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

"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 bit too fast and smashed in my lower radiator support. I know it looks like I was being reckless, but really, I wasn't going very fast. The dirt section was so technical and slow that it almost felt like an extended rallycross, and so I ended up treating it like one. It wasn't until the front end of the car smashed the ground that I realized that despite not getting out of 2nd gear, I could still launch the car quite a bit over the sharp jumps.

I learned my lesson, but I also didn't want this happening again. After some research and planning, this new front end is what I came up with:

• Both front frame rails have been plated on all sides with 1/8th inch mild steel
• Tied in each frame rail to the strut towers with 1.5" x .095" DOM tubing
• Created a new lower radiator support with with the same sized tubing
• Replaced the RS front bumper with a regular Impreza bumper

The first step was cutting off the badly crinkled metal to make room for the new core support. Then, what was left of the frame rails were straightened with a sledge hammer.

After that, it was ready to be plated. The donor core support already had the ends of the frame rails, so I kept them and used the plating to tie them together. I added a plate to the already plated strut towers to add frame rail support bars.

You can see that I took off the lower radiator support on this donor core support. This was on purpose because I wanted to build the new lower radiator support more like a bumper. It's positioned at the bottom of the radiator and forward slightly. In case this new lower radiator support does bend in like the stock one did on impact, there will still be some safety margin until the radiator hits the timing cover. Along with that, the lower radiator support featured stronger skid plate and radiator mounts.

The main reason why the frame rails were in such bad condition was because of the RS bumper. It's different from the regular Impreza because it's meant to act as a shield to protect the lower radiator support. The design is flawed though, since the only structural place that the bumper bolts onto is the frame rail. When the bumper takes impact on the bottom, where the lower radiator support is, the extra length puts leverage on the frame rails and torques them up. If there were a mounting point on the bottom of the bumper as well, the damage would not have been this bad.

I ended up getting a regular Impreza bumper, which ended up being much lighter anyway. It let the lower radiator support be the bumper for the lower half of the car, preventing putting the extra leverage on the frame rails.

It was a lot of work, but I think it will pay off in the long run. I will still be careful over suspicious jumps, but if I mess up again, the car should let me press on regardless.

Cover Photo by Mozes Photography

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 overall. Enough theory, let me tell you how I did it.

After extensive research from other people who have done this modification, I was pretty confident in my plan of attack before the parts even came in. I decided to go with the Howe 5225 Steering Quickener. It has a 1.5:1 gear ratio; the other common option is 2:1. I chose the 1.5:1 because I did not want to overload my power steering pump. Also, a 2:1 gear ratio is harder to turn, so the turning resistance could also be counter productive. This decision was based on assumptions, so do not take them too seriously. I made sure that I added the steering quickener into the steering column with maintenance in mind. Some installations online that I have seen would require cutting up the entire steering column again to replace the unit. Some even weld the shafts of the steering quickener directly. Howe recommends inspecting the units annually or 2000 laps. Not a very helpful guideline in my opinion, so I would like the option of inspecting it annually.

First, I just went to town and cut out the section of tube and shaft that I will replace with the quickener. The shaft in the center is what actually rotates, while the tube on the outside acts as a carrier with bushings that lets it mount securely to the crash bar inside of the car and to the firewall. When we cut the column like this, we need to make sure that we keep the outside tube connected in some way. We also need to mount the steering quickener to the outside tube somehow. More on that later.

I bought the Howe 5221 Splined Couplers to connect the quickener to my stock steering column. One end is welded to the steering shaft, while the other end connects to the quickener with splines and a set screw.

I tried to make sure I spliced in the quickener without changing the overall length of the steering column. In just a few minutes, I already had the couplers tacked in place and the quickener connected.

This is where the real work starts. We need to merge both sets of carrier tubes and mount the steering quickener. We also want to be able to remove the quickener without any cutting. To do this, all we need is a thick steel plate. Each end will be bent at an angle so we can weld it to the tubes. The center of the plate is where the quickener will bolt to. For the ends of the plate, we need to increase the contact area to the tubes, so I cut the corners off and used them to make a gusset. After a lot of aligning and adjusting, I made a solid bracket.

