Tarp 818r

[Mulry]

If I WAY recline the MOMO, we can get enough clearance. But it looks pretty damned uncomfortable.

For a clean sheet chassis design, I just don't get why there are so many issues...

[Mulry]

Update from the past couple of weekends. Sorry, no photos.

We were able to finally complete the custom buildout of the coolant lines from the radiator to the motor and back again. It should've been easy, and it wasn't brain surgery, but it did use a lot of silicone bends. We really didn't like the way that the FFR-suggested connections and corrugated pipe worked.

We pulled the steering column and put it in the press to reduce the overall length by 2". We may need to see if we can get more than that after we install the removable steering wheel collar, but this is better for now.

We installed the lightweight flywheel, clutch and pressure plate, transmission, clutch slave, starter, and transmission mount. Still have a couple things to do on the bottom of the motor to finish off everything down there but we wanted to get the transmission in its final position so we could start working on:

The additional work on the rear bumper, wing mount, and body stays. Based on the experience of others, we're reinforcing some chassis locations and then we're going to put in a more substantial rear tube bumper from end-to-end on the back of the car to prevent a punt from getting into the suspension. Should also protect the oil tank and other rear accessory items.

Finally got the accelerator cable installed to the pedal. What a total PITA that was. Once that was ready to go, we did final install on the frunk firewall aluminum and the clutch master cylinder. Nice to have that done -- also would have been nice if the manual advised that some of the inner fender panels go inside the frame. We'll need to strip out all the accessories we've installed down there just to make room for a drillmotor so we can drill holes for rivets to hold those panels. Argh. Also installed some remote battery terminals in the frunk with wires to the battery (located in the passenger footwell) to make it easier to put the charger (or jumper cables) on the battery in the future.

We have most of the brake hardlines run. That's been interesting to learn how to do. Only 2 of those yet to run are from the ABS pump to the rear wheels, and then the clutch hardline. Will need to build a stainless braided line to connect to the clutch slave cylinder but I want to have all of the accessories on the front of the engine -- alt, oil pump, and the oil pump drive mandrel -- fabricated and in place before we decide on how to locate the clutch slave line.

We're revising the radiator mount to get it slightly lower to the ground. Our original mount was higher to make sure we didn't get it below the floor, but since we lowered the floor at the nose to get it flat all the way back to the frunk frame, we have a couple inches below the nose frame to play with. Should provide for better airflow into the radiator and the AWIC heat exchanger and more clearance for the hood to close without any interference with the radiator cap.

We've been test fitting body panels on/off a lot, and that's neat to see. There's still a ton of work to do -- like installing (fabricating and installing?) the exhaust, and getting the seat to work in the way we want to work, but we will soon be flirting with go-kart stage. Except that we have to design and fabricate a ton of the electrical system. More work will get done this coming weekend. Cheers.

[Mulry]

Very brief update because I'm excited: FINALLY finished doing all the brake and clutch hardlines. What a PITA. But so glad that I bought the Eastwood brake flare tool.

[dallas_]

Nice to hear about your progress.
I need to drop by again one of these days to see it in person.

[grathke]

I started reading the build, nice going. Learning a lot as I go thru the posts. I may have missed it, I'm wondering how you wired it. Stock harness? I'm interested in your experience in this area.

Thanks
Glenn

[Mulry]

I started reading the build, nice going. Learning a lot as I go thru the posts. I may have missed it, I'm wondering how you wired it. Stock harness? I'm interested in your experience in this area.

Thanks
Glenn

We're still working on the electrical system, it will probably be about the last major system to be completed. We are starting with the stock harness. We've weeded it to some extent but will likely remove more wire from it after we get the engine running -- it's a lot easier to start pulling circuits at that point and re-connect them as necessary as we're running the stock ECU.

[Mulry]

Nice to hear about your progress.
I need to drop by again one of these days to see it in person.

