So, I ordered the wrong color paint from TCPGlobal, but I have an idea for the paint scheme. This is just a photoshop of the idea, and the bumper is different from what I'm using, but I think the idea is there. Gray bumpers and greenhouse, bright white body, with blue rockers and front lip. I think the graphics (Shell, the number, and the script) really bring it all together.

Thoughts?

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I like it! Nice work!

How was it loading the car on the trailer while on the rotisserie?

I rebuilt the rotisserie with larger casters so it was piece of cake to load up. Did it by myself!

Sometimes you just have to say "screw it", put on your big-boy pants, and get down to work.

I've been toying with the idea of painting the car myself and this past Saturday I got down to business and started spraying. Yes, I used a cheap HF gun (I've got a new Eastwood gun on order). Yes, the panels did not come out as perfect as they would if I had paid someone.

Do I care? Well, yes and no. I figure, this is my project, for better or worse, and the only way Im going to learn is by making mistakes. Im precise all week long for my job, on the weekends I think Im entitled to a bit of /experimentation/ I've been using this HF gun for a few years now so Im not totally new to painting with it. The fenders all turned out great actually, while the hood has some pitting that Im not too happy about, but the white paint does a lot to hide the flaws.

The color is Wimbledon White, its kinda creamy. Its the same paint we used on my brothers 912-STi project. The bumpers, rockers, roof, and sail panels will be finished in satin black.

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Will be worth the risk in the end for the learning experience and saved money.

I like this project.

I love the Wimbledon White - I'm looking at doing that also but in a satin or possibly flat. I also love the chassis floor mods becuz extra strength isn't a bad thing. I may have to steal a knock off of that myself. Keep it coming - I look forward to your posts to see what's up next!

Put some paint on the 914 chassis:
- front trunk
- wheel wells
- rockers
- engine compartment

Painted the black bits (satin black) too:
- targa top
- front bumper and lip
- rear bumper
- rocker panels

Going to tape off the interior and shoot it probably next weekend. In the meantime I have about 50 dzus fasteners to rivet into place.

did a bit of work on the doors, got them filled in but sanding them was PITA so I gave up until next weekend.

started labeling and sorting through the wiring harness too. I've got 75% of a 2002 WRX harness, going to get the other 25% and wire up the whole car with a full modern harness.

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Paint looks good!!! Always happy with the quality of paint TCP puts out. I dont see any big runs so good job!

I think your making the right decision regarding the wire harness. Ive been happy with my full harness conversion. But I keep telling myself I'll pull the harness someday and strip it down to half the size when I finish all my wiring.

Hi Matt, looks good!
Did you burn the bushings out or do you have another way?

Love what you did to your lower firewall. Good Job! Car is looking fantastic. These 914's sure are a great platform to modify.

Big update: Wiring.

About a month ago I was able to pick up a 2002 wiring harness from eBay. Luck smiled on me back around Thanksgiving and my local junkyard had a 2002 WRX in the lot and I was able to scrounge the complete rear harness, fuel pump controller, turn signal stalk, and a few other various bits for $50. Found an engine fuse panel on eBay and *boom* I've got the complete harness.

~40 hours later and I've finally got the harness all trimmed down and ready for installation.

My advice: Print out the complete wiring diagrams and become extremely familiar with them. Label every connector. Once confirmed what things are, start trimming. EASY. Haha.

Anyways, today I had the day off so I finished up the work on the harness. I've got all the mystery wires identified and marked, all the connectors are trimmed down, and its basically ready to put in the car. Im, of course, going to wire-wrap the whole thing and mount it all to a board before installation, blah blah blah, but the trimming part is done. Phew!

I also had some *spare* time on my hands tonight so I started making the mount for the WRX turn-signal / headlight stalk to mount to the existing 914 steering column. I removed the old controls from the 914 column, including the old tumbler and wheel lock. The mount is made from some 2x2 that I had laying around. Bunch of cutting and bending and I've got a pretty good mount.

The detail work on this stuff will take some time but the bulk is finished. Feeling pretty good about mounting it all in the car next week.

Thanks for following along!

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If you need an excuse to drink, this is it. Good job! Wiring is a tremendous hurdle.

Mounted all the wiring to an aluminum panel which will go behind the driver seat.

Im going to wrap everything in weaved wire wrap before install, should be pretty pimp.

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BIG NEWS: The car is on the ground.

Im trying to think of what to update you guys on as far as the last few months. Lets see..
• Wrapped and installed the wiring harness
• Started work on the tail lights, Im gluing 3" LED trailer light cores into 914 buckets
• Bolted up the suspensions bits, plug-n-play for the most part.
• Ran brake, clutch and fuel lines. Easy, just time consuming.

