thebeerbaron

I'm going to share with you a very important mantra from my heady days as a homebrewer: Relax, don't worry, have a homebrew*. Kettle boil over? Relax, don't worry, have a homebrew. Yeast not flocculating properly? Relax, don't worry, have a homebrew. Too many homebrews to see straight? Relax, don't worry, have a homebrew.

It works, trust me.

This is the attitude I am now taking with the 818. I attended the Open House and was there for the big reveal. I got to listen to Dave Smith say lots of fun and interesting things about the design contest, the ongoing design process, the future of the car, and many other things. I got to talk with some judges, some fellow 818 enthusiasts and some of the Factory Five family. And you know what? I'm not worried.

The forum is all up in arms Monday-night quarterbacking the contest winners, swearing up and down that if this popular choice or that doesn't go into production the car will fail. I'm tuned out of that now. Do I think there were some very nice designs in the winners circles? Yes. Are any of them what I had in mind for the 818? Mostly no.

Here's the thing - after speaking with Dave Smith and Michael Lye from RISD, I'm confident the design that goes into production will be stellar. Would I trust them individually with this task? No. But knowing that those two, Jim, and a host of others will be duking it out to decide where to go with this thing, I know a good design will come out. I think both Michael and Dave recognize the weaknesses of the design competition winners. I think Michael will push Dave's envelope a bit on what is a good looking 818. I can't tell if Jim's Judge's Choice award was a backlash against the forum for all their demands of a tall, correctly-proportioned roadster or an honest choice of something outlandish, but it had the pop necessary for an impressive design. I think Dave will push Michael for something that is not just "artist" pretty, but "car guy" pretty.

I don't think a web poll is the right way to decide on the final body styling. As a tool to bring the cream to the top - maybe. I thought that's what the competition was supposed to do, and yet somehow what should have been a bang came out as more of a whimper.

Anyhow, the lesson I learned from the Open House is that as crazy as Dave Smith is, he's got a good team to get the job done. It's probably why Factory Five has been so successful and that's why I can sleep easy at night knowing this car (in all its iterations) will look great.




In other news, the engine is still not out of the Blue Beast. It is so close I can taste it (and it tastes of minty Kroil, dirty grease, and flaking rust). I ended up taking off the entire down pipe since I couldn't get the thing to swing back far enough from the turbo. I snapped the two bolts that hold the pipe to the next section of the exhaust, but they were so corroded there was nothing left of the threads anyhow. If those are the only two bolts I snap on this project, I will be very, very happy. With that out of the way, I was able to focus on the engine mount bolts. After trying a few things, I still couldn't get at the bolts due to the sway bar. I was working on removing the first sway bar bolt (what promised to be a long and annoying process) when I decided to try one more thing. I found a 3/8" drive 14mm swivel socket and was able to snake the thing in there. With a 16" breaker bar, the nuts came loose! This breaker bar may be my new best friend.

The hex cap over the clutch fork required some serious muscle and that same breaker bar, but eventually it gave in. At first I thought I snapped my friend's 10mm hex drive socket, but that joyous sound was the cap breaking free. The pin came out very easily.

My buddy and I had a devil of a time separating the bell housing from the motor, but eventually it started to give. After some good effort, it stopped, leaving us with a 1" gap on the drivers side and no gap on the passenger side. After talking with the NASIOC folk, I've got a few theories, the simplest of which is that during all the jiggling and finagling, the passenger side engine mount bolt may have slipped back home. That'll be the first thing I check when I get back to the garage on Saturday. After that it'll be jacking up the front of the motor to try to get a better alignment to free the locating pins. And so on.

I ordered a 10mm hex-drive impact socket today for the dreaded removal of the cam gears. I went big and expensive on this one, I hope it holds up. Apparently they use steroid-abusing gorillas in the Subaru factory to attach the cam gears, giving us shade-tree mechanics a bugger of a time getting them off. I can tell you for certain that the shop that had this engine out last definitely used those same gorillas to attach some of these fasteners!

I will have this engine out on Saturday, if it means clearing the other cars out of the garage and using the diesel tractor with the bucket loader on the front of it to just rip the damn thing out.

I still haven't decided if I prefer Kroil to PB Blast. Except for those two exhaust bolts which were too far gone for any real hope, everything has come out quite nicely, and none of it shows any sign of having been anti-seized in the past. But has Kroil magically loosened every fastener to finger-tight? No.

*mantra coined by the illustrious Charlie Papazian