Back gate is open, I'll be out there until around 5:00 this afternoon if you're out and about and want to swing by. No rush, no worries if it doesn't work out or the SLC is calling you

[Mulry]

Progress continued this weekend. First up was to finish up the rear wing structure. After fitting the silver swedged arms, we decided that we still weren't happy with the stability, so we added another location point and the gold arms (which I had in a bin from another project back when we were racing the MR2). This triangulates the front of each of the wing vertical mounts, so it should not move. We found that we may be flexing the bar that they connect to on the chassis, so we need to think about if/how we want to add some additional structure to that to prevent it from flexing once the wing is under load:

IMG_4908.JPGIMG_4910.JPG

I was messing around with fuel system stuff a fair amount last week and determined that we needed to revise the fuel pump mount from the CF one that we'd worked out. The goal is to make the fuel pump setup easily replaceable in the event of an in-race failure by simply removing the feed lines and then the entire pump and pre-filter setup and drop in a new one. The prior CF plate worked fine in the front of the car (with the 5-gallon cell), but it needed to be revised to fit behind (and slightly below) the large endurance fuel cell. Because the CF is so hard on blades, we cut a new one out of scrap aluminum (I think this piece was the original "floor" panel for the chassis, which is now steel-floored) and put that together, with cut outs at the front corners to accommodate the mounting points for the fuel cell in the passenger floor. This one should work in both locations now, as seen with this photo test-fitting the endurance fuel cell:

IMG_4911.JPGIMG_4912.JPG

Ben did some hacksaw revision to the turbo coolant header tank, taking off the lower prong that interfered, then welded in some tabs for mounting the tank. We need to revise the fitting to the coolant return tube along the top of the motor and then this piece of the build should be complete.

IMG_4913.JPG

We also built a throttle cable bracket to the front of the intake manifold and got the throttle cable mounted, but we think we probably want to design/fabricate/install an adjustable throttle pedal stop on the floor to prevent stretching the cable while in use. We did a couple other things that I don't have photos for, including figuring out how to use the FFR-provided cables for the shift linkage. They are WAY to long for the MR2-based shift lever but it looks like we will be able to make it work with some creative cable routing.

Finally, we finished up welding the new floor of the car, then worked on installing the 17" Kirkey Series 45 full containment seat (which is the widest that seems like it will fit in the car -- the driver's side shoulter restraint is _just_ inside the roll cage. FINALLY we have a seat that will allow all of us to pass the broomstick test without having to modify the roll cage. We've decided that our best bet is to use this seat without the seat cover and instead create seat inserts for each of the drivers for the car, which ultimately should be more comfortable and safer. We also finally concluded that we could use a chassis that's about 4" longer in the middle section -- everybody feels like this is a go-kart because their knees are so high. So this will cause some challenges with locating the shifter and the switchgear for the driver, although we are going to move most (if not all) of the critical buttons to the steering wheel area. Am really glad that we didn't get a bigger steering wheel, it wouldn't work at all. I was worried that we would need to compress the steering wheel further, but I think the wheel-driver distance is pretty good -- it's the pedal cluster that's really the problem in terms of driver leg position, but there's nothing we can do about that short of a total pedal cluster redesign...

IMG_4917.JPGIMG_4916.JPG

I need to stop thinking of new problems to solve.

This car had better be fast because I don't think it's going to be super comfortable to drive.

[longislandwrx]

This car had better be fast because I don't think it's going to be super comfortable to drive.

it doesn't look super comfortable to weld either

[DanielsDM]

We went through the same process regarding the seat. Ended up with a 17" Ultrashield seat, each driver will have their own insert. Mine will need 1-2 inches of foam at the bottom so I can see over the dash (5'7") whereas Andrew (6') will have nearly none to pass the broomstick test. We pushed the pedals forward as far as possible to help with leg room, will have to make a new sheet metal cover for the front firewall. We are moving the dash back about 3-4 inches so any switches can be reached when strapped in.

[Mulry]

Work on the 818 was sidelined for a couple months while we did final race prep on the BMW for the Lemons race at Road Atlanta at the start of December, but we got back at the 818 over the Christmas holidays. Work was a little here-or-there due to other obligations, and of course the first thing to do was some workspace cleanup/re-org and getting re-acquainted with the project. But after that, we got back at it.