Yeah, other than that, just invited a group of friends over and we got to work on lowering the chassis off the rotisserie today. Then we lifted the rear and slid the drivetrain underneath and put all into position. Now I have a big shit-eating grin every time I turn on the garage lights! Almost 2 years, countless weekends, yada yada yada, but I'll be damned, I've got a 914 roller in my garage.

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Seeing 914Dave's harness out of the car and just 1/2 of mine out, I thought that was daunting. Nice work! Looks fantastic. Really looks good.
Cheers

Wow that thing looks GREAT!!!! Nice work.

Had a busy weekend with the 914.
Built the engine+trans mount, installed it into the car. Took about 9hrs. Pretty happy, the distances from the trans output stubs to the hubs is a perfect 20" on each side. Easy peasy.

Started work on the IC, found a good location, will start making mounts and ordering tubing and connectors this week. Shouldn't be too hard to mount up.

Im really liking the location of the IC, I think it'll be a nice showpiece, something to look at when she's parked.

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That's looking great! Curious about the cut-away of the lower portion of the rear shock towers. Was there a specific reason? I ask because I was looking at doing something similar. In my case, it was essentially cosmetic.
Keep up the great work.

Yeah, its basically cosmetic, though it does give better visibility into the shock piston / spring area. I was looking over the metal and the bracing and the lower parts of the towers weren't providing any value so I decided to snip them out.

Thanks for the compliments, looking forward to tossing this thing into a corner and full wail!

Mocked up the location of the IC, yanked the driveline, cut some material, and mounted it up.

Its just a little platform at this point, but I'll weld some threaded rod to the bottom of the IC, drill some holes in the platform, isolate it with some rubber, and bolt it down. The IC is going to be full of water so I figured Id build a tough strong mount for it.

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Its been a busy couple of months since my last update!

•Finished the IC mount and plumbing. Welded in a flange for the stock BOV, mounted it all up...
• Exhaust is done. 3" stainless, no cat, right out the back.
• IC radiator is mounted, right behind the driver seat. It's the best place I could think of to get air flow that was near the engine. May not be "race" legal, I know theres some controversy about holes in firewalls, but it'll be good enough as a big-boy toy.
• Dash panel is in, waiting on the tablet mount and it'll have an 8" Fire Tablet running RaceCapture mounted to it. Going to installl oil and check-engine lights into it too.
• Tail lights are in.
• Tow hook is mounted up
• Added some LED headlights to the front bumper. The WRX harness already had the wiring, might as well make the car road legal. The lenses are too bright for my tastes, Im going to smoke them with some nice vinyl this week.

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Those are some serious LEDs.... are you gonna blind the other lane?!
And I love the details of your build - I've stolen several...!!

First start!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0sIbpQJs0ck


But she is smokey:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2QeBiHwc50


We've had quite a journey since the last post. The WRX conversion hit a snag or three: the cam and crank gears had teeth that were not compatible with the US ECU, they were set up for the JDM ECU. That took a loooong time to figure out, and a few minutes to rectify.

The US throttlebody did not fit on the JDM intake, so I had to buy a small adapter and then weld a tab on it to cover up IACV flange that was left exposed.

A lower cam gear was cracked through and easily could have exploded had the car started. Also, the timing belt tensioner bracket was badly stripped out, the tensioner could have popped right out and taken the engine with it.

Lots and lots and lots of wiring debugging of the self-made harness. Still happy I made it myself but the time I have into it is immense.

But here we are, with a running engine. So much more to finish up, just in terms of debugging, but getting it started feels like a huge step forward.

Painting the doors took forever, but I finally got around to finishing them. They had a bunch of damage which I filled and sanded about 6 times. Then I had to figure out my gun (again), prime, and paint. Bodywork, man...

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Then when the doors were finally mounted up, I added some porsche scripts and some meatballs on the doors and hood.

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And heres the cam gear which could have ended the life of the engine had I not found it:

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Congrats on the firing up the engine...sounds great!

Congratulations! Sounds rowdy, ready to party.

Jesus - that engine sounds beautiful.

I would love to come see your car, and live in San Jose too. Rad sounding idle (almost rotary sounding).

Time for an update!

Been busy with a few things:
• It drives! Took it around the block just to shake it down a bit, car feels great. Still needs a windshield, heh.
• Found out why it was running so rich, I hadn't plumbed the bypass valve correctly. Plumbed it to the intake and *boom* no more super-rich exhaust.
• Added number meatballs to the doors for that racer effect
• Found out the water pump is leaking badly, so that will need to replaced ASAP.
• Been working on the digital dash via RaceCapture. This is where the bulk of my time has been spent.

