Another Swap, project Starbuck (aka Kara)

Sell it as fast as I can I'm not a fan of the Evo X.

 

I got a **** ton done this weekend, but not as much as I wanted to. After hoarding parts for months and doing research I thought it would go smoothly. It did not. Some things to note:

• I need a transmission jack so I don't almost kill myself again, or at least use my two jacks.
• I need to test fit my Tomei headers next time before getting them ceramic coated.
• When you need parts go to MAP, they get **** done.
• When you need wheels fixed go to Twin City Wheel Repair in Whitebear Lake, he's a magician.
• When you need random parts check out https://mnsubaru.com/threads/subbie-parts.49192/ The dude has a bit of everything and it helped me put my rear-end back together (not that rear-end you weirdos)
• Threads in the rear diff for the studs are a ludicrous M12x1.75 pitch.
• STI aluminum lateral links need transverse links (duh) but you can't buy them alone, they are $100+ and require the purchase of the ENTIRE lower control arm.
• STI lateral links are mounted upside down from what the GC8/WRX's are (the end-link bracket points up) and STi end-links are different and shorter because of it.
• I hate cars.

Some weight differences thus far:

• stock headers and up-pipe - tomei EL headers and up-pipe: 31lbs - 23lbs = 8lbs lighter
• stock RS brake kit - stoptech big brake kit (caliper and rotor): 27lbs - 23lbs = 4lbs lighter per front wheel (not rotational, rotor was 1lb heavier)
• bilstein coilovers - agx struts (front): 17lbs - 11lbs = 6lbs lighter per wheel
• bilstein coilovers - agx struts (rear): 19lbs - 14lbs = 5lbs lighter per wheel
  
• GC8 lateral links vs Aluminum STi links: 7 1/2lbs - 4lbs = 3 1/2lbs per side
• Total: 41 1/2lbs

I'm not going to go into what I did in detail, but here's some pictures with rough outlines.

Here's a crappy mockup I did of what the car will be like when it's done, except 3DT deleted my calipers... sweet bros.


Some of the parts, some of them are on now, I wish they were ALL on there now.


The wheel's rim all effed. The person in Malaysia bondo'd a new rim to the wheel and did a good job, when the coating place chemically stripped it, fell off.


The wheel after repaired... the rim is absolutely perfect.


Brake comparison, I'm going red calipers though, I decided against black.


Clutch installed with the new lightweight flywheel (that's 1lb heavier than my older lightweight flywheel) but it's new and shiny and will be more drivable.


Headers look baller now with the coating and installed. (Yes I know I need to change my oil pan, I have an entire brand new 06 STi setup just waiting for me to install it).


The car when I first started.


The car on the 4th, note the hammer and my tears on the floor.


More progress this week and many more parts to order, just don't tell my fiancée. I think she may kill me, but she's sleeping right now so I can type this.

 

Isn't it amazing how you decide to do a thing so you order a part and it suddenly turns into a thousand dollars worth of **** you had no plans to buy but did anyway?

 

It's an unfortunate rabbit hole I find myself in a lot of the time. I chose this hobby though so I only have myself to blame. This car is going to be done after this phase for a while. I needed stopping power and handling, the car was outright scary at times. I didn't post this but the rear caliper wasn't even together! You can see where it scraped against the wheel, so then that became a priority. The bushings on the trailing arms are toast so now that's a priority. Which means I get to buy a press today.

Oh and I noticed the PS rear wheel bearing isn't doing so well, so then I'll need to get those replaced.

Here's a pic of the caliper, much wow, such danger.

 

QFT, we'll see...

 

I bought the 12 ton harbor freight press and this socket set for pressing things:

http://www.harborfreight.com/21-piece-sae-3-4-quarter-inch-industrial-quality-socket-set-40996.html

 

Thanks retreif, that's a brilliant idea for the "tools" to push out the bushings. I got a press Tuesday but haven't started the work on the rear hubs.