At this point I ran into a problem. When I bolted the steering quickener onto the mount with the input spline connected, there was some binding when turning the wheel. The problem was that the splined connector was not welded straight onto the steering shaft. When I would rotate the wheel, there was an orbital motion at the splined connector end. To fix this, I cut the weld, then I mounted the steering quickener to the mount and put the connector on the steering quickener without being connected to the steering shaft. I tack welded the connector to the steering shaft incrementally, taping the connector with a hammer every so often while rotating the wheel to check for binding and relieving it. This worked really well, and I had no more binding from the input. Now when I connected the output of the steering quickener, I had the same binding problem for the other side. I did the same method as I did for the input side for the output side to fix the binding.

After finishing the alignment, it was time to assemble everything and test fit it inside of the car. I ended up making the new steering column too short when I tried installing it, probably when I was trying to fix the binding. I had to cut into the output end of the shaft and extend it a fraction of an inch, that's why there are two welding seams in the picture above.

All that is left to do is clean up the sharp edges and give it a little paint!

In the end, I accomplished my goal. The steering quickener is easy to remove and can be easily serviced.

Once the steering column is out of the car you can service it by following these steps:

• Loosen the setscrews.
• Pulled out the output shaft with the rubber bushing.
• Unbolt the steering quickener.
• Push the steering quickener into the output carrier tube.
• Disconnect input spline connector.
• Pull the steering quickener up and out of the carrier tube.

My first event with this quickener installed was Waste Management Winter Rally 2017. I was impressed with how easy it makes correcting a slide when coming out of a turn. I definitely recommend this for rally cars. Street cars, not so much, since driving in a straight line will require more focus because of the increased sensitivity.

If you are interested in doing this modification on your car, you can find the Howe 5225 Steering Quickener on Amazon as well as the Howe 5221 Splined Couplers that I used.

I always envisioned this rally to be my first full stage rally, and I'm glad it was. Sandblast is a very safe rally in my opinion. There are barely any dangerous spots, and the deep sand does a great job at stopping the car when it goes sideways. There was no recce, though, so I had no idea what to expect. The only help I had was through word of mouth and YouTube.

Just like Waste Management Winter Rally tire choice was a big decision for us. I brought medium compound gravels and non-rally snow tires to the event. Since the terrain is sand and I only have 165HP, gravel tires would mean that I would have significant power loss. The snow tires weigh about half as much as the gravels, so we decided to try them out during shakedown to see if they held up. My only concern about snow tires was breaking the bead and losing air, but after three rounds of shakedown, they held up great. We decided to go with snow tires for the event.

Early in stage one, I realized how forgiving the terrain is and how safe the stage is. It didn't take long for me to start pushing myself and become competitive. The stages were beautiful - very wide, open sweepers covered in deep sand, so much room for error made the rally pleasantly enjoyable and worry free. I felt great after completing the first stage. My co-driver, Larry Davis, was doing this for the first time, and he picked it up very fast despite not having recce.

The car felt very nimble and quick despite some saying that Sandblast isn't very fun without much power. I think that's coming from people who used gravel tires because the car accelerated almost as well as being on gravel for most sections. There were some cases where power just wasn't there... Every once in a while there would be a straight where it was just impossible to accelerate due to the deep sand. The sand constantly puts resistance on you at random spots. The worst would be around tight turns. The resistance of the sand was too much for a 2.5L NA Subaru motor to handle in those sections. Powering out around the corners was pretty difficult too because that was also where the deepest sand was. Probably because all of the drivers in front of me dug up all of the packed sand.

The second stage was probably the most fun, mostly because of its length - 14 miles. Right away, after about only 4 miles, we caught up to a Miata. This was probably one of the most frustrating parts of the event. The dust that the Miata kicked up was incredibly blinding. Any time we were closer than 1/8 of a mile we could not tell where we were - not in front, not to the sides, nothing. This was quite a challenge for Larry and I, and it made our teamwork more important than ever. I really wanted to pass the Miata, but they didn't know we were right behind them. After I blew through some caution tape on a 'turn left two' I decided to sit back and play it safe. We eventually came to a short packed sand/gravel section that settled down the dust. That's when we swooped in and cut inside of the left two that they took wide. After that, there was a new open straight on gravel. Towards the end of the straight was a small water crossing - at least I thought it was. Turns out it was about 2 feet deep, and we took it at about 70MPH. There was a large amount of shock that was felt after we plowed through it. In that moment, I was sure I broke something. Nevertheless, we finished the stage without any damage. It was a good feeling knowing that the coilovers I built can withstand that kind of force.

