The Start of a Journey - Metros Build Thread

[STiPWRD]

congrats man, glad the pick up went well!

[AZPete]

Congrats on a successful pickup. I enjoyed the story of your adventure with fun, fear and snow..

[metros]

Over the past few weekends I've made some decent progress on the kit.

When I first got the kit home I had to clean everything because we got caught in snow on the way home. Unpacked the body panels after cleaning them with Optimum No Rinse and gave the chassis the same treatment.

First up I had to inventory the numerous boxes full of parts. Once that was taken care of I was anxious to get my hands on the kit and get started.





I wanted to hang the suspension first but had a few necessary parts on back order. Instead I started on the front firewall. The aluminum panels come hung on the car with 1-2 metal screws each. In order to rivet the panels to the car I first marked the panels for the cross bar locations. Then remove and mark at 3 inch increments incorporating the holes that were already there from the original screws. All very time consuming as you have to space the rivet holes of each panel to coordinate with each other.



Once the aluminum panels are drilled they get re-installed to drill the chassis for rivet holes.

The aluminum panels can get riveted on as is. But I wanted to dress them up a bit as aluminum shows everything and is difficult to keep clean. I saw another 818 builder use Herculiner, which looked good and would help deaden some sound. I decided to do the same.

Each panel had all the rivet holes de-burred with my die grinder and scotch bright prep pads. Then the panels were scuffed and cleaned with acetone prior to herculiner treatment.



Before riveting the panels in place a bead of silicone is laid where all contact with the chassis is made. This is to prevent squeaks/rattles.

Panels installed




I'm in the process of doing the same for some of the panels in the cockpit.

[metros]

I also finished de-powering my steering rack. In order to do this I had to strip the entire steering rack apart and remove the seal. While it was apart I painted everything and replaced the inner/outer tie rods as well as the rubber boots.



I've also been painting the raw steel brackets that fill all those boxes shown in my garage. I'm using rustoleum black gloss with primer and it's producing great results. I'm also clear coating all of these brackets.



My painting area


All of these parts are being scuffed with my die grinder/scotch bright prep pads and cleaned with acetone prior to paint.

On Deck:


Door bars - Yes, these will be installed in the doors and won't ever be seen. But the voice in the back of my head said to paint them up just like everything else.



Next up - Finish prepping the lateral links with new TiC bushings and FCAR bushings for the front LCA. Install a new gates timing belt/water pump/tensioners on the engine. Remove intake manifold/valve covers for powder coat. Continue on cockpit aluminum panels.

[TahoeTim]

good progress

When i built my Cobra, I sent all those parts to the powdercoater. I may paint them this time around.

fyi I coated my cobra panels with spray can undercoating. I may do that again but it is a messy tar coating.

[wleehendrick]

Nice writeup and good progress. I used 3M rubberized undercoat on my chassis panels with a similar scotchbrite and acetone treatment, sticks well really deadens the sound. I sandblasted and powdercoated all my bare steel gloss black... so your chassis looks a lot like mine! Recently Ive been prepping my body panels... sanding down the rough fiberglass and using the same 3M material on the inside... looks really nice there too!

[metros]

Thanks guys.

I'm still trying to decide on what to coat the inside of my body panels with. Initially I was going to use herculiner. But now I'm considering lizard skin sound deadening just because it'll be a lot thinner than the herculiner.

[Goldwing]

I'm going the sound deadening route as well. I'm holding off on the inside of body panels for now. I'd like to reinforce a few panels like the lower front bumper, for crack protection as it seems a bit of a weak spot (perhaps necessitating a splitter?), and hood trunk pieces to allow for hinges and latches. Once I get that all sorted, I'll coat the inside body panels as well. Since all of that will involve fiberglass work, I'm keeping them bare to allow for better bonding.

[Xusia]

Thanks guys.

I'm still trying to decide on what to coat the inside of my body panels with. Initially I was going to use herculiner. But now I'm considering lizard skin sound deadening just because it'll be a lot thinner than the herculiner.

You might want to check this out: http://www.hytechsales.com/prodsc.html Same thing (original, as a matter of fact), but significantly le$$.

Another thing you might want to consider is spray foam - and I'm not talking about the crap in the can you get at Home Depot. I'm talking about real spray foam: http://www.sprayfoamkit.com/products/spray-foam-kits

It's both an excellent sound deadener and thermal insulator, it has adhesive properties as well (which can help quell squeaks, rattles, etc.), and it weighs little. Something to think about...

[metros]

^^^Thanks for the suggestions.

This week was a lot of prep work for the front suspension. Progress was slow as it seemed like I took 2 steps forward and 1 step back. Several trips to the hardware store and had to repaint one bracket after modifying it.

First off - more organization! Searching through a 12x12" box for hardware was getting old. Separated out all the hardware for easier searching.