This weekend was extremely frustrating. I spent about 3 hours trying to get my lower control arms to bolt up after getting transverse links, they did not work without me putting unwanted torque on the bushings. The problem it turns out is they're GD transverse links mated to the GC8 STi links. Anyway that and my chasebays power steering kit, etc just added up to a lot of wasted time.

I finally got the power steering kit installed. I ended up getting some group n trailing arms and pulled my rear hubs for their glorious transformation to the 2 pot rears I'm getting help from a member here.

A member here hooked me up with the above parts and helped me out a lot. They may even help me with the rear hubs. If you need any rally parts, engine blocks etc ask mke723. The guys have helped me out in the past. Here's the list of parts I've added.

• GD STi rear end links
• Stoptech rear 2 pot rotors.
• Stoptech 309 street pads for the rear
• Whiteline trailing arm bushings for the knuckles
• Torque Solutions drive shaft bushings
• Cobb shifter bushing
• Group N trailing arms
• New(ish) WRX steering rack

Anyway here's some pictures of my progress.





Oh yeah, I got the tires mounted and the wheels back from powder coating

 

I'm just passing on wisdom from Jeff the Alignment Guy.

 

I'm getting so confused by this point, so what combination of LCAs/transverses/laterals/end-links/sways have you got front and rear?

 

Not without direction though guyz! First some refreshers on what's what:

• Lateral Links: These are the two aluminum bars in the rear (they could be considered the rear's lower control arms I guess for simplicity, but not accuracy)
• LCA/Lower Control Arms: These are the front's lower control arms.
• Transverse Links: These are the little things about 4" long that bolt to the LCAs that allow them to have their bushing that bolts directly to the chassis
• Trailing arms are the bars in the rear that run parallel with the car and keep the toe and everything else in check under heavy load.

Rear:
Running GD lateral links in the rear will give it a bit more aggressive camber negative camber as they are a few mm longer, since they're STi GD lateral links they require GD STi end links. I'm running the JDM rear STi GC8 rear sway bar, which will be mated with the proper rear end link for the lateral links. The difference is they're much shorter and not C shaped anymore, this makes them stronger and harder to bend (which is why the STis point up and not down). The rear sway bar may be updated later this Summer after I take it out and see how the rear bias is. I want it to oversteer quite a bit, but not too much. The trailing arms are normal GC8 trailing arms with upgraded group n bushings, the lower knuckle bushing that's mated to this will be upgraded with the white line bushing I mentioned above.

Front:
Running GC8 JDM STi aluminum lower control arms, right now I have GD STi transverse links, however I'm trying to find the GC8 transverse links. This will set the front's stance up to a more normal camber, running the shorter lower control arms made for that vehicle's wheel base.

Steering Rack:
The WRX will fit in the GC8 JDM crossmember I have. I would have to get an 04 STi steering rack and they go for a lot of money because of that. For the money and effort of finding one I would only be going from a 16.5:1 to a 15:1. @mke723 had a new(ish) WRX steering rack that would make maintenance and install easier. Long term I will be getting a GD crossmember and will get a 2015 WRX (2015 STi is electric) steering rack as they are 13.5:1 which is 2 turns from lock to lock (like an Evo).

 

<s>I know EVERYONE is waiting with anticipation to hear about my week's adventures</s> So here they are!

Earlier in the week I got my grimmspeed master cylinder brace installed, it went pretty smoothly and it worked well with the L's single stage booster/master cylinder as one would expect. I also modified my 05 center cubby hole to make the wideband gauge hide under the little door and replace the area where the ashtray usually goes. After a lot of driving during the week I got most of the parts I needed to get this week on track. Also the drive performance came out about the car, there's a few weird things about it, but overall I'm pretty happy.



Saturday started with me getting new STi lower ball joints and realizing there's a thing called a transverse link boss (I feel like Subaru ran out of names for their ****). Anyway I was able to get those from my buddies @mke723 while they helped me do my rear wheel bearings/change out the rear plate to get it ready for the WRX 2 pots. That went more or less smoothly until I got home that evening and tried to put things together. When I would bolt the axel all the way in the knuckle would seize, come to find out we put the outer seals on backwards. That was only 3 hours of scratching my head. But you live and learn.

