The Project Anklebiter Build Thread., 8/29 Lid latches and glamor shots... Options

[KELTY360]

Where is the body now?

At my in-laws in Cheyenne WY
Both lids and intact front and rear, at least it is nice and dry there (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)
I could probably split the nose and tail into 2 halves to help with shipping but don't really want to...

if some how they can get to slc Utah I can bring em to WA.

Geez Dane, just pay Jeff to run over to Cheyenne and pick up the body. It's only a little over 400 miles. But warn your folks, he likes to drive in his pajamas. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/poke.gif)

[plymouth37]

Where is the body now?

At my in-laws in Cheyenne WY
Both lids and intact front and rear, at least it is nice and dry there (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)
I could probably split the nose and tail into 2 halves to help with shipping but don't really want to...

if some how they can get to slc Utah I can bring em to WA.

Geez Dane, just pay Jeff to run over to Cheyenne and pick up the body. It's only a little over 400 miles. But warn your folks, he likes to drive in his pajamas. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/poke.gif)

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/lol-2.gif) as long as the body makes it out here he could show up naked for all I care!

I am targeting spring to get the body out here, need to expand my storage and garage space first before I can receive something that big. I am finishing the attic in our house so we will have storage up there this winter, which means I can empty out all of the crap in the garage, it will be tight but after moving our storage to the house I should be able to get the body in here. Thanks for the offer Jeff, I may take you up on that eventually. I am running out of stuff to do on the chassis so the body will need to get out here by spring or so.

[KELTY360]

Where is the body now?

At my in-laws in Cheyenne WY
Both lids and intact front and rear, at least it is nice and dry there (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)
I could probably split the nose and tail into 2 halves to help with shipping but don't really want to...

if some how they can get to slc Utah I can bring em to WA.

Geez Dane, just pay Jeff to run over to Cheyenne and pick up the body. It's only a little over 400 miles. But warn your folks, he likes to drive in his pajamas. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/poke.gif)

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/lol-2.gif) as long as the body makes it out here he could show up naked for all I care!

Better watch out what you wish for. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/shades.gif)

[sixnotfour]

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/bootyshake.gif) Slits taught me this one..

[plymouth37]

After driving the car a few weeks ago I couldn't help feeling that it wasn't as fast as I thought it should have been. My boost sender hasn't been working so on a hunch I pressure tested the intake. This is pretty easy to do, find the appropriately sized pvc cap to fit your intake and pop a couple holes in it. Screw in a couple schrader valves, then use random objects from around your garage to plug all of the ports in your intake. Once everything was sealed I tried to pressurize the system and found it failed to build any pressure at all, turns out the seals around the intake butterfly shaft in the throttle body were totally shot, I think this thing has been running on no boost!


I found a billet intake on ebay, I liked it because it was simple, didn't have all the stuff for cruise control etc... Unfortunately although this thing was machined pretty well i am pretty sure someone described over the phone to the machinist what it needed to look like, but neither of them had actually ever seen a WRX. Everything looked right but was totally a part for a car that doesn't exist. Needless to say i returned it...


Got a super nice remanufactured throttle body, should have done that to begin with, installed it and reassembled the engine, pressure tested, had to tighten a couple clamps and now it is holding 10lbs of pressure, once it stops eternally raining here I will take it for a spin, i think i just gained 150HP! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/driving-girl.gif)

[plymouth37]

So I got a little spooked when I got pulled over the last time I drove the car, The officer was nice but he made it pretty clear he wasn't impressed. I decided to take another crack at increasing the legality of the car so it follows the law perfectly. One pretty obvious problem was the lighting on the front of the car.


Washington State law states that headlights need to be mounted at a minimum of 24" high to the center of the lens, so I moved the light buckets up to that height. It also states that turn signals need to be at least 15" high, so I moved those up to the old headlight mounts.


So these lights are just some old KC hi-lights that I used to run in the fog light holes in the bumper, and state law says that if you plan on traveling over 20 mph you need high beams. I will never run this car at night in this form so I just need to check the box, not actually create a functioning dual beam headlight. With this in mind I swapped in some H4 bulbs into the light buckets and wired them up, good enough for now! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)


There, "legal" front lighting! One less thing to worry about as I drive around in a naked car (IMG:style_emoticons/default/driving-girl.gif)

[DRPHIL914]

No billy. The trooper felt the Amber portion of the lense would confuse driver's behind me. So he said. Bottom line is US spec vs illegal/nonDOT euro. I played the ignorance card and 'they were on the car when I bought it'. In all fairness, it was 11:30pm and I had been to see the Blasters play in Seattle. No alcohol involved. That was question 3 or 4. Told me to get the correct lenses and sent me on my way.

