It would be silly to not return to rallying after it being such a big part of my life in my early 20s. I attended the 2024 Prescott Rally and suddenly got motivated to build another car - a Fiesta ST! Sometimes you don't realize how much you miss something until you get another taste of it.

Things are different now. Having already built a car in the past, I have much more experience to draw from this time around. To be honest, it's a bit crazy to think how I approached it back then, but then again, most young people starting out in rallying like me face those same constraints.

In doing whatever I needed to do to get on-stage and get seat time, I ended up neglecting a lot along the way without even realizing. The reality is that rally isn't just a motorsport discipline, but a logistical mountain that comes with a whole lot more than just prepping a car and showing up to the event.

When you're young, the one thing you can truly control is your effort. As long as you work your butt off, you'll get far. Most of us at that time don't have deep pockets or valuable connections, as we're just starting out in our careers. So we try our best with what we have - time.

In order for me to get on-stage, I had to learn so many new skills and buy many new tools. Being new to all of that prep work, you're bound to make mistakes along the way, even making bad choices without even realizing.

I treated rally like a sport when I started. A sport I wanted to get really good at, not just a hobby. I remember playing hockey in high school and pushing myself to reach the collegiate level. I was treating rally just like I treated playing hockey as a kid. You show up, you train, you work on your skills, you play, and you give it your all. But as a kid, you don't pay attention to all of the other things. Paying fees, traveling to events, buying equipment, coaching, scheduling, team camaraderie, and more. With rally, it's all on you. I was ready to build a car, practice at rallycrosses, and send-it out on the stages. But it wasn't that simple.

Here's what I missed when I participated in rallies last time. I will do better at these points this time around.

Treating a rally as a vacation

This can be a hard one financially, but I think it's important.

I remember only taking the minimum amount of time off work to make it to the rally. What that usually resulted in, was me scrambling on the last day to pack up vehicles and everything I need, arriving at my accommodations late at night, and then leaving ASAP after the rally was over. I had no idea where I was, or anything about the place that I visited. Not only was this stressful for me, but also my crew. Some of my favorite times were just driving in the car chatting on the way to the event and back and trying new restaurants.

This time around, I want it to be a nice experience to simply visit a new place and enjoy the ride up to the event. Hopefully arrive earlier, maybe check something out around the area. Everyone took time off to be here, so I want to make it enjoyable and fun.

If the car isn't ready, don't push

I used to sign up for events while the car was still in pieces. Even with the rally two months out, I was always confident I’d have it back together in time. Sometimes our estimates are wrong though, despite how much we work on something. Arriving at an event already exhausted from a two-month crunch isn't fun. The real kicker is if something else comes up during the event after trying so hard to get there in the first place.

This time, if the car isn't ready, I'm not racing, but I will still go to the rally. I can take the family out and treat it as a vacation while spectating. I could volunteer or crew for a team. There is still so much to enjoy about a rally without actually being in a car.

Most performance upgrades are safety upgrades

I believe that anything you add to a car that increases control is a safety upgrade. Differentials? Safety upgrade. Suspension? Safety upgrade. Drivetrain reliability, quicker steering, rally lights, brakes, comms, and even driver cooling - all safety upgrades.

I want to finish all events that I attend, and I want to make sure that the car is built for rallying. I don't want to build a car that can hold up to rally, I want a car that is built to perform like a purpose-built rally machine. While this mentality can drive up costs significantly, that’s exactly why I chose the Limited 2WD (L2WD) class.

In this class, I can affordably compete to the limitations of the class. I can improve on all points of reliability and safety without competing on weight, horsepower, and sequential gearboxes.

Testing often

After I modify or change something on the car, I now give it an extensive test, no matter how small. With my previous car, oftentimes I would be working on it between events, but I only tested it on the street the week of the event. I never gave myself enough time to test and tune the car because I overbooked events, even though I knew it was important.

This time around, even putting on mudflaps requires a test. I want to make sure I am fully comfortable before taking the car out to a stage. Luckily, living out in the southwest now makes it easier to find places to test the car out on rough roads.

I am also making some custom parts for the Fiesta on behalf of my prototyping and machining business - Bear Prototyping. These parts will be parts that I have on my car, parts that I stand behind and have been extensively tested at multiple events. I will list the parts on the Store Page of this site.

Things are different this time around. The goals are clearer, the prep is smarter, and the passion is stronger than ever. It’s been a long road back, but I wouldn't have it any other way. Keep an eye on the site for build updates and new parts, this is only the beginning. Let's send it!

This car will be used to compete in the ARA Limited 2WD class. This is a mostly-stock class. At the time of writing, the Fiesta is not ready for stage rally, but is slowly being prepped for it. In the meantime, I am competing in the SCCA Rallycross Modified Front Wheel Drive (MF) class.

Suspension and Steering

• Bilstein B6 struts
• Racing Rebel Steering Limiter
• Front camber bolts (full negative)

Engine

• GPI Racing Aluminum Radiator
• Larger bar and plate intercooler
• Spal 12" Slim Fan 30101522
• Vibra-Technics Fast Road engine mount
• Symposer Delete

Transmission

• Cusco type RS 1.5 way LSD - Yawsport spec
• Vibra-Technics Fast Road transmission mount
• Vibra-Technics Fast Road torque mount

Interior

• Ford Fiesta ST Recaro Seats

Exterior

• Steel Skid Plate Frame by Bear Prototyping
• 3/16" 6061 Aluminum Skid Plate by Bear Prototyping
• FIA Spec Mudflaps by Bear Prototyping
• Carbon-nylon fuel filler protector by Bear Prototyping

Wheels and Tires

• Speedline Corse 2118 Rally Wheels 15x6 42 ET
• MRF ZDM3 175/70/R15 Medium Compound

This one was a first for me. Ridge Rally, is the 2nd closest rally to me, with Prescott being the closest. So I knew that I should start getting acquainted with this event near Tehachapi, CA, as it'll likely be an event I can attend annually.

I signed up to volunteer at this event with a friend of mine, who had no prior experience with the sport or even working on cars. I shared with him my plans to get a ham radio license in order to open up more volunteering opportunities at rallies, and we ended up getting our technician licenses.

Initially, I didn't even expect us to get any radio assignments, since we got our licenses so close to the start of the event. It turned out to work in our favor and we were placed in service doing comms with Kevin Mount, the chief scrutineer. I personally enjoy being at service because you get to see and hear all of the challenges and stories firsthand, all while hanging out with cool folks.

Kevin, was awesome and honestly, didn't seem to need too much help. He was out there making burgers, providing us with a cozy RV to hang out in, inspecting DNFed cars, setting up the radio so we can all listen in, and the night before, he was scrutinizing the cars at tech inspection. Meanwhile, we were marking off cones, directing service traffic, and relaying messages in person for the most part. We made a few radio transmissions, and honestly, I was kind of relieved that we didn't have to talk too much on the radio. I think it was good that we spent the time at service during this event to just listen and get a better understanding of how ham radio works during a rally instead of being placed in a vital position from the start.