Installed Turn in Concepts FCAR bushings


Prepared the front LCA to accept the Koni suspension. I purchased these aluminum LCA from a 2006 wrx specifically because that's the only year that these are aluminum - lighter and stronger than the stamped steel donor LCA. Drilling your aluminum LCA is something that requires double and triple checking first. The top side bracket was originally painted and ready to go. However, I found I couldn't got a socket down between the uprights in order to tighten the hardware. I clearanced the sides just a touch to allow my socket to fit and then repainted them.



The bracket pictured on the right is bolted on the opposite side of the LCA, effectively acting as a large nut/washer for the top bolt/bracket.



Front Koni Shocks - 500# springs - both are the 818R equipment that I upgraded for my 818S. These are double adjustable.

Assembled:


The rear donor sway bar is used in the front of the 818. My donor came with a whiteline sway bar that had served the previous owner for a number of years (evidently). The only thing that didn't have a coat of rust on it was the Whiteline sticker.

Start:


Surface rust ground off and etched with POR15 prep and ready.

[metros]

After 2 coats of POR15 - I ended up doing one more coat.


Put the upright brackets on the front knuckles - Still need to find 2 of the donor rear strut bolts.


Is the below orientation of these bushings looking correct to everyone else? The manual just states to switch sides, unfortunately I already had them apart and can just barely make out the details in the manual picture.

[metros]

Are the inner/outer CV boots the same part number? I can't find a part number for the rear outer cv boots anywhere, but can find the front/rear inner.

[longislandwrx]

No different part numbers.

I don't have the Subaru PNs as I use the EMPI kits... rear outer is 86-2131D

front inner is 86-2450D

[metros]

Thanks!

[RM1SepEx]

Your lower control arm bushing are oriented correctly

[metros]

Made some decent progress this week. Really felt good to start bolting parts on to the car instead of spending time preparing parts.

The lower control arm bracket that I showed last week was re-painted and bolted to the front LCA (aluminum). The front LCA rear bushings were upgraded with TiC FCAR bushings and ready to go. I sourced 4 new grade 8 bolts for the upright to knuckle adapters. My OCD kicked in again as I didn't want to use 2 old bolts and 2 new bolts. Then I could only source 3 of the properly sized bolts, which I eventually found a 4th after visiting several hardware stores (M14x2.0 60mm BTW). The front struts/shocks were assembled and ready to install. Now the fun part, putting it all together!





I had everything for the front UCA prepared to install, however I received 2 different balljoint mounts that I'll have to sort out with FFR before moving forward. See below - one mount is perfectly flat and the other has the balljoint at a clear angle. Frustrating but I can see how that would be easy to do.



Continued the painting of brackets - it's never ending!


Then I started on the axles for the 818. Due to the engine/trans being in the rear of the 818 you have to mix and match the 4 donor axles to account for that. You take the inner CV joint of the front axles and the outer of the rear axles to make 1 set of axles to use in the rear of the car. Then the front bearings are held in place by the front outers only.



Front inners disassembled, cleaned and ready to install on the FFR axle shaft.



Overall not difficult to dis-assemble this end, but cleaning gobs of bearing grease is never fun. The inner cv cups will be getting sanded and painted.

That's all I had time for this weekend as I had to do some work on the house this weekend and spent some time enjoying the beautiful weather as well.

All this work sure is tiring though!

[Frank818]

Funny how the shop-vac looks EXACTLY like the shocks. Both the colors and the shop-vac hose vs shock's collar.

[metros]

Ha, hadn't noticed that until you pointed it out. Craftsman shopvac subconscious advertising.

[longislandwrx]

That top bolt should be a M16... your M14 is probably loose?

[metros]

Top bolt on the knuckle to uca adapter? Both bolts were tight through the holes. I actually had to lightly tap them through because of the paint in the hole itself.

I'll double check them though.

[longislandwrx]

Yes. Unless FFR shrunk the hole which would not be a good thing. Take the knuckle out and fit the bolt to just the knuckle first.

untitled.png

Note the big bolt on mine.
WP_20140401_001.jpg

[metros]

^^^Replaced those bolts with m16 bolts and yes they were a better fit. Thanks for the heads up.

My focus this week was to finish setting up the axles for the 818. As I said in the previous post, the 818 uses all 4 axles to make a set of rear axles. Factory five provides axle shafts and you use the front inner CV and rear outer CV to create the rear set of axles.

Last weekend I pulled apart the front inner axles and cleaned everything. Over the week I sanded and painted the cv buckets.

Outer axles in process of removal. These get positioned in a vice and you have to pound the inner race to get them off the axle shaft.



The sprocket looking thing is the inner race.


Once I had them apart I cleaned as much grease out of them as I could and repacked them with Redline Synthetic CV grease.