We have a list of things to finalize on the engine, but because it was so unseasonably cold here (in the upper teens in the garage yesterday – fortunately the propane heater made it livable), we decided to leave those until it warms up a bit and worked mainly on stuff on the chassis, including:

Cleaning up the superfluous bracketry on the steering column, then modifying same for mounting the AiM MXL2;

Modifying the stock dash panel to better fit the R chassis;

Creating an ABS vertical blockoff panel at the top of the front firewall since the factory fiberglass doesn't really work with the brake and clutch reservoirs and other modifications we've made to the frunk area;

Modifying our steering wheel and installing the wireless steering switch assembly and the NRG steering wheel quick release;

Final installation of the radiator and AWIC (including AWIC heat exchanger temp sensor and final routing of all frunk coolant lines);

Design routing for frunk coolant overflow lines;

Installed brake pedal travel sensor for AiM data capture;

Fabricated and installed battery terminal cables;

Fabricated and installed wiring loom for fuel pump;

Fabricated and installed oil line from remote oil filter to Accusump in/out/checkvalve manifold;

Revised installation of oil pressure sender;

Fabricated and installed remote oil pressure sender braided stainless line;

Fabricated and installed wiring looms for fuel and engine oil pressure sensors;

Fabricated and installed electrical panel and installed supplemental electrical components (including wireless steering wheel switch remote box, RaceCapture box, membrane panel control box, and aux fuse and relay panels); and

Revised stock clutch slave cylinder line to work with new components.

There were probably some other things, but that's what I kept track of in the notes.I think we're finally getting to the point where we are checking off more things as we go than we are adding more things to the to-do list.

I need to order a few parts (turbo blanket, some fluid fittings for the overflow cans, etc.) and if the weather gets warmer (like above freezing) then we'll get back at finalizing the engine stuff and the oil drive setup. Sorry for the lack of photos in this update, maybe better for next time. Cheers.

[EODTech87]

Which wireless steering switches did you use?

[Mulry]

The Cartek ones. I saw that NRG sells a similar setup (via an eBay seller), but I can't really find any reviews on it. It's probably a knockoff of the Cartek one -- probably even from the same Chinese factory.

[EODTech87]

I was looking into something similar so please keep us update. I also noticed your in Dallas. I'm located near Fort Hood and will be moving to the DFW area sometime this summer.

[dallas_]

Mulry, glad to hear you're back on it.
And yes, it was cold!

[Mulry]

Progress continued this weekend past. It was nice to have the garage in the 40's and 50's (ambient) and not have to run the heater or be worried about all the heat escaping out the garage door. We definitely crossed off more lines on the to-do list than lines added, which leads to a strong feeling of finally pedaling downhill on this project. Tasks completed included:

Fabricating a plug for the coolant passage on the rear side of the engine-top coolant manifold. I think the original one was intended to send hot coolant to the heater core and also circulate coolant through the throttle body. I simply cut off the existing tube and then capped it with a welded washer, then leak-tested it and re-installed it;

Confirmed that all unneeded vacuum ports are sealed off;

Re-installed the throttle cable bracket.

As a result of the above, the engine is ready to go back into the chassis (for good) after we complete design/fabrication/installation of the dry sump oil pump.

Other tasks completed:

Wired up the coolant fan and AWIC pump electrics to replaceable connectors;

Received and installed barbed tube connectors to allow final installation of front radiator and AWIC overflow tubing;

Replaced seals and RTV'd the remote oil filter mount to finalize that installation;

Repaired wiring to new fuel pump and installed new Deutsch connector for easy replacement should fuel pump fail;

Final installed fuel cell on passenger floor, including:
fabrication and installation of straps across top of fuel cell enclosure;
installation of fuel vent bulkhead fitting at floor;
cut & installed fuel vent hose from bulkhead to fuel cell;
fabricated & installed electric wire harness for fuel level sender to AiM dash

Here's a couple photos:

IMG_5261.jpg

This is the plate to which the fuel pump and the pre-pump fuel filter attach. I've had some dimple dies for a few years but never had a great reason to use them before. Not that this is a great reason -- it's just thin aluminum anyway -- but I wanted to try them out for reasons that will become more clear below. Pretty fun!