The service area was atypically compared to other rallies that I've attended. All of the service spots were on one side of a closed road. Because of this, it was hard to communicate information like you normally would if it were shaped like a square. I drove my car up and down the road to communicate messages to the teams as needed.

Brian McNamara was working timing control for service, another familiar face from when I was on the east coast. You could hear his signature enthusiasm when only a few cars started lining up for the start of the rally, yelling into the desert, wondering why so few are excited to get out and onto the stages. So, we hopped in the car to start corralling the teams over to time control. There were 32 entries, and 11 of which being novices according the the service park rumor mill.

After most cars already left, one car came back. It was BMW E36 with a sheared caliper bolt. Since there is not much to do in the service park while the cars are gone, having a car come back is kind of exciting. Asking "What's wrong?" and "How can we help?" are natural responses. The team didn't have all the tools to fix their problem, so darting up and down the service park to find tools was our mission. They obtained everything they needed to get back and running and left for the stages. They may have DNFed, but at least they still could go out and enjoy the rally!

We had lunch before cars started coming into service so we were available once they arrived. We were informed that a car rolled and their crew needs to be ready to recover the vehicle when the stage is clear, so found the crew and relayed that message. Another team had a co-driver with a medical emergency, but the car completed the stage without any offs.

After the cars in service were rolling in, we got to see the recovered car after the roll over on stage. It was a beautiful Civic hatch that took a little tumble and got damaged on the rear quarter panel. While we were hanging out there, we also heard from the crew of the team with the medical emergency. They basically said, the car and the driver are fine, and he would like to continue the rally if only he had another co-driver to fill in. Luckily for him, I brought my equipment with me, and I ask them to sign me up! Kevin was okay with it, he looked over my equipment and gave me a green light!

Time to co-drive!

To be completely honest, I was a little nervous. Mainly because I haven't co-drove in 7 years. I got in the car and we were off the next stage while it was still hot. During transit, I got acquainted with my driver, Ralph Kosmides. It turned out that I was sitting in the car with a 90's, early 00's, rally veteran. He was clearly experienced and comfortable with what he was doing, which was relieving for me. I quickly got to business though and figured out his preferences with pace notes and reviewed the notes his former co-driver left. I also warned him that I haven't done this in a while, so he wouldn't have high expectations of me.

Taking the transit up to the stage gave me a hint of what I would be in for. There were massive ruts going up to Jawbone Canyon. It made sense now why there were a lot of keep lefts/rights written into the notes. Once we started, it all clicked. I was like I never took any time off. Our communication was great and the stage was exciting. All of the ruts really kept me on my toes, it seemed like preserving the car and watching out for them were just as important as calling turns. Halfway into the stage, we start descending into the canyon. It started getting less rutty and dry. There was more vegetation and shade, and it started getting a little more technical.

We made it through okay, and Ralph asked me to air down the tires a bit after we finished that stage. That was a good move because the next stage was the same stage, just ran in reverse. The suspension felt a little less rough and the car had more traction around turns. We ran it 30 seconds faster in reverse.

What I forgot to mention, is that Ralph's car is very similar to my former Subaru. We both had naturally aspirated 2.5L GC Subaru Imprezas. The main difference was that Ralph's car had a massive driveline upgrade. It had a dogbox gearset and limited slip differentials all around. My car had a stock driveline. The difference was pretty significant. His car powered through turns, while mine was a lot less consistent and predictable. I started to regret not upgrading my car's driveline back when I still had it, but I know in reality, it was not in the budget back then.

After that second stage, Ralph was hearing an unusual noise from the car. He tried to turn left and right, speed up and slow down, but we weren't certain what it was. Apparently, they were having issues with the rear differential the night before. Luckily, we were heading back to service again after those two stages. The crew looked over the car and determined that the noise was coming from the rear differential. At this point, the team called it, and decided to retire from the rally.

This was a new one for me. Really? We're not going to pull the differential cover off and check? We're not going to try to ask everyone in the service park if they can pull off their differential and sell it to us? What if we just send it as-is and see what happens?

That's my default state of mind when it comes to these things during a rally. "I've made it all this way, and what ever happens at this point, happens." I asked them what led them to this decision, and the answer was, a mature one, you could say. Ralph was really experienced, and so was his crew. So, I was eager to hear their wisdom. Essentially, they said, it wasn't worth making matters worse.

At first, I didn't quite understand. I thought, "How much worse can it get if you can't finish the rally?" It's almost like admitting defeat and not even trying to persevere. I let it settle though and tried to look back at my past rallies.

There were two events that I can recall where I was driving, where I probably should have called it. One of them cost me a lot of time, and it was my last rally as a driver. It was Sandblast 2018, my engine would cut fuel randomly during shakedown. We couldn't figure it out and it only happened at high load. We ended up starting the rally anyway, and we ended up soft rolling the car by the end of it. If I would have just called the rally before it started, I would have only had to replace the engine. Instead, I had to replace the engine and do extensive body work after the roll. It wasn't worth it and it wasn't fun. I should have cut my losses instead of digging myself into a hole. I didn't understand that back then. I was young and inexperienced, but I had the motivation to press forward.

At this event, I started to see a more down-to-earth perspective on rally. Of course I knew that we aren't getting paid to do this, and we're not going to turn out to be professionals doing this. What I wasn't thinking about was all of the stuff that happens before and after a rally. I think that's what really makes or breaks people. How much effort does it take to prep for a rally, and what's the damage to your wallet or time schedule afterwards? Minimizing all of that extra effort before and after an event is the key to having fun and coming back over and over again.

As cool as it is to see WRC service crews take a mostly wrecked car and get it back on the road after 30 minutes, no one wants to be in that situation. Maybe once, to tell a cool story, or to unlock a personal achievement, but doing that all the time is exhausting. That will cause people to leave the sport and do something else. That's probably why I took my hiatus.

A really late finish

We came into service around 5pm. We heard good news that everything with the original co-driver was fine, and I was personally thanked for jumping in. The event was running about an hour late at this point, and service was planned to be an hour long. There were 5 more stages left to go though! After Ralph and his crew packed up and left, there wasn't much left to do besides listen to the ham radio. At one point, there was a team that had a light off, and the driver and co-driver had to wait until the end of the rally until their crew came to pick them up. That must have been miserable.

Eventually, the organizers came to the conclusion that the last stage should be canceled. This was a good decision because the event was already running late, it was dark out, it was cold, and some of the volunteers out on the stages probably wanted to go home by now. The first car to finish the rally came in at 9:55pm, and the awards ceremony started around 11:15pm. We hung out for a bit, and left at around midnight. We had a good time volunteering for the first time, and I felt super lucky to jump into the car with Ralph. I'll be back for sure!

Here's a low-quality video of my experience at the rally. I put together a bunch of clips I was sending to my family and friends and turned it into a Youtube video.

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 brakes would be around $1600. This doesn't even include pads and rotors; which puts it out of budget for me. I knew there had to be a better way to upgrade my brakes without breaking the bank.