A bit more about the RaceCapture: Bought a used RaceCapture Track module from eBay and it came with a bad wifi module. $10 and an hour with a soldering iron and a new wifi module is installed and the Racecapture works as expected.

Next problem: Older Subaru ECUs don't speak CAN bus. They speak a Subaru-only message format called SSM. This means that I can't just plug the RaceCapture into the OBD2 port and get signals. There is, however, a project out there which uses an Arduino to translate SSM to CAN:

https://github.com/rpkish/Subduino-SSM

I've started building one of these and I've made pretty good progress. Im able to send test signals from the Arduino to the RaceCapture and have the data appear on the tablet dash. The next step is to wire up the SSM side and plug into the ECU.

Otherwise, we've got a huge backyard remodel going on and my garage is completely stuffed with BBQ and firepit equipment so I haven't had any space to work.

SSM to CAN video is here: https://www.youtube.com/embed/qNpLpvHHIXg

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Cool adapter you are building for the communication betweeen systems.

Video updates of the SSM-to-CAN Arduino project! I've got a working digital dash for the 914 now, which Im pretty excited about. I just have a few basic signals being sent to the dash but adding new ones is a simple as flashing the arduino with new code, then updating the dash app to read and interpret the new CAN packet. Easy-peasey.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5HfEexC8aQ



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfkFrv7F5E4

Made a few changes recently:
• Added a front tow-hook
• Blacked out the front trim
• Installed a glass windshield, blacked the trim
• Added some badge stickers
• Finished up lighting wiring: front and rear illumination bulbs are working

The car is ready to drive and I've done some testing around the neighborhood, but its short and quick stuff until I can get it plated. Im working with the DMV right now to get a title but it'll take about 90 days, fingers crossed it gets solved without a hitch. Im ready to shake down the car, but Id rather do it on the streets near my house instead of on a far-away race track, so Im going to wait for the plates before hammering on it. Im sad that the car won't see track time this year but, well, thats life.

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Cars looking great.

What advantage does the racecapture offer over just plugging in bluetooth OBD reader and use Torque Pro for a display?

Thanks for the kind words.

Loads of features with the Racecapture module & app. Built-in GPS so it has predictive lap-timing on any track. Support for cameras (i.e. GoPro) to turn them on when the car is on-track. Fully configurable for any car, so friends can borrow it. Its programmable so you can tell it when to change the color of, say, the RPM gauge, on different value ranges. There are just loads of things that are great about the RCP hardware and app, check them out.

It lives.

First track day for the car is in the books. A few thoughts:
• The combo of the MR2 shifter + ZeroDB linkage is not great. The throw is way too short and I missed the 4-to-5 shift twice, nearly blew up the motor.
• I need to rebuild the brakes, they are terrible.
• The chassis / suspension setup needs major tuning, the car was wanting to swap ends on every turn-in
• The WRX motor and trans is fantastic. Smooth power, and loads of it.
• The RaceCapture module + Fire tablet worked flawlessly all day.


Spun the holy-hell out of the car coming out of the carousel. The chassis setup needs to be updated ASAP, its just too twitchy to drive with any confidence. I missed turn-in's all day because of how sketchy the rear of the car felt. That, combined with the terrible brakes and the scary-turbo-power made for a tricky, worrying, anxiety-filled day.

Looking forward to sorting out the brakes, shifter, and suspension. Im hoping it will make a huge difference and bring the car to a much better place.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN0pI9DFoT0

Car looks and sounds great.
Yeah, get that handling and braking figured out and you'll have a great little car there.

Heres a pic of the car in the paddock @ Sonoma. She looked the business even if she drove like a manic-depressive rodeo bull.

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P


Mat,
I was so excited to see the video that I watched it before I read the text. My first thought was why did he spin there? But after the video was over and I read the text, I see. Bad brakes and no suspension set-up.
Cars got really great potential though!

Great to see the car get out on the track, that is a big day.

Time to get to sorting all the issues out, nobody nails this right on the money. Everyone likes their cars setup slightly different.

Modify the shifter. Extended the lever to increase the perceived throw, move the cable points so that it increases the throw, that is pretty easy one. Lots of 818 guys run this setup with out issue. BTW, in two different shifters where made from Toyota, early cars had a longer throw, the later cars got it shortened up. If you used after market short throw kits they are not know to be the best quality and can add some error to the movement.

Suspension start with alignment, and worn components. To make an educated guess we would need to know what you're running for all the various bits and pieces.
Spring rates in the back
Running a rear swaybar? If yes size
Running a front sway bar? I hope so, If yes size
Torsion Bar size
Shocks - settings come into play, and valving.
Bushings in the Front
Bushings in the Rear
Tire sizes front and rear also come into play

My one suggestion is document everything as it sits now, and build out a list from there, and change one thing at a time, then recheck the alignment.


