Teddy-2000RS

Thanks! Yep all the welding om the car was either the TIG 200 or there MIG 135. Excellent welders for hobbygrade work.

Teddy-2000RS

I forgot to add in the post. I'm having trouble deciding on what rod ends I should get for my 4 links. I don't think a sold rod end is necessary for a street car and I would like a .500" hole end so I can utilize the stock lower mustang mounts on the axle side of things. A greasable joint would also be very handy. What are your guys thoughts?

LLave

iTrader: (3)

I would get a high quality heim that is designed to take the load. You may have to step up the bolt to 5/8". Also check out Seals-it, they make little rubber seals to keep heims clean in street use.

Teddy-2000RS

I ordered Qa1 chromoly heims. 5/8" bolts and 3/4" shanks. They're teflon lined and rated within a few hundred PSI of the competitors, and of course they come in black.

Teddy-2000RS

Back on topic of the RS shenanigans. This will be a lot of words and less pictures because I kind of just went ham and knocked this stuff out way faster than a normally work. We left off with making a decision on heims. I ended up snagging chromoloy heims, that are teflon lined, 3/4" shank and a 5/8" bolt. Coupled with some Meizure bungs and 1.5" .120" wall DOM I should have a pretty beefy setup.

Now to back track a bit, to start I had to center the axle a dozen different ways from Sunday in order for this pile to roll down the strip in a straight line, or atleast I hope so. First, I set my slip yoke depth and centered a wheel in the fender to locate the axle. After, I set my pinion angle based on a theoretical ride height with the tires I intend to use. This let me get a rough idea of the lower link placement as well as length. No new age computer mumbo jumbo for these brackets, just some old fashion paper, pencil, and a really handy 6" stainless ruler. I only have a side view of this mount as its a PITA to take pictures on stands. The mount is boxed on the inside and out and joins to portions of the rear floor to the unibody rail.



With the lower mounts positioned it was a relatively easy task of creating the lower links up until I realized that Meizure intends there bungs to be press-fit (or I got a Friday batch). Now I don't have a press at my parents but I have the next bes thing.





Now came the fun part or not so fun part if you don't enjoy figuring angles on multiple planes. The upper links are triangulated (duhh) and positioning the brackets down right sucked. I probably have a good two hours of just measuring and checking between the two sides to make sure the mounts were going to end up in the right place. Unlike the lowers, I included 4 seperate mounting holes to change how the car plants and lifts in hopes of it hooking. The upper link mounts are currently just tacked in as I didn't get a chance to gusset them before having to leave for home. I have the gussets all cut, they just need to be positioned and glued.







Other than finish welding the upper brackets the only tid bit stopping the car from rolling is coil over mounts. Since I am keeping the stock towers a Subaru coil over will be used. Not a problem as I have plenty of room for adjustability seeing how Subaru rear coils are so short. Prior to making the mounts I plan to remove the springs so I can set full compression and full droop properly.

Teddy-2000RS

Not a particularly fun filled update but forward progress is forward progress. I spent most of the week designing a coilover mount that utilized both bolt holes on the coilover. Now this was great up until I tried to cycle the individual sides of the axle. It would bind almost immediately as the suspension articulated as well as when the snout would come up or down. Seeing as how KISS is generally a good fall back, I chopped the upper bolt hole off and tried it with a single bolt through the coilover. Viola it didn't bind or put any stress on the mounts.





Now you might be wondering, is the single bolt going to have enough snuff to support all that weight being transferred in a launch? Well I'd be lying if I said I wasn't curious myself. After a bit of research it should be plenty stout with one bolt as I looked through a bunch of drag oriented builds and people are using similar sized bolts in the same fashion on there coils. Also, I didn't box all the way up the mount because I would like to add crush spacers inside the holes so they don't potentially collapse when you reef down the bolts.

Here's a better picture of the 4 link setup with the rearend out of the way. Don't mind the rusty exhaust hanger, it will be removed.



And finally a question for the folks that have drag raced a RWD car. Rear sway bar or no rear sway bar and why? After talking with my Dad and doing a bit of yellow bullet browsing I'm leaning towards no sway bar. The general consensus was sway bar for street driving/crusing and no bar at the track/aggressive street driving. I can ser the pros and cons of both but would love some input. I have a 95 GT bar thats quite a bit larger than a stock Subaru one to use if need be.

LLave

iTrader: (3)

https://www.dragzine.com/project-car...nti-roll-bars/

truckdoug

iTrader: (25)

If I had room I'd add one to preload the passenger side. I do it now with spring and dampen rate adjustment, but it drives like **** on the street.

Nice work man, it's come a long way.

Good on ya leaving the street bikes alone. Great fun, but people drive like total ***** these days.

Teddy-2000RS

That was a good read. Looks like I will keep the swaybar around until I launch the car consistently. That will give me a good frame of reference.

That is an effective way to achieve the same results. I would like to keep it as streetable as possible (Glass house, I know), but I do not have a whole lot of cars to make an educated guess from. As far as I know there are under 10 Imprezas with a solid rear axle and that's across 5 generations of chassis.