New shafts with new rubber boots ready for the ends to be installed.



818 Axles ready to install: Also shown is the finished product of my sway bar refurbishing.


I started prepping the pedals for install.

Rusty:


Ground and sanded - ready to paint


I also did the same for the gas pedal. But that needs to be modified for the 818 before I can paint.

I also completed the final part of de-powering the steering rack. A lot of builders will just tie the ports together. But that just leaves useless lines that aren't visually appealing wherever they are. Instead I followed another builder's idea and cut the stock fittings off the power steering lines and had a friend weld them closed, then grind smooth and paint.

[metros]

As the build is going along I'm realizing that I need to work at the step I am currently on as well as several steps ahead in order to prep. This makes progress slow as you're hopping around to several different areas constantly.

This weekend I:

Finished the lateral links by installing the Turn in Concepts bushings. Ready to go now.


Set up the 'Very Cool Parts' trailing arms. These will allow me to run wider wheels/tires in the rear than the stock trailing arms. I'm debating between 17x9 rear wheels and 18x9.5 rear wheels. I'll be using a 265 series tire, which is more easily available in 18" diameters but that adds weight overall. Decisions.



Installed the front upper control arms. Prior to installation you need to thread the balljoints into the UCA. A note to future builders - grease the threads on both initially and thread it on, then remove and clean the grease before re-installing. The balljoint threads are full of paint/powdercoat, which takes a ton of force to cut through. Afterwards you can threadlock the threads for permanent installation.

Front suspension:


Had the steering column ready to install, then realized I hadn't set the mounting brackets aside. Very frustrating to have everything ready to install then realize you didn't keep the mounting brackets. I've got a set on the way to install next weekend.



Loosely installed the adapters for the rear hubs/suspension. Should be able to hang the rear suspension next weekend. *Crosses fingers*



Overall I'm enjoying the build and seeing parts come together.

[metros]

Parts!

I received some of the crucial parts of my build today. From 'Very Cool Parts' I received the AWIC set up that I'll be using and the K-Tuned Shifter - which is just as badass as I anticipated it was going to be. My local Subaru experts at Mach V Motorsports set me up with a CSF radiator, valve cover gasket kit, colder spark plugs, new o2 sensor, axle nuts and group N trans mount. All of the above was ready for pick up with just 2 days notice. Thanks Mach V!

Pictures:




K-Tuned Shifter - such an impressive piece. I cannot wait to sit in my 818 and feel the way this thing shifts. I would anticipate it'll shift nicer than my s2000 did, which was glorious.




Sunday updates will show progress I've made over the weekend.

[metros]

I didn't make a ton of forward progress this weekend. I'm trying to remind myself to enjoy the journey and not focus on completion. At times that's hard to do because progress is slow compared to what I'd like. Personality wise, I need to see/feel progress to be satisfied with any project I'm working on.

I was able to mount the steering rack.



I also had to go back and redo a portion of the firewall. I didn't read far enough ahead in the manual and realized that the steering column bracket needed to be bolted on before the firewall was installed. I was able to drill out the rivets, install, and re-install the firewall in an hour.

The rear suspension was fighting me this weekend as well. I was planning on re-using the stock rear lateral links with new Turn in Concepts bushings. However, with those installed and the hubs mounted I can't get the rear trailing arms to line up with the hub. The toe adjustment isn't getting to where everything lines up nicely. If I get aftermarket lateral links then I can adjust rear toe to where everything lines up nicely and then re-adjust at alignment time.

Going to make time this Friday to get some things accomplished.

[Frank818]

I also had to go back and redo a portion of the firewall. I didn't read far enough ahead in the manual and realized that the steering column bracket needed to be bolted on before the firewall was installed.

Shouldn't the bracket installation then be located on a page before the installation of the firewall?
It's kinda of weird to read page 350 to do a step before page 267.

[metros]

I would tend to agree with you. To be honest I was unaware of said bracket until the manual revision came out. At that point the firewall was already installed.

If that's the only thing I have to redo then I'll be happy.

[metalmaker12]

Looking good!! I used Bedlinered on my wheel well and should have on my front aluminum like u.

[metros]

Progress!

After wrestling with the stock lateral links last weekend and not getting everything to line up due to lack of toe adjustment, I decided to upgrade to the whiteline units that would allow camber adjustment and lots of toe adjustment. With these units it was still a wrestling match to get everything cohesive but I think I'll be much happier with the additional adjustment that these provide.

I'm also using the VCP trailing arms to allow wider wheels/tires. I'm planning on using the Mach V 'Wicked Awesome' in the rear, which is 18x9.5 +42.