Not sure I followed what the US spec vs illegal/nonDOT euro issue is. I see many cars with amber rear turnsignals. Do your amber turnsignals light up at night when not flashing?

No billy. The trooper felt the Amber portion of the lense would confuse driver's behind me. So he said. Bottom line is US spec vs illegal/nonDOT euro. I played the ignorance card and 'they were on the car when I bought it'. In all fairness, it was 11:30pm and I had been to see the Blasters play in Seattle. No alcohol involved. That was question 3 or 4. Told me to get the correct lenses and sent me on my way.

Not sure I followed what the US spec vs illegal/nonDOT euro issue is. I see many cars with amber rear turnsignals. Do your amber turnsignals light up at night when not flashing?

^ Guessing this is what the officer was focused on? If so, that's one sharp cop, and/or one with too much time on his hands or looking for a reason to pull you over.

Turn signals can light up amber on U.S. cars, but I don't think their rear marker lights can? Really surprised rhodyguy got pulled over, even by a sharp-eyed officer. U.S. 914 taillight housings illuminate their outer section as a result of corner marker bulbs, which of course end up glowing orange with Euro lenses. After running that way for years, I replaced the U.S. housings with Euro housings (would have been just as easy to simply delete the side marker bulbs in U.S. housings, but mine were no longer very bright and U.S. replacements were either NLA or a lot more $$, can't remember which). I suppose I could be cited for no side markers, but my 914 is rarely driven at night anymore. As for headlights in the front bumper, there's a minimum headlight height in CA and many lowered cars are probably in violation of the same law that would prevent one from mounting headlights in the front bumper. Would be curious to know if WA's laws are the same, and if a magnetic (or?) setup could be fabbed up to work at night and/or satisfy a fix-it ticket. They might have to be mounted on the cowl of Project Anklebiter... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

after seeing and reading thru this thread and seeing these comments of the previous page, it appears that most state have same or similar rules but many including you policeman may be mistaken about what is legal and what is not.
In South Carolina , I just looked this up here, it reads that the "rear clearance and maker lamps, rear or side-rear shall be RED, but "except for the stoplight and signal device, which may be Red, Amber or Yellow"
so , here in SC the license plate lights must be white and not blue green or orange, but the signal light maybe red or amber, . the brake light may even be red or amber or yellow, just the running or marker lamp in rear must be red. -

interesting, but good to know in case your local or state police are not aware,
you just may need to keep that information on file in the car to "educate" them in the future.
- my wife got a warning for her license plate light being out last week! they are big on that around here.

BTW awesome to see the car on the road and driving! hope to see soon what you do with the panels too!

[Chi-town]

US DOT FMVSS says your rear turns can be amber or red. FVMSS trumps all state laws.

"The color of the light from turn signal lamps shall
be red or yellow (amber) to the rear and yellow (amber) to the front
of the vehicle. (See SAE J578.) "

I have some JW Speaker LED driving lights that are DOT / SAE legal if you need better lighting.

[rhodyguy]

Well done. Registration, licence, Proof of ins and you're golden.

Argueing, with the guy holding your ID in his hand and wearing a sidearm, about who's rules count at 12:30am can be counterproductive. First thing you know you're out of the car, flashlight in your eyes and walking heal to toe for no reason. A simple "I'll fix those lenses straight away" is much easier and one is on their way.

[PanelBilly]

When do we get to go for rides?

[plymouth37]

When do we get to go for rides?

Soon hopefully! I think by Spring this thing will be dialed in enough to start joining up for the PNW teener events! Main thing keeping me from traveling far now are the lack of windshield and a lack of racing seats with more than lap belts. When the rains fade in the spring let's go play!