For our first service, we saw quite a few "Did Not Finish" (DNFs) already. Most of them seemed to be mechanical issues though. Our friends, who were crewing for Ryan Kolupa and Connie Sott, came to help us out since they had a clutch failure in stage one. We went from having a crew of one to a crew of four just in time. We inspected everything, and the only problem was a CV boot slide off. I later found out that the exhaust kept hitting the axle where the boot clamps on when going over high centered areas. The best we could do at service was using a big ziptie, though, and it held up throughout the event.

On the fourth stage, we made a rookie mistake that I will remember forever. I did a tire change with 1 mile left into the stage. Stupid, I know, but I thought this was the 14 miles stage, not a 7 mile stage. I should have double checked with Larry, but he told me to make the call and I decided to do the change without knowing. This tire change wasn't very smooth. The flat on our jack was pretty large I thought, but apparently not for sand. We were barely able to get the tire off of the ground for a change. After we did the change, we went back on the stage. The next call was a turn left two after a long straight, but there was no caution tape so we drove through the woods until we hit a dead end. After backing up an 1/8 mile, we found the turn. And what do you know, we reached the end of the stage half a minute later. Puzzled, I asked if that was really 14 miles, and that's when I realized my mistake. Oh well, now I know better. That's all it takes to add 7 minutes to your time.

The next stage was the 14 mile one with the water crossing, but this time we ran it backwards. I decided to take it easy on the water crossing this time and slow down for it. That was mistake number two, actually. There is a point where you need to decide if you want to take it slow and drive through it, or take it fast and jump it. If you go in between those, the lower radiator support will be clipped. The first time was more of a jump, instead of going into the water crossing and back out, I just jumped over and bounced. This time, I probably went 40MPH, and fell inside the dip and pushed my lower radiator support in. If I took it a bit slower like everyone else, that probably wouldn't have happened.

Video of Stage 5:

When we finished that stage, the car started overheating. I didn't realize that I smashed the lower radiator support until after we finished the stage. The plastic tanks on the stock radiator cracked and we lost plenty of coolant. We had 8 miles of transit to get to service. I called up my crew and told them to look for Brian Battocchi. His motor blew after stage two, so I was hoping I could use his radiator. Not even a minute passed, and they called back saying they found him and we could use his radiator. Meanwhile, Larry and I were limping it back to service shutting the car off every 15 seconds and rolling down the hills. We made it back fine and started pulling the radiator out. We needed to pull out the radiator support in order to put the new one back in though. Luckily, Brian also had a winch on his trailer. I got in the car and held the brake as he pulled out the lower radiator support. It was almost pulled out all the way, which was good enough for us. We were able to do all of this and put a new radiator back in within 25 minutes. I was very impressed with my crew, and very grateful for Brian coming in and keeping us in the rally.

We only had two stages left until the end of the rally. For the next stage I had the biggest 'oh shit' moment. I initiated a hair pin turn too early and clipped the inside of the turn. The car leaned on two wheels, and almost tipped over, but we came back down on all fours. No roll, no problem, we kept going and laughed about it.

The last stage was going really well until the last mile. We debeaded the right front tire taking a really tight left turn in deep sand. Then on the next turn, we debeaded the right rear tire on a similar left turn. Learning from our previous mistake, we kept going. Luckily, driving on the rim in sand is not that bad. As long as the tire doesn't come completely off, driving straight doesn't feel very different. Although, powering out of turns is more difficult.

We finally finished the last stage, but we still needed to transit back to parc ferme. I keep an air pump in the car at all times in case I have a slow leak. Larry was able to use the air pump to reset the bead on one tire, while I replaced the other one with a spare.

We made it back and saw the results for the first time. We had no idea how well we were doing during the rally until then. We came 4th in our class, but if we didn't stop for that tire change we would have taken home 3rd place.

I could easily say this was probably the most fun I have had in a very long time. I will for sure be back for Sandblast Rally next year. I would recommend anyone to compete in this event, especially beginners.

I want to give a shout out to my friend Jack Swayze for letting me use his truck and trailer since mine wasn't ready yet. Very generous of him to do that for us, and I'm glad that he is always supportive of my rally adventures.

Cover photo by Ryan Stermer Photography