Lets see, oh yes Saturday night... I got to the rear Bilstein and put that in and everything looked wonderful. Then I put my wheels on to find out the tire rubs. At this point I was pretty much ready to set the car on fire. But I reasoned with myself, sat down and enjoyed the wonderful 85 F garage... I had been moving constantly for over 14 hours after-all. Going back to the coilover I figured I would try moving the spring up about an inch so it wouldn't rub on the tire and then jacking it up. I believe this simulates full compression, since that didn't rub and I could still stick my fingers in (TWSS) I felt pretty good.

Today I basically just busted my ass getting the other side of the car done and took a lot of ibuprofen. I'm to the point of the transmission, I ended the day with making a transmission stand to drain the fluid it shipped with. Mid week I'll get the DCCD swapped and put the last few parts back on. Probably to find out my new transmission doesn't work.

Also, side note: These dorks in VW's in another neighborhood I've always dreaded decided to come to my neighborhood because it has a hill. They proceeded to ride down the hill in an adult's sized big wheel for about 20 minutes then realized what I was doing and went total hella flush gang busters and drove by my house a few times then did VR6 burnouts out of my neighborhood. Kids man.



Missing the Transverse Link Boss y0!






Dat camber tho


Full compression


As it sits!

 

@JNendza003 that was really you wasn't it, Doughtcom's just too nice to call you out

 

Yeah, you got me Eric! But seriously... I'm assuming they were on Drift Trikes and those things look like a lot of fun!

VR6 burnouts are cool in my book too Too bad the dummies were doing them in/out of a neighborhood

 

^ That's awesome! He's no longer really part of the company, but he's around every now and then. I bet most of the people I work with don't even know he has a green outback, haha. He's a cool dude for sure and CL is a great place to work.

 

Awesome work man! That's a sweet car.

 

My issue (paper) of the Subaru Drive Performance "magazine"/"propaganda" just came in the mail today (I'm old and old skool). Congrats on the write up.

 

Thanks a lot guys! I'm just happy I can have somewhat of a life again

This last weekend was the one year anniversary since I bought the car from @wiggle_puppy coincidentally. And with that "Phase Two" is basically complete. I'm going to go into detail about what happened in a second, but it was intense. Overall feel of this thing is ridiculous. Granted after driving a 420+ AWHP Evo and taking this out on a humid day it was kind different but the car feels very good. I will be taking it in for a retune on 93 and E85 on the new injectors soon and a Hydramat is a requirement with how many G's this thing pulls now... and it only has my ghetto eye ball'd alignment. Soon Jeff will have his way with my suspension and I can't wait for that. With the rear end upgrades the backend feels planted, the negative camber helps with that as well I'm sure.

First a pretty picture:


Knowledge I gained:

1. Single stage brake booster is the way to go. Especially when coupled with the Grimmspeed master cylinder brace. It has no issues stopping the stoptechs and 2 pots. Yes the L brake booster is better than the dual stage STi/WRX/RS brake booster or at the very least on par. I have very firm pedal feel. Write-up here.
2. The wheels with 225's are too wide for my GC8 without rolled fenders. It's a depressing feeling especially coming from Evo land where I run 255's
3. My twin scroll honestly is scrolling slower with my Tomei headers, something is wrong, I even checked my IAM first thing thinking it was pulling boost targets or something.
4. The Tomei headers also seem to have fitment issues I'm working through right now, my downpipe is hitting my rear transmission mount.
5. Don't wrap your headers, it's stupid and a fire hazard. Go with a local company like I did and pay $100 or so dollars to get it ceramic coated. Tomei wants you to wrap them, I don't want my car to die in a fire.
6. Swapping out a center diff on a 5 speed is a trivial matter. It's about an hour job with the transmission out and > 50% of that is cleaning off the old paper gasket. I did have to swap out the input shaft on the back side to go into the diff though. I'll post pics below.
7. Out of all the bushings to replace (other than the obvious tranny/engine/pitch) I suggest the rear diff lockout bushings (front) and the trailing arm bushings (both). This will make your backend much more responsive.
8. The PSS9 Bilstein coilovers are incredible, granted I don't have much to compare them to... they're decently comfortable and have good spring rates. This is coming from the KYBs with STi springs that were on there.
9. The Chasebays power steering dress-up kit's reservoir is close to worthless... the cap doesn't seal properly. I just put teflon tape on the threads in hopes that it seals it. Also they don't ship their somewhat complex kit with any instructions nor do they have any posted... But the kit itself in other areas is top notch.
10. The Stage 3 Comp Clutch is incredible. Lots of grabbing force (however I am still breaking it in) and the pedal feel isn't much off from stock! It's also rated at 500AWTQ which we all know Subarus rarely see
11. The KAAZ rear diff is LOUD, especially with the lockout bushings in place. The NVH is definitely there now. With that said, this could be due to improper break-in prior to me owning it. From what I've read they are supposed to be quiet at highway speed and louder in situations like parking lots where you're making sharp turns.
12. Wheel bearings are a PITA to change. And the bearings alone are expensive as hell. Also if you do them and the hub is stiff and hard to rotate, this is normal apparently.
13. When you swap to aluminum control arms don't forget the Transverse Link Boss! Your new shiny STi ball joints won't work (see my post above).
    
14. IMO get a M12x1.75 pitch 1 1/2" bolt for the rear diff. It makes installing way easier and then you don't have to track down GD rear diff studs. Just do the old "double nut" trick to get the studs out. Also make sure it's a 8.8 grade!!!

Some of the issues I ran into upon first drive(s):

1. PS rear parking drums weren't calibrated right, had to take it apart and spin the tensioner twice =/
2. Rear diff knocking pretty bad, lockout bushings fixed that.
3. Too much toe out, had to fix that, nothing major.
4. There's TWO bleeder valves on the stoptechs, wups... that fixed a brake pedal feel issue I had.
5. My driveshaft as making terrible noises, I swapped the bushing deletes around so the thicker side faces the bottom of the car to add more space between that and the car.
6. "Scotty's cocktail" formula is about 1/3 a quart short, that wasn't cool. Luckily I had some mixed up already I could throw in.
7. Boost seemed, still seems, terribly low and the boost curve seems worse... still working through this.
8. Brake shields (despite moving them before) were barely hitting the rotors causing a the typical (I just upgraded my rotors) noise.

More parts, it never ends D:

• Rear stock tophats: the ones on there now are terrible and dead. I can't find Group N and it's apparently impossible now for GC8s.
• Cusco front front camber plates. These apparently work with the PSS9s, I hope. My front camber could use some help.
• AMS small battery tray, having a vertical/ghetto battery with the new handling is somewhat scary. Plus I'm missing an AMS sticker (just kidding).
• Black Perrin turbo inlet, I wanted to get this before I spend the money on a tune.

Adding HP one sticker at a time.


A picture! Of a car!


The top shaft (without splines) is for the DCCD, with the splines it didn't want to go into the DCCD diff.


Viscous diff next to the DCCD


Ready to receive the DCCD!

 

Good stuff man. Going to a single-stage brake booster has been on my list for a while, so I'm glad to hear that you tried it and liked it.

I'm not sure that Scotty's cocktail is really recommended any more?

That's weird about the boost issues, you didn't change downpipes did you, just headers right? The Tomei headers should not be so different than the OEM to need significant EBCS tuning changes... I'm wondering if you maybe have a pre-turbo exhaust leak now.

 

Thanks! Yes the brake booster is awesome.

It's been disputed over the years, I've used it in a few transmissions (my car came with it in it's transmission and worked fine for however many years). Supposedly it causes syncro breakdown, I have a hard time believing that with the luck I've had. But who knows! If Grimmspeed sells it and stands by it, that's good enough for me.