[plymouth37]

As I was plugging up my intake to pressure test it I started to ask myself what all of these vacuum hoses and controllers were in there for. Turns out these are part of the emissions system that purge the charcoal canister on the gas tank, the little doohickey is the purge valve, needless to say I don't have any canister or emissions anything so I gutted everything and capped the intake nipples, I was rewarded with the code "P0458 EVAP Emission System Purge Control Valve Circuit Low" but it doesn't throw it into limp mode so I will just add it to my list of codes to have programmed out when I get the ECU tuned. Less crap on the engine is a win for me!


Speaking of taillights from the earlier conversation, when I put in the muffler it eclipsed the spot I had made for the license plate, zipties weren't cutting it for Mr. Officer so I welded up a little bracket and hacked in some led lights into a license plate frame. There, that's legal too.


Finally the trailer lights i got didn't have reflectors which isn't legal, so I got some reflective tape on Amazon for $3 and stuck a strip on the lights, Check that one off too.


I think I do actually legally need doors, the law is pretty explicit about that, despite the plethora of doorless Jeeps that I see all over the place. Being the sitting duck that i am and that I guess the ultimate goal is to have a body on this thing eventually I am going to clean up and paint the doors next, stay tuned!

[KELTY360]

Have you calculated the weight loss of all those hoses? Don't forget to include all the air inside them too. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/shades.gif)

Happy Holidays, Dane.

[plymouth37]

Have you calculated the weight loss of all those hoses? Don't forget to include all the air inside them too. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/shades.gif)

Happy Holidays, Dane.

Hey, every ounce counts! This particular item is hard to weight though, depending on the throttle position these hoses either contain 1 bar of vacuum or 2 bars of total pressure! It has a variable weight!

Happy Holidays to you too Buddy!

[plymouth37]

Well spring is upon us and my garage isn't quite so freezing, Lets get some work done!
I had been running a stock ECU for testing just incase I shorted something out accidentally but now it is time to put in my Stage 2 ECU from Vishnu Tuning (IMG:style_emoticons/default/evilgrin.gif)
The tune on this should be a pretty good starting point but there are a dozen or so codes I need to turn off in order to get a working check engine light.

So here we go into the world of editing a car's Rom, and to do that we need a cable to connect my ECU to a laptop. I was initially looking at getting a tatrix tuning cable but these go for like $200 and this is a budget build, we can do better!

I bought this cable on ebay for less than $7...
https://www.ebay.com/itm/VAG-COM-KKL-409-1-...;frcectupt=true



I put the computer into read mode by connecting the green test mode connectors, and then gave pin A10 on the ECU 12V to trigger write mode.


I then plugged the computers together.


To read and write images to and from the ecu I downloaded EcuFLash for free (you need v1.29 or earlier to use the cheap cable).
I successfully downloaded the ROM from the ECU. Now off to Romraider to edit it!

[plymouth37]

Like EcuFlash, RomRaider is also a free program, you use it to edit the Ecu's Image. I am not going to delve into tuning right now, the goal is just to turn off the error codes that are no longer relevant to this vehicle. To do this select the error code you wish to edit from the menu on the left, open it, turn it off, then close it.


Then after I saved the new edited image, I wrote it back to the ECU. Done, $7 tuning package, heck yeah!


I noticed an interesting thing while I was turning off the codes, p0508 Intake Air Control Valve Error, I had initially thought that this was an inaccurate code because I had deleted the coolant hoses to this controller but after I thought about it that didn't make sense, more likely it was gummed up and causing some of my rough idle conditions. I decided to leave the code in place and pulled out the IACV and cleaned it thouroghly. I was totally right, car ran so much better on startup after a good cleaning.


Ran a test and got a clean bill of health! Now I can hook up a check engine light and have it mean something!


Time to go for a drive under full power for the first time! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/driving.gif)

[plymouth37]

Took her out and I can confirm that we have full boost, and a legitimately scary amount of power, this thing is a monster, what have I built???

[plymouth37]

The car drives really well below 4500 rpm, aka no boost, it is like there is nothing holding this engine back, it will do 30mph at idle in third.

[plymouth37]

Once boost comes in though it is like full blown starwars warp speed, still not brave enough to get it into 4th, or above 5000rpm, I was still shaking an hour after driving it, this is going to take some getting used to. Spins those big tires effortlessly at any speed in any gear. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/screwy.gif)

[plymouth37]

Next priorities are real seats, real belts and a windshield, oh and doors (maybe), woohoo!