I made a little progress yesterday.
I built the mounts for the coolant tank and the fuel pump/filter assembly.

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I am running a 928S pump on its stock bracket, the filter is on its way. Sorry for the bad shot, it is hard to get a good view of it.
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The coolant tank is stock WRX, just relocated to the other side of the engine.
By deleting the throttle body heater I was able to lower the coolant tank by about 3" while still keeping it at the highest point in the system by 4 or so inches.
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Then I plumbed the rest of the engine's coolant lines.
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Looks like you had to modify the oil filler tube. Is that still the SVX piece or did you use something else?

I have the stock wrx filler in there for now, the clearances were close enough with the engine raised that I was keeping the SVX piece off of the car while I put in the engine cross bar for fear of breaking it, I will be swapping it back in after I am done working on the tube chassis.

What did you use for a throttle cable?

-Britain

I got it custom made by terrycable when I did my conversion at Renegade, I think they sell them now.

Really...I will give them a call. How do did you route it? What does the end at the throttle pedal look like? Does it just go into the stock ball socket?

-Britain

Looking at their catalog, didn't see the Subaru conversion cable....but it is a good thing they list a cable for a Porsche 935. Bet they sell a lot of those.

-Britain

It is a custom cable, you specify length and what threads you need on the ends, then they supply the necessary hardware to adapt to whatever you need. It is routed like the stock one through the tunnel and attaches to the pedal like the original.

Dana,

how much room is there physically between your suspension pickup and the subaru cam covers? I'm also using your method of hollow tube over the pivot point on the trailing arm, but I'm thinking of moving them out to create a wider track at the rear and at the same time give me more room for whatever engine in the future..

Thanks

Randall

There is about an 3/4" of clearance between them, it is pretty tight. You are a lot better equipped to create totally custom suspension points than I am, I think it would be a good idea to explore. I did move my trailing arm mounts up by 2" so the suspension arms would sit level at the car's new lowered height, which would also be something to think about as far as positioning goes. With your skill level though you should just go with double A-arms on all 4 corners and really make us all look bad

I'm also in discussion about that, I can change certain chassis groups but there is a limit, suspension, engine and chassis. If I change 2/3 . I will have to get a new title, something I'm trying to avoid to all extent.

Raising the pickup points is something I will surely do, even maybe move them out some..

No real work done today, I am pretty much done with the rear half barring a few bits I need to buy. For now I am going to set it aside to start cleaning up the rear of the tub in preparation for its amputation. I am going to rebuild the area where the back half was cut off so it looks a little more "finished".
Here are a couple pics of the car separated. I timed myself and it only takes 20 minutes working leisurely to split the car in half.

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After you take it apart and put it back together will it need to be realigned? I can't tell from the pictures how the back end connects to the tub.

Can we see a close up of the connection details. How the rear tubes connect to the mid section. Thanks

This is what the connectors look like, they fit together like puzzle pieces and have 2 bolts coming in from opposite sides to hold them together. The other end slips into the tubing, I welded the seam as well as a few plug welds to attach them.
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Here they are installed on the car, you can see the smaller diameter end that the tubing slips over as well as the seam that divides the 2 pieces. In the top of the lower connector you can see the ends of the bolts that hold the pieces together.
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There are 6 connection points like this that attach the 2 halves, making a total of 12 bolts holding everything together. The connectors are circled in red and linked to their partner in yellow.
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I don't think everything will need to be aligned every time the car is split, the suspension is bolted firmly to the rear half. I would think that even if the cage were to move a little when it is unbolted it will regain it's proper alignment once it is bolted back to the car.

As always, very slick.
I really like the removable rear just from a servicing standpoint.
It will take up less space in the shop also....lol

Rich

Where do you get those connectors?

I'm still of the opinion that you should market this set up with a roll cage and front clip. Three parts easily shipped, put together with either a donor teener, a 550 or 904 kit. Even a sheridan body kit. Just a rear half and roll cage kit would be cool!

Seems like you've designed it so that it fits a number of engines.

I'd be first in line for one!

You can find them at a lot of off road supply places, I got mine from Ballistic Fabrication, search "clamp" on their site to find them.

That has definitely crossed my mind, if I had a celette bench and twice as much free time I could totally do it. I am making the back half fairly independent, you could just bolt it to the front half of anything that had matching connection points, hook up a fuel line and have a self sufficient rear suspension and drive train. 350hp 3 wheelers could be fun, how about a home built Atom?

You need a bracket to bolt on to each half so they become self supporting. That way you can easily move each part around when separated.

