling in the motec and just running on the base fueling map which is intentionally rich so no better times were set after that.
It’s a shame that happened as confidence was high at that point and I’m sure some more time could have been squeezed out of it and there was only a second to Paulo in 3rd place.
With all that happening to say I was delighted with the result would be an understatement, if anyone had said to me before hand that I would be less than 2 secs of the class lead with my spec I would have told them they were dreaming.
Some nice shots courtesy of Monkey Nuts on the MLR:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...2/_MG_5842.jpg

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Link here to my best lap of Castle Combe, write up to come in a bit.

car looks super flat in those shoots, I'd imagine you were well please with the changes :)

The day at Castle Combe did not start out very well as when I went to change my wheels I found I had forgotten my locking wheelnut key! IDIOT :brickwall
I knew exactly where it was, on the side of my toolbox rather than in the glovebox.:(

Suffice to say I did manage to change from my road wheels to the track ones but I won’t be letting everyone know how.

There were a few changes for Combe first being I had worn out the AP 304mm discs again which meant going for a change in disc size, second being a set of new wheels and tyres.
The last time I had bought a set of these discs I had found out that because they are a very little used application AP basically builds to order with an 8 week lead time and they were bloody expensive.
A few phone calls later Alyn at ASP had sorted me out with a set of Performance friction 330*28mm discs and a custom set of Bells and spacers to fit the CP5200 4 pot caliper for less money than the 304mm discs would have cost , and it was all on my doorstep within a week!:thumb:

Now having a 330mm front disc meant that my 16inch rims would not fit so ebay turned up a set of Bug Sti 17*7.5J rims for reasonable money but boy they are heavy. Once they were shod with my new Dunlop CR311 X12’s those wheels weighed in at 19.5Kg! almost 2.5Kg per corner heavier than the 16 inch rim and R888 combination.

The rest of the day turned out to be much more fun!
After the first practice run I came back shaking..., this was by far and away the fastest track all year, deep into 4th gear in a number of places round the circuit.
After a few practice runs I had pulled myself together and was finding good time especially with some short shifting and riding the meat of the torque curve.:D
It was a close thing all day and it could have ended up very differently if Paulo Spec C’s engine had have held on for another couple of laps, he was gunning to be fastest subaru of the day.

In the end I came away with my first official podium finish of the season (posing as Andy F at Blyton does not count :norty:) just sneaking past CJ by two tenths to claim 3rd place in S2 with a time of 1.42.81 and about 0.9 of a second off 2nd place which was taken by AndyScooby M3 with a time of 1.41.69.
To say i was shocked would be an understatement due to my power level and the time at full throttle round this track.

My first plastic pot! :D
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A few Photos from Castle Combe

Into the chicane
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Looks like im trying hard, only three wheels touching the ground :D
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Appear to be trying out for rallycross :D
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So the new season is not so far away and a few little bits and bobs have been finding there way to my workshop.
First off is a gucci battery, 1.9Kg :eek: replacing the 10kg lump from before.

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Awesome write up there:thumb:


Jura

Thanks Jura, it takes some time doing all this writing, good job im not an editor as i would be rubbish at it!

New wheels with race tyres now fitted, 2.2kg per corner lighter than the previous lot.

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And some of these turned up to thanks to HI JAC

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Where'd you get your battery from?

Battery came from here

http://www.batterypitstop.co.uk/15/1...P27L3-BS12.jpg

When its fully charged it starts the car no problem but it wont last if you keep stop starting. Going to put an anderson connector on the side of it so i can parallel up a normal battery quickly at sprint meets if it decides it has had enough. It was expensive but actually a pretty cost effective way to loose the weight.

Those wheels are awesome,they're 16" or 17" ?


Jura

Found a set in 17*17.5 I have always loved the look of the TE37's :thumb:
Bonus is they don't weigh much either.

I am on a weight reduction mission at the moment as it looks like there are going to be a few higher spec cars in my class in the 22B sprint series this year, plans are also afoot for more power as well but i'm sure that will not be ready in time for the start of the season so getting rid of the excess weight is top priority at the moment whilst still retaining enough interior so i can fulfill the rules and still drive it each day :D

good to see this still going danny

Cheers fella.

Car looks awesome. Well done on your excellent results.

Keep the updates coming please.

STILL going is about right! Post one said it was going to be a slow journey :D

And so the next phase of my car's life begins. Just before Christmas she decided to blow a head gasket pressurising the water jacket and popping the nice new rad i had made. :cry:
The original engine has done exceptionally well in my eyes now being 14 years and 110,000 miles old, it has got two sprint seasons under its belt and has been running more than standard power since about 30K miles.

I have been storing away parts for this eventuality for a good few years and now its full steam ahead to get a new engine built for the car.

I'm going to be doing as much of the work as can but the bulk of it will be done through Chevron Motorsport in Stafford as my work commitments mean that it will never get done if i try and do everything myself. Plus it will probably get done wrong :D

Outline spec will be 2.35L, EJ22T Block, New EJ257 Crank, Arrow Rods and Mahle Pistons. Phase 2 V5/6 Sti heads and a twin scroll turbo conversion.

As someone around here one said go big or go home, granted not as big as some but big enough to produce some pretty impressive figures for a sprint car that's for sure. I will also be attempting to retrofit DCCD to the car to further compliment the handling mods.

Could this be the first scoobynet project to span 15 years? :cool::D