IMG_5262.jpg

Supplemental electrical panel. The idea is to send 12v from the battery to the hot bus bars, then segregate it out to each of the additional race car-based circuits on the GEP fuse boxes. Those will also host some supplemental relays for circuits from which I could not re-appropriate relays from the stock wiring harness (transmission oil pump and cool shirt water pump are two examples that come to mind). It's a lot easier to wire this up out of the car and then drop the entire panel into place than to do it all bent over the car, so it's easier to do a neater wiring job this way (learned from experience). Once I have a better grasp on all the wiring looms that will go on this, I'll dimple die this panel to give it some extra rigidity for movement in and out of the car while working on the wiring. Once it's finally assembled, we will bed it down with some silicone caulk to ensure that it's not rattling around. All the components (other than the GEP boxes) are installed on small rubber isolators to limit the vibration on the electronic assemblies inside. Also shown here are the membrane panel box (we're using a membrane panel instead of flip switches for most functions that can't fit onto the steering wheel buttons), the Cartek box (for the steering wheel buttons) and the RaceCapturePro 2 (for telemetry of the data logged by the AiM).

IMG_5283.jpg

Fuel cell. This is a 22-gallon fuel cell, which is larger than we'd like but it's what I have on hand from a prior project. We will eventually replace this with a smaller cell to comply with E0 class rules for Thunderhill (or put a bunch of those empty sphere things in this one to limit the capacity). The fill plate has more I/O's than we need but it also had the space necessary for implementing the fuel level sender and the fill neck. We will route the fuel fill through the passenger door to an as-yet-to-be-specified fill plate. I suspect we will have to fabricate our own fuel fill neck as I'm not thrilled with the ones that I can find on the market. That's the vent tube on the left side, it has a check valve on the fuel cell to prevent leakage if it goes upside down. The line itself goes to a bulkhead fitting on the floor in the rear corner of the passenger side of the chassis.

Next weekend will be devoted to BMW engine work on the Lemons car, but will hopefully be back to 818 work the following weekend. Cheers!

[Mulry]

It's been a couple weeks of good progress on the 818. Things are really flowing downhill now.

The primary goal has been to get the dry sump oil pump system designed and prototyped. After several revisions of the 3D printed models for the brackets and the plate to which the brackets mount (and which, in turn, mounts to the backside of the stock alternator bracket), we finally have one that fits and is properly in line with the drive mandrel on the front of the crank pulley. Like on all the car shows on TV and YouTube, that sentence shrinks about 3 weeks of work into mere seconds of review for you, dear reader. The next step is to mill the brackets from billet aluminum on the Bridgeport (or the Haas, still haven't decided which one to use) and then do a final test fitting before re-installing the engine in the chassis. We will probably need to change a pulley and/or belt length, as the pump ended up being closer center-to-center with the crank than we anticipated. Here's a couple photos of the 3D printed prototype:

IMG_5395.jpg IMG_5394.jpg

We also sent the exhaust header out for ceramic coating after unsuccessfully attempting to wrap it in exhaust header wrap. The individual pipes were just too much of a PITA and I didn't think we'd get good coverage on them; in addition, they are so exposed to potential road damage compared with headers on a more traditional motor that the wrap would be more likely to fail sooner than later. So those will be re-installed after we get the motor back in the chassis again.

We completed design, fabrication, and final installation of the steering column and the mount for the AiM display. We decided to simply fabricate a plate and weld that to the top of the stock steering column so that we could retain the stock steering column angle adjuster, but could bolt it to the FFR-provided steering column brace. Then we painted the column and the AiM brackets in order that they would be less visually distracting. In that same area, we completed fabrication and installation of the fixed seat mounts, including additional welding at the chassis for the mount studs (build tip: anything that has to be installed vertically inside the chassis is a lot easier to do if it gets placed on studs than trying to install bolts later). We also installed hard mounts for the racing harness and installed those to spec. Also modified the rear firewall so that the rear seat support bolts through the firewall in order to make sure we pass tech using this seat. We intend to use custom foam inserts for each driver rather than a seat cover in order to maximize driver safety and comfort:

IMG_5399.jpg IMG_5402.jpg IMG_5403.jpg IMG_5404.jpg

While the engine remains separate from the chassis, we fabricated and installed a mount for the oil tank and for the transmission oil cooler pump. The oil tank is a Butler Built ex-stock car tank that mounts primarily through the rear set of bolts but then is flanged at the front to ensure that it's not going anywhere. The transmission oil pump mount was just a flat plate to which we installed weld nuts prior to welding it to the chassis. The trans oil cooler and the engine oil cooler will be mounted on the inner side of the rear fascia of the car, cooling air to be ducted from the slats in front of the rear wheels. We need to glass in the ducts that we got from FFR to complete that. Both coolers have fans so hopefully between the ducting and the fans, we will be able to maintain appropriate oil temps in both systems.