Lots of toe right now:


Front outer cv joints - As you can see these won't be attached to anything. They're only there to keep the bearing in place and happy. Plus the ABS sensor will be using them as well. This weekend I popped all the original ball bearings out of it and cleaned it up.



Michael Everson master cylinder mounting flange. This is an add on that's used solely to level the master cylinder mounting out, instead of the weird twist that the FFR hardware uses. Very happy with the quality of the piece. Maybe next weekend you'll be able to see how the master cylinder looks all mounted in place.



Pedals! If anything makes you feel like you're making progress it's putting the pedals into the car! Gas should be installed next weekend. So no vroom vroom noises until then. Anybody have pictures of the gas pedal bracket installed?

This is after finishing painting them up with POR15.



Next Weekend:
-Paint steering column adapter
-Finish pedal install
-Look at mounting ABS unit

[Frank818]

Your lower control arm bushing are oriented correctly

Tnx Dan.

[07FIREBLADE]

I didn't make a ton of forward progress this weekend. I'm trying to remind myself to enjoy the journey and not focus on completion. At times that's hard to do because progress is slow compared to what I'd like. Personality wise, I need to see/feel progress to be satisfied with any project I'm working on.

I was able to mount the steering rack.



I also had to go back and redo a portion of the firewall. I didn't read far enough ahead in the manual and realized that the steering column bracket needed to be bolted on before the firewall was installed. I was able to drill out the rivets, install, and re-install the firewall in an hour.

The rear suspension was fighting me this weekend as well. I was planning on re-using the stock rear lateral links with new Turn in Concepts bushings. However, with those installed and the hubs mounted I can't get the rear trailing arms to line up with the hub. The toe adjustment isn't getting to where everything lines up nicely. If I get aftermarket lateral links then I can adjust rear toe to where everything lines up nicely and then re-adjust at alignment time.

Going to make time this Friday to get some things accomplished.

I feel your pain about the steering column bracket. I did the same thing except that my bracket got lost during transit and I didn't realize that was the missing box. Took 1.5 weeks to figure it out and get another made and sent to me. Talk about back tracking.

[STiPWRD]

Great progress! I've gotta catch up

[metros]

Thanks, you've got to update your build thread. I've been curious how far along you are.

[dougkirkbride]

This steering column bracket you speak of......... is this just for certain year donars? i have a 06 wrx wagon donar - chassis 115 and dont seem to have a bracket or remember reading in the manual about a bracket. I am ready to put firewall on and dont want to do it twice. I have had steering column in and all seems good. am I missing something?

Thanks

Doug

[metros]

I think the bracket is used across the board, but I could be wrong. Here is the manual revision that shows the bracket. Take a look through your boxes as mine was separate in it's own white box with hardware, easy to overlook.

https://www.factoryfive.com/wp-conte...-1i-update.pdf

[RM1SepEx]

the earlier frames had the pedal mount welded in. I think that the bolt in section is an update to allow easier install of the Wilwood pedal assy

[dougkirkbride]

thanks for the info Metros and dan. i think mine may be welded in, is this bracket the 3/16 or 1/4 thick plate the pedal box front mounts to inside the car? does anyone have a picture of this bracket by itself, before installed?

thanks Doug

[metros]

Yes the pedal box mounts to this bracket.

[dougkirkbride]

Thanks Metros.......I looked back through your thread and saw ware you just had the alluminum sheeting on ware the bracket goes. Mine was welded in. should be good to go on the sheeting.

[metalmaker12]

Progress!

After wrestling with the stock lateral links last weekend and not getting everything to line up due to lack of toe adjustment, I decided to upgrade to the whiteline units that would allow camber adjustment and lots of toe adjustment. With these units it was still a wrestling match to get everything cohesive but I think I'll be much happier with the additional adjustment that these provide.

I'm also using the VCP trailing arms to allow wider wheels/tires. I'm planning on using the Mach V 'Wicked Awesome' in the rear, which is 18x9.5 +42.



Lots of toe right now:


Front outer cv joints - As you can see these won't be attached to anything. They're only there to keep the bearing in place and happy. Plus the ABS sensor will be using them as well. This weekend I popped all the original ball bearings out of it and cleaned it up.



Michael Everson master cylinder mounting flange. This is an add on that's used solely to level the master cylinder mounting out, instead of the weird twist that the FFR hardware uses. Very happy with the quality of the piece. Maybe next weekend you'll be able to see how the master cylinder looks all mounted in place.



Pedals! If anything makes you feel like you're making progress it's putting the pedals into the car! Gas should be installed next weekend. So no vroom vroom noises until then. Anybody have pictures of the gas pedal bracket installed?

This is after finishing painting them up with POR15.



Next Weekend:
-Paint steering column adapter
-Finish pedal install
-Look at mounting ABS unit

Your only in the second round of a 12 round fight, but your ahead. Lol