This guide is meant for all 5x100 Subaru Imprezas, excluding WRX and STIs. If you don't care about fitting 15" wheels because it's not a rally car, you can still do this modification and greatly improve your braking. I recommend this upgrade more than the 4-pot and 2-pots because it's cheap and inexpensive to maintain. This a simple bolt on job and not very difficult even if you're a beginner.

This modification will increase your rotor diameter by 0.70" in the front and 1.34" in the rear. We will be using the same calipers, but getting new caliper brackets and rotors. If you do not have an Impreza RS, you will need to upgrade your front calipers to pre-2002 RS calipers or 2002 WRX calipers. Increasing the rotor diameter and positioning the caliper further out will provide more torque on the hub while breaking. It's just like using a longer breaker bar to loosen a bolt.

Here is a comparison of the old rotors versus the new ones. The front rotors are on the right and rears are on the left.

Enough talking, let's get to work.

Buying Brake Parts

We start our hard work by going on Amazon, Rockauto, or wherever you get your parts.

I conveniently listed them for you with links:

• 2x Front Caliper Bracket - from 2002 WRX
• 2x Rear Caliper Bracket - from 00-04 Legacy/Outback non-brighton
• If you do not have an Impreza RS, you will need these calipers: left and right. The brackets are included, so you do not need to buy them from the list above.
• 2x Front rotor for an 02-04 WRX.
• 2x Rear rotor for an 00-04 Legacy.

The choice of rotors are up to you, but I recommend these from SP Performance: front and rear. The slots are great for rally cars because they clean out the grit that would otherwise be trapped between the pad and rotor while braking. I do not recommend buying the drilled rotors for rally though. There is a possibility of gravel getting jammed in one of those holes.

You do not need to change your brake pads, but I highly recommend it, especially if it's not an RS. The non-RS pads are about 1/4" shorter, so getting the RS or WRX pads will give you more contact area. To use your new brakes to their full potential, get some high performance brake pads. I use these from Hawk: front and rear.

Don't forget to get a lubricant for the caliper slide pins. I recommend 3M Silicon Paste. I used to use Permatex Caliper Lube, but they ended up gumming up from racing.

Great, now that you ordered your parts, you can have a cold one and wait for them to come in. Good job!

Upgrading Your Subaru Brakes

Now it's time to do some real work. I am not going to go into too much detail as far as how to bleed brakes or install calipers because I am assuming you already have that experience, but if you don't there is always YouTube and other guides on the Internet. The process for the front and rear are basically the same. The only difference is that the rear brakes have a drum-in-rotor parking brake. Make sure you readjust the parking brake with the new rotor using the adjuster screw on the brake shoe assembly.

With the wheels off, take off the caliper and caliper bracket. If you do not have an Impreza RS, you can just take off the caliper bracket first so they come off together. You do not need to disconnect the hydraulic line if you have an Impreza RS. The caliper comes off with 2 medium sized bolts on the outside of the caliper. It may take some wiggling, but it will pull off. The caliper bracket comes off with 2 large sized bolts on the back of the knuckle. Now you can take off the rotor.

Your new caliper bracket does not have slide pins, unless you bought the caliper + bracket combo for the non-RS Impreza. You will need to transfer these slide pins from your old bracket to the new one. If you will be using your car for racing, I recommend removing those rubber bushings on the ends of the pins. Only one pin has one on each caliper. These can cause your slide pins to jam much easier. The only disadvantage of doing this is hearing more braking noise.

Lubricate the slide pins with the 3M Silicon Paste before installing them into the new bracket. Check to make sure that the caliper pins can slide back and forth well. This might seem like a minor detail, but if they start to get stuck, you will lose a lot of braking force. Sometimes you will get new anti-rattle clips when buying new brake pads, but if you don't then just transfer them over from the old caliper brackets to the new ones. Now you will need to remove the brake dust shield to fit the new rotor. For the front, simply remove the bolts that hold it on from the back of the knuckle. The rears are spot welded on. You can trim it with sheet metal snips or a cutting disk.

Put on your new, larger rotor. Then put on your new, larger caliper bracket that you just assembled. Now put your new brake pads on the caliper bracket. I like to put some of the silicon paste on the back of the pads where they will touch the caliper. This will help them settle and prevent them from rattling.

Before you put your calipers back on, you will need to push the pistons back in to fit your new, thicker pads. There are special tools for this, but Subaru makes it easy to do it without them. You can press them in with a c-clamp or large jaw pliers. Once they are pressed back in, put them on the bracket and bolt them back on.

That was easy, right? Now do that for the remaining three sides.

If you replaced any calipers in that process, you will need to bleed your brakes to remove the air in the hydraulic system that you introduced from disconnecting the lines. You will need a buddy for this, a bottle of brake fluid, and a brake bleeder kit or a clear tube that fits over the brake bleeder screw.

You want to bleed in this order if you have ABS as per Subaru's factory service manual (FSM):

1. Front Right
2. Rear Left
3. Front Left
4. Rear Right

If you don't have ABS, you should bleed from the calipers that have the longest to shortest fluid travel, but you need to do the secondary chamber before you do the primary chamber of the master cylinder as per the FSM.

I will not cover the entire brake bleeding process in this post, but make sure there is absolutely no air in the lines before driving.

Conclusion

So there you have it, you have successfully upgraded your brakes for a low price all by yourself. The amount of braking force you have now is ridiculously awesome for how light the car is. One thing I should mention is that I installed a proportioning valve and removed my ABS system when I did this modification so I was able to tune my brake bias. Since the rear rotor had a larger size change, that means that your brake bias will shift slightly to the rear. I do not have experience with this modification on the stock valve. I am assuming that it's negligible as far as safety goes because a lot of people have done the rear brake upgrade without doing the front on the stock valve and still praise it.

You might be wondering, "How will I be able to fit 15x6" Subaru wheels when they still don't fit on these front brakes?" and you would be right for asking. I grinded down the stock Subaru calipers to make it work!

I hope you found this upgrade useful. If you have any questions, feel free to comment below. I will do my very best to help steer you in the right direction.

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 don't want to be spending money on either of them. My solution is dramatically cheaper and performs just as well - use your factory brakes!

This guide was based on 2002 WRX brakes, but according to NASIOC, it should also work for the following Subarus since they use the same rotor size:

• 02-04 Legacy GT
• 05-09 Legacy non-gt
• 01-13 Outback
• 02-14 Impreza WRX (including 08, which uses 2-pots)
• 03+ Forester
• Baja
• BRZ/FRS/GT86

Things you need

• Angle Grinder
• Metal Grinding Wheel (~40% life needed)
• High Temperature Paint

If you don't have an angle grinder, I recommend buying from a quality tool brand like DeWALT. Here's a really affordable one that won't let you down: DEWALT 4-1/2-Inch 11-Amp Angle Grinder. They also have great grinding wheels as well: DEWALT Metal Grinding Wheel (5-Pack).

I recommend a high temperature paint to coat the calipers after you finish. I used a 500°F engine enamel paint because calipers get very hot during racing conditions.