IMG_5400.jpg IMG_5401.jpg

Work on the electrical system was temporarily stalled by the discovery that the terminals for the main auxillary fuse panel were incorrect, so replacements were ordered from Mouser and hopefully will arrive today. I'm excited to get work done on the supplemental (race) electrical circuits. We will further weed the Subaru harness once the engine is running to remove dead weight and reduce troubleshooting complexity.

The fire bottle was installed deep in the passenger footwell. It should be fairly accessible for when we need to have it serviced, but we left room for the installation of the cool suit cooler between the front of the fuel cell and the fire bottle.

IMG_5405.jpg

Finally, we fabricated a coolant overflow bottle to attach near the turbo header tank from an aluminum bottle that was donated to the effort by some other racing friends. Ben really went all out to fancy it up with some spare metallic paint that was in the paint locker:

IMG_5406.jpg

If anyone reading has any advice regarding electronic boost controllers and BOV valves, I’d love to hear it. We are planning to dyno tune the stock ECU but want a better-than-stock EBC, and I’ve heard that the Greddy knock-off BOV’s leave a lot to be desired in terms of holding properly, but I’ve not identified any specific equipment that I want as replacements. Any suggestions would be welcomed.

Cheers!

[dallas_]

Coming along. Looks like I need to drop by and see it in person.

[Sgt.Gator]

Great Progress. Thanks for the pics.

[Mulry]

It's funny how you can spend a lot of time on the car and not always have a lot to show for the effort. But that's how it went this weekend. I spent a lot of time working on organizing wire locations and then actually running wires and placing terminals for the additional electrical circuits. There's probably at least one more full day ahead of me on this part of the build, and even then it won't be finished because many of the locations for final component installation aren't fabricated yet (like for driving lights or transmission oil cooler). And I need to add a couple of grounds to the chassis to make circuit completion easier without running a lot of ground wire.

For those playing at home, I'm using a GEP 72-position power distribution center for most of the new circuits, and then a GEP triple-relay PDC for what I thought were going to be the big power draw circuits. Both of them have really robust silicone seals on the cover and on each individual wire terminal and a very positive wire retention mechanism. Only downside is that the terminals that CE supplied with the 72-position PDC were incorrect, but that was remedied with a quick Mouser order and the new Metri-pack GT280 terminals work great. One tip: get the dedicated Metri-pack crimper rather than trying to use the all-in-one or replaceable-jaw crimper for those. The dedicated crimper works about 500% better than the others and is well worth the moderate price for the elimination of frustration and the better quality of the crimping.

I've been surprised that a lot of the vehicle components don't have the draw that I expected. For example, our transmission oil pump is only 6amps. I'm using a relay that is way oversized for that.

There was a really interesting series of articles on MotoIQ about the re-wire one of their authors was doing on Project Lexus SC300, and I've been following some of the advice there. My work method is different and I'm not using the really expensive Deutsch circular connectors at firewalls because I don't want to invest hundreds of dollars into those (although they are dead sexy), but I really appreciate the philosophical approach that the author uses and am trying to emulate that, within reason. I've wired enough race cars at this point to know what a mess it can become as you ad-hoc along the way and am trying to avoid that on this build.

Another tool that I picked up that's been really useful in this process (other than Excel -- which is probably the most useful tool for me in keeping this part of the build organized) is a Dymo Rhino label maker. I've used an Epson label maker a bunch on this and prior projects, but the Dymo Rhino has an advantage in that they make cartridges of heat-shrink tubing that you can print right onto and then seal onto the wire itself. I don't do that on all of the wires, but it has been very useful thus far for labeling wires that I know I'm going to have to come back and finish up later when the electrical component gets installed on a chassis bracket that's not yet itself built. The 1/4" size is good for 18 and 14 gauge wires and the 3/8" size is good for when you have 2 14-ga wires together.

