Tarp 818r

[Mulry]

Since we've just finished shelling out the donor, we figured it was time to start a build thread. So this is the TARP Racing 818R build thread.

By way of background, we've been racing in the 24 Hours of Lemons for a few years. I started my first Lemons build in September 2008 (an '86 MR2) and we did our first race at MSR-Houston in February 2009. I've done 25+ races since then and have built or participated in building several cars for that series. There are three of us (so far) working on this build. The car and all the parts and tools reside at my house in Dallas. Ben is the really tall guy you'll see in some of these photos, and Roland is the second member working on this one, and then there's me.

We bought the 818R that went on special during the 20 Days of Christmas in June Special or whatever FFR was calling it, so we got a new black powdercoated chassis and the original #5 bodywork:

44536

The chassis and body were delivered in early July, but between work and prepping the Lemons car for the overnight race in Joliet (which did not go well -- we had a lot of problems and finished next-to-DFL after a very long tow), we didn't start working on the donor until 2 weeks ago. Our donor is a 175k mile 02 WRX with the EJ20 motor:

44537

Thanks to our experience with the Lemons builds, we've gotten pretty quick at stripping a car down, so we had the WRX shelled out in 2 full workdays. Here's the traditional "no engine, Ma" photo. That's Ben doing the engine bay honors with Roland on the left:

44538

Our plan is to run essentially stock internals and turbo on a mild tune. We will run a dry sump and are working on spec'ing that part out now. We are shooting for ST-3 for NASA racing. Our goal is to have the car on the track by spring 2016. Cheers.

[Frank818]

Another nice build!

I bet Chad would have something to say about the dry sump on the R. :) We'll see when it gets there.

[Mulry]

Thanks Frank. We've been lurking Chad's thread for quite awhile now, and now that we're actually laying hands on the chassis and body itself, I've started going back through it from the start to pick up some tips. One thing that I've noticed is that it looks like FFR has made minor changes to the chassis between the early versions and the one that we received. Our main goal is to just get the car running and reliable (and not blowing up). We've learned over the years in Lemons that race cars will devour every dollar that they even think that you have sitting around, so our secondary goal is to try to keep scope creep in check as we do the build, using parts off the shelf and fabricating as we go.

That said, we know all too well that the road to hell is paved with good intentions...

[Tamra]

I'm looking forward to watching this build! Sounds like you're bringing some great experience to the table.

[C.Plavan]

Welcome to the money pit fray! :)

I'm tired of my own R, so I want to see others. PM me any questions you have.

[Mitch Wright]

I am just inching up on my first start of my R and the will be on the ground soon (once I finish my rear AP Brake caliper mounts). Looking forward to watching your build and you will find a great resource here from those that have been there and done it, have fun.

[Pearldrummer7]

+1 on what everyone else said. Welcome to the forums and I'm excited to see a fellow R builder, especially one bringing it to the track. That body is badass, too. Best of luck with the build and feel free to ask any questions you have!

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[longislandwrx]

good luck guys. hit me up as well if you hit any snags.

[Mulry]

Thanks for the welcome, guys. A couple quick observations, and then I'll document something that we certainly didn't find in the FSM:

1. We're very excited about this project, but I can't imagine tackling it as a first-timer who had never built (or largely built and rebuilt) at least a couple cars before. The 818 manual is somewhat lacking in detail and that would be really tough for many first-timers to figure out intuitively. For example, I laughed out loud at the single photo & instruction that said, essentially, "remove all mechanical, hydraulic, and electrical connections, then remove engine." It's certainly true, but woe to the builder who is dropping his first engine with that paucity of instructions. Unfortunately, we've dropped the engine on the MR2 so many times that this part was like old home week for us.

2. Having spent a lot of time in the Toyota BGB ("Big Green Book," the MR2 factory service manual), I'm also surprised at the relative lack of completeness of the Subaru FSM. for example, the procedure I'm going to discuss below was not at all described in the transmission-removal section of the FSM, yet it is impossible to remove the trans without implementing this step.

3. It is very nice to be back in the land of JIS fasteners. I have drawers full of JIS fasteners off the MR2's that we've shelled out for spares over the years, and then we went and started racing a BMW. Whereas you pretty much need nothing other than a set of 10, 12, 14, and 17mm wrenches & sockets to do about 90% of the work on a Subaru or Toyota, the BMW requires every size from 8mm to 19, plus other stuff that I never knew existed (like e-torx bits).

Ok, now for some knowledge. The rest of you probably know this already, but maybe this will help somebody else along the way when they search the forum on how to remove a manual transmission for a donor engine:

Once you have the engine/transmission combo dropped out of the car, remove the clutch slave cylinder from the top of the transmission. You should see the activating arm of the clutch fork sticking out of the top of the transmission housing through a rubber bellows. Due to the way that the clutch fork is trapped (by design) betwween the clutch release bearing and the pressure plate, it acts to prevent the transmission from being separated from the engine. You thus must first remove the clutch fork before you can separate the engine from the transmission.

In order to do so, you must use a slide hammer to poll out a long captive pin/bushing that internally secures the clutch fork to the body of transmission housing. There is a cover on the driver's side of the bell housing that needs to be removed to provide access to the end of the bushing that you need to remove:

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Then you need a long M6 bolt or threaded rod. We used a double-ended stud that was in one of our hardware bins, I think it was originally a MR2 valve cover fastener, but any longer M6 bolt or threaded rod would work. One end of your M6 fastener threads into the end of the clutch fork pin/bushing while the other end emerges from the transmission housing.

Next you need to develop an attachment to a slide hammer so you can pull the long pin/bushing out with your slide hammer. If you don't have a slide hammer, it's off to Harbor Freight Racing Supply! Once you fabricate a way to attach the M6 fastener to the slide hammer - it's not daunting to fabricate this, and making tools to do things is a pretty satisfying secondary product of working on race cars anyway - then you just operate the slide hammer and the pin/bushing comes right out. Then remove the bolts securing the transmission to the block and it will separate easily. If it does not separate easily, you probably missed a fastener (I've done that more than once myself, this is also true when removing a head from a block).

This photo shows attachment to the slide hammer as the pin was emerging from the transmission housing:

44591

Just to explain that attachment method a bit, we took a piece of flat steel and into it drilled 3 holes. The center hole is where the M6 fastener is bolted to the flat plate. The other 2 holes are where Ben used eye bolts to connect the flat plate to an attachment that threads to the end of the slide hammer. How you fabricate your attachment method obviously depends on your slide hammer & the accessories you have for it. There are many ways to skin this cat (as is true with so much of racing fabrication), but this is how we did it.

Cheers.

[STiPWRD]

Welcome to the forum! I noticed you had the 02 donor like me, in the 02 FSM it does mention to remove the clutch release fork shaft (in the transmission section). Here's an excerpt:
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The first time I changed my clutch I too was wiggling my trans for a while before I figured out this trick. Also, a slide hammer isn't necessary - I just screwed in a 20-30mm M6 bolt and used a flat-head screw driver to pry on the head of the bolt and pull out the shaft. But your method works too.

[Mulry]

Welcome to the forum! I noticed you had the 02 donor like me, in the 02 FSM it does mention to remove the clutch release fork shaft (in the transmission section). Here's an excerpt:
44594
The first time I changed my clutch I too was wiggling my trans for a while before I figured out this trick. Also, a slide hammer isn't necessary - I just screwed in a 20-30mm M6 bolt and used a flat-head screw driver to pry on the head of the bolt and pull out the shaft. But your method works too.

Duh. I guess we don't know how to work the FSM :) LOL.

[Mulry]

We're working on front suspension install/setup today. We are starting with the stock R red Koni's and stock R springs (300F/500R). The R-supplemental manual seems indicates that the front shocks at full extension are 15.15" long and that rear shocks should be 2.5" longer at full extension. It appears that we received 4x front shocks. Can someone confirm that the rear shocks should be longer before complain to FFR about needing the correct rear shocks? Thx.

[DodgyTim]

we have 2 R kits locally, all 8 shocks are 385mm (15.15") eye to eye
Looking forward to watching your build:)

[longislandwrx]

agreed, all my shocks were the same... unless there was an update.

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[C.Plavan]

All shocks were the same for me. For a great starting point, increase the rebound 50% on all the shocks, and purchase New springs (2.5" x 8") 375 front, 600 rear springs. Stock was way to boat like, and you rub tires like crazy on the front at the lower height. I'm probably going to go even a little stiffer. Springs are cheap- Eibach.

[Mulry]

Thanks for the info on the shocks guys.

Chad, what's really amusing about that is that I have a set of ERS springs at 400 and 600 sitting on the shelf that I didn't use on a different project. So I guess I'll drop those in here :) I'm wondering if we'll need to modify the front fenders to get as much tire under there as I think we'll want. I'd like to run a 200TW tire on the car for endurance racing to keep from getting bumped up a class (or two) and also to reduce pit stop times for tire changes. At least that's the plan for now. Given the relatively low weight of this car, I'm thinking about the RivalS, although who knows what tire we'll want on the car by the time it's really ready for that stage.

[Mulry]

I'll update our progress last weekend, although I don't think that I took any valuable photos. We got most of the front suspension on the car, but are waiting for the delivery of new wheel bearings before we install the spindles. The ones on our donor are in pretty rough condition, so we'll press in new ones before we install that. One of the front upper ball joints went in really smoothly, the other one required the use of Archimedes' leverage via a jack handle to overcome the tight tolerance, but both of those are on now. Lowers are modified and attached, and we're waiting on the springs/shocks until we are ready to put the spindles on there too.

We spent a good part of Saturday de-powering the power steering rack per the Spec Miata guide on Flyin' Miata's website, it was awfully accurate even given some slight differences between Miata and Impreza P/S racks. We painted the master cylinder side of the aluminum front firewall and installed that, and then installed the master cylinder. Minor peeve -- why would you ask the builder to drill out the pedal cluster using the aluminum panels and brace on the car when the holes are in large part obstructed by the rest of the structure? Hmm.

We also started modifying the stock transmission to delete the center diff, but the rest of that will have to wait until the engine and transmission are mounted and CV's and wheels installed so that we can twist that nut off the back of the transmission shaft without the entire transmission spinning. There are a lot of yellow sticky notes sticking out the side of the FFR manual for things that we've skipped or have to wait upon until we finish other jobs. That's something that would have been nice to know during the engine removal process in the manual -- we would've done it before we separated the trans from the engine if we'd been instructed that way. Hashtag "manualpeeve" for the kids, I guess.

So, steering is hooked up other than the tie rod ends. I'm working on planning out where everything will fit ahead of the front firewall. We will likely relocate the battery from that battery tray and put the oil tank up front (to keep it out of the engine toaster area), and I'd like to fit the ABS control unit up there too (we've learned that ABS is a GREAT way to extend tire life in racing conditions). We'd like to put a small 5-gal fuel cell up there too for passenger-ride purposes, the main fuel cell for endurance racing will go in the passenger seat well but we'd like to remove that for ride-alongs. Will probably plumb the coolant pipe system before I get much further on designing components for up there. I guess that FFR runs the coolant lines & etc around the outside of the tub due to the placement of the stock fuel tank, but I'm hoping to run a bunch of stuff up the tunnel. That's how the MR2 does it and it seems like that's a really good method for protecting coolant lines (for example) from side impact, since we're not running the stock fuel tank.

I'm going to have to fire up the parts-ordering part of this operation pretty soon. We'll need seat(s) to figure out some of the interior stuff, the dry sump setup for all that business, a limited slip for the transmission and a new clutch plate, just off the top of my head. I guess I can do that when I'm back home tomorrow, and then I'm out of town again for the next 5 or 7 days. That dry sump purchase is going to hurt.

My thought right now is to mainly go with the ARE dry sump setup with a 3 gallon (9" diameter) oil tank and the 3-stage oil pump, including the pressure side. I just don't like the idea of using a scavenge pump and then a separate oil pump, just one more part to break/troubleshoot. But I'd love to hear opinions about why I should give more credence to the Element Tuning setup. This is probably the single most expensive component on the car other than the kit itself. Cheers guys.

[Mulry]

Was out of town last weekend, so no progress to report, but a question to ask.