Grinding your calipers

15" wheels clear the factory rear brakes, but 15" wheels do not clear the front brakes. What we are going to do is grind the top of the caliper while it's on the car with an angle grinder. There is a lot of material on top of these calipers, so grinding it down several millimeters isn't going to cause any problems.

Jack the car up and take off the front wheels. Bring out one of your 15" wheels so you can use it for test fitting.

The top front of the caliper is the first part of the caliper that collides with the wheel if you try to put it on. Start grinding there and as the wheel starts fitting better and better, start grinding further back.

You can tell where it rubs by the scratches left on the inside of the wheel. Grind down on the caliper and check every so often on your progress. This will not be quick. I think it took me over an hour to do both, maybe two, mostly because I was being overly cautious on the first one. Once the wheel fits over the caliper, try bolting it on and rotating the wheel. You do not want it to bind on the wheel at all. You actually want to keep grinding until there is about 2mm of clearance as a safety margin to account for heat expansion.

Painting your calipers

When you are done grinding, go ahead and paint the top of the caliper, it will rust really badly if you don't. You can pull the caliper off and paint it entirely if you really want to make it look good. I already repainted my calipers before doing this modification, so I just coated it again while it was still on the car.

And there you have it! That's how you can fit factory 15" wheels on your WRX without changing your brakes. I am not sure which 15x6" Subaru wheels will not work for this modification, but if the minimum diameter of the inside of the wheel is greater than or equal to 13" then it will probably work because it will not require more grinding.

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, most likely because there is no demand for gravel suspension on those cars.

Plenty of documented Subaru builds and repairs

Whether you live on the forums, Facebook groups, or just on Google, you can find content on building a Subaru rally car. Many people have done it before, so it's easy to find free advice online, like right here on this blog! Even if it's not rally related, most questions about the car have been asked before. There is plenty to learn and discover when you search. Getting a factory service manual online is also very simple, and crucial for an involved build.

Many scalable Subaru upgrades

Nothing is stopping you from buying a cheap front wheel drive Subaru Impreza and upgrading it to an all wheel drive turbo monster later on. When you first start, you do not need a turbo or all wheel drive to have fun and be competitive. Starting out slow and incrementing over each season is probably the best way to go about starting in stage rally. Not only because it's cheaper, but also so you know that you are improving as a driver. There aren't a lot of platforms in North America that allow this kind of flexibility without extensive modification. One day you could be an open class competitor in the same car you first started in.

Subarus are not hard to work on

When building a rally car, you want to be able to service just about anything. Just in case things goes wrong, you want to be able to easily inspect all mechanical and electrical components. Most components are very easy to get to, especially in my older GC Impreza, so swapping out parts in the service pits should not be a problem. You can also forget special service tools, because you won't need much more than a basic mechanics tool kit.

Easy to make friends

There are already a handful of rally teams out there that rally Subarus. This may seem like a bad thing because it will make it harder to standout, but putting that aside, it gives everyone something in common besides simply competing in the same rally. You will be able to find teams that could give you some parts to keep you in the event if something goes wrong. Rallists typically have good sportsmanship and will help you out like that. Also, because your car will be similar to the other Subaru teams, it will be easier to compare your stage times. That will give you a better understanding on how you are improving as a driver. It gets hard to make comparisons with a Fiesta ST, BMW M3, and a VW GTI if you are in the 2-wheel-drive class for example.

I hope you found this post informative! Do you have some other reasons that I am missing? Maybe you didn't have good experiences with a Subaru. Whatever the case may be, I am curious to know. Let me know in the comments below!

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 for both of them shipped.

I went ahead and pulled the transmission out. This required the exhaust, drive shaft, and transmission crossmember to come off. Disconnecting the transmission from the engine took some work. There was a lot of chiseling going on to split them apart. Once they disconnected, I used a jack to lower it and pull it out from the bottom.

The first thing I noticed was how worn out the throwout bearing was. It was clunky, dirty, and binded up while sliding back and forth. Then I pulled off the pressure plate and took a look at the clutch and flywheel. The flywheel was in decent condition, but the pressure plate had some burn marks.

Taking a look at the transmission again, I noticed that there was a big leak coming from the shifter rod. I have a factory service manual for the car, so I looked it up to see how easy it would be to replace the seal in there. It required me to take off the transmission extension and center differential housing. I went ahead and dove right in to take it apart.

In a short amount of time, I was in! The first thing I noticed was just how good the condition of this transmission was. I did not see metal flakes or chipped parts at all. Quite impressive for 205K miles!

Looking closer, I noticed that the failed seal introduced another problem. It let moisture into the transmission and made the part adjacent to it, the main shaft rear plate, develop a layer of rust. It made me feel better about doing all of this work just to fix a relatively minor problem, only to find out how important it really was.

I hand sanded it down lightly to remove the rust. I did not want to sand it down perfectly, because the thickness of this part is important. It acts as a supporting spacer for the extension end of the main shaft. The part comes in a 5.50mm and a 5.63mm version to account for the bearing protrusion from the end of the main transmission case. Probably more than you care to know, but it just proves the point that this thickness should not be changed.

After putting the main shaft rear plate back on and doing a thorough cleaning of the insides, I put the new shifter rod seal in and started putting the case back together. I was torquing the extension case bolts to spec, but my 3/8" torque wrench ended up braking and snapping the long bolt. I ended up having to take it apart again to extract the bolt. It was one of those 2am nights again, so that did not put me in a good mood.

I did not have a clutch alignment tool, so I ended up ordering it online. A couple days later, I put on the new clutch and flywheel.

Stay tuned for part 5 where I start working on the brakes, including removing ABS and upgrading the rotor sizes.

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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 these bushings. It was nice for the street, but I do not use a rear sway bar for rally.
• Front Control Arm Bushings
• Lateral Link Bushings
• Trailing Arm Bushings

I did not replace the rear spindle bushings and the rear control arm bushings because they were still in good shape and pretty firm.

Before I put these bushings in though, I wanted to reinforce some of the components. I recently came back from co-driving at ESPR 2015 while this was going on. I saw a fair amount of suspension failures.

The first one happened to us. We weren't in a Subaru, rather a Ford Focus, but it's still worth learning from. The Focus's trailing arm was basically a piece of flat stamped steel. Definitely not strong enough to handle the abuse of rally. It did not take long before this trailing arm bent, and we didn't even jump or hit anything. Now, I know the Subaru has a decent trailing arm, especially compared to the Focus, but I decided to reinforce it anyway. If you are not familiar with the shape, it's basically a C, or a rectangle with a side missing. I decided to make it a full rectangle by adding one more side.

This shape is also used for one of the lateral links, commonly known as the taco link because of its shape. I decided to box that one up as well and call it a burrito.

At this time, I did not have any welding experience. I had my good friend Dan lend me a hand and weld the new sides onto the trailing arms and lateral links. It turned out great!