The BMW came back from OKC so that I can do final pre-race prep on it for our early April race at NOLA, so that will probably slow down my 818 work, but I'm going to try to get the electrical system all bolted down and located on Saturday before I get into BMW mode. Here's a couple of exciting electrical system build-out photos for you. Cheers.

IMG_5421.jpg IMG_5424.jpg

[longislandwrx]

If anyone reading has any advice regarding electronic boost controllers and BOV valves, I’d love to hear it. We are planning to dyno tune the stock ECU but want a better-than-stock EBC, and I’ve heard that the Greddy knock-off BOV’s leave a lot to be desired in terms of holding properly, but I’ve not identified any specific equipment that I want as replacements. Any suggestions would be welcomed.

Cheers!

most of the ebcs on the market are just relabeled ots parts with a cool logo stamped on it. some manufacturers tote "custom windings" or "upgraded components" but basically they are ots solenoids.

the exception being the perrin pro which was designed from the ground up from scratch, all metal, works super fast, easy to tune, that's the way I would go.. I GS/COBB/ETC are all nice, and will all work fine, but for a few bucks more i'd go with the pro.

as far as blow off valves, go with the GFB hybrid super fast response, nice sound, still recircs (you choose the percentage).

[Mulry]

Thread back from the dead (again). Lemons car is on hiatus until later this summer so I can hopefully finish the 818. Have done some more work on the electrical system since last posted (but not much - although we've gotten much better with Deutsch connector use on the Lemons car thanks to our 818 experience, and vice versa). I finished up the exhaust a couple weekends ago (photo below), will probably move the trans oil pump to reduce chances of heating that up with the exhaust.

We've also decided to add a halo cage to the top of the car. NASA requires that open cars pass the "broomstick test" now and it would've been close for us with one or two of our drivers. So on Sunday I cut out some door bars to make room for the cage. Really looking forward to doing that. Here's photos as proof of life:

IMG_6372.jpg

IMG_6563.jpg

[Mulry]

We've completed a good bit since the last post. We decided that we needed to swap pedal clusters, as the car was just too uncomfortable for us with the factory/donor pedals. We installed the OBP Pro-Race V2 pedal cluster with reverse-facing floor mount master cylinders so that we could get the pedals as close to the front firewall as possible. Then we added remote reservoirs for the brake and clutch MC's. Will need to revise some of the brake and clutch hardline to match. No photos of that.

As noted in this thread, we attended a NASA race a couple weeks ago in which another 818 suffered a frame crack, so we installed a gusset and some tube to help stiffen up the chassis in the location where he had that failure. I won't go into depth on that here since it's all in the other thread, including the as-installed photos.

We also vapor honed the surface rust off the MR2 shifter and put a couple coats of rattle can wrinkle black on it:

IMG_6660.jpg

Finished up the fuel cell install and all the fuel lines. Will need to cover all of this with another aluminum panel to pass NASA specs (I think), but here's the fuel cell sitting in the passenger seat area:

IMG_6661.jpg

We also (finally) finished up all the routing, mounting, and hose creation for the dry sump lubrication system. Mounted the oil cooler and then designed and 3D printed a plenum so that we can bring in cool air from the side ducts into the oil cooler:

IMG_6667.jpg

We loosely fitted the rear facade and the sides so that we can start doing some work building a proper rear bumper/bump protection that will also protect the rear wheels a little bit in case we get around somebody a little squirrely on track (because we would never get squirrely ourselves...). It was exciting to see the body on the car after so many years in just frame stage. so we decided to finish off the engine cover and put that on too just to see what it looks like:

IMG_6671.jpg

Also started modification of the rear diffuser to accommodate the exhaust system, so we'll finish that next weekend. After that, we will be designing, bending, and welding in the new halo cage and some additional rear bumper structure. Will mount the trans cooler either to the rear body or off of the new bumper structure on the passenger rear side so that we can plumb clean air from the passenger side air duct to that cooler and then out the rear.