Bikes are too much fun to stay away. I still have my motocross bike but the FZ is going up for sale.

Teddy-2000RS

I wasn't expecting to have enough material for an update, alas ebay pulled through. Last weekend I planned and ordered the entire cold side, radiator, fan, shroud, catch can, and coolant overflow. I had to suck up my pride to order the catch can and overflow. I happpened to find some smoking deals that I couldn't build cheaper.

The first to arrive was the Osias/Ksport catch can. Internally baffled, O-ring AN/pipe thread fittings, O-ring drain and filters included.



I am going to mount the can on the tower to minimize gawdy lines running haphazardly throughout the bay.



Since the can was the only thing that showed up early I took the opportunity to prepare the front end for the radiator and intercooler. For about the 10th time I installed the hotside and turbo, which never gets old looking at.



As my front bumper was already cut it wasn't to difficult to cut a bit more out. At first I took out the remaining portions of the big rad vent. With it gone the pumper doesn't have a whole lot of ridgity.



To clear the 3.5 inch charge piping the fog light mount had to go as well. I am going to glass over the foglight opening and blend it with the blinker/orange vent provisions for a cleaner, more aero friendly look.





I am leaving for vaction next weekend but the parts should start rolling in in hordes when I am gone.

Teddy-2000RS

Also I forgot to add to the update, I did weld up my links and I was planning on setting the car down to see how it sat with a 26 inch tire or atleast a 245/40r19 which is close at 25.5 inches. I failed to remember I swapped to a Ford lug stud and they are significantly larger in diameter and the hubs do not fit in the wheels. I guess it is time to snag some Weld Magnums.

Teddy-2000RS

All my cold side and cooling system goodies have arrived! Rather than bore you with pictures of the assorted parts I'll just catch you up to where I am at. First on the list is the cooling system as I can do the majority of the fab work required away from the car.

I ended up going with a 19" tall, 16" wide, 3" deep radiator intended for a 90s Integra/civic. I will be converting it to dual pass and removing the current inlet and outlet in favor of some -20 AN bungs.










With the downpipe consuming so much space, non traditional placement of the radiator is required to cooperate with both the DP and the charge pipe as to keep it from protruding through the hood cowl. The passenger fog light area will be removed and properly ducted to help with proper cooling.



I will also be replacing the water pump ports with the same bungs. Stay tuned for me chopping up a perfectly good radiator.

biketopia

iTrader: (5)

Pretty dope!! can you explain a little more on your conversion to duel pass on that radiator?

Teddy-2000RS

So the majority of radiators off the shelf are known as single pass. This means the coolant flows through the core one time as illustrated here :



Now a dual radiator is as simple as it sounds, the coolant flows through the core twice. This is easily accomplished by splitting one of the end tanks in half, in my case by welding in an aluminum partition inside the tank. The coolant spends more time in the radiator this way and still covers the same amount of surface area. From what I have read the stock LS waterpumps generally flow too fast for the smaller import sized radiators, and the second pass, on top of being up hill now, should stall the coolant long enough for it to effectively cool it. The blue line is where I plan to install the partition while the red arrow illustrates the new direction of flow.

biketopia

iTrader: (5)

ahh, makes a lot of sense now, thanks for that!!

-TheBandit-

iTrader: (1)

I am not sure that splitting your single pass radiator into a dual pass is really such a great idea. It increases the coolant pressure drop as it goes through the radiator because the coolant is now forced to travel through half the radiator area twice instead of the full radiator area once. The increase pressure drop will result in decreased coolant flow rate since the water pump is centrifugal (increase pressure drop = reduce flow rate). Reducing the coolant flow rate through the system is detrimental to cooling capacity- the idea that "stalling" fluid somewhere in the system will help is thermodynamically incorrect. I am a mechanical engineer with a masters degree - it doesn't make me an expert on this application, but I am willing to bet cash money your cooling system will perform better if you leave that radiator single pass than if you convert it to dual pass. My guess is the reported cooling issues with LS engines and import radiators is largely due to the smaller overall radiator area available and not whether the radiator is single or dual pass.

Teddy-2000RS

Now this is why I like the forums. I guess my wording might have thrown off my intentions. By doubling the length that the coolant has to flow in the radiator won't it have a better chance of transferring more heat?

Teddy-2000RS

So after a bit more research I am inclined to agree with you Bandit. Apparently its 16x harder to flow through a double pass vs a single pass and this restriction doesn't offset the benefits of the increase time spent inside the radiator.

NSFW

It doesn't seem like a win to me either. If the system flow rate doesn't change, then the coolant is not spending more time in the radiator. It's just flowing twice the distance through half the cross-section.

​​​​If the system flow rate does change, it would just be getting slower due to more restriction in the radiator. But cooling works best when the temperature differential is higher. So, slower system flow = more time spent in the engine while already hot = less effective cooling. And making two passes through he radiator means that during the second pass the heat differential is lower, so it doesn't work as well on the second pass. Really you want one pass through a radiator that's twice as wide, to spread the hottest water across more area.

Teddy-2000RS

My research came to the same conclusion. I was looking at radiator as its own entity and not looking at the system as a whole.