One of the most common failure points for Subarus are the front control arms. They have a tendency to kink at the bend. It doesn't help that there are holes on both sides of the middle of that bend. I wanted to eliminate this weakness as well by welding plates on both sides of the bend.

This time I went over to my friend Drew's house to try and weld these plates on myself using his welder. His welder is a Harbor Freight flux core welder, and I will tell you what - they are actually pretty good once you have some practice. They turned out awesome, and I still have those control arms on my car today!

Once everything was reinforced, it was back to Dan's place for some sandblasting. I cleaned up the surface rust and the bushing mating surfaces. Next, it was time to press in these bushings. I did not have a press so I made a tool. It's basically a few large washers and a big nut and bolt. I used my impact wrench to pull them inside of the parts by tightening the nut and bolt.

Finally, it was time to paint! I just used Rust-Oleum enamel paint that you can find anywhere. I put on the primer first, then red enamel. If I remember correctly, I was doing this at 2am. Being my first actual car build, I was pretty excited working on the car, so the late nights did not bother me so much. I painted my shifter linkage as well at this time because it was just sitting around being rusty.

Stay tuned for part 4, where I crack open the transmission and replace the clutch.

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Empire State Performance Rally (ESPR) took the cake again as one of the most difficult rallies to finish in North America. With 24 cars starting the event, only 10 of them finished. For the last two years, the common complaint was how rough the stages were, but this year, they could not use the same excuse. The organizers of the event spent many hours working on the stages to level out the big holes and rocks that were causing problems before. This allowed for a faster, safer, and more enjoyable rally.

So why didn't many of the competitors finish? Most of them were out because of powertrain failure.

• Engine: 4
• Transmission: 4
• Suspension: 2
• Off Stage: 2
• Electrical: 1
• Unknown: 1

Sources: NASA Rally Sport and me walking around at service.

It was a little depressing seeing all of the cars having problems at service, and on top of that it was starting to rain. Regardless though, once I was back on stage spectating, you can still see that the event was very much alive.

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 of the car smelled slightly like gas. I knew that must be the EVAP problem. I took off the fuel level sensor cover and fuel pump cover and noticed it came from the fuel level sensor for sure just by smelling it. I took it off of the gas tank and look at that - the mating surface was pretty darn rusty, so I doubt that the rubber gasket was making a good seal.

I started sanding the mating surfaces for the gasket. Since the gasket is very thick, I sanded the gasket as well and removed all of the embedded rust. It went back together easily and no more gas fumes!\n\nThe next step was to find out why the handbrake did not work. I pulled off the wheel and rotor and this is what I found...

This brake shoe was just dangling around in the rotor. There was no brake hardware associated with it. Instead of trying to buy the drum brake in a rotor hardware kit, I searched for an entire rear spindle at the local junk yard. I found myself going back to the same Subaru Legacy that I pulled the seat from. The rear spindle for that car is exactly the same except the handbrake cable is slightly longer. It was in excellent condition, so I decided to get it.

When I went back to take off the rusted out spindle, this happened...

The strut mount separated as I was trying to take off the axle nut with a breaker bar. At this point, I was mostly a hand tool user, but that quickly changed. The next day I bought an air compressor, impact wrench, air ratchet, and air hammer. I was trying to hold off as long as I could, but I knew that one day I would need to make this purchase. I was so happy I did because it made working on the car much easier with all of the difficult to remove hardware on the car. With my new tools, I was able to take off the spindle, trailing arm, and the lateral links.

Here is a list of the tools I bought:

• Husky Impact Wrench
• Husky 30 Gallon Air Compressor - I actually have a 33 gallon one, but they stopped making it. This one is the closest thing to it.
• Husky Reactionless Ratchet
• Husky Air Hammer

All of the suspension bushings were extremely worn on this car. I knew my next step would be to replace all of them.

Stay tuned for part 3, where I will work on the suspension components by replacing the bushings and welding reinforcement plates.

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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, I will explain the seats. The car was originally listed for $1500. This included WRX front and back seats. I told the owner that I would like to buy the car with the original seats, so he dropped the price down to $1200. Then on the day I was going to drive up, he told me that he forgot that he sold the original seats. I asked how much would it be for no seats? He replied with $1000, so I told him "no problem, I will be there". Meanwhile, I was trying to find any information I could about which seats were interchangeable for this car because there wasn't a single Impreza at my local junk yard. None of my friends could hook me up with a truck and trailer for that weekend, so driving it back was my only option. I found mixed thoughts on the forums about 2nd generation legacy seats fitting. I ended up giving it a shot and pulling out one of those seats at my junkyard and buying it.

My friend and I put the seat in my car, grabbed a few ratchet straps - just in case a couple of bolts did not align with the seat, and we took off to Hartford from Baltimore. When we arrived there, we immediately put the front seat in. What do you know, it bolted right up! Test driving the car was interesting. To stop the car, you needed to keep pumping the brakes. You also cannot accelerate very fast because as soon as you tried, the clutch would slip. That didn't matter though because all I was looking for was a foundation. Regardless of their condition, I was planning on changing the clutch and brakes anyway. As long as it had an engine and transmission that worked, it was fine with me.

For $1000, there was no reason why I shouldn't buy the car. Later, I found out how difficult the body work would be, but in that moment, it didn't matter. And to this day, I am glad that I bought it. Driving back home wasn't bad at all. The only problem I had with the clutch was going up the entrance of the George Washington Bridge. I could barely maintain speed with its incline, but it turned out fine.

This was the first picture I took of the car. I was filling up on the way back home. By the next day, I already started to dig into it. Stay tuned for Part 2 - when I found out just how much work really needed to be done to the car.

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When I first towed my rally car with my Nissan Pathfinder, I had to be extremely careful with my following distance. There was so much sag in the rear of the SUV that it affected breaking efficiency. Most of the braking power is on the front wheels of a vehicle. Because most of the weight is over the front wheels, you have more effective braking when applied to the front wheels. When the rear end sags, you are doing the opposite. The weight is concentrated on the rear end of the car, and the rear brakes need to do all of the work. If you try to brake really quickly in this situation, you will notice that your front brakes will be easier to lock up because of all of the rear weight transfer. This just makes for an unsafe trip.

Air Lift's 1000 series air suspension kit, also known as a rear leveling kit, lifts the rear end of the vehicle up to spread out the weight more evenly. This puts the weight back onto the front end of the vehicle, which lets your brakes do their job more effectively.

2. Adjustable

Driving to work today but towing your boat tomorrow? No problem! You can inflate the air bag springs using the regular Schrader valve included in the kit just like your tires. What psi should you run in your air bags? The instructions said to always have at least 5psi and a maximum of 35psi for my Air Lift 1000 kit. I leave mine at 10psi while I am just driving around and increase it to 35psi when I tow. When I installed my valve, I wanted to maintain the factory look, so I hid it behind the fuel door.

3. Improved Comfort

Even if you are not towing, I find that leaving 10psi in the air bags makes the ride more comfortable. It firms up the suspension and reduces the bouncing that persists after driving over speed bumps. Adding the air bags improved the ride much more noticeably than replacing the shocks and struts, which I did earlier this year.