Has anybody tried using the Speedway Motors tie rod adapter for the Pinto front suspension for the bumpsteer correction on the 818R? They are 7 degrees, which should match the angle of the spindle casting, and at $20 they are very affordable. I used them on the rear of the MR2 to make some dirt-track type rear links and they worked great in that use.

[Mitch Wright]

I bought the Bear kit (I think) from Summit. For the R ride height you ditch the tie rod adaptor buy a 5/8 grade bolt, drill the steering arm for the bolt, use the tie rod adaptor, rod ends and shims to fine tune your bump steer. ( the R supplement will give you the bolt length 5" if I remember correctly and spacer I think it is 2 3/4)

[C.Plavan]

Just a guide for the Baer setup. http://thefactoryfiveforum.com/showthread.php?14526-818R-Baer-Bumpsteer-Install-Guide&highlight=bump+steer

[Mulry]

Thanks Chad. I had seen that awhile back but until this reading it didn't dawn on me that the Baer part discussed was the outer tie rod arm & heim. I think we'll follow post 7 on that thread and DIY some outer tie rod arms on the drill press and save the $$ for the Baer parts. I'm pretty sure that I've got some leftover NIB 5/8-18 heims in a suspension parts bin.

[Mulry]

After a weekend off, we got back to work on the 818R over Labor Day weekend. We didn't receive all the parts that we'd ordered, so we got stopped short on a few things.

One thing that did come in was the tub of new Red Line CV grease, so Ben completed assembly of the new halfshafts. Ben also pressed out the hubs and all the bearings, so those are ready for replacement once the parts arrive. Most of them were in pretty good shape, but not all, and with what we are going to do to this car, bearing replacement is just a solid plan. I really like the way that Subaru did their wheel bearings vs. the way that Toyota does theirs.

We got most of the old wheel studs out for replacement with the ARP extended bullet-nose wheel studs. I find it really amusing that the best replacement are the ones originally spec'd for a Lancer EVO. The new wheel studs arrived, but we decided to not install those until we are done with pressing in the new wheel bearings, seals, etc.

I stripped the engine down to the bare block to see what we are dealing with. We knew that it was a filthy pig, but I wanted to get a look at the internals a bit. I didn't pull the heads or disassemble the block, just stripped it down. I got VERY concerned when I saw the screen on the oil pickup, there were many large flakes on it, but then it turned out that they all were just RTV that flaked off the pretty-sloppy seal job that someone did when they pulled the oil pan sometime in this engine's prior history. I know that someone was in here before not only because of that, but also because there were supposed to be 6 bolts holding on the windage tray and there were only 5 bolts in place. I wonder if this engine was rebuilt at some point -- why else would one have the windage tray off? Hmm.

After stripping the engine down, I got to work with soap, water, WD-40, lots of blue shop towels, and a toothbrush to clean off the block and heads. I don't like using the power sprayer on engines that I'm not tearing down fully, I don't like the chances that I soak down the rings with pressurized water, so I do it by hand instead. The engine's not perfectly clean, but it's a lot cleaner than it was before. I'll spare you the nasty photos.

We spent a lot of time on TGV removal. What a pain in the butt. We chewed through about a set and a half of the cheap Harbor Freight rasps trying to finish grinding out the remnants and still aren't done. Guess I'll buy a carbide rasp to finish the job. Top tip: using beeswax on the cutter definitly prevents clogging with aluminum swarf. But we can't pass on the free HP gain that we'll get with the TGV removal, and the DIY work is cheaper than buying a set of aftermarket intakes.

We also got the harness weeded of circuits that we don't need for this project. I think that we reduced the weight of the harness by about half just in removing the gobs of factory electrical tape.

We spent a lot of time trying to think through cooling and dry sump issues. I picked up a used 4 gallon oil tank off eBay and we know where that's going to go (near the radiator to keep it out of the engine heat), and we're also going to run an oil/water heat exchanger up there, but we are waiting to get all the parts to start figuring out how they will all fit, along with the ABS control unit (yes, we're keeping ABS).

We also decided to flip the intake so that the throttle body points to the rear of the car to make it easier to route to the A2A intercooler(s) that we're going to locate somewhere in the side duct cooling path -- we'll duct that whole thing to keep it isolated from engine heat. I think we'll start with just 1 A2A intercooler and then if that's insufficient we'll work out how to make it work with two, which will be a little tricky since the turbo's off to the passenger side of the engine already.

Next weekend, we should be able to at least start on installing the LSD into the transmission case. We'll modify on the fly as needed so that we can plumb in a transmission oil cooler. I have a spare cooler from a prior car, so we'll need to add a pump (I'm thinking Tilton 40-527; anybody have a different idea?) and the fittings to make that work. Cheers.

[Mulry]

More progress this weekend. We finally got the TGV removal finished, turns out that the crappy die grinder rasps at HF are really crappy. We bought some carbide rasps from Amazon and those made quick work of cleaning out the TGV's and now we're prepping the exterior for paint. Don't use these when doing the TGV removal:

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Handy tip is to use beeswax on the carbide bit to prevent aluminum from clogging the bits. Ben had some leftover from another project (mixed with mineral spirits to form a liquid) and that worked great. That's what's in the jar in that photo.

Spent a lot of time the last couple weeks figuring out parts for the dry sump system and ordering those. Quite a few came from eBay. Good used parts are a bargain hunter's dream, so long as they work right. Got a great 4 gallon dry sump and a 3-stage pump for way less than retail. Also snagged a former DP car oil/water heat exchanger and are going to try to use that for our oil cooling needs. I have a Setrab air/oil heat exchanger on the shelf if the oil/water one proves insufficient.

We got most of the new hub bearings and seals installed, but the rear inner's were wrong from RockAuto, so we're waiting on those. We hung the front suspension, except for the Baer arms, on which we're still waiting. Upgraded the front springs to 400# and the rears to 600# thanks to Plavan's suggestion and set the Koni's to 75% on rebound before installing (thanks Chad!). Here's a tip for my fellow builders: put a zip tie on your shock rods before you put the springs on the shocks. It will serve as an easy trackside way to see the maximum that your shock is retracting. I like to use the orange zip ties for this since they are easy to see at a glance:

45426

Because we have some good racing radiators sitting around and don't particularly want to invest more $$ in that part of the operation -- and certainly aren't going to use the plastic end-tank stock radiator for a race car -- we modified the front radiator mounting tabs. Well, we just removed them entirely, then are going to fabricate and weld on some new ones so that we can use a universal Ford/Mopar radiator. It's easy and cheap to find those and to get them repaired near tracks everywhere in the US. Plus I had a spare sitting in the shed from the prior race car project. Putting a big American radiator on the MR2 got rid of its cooling woes, so hopefully that will hold true for the 818 as well. I'll post photos when we've fabricated the new part so that the outlet doesn't interfere with the steering rack.

I ordered the parts to assemble the rear lower control arms. Apparently the swaged steel rear lower arms are an option now instead of coming standard? At least Speedway Motors is just a website away. Cheers.

[Mulry]

Finally got the rear suspension finished up this weekend, which was shorter than usual due to kid's events. Those rear spindles are a huge PITA to get drilled out, even with the drill press. After building a fixture to gain more control over the axes of movement, got those done and fitted, and then the rest of the rear suspension on the car. Also added the new steering wheel and adapter.

Spent a lot of time working on packaging ahead of the front firewall. We're going to put our oil tank for the dry sump up there to keep it out of the engine room heat, plus the Spintric, oil/water cooler, oil diverter/filter/bypass, oil breather tank, coolant overflow tank, and ABS control module. Still need to do some adapting of our oil tank for the Spintric diverter fitting and need to clock an input on the oil/water cooler so that it will work better with our radiator.

Someday I will start having fewer things to do, but it seems like this project is definitely at the stage where everytime I finish something, I add 3 or 4 more things to the to-do list. But I guess that's what keeps it fun too. Cheers.

[Mitch Wright]

Yup I can relate to that, finish one 10 minute job (3-6 hours) cross it off the list but you think of 3 other things you want to change or do.
Thought I would get my firewall cut out along with reinstalling rear uprights and interior kick panels, I guess 2 out of 3 is not bad.
4605846059

[Hindsight]

I can relate too, only the problem I have is that I tend to buy things, install them, then realize after more research, "Oh no, that's all wrong" and have to buy a bunch of other things to re-do it.

[Mulry]

This is why I need to buy more clecos. I hate drilling out rivets, putting them back in, and then drilling them out again. Especially on closed tubes, where the drilled-out backside of the pop rivet gets to rattle around for the rest of eternity.

[Mulry]

Work continued last weekend. Fitted the brake rotors and calipers (re-using stock for now), re-attached the wheel speed sensors for ABS, and dropped the chassis from jackstands onto its wheels (on wheel dollies). It's funny how much more it looks like a race car just being off the stands and having its roller wheels on it -- despite the fact that it seems like most race cars spend most of their lives on jack stands. At least that's the case in my garage...

Ben worked on fabricating a radiator mount system for the larger radiator that we're installing and got that about 90% complete, with the goal being that we can remove and insert a replacement by removing only two bolts. We also started templating the ducting system for the lower part of the radiator too. After that we'll work on building a stronger front bumper to protect the radiator and the front of the car in the event of light contact. We don't anticipate that, but you really do have to anticipate it in wheel-to-wheel racing.

We received the rest of the parts for the firewall-forward section, so I worked some more on the exact locations for all those components, then started fabricating a subframe/bracket to which the lower components (oil tank, ABS pump, Spintric) will attach. Need to start drilling holes in that subframe and then adding on weld nuts for the attachment of those components.

I found a 5-stage (4 suction, 1 pressure) Weaver Bros dry sump oil pump on eBay in great condition and sent that in to have it modified to a 3-stage (2 suction, 1 pressure) pump. Once we get that back, then we can fabricate the mount for it and order the mandrels and drive pulleys as necessary and start getting the engine back together.

Picked up some sheet aluminum (for the flat rear firewall) and .090 sheet steel for a thicker driver protection shield on the outside of the cage on the driver's side. Will need to break out the plasma to cut that to size, fortunately we can use the stock aluminum as a template.

Not having any luck finding an OBX diff for the transmission. Don't want to pony up the 4 figures for a Cusco. Hmm.

[Hindsight]

I put a Quaife in mine and in a friend's. They have come down in price. Saw the Race Line advertise one here for like $750 the other day.

[Tamra]

I just googled and found an OBX diff listed here (http://www.sparktecmotorsports.com/obx-1064.html?utm_source=googlepepla&utm_medium=adwords&id=91571116997&gclid=CjwKEAjw-vewBRDH1-b52Lig1hkSJACTPfVFKm4h73iE6qbffmoPV_z5mCF3UfMVGQHh jkTqbLozUhoC4Uvw_wcB) for an 02-06 WRX. Did you try these guys?

Don't forget to buy the upgraded washer kit for it, here (http://rbryant.freeshell.org/obx_washers.htm)

We've been happy with ours.

At $750 for a Quaife though, I'd be tempted.

[Mulry]

I just googled and found an OBX diff listed here (http://www.sparktecmotorsports.com/obx-1064.html?utm_source=googlepepla&utm_medium=adwords&id=91571116997&gclid=CjwKEAjw-vewBRDH1-b52Lig1hkSJACTPfVFKm4h73iE6qbffmoPV_z5mCF3UfMVGQHh jkTqbLozUhoC4Uvw_wcB) for an 02-06 WRX. Did you try these guys?

Don't forget to buy the upgraded washer kit for it, here (http://rbryant.freeshell.org/obx_washers.htm)

We've been happy with ours.

At $750 for a Quaife though, I'd be tempted.

I just emailed them to see if they actually have them in stock or not. My experience so far has been that the tuners who say that they have them in stock really don't, they usually just drop ship from a distributor. So they'll take the order and process the credit card, and then not fulfill the order and then refund the money. This has happened to me numerous times with stuff like this (including a prior OBX order on this car). So we'll see if those guys are on the up and up with this or not.

I've already ordered and received the washer kit, assuming that the first vendor who said they had an OBX actually did. They didn't. Will go Quaife if I can't find an OBX soon. I want to get that transmission done and attached to the motor (already have the clutch stuff on hand and ready to install).

