ditchmyster

iTrader: (7)

Well I thought I may as well start a project thread to give me something to do of winters evening and as a way of documenting my progress with my Blob WRX Wagon PPP daily.

I think it's important to start with a mission statement more for myself than anything else, so I don't lose sight of what it is i'm trying to achieve with this car.

I know the PPP has it's doubters because I was one of them, so let's set the record straight, it's never going to set the world on fire but it is a good, cheap, safe way of upping the power on a standard WRX.

When I bought this car about 2yrs ago it was a bit of a impulse buy, because I hated not having a scoob to drive every day and was sick of sinking money into my type r and hardly using it, so in true ditchmyster fashion I did the princely sum of 2000 ish miles in 2yrs, I decided enough was enough and I need the car with me out in Croatia as opposed to it being sat on my drive in the uk and getting used for a couple of weeks every 3/4 months.

The upshot of which is I have now been driving the car for a couple of months on a daily basis and have discovered it's shortcomings when pressing on.

So where to start?

In standard trim the WRX is an understeering sloppy bag of **** that has no business calling itself a performance car, once pushed on country roads it is quite frankly all over the place and way too fast for the way it handles.

In it's normal environment ( the city) it's a very capable car when it comes to the traffic light derby/odd B road blast and punches well above it's weight in terms of quick ish cars, however a
Rover 25 it ain't . and once out on the open road it shows it's weaknesses, handling being the main one.

I don't want to spend a fortune on this car as i'm not overly passionate about it and at the end of the day it's nothing special and wasn't bought for that.

So where to start?

I'm going to try and do this bit by bit as cheaply as possible, some of the stuff i'll be doing is related to general wear and tear due to the 100k miles she's done and other bit's will be because of the areas of weakness that have been exposed by the fantastic driving roads out here and lack of passengers.

Phew long *** post.

Back to the mission statement.

Cheap.

Quick to 100 ish mph

Plenty of mid range grunt.

Pulling hard between 2nd and 4th is a must because after that the speeds start to get silly, i've no interest in top end or racing, it's purely for personal enjoyment in as safe a manner as possible, if breaking the speed limit everywhere can be considered safe, because let's face it that's what owning one of these cars is inevitably about, just a case of choosing your moments wisely.

Handling, which is my main bug bear.

At this moment in time coil overs are out of the question, i'm old ish and don't want to be jerking mi bits about too much, so what's the alternatives?

Brakes are sorted in the form of AP 4 pots up front which were on the car when I bought it, although they will need looking at soon as part of my routine maintenance.

List of "mods" to date.
PPP.
AP4 pots.
18" ultralight G-grid alloys with Falken 452's, more on the tyres later.
Solid Whiteline rear drop links.


I started inadvertently "modding" about 2 months ago when I first came over here in the car.

I had a print out of the current Geo settings that the car came with and after some giggery pokery managed to get a bit closer to the suggested settings I got off here, but it was lacking in the camber department so I came up with some ideas to improve things.

Planned mods.

Rear roll bar bushes.
Front roll bar bushes.
Steering rack bushes.
Camber bolts front and rear.

After a bit of surfing the net I decided to go with AS performance due to the good feedback from respected members on here, all I can say is that I was not disappointed with the service.

So after a PM, phone call and a chat i'm now the proud owner of all the parts above plus a rear crank seal, more about that later.

Right that's enough for now, I'll upload some pics tomorrow and reveal some more of my plans for the car later.

jayallen

iTrader: (31)

Im looking forward to seeing how you take an already awesome Subaru model and fill it with more awesomeness..

ditchmyster

iTrader: (7)

No trolling please and that goes for you too TT, although I will welcome any suggestions that don't involve selling it and buying an STI.

tubbytommy

iTrader: (20)

So you have changed most things on your all conquering wrx ppp....

ditchmyster

iTrader: (7)

And as if by magic TT put's in an appearance.

Which is not something you could be accused of doing.

Mild improvements is the way i'd put it.

She's getting on a bit, just turned 8yrs old and a couple of hundred miles off hitting 100k, so things like bushes are a bit on the tired side, no point in replacing them with OEM parts when uprated after market parts are similar prices, as i'm sure you'll agree.

I have a few more bits to go on which will be revealed later, i'm off out to a rakija festa in the smallest city in the world called Hum, so i'll be in no fit state shortly.

bustaMOVEs

iTrader: (31)

Lol

Cheap fix, get sti dampers (rebuild them, re grease) eibach springs or simlar, drop links all round, rarb 24mm and front 22mm and a good geom.

Get the stock td04 running upto its max around 280-300hp and that should see you with a capable quick spooling car with good handling.

And good tyres and pads of course.

Good luck

Peedee

iTrader: (4)

Sell it and buy and STi.

ditchmyster

iTrader: (7)

Like I said, "cheap" is the order of the day as I don't fancy shelling out too much on this one as I also have the type r to rebuild which i'm currently collecting parts for that so 5/6 hundred quid on roll bars and suspension is out of the question, also one of the things I don't like about the STI is the suspension so I won't be going down that route.

I have another TD 04 sat next to me that's done a lot less miles than the one on the car so that will be going on shortly and the old one will be getting some "special treatment" and be refitted later.

Some other bit's that I have to go on are an AP organic clutch and Exeddy light weight flywheel, i'll be treating myself to a Harvey up pipe and doing a bit of porting on the headers too.

Probably do the cambelt too while the engine is out along with some silicone water hoses.

Anyone got any experience with Toyosport hoses?

ditchmyster

iTrader: (7)

No thanks they're too slow.

bustaMOVEs

iTrader: (31)

The list I gave you is the cheapest option to get it well set up for rd, so if you can't do that, then your going to struggle on the handling front.

