Jaime's Western New York Build

[Frank818]

Ok I get it. You got the God's which don't clear enough so you needed to modify the God's.

[Brando]

I also purchased the Godspeed trailing arms. I'm running 255's and the trailing arms needed 24mm of spacers to clear the tires! I ended up going with Wayne's trailing arms.
I also found less clearance with the Godspeeds over the stock trailing arms. Nice job with your fab on those Gods

[Jaime]

My 2005 donor didn't have a canister filter, so I just got one of these:



It's a lot smaller than I thought it would be, but 100 Gallons/Hour (380Liters/Hour) is more than I'll need.

[Jaime]

#177 was ready and waiting for me yesterday.



Loading it onto the truck was no problem thanks to the nifty forklift attachment Factory Five has:



Here's the nine boxes of hardware:

[Jaime]

I got the parts I need to get started powder coated.



Factory Five should really offer a service to get these coated too (or to ship them early). You can't start the firewall without the pedal bracket and you can't start the suspension without the IRS and IFS adapters. I threw the brake parts in the batch because they were handy, I won't need them for a while.

I've tried several powder coating alternatives and I haven't found anything I like yet. I would love to have a more repairable coating that I can do at home in a few hours, but so far nothing comes close to the durability of powder coat. I think I'm going to try this stuff for parts that I want to keep from rusting, but that I don't want to go through the hassle of powder coat:

[Jaime]

Got a bunch of stuff done this weekend.

Rear suspension is on.



I have 18x8.5 wheels with 45mm offset. I needed 15mm spacers to clear the upper trailing link. The real pain was the eBay lateral links and trailing arm. All of the spacers were designed to eliminate the washers, but the Factory Five kit doesn't use them. That makes them too wide to fit in the brackets. Six hours of grinding later:

[Jaime]

Front suspension is done too:



Assembly tip: make sure the cotter pin hole on the upper ball joint isn't oriented front-to-back or you will never get the pin in.

[Kurk818]

I feel you on the lateral link spacers. I had to do the same thing. Did you grind them free hand on a bench grinder?

[Jaime]

Front firewall is in too.



I did the suspension before the firewall because I wanted to see how the wheels fit and I need to wait for the pedal mount to be powder coated. Doing the firewall with wheels on isn't too bad. I did have to cut of the tip of the driver's side LCA bolt to avoid interference with the firewall.



Even then, it was really close.

[Jaime]

Got the engine in last night. Here's my "custom tool" for holding the flywheel to torque the nuts:



Engine in the car:


It feel really good to be this far, but there's still a long way to go.

[Kurk818]

Awesome progress! Are you doing this solo?

[Jaime]

I feel you on the lateral link spacers. I had to do the same thing. Did you grind them free hand on a bench grinder?

Bench grinder. It took me six hours because they kept getting too hot to hold.

Awesome progress! Are you doing this solo?

Thanks. I'm doing it mostly solo, but I had two friends help me get the engine in last night. It took about four hours to get it prepped and in.

[sponaugle]

My delivery is in three weeks, so I took advantage of the good weather today to start a chassis dolly:



I got four 600 pound casters from Amazon for ten bucks each. I like these ones because the wheel locks also prevent swiveling. I still have to build the pads up to final height.

Do you have the dimensions of your dolly? Primarily the distance from front to back and width of the standoffs?

Jeff

[AZPete]

Jeff
http://thefactoryfiveforum.com/showt...-Chassis-Dolly

[Brando]

I have 18x8.5 wheels with 45mm offset. I needed 15mm spacers to clear the upper trailing link. The real pain was the eBay lateral links and trailing arm. All of the spacers were designed to eliminate the washers, but the Factory Five kit doesn't use them. That makes them too wide to fit in the brackets. Six hours of grinding later:

I had a machine shop do all the cutting on a lathe. Cost $30 to do the lateral links and trailing arm spacers. I didn't end up using the trailing arms because of clearance issues with the tires and went with Waynes lower trailing arms. Even with those I still need 5mm offset for it to clear. On the upper trailing arms I had to put both spacers on the outside to gain the clearance needed.

[Frank818]

went with Waynes lower trailing arms. Even with those I still need 5mm offset for it to clear. On the upper trailing arms I had to put both spacers on the outside to gain the clearance needed.

What is your wheel and tire setup again? I have Wayne's arms (those he sell, not his 2 private arms), and will use 18x9.5 in 265s.

[metros]

You're making some great progress!