Can't wait to have this car running. Gotta think about a seat for it soon. Am really curious about the Momo Daytona or Daytona Evo, but I saw an OMP one the other day that I liked too. Definitely want a HANS-compatible seat with the head surrounds on this open-cockpit car.

[Hindsight]

I have the Momo Start seat which is their lowest end seat. It is very light and smaller than most racing seats in width. I'm only 150lbs so it fits me perfect. If your waist is 34 or above, it may be too snug unless the Daytona runs wider.

[Mulry]

Sorry. Meant the Daytona XL or the Evo XL. Haven't seen a waist 34 since I was in high school. Probably middle school to be honest.

[Mulry]

Grr...
"unfortunately part is on back order at the moment with no ETA from OBX"

[Mulry]

I put a Quaife in mine and in a friend's. They have come down in price. Saw the Race Line advertise one here for like $750 the other day.

BTW, thanks for the tip. Just got in on the last day of sale for that one at that price, shipped. For those playing at home, it's a QDH3Y.

Just realized that I hadn't posted the stuff about our lubrication system yet, so I'll add that into this post. We are running a full dry sump oil pump with 2 scavenge sections and one pressure section. We thought about going the Element Tuning route, but we like the ability to control the oil pressure that you get with a full pump, whereas you're stuck with whatever comes off the factory oil pump that way. We bought a used Weaver Bros pump off eBay and then sent it to Stock Car Products to have it gone through and revised from a 5-stage to a 3-stage. They did a great job, super fast turn around, and doing it this way got us basically a fully custom pump for less $$ than if we'd bought one new.

We are going to place our oil tank at the front of the car, for a couple reasons. First, it gets the oil tank out of the radiant heat of the engine compartment, which should help nominally with oil temps. Second, the packaging up there is easier than in the crowded engine compartment. Thirdly, we have more room for coolers up front should we need them, and we know that the airflow is good on the nose of the car, whereas it's pretty sketchy on any of the rear inlets. Here's how that all is going to look (for now):

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On the bottom layer, we have the Spintric (closest to the front firewall), which then feeds into the oil tank, which sits in the middle of that rectangle on that frame. To the left is the ABS pump. Here's what it looks like when the oil tank is in place:

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That's the oil tank in the middle. It's a Butler Built 4+ gallon oil tank removed from stock car service with a large Racor Oberg tatletale oil filter on top. The oil comes out of the Spintric to one side of the Oberg and the air side of the Spintric goes to the other side. Oil feed comes out near the bottom of the slanted side of the oil tank and then up to the remote filter/cooler bypass that's mounted high on the firewall and is partially obscured by the clamps in that photo.

The yellow clamp is holding the oil/water heat exchanger. After the oil circulates through there, then it's back through the remote filter and back to the dry sump pump and into the engine. I really like the Peterson Remote Mount Oil Filters with primer pump but I can't see how I'd work that into the system at this point. I still might incorporate a spare Accusump into the build just for pre-start oil priming.

[Mulry]

So we've had a couple of slower weekends due to family commitments, but we were back at it hammer and tongs this weekend.

It's funny how in a build sometimes you run into those frustrating impediments, and then when you clear them out, the build flows fast again. We'd come up against a few of those. One was that the PO of the donor had snapped off a valve cover bolt in the head when he was replacing a leaky valve cover gasket awhile back. He'd RTV'd the cover in place, but I wanted to fix it. The bolt was sheared below the level of the bolt hole, so it was a pain to grind a flat on the busted bolt shank. But we finally got that done, got the shank out (see below) and then helicoiled that hole for a new bolt. We didn't really want to do any more work on re-assembly of the engine, because if we couldn't get it done in the shop then we were going to need to do a complete disassembly of the motor and take the head to a machine shop. Since we got it out, then we were able to get reassembly of the motor mostly completed and ready to build up the new fuel rail and lines:

4746447465

We need to get to work on a plate mount for the dry sump oil pump, it will live on the upper-right side of that motor. I think we're going to design it in CAD and print a 3D model in ABS for fitment testing first, then we'll send it out to emachineshop.com or something for final production. The dry sump pump will be driven off a mandrel that attaches to the front of that damper pulley.

We also finally got the LSD install finished (thanks again for Hindsight's guide to that). We struggled a bit with the shims and circle clip at the back during re-assembly, but once we had 4 hands working on it at the same time, it finished off quickly.

We secured our seat (a Momo Daytona XL) last week, so we started building the frame mount for it that will weld to the chassis. Mostly got that worked out but are waiting on delivery of some M8 weld nuts from McMaster to complete that design and fabrication. I'll take photos of that when it's done but the goal was to make it possible to do all the seat install from above so that we don't have to take off the flat floor once it's installed.

I pulled out the plasma cutter and used it for the first time in awhile. Used the stock thin aluminum driver's side panel as a drawing template, then cut out a steel intrusion panel from some plate steel that I got a few weeks back. It's not lightweight, but I'll feel a lot better knowing that our drivers are less likely to get impaled if we were to be t-boned on track. Here it's just being held on by a few cleco's but eventually we will stitch weld it to the frame, for now we want it removable to make it easier to do work inside the car:

47466

We're going to put more substantial front (and rear) bumpers on the car, so we fabricated and welded on these simple plates. We will eventually run some 1.5" (probably) tube forward from these and from the lower corner (under the rack) to form a better push bumper at the front of the car. The stock nose assembly is fine for autocross, and I don't want my drivers pushing anything with the nose of the car, but racing incidents do happen and I don't want our nose pulled off the car because somebody else did something stupid (my drivers would never do something stupid, right? LOL). These are the plates (in grey primer):

47467

We'll do something similar at the rear of the car but we want to get some of the other packaging in there first before we commit to a solution there. Probably something like Bob did on his car.

Since I had the plasma cutter out, I also cut down some sheet aluminum for our rear firewall. We can do a one-piece rear since we will run a fuel cell in the passenger seat area for the races. I'd never used the plasma cutter on aluminum before, man that's weird. Hardly any sparks and it throws melted aluminum spatter all over the place. But it is always fun to use that tiny light saber on stuff. That's visible here along with the seat and the new steering wheel, the cowl and dash are just there for show, they're not installed yet:

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I've figured out about 90% of the line routing and fittings for the lubrication system, not looking forward to placing that order but we'll get that done soon. We have a Lemons race next weekend and then there may be a substantial honey-do list for the following weekend, and then the weekend after that's Thanksgiving, so it may be a few weeks before anything else substantial is done to the car.

Question for those playing at home: What solution are you guys coming up with for filling the brake and clutch reservoirs, other than making the cowl (and dash?) removable? I typically like to change out the brake and clutch fluids on a 6-month basis on the race cars and that's going to be a pain with this cowl covering those up.

[Mitch Wright]

I have the Wilwood pedal assy I am using a Tilton reservoir that will be mounted to the front of the cowl.
Mike Everson I think makes a remote reservoir set up for the OE master's.

[Mulry]

I have the Wilwood pedal assy I am using a Tilton reservoir that will be mounted to the front of the cowl.
Mike Everson I think make a remote reservoir for the OE master's.

Good tip. Thanks!

[dallas_]

I enjoyed seeing your car today. Really like the direction you are taking it. Looking forward to seeing your progress and the finished product.

John

[Mulry]

Thanks John. It's definitely on delay right now while we build/rebuild the Lemons car following its crash in November, but I suspect that I'll start working on doing the head gaskets on the Scoob motor any evening now. Because if you can have one race car project in process, why not two simultaneously?

Nice Cobra too. Caroline liked it a lot.

[nkw8181]

Man things are looking great!

[Mulry]

Well it's been more than 2 months since my last post, so I should update.

There's been no progress since the last post. We got the Lemons car built just in time for the first race this year, at Barber Motorsports Park the first weekend of February. The car had a few teething pains -- oil leak at the VANOS that was solved with bolt tightening and some well-placed RTV, and the motor is TIRED but stopped burning oil after we switched to 20w50 conventional -- but it ran all weekend. The motor is so tired that we weren't really competitive (22nd out of 80+ cars) but the car handled predictably and was a blast to drive (other than the ABS going out, gotta fix that). And Barber is a track that is always a joy to drive.

I had promised my bride that I would complete a couple furniture projects last fall until the other Lemons car got wrecked, so that got delayed until after the last race. So now I'm on furniture duty until those are done; it surely will be at least another month until I can start work on the 818 again. It just sits there in the garage, taunting me. :)

[nkw8181]

At that rate I'll come to meet you driving the 818 :-)

[Mulry]

Ouch. But true.

[Mulry]

Work has resumed on our 818R. I'm working on building the dining room table for my bride, but Ben removed the heads from the engine, installed new MLS head gaskets, and re-installed the heads with ARP hardware (no thanks to rallysportdirect.com, which sent us the wrong ARP stud kit and then wouldn't take it back in exchange for the right one -- won't shop there again). We are awaiting some parts to finish the job -- new cam seals, new timing belt -- and then the long block will at least be together.

Next step really is to get our oil pump modeled in software so we can fabricate a good mount for it. And we need to figure out how to get the go pedal mounted right, I really can't believe that such a simple operation should be such a fustercluck in the factory instructions.

[dallas_]

Work has resumed on our 818R.

Good news!

[FFRSpec72]

I'm sure you are aware as looking at your dash pictures, your windscreen mount is going to have to come way forward towards the cockpit to get the windscreen in proper position

[nkw8181]

The go pedal bracket is pretty weak. I tried it then made a stiffer replacement. Just FYI it likes to flex

[shoeish]

http://thefactoryfiveforum.com/showthread.php?19383-Wyoming-818R-Build-Thread&p=218209&viewfull=1#post218209

If you add one more rivet like I did it stiffens the whole mess up a ton.

[Mitch Wright]

I tack welded the pedal assembly to the FFR mount at the top which made it rock solid.

[Mulry]

Tack welding or additional rivet makes sense -- but the thing that I can't get over is the position of the entire thing. The pedal arm has such limited movement before it hits the clutch throwout arm. Is that really enough room for it to fully open the throttle plate?

[Mitch Wright]

I am using the Wilwood Pedals so didn't have that issue.

[STiPWRD]

Tack welding or additional rivet makes sense -- but the thing that I can't get over is the position of the entire thing. The pedal arm has such limited movement before it hits the clutch throwout arm. Is that really enough room for it to fully open the throttle plate?
My gas pedal also hits the top of the pedal assembly - I measured TPS response and I'm only getting up to 80%. I'll be modifying the mounting to get that extra bit of clearance.

[Mulry]

My gas pedal also hits the top of the pedal assembly - I measured TPS response and I'm only getting up to 80%. I'll be modifying the mounting to get that extra bit of clearance.

I would love to see what you come up with. It seems like the only practical modification, given the length of the gas pedal lever, would be to cut the flange and re-weld it lower on the lever arm so that it clears the throwout arm.

[STiPWRD]

I was going to try copying JJ's approach:
http://thefactoryfiveforum.com/showthread.php?16780-JJ-s-818s-Build&p=186146&viewfull=1#post186146

[Mulry]

That's a good catch. We will try that too. Thanks!

[nkw8181]

Mine didn't have an issue but it is dbw

[Mulry]

Managed to get back into the garage yesterday and worked on the 818 some more. I decided that either the 818 was going to get a gas pedal or it was going to burn to the ground, but since it's mostly just a steel cage at this point and I don't have a really large forge, it was going to have to get the gas pedal.

Thanks for the ideas linked above, they kind of broke me out of a mindset of "it should work this way" and more into a "modify this BS until it works" mindset. I just can't get over the fact that the FFR manual is so badly wrong so many times in so many places; moreover, that the custom parts that they send are so badly wrong so many times. I really need to adopt the mindset that their methods and parts are sort of just tangible suggestions than gospel truth. That's easier to remember when you're working on it more than once every six months, but hopefully that long delay won't occur again. Or if it does, somebody else is rebuilding the Lemons car next time.

So, I tackled the accelerator pedal and throttle cable install. The 818 being a clean-sheet design, there is no good reason that this job took the better part of 5 hours for someone who is a pretty experienced (if not skilled) fabricator and installer. I guess I probably did turn and watch the Indy car race at Long Beach on and off during that time, but still, it took way longer than it should have. Here's what I learned:

1. Prepare to install and remove the frunk firewall aluminum several times to achieve proper fitment of the pedal mount plate and the cable.
2. The plasma cutter and/or cutting wheel and the flap wheel sander are friends to treasure to complete this operation.

