soccer05

Passenger air bag and glove box reinstalled. I had no idea how much the air bags weigh, what an easy place to cut off approximately 20 pounds for a track car. This is a street car though, so some concessions ahd to come into play, and the air bag stay for passenger safety. Take note of the quality of the end product on the dash, clean crisp lines throughout, easy to clean with a vacuum, etc. I am very happy with the end product, in a market where so many products can fall short on quality or finish, I love it when products meet my high expectations.


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soccer05

View of the interior nearing completion. Still need to flock my clock pod in the center of the dash as it had a small crack from removal (just brittle from the sun). So I need to put a light coat of bondo over the crack, sand flush, then flock. Shouldn't take long, but I am putting it off until I can get the car running (getting close).


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soccer05

Just noticed the last pic had some trim pieces missing on the drivers side. This is how the complete interior looks now, still missing the clock pod as described above. I am tired of covering pics of the interior, let's get back to the good stuff under the hood.


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soccer05

Whiteline 24mm Adjustable front sway bar all prepped for install. I wrap the mounting points in teflon tape to reduce friction and noise, then throw the mounting grease supplied by Whiteline over the teflon and mount. Starting to get things all buttoned up to start this baby up.


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stupidchicken03

iTrader: (38)

no response huh? lol

soccer05

Front Sway bar installed just snug. It is important to not tighten sway bars to final torque specs until the car is at ride height to prevent preloading the suspension. Sway bar is all greased up riding on a thin layer of teflon tape to reduce friction and noise. Here is my kick *** Mooresport MSI spherical front endlinks. I started a thread so the community could find out about these parts, as I truely feel they are step above what is typically found in the aftermarket scene. I feel it is essential to have a high quality spherical endlink to get the most out of your swaybars and suspension. They allow 0 compliance, so as seen as the sway bar moves it is transferring force into the chassis, allows proper corner balancing (corner balancing sucks with rubber and is only slightly better with polyurethane). I had a bad experience with my previous spherical endlinks wearing out at what I felt was a rapid rate, and these use very high quality spherical bearings. I can not tell you how much searching I did to find a set of endlinks to meet my needs, so hopefully that explains why I am so excited to find a part that met my needs and price point.

Car is starting to look pretty good, and like a car again...


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soccer05

Front Sway bar bolted up, endlinks adjusted to approximate length for corner balancing. Notice the little things in this picture, header coated to help spool the big turbo, front suspension arm has much of the anti lift taking out of it, when at ride height the lower control arms are parrallel to the ground to ensure proper suspension geometry with a lowered stance, etc. It costs a little more, but I much prefer the look of functional performance over the stance nation.


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stupidchicken03

iTrader: (38)

ahh just copy pasta from nazioc

Soccer05 Bugeye GTX3071 ej205 Street/Track Build Thread - NASIOC

soccer05

Yes, brought my build thread over to i-club, hence the reason it is the exact same title, and my screen name is the same, etc. I thought my car was worth posting, and I am excited I have it running and the end is in sight. I hadn't seen an earlier post from you, I will look back through and see what you had asked and get back to you, had to finish bringing my car over.

Update- Just saw your post, thank you for giving me 15 minutes to respond to your previous 2 comments, I got back to you within 30 minutes, thats pretty good for online stuff. Now that the thread is caught up let me know if you have any questions and how you like the build thread.

soccer05

Thanks, glad you're liking it.

soccer05

As I mentioned the other day, I am a little behind on this build thread. I buttoned up my immediate projects, triple checked all torque settings, fluids, and connectors. Then cranked the car over and miraculously, the old subie fired right up. I can't tell you how happy just that made me, as I was so worried that I had ****ed something up and would be spending a month tracking down a gremlin or two that was preventing the car from getting tuned and back on the road.