That's the exact thought I had, it doesn't seem like a boost leak (I've had a lot of those). However I don't hear any exhaust leaks or smell any exhaust in the front of the car. The Tomei is more of an EL header than the stock was (the stock was almost EL). But that should HELP the situation. In addition to that it's obviously not as restrictive, perfectly welded and ceramic coated. All of these things should mean it boosts much better. I'm kind of at a loss. In regards to that, one thing I'm battling I didn't go into is the downpipe now hits the rear transmission mount. That's how much the headers have moved the turbo. The next thing I'm going to do to try to fix that is to see if I can rotate the engine a degree or two. Because that could be causing the issue.

 

Well some updates. I'm pretty confident it was a mixture of the humidity/heat and mostly in my head. I drove it last night and this morning and the thing is pretty damn quick. The gearing is perfect for this engine. I got a few things done on it, mostly electrical and applied my JDM (style) decal to the rear trunk lid. I was hesitant to apply it but I'm extremely happy I did. I also have the two side ones to match this. I'll take some pics during the day too, but it's discreet yet awesome IMO.

I also got my wideband calibrated and wired up, here's a pic of the custom "mount" I made. You can close the door when you don't want to see it.

 

pretty sure i saw you driving by south beach on lake harriet yesterday -- car looked great, love the red stoptechs

 

Thanks man! I didn't see any Subarus or I would have stopped and been a creeper until I found the driver. I did see like 5 WRXs that day and not one even noticed my car I guess that's a good thing because the police seem to not notice it as well. "Old piece of ****"

I'm removing my "Golden Tip" above. That **** was so bogus it's not even funny and I don't want someone to find it later and think that's how you do it. The reality was I was a n00b and my slave cylinder was dying/dead so it lead me astray. I replaced the master cylinder and slave cylinder then my stainless steel line burst. It was a fun 10 hours of me cussing at my car in the garage. So I'm removing the above and replacing it with one in this post.

Here's how you REALLY bleed a clutch system.
Note: For best results I would "bench bleed" the system and you should not use a vacuum/power bleeder.

1. Putting something (like a socket) and butting a c-clamp on the slave helps the cylinder not move. This enables you to get the best use out of the master compression. (Video).
2. Starting with a gravity feed (keep putting fluid in the system and allow it to drain out of the slave's nipple).
3. Keep gravity feeding until solid fluid is coming out.
4. Carefully compress the master after opening the bleeder valve, tighten the bleeder before allowing it to decompress.
5. Do this until you're satisfied with the fluid coming out.
6. At the end, a few cycles after #4's decompression, open the bleeder valve on the slave and push the slave's cylinder in (if #1 isn't used or if it's not all the way in). This pushes bubbles that can form in the slave that may be hard to get out using the conventional method. (Video).

I may update this and or edit it, but this should do it.

 

no worries about spotting back -- i walked to the beach with my kid for a swim so we were carless. again, your car looked great - awesome job on it.

 

Just clarifying, that's backwards. The 2015 and 2016 STi retain the hydraulic assist, while the 2015 and 2016 WRX get the electric assist (which is, in my opinion, very nicely executed).

 

Damn it, you're absolutely right. I had a moment (or two) of dyslexia. For anyone interested in said modification here's the link. Thanks for calling that out!

http://forums.nasioc.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2681059

 

Well this weekend was good. I pulled an all nighter Friday pretty much. Worked until 5Am, got up at 9(ish) and worked until 9PM. Got up this morning and spent an hour or so on it, did a compression test and put on fresh BKR7EIX plugs. Here's what I accomplished.

• Replaced the oil pan and installed a Fumoto F-105N valve.
• Installed the Perrin turbo inlet tube.
• Installed the Cusco "Piro Ball" camber plates.
• Installed the AMS battery tie down.
• Installed some new engine grounds.
• Wired in the external temp sensor for the gauge cluster.
• Wired in the rear temp sensor for the gauge cluster, but just have that stubbed for the time being.
• Wired in DCCDPro display to the STi gauge cluster.
• Installed new BKR7EIX plugs/Compression Test.
• Fixed my clutch engaging issues.