Ok, this ranting isn't going to help anybody (although I feel better, thanks Internet for letting me vent), so let me see if I can summarize the work for the benefit of future generations of frustrated 818 builders.

In order to fit the area allowed and provide really sufficient throw to fully open the throttle plate, the throttle pedal support plate needs to sit flush against the inside of the firewall. There is an ear on the upper left side of the plate that needs to be excised so that it will clear a square tube that is part of the chassis. This photo shows the ear that needs to be cut off and then after cutting that ear off, the throttle support plate will look like this:

52936

So now the throttle support plate will fit the intended area flush with the firewall (and sandwiched at the top between firewall and the chassis square tube), but the throttle pedal assembly (from the donor car) still will not. Please bear in mind that I am using a throttle cable-actuated throttle from an 02 STi; I've heard rumors that this isn't a problem for all gas pedals, but it was a problem for me. YMMV, etc.

My throttle pedal was both too tall and too wide in a couple places to fit the intended area. This is what the throttle pedal assembly looked like before surgery.

52937

Note that there is a fair amount of support material behind and above the throttle pedal lever arm where the throttle cable will connect to the throttle pedal arm. I suspect that this was there to attach to the STi chassis, but it's not necessary in the 818, as it doesn't attach to anything and is just in the way. So out came the cutting wheel and flap sander, and then the top of the throttle pedal was cut flush and sanded/deburred:

52938

The throttle pedal assembly worked vertically with that modification, but it was interfering with square tube to the left and the clutch pedal support bracket to the right. I kind of eyeballed where the material needed to come out and marked it with the sharpie:

52939

And then cut and sanded some more. After cutting, it looked like this and fit like a glove:

52940

I then test-bolted everything to make sure that it would fit for final assembly. At this point, I thought I could just run the throttle cable, but it is basically impossible to bolt the throttle cable to the firewall with the throttle pedal assembly bolted in place because the nut for the inside of the throttle cable attachment goes between the throttle pedal support plate and the firewall. Out came the pedal, and then it became clear that the throttle cable attachment would be a lot easier to handle with it out of the car. So I removed that entire panel (again) and attached the throttle cable to the firewall. Firewall panel back into the car (with clecos to hold it in place, bolted in the support plate (with just the M6 bolt at bottom to locate it), sandwiching the plate between the firewall panel and the square tube at top. Then I reinstalled the pedal itself.

Of course, when I went to snap in the throttle cable end to the pedal, the plastic clip broke. Apparently this is a common problem and there is a .stl file out there for printing a replacement on the 3D printer, so I've asked for that file from its creator and will implement that fix. I don't see it really being a big problem, as the cable can pull loose only when it's not connected to the throttle body on the other end.

Next for the car: reassembly of the timing gear/belt and then the clutch and transmission. Guess I'm going to have to figure out the fuel line routing here one of these days, although I might wait until we've mounted the engine in the car to make sure I've got it all right.

[Mulry]

We've spent the last couple weekends scrapping our old Lemons MR2 shell because we wanted to pull some parts from that for this build, including the accusump (for pre-start oiling), an oil cooler, the fuel cell, and some other random stuff. We finished that up last Sunday and got to the 818 yesterday.

We got the engine all back together and timed but are waiting to pull it from the engine stand until we complete work on the top-of-engine items, like the oil pump mount and fuel line routing. I foresee setting and removing the engine from the chassis several times before this project is complete, but I'd like to be wrong about that. Fortunately, compared with the MR2, getting an engine in/out of the 818 chassis looks like it will be a breeze. Then again, getting an engine in/out of nearly any car has to be easier than it was on the MR2.

We've decided for now to utilize the stock fuel rails since we're not going for big HP for the initial run with this engine and chassis. But we're not going to deal with that rats next of hardlines, so we're modifying the stock fuel rails slightly. Since we will run an external FPR, the first thing to do was to cut up the stock one and weld on a fitting so that we could use the stock FPR exit without the FPR. We had a -8AN weld on bung in the AN box of parts. We cut the stock FPR off its flange and re-used that so that we could utilize the stock o-ring fitting:

54027

We cut down some of the hardlines. I bought a WWII-era Parker tube beading tool last winter in anticipation of needing to do this with some hardlines and it paid off, as it worked great to re-bead the cut hardlines. We will use PTFE-lined hose and the stock Subaru clamps on the fuel system at the fuel rails and then AN fittings at the FPR and fuel pump, etc.

Ben got a lot of work done on prototyping the oil pump mount. We are going to use a 3-stage Weaver Bros. oil pump that I bought off eBay last fall and had rebuilt (it was a 5-stage). It has 2 scavenge stages and one pressure stage, which should be sufficient. 3 stages is all that will fit in the area above and to the driver's left of the alternator, and we're going to build a bracket off the stock alt bracket for mounting the oil pump. Ben modeled the oil pump in Inventor (I think) and is going to prototype a mount for it, then we'll 3D print that for fitment purposes, and then we'll figure out how to fabricate it in 3/8" aluminum when we get fitment figured out. The nice thing about it is that it will put the pressure adjustment screw on the pump in an easy-to-access location; that's the sort of thing you really only have to adjust once, but you don't want it hidden if possible. Should also provide us with some good line routing around the hot things we want to not get too hot. Then once we have the mount figured out we will know our center-to-center spacing from the oil pump to the crank pulley and can figure out ordering those mandrels, pulleys, and the toothed belt to drive the oil pump.

Also pulled apart the fuel cell and gave that an inspection. The fuel cell foam appears to be in good condition but I didn't go digging around in it. The gas that was in the cell was, of course, completely degraded, so we have about 7 gallons of watery gas (or gassy water?) to figure out how to dispose of. The fuel cell can was a little rusty from sitting around out in the elements for the last 20 months or so, so we got to work on stripping the paint and surface rust and getting it primed and re-painted just to keep it clean. Once re-painted we will start working on fuel cell fitment in the passenger seat area. It's a 22 gallon cell, which isn't all that large, but given the ST3/E0 regulations on fueling, we probably really have a ton of excess capacity. Given the success we've had with it on our Lemons car, we'll probably put a Hydramat in this before hooking the whole thing up.

Most importantly, I got a bunch of work done on Rachel's dining room table while Ben was getting 818 stuff done. If mama aint happy...

[dallas_]

Good to see some progress being made.

[Mulry]

BTW, this is what a sawzall'd MR2 chassis looks like before the scrap guys haul it off the curb. We had it out on the curb for bulky trash last weekend about 5:30pm on Saturday and it was gone by 8:00 that evening. Pretty amazing that it disappeared so quickly with scrap metal prices so low:

54028

[Mulry]

Work progresses but slowly as the continuing and unending rainstorms in the DFW area hobble my ability to finish the dining room table for my wife, which hobbles my ability to work on the car.

That said, we completed modeling and mockup of v1.0 of the dry sump pump mounts. Ben modeled our 3-stage dry sump oil pump (2 scavenge, one pressure) in Autocad Inventor (I think?) and then printed out the stages on his 3D printer. I did a little cleanup on the parts and a test assembly, and then we mocked it up on the engine. As far as I can tell, we are the first ones to do this with an oil pump doing both scavenge and pressure. It seems more common for builders to do a scavenge-only pump and let the stock oil pump do the pressure side, but we wanted to be able to control the pressure externally via the pump, so we're building a bespoke mounting system. Here's what the 3D printed stages look like prior to assembly (that's the dining room table in progress underneath the pump stages):

54933

And then here's what they look like when assembled. The 2 scavenge stages are at the front of the pump and the pressure stage is at the rear. The long stub on the front represents the pump shaft:

5493454935

We are planning to mount the pump to the engine using the A/C side of the bracket that also holds the alternator. We made up a multi-hole test bracket in plastic to work on positioning. We want to tighten up the fit closer to the bracket, so we'll have v1.1 ready to work on for next weekend.

54936

Once we get the fit where we really like it then we'll have it made up in aluminum that we can either bolt together or weld, and then the pump will mount to that. Then we can calculate the belt length that we need. Having the pump mockup in place will also assist us in determining what, if any, modifications will need to be made to the firewall to clearance the oil drive setup. It's made easier for us since we aren't running the stock fuel tank but will have a fuel cell in the passenger seat area.

We also did some work on that front. Having pulled the cell from the MR2, we decided to strip the old mounting cage, remove some bracketry that won't be needed for this application, and then we need to modify it slightly to fit.

[Mulry]

Saturday was really hot in the garage, but I guess we'd better get used to it. Seemed hotter than last summer for some reason.

Anyway, we finally got the engine off the stand and test-fit into the chassis. Installed the clutch assembly and transmission, then did the remaining work on the transmission conversion since that's easier to do with the transmission connected to the wheels preventing the transmission from spinning to do that last nut on the back end of the trans. Got everything bolted and sealed up and the CV's mostly done. We may need to slide the engine slightly back to ensure enough clearance between the oil pump mandrel on the crank and the frame, but we'll know that better next week. Need to figure out where we really want to put the fuel pump and start doing fuel line routing next week when we test fit the fuel cell. Then it will be time to crack open the wallet and get a ton of fittings and line. Too bad I don't have a good volume discount for any of that stuff :)

Am thinking that we will go AWIC on the intercooler. So there's something else to investigate...

[Mulry]

Holy cow, didn't realize it's been almost a year since the last update - but then I guess that's not a big surprise. That said, I'll keep this pretty brief.

Most of the last year has been taken up with working on and rebuilding our Lemons car after the prior iteration got totaled in November, 2015. We swapped engines, fixed a bunch of stuff, etc. After the most recent race, we sent the car up to OKC for the summer because I've found that if the Lemons car is within sight and there's stuff to do to get it ready for the next race (and there's always stuff to do to get it ready for the next race), then the 818 doesn't get worked on. And I really want to finish this car.

The last couple weekends were spent unburying the car, re-organizing the parts (and ordering more), and figuring out design and layout for all the fuel, engine cooling, AWIC cooling, and brake lines. For sprint-type races, we decided to install just a 5-gallon ATL RaCell ahead of the front firewall (also to keep the passenger area clear so we can install a seat there for ride-alongs at DE's, etc), so we're routing fuel there and back. So, I've been in bracket-fabrication mode last weekend and this past weekend.

After fabricating and tack-welding in some of the frunk-area brackets, I was finally able to start fabricating the fuel and AWIC hardlines. That was surprisingly fun. Only forgot one time to put the tube nut on before flaring the line.

Next up will be to fabricate some brackets to hold the hardlines, then test-fit the engine (again) and figure out the exact location that I want for the bulkhead fittings for fuel and AWIC. Also need to finish the wire diet and re-loom for the electrical harness so that we can fit all that in at the same time. Also need to clock the turbo per Mechie's kit.

[Mulry]

Ben and I got a fair bit done this weekend, although we remain at that stage where you get a lot done and it still doesn't always look like you got a lot done. We finalized fabrication and initial assembly on about 90% of the components for the frunk, including welding of all the steel brackets and fabrication of the u-brackets to hold in the 5 gallon fuel cell for sprint races. We await delivery of our 3D printed brackets for the pre-pump fuel filter and fuel pump and then we can start working on building out the hoses for all the connections. NASA regulations requires that any fuel cell be contained within its own metal can, so we're working on a sheet metal design for the Racell, as I haven't found that anybody makes one. After we get the hoses fitted then we'll work on bending and location for the hydraulic hardlines for brakes and clutch

We've been bothered for a long time by the main hoop terminating in an uncapped square tube, as that would be the obvious failure point in a rollover situation, so we fabricated and welded in a cap for that location. It's still a weld in shear, so it's not ideal, but we could always plate the triangle formed by the rear backstay if it continues to bug us. This patch was substantially aided by one of our most common design tools: Cardboard Aided Design:
69420

Also in metal fabrication world, we fabricated a clutch dead pedal. It seems very odd that these cars don't come with one. We once again recycled some powder coated steel dividers that came with an old software media cabinet that we've repurposed into hardware drawers. Another one of those dividers also serves as a clutch dead pedal on the Lemons car.

