Project: The Chariot of Victory

[ScottyB]

yeah that stuff should be fine. anything 75W90 that isn't total house-brand garbage.

good news with your 15's is that even if it limits your brake choices, that is the absolute best size to have for when the time comes that you find a good deal on some used rally tire take-offs from stage rally guys. that is your unicorn tire option if you can get it, and the rally guys will generally dump them at the end of every season with about half the tread left. 99% of the rally tire offerings are in 15 and 17 inch.

[ViPER1313]

It's a $900 car... it does not deserve better than the cheapest, worst bush fixes you can throw at it. Save the money for entry fees.

[SlimKlim]

The kit was backordered so I think our plan at the moment is to wiggle some sticks when we go to the junkyard and see if any of them are worth stealing parts from.

If someone can point me in the direction of cheapo OEM replacements to buy, I'll go that route too.

[JPolen01]

When are you guys going to Mt Airy?

[SlimKlim]

Possibly Sunday morning, haven't really planned it yet.

[JPolen01]

Possibly Sunday morning, haven't really planned it yet.

If it's Sunday let me know and maybe I'll join and break some shit. I'm having dental surgery Friday so not sure if I will be able to make it Sunday, but anything before that is certainly out.

[SlimKlim]

Day 1: Triage.

No one that knows me should be surprised that the first step of my RallyX beater project involves a deep clean.

This thing has clearly served as a pickup truck for the past decade or so and as far as I can tell has never once been vacuumed or wiped down. Open any door and you're hit with a stale cig/mildew smell that could gag a mule. The amount of bark, mulch, gravel, concrete, hay, dog hair, and the visible, sludgy layer of cigarette tar is almost comical. More power to the PO for extracting every bit of functionality out of this thing, but we needed to do something about it in order for us to work on it and drive it around before the interior finds its way into the landfill.

The patient.







Check out the console in front of the shifter in particular.





The procedure.

I vacuumed as much of the loose crap out of the carpets as much as possible, I was probably able to lift out 80% of the dirt, and what's left is in there to stay. It's actually worn through in a couple spots, and peeling away where it meets the dash up front and rear seats in the back, basically begging to get torn out put out of its misery.

Then I upped the concentration of my purple power spray bottle to about 3 parts degreaser to 1 part water, filled a 5 gallon bucket half way full and got to work wiping down all of the hard surfaces. Spraying each panel with degreaser, brushing everything loose and wiping it down with a wet rag followed by a dry one. 30 minutes later I had a bucket of solid black water and a much happier car.





Then, I heavily treated all of the fabric surfaces with Odo-ban and let it flash off while washing the exterior of the car. For the outside I just turned the pressure washer on it to knock off all the really heavy/loose grit. Then snapped on the snowfoamer to coat the poor thing in suds (easily the best it's been treated in its 200k life), and gave the whole car a quick scrub. Then another pass with the pressure attachment taking particular care to knock all of the foliage out of the panel gaps.











Once the interior had dried somewhat I hit it with the Odo-ban again. And again. Then I took a shower, got lunch, came home and bug bombed the thing with about half a can of Ozium. It's currently sitting in the garage with all the windows up letting that magical cancer in a can do its thing. I'm not sure any more can be done at this point, short of burning formaldehyde crystals in there (the method they use to kill ebola). It'll certainly make it a lot more pleasant to work on, which was really the only goal.

Tomorrow morning we're heading up to Mt. Airy to hopefully find & pull good rear end hardware to fix the bearing issue and convert us over to disc brakes. Might as well gather all of the required parts to get this thing driving right before we tear it to bits in my garage. :thumbup:

[Jake]

Goddamn, what an improvement! Sorry I didn't make it over today, helping run a garage sale in 94* heat til noon really took it out of me - working on a funky Subaru didn't sound like the best way to recover.

Good luck with the junkyard trip! I'll definitely make it out to wrench soon.

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[Senor_Taylor]

Whatever sucker you conned into going halves with you on this sure is in for a wild ride. My thoughts go out to him.

[Senor_Taylor]

Well, it's my turn for a post.