4. Easy To Install

Air Lift makes air ride kits that are specific to the vehicle you have. I bought mine from Amazon. All I had to do was put in my 2001 Nissan Pathfinder in the vehicle filter section on this page and they had it in stock. The procedure was fairly simple for the Pathfinder:

1. Lower the rear axle by disconnecting the shocks and panhard rod.
2. Remove the rear coil springs.
3. Remove the bump stops.
4. Drill out a 3/4" hole at the bottom of the spring seat.
5. Place the air bags into the coil springs.
6. Reinstall the coil springs.
7. Route the air lines and install the Schrader valve.
8. Reconnect the shocks and panhard rod.

One thing that I will point out is that it required me to use a 3/4" drill bit/hole saw. Luckily, I had a stepper bit of that size already, but it's not common for a lot of people to have a size that large.

Here's how it looks after it's installed:

5. Inexpensive

Even if you do not tow very often, it's worth getting this air suspension kit because it's so inexpensive. Just think about it, for under $100 here on Amazon you are helping protect your vehicle, your payload, other drivers, and of course yourself! It's a small price to pay, but the confidence and security you will have while towing will be more than worth it. Even if you need a professional to install the kit, don't expect more than 2 labor hours for this upgrade.

Earlier this week, I showed you all how the Subaru's roof was repaired. Doing that repair really cut it close to our next event, Black River Stages (BRS). We did a few modifications to the car since STPR, as well as some repairs:

Modifications:

• Added a rally roof vent.
• Replaced the factory dash bar with a single bar made out of 1.5" x 0.095" DOM tubing.
• Replaced the stock fuel lines with -6AN stainless steel braided fuel line.
• Replaced the stock HVAC system with a motorsports/hotrod heater.
• Added a wink mirror to help with poor visibility with the cage installed and being strapped in by the harnesses.

Repairs:

• Replaced the roof skin.
• Pulled the dents in the quarter panel.
• Replaced the front doors.
• Replaced the coil pack.

After our tumble at STPR, I was determined to do well at BRS. I studied the BRS stages by watching Youtube videos. I also learned from watching other drivers' in-car videos at STPR to see what I could have done better. I was more ready than ever for this event.

Arriving at Harrisville, NY:

Just like always, we arrived extremely late at night the day before tech and shakedown. We had a late start going to bed at 4am and waking up at 11am, but that's okay for this event. This event did not have recce for us to check out the stages before hand, so on Friday all we had to do was tech inspection and shakedown.

We had no problems at all at tech inspection. So after several hours of downtime and parc expose, we were off to shakedown.

We did shakedown like usual, get as many runs as we can or until we feel like we did a perfect run for this short course.  I took the first run kind of slow to get a good feel of the car, we also need this run to help us sync up on the notes. This is usually a good time for me to get Larry tuned in to the way I want notes being called. We were able to get three runs in, and after that we felt fast, all synced up, and ready for a day full of racing.

The interesting thing about this shakedown was that it was at night. We were able to see perfectly with our lighting setup. It sure is nice having my Nitrous Lighting LED Light Bar on the car at all times. Some rally cars have really large HID light pods that are taken on and off of the car. They can take up precious time installing during service. We save a lot of time by not touching the lighting at all during a rally weekend. Last year, when I co-drove at BRS, my driver's car had pod lighting that would constantly need to be realigned after each stage because the positioning would drift over the course of the stage. I am happy I never have to worry about that with my car.

Race Day

We started off race day early in the morning on Saturday.

Breakfast of choice: cold falafel from Trader Joe's.

We found out that we were 6th in line to out of 23 cars. Typically, faster cars start first, so seeing that was somewhat flattering for us, but mostly a relief. This was going to be the first stage rally where I would not have to worry about catching up to the dust from the car in front of me. We wanted to take this opportunity to prove ourselves, and hopefully secure a good position like this in the future. It turned out that there was only one other car in my class, NA AWD, for this event, and only 6 cars for AWD in general. As far as power goes, I would have to guess that there are about 16 cars that have more power than me. Which puts me at a disadvantage when it comes to straights, but the AWD helps me pull out of turns quicker.

We got to see a lot of cool cars at parc expose. Our favorite was Michael Hooper's new Lexus IS350 rally car. Who was starting at 5th place, right in front of us. You can check him out at River City Rally.

We started stage one fairly strong. We got 12th out of 23 cars; I would say that I was more conservative than usual. That's a good thing though, at least for the start. Hooper told us that he broke well over 100mph on this long straight away in his 306HP IS350, while we struggled to get to 85mph in our 165HP Subaru! One day we will have that much power to play with, but just like everybody else we need to start somewhere. And as we know from STPR, I still have a lot to learn!

Stage two was great! Larry and I worked together very well, and we had a lot fun so far. We took 7th out of 23 cars on this one, so we really stepped up our game. There hasn't been any DNFs yet, and we have not had any sketchy or scary moments yet. Except for one of the combo cars that sweeps the stages between motorcycles and cars... This volunteer was a little too hyped up for the rally and rolled their Outback on stage! It wasn't severe by any means, but it was funny to watch as we passed them on stage 3.

Stage three was even better! 3rd fastest car this time, and only 13s slower than 1st with only half of the power! This bumped us all the way up to 2nd out of all of the AWD cars. Wow! Remember, there is only one other non-turbo AWD car out there besides me. This was definitely the highlight of this rally for me.

I was doing what I came here to do to make me a better driver: have Larry call the notes an additional turn ahead of time, optimize my driving line, and play it safe. Before, I would take turns hard and go sideways, but I wasn't thinking about how that affected my actual performance. Usually, that just made me slow upon exiting the turn. Now I had a different mindset: come into a corner in a safe and reasonable way, but make sure to power out of it as fast as possible.

Below is a video from that stage:

Then we went to service. We looked over the car with our crew, and everything checked out okay. Don't forget to check the oil though, because this 210K mile motor likes to drink when I shift at red line every single time.

Stage four was the same as stage one, the one with the long straightaway. One of the turbo AWD guys was not able to finish this stage. I was the 6th fastest out of 22 cars that finished this one. A huge improvement from stage one while maintaining my 2nd place position in AWD. There was one sketchy moment on this stage though. During the long straightaway, the rear-end of the car kicked loose while braking before the turn. I did not make too much of it at the time, but looking back on it now, I think my brakes had too much rear bias.

Stage five was not good. Larry lost his place in the notes and had trouble finding his place again. I think I should take the hint and install an odometer for him next time so this will not happen again. I ended up going out a little too wide and sent the rear tires into the soft/slippy edges of the course. The rear end did not have enough grip to push us back on course in time before we hit a log on the ground and then a tree which ultimately stopped us.