BTW, adding the air compressor to a dedicated A/C circuit has been a boon to fabrication. Just being able to use the angled die grinder in places to remove powdercoating prior to welding has been worth it, although it makes the garage sound like the office of a deranged dentist when we're really running it. Getting the plasma cutter working at 100% has sped things up a lot too. Just watch out for the slag...

The stock turbo is getting re-used for the initial build and racing, so we clocked the TD04 so that it has better location for use with our AWIC. Nobody tells you what a pain it really is to get that circlip out of the compressor housing, but we found that teamwork makes a big difference. Also, if you're thinking about that job, we'd recommend getting the ratcheting spring clip tool, it would have made out life a lot easier. That clip is very large and takes a lot of pressure to move. Once we have the replacement turbo oil drain gasket, that will be ready to re-install final to the engine, which also got new Radium fuel rails this weekend. We will deadend the fuel system so that we're not circulating hot fuel back into the fuel cell. That provides 2 benefits, but the biggest one is that it makes the fuel pump far less likely to cavitate. We found out at Sebring a couple summers ago that very high ambient temps can contribute to fuel pressure failure that way. It was not a fun way to drive a race because we had to cycle the fuel pump before every turn to keep the pressure up.

The dry sump plate was final-installed, although I'm thinking I might go back and stud the block instead. I'm not thrilled with how several of the bolts are catching and it will be a lot easier to service if all of the fasteners are identical.

We decided to install the battery in the passenger footwell. We just ran out of space low in the frunk area and this was easier to mount.

We also did a lot of work arranging the wiring harness. That thing is a mess, but we at least have everything located where we think it's going to need to be. Next step on that front is to decide how to handle power management for all the other circuits we need to add for racing and how many we can repurpose out of the stock fuse panels. We test-mounted the engine for wire running purposes and also installed the rear brake soft line tabs, but wanted to wait on the front ones until we have a better idea where we'll terminate the hardlines. It seems somewhat weird that the 818 manual doesn't have a hard specification for the location of those items -- but I guess that's a situation we came to grips with long ago. Once we had the electrics run and the engine in, we were able to start locating some stuff on the rear firewall, including initial installation of the fuel pressure regulator.

My hope is that we will get the rest of the fluid routing stuff done next weekend, depending on how many days I get in the garage over the July 4 weekend. I'd love to at least get the rear brake hardlines run and the modifications to the stainless cooling hardlines. It's really nice to be mounting stuff to the car rather than just building brackets. And there are so many to build.

[AZPete]

I'm learning from your build thread. For example, CAD=cardboard aided design! :)

[Mulry]

LOL. I can't take credit for that. We are actually doing a fair amount of CAD via OnShape for our 3D printed components. But there is a lot of cardboard template building for 2D stuff too.

[dallas_]

Glad to see you're back on it.

[Mulry]

The list of stuff that got done on July 4 and this weekend was pretty substantial, fortunately. Unfortunately, I didn't take a lot of pictures.

Other than building the can for the 5 gal Racell in the frunk, pretty much everything up there is located and we primed and painted all the structure gloss white to make it easier to identify any leaks. On our next work weekend, we will need to re-install everything and then start building and connecting the lines (AWIC, fuel, coolant, brake, clutch).

We finished the buildout of the rear firewall and most of the pass-through locations. We rivnutted the chassis for when we're ready to permanently affix the rear firewall and tested all those. The only holes left to cut are for the electrical passthrough(s) and probably some rivnuts to add to locate ECU, etc. Will add some heat control to the reverse of the firewall before we do final install. Actually took a photo of the bulkhead:

70110

We did a lot of work on the gas pedal. We weren't happy with the way that it was mounting to the front firewall and flexing around, nor with the way that the top was banging into the clutch pedal extension arm across the top of the pedal cluster. Ben did a ton of fabrication and welding work on this -- basically all morning on Saturday -- and took a bunch of pictures, so I'll document that separately. We will probably need to revise the pedal itself before it goes final, but it's planar with the brake pedal and clears the extension arm now, so we shouldn't have any problems with pulling the throttle butterfly to 100% WOT now.

Ben also did a lot of fabrication work yesterday to build a single mount for the radiator and the AWIC heat exchanger in the nose part. We are using a universal Ford/Chrysler aluminum racing radiator because they're practically universal and cheap (and I have 2 in the shed from prior builds), so that got mostly completed and just needs to be bolted in. Then we'll work on the venting/ducting so that they are getting plenty of airflow and then duct that out of the hood cleanly to try to reduce hood lifting like we've seen in so many 818 dashcam videos.

We finished up buildout of the stock turbo (clocked it with Mechie's kit) and got that installed back onto the motor. We did a mostly-final install of the dry sump plate (just need 2 more longer bolts for next to the oil galley input) and test fit the Canton oil takeoff at the stock filter location, the lines for which will likely just get looped since we are sending oil to the filter via the external oil pump. While we were test fitting the engine in the chassis, we revised the 3D printed prototype oil pump mounts. We'll re-print for final fitment before we send the final design out for machine shop fabrication:

70111

Also finally finished up building out the engine side of the valve cover and crankcase vent lines so we can route those to the oil tank (and then to the catch can) when we do final engine and oil system installation. Also did some conceptualizing about location for the oil and transmission oil coolers, we will likely mount those above the transmission and duct them from the sides and out the rear of the rear valence. Not ideal in terms of getting high pressure airflow, but the alternative is to mount them in the front fenders and we don't really want to run the oil lines that long unless it becomes absolutely necessary. But that is an option if we can't get oil and trans oil temps in a happy range on track.

We designed and 3D printed some little bolt-on mounts for the fuel and AWIC hardlines that are running down the middle of the car and then welded in some tab brackets with rivnuts for them to attach to. Since FFR sent us a chassis with the center console caging, we figured we'd put it to work.

Finally, the toughest part (psychologically) was that we cut out the x-braces on the floor of the driver and passenger area. It always sucks to take a built part of the chassis and excise it with the sawzall, but the seats simply were not going to sit low enough to pass the broomstick test without getting the mounts lower. Thanks to prior projects, we have a stack of .125 plate steel sitting around, so I got to spend some quality time with the plasma cutter and cut a bunch of plates that we will weld to the bottom of the chassis into which we can place the new seat mounts. I mean, if we're going to add weight to the car, at least it's steel plating right under our butts, so we're actually aiding in lowering the car's CG and polar moment, right?

[RetroRacing]

Don't feel bad about cutting out the braces, been there, done that! now you can drop the seat right to the floor using some custom brackets and a side mount seat.

[Mulry]

Yeah, if this doesn't get it low enough, I guess we have to get a different seat. Maybe this Momo just sits up too high on the base? I know we wouldn't have that problem with a Kirkey.

[Hindsight]

Which momo seats do you have? I have the Start seats. I felt they sat really low with the momo seat brackets... I mean, the rear bottom of the seats were sitting on the the same plane as the top of the X-brace. Removing the X-brace would only get me 1" lower. But with the "S" roll-bar, I still didn't pass the broomstick test with a helmet so I went another route and cut out the roll bar and put a new one in that is higher.

[Mulry]

It's a Momo Daytona (I think). It was pretty low to the floor above the x-brace, but we wouldn't pass, so I wanted to try to get it mounted as low as possible before throwing in the towel on this chair and buying a Kirkey. Due to the cage structure of the R, it would be a LOT of work to cut out this hoop and install another one. Lots of cutting, grinding, and re-designing, all with the added bonus of possibly compromising the existing setup. I'd rather cut the x-braces and plate the bottom (also, more security if there's a rough off-roading incident) and then change the seats than cut the cage.

[RetroRacing]

We took a set of side mount brackets and re-drilled them to countersink the seat so that the rear of the seat touches the aluminum floor. You can install sliders if you mount them even higher up the side, but the anti sub belts become an issue.

[Mulry]

Just getting around to documenting what we did last weekend -- which was a lot -- due to an extremely busy week this past week. Plus updating the build thread on Saturday morning lets me enjoy another cup of coffee before plunging into the furnace-like garage :)

Ben and I had largely stripped the chassis down to just suspension and steering so that we could do some frunk-structure welding and painting the weekend before, so Roland and I began on Friday afternoon with re-installing all the stuff we'd taken off the car, including the hardlines for transport of fuel and AWIC coolant down the middle of the car. We 3D printed some brackets that bolt to welded structure up the middle of the car, and Roland also brought with him some 3D printed fuel pump brackets that we used to mount the fuel pump and pre-pump filter to a plate that mounts to the chassis:

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Although you can't see it in the above photo, we have a 5 gallon RaCell that mounts on the "battery mount plate" on the frunk floor that will be the fuel can for sprint races and when we have a passenger seat in the car. So fuel comes out that cell, through the prefilter-pump assembly, than into the bulkhead fitting and down the center of the car to the filter and ultimately to the fuel pressure regulator that we mounted on the backside of the rear firewall (photo later). We are going to try to run a deadhead returnless system (to reduce heating the fuel in the fuel cell), so the excess fuel runs back through a return hardline and into the top of the RaCell. When we mount the big fuel cell in the passenger seat area for endurance racing, we will reconfigure the soft lines so that the bulkhead fitting marked "feed" will feed the pre-pump filter and the one marked "return" will actually be the feed to the fuel pressure regulator. All this so we don't have to mount the fuel pump in the passenger area or in the hot engine bay. We had problems with hot fuel cavitation at the fuel pump at a race at Sebring a couple summers ago and don't want to repeat that experience.

Having cut out the x-braces on the bottom of the passenger area of the cabin last weekend (to attempt to get the seat lower), the big job for last weekend was to weld in new steel plates to form the floor for the seating area. Fortunately, we had some 1/8" steel plate on hand from a prior project (taco gussets for the roll cage on the Lemons car), so the weekend previous I'd used the plasma cutter to cut those down to size. We took the engine back out of the car and that made it really easy to lift with the engine hoist in order to not have to be laying under the car while welding, which is a sure way to get some nasty hot slag on you while welding. Here's what the welding setup looked like:

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Once we sanded off the powdercoating at the weld locations, Ben got to work on welding in the plates, while Roland worked on building the AN fluid lines for the Accusump, the AWIC coolant delivery, and for the fuel system:

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That's Roland on the left, Ben on the right. Here's what the bottom looked like after Ben had tacked in all the plates on the bottom and finish welded the top 2 (and maybe the middle one?) with a quick coat of self-etching primer:

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After getting the top set of plates final welded, we dropped the driver's side back onto jackstands and repeated on the other side for the passenger side plates:

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We finally put a couple coats of black gloss over the primer and the other primed spots on the bottom of the chassis, but I didn't get a photo of it, so you'll just have to use your imagination.

Roland really did a great job building all the AN soft lines, but I didn't get many photos of his work. This one shows a lot of different things though, so I'll go through it:

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In the middle-bottom, you can see the stainless AWIC and aluminum fuel hardlines, which are fastened to the chassis via the red 3D printed brackets, which are bolted to welded points on the chassis. Those use tube nuts on the frunk end to connect to the bulkhead fittings and on the rear end to connect to the stainless braided soft lines and then to the rear firewall. As you can see, we fabricated a custom firewall instead of using the 2-part firewall from the factory, as we knew from the start that we would never be using the factory fuel can. To the left side of the photo are the fuel feed and return lines (Earl's Ultra Pro AN-6 for the PTFE liners to deal with ethanol in pump gas). The more central lines are AN-12 stainless braided lines and fittings from Summit (house brand, standard rubber liner) for AWIC coolant handling. We mounted the Accusump low and close to the rear and that's another Summit hose and -10 fittings that go into a T-fitting at the bulkhead, which has a check valve on one end and then the other end will feed right into the oil feed location on the dry sump plate. We intend to use the Accusump primarily for oil galley priming at startup, and as an insurance policy, but hopefully with the dry sump setup it will go unused during on-track operations. The fuel bulkheads then feed into the Aeromotive fuel pressure regulator mounted on the back side of the firewall:

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The short lines are more of the Earl's UltraPro -6 lines, and we put some firewrap on them just to try to minimize the heat soak. From there, the fuel lines will go to a Y-fitting distribution block and onto the Radium fuel rails. We're running the stock EJ205 injectors for now, given our relatively modest HP needs for the class we intend to run.

