legacycentral bbs

So... Couldn't figure out how to post in the Members Journals, so hopefully a moderator will move it over there for me after this is posted. I've kept a build journal going on for the past few months on a couple other sites, so for now I'll just copy-paste what I have written over there. Hopefully it will all flow together well.

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Well well well. Didn't think this deal would come around. I have always had a long term plan to pick up a good starter rally car for around $5-6k, something in G2 or G5 (2WD) or Open Light (NA AWD) as those are the classes I would be limited to as a novice driver. However last week I came across a CL ad almost by chance, just happened to search for "subaru" in the Nashville CL in hopes of finding a cheap Impreza to use as a daily driver so I could unload the WRX and the Audi I have, and lo and behold, a 1994 Subaru Legacy Turbo Rally Car is for sale for $2800. Has a logbooked cage, been raced for several years between 2004 and 2006. It had passed hands several times over the last few years, each time going to someone who had a less and less interest for rallying. After talking with the guy who had the car for a while, and seeing pictures, I put down a $200 deposit on it to hold the car until I could drive out to nashville to see it. We settled on a price of $1800 + some of my WRX brake stuff. RyanR helped me out and drove me out to the Nashville area to pick up the car and begin a longgg journey home.



The car is not comfortable. The seat is rather narrow and close to the wheel. The last guy to race this must have been a midget! There was a 3" wooden extension on the clutch pedal! The rally tires screw/whine/howl at highway speeds, no AC, no radio, and a nearly 300 mile journey back home. Eventually it made its way back to Jonesboro, and found a spot next to the WRX.



The next day me and Ryan started the process of cleaning out the car and fixing a lot of small nagging issues. Things such as the clutch extension, cleaning the headlamps, fixing a window that wouldn't go up or down, cleaning the dash, pulling bulbs out of the cluster for lights that are just annoying (seatbelt, ABS, and airbag). Ryan went out of his way to get my old lightbar and modify it to fit the new car. Looks proper again with the lights.



This weekend I will be taking the practically brand new rally tires that came with the car as spares, and mounting them to a set of white Enkei gravel wheels I have laying around. Some of the next steps in the project include getting the car to Izzy's Custom Cages for him to take a close look at the cage, and see if we can improve on it, since it is a rather old cage. I will need to get another seat and a set of harnesses for the co-driver (to be Mr. Ron Erickson), annnnnd I will need to find an NA engine to put in place of the 2.2T since I want to run this car in the Open Light class of Rally America.

First race I am shooting for is the new Perryville Rally in Perryville, MO in late October, and then of course will try to race the first rally I ever went to, the infamous 100 Acre Wood in late February.

This should be fun.

Got to shakedown the car really well at a local rallycross last weekend. I also whored it out a friend of mine and his dad. Ended up with 19 runs in some extremely hot weather (heat index over 110), being redlined most of the way in 1st gear.... and it loved it. The car is very easy to drive and to make it rotate. I am sure the rear LSD has something to do with it. Left Foot Braking worked very nicely, a gentle push and the car just starts to rotate around predictably. Almost feels RWD'ish.

Either way, it also makes for great pics. These shots were taken by my friend Curt Fagile.





Next up... clean out the car, flock the dash, paint the cage, apply DirtyImpreza.com stickers....

Well, I got some great news the other day. Boeing in St. Louis has offered me a job as a Structural design engineer that I'll be taking. So I will be leaving Jonesboro soon, and moving back to St. Louis. This should help make things progress MUCH faster on the rally car as there are some reputable shops nearby, and my friends who will be more than willing to help make it work. Also it is a lot closer to rallycrosses and the actual rallies themselves.

Right now all that has gotten done since the RallyX is applying driver/co-driver names, a DI.com banner, and the sunscreen on the windshield. Also washed the car for the first time and learned that I better not drive this car in the rain anytime soon. It leaks like a sieve.

For now it is sitting in the garage awaiting its move to St. Louis, once it gets there I am taking it to Izzy's Custom Cages for some cage updates and gussets. Then paint the cage, flock the dash, rewire a lot of electrical stuff, and somewhere in there install an NA engine.

Also going to be selling my WRX soon to free up some cash for the rally car and some other big purchases.

New sparco wheel is in! This wheel is amazing, and even better when combined with the G-Force gloves from Safe Drives! I will be flogging the car hard again at a rather large rallycross venue tomorrow (St. Joe's Off-Road Park) along with letting friends drive the car again. Should be a blast.