The rear was high centered on the log, and the right rear wheel had a lot of positive camber. The right rear door was smashed as well. We were determined to keep going, so I pulled out the tow rope. Luckily, the Beliveau Racing Boys were there to save the day and pulled us off of the log. We jumped back into the car and kept going. Unsure of the extent of the damages, we took it easy because hitting one tree is bad enough. We knew that this was a stage with a lot of jumps, so I did not want to take any until we knew exactly what was damaged. But as we know, if there are jumps, Sergei will jump regardless. That was true... I did take two on accident. It's amazing how easy it is to jump over some of these bumps. You can watch all of this happening on my YouTube video.

This brings me to another improvement that I would like to make on the car - the suspension. My current setup can take the impact of these jumps, but the suspension doesn't absorb it very well. It just crashes onto itself and requires me to settle it down after I land. Which is fairly unnerving to put it lightly.

We took a look at the car after we finished the stage. We took the wheel off and it was not very obvious why our camber was way off. After close inspection, I noticed chipping at the knuckle - a good sign of it being bent. We put the wheel back on and went back in line to start the next stage. We gained so much time that it was unlikely for us to catch back up. Regardless, we still wanted to finish. In the meantime, we asked our crew to find out if we could get another knuckle from another other team. Service was right after this upcoming stage.

Stage six went okay; we still did not take any jumps, but I drove at a quicker pace. This gave us a moderate time, still beating 6 other teams, which I found surprising. When we arrived, our crew located a team with a complete spindle for our car. We made sure to ask them if it was the 5x100 bolt pattern version, but upon installation we realized that they gave us a 5x114 bolt pattern spindle. Struggling to get back onto the stage, we tried boring out the rotor and wheel stud holes to fit the new bolt pattern. The caliper did not fit after we got the rotor on, so we just tied it back and accepted not having brakes for that wheel. We were able to get the car back together and rolling again just in time.

Then the car just died...

After checking for spark, we checked the fuel. And the fuel contained coolant. I knew exactly where that came from. Let's just say, if you ever put anything except gas into the gas can, empty it out as soon as you can. If you are unsure, dump it. Because even if it smells like gas in the can, it doesn't mean it is. I brought a gas container that was half full of coolant, and our crew topped off that can in the morning. This was for sure the most stupid thing that I have ever seen at a rally, and I take full responsibility for it...

After almost an hour of draining the tank with the fuel pump and trying to get the flooded engine started, we were up and running again. We had to accept the fact that we skipped three stages doing this. We drove up to stage 10 and prepared to launch the car. And just when we did - SCRAPE! The axle nut popped off and the axle was spinning in the spindle. Guess what, a 5x100 axle does not fit on a 5x114 spindle. I was surprised that it engaged so well in transit, but a good launch really did it this time. At this point we were done. There was nothing that we could do to keep us in the event.

All in all, we had a good time; we set some awesome times, and we fought to the bitter end. It was finally time to relax, chill out at our cabin, and head home.

So what did I learn at this event:

• Give your co-driver an odometer or a rally computer.
• Bring spare spindles.
• Don't putting random fluids in gas cans.
• 5x114 spindles won't fit no matter what you do.

Special thanks to our crew:

• Chris Lomicka
• Becca Frost
• Students at Alfred State University: Motorsports Program

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 this one, my local scrap yard ended up with one...

The first step was to take out the windshield and the rear glass. Taking out the windshield was much more difficult than I thought it would be. I kept trying with a utility knife, but it did not get me too far. I ended up getting an extended utility knife and a 90° angled blade that auto glass professionals use. The new knife is neat because you can reach in from the interior and use the knife in the tight spaces where the glass meets the metal. The 90° blade is for areas where you do not have access directly in front of the joint, such as the recessed edge near the A pillar.

My original plan was to get a windshield from the scrap yard because I would have to remove it anyway to get a roof. After all, I was able to take the rear glass off without breaking it. I made three attempts at the scrap yard to remove a windshield, but I cracked it every time.

After I removed the glass from my car, all that was left to do was to remove eight nuts that hold the roof skin on and drill out the spot welds. It was my first time using a spot weld drill bit, and it was totally worth it. It helps prevent you from drilling through both of the welded surfaces by only cutting a hole through the top surface. This made installation much easier because I did not need to fill large holes with weld. The extended utility knife was useful here as well to remove some of the adhesive used on the crossmembers of the roof. I also removed the front crossmember since it was crushed from the roll over, and used the one from the new roof.

I decided to use this opportunity to add a roof vent to the car. After hearing stories from friends that did the Southern Ohio Rally without one, I knew that I had to add it soon. I found a used one for sale on a rally Facebook group, so I made the cuts for it before I put the roof on the car.

After the roof vent was ready, it was time to put the new roof skin on. I made sure to put some weld through primer on the seams that would be welded to protect the bare metal. I also painted the inside of the roof skin white to make painting easier after it was put back on. I lined up the spot welds and started to weld away. The seams still needed seam sealer on the outside to fully seal it out from moisture. Then it was ready for some paint! I used the Delfleet series paint from PPG. I chose it because it's single stage and cheap. The quality was alright; it came out much stickier than I am used to. I was worried that it was becoming tacky as I was spraying. Not that it was a bad thing, but I just wasn't used to it. It cured very fast!

While I was working on the roof, I also had to pull the dents on the quarter panel and the C pillar. I used a slide hammer with weldable studs to pull out the dents.

The quality was not too great, but good enough. I needed pressure from multiple points to pull out the dent smoothly; that's what professional shops do. That just means that I needed to use a bit more body filler to smooth out the dents. The quarter panel already had a lot of body filler on it from the past, so back on it goes!

I had to replace the front doors as well after STPR. It made much more sense to buy the doors from the scrap yard than pulling the dents out of the originals. I was able to replace the doors with manual crank versions to save a small amount of weight. They were originally green, but I painted them white while painting the quarter panel and the interior of the roof.\n\nI ended up having to hire someone to install a new windshield along with installing the rear glass that I took off while repairing the roof. He told me that all of the windows are usually tempered, but the windshield is not. That's why they broke very easily when I was at the scrap yard. After all of this body work, I was happy to be finished. It takes a lot of skill, patience, and quality equipment to do a good, quality job. I didn't have much of any, but I know that everything is now safe and functional again. Maybe just a little less pretty, but that's what the camo vinyl wrap is for!


If you remember from last time, I had to do quite a lengthy repair before our next event, Susquehannock Trail Performance Rally (STPR) in Wellsboro, PA. It was the weekend before the event that the engine was finally put back in the car, and it fired back up without any problems.

