A racecar Noob, a Sube and the Mexican 1000 Rally

By the look of one of the pics, a question comes to mind: Are you worried about suspension geometry? In other words, since you "lifted" it with just the springs/struts, are you worried about the stock controls arms and such allowing for full and correct travel? I know the lift is not huge, but since you don't have a huge amount of travel to be working with in the first place, it seems you might need to address...

OK, if you want to see Subaru madness, the run up Mount Washington (substantially steeper than Pike's Peak) is required viewing.

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And the famous roll by the late Colin McCrae at X Games.

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Great Points, thanks for bringing them up. I definitely was concerned about any ill effects of adding a lift.
I removed the rear sway bar to allow for more articulation in the rear. I did not change the springs yet, just added strut spaces. Here you can see the sway bar being pushed in which also caused a lot of stress on the endlinks.



So with no rear sway bar and a taller stance, the car handles very different on the road. Still very good, but it is not "on rails" anymore and cannot be driven that way. There are compromises when building any sort of vehicle for a specific purpose. This is not a road rally car. But it does have to have decent highway manners because I will be driving thousands of miles on pavement. I can tell you that it still rides great on twisty roads and highway with the lift and sans sway bar. Removing the swaybar is very common on lifted 4x4's racers...now that I said it, you will notice it much more while sitting behind them in traffic or when seeing them on a trailer.


And here are the strut spacers...which you will be hearing and seeing more of:



The suspension appears to work through its travel arc without binding or problems. I did install camber bolts on the rear struts for a little more negative camber to compensate for the lift. I had been planning on ordering camber bolts online but while at my local Les Schwab Tire Center I asked if they had some for my car. They did.



Online they are about $30 bucks shipped for two. I got one for $20, but the instant gratification was worth it. Once I got my head around it and actually followed the instructions, it was an easy install. I corrected the positive camber issue caused by the lift, and I will be bringing it in for a proper 4-wheel alignment first chance I get.


Probably the most common issue that appears with lift's on Subaru's, is actually the axle angles; Too steep which causes them to fail or wear prematurely. The axle angles on our car, seem to be just fine, but I will be watching them and listening for the tell-tale clicking.

The tires themselves are slightly taller and rubbing on body parts can be an issue. However I only have a slight rub and that is because the front fender is damage and distorted. Once that fender is replaced, it won't be an issue, and a sledge hammer will solve the problem for now.

One of the reasons we wanted the engine running and installed is so we could test both the engine and the car itself and how everything works together. I do not want a mudder or a rock crawler, just a little more ground clearance, which we have achieved.

And this will never be a trophy truck or be able to jump or take the whoops like one. This ain't that build.

This is our testing period and finding and addressing issues is what this is all about. I am also looking at maybe putting some wheel spacers on to widen the stance slightly. Before someone says something, yes, this might mean then changing something else to compensate (ie, axle length, fender clearance, etc.). Subarus have been lifted by a lot of people so there is lots of documentation of what works and what doesn't, and we are looking at, and will probably try, a lot of options, before deciding what we will race with.

It should also be noted that once the cage and all strut tops are tied into the cage, things will obviously handle much differently than stock. This is also why, although I say I will be beating on the car, it is relative to the amount safety equipment and re-enforcement that is installed in the car at the time!

Something to remember is that this thread's timeline is kind of wonky as I am Tarantino'ing it by jumping back and forth in time to tell the story. So the way something on the car looks in tomorrow's post may not be the way it actually looked on the car in my driveway today. It may have been three weeks ago!



Coming soon: I am actually working on a write up on these strut spacers, since the manufacturer is sponsoring us with a free kit for a proper evaluation!

Good stuff, and since you are (were) aware, I'd say it's a non issue. Also, I wouldn't get too riled up about no sway bar. A PSYCHO fast guy in an E30 a good number of years ago said that handling should be tuned with springs and not sway bars. In other words, you have a nice independent suspension, why take some of its functionality to keep all 4 paws down with a sway bar?

You might like this.

Wow. Just. Wow. Finally brought myself up to speed on the Subaru craziness. Awesome!

You bastard, you are making me want to build up a car for this now. I keep looking at my Jeep Cherokee in the driveway thinking it would make a great Jeep Speed racer.

^ I keep looking at XJ Cherokee's thinking the weights not bad, they could be made to go quick!

Would they take the punishment? I've read where the suspension mounts rip free from the body, under hard use. IDK, as I'm not a Jeep expert. I'm living vicariously through others.

here's a link to a cool old Subie rally car;

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?...328372639.73715.164392180262789&type=1&ref=nf

Don't want to take this too far off-topic, but Cherokees are actually pretty expensive to build/race if you wanna go fast. Since they have not real frames to speak of, you have to do a lot of reinforcing and after building a rollcage and after adding everything else that goes into something like that, you're still stuck with a shitty platform. It's not just Cherokees, it's pretty much any/all production vehicles. Why work around the limitation of a body and chassis? It's a waste of time and money. Would be a lot better off figuring out what you want to end up with and just starting from scratch. Or buying someone elses' tube chassis buggy/racecar/whatever. Unless you are married to some romantic notion of driving a particular kind of vehicle. Nothing wrong with that.