While we had the chassis in the air, we decided to work on figuring out the under-nose condition. Jeff at RetroRacing had documented that there's a nasty vertical displacement between the nose structure and the front of the chassis, and we determined that to be about a 3" vertical gap with no intended filler from the factory. We decided to build some structure on the bottom of the nose frame and use the factory nose panel below, bridging the gap with a custom piece cut from some other aluminum panels we won't need (probably from the driver's side aluminum that goes behind the door -- we're using a steel anti-intrusion panel there instead). So, Ben did a little fabrication and welding and this is what the bottom of the nose looks like now:

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Savvy readers will note that we are not using the stock radiator but are instead using a larger and more affordable dirt track radiator. We have a couple of these in reserve but since the dirt track guys use them on their sprint cars, they are numerous and cheap in the market -- but require some custom fabrication for mounting in this chassis. We've also mounted the AWIC front heat exchanger there, as we don't trust it in a rear-mount location for endurance races, the opportunity to heat soak back there is just too great, especially as it would be right above our intended location for the center-rear exhaust.

We test fitted the Momo Daytona seat on the new floor, and Roland passes the broomstick test, but just barely, and only at a very steep rake of the seat. I think we are going to try a Kirkey 45700 17" 18-degree layback full containment seat and see if that works better. It seems that the distance between butt-bottom and seat-bottom on the Momo is just too high for our comfort. Also, that Momo is kind of narrow for more well-built drivers. I'd love to hear what seats you guys are using that are known to fit with some decent clearance under the broomstick-test line.

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That photo also shows the wiring harness starting to take shape. Ben spent most of Sunday working on further dieting the harness and getting it into position. We will wind up adding a bunch of wires to the loom for sensors for our AiM dash and RaceCapture, but that will come later.

There was a bunch of other stuff that got taken care of too but that I didn't document with photos, including almost completely finishing up the exterior build of the engine (equal length exhaust header install, etc), doing a final install of the gas pedal and bracket, modifying and fitting the driver-side anti-intrusion panel, re-fitting the engine after dropping the car back onto all 4 jackstands, building the hoses and locating the side coolant lines (BTW, life is a lot easier for custom coolant line work if you pick up a vintage Parker beading tool off eBay), and some other stuff that I didn't even take note of.

Overall, it was an enormously productive weekend. Now, I'll head out and start working on modeling, bending, flaring, and installing the brake and clutch hardlines to the chassis. Hopefully I can get that done this weekend, but realistically, I'll probably get it started and have to finish it next weekend. Cheers!

[fastzrex]

Thanks for the big write up. But almost all your attachments are not viewable!

[Mulry]

Thanks for the big write up. But almost all your attachments are not viewable!

Sorry about that. The forum timed out when I was writing the post and I thought it had kept the uploaded images; turns out it hadn't. I think I've got them all in there now.

[Bob_n_Cincy]

Sorry about that. The forum timed out when I was writing the post and I thought it had kept the uploaded images; turns out it hadn't. I think I've got them all in there now.

Mulry,
Personally, I can't handle long post like this. I forget half my question before I get to the bottom. (old age maybe) I would much rather see one subject per post. Just my personal opinion.

I like the additional structure for the front splitter.

I also went with a different radiator. http://thefactoryfiveforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=58792&d=1474354730

https://www.summitracing.com/parts/GRI-1-25201-X

Keep up the good work.
Bob

[DanielsDM]

We test fitted the Momo Daytona seat on the new floor, and Roland passes the broomstick test, but just barely, and only at a very steep rake of the seat. I think we are going to try a Kirkey 45700 17" 18-degree layback full containment seat and see if that works better. It seems that the distance between butt-bottom and seat-bottom on the Momo is just too high for our comfort. Also, that Momo is kind of narrow for more well-built drivers. I'd love to hear what seats you guys are using that are known to fit with some decent clearance under the broomstick-test line.

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We are using an Ultrashield seat, 10 degree layback, 17" wide. We tilted it back to 20 degrees or so (this gives more support for bottom of the leg than a 20 degree seat, since your knees will be raised anyway due to the lack of leg room. Floor X's removed, plates welded in flush to the bottom of the frame. Also each driver will get their own poured foam insert so the wide body drivers can still fit and others won't be bouncing around.

[RetroRacing]

Odd, we have a similar seat to the momo, and with the seat touching the floor pan, we have a few inches at 5'9".

[Mulry]

If I WAY recline the MOMO, we can get enough clearance. But it looks pretty damned uncomfortable.

For a clean sheet chassis design, I just don't get why there are so many issues...

[Mulry]

Update from the past couple of weekends. Sorry, no photos.

We were able to finally complete the custom buildout of the coolant lines from the radiator to the motor and back again. It should've been easy, and it wasn't brain surgery, but it did use a lot of silicone bends. We really didn't like the way that the FFR-suggested connections and corrugated pipe worked.

We pulled the steering column and put it in the press to reduce the overall length by 2". We may need to see if we can get more than that after we install the removable steering wheel collar, but this is better for now.

We installed the lightweight flywheel, clutch and pressure plate, transmission, clutch slave, starter, and transmission mount. Still have a couple things to do on the bottom of the motor to finish off everything down there but we wanted to get the transmission in its final position so we could start working on:

The additional work on the rear bumper, wing mount, and body stays. Based on the experience of others, we're reinforcing some chassis locations and then we're going to put in a more substantial rear tube bumper from end-to-end on the back of the car to prevent a punt from getting into the suspension. Should also protect the oil tank and other rear accessory items.

Finally got the accelerator cable installed to the pedal. What a total PITA that was. Once that was ready to go, we did final install on the frunk firewall aluminum and the clutch master cylinder. Nice to have that done -- also would have been nice if the manual advised that some of the inner fender panels go inside the frame. We'll need to strip out all the accessories we've installed down there just to make room for a drillmotor so we can drill holes for rivets to hold those panels. Argh. Also installed some remote battery terminals in the frunk with wires to the battery (located in the passenger footwell) to make it easier to put the charger (or jumper cables) on the battery in the future.

We have most of the brake hardlines run. That's been interesting to learn how to do. Only 2 of those yet to run are from the ABS pump to the rear wheels, and then the clutch hardline. Will need to build a stainless braided line to connect to the clutch slave cylinder but I want to have all of the accessories on the front of the engine -- alt, oil pump, and the oil pump drive mandrel -- fabricated and in place before we decide on how to locate the clutch slave line.

We're revising the radiator mount to get it slightly lower to the ground. Our original mount was higher to make sure we didn't get it below the floor, but since we lowered the floor at the nose to get it flat all the way back to the frunk frame, we have a couple inches below the nose frame to play with. Should provide for better airflow into the radiator and the AWIC heat exchanger and more clearance for the hood to close without any interference with the radiator cap.

We've been test fitting body panels on/off a lot, and that's neat to see. There's still a ton of work to do -- like installing (fabricating and installing?) the exhaust, and getting the seat to work in the way we want to work, but we will soon be flirting with go-kart stage. Except that we have to design and fabricate a ton of the electrical system. More work will get done this coming weekend. Cheers.

[Mulry]

Very brief update because I'm excited: FINALLY finished doing all the brake and clutch hardlines. What a PITA. But so glad that I bought the Eastwood brake flare tool.

[dallas_]

Nice to hear about your progress.
I need to drop by again one of these days to see it in person.

[grathke]

I started reading the build, nice going. Learning a lot as I go thru the posts. I may have missed it, I'm wondering how you wired it. Stock harness? I'm interested in your experience in this area.

Thanks
Glenn

[Mulry]

I started reading the build, nice going. Learning a lot as I go thru the posts. I may have missed it, I'm wondering how you wired it. Stock harness? I'm interested in your experience in this area.

Thanks
Glenn

We're still working on the electrical system, it will probably be about the last major system to be completed. We are starting with the stock harness. We've weeded it to some extent but will likely remove more wire from it after we get the engine running -- it's a lot easier to start pulling circuits at that point and re-connect them as necessary as we're running the stock ECU.

[Mulry]

Nice to hear about your progress.
I need to drop by again one of these days to see it in person.

Back gate is open, I'll be out there until around 5:00 this afternoon if you're out and about and want to swing by. No rush, no worries if it doesn't work out or the SLC is calling you :)

[Mulry]

Progress continued this weekend. First up was to finish up the rear wing structure. After fitting the silver swedged arms, we decided that we still weren't happy with the stability, so we added another location point and the gold arms (which I had in a bin from another project back when we were racing the MR2). This triangulates the front of each of the wing vertical mounts, so it should not move. We found that we may be flexing the bar that they connect to on the chassis, so we need to think about if/how we want to add some additional structure to that to prevent it from flexing once the wing is under load:

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I was messing around with fuel system stuff a fair amount last week and determined that we needed to revise the fuel pump mount from the CF one that we'd worked out. The goal is to make the fuel pump setup easily replaceable in the event of an in-race failure by simply removing the feed lines and then the entire pump and pre-filter setup and drop in a new one. The prior CF plate worked fine in the front of the car (with the 5-gallon cell), but it needed to be revised to fit behind (and slightly below) the large endurance fuel cell. Because the CF is so hard on blades, we cut a new one out of scrap aluminum (I think this piece was the original "floor" panel for the chassis, which is now steel-floored) and put that together, with cut outs at the front corners to accommodate the mounting points for the fuel cell in the passenger floor. This one should work in both locations now, as seen with this photo test-fitting the endurance fuel cell:

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Ben did some hacksaw revision to the turbo coolant header tank, taking off the lower prong that interfered, then welded in some tabs for mounting the tank. We need to revise the fitting to the coolant return tube along the top of the motor and then this piece of the build should be complete.

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We also built a throttle cable bracket to the front of the intake manifold and got the throttle cable mounted, but we think we probably want to design/fabricate/install an adjustable throttle pedal stop on the floor to prevent stretching the cable while in use. We did a couple other things that I don't have photos for, including figuring out how to use the FFR-provided cables for the shift linkage. They are WAY to long for the MR2-based shift lever but it looks like we will be able to make it work with some creative cable routing.

Finally, we finished up welding the new floor of the car, then worked on installing the 17" Kirkey Series 45 full containment seat (which is the widest that seems like it will fit in the car -- the driver's side shoulter restraint is _just_ inside the roll cage. FINALLY we have a seat that will allow all of us to pass the broomstick test without having to modify the roll cage. We've decided that our best bet is to use this seat without the seat cover and instead create seat inserts for each of the drivers for the car, which ultimately should be more comfortable and safer. We also finally concluded that we could use a chassis that's about 4" longer in the middle section -- everybody feels like this is a go-kart because their knees are so high. So this will cause some challenges with locating the shifter and the switchgear for the driver, although we are going to move most (if not all) of the critical buttons to the steering wheel area. Am really glad that we didn't get a bigger steering wheel, it wouldn't work at all. I was worried that we would need to compress the steering wheel further, but I think the wheel-driver distance is pretty good -- it's the pedal cluster that's really the problem in terms of driver leg position, but there's nothing we can do about that short of a total pedal cluster redesign...

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I need to stop thinking of new problems to solve.

This car had better be fast because I don't think it's going to be super comfortable to drive.

[longislandwrx]

This car had better be fast because I don't think it's going to be super comfortable to drive.

it doesn't look super comfortable to weld either :cool:

[DanielsDM]

We went through the same process regarding the seat. Ended up with a 17" Ultrashield seat, each driver will have their own insert. Mine will need 1-2 inches of foam at the bottom so I can see over the dash (5'7") whereas Andrew (6') will have nearly none to pass the broomstick test. We pushed the pedals forward as far as possible to help with leg room, will have to make a new sheet metal cover for the front firewall. We are moving the dash back about 3-4 inches so any switches can be reached when strapped in.

[Mulry]

Work on the 818 was sidelined for a couple months while we did final race prep on the BMW for the Lemons race at Road Atlanta at the start of December, but we got back at the 818 over the Christmas holidays. Work was a little here-or-there due to other obligations, and of course the first thing to do was some workspace cleanup/re-org and getting re-acquainted with the project. But after that, we got back at it.

