The rally thing to do is to mount it as far back as possible to keep the likelihood of melting down low. Like using it as the tailpipe. And if you do clog it, it's easier to repair/replace if there's only one connection to the exhaust.
Plus red/orange substrates look awesome in photos 
Man, it's a shame you need a radiator and stuff. Those headers are begging to both cross over the front to the other side.
In reply to Pete. (l33t FS) :
The bigger problem is cooking the serpentine belt...
In reply to TurnerX19 :
This is true, but philosophically, there were millions of turbo Subarus with the exhaust routed right there next to the plastic timing covers and belt, and the newer ones even put the turbo there up front.
180s, cats, and wiggles around subframe completed for both sides. This is probably all I'm making exhaustwise until the car is further into the assembly process. The hanger things go to the sides of the block to support the tubes while still letting them move with the engine.
Not the happiest with the welds but they're strong- the discounted U-J bends I got from speedway really weld kinda poorly no matter how much I clean them.
Welded and painted some harness anchors for the lap belts:
The final thing to make this a "roller" for shuffling around at cage time, was to make it steer again. I had already extended the steering support, and a Corolla intermediate steering shaft and a 3/4" heim made a nice extension for the upper section of the column, but the lower column had to extend a bit to meet it- the collapsible square section is about .76" square so some 1/8" wall 1" square tube just needed a tiny bit of grinding to fit:
Cut, drill, grind:
Plug weld and lap joints with plenty of amps:
Works nicely, seems like I got it all concentric since it feels smooth from lock to lock. This leaves me with about 3" of collapse at this section, and a few inches in the upper column as well:
Always satisfying to set it back down, that car in the background needs to take priority for Sno*Drift so this timing is good:
This angle really emphasizes how far back things have moved:
Well ok, another small project since the parts arrived. The front WRX calipers bolted right up, but the rears needed a little help and I honestly just don't like any of the little aluminum adapters on the market, so I made a different potential problem and welded a huge thick tab to the cast iron knuckles instead:
Also visible there is the significantly cut down backing plate- I may weld a duct tube to these at some point but right now they're just a spacer to keep the hub in the right spot:
Calipers bolt to one stock hole and the new tab, and the stock lower caliper bolt spot is repurposed for what will become a wheel scraper mount once I have wheels picked out (if anyone has contacts at Speedline, Enkei, Compomotive, or Evo Corse I'd love their info); the tapped holes in the top surface are for a different thing:
Originally I didn't want to use these Subaru calipers, because that little fluid crossover bump tends to wear through and cause a failure eventually- if somebody makes a steel clone of this caliper I'll buy it, but for now my thought is to protect them instead:
The fasteners are in line with the fluid passages to hopefully deflect any direct hits, and the shield will be safety wired to either the caliper itself or the pad pins. It'll probably make noise anyway and may be a terrible idea but caliper failures are really scary so I wanted to try something here.
It clears a 15x6.5 VW wheel which is hopefully worst case for caliper clearance compared to proper rally wheels.
could you separate the caliper halves and have an aluminum welding pro "build up" the bump area to be stronger/more beefy?
In reply to irish44j (Forum Supporter) :
If I did that I'd probably keep it together and have them just tack a sheet of aluminum over the whole section- the XR4Ti had a welded cast aluminum intake manifold for a while and it liked to crack.
I would taper or contour the leading edge so inbound debris gets pushed towards center, and use these as the mud scrapers. Maybe another attachment as well. The build up idea has a down side with metallurgy because it will be even softer than the original caliper, and the possibility for damaging the sealing surface.
In reply to TurnerX19 :
There will be additional scrapers perpendicular to the inside of the wheel before these, I usually angle them a bit so they eject the dirt towards the center of the car.
So, Adam isn't here yet, but he's working on some stuff for the car already- and it's a neat full circle moment. GRMer Spearfishin, who found 9HIO and Adam through my L2wd car thread, gave him a bunch of leftover aluminum filler rod when he had his E46 caged. That filler rod ended up in the skidplate for this car:
The idea with this new skidplate was to get all the fasteners up off the bottom so they don't get mashed/snapped off. The bends are all "pizza box" style cutouts since it's very difficult to bend 6061; the welded walls and pockets should also make it a great deal stronger than the simple flat skidplate on the L2wd car.
Those knuckles are most likely cast steel, not cast iron.
Easy way to tell the difference is to file it. If the shavings are bright and shiny slivers, it's steel and going to be weldable. If you get graphitey black powder, it's cast iron.
Years back I had to cut half an ear off of a knuckle due to a seized bolt situation. I welded a thick strip of steel over it, retapped it 12x1.25, and ended up reusing it for rallycross/daily driver use. It was one of the fasteners that held the strut housing to the steering arm, which is the part the ball joint attached to, so kind of a critical fastener It held up just fine.
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