Along with the frame rail repairs, I made the following modifications:

• Group N Engine Mounts
• Group N Transmission Mount
• Polyurethane Transmission Cross-member Bushings
• Polyurethane Steering Rack Bushings
• Swapped Pirelli K4 195/70R15 tires to Yokohama A035-E Soft 185/65/R15
• Added Fog Light Covers

and repairs:

• Warranty replaced the rear coilovers from HSD (shaft would seize in shock body randomly)
• Replaced the front timing belt cover after the radiator smashed it
• Replaced my smashed Mishimoto radiator with an OPL radiator one because Mishimoto did not replace it despite their lifetime warranty and accident protection (OPL's part is identical, and half the price...)
• Re-greased the front coilovers, 40mm Bilstein Universal MotorSport Struts
• Replaced left steering rack bellow
• Replaced rear left wheel bearing
• Replaced spark plugs with NGK coppers

Arriving at Wellsboro, PA

We arrived at our vacation home very late, so we did not make it to recce until around noon. We saw this as an advantage because we probably would not have to deal with recce traffic on the stage. Recce was as we intended, clear and fun. I was looking forward to putting my "new-to-me" Pathfinder tow and recce vehicle out on the stages. Not that it's anything extraordinary, but it's the best recce vehicle I've ever been in. Here's what it's got:

• 240HP V6 - VQ35DE
• 5-speed Manual
• Manual 4WD
• Rear limited slip differential
• Rancho struts
• Rancho shocks
• New brakes all around

Our recce got cut short though because our crew had some complications at tech inspection. This was our first American Rally Association (ARA) event. Most of the ARA rules are from the FIA rule book, which is more strict than the NASA one that we are used to. It required fuel lines to be mounted outside of the car or inside of the perimeter of the roll cage. My fuel lines were not modified from stock, which is inside of the car, but outside of the roll cage perimeter. We ended up having to pull these fuel lines out, move them inside of the roll cage perimeter, and re-flare them with a union to make them pass tech for the weekend.

We got the car prepared just in time to get reinspected and head off to shakedown. Shakedown was straight forward, nothing technical, just fast. We did the ~ 1 mile shakedown 4 times to make sure we were warmed up. With all that was going on leading up to the event, I didn't have immediate confidence in the car, but this shakedown turned everything around. We were finally ready for the next two days of racing.

Race Day 1

The first day of STPR is notorious for being rough on the car, despite having such a short schedule. Only 19 stage miles, 2 stages at Waste Management (these are the same stages that I raced on at WMWR and 2 European style super special stages. The Waste Management stage is very rough, technical, and includes a huge jump. The key here is to make it through the day and try not to hurt the car. Even though I just bought new Yokohama rally tires for the car, I decided to use the Pirillis to absorb all of the rough conditions of day 1.

We started stage 1, and Larry immediately lost his place in the notes and had a hard time getting back on track. I drove the stage without notes for the most part until the big jump. Luckily, I co-drove for this stage twice, and ran it at WMWR this year, so I had a pretty good idea of where all of the tricky sections were. We also took the big jump as hard as we could because - why not? I landed a little bit more on the nose than I wanted, but the car was fine. The new front-end I built really paid off! Next time I will remember to brake and then accelerate to point the front of the car up before I take off. We ended up catching up to the car in front of us right before the finish. The roughness of the stage was so much greater than WMWR; after we finished that stage, there were several dents in the floorboard. The rear lateral link mount on the subframe even sheared slightly. I wasn't surprised by this though, the subframe was already fairly rusty from its past life. Regardless, when we found our stage time for that run, we were pretty happy with it.

Knowing the condition of the lateral link mount, we decided to take the second run of the Waste Management stage lightly. We already heard from various competitors and volunteers about pictures and videos of our spectacular jump that immediately surfaced. Unfortunately for us, we couldn't take it a second time around. There was a Honda Civic rally car, the one we drag raced in this rally video, that crashed in the middle of the stage and showed a red cross - a sign that they need medical attention. It turned out that was a false alarm, and it ended up causing everyone after the Civic to stop racing and receive a bogie time. We were a bit upset about that, but then again it was nice that it let us keep the car going without ripping out the rest of that lateral link mount.

We had a lot of fun at the super special stages that came afterwards. It was a large rallycross-like course that was made out of large berms. On one of our runs we high centered one of the berms, so that was a bit embarrassing being in front of the crowd, but luckily we managed to get going again. After all of the stages on day 1, the car still ran great, and the lateral link mount was still attached.

Our crew located another team that had a welder in their service vehicle at the end of the day. That team had Ryan Thompson from Thompson Racing Fabrication (TRF) taking care of their service needs. He was very helpful and lent us a helping hand by welding a section of steel to our subframe, which held the sheared sections together after we hammered it back into place. After that, we had nothing to worry about anymore, and were ready to tackle day 2 with full force!

Race Day 2

For the first stage of the second day, stage 5, we got another bogie time. One of the Team O'Neil Ford Feistas caught on fire in the middle of the stage! At this point it was getting frustrating because I already missed 2 stages that were outside of my control.

Nevertheless, we completed the next stage. We had sort of an off towards the last mile though. The car oversteered on an R5 on a loose section going downhill. It sent us into a ditch that pulled off our bumper and debeaded one of the rally tires. We pressed on regardless and changed the tire on transit.

For stage 7, I really began to feel the severity of the loose sections, especially downhill. So far day two proved to be unpredictable when it came to traction compared to day one. There would be random sections of very loose gravel, which can be scary when you have to start braking while going downhill at about 80mph.

We made it back to service, and everything on the car looked okay. We decided to change the Pirelli tires over to the Yokohamas now that we didn't have any more spare Pirellis. My front bumper cover was left with the volunteer time keepers back on stage 6, but sweep didn't bring it back to service while we were there, so we ran the rest of the event without a front bumper cover.

On stage 8 we felt really good. Very fast and smooth, I was impressed with these new tires. We caught up to the car in front of us again. This time there was less loose sections than the previous timecard. This one had random muddy sections to watch out for. I also remember needing to slalom in the middle of the stage, but instead of going around cones, it was trees.

Video of that stage:

Stage 9 was the stage known for the 'overlook'. That is a section of the stage that includes a moderate right turn. The problem is, if you miss the turn, you are sent flying into the sky since there are no trees in front of you, only below. I made sure to slow down for that section. We ended up catching up to the dust coming from the car in front of us. The dust covered everything after the finish line, so we didn't know when the next R5 turn would be. We were already going very fast downhill in the loose dirt. Typically that wouldn't be a problem given how mild the turn is, but I couldn't tell when the turn might be, so I just had to guess. It turns out that I guessed a little too late, and we ended up going off of the stage and rolling over. It was a bummer, and quite bizarre that we didn't see a trail of dust, but rather a smokescreen of dust right after the finish.

Video of that stage, including the roll over:

We were both okay, and the car was still drivable and mechanically sound despite all of the dents. We ended up driving the car to the local grocery store after the stage and grabbed some lunch and ice cream to help us chill out.

We went back for the super special stage that day, and we were allowed to run it for fun even though we didn't finish. Our crew straightened out the fenders so they would clear the wheels, and we were off!

After this event, I learned a lot of new lessons. Lessons that I could not possibly learn at any of my other events.

• Before jumps: brake, then quickly accelerate before taking off.
• When going downhill at a high speed, expect to brake much earlier, especially if the surface is loose.
• If you see dust, slow down, it's not worth it to follow so close. I had this problem at Sandblast too, but I was lucky there.

Special thanks to our crew for all of the awesome support:

• Thomas Critelli
• Ted Andkilde
• Mateusz Czwakiel

Cover photo by Evan Sanders