We have a list of things to finalize on the engine, but because it was so unseasonably cold here (in the upper teens in the garage yesterday – fortunately the propane heater made it livable), we decided to leave those until it warms up a bit and worked mainly on stuff on the chassis, including:

Cleaning up the superfluous bracketry on the steering column, then modifying same for mounting the AiM MXL2;

Modifying the stock dash panel to better fit the R chassis;

Creating an ABS vertical blockoff panel at the top of the front firewall since the factory fiberglass doesn't really work with the brake and clutch reservoirs and other modifications we've made to the frunk area;

Modifying our steering wheel and installing the wireless steering switch assembly and the NRG steering wheel quick release;

Final installation of the radiator and AWIC (including AWIC heat exchanger temp sensor and final routing of all frunk coolant lines);

Design routing for frunk coolant overflow lines;

Installed brake pedal travel sensor for AiM data capture;

Fabricated and installed battery terminal cables;

Fabricated and installed wiring loom for fuel pump;

Fabricated and installed oil line from remote oil filter to Accusump in/out/checkvalve manifold;

Revised installation of oil pressure sender;

Fabricated and installed remote oil pressure sender braided stainless line;

Fabricated and installed wiring looms for fuel and engine oil pressure sensors;

Fabricated and installed electrical panel and installed supplemental electrical components (including wireless steering wheel switch remote box, RaceCapture box, membrane panel control box, and aux fuse and relay panels); and

Revised stock clutch slave cylinder line to work with new components.

There were probably some other things, but that's what I kept track of in the notes.I think we're finally getting to the point where we are checking off more things as we go than we are adding more things to the to-do list.

I need to order a few parts (turbo blanket, some fluid fittings for the overflow cans, etc.) and if the weather gets warmer (like above freezing) then we'll get back at finalizing the engine stuff and the oil drive setup. Sorry for the lack of photos in this update, maybe better for next time. Cheers.

[EODTech87]

Which wireless steering switches did you use?

[Mulry]

The Cartek ones. I saw that NRG sells a similar setup (via an eBay seller), but I can't really find any reviews on it. It's probably a knockoff of the Cartek one -- probably even from the same Chinese factory.

[EODTech87]

I was looking into something similar so please keep us update. I also noticed your in Dallas. I'm located near Fort Hood and will be moving to the DFW area sometime this summer.

[dallas_]

Mulry, glad to hear you're back on it.
And yes, it was cold!

[Mulry]

Progress continued this weekend past. It was nice to have the garage in the 40's and 50's (ambient) and not have to run the heater or be worried about all the heat escaping out the garage door. We definitely crossed off more lines on the to-do list than lines added, which leads to a strong feeling of finally pedaling downhill on this project. Tasks completed included:

Fabricating a plug for the coolant passage on the rear side of the engine-top coolant manifold. I think the original one was intended to send hot coolant to the heater core and also circulate coolant through the throttle body. I simply cut off the existing tube and then capped it with a welded washer, then leak-tested it and re-installed it;

Confirmed that all unneeded vacuum ports are sealed off;

Re-installed the throttle cable bracket.

As a result of the above, the engine is ready to go back into the chassis (for good) after we complete design/fabrication/installation of the dry sump oil pump.

Other tasks completed:

Wired up the coolant fan and AWIC pump electrics to replaceable connectors;

Received and installed barbed tube connectors to allow final installation of front radiator and AWIC overflow tubing;

Replaced seals and RTV'd the remote oil filter mount to finalize that installation;

Repaired wiring to new fuel pump and installed new Deutsch connector for easy replacement should fuel pump fail;

Final installed fuel cell on passenger floor, including:
fabrication and installation of straps across top of fuel cell enclosure;
installation of fuel vent bulkhead fitting at floor;
cut & installed fuel vent hose from bulkhead to fuel cell;
fabricated & installed electric wire harness for fuel level sender to AiM dash

Here's a couple photos:

78841

This is the plate to which the fuel pump and the pre-pump fuel filter attach. I've had some dimple dies for a few years but never had a great reason to use them before. Not that this is a great reason -- it's just thin aluminum anyway -- but I wanted to try them out for reasons that will become more clear below. Pretty fun!

78842

Supplemental electrical panel. The idea is to send 12v from the battery to the hot bus bars, then segregate it out to each of the additional race car-based circuits on the GEP fuse boxes. Those will also host some supplemental relays for circuits from which I could not re-appropriate relays from the stock wiring harness (transmission oil pump and cool shirt water pump are two examples that come to mind). It's a lot easier to wire this up out of the car and then drop the entire panel into place than to do it all bent over the car, so it's easier to do a neater wiring job this way (learned from experience). Once I have a better grasp on all the wiring looms that will go on this, I'll dimple die this panel to give it some extra rigidity for movement in and out of the car while working on the wiring. Once it's finally assembled, we will bed it down with some silicone caulk to ensure that it's not rattling around. All the components (other than the GEP boxes) are installed on small rubber isolators to limit the vibration on the electronic assemblies inside. Also shown here are the membrane panel box (we're using a membrane panel instead of flip switches for most functions that can't fit onto the steering wheel buttons), the Cartek box (for the steering wheel buttons) and the RaceCapturePro 2 (for telemetry of the data logged by the AiM).

78843

Fuel cell. This is a 22-gallon fuel cell, which is larger than we'd like but it's what I have on hand from a prior project. We will eventually replace this with a smaller cell to comply with E0 class rules for Thunderhill (or put a bunch of those empty sphere things in this one to limit the capacity). The fill plate has more I/O's than we need but it also had the space necessary for implementing the fuel level sender and the fill neck. We will route the fuel fill through the passenger door to an as-yet-to-be-specified fill plate. I suspect we will have to fabricate our own fuel fill neck as I'm not thrilled with the ones that I can find on the market. That's the vent tube on the left side, it has a check valve on the fuel cell to prevent leakage if it goes upside down. The line itself goes to a bulkhead fitting on the floor in the rear corner of the passenger side of the chassis.

Next weekend will be devoted to BMW engine work on the Lemons car, but will hopefully be back to 818 work the following weekend. Cheers!

[Mulry]

It's been a couple weeks of good progress on the 818. Things are really flowing downhill now.

The primary goal has been to get the dry sump oil pump system designed and prototyped. After several revisions of the 3D printed models for the brackets and the plate to which the brackets mount (and which, in turn, mounts to the backside of the stock alternator bracket), we finally have one that fits and is properly in line with the drive mandrel on the front of the crank pulley. Like on all the car shows on TV and YouTube, that sentence shrinks about 3 weeks of work into mere seconds of review for you, dear reader. The next step is to mill the brackets from billet aluminum on the Bridgeport (or the Haas, still haven't decided which one to use) and then do a final test fitting before re-installing the engine in the chassis. We will probably need to change a pulley and/or belt length, as the pump ended up being closer center-to-center with the crank than we anticipated. Here's a couple photos of the 3D printed prototype:

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We also sent the exhaust header out for ceramic coating after unsuccessfully attempting to wrap it in exhaust header wrap. The individual pipes were just too much of a PITA and I didn't think we'd get good coverage on them; in addition, they are so exposed to potential road damage compared with headers on a more traditional motor that the wrap would be more likely to fail sooner than later. So those will be re-installed after we get the motor back in the chassis again.

We completed design, fabrication, and final installation of the steering column and the mount for the AiM display. We decided to simply fabricate a plate and weld that to the top of the stock steering column so that we could retain the stock steering column angle adjuster, but could bolt it to the FFR-provided steering column brace. Then we painted the column and the AiM brackets in order that they would be less visually distracting. In that same area, we completed fabrication and installation of the fixed seat mounts, including additional welding at the chassis for the mount studs (build tip: anything that has to be installed vertically inside the chassis is a lot easier to do if it gets placed on studs than trying to install bolts later). We also installed hard mounts for the racing harness and installed those to spec. Also modified the rear firewall so that the rear seat support bolts through the firewall in order to make sure we pass tech using this seat. We intend to use custom foam inserts for each driver rather than a seat cover in order to maximize driver safety and comfort:

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While the engine remains separate from the chassis, we fabricated and installed a mount for the oil tank and for the transmission oil cooler pump. The oil tank is a Butler Built ex-stock car tank that mounts primarily through the rear set of bolts but then is flanged at the front to ensure that it's not going anywhere. The transmission oil pump mount was just a flat plate to which we installed weld nuts prior to welding it to the chassis. The trans oil cooler and the engine oil cooler will be mounted on the inner side of the rear fascia of the car, cooling air to be ducted from the slats in front of the rear wheels. We need to glass in the ducts that we got from FFR to complete that. Both coolers have fans so hopefully between the ducting and the fans, we will be able to maintain appropriate oil temps in both systems.

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Work on the electrical system was temporarily stalled by the discovery that the terminals for the main auxillary fuse panel were incorrect, so replacements were ordered from Mouser and hopefully will arrive today. I'm excited to get work done on the supplemental (race) electrical circuits. We will further weed the Subaru harness once the engine is running to remove dead weight and reduce troubleshooting complexity.

The fire bottle was installed deep in the passenger footwell. It should be fairly accessible for when we need to have it serviced, but we left room for the installation of the cool suit cooler between the front of the fuel cell and the fire bottle.

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Finally, we fabricated a coolant overflow bottle to attach near the turbo header tank from an aluminum bottle that was donated to the effort by some other racing friends. Ben really went all out to fancy it up with some spare metallic paint that was in the paint locker:

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If anyone reading has any advice regarding electronic boost controllers and BOV valves, I’d love to hear it. We are planning to dyno tune the stock ECU but want a better-than-stock EBC, and I’ve heard that the Greddy knock-off BOV’s leave a lot to be desired in terms of holding properly, but I’ve not identified any specific equipment that I want as replacements. Any suggestions would be welcomed.

Cheers!

[dallas_]

Coming along. Looks like I need to drop by and see it in person.

[Sgt.Gator]

Great Progress. Thanks for the pics.

[Mulry]

It's funny how you can spend a lot of time on the car and not always have a lot to show for the effort. But that's how it went this weekend. I spent a lot of time working on organizing wire locations and then actually running wires and placing terminals for the additional electrical circuits. There's probably at least one more full day ahead of me on this part of the build, and even then it won't be finished because many of the locations for final component installation aren't fabricated yet (like for driving lights or transmission oil cooler). And I need to add a couple of grounds to the chassis to make circuit completion easier without running a lot of ground wire.

For those playing at home, I'm using a GEP 72-position power distribution center (https://ceautoelectricsupply.com/product/gep-72-position-waterproof-pdc/) for most of the new circuits, and then a GEP triple-relay PDC (https://ceautoelectricsupply.com/product/gep-triple-relay-waterproof-pdc/) for what I thought were going to be the big power draw circuits. Both of them have really robust silicone seals on the cover and on each individual wire terminal and a very positive wire retention mechanism. Only downside is that the terminals that CE supplied with the 72-position PDC were incorrect, but that was remedied with a quick Mouser order and the new Metri-pack GT280 terminals work great. One tip: get the dedicated Metri-pack crimper rather than trying to use the all-in-one or replaceable-jaw crimper for those. The dedicated crimper works about 500% better than the others and is well worth the moderate price for the elimination of frustration and the better quality of the crimping.

I've been surprised that a lot of the vehicle components don't have the draw that I expected. For example, our transmission oil pump is only 6amps. I'm using a relay that is way oversized for that.

There was a really interesting series of articles on MotoIQ (http://www.motoiq.com/MagazineArticles/ID/4330/Project-Lexus-SC300-Road-Racer-Part-4--Beginning-the-Epic-Rewire.aspx) about the re-wire one of their authors was doing on Project Lexus SC300, and I've been following some of the advice there. My work method is different and I'm not using the really expensive Deutsch circular connectors at firewalls because I don't want to invest hundreds of dollars into those (although they are dead sexy), but I really appreciate the philosophical approach that the author uses and am trying to emulate that, within reason. I've wired enough race cars at this point to know what a mess it can become as you ad-hoc along the way and am trying to avoid that on this build.

Another tool that I picked up that's been really useful in this process (other than Excel -- which is probably the most useful tool for me in keeping this part of the build organized) is a Dymo Rhino label maker (https://www.amazon.com/DYMO-RHINO-Label-Maker-1801611/dp/B005MR516Y/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1520265871&sr=8-3&keywords=dymo+rhino+4200). I've used an Epson label maker a bunch on this and prior projects, but the Dymo Rhino has an advantage in that they make cartridges of heat-shrink tubing that you can print right onto and then seal onto the wire itself. I don't do that on all of the wires, but it has been very useful thus far for labeling wires that I know I'm going to have to come back and finish up later when the electrical component gets installed on a chassis bracket that's not yet itself built. The 1/4" size is good for 18 and 14 gauge wires and the 3/8" size is good for when you have 2 14-ga wires together.

