914 WRX Build Options

[waltonsm]

After seeing some recent posts, I decided it was finally time to thank everybody on this forum for years of encouragement and scope creep on my long term project. As with every real project, this will never be done, and there are certainly many things I would do differently a second time around. But I am 80% of the way there, and I am enjoying driving it as much as I am working on it for the last year or so.

I plan to add more photos of my build process over the next few weeks. You may see some of the advice you gave me realized, and probably some bad or good ideas in metal, fiberglass, and wood.

Hopefully I can help someone else out too.

-Steve


Here are some recent photos:





And a few from about 4 years ago:

[AZBanks]

Amazing build. I'm curious what metalworking tools you use, brakes, tube benders, etc.

[waltonsm]

Amazing build. I'm curious what metalworking tools you use, brakes, tube benders, etc.

I don't have many sophisticated tools. I did borrow a friends hydraulic bender for the cage and rear subframe. The bender was a vertical bender than makes it easy to use a digital magnetic angle finder to make very repeatable angles. Other than that, 95% of what I do is plan cuts out of various stock tube shapes I got for scrap prices. I got a bunch of 1-6' sticks of different profiles and wall thicknesses, and then I dig through the pile, find the closest one, mark them out with cardboard templates, and cut it down to size. I almost exclusively use a cutoff wheel and flap disc for the work.

As a note my favorite materials for templates are cardboard beer boxes and cotton resume paper. The resume paper works great because it doesn't stretch much, but does stretch just enough to not tear while you do a rubbing of the surface with dirty fingers. This transfers the pattern really well, especially when you can't easily see where you are working.

For example, the long repair was cut out of 2x6" rectangular tube that had a matching radius on it, I generally cut out the weld on formed and welded tube if I can keep it as open section.



For the turbo dog house (this was a planning mistake, but it would do it again this way now that I have done it) i bought a section of a cut up trunk, and looked at it for a few hours to figure out how to cut it out to make it look as close to oem as I could, then cut some sheets with the cut off wheel and flap disc and cleaned it all up after welding. I also have some harbor freight electric shears I will use to get stuff down to more manageable size, and occasionally use the cuts.



I have a similar process for tubing. I generally spend time mocking it up, buy a pile of mandrel bends, and cut it with a cutoff wheel. I like using wide masking tape to mark straight cuts (and try not to stretch it). The old "downpipe" for the original turbo was a stainless mandrel bend and some flanges welded on, then I had to fill a big spot to make the oval for the oval subaru wastegate configuration.. So I made a cardboard template, cut a piece of tube open along the weld, and smashed around various ipe wood forms until it fit. starting with the cardboard template. When it was close, I worked on clearancing both parts until I had close butt weld.



I used all straight tubes welded together for the tunnel, rear firewall, floor, etc. There might have been one or two bends in the sheet. I do all the bending with a vice, ipe wood tools, a 3 lb sledgehammer, and some knipex parallel jaw adjustable wrenches to help make clean bends in smaller parts. I will hit a foot long piece of ipe into a wide sheet width a sledgehammer to get a clean edge break too.