I just trying to slow down your progress.

Oh, and I can see your fuel pump now. Take a nice picture of that and go back and edit your earlier post to bring it up to date.

I have 4 casters that would be perfect to make each piece rollable, now if I can just get my homework done I could drag out the welder and get back to work!

And there you go! When's the first one available?

I pulled the front suspension today, I am running a full Carrera suspension including the aluminum cross member and underbody sway bar.
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I also finished plumbing the turbo hoses.
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Now that the suspension has been removed I am pretty much left with a bare tub.
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I also started cleaning up the fire wall, I have a lot of metal work to do back here over the coming months.
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Dana...some additional inspiration (like you need it).
http://www.gizmag.com/lamborghini-introduc...tm_medium=email

Ed

HAHA, Just saw that too, glad to see Lamborghini is thinking along the same lines as I am for the new LP-700
I am pretty envious of those double A-arms though!

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What size of wheels are those? We could use the wheel diameter and a little bit of math and get some dimmensions for the a-arms. I'm liking the way those a-arms look like they mount, too.

So let's see....you've got the sports car covered. If you found a VW bus and did the same to it, you'd have a family hauler or a camper. You could add a VW squareback or notchback for an estate wagon or family sedan, all using the same power plant. Kinda like swapping a battery pack into one of those multi-tool Dewalt kits. There you go!!!

Dana, you used to work for Renegade right?

I have a question regarding the tacho; is the stock 914 unit compatible with the Subie output? (probably not) How are you going to run this? I bet you have experience with this.

Thanks

Randall

I had mine refinished and re-calibrated by North Hollywood Speedometer, they also added the boost gauge, LED lighting, and changed the redline to match the subie's.
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Thanks!

I did a little wiring yesterday. I started out by building a harness for the car's rear lights and rear mounted sensors. The harness will plug into the main harness at the firewall and at the other end the rear clamshell will plug into it for the taillights, this way it is still possible to break the car into components easily.
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Then I pulled the subaru engine harness, ran any extra wires I needed to, and combined it with the car harness I had just built. Within the harness I ran a few extra wires to various parts of the car, this way any extra sensors or electronics I want to run in the future are already wired and ready to go.
Remember when it only took about 4 wires to hook up an engine? Well those days are gone!
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And here is the harness installed, I still need to run the battery cables but other than that the entire rear of the chassis is wired.
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Since it was readily accessible, here is a shot of the front of the engine. Also notice that the engine is lacking a Perrin lightweight pulley, gonna have to fix that problem soon!
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I did a lot of trimming and wire wheeling on the firewall today. I have stripped the entire rear of the tub and trimmed it down to a point where I can start rebuilding the fire wall and longs.
I also decided that if I am going to build a high quality fiberglass or carbon body I need a perfect steel body to take a mold off of. Because of this I have decided to trade my lightweight lids for stock steel lids, If you want to trade click here. I think by starting with steel, I material that I am much more competent working with, I can end up with a much better final product. And then once I make a carbon body, one of you can have the steel one

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Nice work! Are you excited to start building up again? Can't wait to reach that stage..

Hey Dana,

What boost sensor are you using? My boost guage stays pegged all the time. I thought I put a 930 sensor on there. Is that right?

Ed

I can see a bidding war on the steel shell already!

Looks great!

I got some welding done today, I reconfigured the upper portion to eliminate the stock dip and added about a foot of weld between the cage and the tub in the process. I also seam welded the firewall and ground down the pinch weld that splits the firewall in half.

Before:
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After:
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Very nice Dana!

I like how you made it so smooth.....

Care to help me with the Kar-B-Q ?

Looks heavy. You must have added at least 8 oz.

I started rebuilding the frame rail area of the firewall. Since the tub will end at the firewall I had to amputate the frame rails.
Here is how much I needed to remove to get to flat, rust free metal.
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I welded in a filler plate, the frame rails, cage, and inner structure are all welded to the filler piece, hopefully this should tie all of the inner structure together.
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Here is a before and after shot, after I finish welding up the drivers side I will start fabbing up the outer structure that will tie the door jambs into the rest of the firewall
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Have you seen this???

http://www.autoblog.com/2011/02/18/you-can...powered-kit-ca/

http://www.factoryfive.com/whatsnew/update...nouncement.html

Very cool! The WRX engine really is a perfect power plant for a sub 2000 pound sports car. I am surprised it took them this long to come out with a good kit with Subie power. Nice find!

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Hey Ed,
Mine is a VDO piece.
The part number reads: 993-606-103-00
The other side reads: 0-1.5 Bar