The BMW came back from OKC so that I can do final pre-race prep on it for our early April race at NOLA, so that will probably slow down my 818 work, but I'm going to try to get the electrical system all bolted down and located on Saturday before I get into BMW mode. Here's a couple of exciting electrical system build-out photos for you. Cheers.

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[longislandwrx]

If anyone reading has any advice regarding electronic boost controllers and BOV valves, I’d love to hear it. We are planning to dyno tune the stock ECU but want a better-than-stock EBC, and I’ve heard that the Greddy knock-off BOV’s leave a lot to be desired in terms of holding properly, but I’ve not identified any specific equipment that I want as replacements. Any suggestions would be welcomed.

Cheers!

most of the ebcs on the market are just relabeled ots parts with a cool logo stamped on it. some manufacturers tote "custom windings" or "upgraded components" but basically they are ots solenoids.

the exception being the perrin pro which was designed from the ground up from scratch, all metal, works super fast, easy to tune, that's the way I would go.. I GS/COBB/ETC are all nice, and will all work fine, but for a few bucks more i'd go with the pro.

as far as blow off valves, go with the GFB hybrid super fast response, nice sound, still recircs (you choose the percentage).

[Mulry]

Thread back from the dead (again). Lemons car is on hiatus until later this summer so I can hopefully finish the 818. Have done some more work on the electrical system since last posted (but not much - although we've gotten much better with Deutsch connector use on the Lemons car thanks to our 818 experience, and vice versa). I finished up the exhaust a couple weekends ago (photo below), will probably move the trans oil pump to reduce chances of heating that up with the exhaust.

We've also decided to add a halo cage to the top of the car. NASA requires that open cars pass the "broomstick test" now and it would've been close for us with one or two of our drivers. So on Sunday I cut out some door bars to make room for the cage. Really looking forward to doing that. Here's photos as proof of life:

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[Mulry]

We've completed a good bit since the last post. We decided that we needed to swap pedal clusters, as the car was just too uncomfortable for us with the factory/donor pedals. We installed the OBP Pro-Race V2 pedal cluster with reverse-facing floor mount master cylinders so that we could get the pedals as close to the front firewall as possible. Then we added remote reservoirs for the brake and clutch MC's. Will need to revise some of the brake and clutch hardline to match. No photos of that.

As noted in this thread (https://thefactoryfiveforum.com/showthread.php?31645-Warning-Cracking-Frame-on-818R-at-Track), we attended a NASA race a couple weeks ago in which another 818 suffered a frame crack, so we installed a gusset and some tube to help stiffen up the chassis in the location where he had that failure. I won't go into depth on that here since it's all in the other thread, including the as-installed photos.

We also vapor honed the surface rust off the MR2 shifter and put a couple coats of rattle can wrinkle black on it:

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Finished up the fuel cell install and all the fuel lines. Will need to cover all of this with another aluminum panel to pass NASA specs (I think), but here's the fuel cell sitting in the passenger seat area:

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We also (finally) finished up all the routing, mounting, and hose creation for the dry sump lubrication system. Mounted the oil cooler and then designed and 3D printed a plenum so that we can bring in cool air from the side ducts into the oil cooler:

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We loosely fitted the rear facade and the sides so that we can start doing some work building a proper rear bumper/bump protection that will also protect the rear wheels a little bit in case we get around somebody a little squirrely on track (because we would never get squirrely ourselves...). It was exciting to see the body on the car after so many years in just frame stage. so we decided to finish off the engine cover and put that on too just to see what it looks like:

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Also started modification of the rear diffuser to accommodate the exhaust system, so we'll finish that next weekend. After that, we will be designing, bending, and welding in the new halo cage and some additional rear bumper structure. Will mount the trans cooler either to the rear body or off of the new bumper structure on the passenger rear side so that we can plumb clean air from the passenger side air duct to that cooler and then out the rear.

[Mulry]

We've gotten more done the last couple weeks, including some wiring work (no sexy photos there). Finished up the fuel pump mount from 3D printed materials and got that installed, then finalized the fuel hose fabrication and install. Need to leak-test it all soon.

Also final-installed the new pedal cluster after installing all the braided stainless lines. Re-configured and had to make a couple new hardlines to get it all to work, but that's all plumbed now. Waiting on a new cap adapter for the pressure bleeder and then we will fill the reservoirs and bleed down the brake and clutch hydraulics to see if it's all holding or if anything needs fixing. Thank God I bought the good Eastwood flaring tool.

Filled and pressure-tested the AWIC cooling system with no leaks. Engine coolant system had just one leak, the slight tube that goes under the engine from the water pump into the nipple on the bottom of the passenger side engine head. We're in the process of rebuilding that line and then will re-test next weekend. Otherwise, no leaks, which was very encouraging.

Finalized the dry sump oil lubrication system and tested that, video of that in the dry sump thread:

https://thefactoryfiveforum.com/showthread.php?15502-Oil-issues-Dry-Sump-Accusump-for-road-racing&p=364387&viewfull=1#post364387

At this point, we need to do the remaining static fluid testing (fuel, brakes, clutch, and re-test on engine coolant) and then the mechanical systems are all ready to go. We need to order and install the Wilwood brake kit before we do the brakes testing. Then we just need to finalize and test the electrical system and we should be ready to go-kart. Exciting times at TARP Racing!

[Mulry]

We are almost ready to start the engine and go kart. Need to finish weeding the harness and testing the circuits, then build a temp panel for switchgear.

We decided to fully cage the top and have ordered, and received, a front windshield and windshield surround. We feel that the cage will make the car safer in wheel to wheel action, and the windshield will reduce the chance of face impacts from other flying debris. All of this pushes back the finish date of the car, unfortunately. It's already taken longer than we wanted, but we'd rather get it right the first time (or at least as much as possible).

On a very positive note, we received the wheel order the other day. We ordered Team Dynamics ProRace 1.2 wheels via DemonTweeks in Wales, UK and they showed up a couple weeks ago after a long summer of waiting. 6x 15x7 for the fronts (17's were going to rub the chassis at the tub) and 6x 17x9 for the rear. Pretty happy to get them and have matching wheels on all 4 corners, given the dearth of great wheel options. Here's what they look like:

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[Frank818]

Those rims look super strong!! How much do they weigh?

I didn't know it was possible to run 15" tires.

[q4stix]

Stock WRXs brakes, at least up to my model year (07, not sure about later), matched rally spec diameters which is why they can fit a 15" wheel. I'm sure the rules and classes have changed by now but that's the original reason.

I like the wheels too!

[Mulry]

Lots of availability in 15” slicks from Hoosier.

15” wheels are right around 15# each. 17” are closer to 20. Would love to have gone with forged wheels but at double or triple the cost per wheel, just wasn’t in the budget oven that we need multiple sets for racing. This gives us 2 sets of slicks and a set of wets.

[biknman]

I'm running 15x8 TA Superlites with 23/9/15 Hoosier Slicks Front with 65% of turning radius and 15x10 TA Superlites with 23/11.5/15 Hoosier Slicks in the rear on Wilwood late model four piston calipers with 11.75x1.25 rotors using bolt on 5x4.5" hubs (350Z) mounted to knuckles from TSS Fab.

Murly any updates on the roller status? Question: If I missed it sorry but are you placing the prob valve on the front calipers like manual states or the rear calipers?

FYI doing the same wireless switch panel on the steering wheel as you but your further along than I. I plan on using it as "switch to grounds" controls mostly as I'm running a ECUmaster PDM with it if it works.

Thanks
Dave

[Mulry]

Just reread my first post on this build thread. "Our goal is to have the car on the track by spring 2016." HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. The Lemons car and about 10,000 things (of which the 818R is only about 7,500) have certainly conspired against that.

That said, #coronavirustime has been very good for our progress. We ultimately decided to just completely strip out the Subaru harness and build a full custom electrical harness. This took up a good bit of this spring, but now we know where everything goes and that it's in good condition. We wound up using 3 separate GEP fuse/relay boxes plus a smaller 4th one. All the switches are either on the steering wheel or a small membrane pad, other than the hard kill switch, a hard start/ignition switch, and the switches for the turn signals and hazards (because we are still hoping to get it street legal).

As noted briefly above, we had also decided to do a cage around the driver, so we did that this spring too. We also decided that we liked the safety add of the windshield, so we ordered just the windshield surround and glass from FFR and test-installed that so that the cage matches the windshield. One of our drivers is muy, muy tall, so the cage is taller than the rear roll bar (and the windshield) but safety first, right? (I'll add some photos).

The big news though is that after all this time, we were able to roll the car out into the driveway and got it to start and run on its own! It's running rough -- clearly needs a tune -- but none of the fluid systems leak and the dry sump seems to work like a champ. Stays primed between starts, too, which is nice because priming it with a drill motor is kind of a PITA, but that's what we did before we test started it. And then turned it over on the starter with plugs out and fuel off just to make sure all the bearings were lubed before first fire.

And here's one thing that will be of benefit to the community. We designed and 3D printed a rack stop for the steering rack for use in ease of front end alignment. We have one of these from a BMW race team that we use on the e36 Lemons car when we align that and figured it would be easy to make and use one on the Subaru rack too. Basically what you do is turn the steering wheel to the passenger side past center, push back the passenger side steering rack from the center, drop in the rack stop, and then re-center the steering wheel. The stop is the correct length so that when you have it pinned between the rack ends and the inside of the tie rod end, the rack is dead center. This prevents us from having to count turns on the steering wheel every time we align the front end. Cheers guys.

[Sgt.Gator]

We need pics!

[Mulry]

Sorry, that's fair. I totally forgot to append the prior post, so here you go. The photos in post 02, above, show what we cut out from the chassis as delivered from FFR. Here's what we added:

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We temporarily installed the windshield surround in order to get the angle of the front hoops correct. In the photo it looks like the driver's side one interferes with egress by the driver, but that's not really the case. We've found it not very difficult to get in and out of the seat through the "window" opening, although the halo seat definitely makes it tougher. We figure the additional safety factor is worth it, particularly since for most of the racing that this vehicle will see, speed of driver change is irrelevant. The angle of this photo makes the bar connecting the roll hoops at the top off the windshield appear to be higher than it really looks in real life, as you'll see in one of the photos below.

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This one shows the additional backstays we installed. We think the chance that the main hoop would fail rearward was negligible at best on the stock design, but with the additional roll hoops, we wanted to pre-empt any questions by a tech inspector. This photo was taken when the bars were being fitted and tacked in; they have subsequently been finish welded.

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This one shows the addition of the roof diagonal, which goes from the node at the driver's side a-pillar/top of windshield to the rear part of the passenger roll hoop just before the roll hoop makes its turn down to the main hoop. Also visible are the gussets at the roll hoop/windshield header node. We formed this bar after reviewing approved designs for Spec Miata roll cages. It would make egress through the roof more difficult, but better than a diagonao going the other direction.

As I noted in a post on Gator's thread, we have been working on getting the engine to start and run nicely. We had several vacuum leaks, which was the initial cause of the VERY rough running condition. After plugging those, we determined that the MAF has probably gone bad due to the weird un-correlated data stream it was outputting. We've ordered a new one and will try that, but if that doesn't solve the problem, we may need to switch to using speed density tuning. Cheers!

[Mulry]

We replaced the MAF, then found one more vacuum leak (so it may not have been the MAF after all). But the good news is that we now have a motor that starts, idles, and revs! We need to do a rear end alignment and zip-tie some loose cables and I think we are pretty close to being able to go-kart it in the neighborhood. Here's the start-idle-run video:

https://youtu.be/jtd2pShYwtI

[Mulry]

Well, we've decided to sell the project. Need the garage space for other projects. See post below for more details, photos, etc.:

https://thefactoryfiveforum.com/showthread.php?44533-FS-818R-Kit-12kOBO

[Sgt.Gator]

2015 to 2022. Sorry to see you moving on. What are your next projects and where can we follow them?