[Mulry]

We've gotten more done the last couple weeks, including some wiring work (no sexy photos there). Finished up the fuel pump mount from 3D printed materials and got that installed, then finalized the fuel hose fabrication and install. Need to leak-test it all soon.

Also final-installed the new pedal cluster after installing all the braided stainless lines. Re-configured and had to make a couple new hardlines to get it all to work, but that's all plumbed now. Waiting on a new cap adapter for the pressure bleeder and then we will fill the reservoirs and bleed down the brake and clutch hydraulics to see if it's all holding or if anything needs fixing. Thank God I bought the good Eastwood flaring tool.

Filled and pressure-tested the AWIC cooling system with no leaks. Engine coolant system had just one leak, the slight tube that goes under the engine from the water pump into the nipple on the bottom of the passenger side engine head. We're in the process of rebuilding that line and then will re-test next weekend. Otherwise, no leaks, which was very encouraging.

Finalized the dry sump oil lubrication system and tested that, video of that in the dry sump thread:

https://thefactoryfiveforum.com/show...l=1#post364387

At this point, we need to do the remaining static fluid testing (fuel, brakes, clutch, and re-test on engine coolant) and then the mechanical systems are all ready to go. We need to order and install the Wilwood brake kit before we do the brakes testing. Then we just need to finalize and test the electrical system and we should be ready to go-kart. Exciting times at TARP Racing!

[Mulry]

We are almost ready to start the engine and go kart. Need to finish weeding the harness and testing the circuits, then build a temp panel for switchgear.

We decided to fully cage the top and have ordered, and received, a front windshield and windshield surround. We feel that the cage will make the car safer in wheel to wheel action, and the windshield will reduce the chance of face impacts from other flying debris. All of this pushes back the finish date of the car, unfortunately. It's already taken longer than we wanted, but we'd rather get it right the first time (or at least as much as possible).

On a very positive note, we received the wheel order the other day. We ordered Team Dynamics ProRace 1.2 wheels via DemonTweeks in Wales, UK and they showed up a couple weeks ago after a long summer of waiting. 6x 15x7 for the fronts (17's were going to rub the chassis at the tub) and 6x 17x9 for the rear. Pretty happy to get them and have matching wheels on all 4 corners, given the dearth of great wheel options. Here's what they look like:

IMG_7323.jpg

[Frank818]

Those rims look super strong!! How much do they weigh?

I didn't know it was possible to run 15" tires.

[q4stix]

Stock WRXs brakes, at least up to my model year (07, not sure about later), matched rally spec diameters which is why they can fit a 15" wheel. I'm sure the rules and classes have changed by now but that's the original reason.

I like the wheels too!

[Mulry]

Lots of availability in 15” slicks from Hoosier.

15” wheels are right around 15# each. 17” are closer to 20. Would love to have gone with forged wheels but at double or triple the cost per wheel, just wasn’t in the budget oven that we need multiple sets for racing. This gives us 2 sets of slicks and a set of wets.

[biknman]

I'm running 15x8 TA Superlites with 23/9/15 Hoosier Slicks Front with 65% of turning radius and 15x10 TA Superlites with 23/11.5/15 Hoosier Slicks in the rear on Wilwood late model four piston calipers with 11.75x1.25 rotors using bolt on 5x4.5" hubs (350Z) mounted to knuckles from TSS Fab.

Murly any updates on the roller status? Question: If I missed it sorry but are you placing the prob valve on the front calipers like manual states or the rear calipers?

FYI doing the same wireless switch panel on the steering wheel as you but your further along than I. I plan on using it as "switch to grounds" controls mostly as I'm running a ECUmaster PDM with it if it works.

Thanks
Dave

[Mulry]

Just reread my first post on this build thread. "Our goal is to have the car on the track by spring 2016." HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. The Lemons car and about 10,000 things (of which the 818R is only about 7,500) have certainly conspired against that.

