BRZ Rally Car

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

Need to talk to dealer to confirm, but they sent me some pretty atrocious looking pictures of damaged cam journals and clogged oil passages so I'm thinking this motor may be entirely not worth saving.

There's a complete (includes engine harness, coil packs) '16 motor on car-part with 40k miles and a 6 month warranty.  I'm leaning towards that option at the moment.

Easy button that E36 M3!!

Here's a picture they sent of one of the cams, but there are a number of unpleasant things.  Apparently not only is there RTV everywhere but a piece of one of the heads was broken off and bouncing around in there:

I talked to them and they basically said the majority of the engine is a goner, so I told them to finish it and get it back in the car for me so I can take it away.  Time to go engine hunting.

I'm no engine expert, but that looks dead. 

Dump question: since its already out, can you drop off the used engine and they put that one back in instead? No extra labor on their end, a LOT less on yours.

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael (Forum Supporter) :

Unfortunately, no.  They don't do that sort of thing, especially with the added weirdness of a recall thrown in.  No big deal, honestly, I'm going to have to get good at getting the engine in and out of this car anyway.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

In reply to Dusterbd13-michael (Forum Supporter) :

Unfortunately, no.  They don't do that sort of thing, especially with the added weirdness of a recall thrown in.  No big deal, honestly, I'm going to have to get good at getting the engine in and out of this car anyway.

its a subaru so it should be easy to get out since iirc you have to pull it to change the spark plugs anyway

Ian decided he wanted to sell me his parts car's wheels, the stack of VW's finest BRZ rally wheels is growing:

Bummer to hear on the engine! :( I hope it goes well sourcing another.

It's back!  It's still broken, but the engine actually sounds better- maybe it's just the fresh oil.  I have an engine lined up for next weekend, I'll start pulling this one tomorrow.  Have been working on some CAD stuff, more in a bit.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

In reply to fidelity101 (Forum Supporter) :

So the expensive thing that is gonna be the first to get damaged on a big hit gets an expensive coating?  

they have an offroad coating for baja1000 type stuff I'm interested in, curious how it holds up... and exactly!

Maybe better exhaust routing and underbody protection can go with it? 

we can still do the rotary route on this if you want :) join us in open! or is this supposed to be a L2WD car?

In reply to fidelity101 (Forum Supporter) :

Trying to stay in L2WD- I think it's good for me to have rules that say what I can/can't go crazy on.  There's not really a better exhaust routing on this weird flat pancake engine, since the headers come straight down off the bottom!

So, Seth asked about the rear towers.  My plan is to use a 4.5" steel tube to form these, I considered sheet metal but the tube is just the perfect size given the space it has to fit in, and pretty cheap, just requires a little trimming to fit the contour of the wheel well stamping:

If we zoom out and make the other bits of metal visible, you can see the gussets I plan to tie it in with, and the control arm reinforcement down below:

Also on the back end, I'm planning on doing a diff skidplate.  Originally I drew up an aluminum one with steel mounting brackets, but with all the hardware added up it's actually lighter (and much cheaper) to do it all out of steel.  Welding it together will be a little funky but it should hopefully be pretty tough:

Up front, a 3/16" aluminum skidplate (nice and simple, one bend, shown transparent here) will be supported by a core support brace and some bungs welded on to the little subframe things that hold the swaybar.  You can also see the front control arm reinforcement plate:

The front towers will get moved up and remade out of sheet metal- I'm planning a little fixture to make sure they wind up in the right place.  Once they're fully welded my plan is to cut the top of the original tower from underneath, fold it outwards, and weld it on to tie things in even more:

And the front tower and strut from the wheel well side:

As we all know, no plan survives first contact with the enemy, but I'm hopeful this will go well.  It's hard to see but the steel for the tower has all of the little wiggly edges it should need to mate up to the stock unibody nicely- the hope is that I won't have to do much fitup, just grind everything clean, fixture it, and start zapping.

None of this will happen until after it has been running for a while, but it doesn't hurt to get the ball rolling.

Extending the towers up. That's very much in line with my own interests. Will they come up through the hood? 

Excellent work and planning going on here.

In reply to wheelsmithy (Joe-with-an-L) (Forum Supporter) :

I might need some little bumps to clear the top of the strut mounts, but the tower itself should just clear.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ said:

In reply to wheelsmithy (Joe-with-an-L) (Forum Supporter) :

I might need some little bumps to clear the top of the strut mounts, but the tower itself should just clear.

Maybe a good spot for some heat extraction vents?

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

In regards to the shock towers and rear mounts:  

What thickness of metal is required to do something like this?   I have IDEAS :) but don't know much about materials and fabrication.

In reply to Jah29 :

I'm planning on using a combination of 12ga (.105") and 10ga (.135") but that's partially because I want overkill- the stock stuff is around half that thickness.  Rules also dictate that the places where the cage is attached are a minimum of .120" thick so that makes some of the decisions for me.

Really it depends on geometry- if you're just putting the entire suspension load through a tab on a tube, you might want .188-.250" thick metal to work with.  The OEMs can get away with really thin stuff because they can stamp clever geometry into it and tie it together really well.

Loving the 3D modeling  of your add ons  , it really makes fabrication quite easy if you have the ability, and you obviously have, to use something like Solidworks. Nothing wrong with cardboard CAD for simple things which is my go to ...

Did you do the basic scan of the car or did you manage to acquire it from somewhere ?

cheers

In reply to RichardNZ :

I did the scan with borrowed equipment- I wish this stuff were more readily available, but I've found you generally need to do it yourself if you want reasonably accurate data.

Ready, set, go!  Remove battery, drain fluids, disconnect stuff underneath (10mm, 14mm, and some hose clamps.  One motor mount had a 17mm on it because somebody switched some hardware around):

Lower car, disconnect wires and remaining stuff/bellhousing bolts (all 10/12/14mm except for where someone changed things for no reason):

1hr 20min solo:

I wasted a bunch of time moving back and forth to check things, as well as fighting the one stud in the bellhousing.  If I make the right hardware changes I should be able to do this in less than 40min by myself, and faster with help- I'm pretty happy with how it's put together.

Put engine on stand:

I think it sat for a while, the pulleys are rusty and all of the idlers are crappy feeling.  The clutch springs are also rattly and loose:

One of the motor mounts also just fell off when the engine came out, looks like it didn't have any bolts in it and one of the ears has been snapped off:

Some of this I will order today, some will wait until I see the replacement engine next Friday.  The engine bay is filthy so I'm going to do some cleaning.

In reply to ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ :

I'm really surprised the engine comes out the top & not the bottom. 

In reply to Pete Gossett (Forum Supporter) :

If I were pulling the transmission with it, I would probably drop the whole front subframe, although you can get the combo out this way too.  Subaru generally makes it easy for engines to be pulled from the top, though, there's even a "service position" for the hood prop so that you can get an engine hoist in there.

have you ever played with any topology optimization software? I have a few models I need some help with and my boss is too damn busy to get anything done. I really should learn solidworks or catia. 

In reply to fidelity101 (Forum Supporter) :

Depends what you're using and what you're trying to do, feel free to PM me about it and I'll help if I can.