Oh and get rid of the 18s, 17s for go....18s for show.

ditchmyster

iTrader: (7)

I'm sure there's more than one way to skin a cat and i've never been one to follow the crowd.

bustaMOVEs

iTrader: (31)

Good luck then fella racing from the lights on a straight road and getting hammered on the twistys by a fiesta st

Kwik

iTrader: (10)

Good luck with it Ditch, loads of pics as well mate as the handling will be next on my agenda also (now the engine's running ).

53

iTrader: (41)

STi ARB's would be better than the WRX ones and cheap

bustaMOVEs

iTrader: (31)

Modded also by drilling another hole to make firmer

ditchmyster

iTrader: (7)

Well I fitted all the bushes this afternoon, steering rack was the trickiest but nothing too major just took a bit longer on one side, as it happens one of the old bushes had gone brittle and was broken into two pieces so it's a good thing I decided to change them.

Went for a quick drive and there is a definite improvement, less body roll and more positive feel with improved turn in, I didn't give it any as the car was cold so just carried a bit of speed into the corners and turned in hard just to get an idea of how it feels and i'm pleased with the result, for the sake of 60 odd quid and a couple of hours it's worth doing.

Camber bolts tomorrow morning and then go for a geo set up for a bit more negative camber.

Oh and I removed the C section cradle that the under tray attaches to as well, lost a bit of weight which can only be a good thing.

53

iTrader: (41)

This diverts the engine away from your bollox in the event of a head on collision But the car drives much better without it Classics don't have one so to the H&S brigade

ditchmyster

iTrader: (7)

Yesterday I did the camber bolts front and rear, had a bit of a head scratching moment with regards which holes to put them in on the front, Alyn @ AS Performance to the rescue

For those that don't know, you retain the standard ones in the top and the aftermarkets go in the bottom holes.

At the rear they go in the top.

Then off I trotted down to the local rubber man to do the alignment, after some reading and a little consideration for my not the best in the world tyres (Falken 452's) and the really treacherous crappy asphalt out here I opted to try and keep the back end a little more stable by having more rear negative camber than front, just shy of 0.5 more on the back which is at -2.21 and a little more rear toe, 0.07 on the front and 0.011 on the rear, again for a little more stability under hard cornering castor is at 3.41, which isn't ideal but will have to do until I get some adjustable top hat jobbies, at which point I will review my current settings.

These settings are a bit of an amalgamation of the stuff i've read on here, I'm not too sure if I maybe have a little too much toe, which can result in excessive tyre wear but I don't do a huge amount of miles so i'm not too worried at the moment, maybe that will change when I get some new stickier rubber for the summer.

I'm currently using Falken 452's as mentioned above which I acquired by way of a swap with someone off here, and much like my previous handling set up they have shown them selves to be a tad wanting out here, i'm not saying they are a bad tyre because they're not, but they are a budget ish tyre which are good for the UK roads and the driving that I do there, but out here on twisty country/mountain roads I could do with a little more grip, so I don't mind sacrificing them to discover the best overall set up for me and the roads out here in Croatia.

So how does it feel now? wooohooo what a difference, compared to how it was before it's like a go cart on rails, it's gone from disconnected wafting along on a wing and a prayer, which to be fair was kinda fun but a bit on the slow/dangerous side on roads that don't have any room for error and coupled with the Istrian tradition of straddling the white line and cutting every corner possible even when they can't see what's coming means understeer and an unruly back end is out of the question.

It's now much flatter in the turns with less roll, the front goes where I point it and the back seems to have soooooo much more grip and is very confidence inspiring, I can feel it biting into the tarmac where before it felt like it was about to let go all the time and did on a couple of occasions, another really noticeable aspect is the way it now handles quick direction changes, it's so much more composed during transition from one side to the other, this is something that I do every time I come home as the road to my house is like a single track hill climb stage with 3 good 'S' bends amongst others.

Anywho that's enough waffle for now, got a full tank of 100 ron and a 100 mile cross country outing so i'll get to do some proper testing.

Fonzey

iTrader: (5)

I've never heard of camber bolts being in the bottom before! Always thought it was the top.

RoyPinhey

This thread is useless wothout pictures

ditchmyster

iTrader: (7)

yeah i'm crap with the not putting up pictures, i'll go look for my lead and load the ones i've taken shortly.

Well just got back from my drive, wasn't the one I mentioned earlier but i did get to have a bit of a play

Some interesting characteristics have been noted, steering feels heavier and gives more feedback and the best bit, totally controllable POWER SLIDES I'm still grinning now, like I said before the asphalt here is shoit, if it's wet from just a few drops of rain it becomes slimy and slippy as all buggery, but it's ok if there has been a lot of rain to wash it clean, at the moment a lot of people are bringing their crops in so there is mud on the road, with it not having rained for a week or so this has turned to dust and made for some interesting driving, space and line of sight permitting, I can just put it into a corner and feel exactly when it's going to break traction apply a bit more gas and grin from ear to ear as it starts sliding but still going exactly where I want it to, i'm going to have to watch this as it's a little addictive already and I only did it about 4 times don't fancy my tyres chances much.

But actually I think i'll have to do something about that, just not yet though.

Just to quantify this sliding mallarkey, before it would just feel like I was going to lose the back end and have a tank slapper or worse spin off into a field, now it's like being a rally driver with pretty much pin point accuracy as to where I want it to go, I used to do it in the type r a tiny bit just for fun but now it's just part of the fast cornering experience, it's that controllable.

This is getting interesting.

bustaMOVEs

iTrader: (31)

At the front of subarus, come standard with a camber bolt, so if you want a bit more instead of using adjustable top hat then leave the stock camber bolt at top and use other one at bottom.
Rears go at the top.