The rallycross was simply awesome. The car once again, is a total and utter tank. Drove it 3.5 hours to the rallycross venue. Flogged the car hard all day, WOT in 2nd gear for extended periods of time, banging off the revlimiter in 1st gear through some sections, all while in extreme heat. The car is pretty predictable in handling, except under hard braking in deep sand... although I am fairly sure every car is unpredictable in deep sand.

This is a video a friend shot with his GoPro attached to his helmet of my first run of the day.

*Starts at 1:45*

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGsGWYKfuu0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l68adwypBI

So I moved the car up to Rolla temporarily to live in Ron and RyanR's garage. Ron and I stripped the car bare, removed the remaining sound deadening, he went ahead and started rewiring most of the car and lightening the heater system by removing the condenser and covering up the vent holes. I also flocked the dash.

Spent a lot time trying to clean the interior and masking off the windows prior to spray painting the cage.....Never again am I going to spraybomb a car. It was a mess, it took forever, and got overspray EVERYWHERE. However the paint looks awesome. Will be touching it up this weekend, as well as installing the last details needed to get the car stage ready. Basically everything will be ready except for the engine.







Should have a ton of pics this weekend as Ron and I try to finish up putting together the car (provided all the parts come in on time!)

Also! Rally-America visual package is here.

Spent another very very long weekend putting things together. Ron rewired a lot of dash, including a push button start. Only need a key now to get into the car, flip the accessory power switch, flip the ignition power switch, press the red button where the cigarette lighter went, and vroom, the car starts.

Installed the dash, touched up the paint, removed all the rest of the sound deadening, lost the AC condensor, and generally touched up a lot of things. New rally intercom showed up, got a great deal on a used rally computer and a second seat. Basically this car is 99% ready for the stages, all the safety equipment is in, all the requirements are met. Going to be gutting a turbo soon to make this thing NA if I don't find a suitable donor car soon.

Got two Sparco Circuit seats in the car now with new belts and fire extinguishers from SafeDrives! Basically now the car is 100% ready for the stages a month ahead of schedule.



Brought the car out to a local car show as well to get people talking about rally. Answered a lot of questions and hopefully convinced some people to come down to the rally. Surprise of the day was actually winning the "modified import" class, beating out a few "show cars" with stereos, flashing lights, tricked out wheels, etc. got a cool little trophy. So yea, this car wins car shows, despite rusty fenders and caulk on the roof.

I added you to the build journal group (You have to request to be in the group. Instructions were in the forum sticky) and moved your thread.


Nice build thread. The video inside the cabin gives the illusion the car is going slower than it actually is when compared to the video taken from outside the car.

wow that is coming along very nicely.

Thanks for moving it!

The ultimate end goal of this car is a competitive Open Light car. Swapping in a hopped up 2.5L engine with engine management, great suspension, and reduce as much weight as possible. After Perryville the car will be painted white to prepare it for the Colin McRae tribute paint scheme.



It should be quite an eye-catcher at 100 Acre Wood.

Very cool! You're over on RallyAnarchy, and I'm sure you're familiar with JVAB sooper-bitchen suspenders.
One suggestion, though: install a steering quickener. You'll experience a significant reduction in flailing limbs.

ima keep an eye on this thread awsome build.

subscribed! Always cool to see someone taking one of these cars to the limit, and then to actually use it for said limits purpose!

BTW It would be really nice if someone did a DIY on flocking. I'm really interested and I've read alot on it but most people just show finished pics and give abreviated instructions or tips.

Perryville Forest & Farm Rally Recap!

This weekend was a resounding success for me, even though I crashed hard 100 yards from the finish on the second to last stage.

This rally was only an hour and a half south of me. It felt strange loading up the car and only driving a short distance to our hotel. Ron and I spent a few hours that night finishing up some wiring issues with the rally computer and the horn in the hotel parking lot. The next day we went to tech and found that Mike Hurst wanted us to have a stronger battery tie down for the relocated battery behind the passenger seat. Ron scrambled to build one in the parking lot using a hacksaw and a drill. We got one made, got it approved, and got the official sticker.

Later that day at Parc Expose, worked on getting the cameras setup and just talking with some of the locals and other friends who had stopped by. A lot of people seemed to like the Legacy, one little girl shouting "it's papa's car!" and immediately going past the Evo IX, and other amazing cars to go straight to my ****box.