Joey and I loaded up early Saturday morning to head to Maryland and snag some junkyard parts. It was a scorcher so Joey made sure to bring some coffee and nothing else to hydrate with. There were 5 subarus in the yard and 2 of them fit the bill. The first was the same rear hub setup as ours with drums brakes, so we decided to keep looking. Naturally, the one furthest away on the other side of the yard was the one we needed with the upgraded disc brakes. We set to work disassembling the hubs and we both ran into a few problems. Everything was seized and rusty and as we worked, we began to lose hope. Joey snapped a slide pin and we both ran into issue getting the bolt for the lower control arm out, even with my super strong 20v impact. We packed up and went home empty handed knowing it would be the same on the other Subaru. At that point, we decided we would just order replacement parts and not worry about upgrading the brakes.

After a quick lunch we both started on the valve cover gaskets. The ignition cylinder is so messed up that, to this day, I haven't been able to actually start the car without Joey's help. I could tell Joey was absolutely foaming at the mouth to start wiring up a switch panel to circumvent this, so I offered to do the gaskets while he did his soldering and research. We both got carried away and I ended up doing both valve cover gaskets, oil filler neck seal, degrease the engine slightly, drill new holes for the battery tie down that had rusted away, change the oil, and drain/fill the trans/differential. Joey did a fantastic job of fabbing up the switch panel and with a little skill and a lot of blind luck, he fired the car up right away. It was a glorious moment and I think Joey and I compliment each other's skills very well. Co-ownership of this pile will be fun.

Next on the list in roughly this order:
- Call Mach V and get their opinion on the parts to order for the rear hubs/bearings
- Appropriately sized winter tires
- Shifter bushings
- Oil pan gasket I forgot to replace before I changed the oil. (Good excuse to seafoam the oil)
- Strip interior and source two race seats and find a way to mount them very low
- See if we pass inspection with this exhaust. If not, employ Taylor Johnson Exhaust Engineering LLC
- Skirt skirt in the dirt

[youtube]_T9ZZR3C0I0[/youtube]

[Jake]

I want Joey to build ignition switches for my racecar now, there is something far too gratifying about *thwick* *thwick* *uggauggaugga* that a key doesn't provide.

Great progress guys!

[rherold9]

It was a scorcher so Joey made sure to bring some coffee and nothing else to hydrate with.

:lol: :lol:

Great progress. Looking forward to where this goes

[SlimKlim]

Anyone have thoughts on how much money should be spent on rear wheel hubs & bearings?

Full OEM list pricing is ~$280 for just the hubs, close to another $160 for the bearings and then the associated seals and whatnot.

Then on the other end of the spectrum we can get this kit for all of $83 that includes everything we need but the seals.

https://www.1aauto.com/wheel-bearing-and...101&y=2005

On the one hand, it's a $900 car and we're operating on a microscopic budget. On the other hand, I'd rather not die on the highway on the way to an event.

[JPolen01]

On the one hand, it's a $900 car and we're operating on a microscopic budget. On the other hand, I'd rather not die on the highway on the way to an event.

1) Borrow Jake's truck trailer for events
2) Profit?

[Senor_Taylor]

On the one hand, it's a $900 car and we're operating on a microscopic budget. On the other hand, I'd rather not die on the highway on the way to an event.

1) Borrow Jake's truck trailer for events
2) Profit?

While it's ideal to trailer that car, Joey and I aren't ones to be borrowing something for every event. Honestly, if I had a place to store Navin's Trailer, I would have bought it already.

Secondly, if a car's wheel bearings can't survive driving on the highway, chances are slim they would survive on a rally course. Unfortunately, Hubs/Bearings aren't something to doddle with when offroading.

[JPolen01]

Damn man, are you fluent in sarcasm at all?

[Senor_Taylor]

Damn man, are you fluent in sarcasm at all?

My bad for assuming you actually had relevant advice for once

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[SlimKlim]

OEM rear wheel bearings and hubs ordered at an excellent price thanks to Ken's hookup.

Now we have to think about how we're actually going to assemble these things. Do you think a 1-ton arbor press from HF would have the Chutzpah to press the bearing onto the hub?

https://www.harborfreight.com/1-ton-arbo...-3552.html

If not, Mach V said we can bring them the knuckles and they'll break them apart and assemble them with the new parts for ~1 hr labor per side. So if we throw another $230 or so at it we only have to worry about getting the knuckles on and off the car.

[xvxax]

an arbor press probably cannot press wheel bearings. I used a super fancy press to do BMW rear bearings and it took a lot of force, maybe 10 tons on the gauge. And arbor presses are terrible. Doesn't DJ have a HF "50" ton press or whatever? That would get it done.

[.RJ]

For a rust bucket I would absolutely pay for it. Heat and swearing will be required.