You most likely know all this stuff, just wanting to help get the car sorted fast here is a simple cheat sheet, image quality is poor.

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• Rear: 250lb Swift springs over new Bilstein struts
• Front: 23mm t-bars
• Plastic bushings, front and rear
• No sway-bars, front or rear
• 8" front, 9.5" rear wheels, Direzza Star-spec tires, from my 911.
Everything in the suspension is brand new.

Recently had the car aligned, my wrench encouraged me to lower the car to get more rear camber, Im at 2 degrees in the rear.
I run sway-bars front and rear on my 911 and they make a huge difference, may think about using them on the 914.

I remember my 911 being really twitchy on turn-in before I started tightening up the sway-bars, a small front and rear adjustment calmed the car down immensely. Its a bit what I was feeling yesterday: tail-happy, scary on turn-in, rear wanting to come around.

Wish I could get more camber in the rear but the exhaust header and oil pan are pretty close the ground as it sits now :/

- m

Add a front sway bar NOW!!!!!!!!

Nice adjustable one, several sources, Us cheap people that like to fabricate stuff use Nascar hand me downs. If you build one your self make it adjustable.

That will most likely solve you wanting to swap ends issue.

Yeah, I figured as much. The rest of my setup checks out though, yes? 23mm + 250lbs?

Seems like the used Nascar market has dried up a bit. I remember seeing loads of used lexan windshields and carbon splitters up on eBay, haven't seen any for like 2 years now. I've only heard rumor of using Nascar / circle-track sways on these cars, I've not tried yet. Will likely toss a Tarret in the front, I like the one I have in my 911.

That was my first thought and second and third.

I missed the lowered car part, it is fine to lower the car, but to do it right lots of things have to change.

On the front you can do it a bit with the Torsion bar adjustments, but to get full travel you need to raise the spindles.

On the rear you can use adjustable perches, but the way the rear is setup lowering the rear cause all sorts of changes in the back of a 914. You might have to go higher, cheap solution. Or raise the pickup point, cut the arms.

Best guy I know to talk to about this stuff is @ChrisFoley . He also makes all the stuff to solve the issues you're having.

BTW, running stock Bilsteins with larger rear springs and front torsion bars means they should be shipped to Bilstein and be revalved for proper dampening. Factory offers the service, and they are right there in CA. When I did mine it was I think $50 per shock. They had to mill my heat on coil over thread adapter. Made a huge difference in the suspension dampening.

I think your close on the spring rates.

Stock with a smallish sway was like 90lbs front and lots of arguments about the rear, but 100 lbs aftermarket springs seem to be the norm.

Back several pages I gave you the spring rates, I would think your close enough to get where you want to be with a swaybar.

BTW, you can pickup the round round bits new also.

Chris also has swaybars and all the bits you need for the installation. 914LTD makes the best kit for reinforcement of the bar mounts. LOL I used one of Mad Dogs units way overkill after I did roller bearings as I get no binding of the bar, the binding is what puts the stress on the mounting area. So for my installation the Mad dog unit was / is overkill. Thing I like about the 914LTD mount is not cutting up the box section below the tank. I used one of them on my fathers 914-6, installation was easy.

Late to the party but im curious if you have ducting from the outlet of your radiator to the vent coming out the hood? Im gonna make a vent like that so an image with the hood open for inspiration would help me out if you could

Great project, love the look of the car.

Tarret makes great stuff for 914s.

John

Your setup sounds exactly like mine and your experience at the track sounds like mine as well! My car had slow turn in response as well as a tendancy for what felt like understeer but it never lost front grip. The rear on the other hand would spin the inside tire on any throttle adjustment mid/late corner. We were probably similar for power as my boost was on the wastegate and my confidence level in the car was extremely low.

I've been thinking that the fix is to finish up my nascar front sway bar as well as see about some more toe/camber/sticky rubber.

Its nothing special, just an open hole, heh. I haven't seen the need (yet!) to fully enshroud and duct the radiator out of the hood, so I just made an opening and bolted it in. Maybe if theres a real need (aero, efficiency, etc) for something better, I'll add more shrouding to it. But really, its a race-car, I don't mind if its a bit rough around the edges

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Im going to throw some $ at it and get the front Tarett bar, it made a huge difference in the handing of my 911 so Im truly hoping for a dramatic change in the character of this 914. Its... undrivable in its current form. The hyper-aggressive turn-in, coupled with a tail that has no grip is just too much to wrangle on a racetrack.

If you get there before me, let me know what find, Im curious.