Subaru Impreza 2.5RS - Best Inexpensive Brake Upgrade When I bought my 2000 Subaru Impreza 2.5RS, I immediately wanted to see what kind of brake upgrades I could do. Since I was building a rally car, I needed to fit 15" wheels to use rally tires since 16" rally tires are very expensive and hard to get. This made big brake kits not an option. Another choice would have been the JDM 4-piston front calipers and the JDM 2-piston rear calipers, also known as the 4-pot and 2-pot brakes. These will fit certain rally specific wheels like Methods, but six Method wheels, a JDM 4-pot, and 2-pot...
Fitting Subaru WRX Brakes with 15" Wheels Typically you want to be able to fit 15" wheels when building a rally car. 16" rally tires are very expensive and hard to get. The option that most people choose are the JDM 4-piston front calipers and the JDM 2-piston rear calipers, also known as the 4-pot and 2-pot brakes. These will fit certain rally specific wheels like Methods. Six Method wheels will run you about $1000 and a set of JDM 4-pot and 2-pot brakes will be around $500. We haven't even bought pads and rotors yet! If you are more budget oriented like me, then you probably...
5 Reasons Why You Should Rally a Subaru Subaru parts are readily available In North America, finding parts for a Subaru is simple. Plenty of parts are interchangeable across various Subaru models. Most autoparts stores will probably have what you need if you are in a rush to get something fixed. Even if you need to get an OEM part from the dealer, lead times are quick. Subarus have a massive aftermarket as well, especially for rally components, so you do not need to fabricate most parts yourself to turn a Subaru into a race car. For other makes, picking suspension for a rally car can be difficult,...
From Junker to Rally Car - Part 4 - Clutch and Transmission This was definitely the highest priority repair I needed to make on the car. My first question was: "Which clutch and flywheel should I get?". I did not need a crazy, unsprung, ceramic clutch for the car because I will not be adding too much power to the car. I was lucky to find a guy on the RS25 forums who was selling his used ACT Streetlite Flywheel and Exedy Stage 1 Organic Clutch. He said it was only used for 5k-10k miles, so I took his word for it and bought it. I think he was only asking $300...
From Junker to Rally Car - Part 3 - Suspension Reinforcement Moving along to the suspension from part 2, the next task on the list was replacing all of the suspension bushings. Because this is a race car, I chose to get polyurethane bushings of course. I bought a kit from Prothane. Some of the bushings were for a GD WRX, so I ended up not using those. I also bought the bushings for the lateral links from Whiteline. Here's what I used for this modification: Front Sway Bar Bushings Rear Sway Bar Bushings I upgraded to a 17mm rear sway bar at the time of this modification so I got...
From Junker to Rally Car - Part 2 - Rust After buying the car in Part 1, I was eager to get started on the car. I wanted to fix all of the problems right away, and I was determined to make it just like new. I started to do a lot of disassembly from the back of the car since that seemed to be where most of the problems were. Time to pull off the rear bumper cover... Ughh, that's no good. At least the STI exhaust tip is looking pretty! That was several pounds of rust coming from that bumper. Whatever, weight reduction. I noticed that the inside...
From Junker to Rally Car - Part 1 My rally car has come a long way since I bought it in October 2015. In this post, we will take a walk down memory lane to see how far we've come. This picture was from the original Craigslist post. A 2000 Subaru Impreza 2.5RS 5 speed manual. It was in Hartford, CT, which is about 5 hours away from me. It had about 200K miles on it at the time, with a few issues: Bad clutch Air in brake lines Handbrake did not work EVAP codes Rusted quarter panels Huge dent in rear right door No seats? First,...
Roof and Body Repair After STPR, we had a bit of a tumble.... This was a quite a lengthy repair, but I was ready to tackle it. The first step was trying to find a 4 door Subaru Impreza without a sunroof at a scrap yard. After waiting for about one and a half months at my local scrap yard, I decided to just pull the trigger on a scrap yard 2 hours away from me. They were asking for $300 for the roof cut, compared to $100 that my local scrap yards would charge if they had it. Two weeks after I bought...
Rally Radiator Support and Frame Rail Reinforcement "Damn, didn't see that coming." These words ran through my head as I nosedived at NJ's Raceway Park Rallysprint back in April. This event is half dirt, half tarmac, and I expected it to be good practice for me. The dirt section was modified to be used as a rallysprint course since it's normally used for motocross. Rain from the days prior made many sections slippery, but that wasn't what ruined the day for me. Some of the motocross jumps were kept in the course design to be used for the rallysprint. I ended up taking one of them a...
Subaru Steering Quickener Installation Today, I will walk you through my steering quickener installation for my Subaru Impreza 2.5RS Rally Car. I have been contemplating this installation in the past, but after the BMR Rallycross I felt that it was necessary. Before, my mindset was, if you need that much constant steering effort, you are not driving efficiently. Even though I believe this is mostly true, I think it would be very beneficial for odd understeer and emergency situations. A better response rate is just an advantage right? As far as the driving experience goes, I believe it will improve my driving quality...