Since I heard from Stewarts this morning that my 818S is now In Phoenix and should be here next weekend I think it’s a fine time to join the build threads and contribute. I’m doing a father and son build with my dad. He’s 70, I’m 43. We have each owned, restored and raced Lotus Europa’s although at different times. More recently he owned and raced an Acura NSX and a while back I spent a year building a Monster Miata (See YouTube link) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCRLMTwDfXE I also have some build picture in the album associated with my profile.
For our 818S build we started with a 2002 WRX sedan as our donor with around 87K miles with driver’s side front corner damage. After we dissembled the car, clean and painted our parts and performed a timing set replacement on the motor (timing belt, tensioner, idler and water pump). We removed our intake manifold, replaced all the cracked vacuum lines we plan to retain. During the disassembly I re-built the main engine harness and removed all four TGV connecters as well as the power steering pressure connecter. We then performed a TGV delete ourselves and mounted the manifold back on with phenolic spacers to help with heat soak. As our 2002 had a catalytic converter in the uppipe we removed it and fabricated our own. We cut off the existing flanges then bored them out on the lathe and welded in a mandrel bent piece of 1.75” ID exhaust pipe and had it coated. We also replaced the font wheel bearings and pressed in new seals.
Currently we are working on the electrical harnesses and have finished removing the ABS and air bag systems from the headlight harness. We have finished deleting unneeded wires and connectors from the primary fuel pump harness and just started on the rear wiring harness and trunk cord.
I would like to give a big thanks for all the great information provided so far. It’s made the start to our build so much easier already.
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