That said, #coronavirustime has been very good for our progress. We ultimately decided to just completely strip out the Subaru harness and build a full custom electrical harness. This took up a good bit of this spring, but now we know where everything goes and that it's in good condition. We wound up using 3 separate GEP fuse/relay boxes plus a smaller 4th one. All the switches are either on the steering wheel or a small membrane pad, other than the hard kill switch, a hard start/ignition switch, and the switches for the turn signals and hazards (because we are still hoping to get it street legal).

As noted briefly above, we had also decided to do a cage around the driver, so we did that this spring too. We also decided that we liked the safety add of the windshield, so we ordered just the windshield surround and glass from FFR and test-installed that so that the cage matches the windshield. One of our drivers is muy, muy tall, so the cage is taller than the rear roll bar (and the windshield) but safety first, right? (I'll add some photos).

The big news though is that after all this time, we were able to roll the car out into the driveway and got it to start and run on its own! It's running rough -- clearly needs a tune -- but none of the fluid systems leak and the dry sump seems to work like a champ. Stays primed between starts, too, which is nice because priming it with a drill motor is kind of a PITA, but that's what we did before we test started it. And then turned it over on the starter with plugs out and fuel off just to make sure all the bearings were lubed before first fire.

And here's one thing that will be of benefit to the community. We designed and 3D printed a rack stop for the steering rack for use in ease of front end alignment. We have one of these from a BMW race team that we use on the e36 Lemons car when we align that and figured it would be easy to make and use one on the Subaru rack too. Basically what you do is turn the steering wheel to the passenger side past center, push back the passenger side steering rack from the center, drop in the rack stop, and then re-center the steering wheel. The stop is the correct length so that when you have it pinned between the rack ends and the inside of the tie rod end, the rack is dead center. This prevents us from having to count turns on the steering wheel every time we align the front end. Cheers guys.

[Sgt.Gator]

We need pics!

[Mulry]

Sorry, that's fair. I totally forgot to append the prior post, so here you go. The photos in post 02, above, show what we cut out from the chassis as delivered from FFR. Here's what we added:

IMG_8222.jpg

We temporarily installed the windshield surround in order to get the angle of the front hoops correct. In the photo it looks like the driver's side one interferes with egress by the driver, but that's not really the case. We've found it not very difficult to get in and out of the seat through the "window" opening, although the halo seat definitely makes it tougher. We figure the additional safety factor is worth it, particularly since for most of the racing that this vehicle will see, speed of driver change is irrelevant. The angle of this photo makes the bar connecting the roll hoops at the top off the windshield appear to be higher than it really looks in real life, as you'll see in one of the photos below.

IMG_8223.jpg

This one shows the additional backstays we installed. We think the chance that the main hoop would fail rearward was negligible at best on the stock design, but with the additional roll hoops, we wanted to pre-empt any questions by a tech inspector. This photo was taken when the bars were being fitted and tacked in; they have subsequently been finish welded.

IMG_8292.jpg

This one shows the addition of the roof diagonal, which goes from the node at the driver's side a-pillar/top of windshield to the rear part of the passenger roll hoop just before the roll hoop makes its turn down to the main hoop. Also visible are the gussets at the roll hoop/windshield header node. We formed this bar after reviewing approved designs for Spec Miata roll cages. It would make egress through the roof more difficult, but better than a diagonao going the other direction.

As I noted in a post on Gator's thread, we have been working on getting the engine to start and run nicely. We had several vacuum leaks, which was the initial cause of the VERY rough running condition. After plugging those, we determined that the MAF has probably gone bad due to the weird un-correlated data stream it was outputting. We've ordered a new one and will try that, but if that doesn't solve the problem, we may need to switch to using speed density tuning. Cheers!

[Mulry]

We replaced the MAF, then found one more vacuum leak (so it may not have been the MAF after all). But the good news is that we now have a motor that starts, idles, and revs! We need to do a rear end alignment and zip-tie some loose cables and I think we are pretty close to being able to go-kart it in the neighborhood. Here's the start-idle-run video:

https://youtu.be/jtd2pShYwtI

[Mulry]

Well, we've decided to sell the project. Need the garage space for other projects. See post below for more details, photos, etc.:

https://thefactoryfiveforum.com/show...18R-Kit-12kOBO

[Sgt.Gator]

2015 to 2022. Sorry to see you moving on. What are your next projects and where can we follow them?