Only thing worth noting was the cusco camber plates didn't play well with the PSS9 coil overs. I had to modify the top nut a bit and then added nut the coil overs came with to bolt the assemblies together.

 

I do need help D:

Yesterday was the first day in a very long time where I was finally like "You know what? It's done enough, lets go for a ride". Of course the whole time I was driving it I was like... "I wish I had the new injectors installed and the KAAZ rear diff back in".

Now that I'm done I'm already thinking about taking it to the next level and doing an Evo V swap next. Which (of course) requires a lot more work. But I'm going to honestly just try to enjoy this for a few years.

 

Hmm.. think I might have a set of these sitting in my garage somewhere..

 

@Shane86 Let me know! Would love to buy them from you.

 

I'll try to look around in the next day or so. I bought a set of sweet ass Koni DA based Zzyzx coilovers, and they came off a GC8.
it was a few years ago now, but i'm pretty sure they were Group N tophats i took off the rear, and the front went into GC Camber plates.

 

Who did the ceramic coating for you? I have a bunch of things that need it. Did you notice a significant difference in engine bay temperatures? My VR6 (VR6 burnouts brah) just cooks in the bay, in large part due to the super hot exhaust manifolds and down pipe.

 

Racecoatings. The dude is awesome, work was great, but he hasn't replied to my emails as of late and it took him quite a while to get my stuff done. I find it insane that I can't give people money sometimes in return for work. Glad to see you're still following this thread and didn't take offense to my VW post. I love VW's, I just hate most of their drivers, the same could be said for Subarus, Mitsubishis, etc. haha.

 

Hey kids you want some updates? No? WELL I DON'T CARE.


My KAAZ rear diff has backlash. I've joined a program to talk about it and get my feelings out. But in all seriousness if anyone has any connections that can shim/set the backlash on a diff let me know. I called Proven Force and they want like $700 to look at it... cool bros. This was also after they tried telling me it wasn't serviceable. You fools! I just put in all new bearings myself, I can get you part numbers! Anyway... fun times. Right now I'm driving on a 2012 Forester open diff.

• I just got Shane's Group N tophats for my rear after me getting busy every day and flaking. He was cool enough to meet me downstairs after taking the time to find them. This makes me excited, I'll take pictures of the current ones, it's sad.
• I also just ordered, and paid too much, for JDM OEM side skirts and areo guards but they're in awesome condition. I'm working on a V6 spoiler right now and have some other JDM crap coming over. Remember when I said I would stop and the project was complete? I lied.
• Ronnie at RS is also too busy to fit me in his schedule for however long that is. So I have ID1000's sitting in a box asking nicely to be thrown on, rescaled and have E85 pumped through their tiny little holes. I'm looking for the BEST EJ207 tuner in the US of A. If anyone knows who that is, whether it's in California or something like AMS in Chicago, I'm all ears. Otherwise if RS can fit me in I'll go there.

The only other lingering thing is I'm trying to figure out my boost issue. Looking at my old graphs (from RS) my boost curve was pretty bad before. These things should spool before or around 3000 RPMs, I need to look at the tune and see if that's the cause, however I'm doubtful, this is also going off of bozos on the interwebs.

Also I'm not sure why I never posted this. I feel my car should be a 350AWHP E85 setup at this point, once it's tuned.

 

I believe Oppo Moto can help with your diff. I remember he used to do that kind of stuff for the Drift guys.

Should be able to look him up pretty easily on Stalker Book. He does some fantastic work.

 

Kyle can/has set diff backlash I believe. RS can as well, via bikerboy and not just Ronnie. I'm sure there's others.

 

@tangledupinblu should I search for them? Is it clack? D:

@EricS Kyle didn't express too much interest in helping, didn't want to push him with him moving and all. Bikerboy hasn't worked at RS for over two years (I think Matt retired), he was an excellent engine builder too RS is also so booked they won't even give me a date to get my tune done... so that's awesome.

@pocketrocket thanks for the info, I'll check them out!

 

Did you go from uel to el headers? I can't remember.

AVCS tuning can affect boost onset I believe.