Because by the time you've built your own vehicle, you are in an unlimited class (or that odd VW tube frame class). By starting with a "stock" bug, you are racing against other guys with no budget in Class 11. Step it up a bit, and you're in Class 5. The Jeep guys run the JeepSpeed class, and there's Class 8 for full size trucks...

There is nothing rational or smart about amateur racing. It's time consuming, expensive and the payout is a trophy. The only reason to do it is for fun. If it's for fun, you might as well build whatever you want.

I'm just saying it's kind of a false economy. Ask anyone racing jeepspeed. They're more expensive to build and race than some other classes, which is fine and all, but they're slower too. You can only do so much to make racing affordable. The'limited' classes are still dominated by people/teams that spend money to beat the rules. My only point was thag if you want to race on a budget, you can spend less money and go faster in a buggy. That's all.

As someone who races a Cherokee in Rallycross events I can assure you that building a Cherokee to race can be cheap if you don't want to hit huge jumps. I have under $500 in my suspension and it can take just about anything I want to put it through. Yes it can be expensive if you buy everything brand new and get the best stuff money can buy.

I am also building a rockcrawler inspired Cherokee and will have under $3000 into the upgrades which includes a full custom 3 link front suspension, Fox 2.5 airshox, 8 point DOM rollcage, and built axles w/35" tires on beadlocks. Building my own parts and buying used parts saves a lot of money.

Not a particular Subaru fan but racing a wagon...Oh hell yes!

Adventure is taking inappropriate equipment to out of the way places and I think this qualifies

Following for sure.

Jeesh... didn't realize mentioning Jeep would bring contoversy. Sorry, didn't want to distract from the Subaru project!

Anyway... Paul, been curious on what you are packing for spares and supplies. Will be interesting to see. Going to be a tough tradeoff between being fully prepared vs. too much weight. Probably a very good move going with the wagon, space is going to be an issue to I bet. By the time you have 2 spare wheels, probably some control arms, a whole lotta tools, consumables (oil, coolant, filters...) and who knows what else it is going to get tight in there. That is if the plan is still to not have a chase vehicle that can carry some stuff for you.

Ok, then...back to the Subaru Show!

Doug, I'm working on the spares and supplies list and it will be interesting to see There may be a bivouac chase vehicle at the least. Luke has alluded to this in the M1K thread. Luke's Desert CB and the Subaru are both being run under the Outta Sight banner, so between the two of us, we should be able to have supplies/parts/goodies waiting for us at the Bivouac, even if we are responsible for getting our asses down to them! But of course, OSR members will do what we can to help our friends out along the way!





Of course, in the Mexican 1000, or any multi-stage rally (especially multi-day), navigation, pit strategy and chase strategy can prove to be just as, or even more important than how fast you run on the special stages, and we spend a lot of time working on that aspect and it has proven to work for OSR. However, we probably won't be sharing every exact detail online, as I'm sure you can understand

An example of our high-tech, navigational planning from last year:







I think this might be David's last installment on the motor build....but he will be here with more as we discover and work through issues:

And that is how he left this last installment. What a douche. oser

Does the 2013 2.0L have a cam belt, too?

that picture sums up why I want to do this race again so bad. One oversight knocked me out of the race for the day and ruined any chance of a decent overall finish. Thanks again to LoudAL for convincing the local guy with the pickup truck to come rescue me, might still be there otherwise!

Context for those of you who don't know what the pic is about. That is me standing next to my bike with a shreded front wheel. Spokes evidently started to come loose on day 1, this was 8 miles from the end of the first stage of day 2. Cruising along on a fast straight gravel road the wheel pretty much self dissasembled itself. Very scary.

Moral of the story.... check your spokes often especially if they are new wheels!

Hi Paul!

I Googled M1K rally, and stumbled onto this forum!

I have been rallying for several years, and wanting to the Mexican 1000 for, well, a long time. This year my (new) car (umm, truck) is finally done and ready to go! Yay! -only took three years!

I live in Idaho. I was just curious, being as you know the logistics of this race, could there be some money saved by teaming up? Maybe we could split the cost of a chase crew. I noticed, for a "rally" there aren't a whole lotta Rally cars. We would be in different classes. I normally run G5; or 2wd open. But, unless we both run the bageezus out of our cars, a 2 man chase crew might just be doable.

Let me know. If you have any "rally" questions, Id be happy to help you out!

Thanks.

Jeff
tazracing674@gmail.com
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