[Frank818]

The real pain was the eBay lateral links and trailing arm. All of the spacers were designed to eliminate the washers, but the Factory Five kit doesn't use them. That makes them too wide to fit in the brackets. Six hours of grinding later:

Ha! Got it! So it's you with the same links as me. Ok so I guess I didn't grind at the right place, I have to do it on the external portion, that's what I thought. Stupid thing, but no choice!

[Jaime]

That's why I love pictures in build threads. I'm glad mine helped you.

[Frank818]

Jaime, on the lateral links again, one link comes with conical washers on one end and yellow/orangeish rubber on the other end (it has the bracket for the rear sway bar on the OEM imprezas) and the other link comes with no sway bar bracket and has conical washers on one end and round washers on the other end (those on the first pic on my post #57).

On that latter link, which side is it installed? The conical washers go on the spindle and round ones on the chassis?
I am asking cuz on the link with sway bar bracket, the conical washers go on the chassis end.

tnx

[Jaime]

I put the straight spacers on the chassis side. The conical washers seemed to match the spindle and nut better and the conical ones are much harder to grind. It's possible they were intended to go the other way around.

BTW, were all of yours the same length? One of mine was shorter - probably a wagon part. There's enough adjustment for it to work, but it just shows that you get what you pay for.

[Frank818]

I have to check on the length, but what I remember is that they are supposed to fit the wagon, so I wasn't sure how they designed it: one shorter for when you adjust them at the shortest possible or short enough on all 4 but same length so that everyone will adjust longer than the shortest.

Since the conical washers go on the spindle side for the link with sway bar bracket, I would guess the same on the other link, so I'll do like you. That link seems to be pretty symmetrical anyway.

[Frank818]

BTW, my kit came with a pair of M16 bolts and nuts that fit the in the cam bolt holes of the front knuckles. They weren't on the inventory sheet and I can't find any other use for them, so I put them there.

(from post #363 of Rasmus' thread)

In a small bag within the bigger cardboard box of fasteners? If yes, what was written on the sticker?

[Jaime]

It was a label similar to all of the other fasteners. I'm 95% sure it was in the hardware box.

[Frank818]

I'll check if I have an M16 bag. Looking through the manual FFR doesn't mention the word "M16" other than in the Torque Specs section, so they probably don't provide M16 for the kit. I'm not far enough to know that.

[Frank818]

No M16 bag.

My blue ebay lateral links are all 4 the same length.

I have gone a different route. First I will use the conical washers on the chassis side for both sets of blue links. Second, I will get the cones machined to remove 2mm. But not the outside side, but the inner side where the cone becomes straight. That way the washer will go in the sleeve further and the outside of the washer won't lose strength cuz it won't be thinner.

[Jaime]

If I were doing it on a lathe, I would do the same thing. Good call.

[Jaime]

I've been working on electrical for the past few weeks, so not much to show. But, I got some backordered parts yesterday, including my pedal bracket mount.

The cable mount isn't as bad as the stories I've heard about the DBW mount. But, drilling for the rivnut at the top is an awful job. I've heard people say to cut down a 25/64th bit, but I barely have enough room for my angle drill with a shorty #30 bit that I use for the small rivets. I ended up cutting a 3/16th bit short and hogging it out until the rivnut fit.



I don't like how the bottom mounts to a 0.040 aluminum panel, so I need to make a bracket for that. Also, the cable goes through the aluminum at an angle that causes it to rub both on the cable end and on the pedal bracket. I'll get picture of both when I fix them.

On a side note - the split nut is an evil thing. The only way to have any hope of getting it on is to take the entire mount off. Mine was made in such a way that if the splits were lined up, then the threads engaged properly. If it is rotated more than about 60 degrees from lined up, the threads were so far off that it couldn't be spun on the threads. My fix for the angle of the cable is going to eliminate the split nut.

[Jaime]

Here's my main harness about half dieted.



I plan to make it look really good without buying an aftermarket harness or sending mine away to get done. If you enjoy electrical (I do), stay tuned to this thread so you don't make the same mistakes I do. If you hate electrical, look away because it's going to get ugly in a few days.

[Jaime]

Now that's a starter cable.

I didn't want to run it over the engine and the one Factory Five provides isn't long enough to go around. Besides, I think 4 gauge is a little thin for a ten foot cable. The 1/0 cable I used is probably overkill, but it's insanely flexible so it's easier to work with than the original 4 gauge cable. I'll use the wire from the kit to supply power to my fuse block.

[Jaime]

Most of my wiring stuff came.



Time to get to work.