Then came time for my first stage... what a feeling. To be sitting on the start line revving the engine getting ready to go after first getting involved with this sport nearly 4 years ago, and getting in the rally cars about a year ago. I was nervous, I was excited, I was a lot of emotions, but I was focused. I wanted to finish, and I wanted to go fast. The countdown began and once I heard ron say "GO!" I did a 5k clutch dump and.... almost stalled out. Turns out my little deturboed NA low-compression engine with a wine cork in the idle air control valve doesn't quite like sudden clutch dumps. Anyways, we got back up to speed and threw the car into the first corner, it felt natural, it felt fast. All the years of playing around on back roads seemed to pay off. We were fast out of the gate. We finished the stage within 0.4 seconds of the top OL guy on a 4 minute long stage. I was pumped. I was running a car with a bad gearbox, 3.9 FD, a heavy car, a deturboed low-compression engine that lost almost all speed on uphills; and within 5 seconds of the top competitors on a proper rally stage? I'll take that!

http://rally-america.com/events/2011/Perry/results/standings/1/

We continued to pick up more speed on the other stages. Although I kept losing time on high speed sections that required hard braking into a tight turn since the engine would stall out. The intake that I put on the car didn't have anything for the IACV to plumb into, so I jacked the idle to 2000 RPMs, and stuck a cork in the IACV. As a result, I had issues where the car would randomly stall out on hard braking. Another issue was hairpins when I had to go into first... the gearbox is failing, and could not get into first unless rolling at very low speed. So I would throw the car into a hairpin, but only bog on the way out until I could find 1st and take off. Very frustrating....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1NhpiledKI
(0:24) This is the hairpin on the second pass of stage 4

And this is the in-car footage for stage 4. This is recorded using the new GoPro HD Hero2 with my Peltor FMT120 Intercom being inputted into the GoPro mic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_ngaRcekHc

Was having a blast throughout the day. But then on Stage 7, on the last turn before the finish I was trying to carry more speed then I should have and turned in a bit too late, hit some loose gravel and washed out into a deep ditch that pirouetted the car. The final damage assessment is:

- Lower Control arm
- Top Mount (Strut ripped out of it)
- Radiator
- Engine Mount
- Subframe (Got shifted 1/2")
- Possibly steering rack?
- Fender
- Headlight
- Taillight
- Lots of body work on the rear quarter

Otherwise, the car seems straight and true. This thing is a tank. Part of the rebuilding process for 100AW is going to include a strong NA engine and a proper 4.11 or 4.44 transmission along with new gravel suspension. I feel like I proved myself to be a fast driver in a slow car, and now want to see if I can take on the faster competition (Corn? Smith?).









If there is one thing I learned, is never skimp on the safety equipment. The seats, helmet, HANs, belts, extinguisher, etc. all were the most expensive things I spent on the car (nearly just as much as I got the car for) but its incredible how cheap all that stuff seemed when heading sideways into a deep ditch at 60mph and bracing for impact. I had my belts on tight, my HAN's on securely, and was able to jump right out of the car after the crash. The halo style seats I have were fantastic, hardly felt anything. So.... if anyone is looking to get into rallying. Get the best equipment you can, you will not regret it that first time you go off.

I bet biggreen agrees with me

Picked up a 1990 Subaru Legacy parts car. Will be disassembling it soon and transfering parts to the rally car. Looking to get it ready for Sno*Drift at the end of January. 2 months!

Good luck, loving this car/thread. Any plans to update the motor by then? I bet that thing is massivly overfueling right now or do you have some kind of EM?

Right now insanely rich, but it is just a 2.2T with the turbo bypassed and a cork stuck in the IACV. Jankiest setup ever. However the donor car has a 2.2L NA engine with dual port heads. Sending the heads out to DeltaCam to get some new race cams, supertech valves and springs, as well as a mild port/polish. Bumping the compression up a little with the new heads, and refreshing the piston rings in the shortblock. Combine that with an Equal Length header and an intake, and I think it'll be a significant increase over the current engine.

Also now getting a good 4.11 transmission instead of the failing 3.9 FD turbo transmission. Combined with with the All Wheels Driven gravel coilovers I am getting, I seriously cannot wait to get this car back on the stages. It is going to be an absolute blast while looking gorgeous with the Colin McRae livery.

cant wait to see pics when finished

Can't wait to see the throw back paint!

My reference model came in a few weeks ago. Sitting my desk at work. Will be tearing apart the parts car over the Xmas break (two weeks of paid holiday!) and start the paint/rebuilding process. Hopefully my coilovers will have arrived by then too.

2 weeks paid holiday!? What! Managed time vacation?

I work for a large Aerospace company, basically we don't have all the little holidays thoughout the year (MLK, etc.) and instead we have 2 weeks where the entire place just shuts down for holiday. It's pretty fantastic.

I'd take that over paid holidays any day. We get 8 paid holidays at my work. I'd rather have a 2 week vacation for sure.