Mechie3's 818S

[Mechie3]

Not many updates on my car itself, but a few fun stories to share.

1: We had a huge cleanout at work. We scrapped over 10 full size dumpsters (the long ones that are delivered by 18 wheelers). The rule has always been that as parts are scrapped you can grab items you want for personal use. The only thing not allowed is reselling (ie ebay). Our centrifuges have a 4' x 3' .125" thick aluminum back. about 75% of it is clean. No holes, no slots, nothing. I snagged a bunch of these to use for prototyping brackets. Score! I was running low and almost at the point of needing to buy material. Many dollars saved!

2: Two years ago I bought an 02 WRX with 184k miles for $3350. Did some maintenance work when I first got it, sold parts I didn't need, and swapped parts from my wrecked 06/818 donor as needed (trunk, coilovers, subframes). Friday I drove home from work and hit my driveway right at 200,000 miles. I parked it and never drove it again. Guy came last night to test drive it and left with it. Got 90% of my asking price and sold for $5400.

[AZPete]

What? Bought a 10-year-old WRX for $3,350, put 16K miles on it in 2 years, then sold it for $5,400. What a country.

[Mechie3]

Pretty much. I saw bugeye prices getting ridiculous. Hard to say no to that given I had minimal attachment to the car.

[Frank818]

You are still in the process of designing the side scoops, side louvers, front hood louvers, front bumper louvers, rear deck lid louvers, front hood hinges, rear deck lid hinges and middle rear deck lid hinges? Don't leave us alone on that, we need you.

[Mechie3]

I am. Progress slowed a little this week as I did final touches on the WRX I sold. Tomorrow is the final autocross points event. I may or may not have awesome news tomorrow.

[Frank818]

Craig we all appreciate your work a lot.

[Mechie3]

Turns out I do indeed have awesome news. Today's autocross went off amazingly smooth in the fmod. Top 3 in overall year end PAX were within 5 points with me currently in the lead. I managed to extend my lead to 10 points and clinch the year end PAX championship win! Points are given as a percentage of your time compared to top pax so it's possible for two people to both earn (for example) 95 points per event. My old region gave 50 for first and 45 for second, 42 for third, etc. Made it easy to get runaway wins. Indy regions ratio method makes for fun exciting ends and plenty of good natured trash talking.

[Brando]

That's pretty darn cool. Props!

[Rasmus]

Nice win man. Always feels good to be on top with good natured trash talk among you and your competitors/friends all the way there. Spend $2000 to win a small plastic trophy that you can lord over your friends for a few weeks. Good times!

Also got a link to how that Percentage of Points system works for your regions PAX competition?

Say
Top guy ran a 60.000s (PAX adjusted)
2nd 60.250s
3rd 61.000s
4th 61.001s
....
....
100th (last) got 84.500s

How many points do they get in that case?

[Mechie3]

Year end PAX winner gets their name added to a traveling trophy. There's several national and multi national champions on that including current national champ (and 5 time total) Clemens Burger in B modified. It's taken me 5 years to get back on top (I won PAX in CNY in 2008, but that was a smaller region with no national champions, Indy has at least 5...I'm not one of them, lol)

Per event:
The top guy gets 100 pts
Last gets 10
In between gets 100-(150*(competitors time-top pax time)/top pax time)

It's essentially taking the ratio of your time to top time and giving it a 1.5X bonus factor to give slightly more reward to the top guy. Thus, for the times you listed they would get the following points:

60: 100pts
60.25: 99.38pts
61: 97.5pts
61.001: 97.5pts
84.5: 10pts

If the 150 in the equation was made 100 (ie, direct ratio) then the 60.25 guy would end up with a 99.58 and the 61s guy would have 98.33.

If you do it straight up 1st gets 50, second gets 45, third gets 42, then subtract 1 for each place after, the 60.25s guy is already down by 5 points. Do that at a good handful of events and you can walk into the last event untouchable. It rewards getting first place more, but leads to less tight competition.

[RM1SepEx]

Congrats Craig, and you did it with a fast, high PAX vehicle too!

We just do it in inverse order of finish, if 100 competitors best PAX gets 100 2nd place 99, slowest gets 1, we also drop events so it can get complicated when you take pax and class entry/finish points from events, you never know who is running for what, which is more important to them!

[Mechie3]

This forum is moving! I don't update for 9 days and I drop to page three.

Few new pieces.

New design for the coolant bracket.



Revision 2 prototype of my rear AWIC mount. Reversed the bends and corrected the 2 axis offset for the mounting hole. We'll see how it works.

[Mechie3]

Had friends over for dinner last night but managed to find 5 minutes to test fit this piece. Fit perfectly! Need to spot weld the seams now to make it permanent, but I at least know that the geometry is right. I can just fit a finger between the AWIC core and the engine cover and there's a smidge of clearance over the push style clutch (pull style will have plenty of room). Even without the front brace installed it's extremely stiff. I wouldn't want to rely on just a rear brace though. A brace for the body would be good too. Straight from FFR it sags in the middle. That will only help my clearance.

[metros]

Dear Santa,
I would like a zero db AWIC brace, rear fender brace, t-shirt, and hinges x3.

Updated brace looks good.

[Mechie3]

T shirts were done printing today. They're in NY though (where I'm from). My brother is picking them up for me. AWIC brace will be ready once I finish the front brace.