I must say the wrx sounds downright viscious, the Perrin header, APS up-pipe and 3 inch catback exhaust give it a definite menace, a good deep throaty sound. I joke around and say it sounds like a pissed off go cart. So I had reflashed an OTS Cobb accessport stage 2 tune for 91 octane gas per CObb's recommendation, although they said the equal length manifold would make the tune not optimal for driving around, but fine to bleed the air out of the coolant. I have a fire extinguisher at the ready, as the header wrap is smoking constantly, as they do for the first couple heat cycles. So I bleed the coolant, with a carefull eye on all dash gauges, and notice I have an oil leak, that has dumped about a half quart of oil on the ground over ten minutes at idle. Frustrating to say the least, but at least the car fired up properly. My first instict was that I had either blown the rear main seal or the Killer Bee oil pan had a leak in the rear (like I had not tightened properly the pan bolts), as it was coming down over my power steering rack.

Fortunately I have had the car broken down and completely apart, so I know how to do this process relatively easily. First off drop my headers..


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soccer05

Unbolt the motor mounts from the subframe, then jack up the engine so I can access the back of the pan. The back of the pan is dry as a rock, so that was not my leak. I checked around my flywheel, no oil there (thank god I would have been pissed if my 800 dollar flywheel and clutch was covered in oil). So I start snooping around and find this. The picture is hard to see but my oil return line is attached to the block but not to the turbo. I remember at the time thinking, wow these are really flimsy and a half *** solution, but its oem I'll roll with it. Now I have to get this hose back on. Fortunately, with the GTX turbo all these fluid connections will utilize AN fittings so there will be no leaks. Also, I was lucky and none of the oil got on my Up-pipe or header wrap.


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So, fortunately I know what the problem is, didn't seriously damage anything, and can now fix the issue.

soccer05

Dropping the top half of the downpipe and APS up pipe to get to turbo oil drain hose to fix the leak I found on initial start up. That stupid oil drain hose is a bear to get to, I tried to shortcut the job and see if it was possible to reattach the hose without removing these components but I was unable to. I am so happy I will be upgrading my new turbo to stainless steel lines and AN fittings, if I wasn't every hose connection would be properly secured with at least worm style clamps to give some semblence of reliability. I can not believe an oil line (albeit one under low pressure) is secured with spring clamps in such a high temp area. Fortunately, I am getting to know the lil wrx pretty good and can drop these parts in a relatively short amount of time. Believe it or not, that was one of the reasons I did so much of the job myself, I really wanted to get to know the car like I do my little 240sx. I can confidently say I am getting pretty close to that familiarity level after this job.


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soccer05

Looking down into the engine bay with just the turbo remaining. I unbolted the turbo and was able to reattach the oil drain line in a proper manner to ensure no oil leaks. I must say, for how much this engine was apart this was a really simple problem to fix, very happy it was not the oil pan or worse, the rear main seal.



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soccer05

All parts reinstalled and torqued to spec. Double checked all fasteners to ensure tightness and nothing was missed, suspension, exhaust, engine, everything double checked. Got out my funnel to bleed air out of the coolant system. Everybody who does this type of work should invest in one of these funnel system, it creates an artificial high point in the cooling system so you can bleed all the air out, ensuring robustness in that coolant system you paid so much money to operate at its maximum efficiency. I had a fire extinguisher next to the car if anything weird happened, even though I was expecting it I never get used to the car smoking from the header wrap. It smokes a lot, had to get a fan to blow it through the garage (no cross wind on that summer night), as I said before the engine sounds sinister at idle with my choice of components, can not wait to hear it at 7500 rpm wailing with the bigger, less restrictive turbo and external wastegate. Should be fun... but first steps first, we are getting there. By the end of the idle session the car through the check engine light, which is no surprise from my level of modification. Cobb warned me it would happen, code was P0171 for a lean left cylinder bank. I double checked for a vaccumm leak, couldn't find any, so Cobb thinks its just the equal length headers which the car is not tuned for. No biggie, the car is getting trailored to the body shop for fender work, then gst motorsports for the fun stuff.



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