[Jaime]

My donor had an automatic transmission, but I've since installed a 5 speed. The ECU only needs to have one pin grounded for the conversion, so I installed this wire in the connector (the BrR one in the upper right corner):



Fortunately, there are a bunch of ECU-to-TCM wires that can be borrowed since the auto harness has no wire at that position on the connector. The wire I borrowed came from the B ECU connector at position 20. It's currently in the C connector (the smallest one in the center) at position 1.

[Jaime]

I also did a little work in the engine compartment.



I took my donor apart in zero degree temperatures, so I broke a bunch of vacuum hoses and the turbo inlet. I ordered an eBay turbo inlet in blue, so I decided to pick up some blue silicone vacuum hoses and paint the manifold blue.

I found that the manifold is really difficult to take off because there is very little room between the top of the hard cooling pipe that goes from the driver's side of the block to the coolant fill tank and the frame member. The manifold won't come off the TGV assemblies because of the routing of the fuel rails. So, for easier servicing, I'm going with aftermarket fuel rails and replacing the hard coolant pipe with silicone.

[Jaime]

I started installing the wiring harness. The first order of business is to decide where stuff goes. I'm going to put the ECU where the manual says, except it will be sandwiched between the seat back aluminum and the rear firewall...



My fusebox is going to go on the passenger side, easily accessible with the engine cover removed...



Everything is temporarily mounted at this point. I want to see how things lay out before committing.

[Jaime]

At this location, the connectors on the right side of the engine plug in easily.

For the left side, I separated the engine plugs from the front harness. It comes out really easily except for one wire. The two big plugs connect to the black 24 pin connector and the blue 16 pin connector that has only a few wire populated. There is also a yellow/red wire that goes to a white connector. The stray one is a power wire and I'm totally redoing the fusebox anyways, so I just pulled that wire out of the connector body to get it separated from the rest of the front harness. Here's an overhead shot of the part I separated plugged into the engine harness connectors:

[Jaime]

Next comes the part that's the most important part. Most of the engine harness goes to the ECU. But, on a WRX, it goes from the ECU, up into the dash and merges with the main harness, follows that all the way to the driver's side fender and wraps all the way to the front of the engine. This creates two problems. First, the engine wiring is mixed in with the gauge cluster and steering column wiring, but those go different places on the 818. Second, the wires are way too long. The simple way to do it is just to use the extra length to fold the wires back and plug them in. A lot of people are doing this and it works fine, but it's the main cause of the rats nest in the tunnel.

I separated the two connectors (B100 and B200) from the rest of the main harness all the way back to the ECU. With the exception of about six wires, all of them run directly to the ECU. Since the main harness is a total mess, I just unplugged each wire from the connector, pulled the wire back to the ECU, and plugged it back into the connector. The only thing I need to fix are:

-Two ground junctions had to be cut because they involve wires from components that are staying at the front of the car. I just labeled the wires and I'll connect them neatly when the rest of the wires are laid in place.
-Two short wires go from the engine harness to the gauge cluster. That is no longer a short distance, so those will need to be lengthened. For now, I cut them and labeled them.
-There are two power circuits - one that is always hot and one that is hot is the start and run positions. Those are labeled and just hanging for the moment. Since I'm redoing the fuse box, those were always going to be re-done.

Here's what I have right now:



There's six or seven extra feet of wire bundled up in the middle. I'm going to shorten them. I think I might eliminate the Subaru B100 and B200 connectors and replace them with new connectors. That way I won't have any wire splices. On the other hand, there will only be about two feet of wire before the engine connectors, so that might be overkill.

[Jaime]

Getting there...





I have most of the wires running through the car done. I still have to do all of the grounds and the fuse box.

[AZPete]

Nice work, Jaime. Much less wire than mine, but I'm one of those guys you mentioned who hates wiring. Yes, I should have looked away, as you suggested.

[flynntuna]

I too have a wiring phobia, are you making any provision in the unlikely case that the fuel tank needs to be swapped out? The idea of having to deal with the harness is twice would put me in the fetal position LOL.

[Jaime]

I too have a wiring phobia, are you making any provision in the unlikely case that the fuel tank needs to be swapped out? The idea of having to deal with the harness is twice would put me in the fetal position LOL.

Just unplug the ECU connectors, the three engine connectors, the cruise control actuator, the rear light harness connector, and the new one I'm going to add on the fuse box wire bundle and the rear section of the harness is free.

After I get all the wires in, the harness will be cable laced and also zip tied in place. Removing the zip ties will leave the harness free, but it will still maintain its integrity. I'm not a big fan of using a cable covering unless the bundle needs to be protected. The wires in the pictures will all be under aluminum panels or under the dash, so they won't be covered with anything. Any wires in the engine bay will be covered.