[Rasmus]

Like V2 of the brace. Nice work.

[Mechie3]

Sometimes I ponder to myself "if it's noon, but I didn't machine anything, is it really lunch time?"

Brace for the front of the AWIC core. We'll see how well I measured my roughly cut cardboard template.

[Rasmus]

Q: "if it's noon, but I didn't machine anything, is it really lunch time?"

A: No.

[Harley818]

And the rest of us are thinking....... "mechie didn't post anything today so I guess he didn't stop for lunch"......

and secretly we are thinking...... I wish i had equipment like that to use for lunch......

Keep it up Mechie

[Mechie3]

Made an adjustment to the bracket to fix a misalignment in angle. It fits now but wasn't as smooth as I wanted. Going to make another tweak to it.




On the right is what the non clocked turbo version will look like. I still maintain that the clocked version is better (1/2 piping length, fewer bends, fewer couplers) but not everyone wants to clock their turbo.

[thall818]

I like it. I'm guessing people don't want to clock the turbo due to oiling issues? or is it due to hooking everything else up and all the changes?

Also, I can't see your BOV on the clocked version. Is it out of camera view or am I just not seeing it?

[MrDude_1]

I love it how I have idea after idea, an then someone else does it. Clocking the outlet, and running it to the A2WIC flipped the other way was the first thing I thought of, back when I first saw one on an 818.

[Mechie3]

I like it. I'm guessing people don't want to clock the turbo due to oiling issues? or is it due to hooking everything else up and all the changes?

Also, I can't see your BOV on the clocked version. Is it out of camera view or am I just not seeing it?

Only the compressor housing is clocked. The CHRA and exhaust housing don't move. The reason you wouldn't want to do it is because you have to remove the snap ring, drill a new locating pin hole (the easiest part), and put it back. It's not hard just can be a little nerve wracking the first time you do it because of the size of the snap ring. It helps to have a big set of snap ring pliers.

The BOV is in magic land. I'm going to machine off the right hand side mounting pad, face off the front, and bolt it directly to the IC just like stock. It's a knock off Greddy BOV with all aluminum parts (vs some knockoffs that use plastic pistons). Initial reviews were good, Google didn't show any long term issues so I'm willing to give it a go.

I love it how I have idea after idea, an then someone else does it. Clocking the outlet, and running it to the A2WIC flipped the other way was the first thing I thought of, back when I first saw one on an 818.

I'll be honest, it wasn't my idea. When I was googling/researching setups in Subarus I came across a very similar setup and liked it so borrowed from it. They used 3 90's because the subaru chassis didn't allow the use of the one metal tube.

[Mechie3]

Here's where the BPV mounts. I machined off the boss I didn't need, made a flat spot, drilled a hole to pass the air through and tapped two M6 holes. My setup wasn't great so I had to take off more than I initially wanted to. Still ended up with a ~.2" wall and 4 threads to bolt to.

[Rasmus]

Nice use of space for the BPV. Excellent choice of location.

[Mechie3]

Just another idea I borrowed from google images.

[MrDude_1]

excellent packaging. I really like it.
While you're drilling and tapping the intercooler, are you going to add a bleeder valve on the water side? or is it not needed?

[Mechie3]

That's the plan. I just ran out of time during lunch today to get that far. I need to make a jig to hold these and adjust angle better. My setup was slightly hokey and took way too long to setup and machine because it wasn't rigid enough.

[Hindsight]

Mechie, when you clocked your turbo, did you have to modify the support bracket at all to resolve any clearance issues between the compressor housing and transmission? I see it looks like you modified the wastegate bracket (unrelated).

[Mechie3]

No. The only thing I had to do aside from the wastegate bracket was separating the coolant feed and return lines (thin piece of metal connects both for faster factory assembly) so I could massage the location of the lines if needed. Also had to massage the oil feed line slightly.

[C.Plavan]

Are the Front Hood Louvers available yet? Any thought of doing the rear "trunk" panel also?

[Mechie3]

Louvers are going out for quote Monday along with 8 other pieces. I have a cad model for the trunk lid louver. Have not had a chance to make it to test fit yet.

[Frank818]

8 other pieces.

Nice.
Once you get all the louvers and hinges ready, I think my order will be big

[Mechie3]

Those 8 pieces don't count hinges. Lol

[metros]

Damn it! 8 unknown additions means I need to re-adjust my budget again. My build budget has really become more of a monthly budget than overall budget.

I too have been holding off to order several things all at once.

[Mechie3]

You've seen most of the pieces already.

Front AWIC bracket
Rear AWIC bracket
Driver side HE bracket
Passenger side HE bracket
Hood Louver
Turbo Heatshield
Turbo heatshield support bracket
Revised coolant bracket
Turbo clocking bracket

Still need some tweaking before quote:
Trunk latch (4 unique pieces)
Trunk Louver
Rear AWIC bracket for non clocked turbo

Still a decent ways out:
Front hood hinge
Shifter mechanism
Naked rear license plate/diffuser mount
Naked rear GT3 style bumper insert

[Frank818]

Oops, no side scoops on the "decent ways out" list...

[Mechie3]

Those aren't laser cut so I didn't put them on that list.

[Frank818]

Oh sorry, thought the list was meant for all other parts, not just the laser stuff.

[tmoretta]

Any thought of a hinge system for the trunk panel over the engine (behind seats)? It would be nice to check the oil without removing pins.