Shoulda, woulda, coulda.... but it wasnt. I guess thats racing. So frustrating haha. When do you plan to have yours back in action?

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Doing it for all the wagons out there

I plan on doing the wrx night at barbs on 26th may so then

using the Perth-WRX mobile app

A little upgrade to the upper g-box/engine mount pitch stopper thing. (because NVH wasnt bad enough already in this car LOL)




When i had the engine out to replace the clutch, i noticed the Kartboy link had a little bit of slop in the front bush. While hardly noticable, and probably nothing. I thought it a good excuse to upgrade to a spherical joint rod end link that i built. All metal contruction and turn buckle length adjustment. This thing is tough and not too heavy either. Same high grade rod ends that i built my sway bar links from.

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Doing it for all the wagons out there

Been getting sh1t done on the sled over the last few weeks. I booked the car in for Barbs next friday with the WA WRX Club. So i wanted to get the car up to scratch for the night event. Finally swapped in some softer rear springs and replaced some bad front swaybar bushes. Bleed the brakes and other general checks and inspections. Also re-installed the DCCDpro. As i simply dont have time to try and write a DCCD control strategy using the Link ECU. And the DCCDpro does work well anyways.


First order of buisness was to put some vinyl wrap and stickers up on the car. 3m 1080 black wrap with some vinyl stickers on the top. The logo is YETI AUTO ELECTRICS, which is what im setting up as my side buisness, doing custom auto electrics. Trying to focus on modified/performance/ engine conversion/custom type work. Already done the electrics on a couple of engine conversions this year. One being a SR20 KE20 Corolla with Link Fury ECU. And the other being a Porsche 914 with a Spec C EJ20 also using a Link Fury. And there is a turbo Gemini with Haltech Sprint in the works too. So now that the work is slowly rolling in, i thought i better make it official with some "sponsorship" haha. (I just wish i had of done it earlier. Could of made the entire car a massive tax dodge as "promotion" LOL.

As a side benifit of the vinyl sunstrip, it means i can totoally remove the inside sunvisors (for wieght savings LOL.) And i also removed the last remnants of hood lining too.




Next job was to fit some decent lighting. The OEM JDM HID headlights just dont have enough light for me to feel comfortable racing at night. So i went and got a big bastard of a light bar. Its a Stedi brand 288w 50" curved bar. Which is massive. I went for the curved design as i wanted as much spread as possible. Dont really need long range, just good visibility in the near ground and side extremities.

I didnt really have any where to put it, but i figured up top would be ok. So i had to weld up some custom brackets to suspend it from the roof rails. The idea was to keep it within the existing silhouette of the car, while still monting it above. I didnt want it poking up too high above the roof line as then it would just be a massive sail cathing air and adding drag.



I used a bunch of Riv-nuts to secure the bracket to the Slim line roof rails. I riveted them on the inner edge as far forward as i could. But i still needed to extend the bar another half meter forward to get it where i wanted.


Heres one of my better ali welds on the bracket. I polished it with a calico wheel so it lookwd nice and pro. Practice is slowly paying off with the TIG. Every new project gets better and better.


In order to simply mounting the bar, i simply clamped it where the brackets lined up with the bar. The bars standard brackets only connect on the end of the bar. But it was far too wide to meet my brackets, as that width is determined by the spacing of the Forester roof rails.
2017-09-01_08-12-31 by bram biesiekierski, on Flickr


Heres normal HID high beam.
Normal HID high beam by bram biesiekierski, on Flickr

And this is High beam plus the 288w of LED light bar. It seams to really light up everything infront of you. The "spot light" component of the bar isnt too pronounced. it seems to be more intense in the center area. But not so much that it makes the "spread beam" component look weak. Its a good blend between spot amd spread. But the spread just inst quit as wide as i would have liked. I think another 10-15° to each side would really be nice for high speed cornering. The bar is rated at 65° spread angle. I think if they could get it out to about 90° spread (45° to each side) it would be perfect for this application. But i cant complain. The bar was $239 delivered. There is some minor glare on the hood duct. It isnt too bad. Well compared to the amount of lightthats infront of the car, the glare off the hood is minimal.
LED Light bar by bram biesiekierski, on Flickr

Light bar on by bram biesiekierski, on Flickr

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Doing it for all the wagons out there

Is the light bar going to be race (AKA: CAMS) compliant? I've never seen a light bar up that high? Spot lights mounted at the front, yes, but light bar up high like that, nah?

Fuk i dont know? I didnt even think of that. I cant really see it being a problem. Surely having good lihht amd visibility is more safe than driving around in the dark.

Its pretty secure and robust. I actually used 25 mm ali square hollow section and slid that inside the 30mm square hollow section. So the bars are very rigid. And i used 8 bolts on each side for stiffness. The bar hardly moves at all.

I guess if the car infront (in a speed event) gets withing range it could be alittle unpleasant for them LOL.

If i have to take it off the its not hard. It simply unbolts and unplugs. But i would much prefer to use it after doing all the work to fit it.

I would think the reason you dont see them mounted there is because its a difficult place to mount it.

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Doing it for all the wagons out there

.

http://www.rallywa.com/wp-content/up..._VS_IB_132.pdf

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1980 MK2 Ford Escort RS2000
1979 MK2 Ford Escort RS1800 GRP4 spec historic rally car.
1998 GC8 WRX Tarmac rally car

That's some pretty tidy welding Bram. You've come on a long way from the first stuff you showed me when you first got your welder.

Something I would like to learn.

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605whp
Quarter Mile in 10.9 seconds @ 135mph /217kph
0-100 kph 3.2 seconds

Thanks. There are a couple of points on that bulletin that could be an issue.

1st, While techinically it is infront of the top edge of the windscreen, due to how low the fixed back seats are in the car, the only vision it would be inpeding is vision of the sky. And the normal sunvisors (if fitted) would block the same vision anyways, as does the vinyl sunstrip.

2nd, This could be an issue as there is a little bit of glare on the hood scoop. But its all relative, the amount of light infront of the car makes the glare seem small in comparison. I havent sat in there for a long period of time, i guess that glare could be annoying after extended periods.

3rd, I have wired the relay negative coil off the high beam negative switch feed. And the Relay coil positive, off the OEM foglight switch/relay feed. This means the light bar goes off when you go from hi to lo (like it should). But because ive used the OEM foglight wiring to control the bar. The light bar can come on when the park lights (not headlights) are on and the foglight switch is still on (light bar switch). This shouldnt be a problem as when your driving, you dip the lights with the dip switch, you dont turn the head lights off and down to park. Unfortuantly its just a quirk of the OEM foglights being active with just park. And me being too lazy to fully re-wire the un-used foglight circuit.

4th. Mounting lights up above the cabin (on the roof racks etc) is perfectly legal according to that bulletin. It even has a picture with a green tick in the picture. As long as it meets the other points. This point only applies to bullbar/roobar mounting.

5th. I have used rectangular alloy bars for my brackets. There are angular edges on the front. I guess i could easily put a piece of roun bar infront of the rectangle if i had to get around this point. Stupudly, light bars themselves usually all have sharp angular extruded aluminium construction, so i dont see how this is any worse than the brackets LOL. Although i would need a real stickler nazi inspecter to pick that i reckon.

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Doing it for all the wagons out there

20170902_091000 by bram biesiekierski, on Flickr

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Doing it for all the wagons out there