The build story of the S&J Rally Car

Here's an update on the build of the latest S & J Project.

It's our Version 5 Type R STI for the up-coming SARC Rally season. As many people are aware Joanne & I have been competing in State & Clubman level rallies (including 4 ARC events) for the past 5 years in an RSR Turbo Legacy and a season prior to that in an RS Turbo. As much as we love the “old girl” we felt the desire to upgrade. Something told us that if we started immediately at the end of the last season, with the unusually long 8 ½ month gap, we would easily be able to complete a major build and prep of a new car, however there's major and there's MAJOR. As previous with restorations and overhaul of project cars, Joanne and I always seem to go further than first intended, but it is coming up very nicely and we should just make it in time for the season opener SARC Round 1 Eden Valley Rally on July 1st.

Photo thanks to Roger Foster

Here it is as a std type R 44,000 km's on the clock.

First priority was to prep it for the roll cage, this includes: stripping of interior, windows & engine + seam welding, seat mounting & turret reinforcing, we completed all of this in house and then sent it out for the cage. With the efficiency and beautiful workmanship of Lance Walker from Walker Chassis, our goal had been achieved, cage and prep work prior to Christmas. We had researched materials and the design of the cage quite extensively and settled for the cold drawn steel version with extensive bar work. Cost did have a major bearing on this decision, as we achieved every thing that we were after in regards to safety and rigidity for under $3000 as opposed to $9000 upwards for the Chrome moly version of a similar design that may save up to 10kg or so.

Christmas time, we actually went away for 10 days other wise I would have been pondering around full of enthusiasms to get some paint on this puppy. Early January with the help of a good mate (also fellow competitor) Simon Orme, the painting process began. This is where we began stripping the car further than first intended. Simon being the perfectionist that he is, certainly was (and still is) a bad influence in regards to finishing this car quickly, however all of the time lost in pursuit of an “Auto Salon Rally Car” and more has certainly been made up for with Simon's help so far. Simon has spent almost as much time as myself on the project since Christmas, in fact one day he arrived at the workshop, went about some chores on the car, sure not to disrupt me as I continued with my days work, and then left some hours later, “what are friends for aaah”!

In summary January & February saw us achieve the following: All prep & 2 pack paint work for interior/cage, engine bay, boot, wheel arches & under body areas plus mounting of Hydralic Handbrake, Tilton Pedal Box & master cylinders & fabrication of permanent jack stand mounds into sill panels. A lot of hard work done and a lot still to do!

As the photo’s show, the first week in March as I installed some DBA, MRT & Whiteline goodies to the 4 corners, Joanne attacked the body panels with some 320 wet & dry. An exterior paint job was something we were only going to do if we had plenty of spare time, though this was not the case, the rest of the car was now to nice not to compliment it with a flashy outer shell. Realistically it is only a couple of extra weeks work as the panels were reasonably tidy, plus Jo is pretty efficient with this sort of work as we have restored many cars in our time together. Colour decisions were made in a jiffy as we had something in mind from an old rally video, where a team has painted their 2 door in 3 different blues, leaving the interior, wheels, front bumper and rear wing all white. To keep it more original we chose grey's in place of the blues. The main grey being as close as possible to the Aus delivered V6 STI (steel blue). To confirm our thoughts, we painted the front and rear bumpers and sat them on, Nice!

The other big mission at the moment is a wiring loom conversion, trust me this is not something that I had in mind. I actually bought a '99 onwards so that I could simply “reflash” the ECU and utilise the performance benefits and engine safety of Ecutek, with the only hitch being the lack of Anti-lag. This is one luxury we would be without for a moment in a rally car, and I thought that I easily had this one covered as MRT are soon to release Anti-lag “Plug & Play” boxes for Subaru's with Ecutek '01 onwards. How hard could it be? Re-hash the necessary wiring loom and/or connectors that come in the kit to fit the old '99 ECU, well maybe but when chatting to Paul at MRT about this he reminded me that in the '99-'00 ECU we have no way of disabling the “fuel cut on decel” feature. This would render the system (and engine if attempted) useless, as fuel is required on lift off. At this point Autronic or Motec were looking good for a moment, but all of the other bonuses of Ecutek still excited me enough to carry on, especially the “User Tune” & “Launch Control” features of the '02 STI. Well there it is, all I have to do is find an '02-'04 STI ECU + loom and blend it with the '99 one. Finding the ECU & loom was a walk in the park thanks to a colleague in the game Peter Jankowski. Wiring information that I lacked was made available thanks to fellow competitor Gary Matthews from Eblen Subaru.

70 hours later, we have achieved our wiring goals. Tiered but excited, this will definitely be the Ultimate “factory ecu” race car, with the ECUTEK “Data Monitor” now on board features will include: Launch control, which is a tunable short term RPM limiter that is disengaged with speed sensed movement, Map switching from 2 preset boost levels, Live tuning, which is an onboard trim of fuel, ignition timing & boost, on the fly. Note, I can easily reach the central location of the Data monitor from the co-drivers seat and fiddle while Jo drives, and by the way, I kept the hydraulic handbrake in reach too!!

A couple of weekends and a couple of short cuts (in comparison to our previous restorations) in the body work & painting process and we have finally finished all of the paintwork. It’s now a beautifully polished shell waiting for some graphics to give it the “rally car” appeal that just quietly, it really needs now. Having chosen a dark metallic base colour the car looks a little too road going currently, but we will fix!!

On to the more interesting stuff, I dug into my tomb of treasures (the crusty old workshop pit, now the home of once loved Subie bit’s) and excavated something that I have been saving for years, a retired STI 2.0L Closed deck block, which gives us the chance to leave the original short motor (also closed deck) in tact as a good spare (which I am confident we will never need). So with the STI block the basis of the motor with the factory Type R heads & cams bolted on via ARP studs, it’s a nice combo that with the right choice of internal components will be good for 30 psi if required, trust me, it will be required!! As far as internal prep, there won’t be much that differs from our usual S&J engine builds, “ACL Race Series” engine bearings are an absolute must, plus blue print grinding, stress relieving, shot peening of the crank & rods, all of which are carried out by Chris Milton Engine Developments.

While waiting for engine machining and gearbox/diff internals to arrive, we attacked the graphics. With the help of Graham a fellow WRX enthusiast to cut the vinyl, once again Simon and my oldest son Daniel we turned this very street able looking WRX into a work of Rally Art (can I say that?). As much as it is only straight lines and stripes, it was 55 hours of rewarding torture, as straight lines on a curved panel are challenging to an amateur team!

Caught on camera "working on the rally car on a work day"

Here’s some engine shots, naturally we are not going to give away all of our secrets, but we are proud to boast about the ACL Pistons and bearings plus Chris Miltons, attention to detail on all of the machining work. Next is the PPG Billet Gearbox & Front Diff, the Heart & Soul of any rally car (especially a Subie!)

 

Standard STI Type R gear-set. A PPG/S&J work of art!

As with any 5 speed WRX or STI that is to be used in competition, a set of PPG Internals is money very well spent. In this case we have opted for the full Dog selection Grp N straight cut Billet gear & fork set with interlocker. With the car already being factory fitted with the R180 plated rear LSD and the electronic (DCCD) centre diff, it was all too easy to complete the package with a PPG Torson front diff while we had the gearbox open!

Have a look at these pics and see if you can understand why Shane loves building PPG Gearboxes here at S&J. Now with the box in, it’s literally time for a start-up, quick dyno run-in and a test drive, I can’t even begin to describe how well it drives!!!

See the S&J Motorsport page for some action shots and video files including “In-car” footage.