Gancherov

iTrader: (13)

This is from my introduction thread:

Hey guys, I'm the proud owner of an 02 bugeye wagon in MBP and I've been lurking around the forums for a little while so I thought I should properly introduce myself. I purchased the car in October 2009, bone stock with 60k on it. Like the title says I'm from Sunnyvale California, right by San Jose. Born and raised in Russia though. I'm an EMT and I also work for a tech company doing networking and QA stuff.

Before I bought this car I had pretty much never done any work on any cars. So my work is still a little bit messy and i'm learning as i go. So far every bit of work on this car I have done myself, occasionally with a little help from my friends. Got addicted to modding within a month of buying this car, and after being briefly sidetracked into the pavement loving side of the impreza scene, I'm finally setting my sights off-road. The plan is to make this a bang-for-my buck efficient weekend off-roader and it will have to be my daily driver as well. It has been a long 8 months, here is the current state of the car with all the mods that I can remember doing.

Complete mod list as of now..

Waste of time and money mods:
Grills are DIY, made of steel.
Teeth are DIY, made of steel.
Debadged trunk
20% tint on all 7 windows
RallyArmor Limited Edition mud flaps
Hella Supertones
Clear sidemarkers
Carbon fiber eyelids
JDM silver Hazard button
2006 STI OEM head unit
Jazzy Engineering iPod/3.5mm input mod w/ipod charging
Pioneer upgraded speakers
Mitsubishi Lancer dash clock w/red color mod
Booster Seat (swear to god this improves power )
American flag license plate (annual CHP donation), edges painted black
Roof Rail delete (traded with a Saab)
Headliner delete
Pillar cover delete
Inner trunk cover delete
Oh **** handle delete

Engine:
Exhaust is a Borla Hush Cat-back painted silver w/DEI exhaust paint/sealant, white muffler face.
Stage 2 w/open source tune
-Helix up-pipe
-Helix down-pipe w/v-band flange @ the cat-back, heatwrapped, painted, and sealed with DEI exhaust wrap products.
-Samco intercooler hoses
Subaru SPT Short Ram Intake w/heat shield

Suspension:
BFGoodrich 225/45zr17 on A-tech/MB Weapon 17x7 +45(fricken mystery wheels?)
Kumho r700 205/65-15 on Braids Winrace T Acropolis 15x6.5 +45
2007 sti rear struts, springs, and tophats
1/2inch rear strut spacer w/extended bolts
Whiteline sways, front and rear 22-24mm adjustable
Whiteline endlinks front and rear
Whiteline heavy duty rear sway bar mounts
Ebay Strut bars painted black front and rear
Paranoid Fabrication fender braces

Transmission:
Cobb double adjustable short shifter, currently with a rally style shifter height
Prodrive shift ****
(secondary shifter option is a short shift height with a Skunk2Racing 440gram weighted ****)
ixiszClutch (love it!)
Exedy OEM replacement clutch
Scotty's transmission Cocktail (STFU, i'm trying it! Next time it will be Redline Shockproof w/ Motul300)

Brakes:
Axxis Ultimate pads
Painted stock calipers
Painted brake hubs black
Here is an avalanche of photos:

This is in L.A. (Silverlake) about 2 months after I bought the car. Only mods in these photos are the borla hush, wheels/tires, and the facelift.








July 2010
Mud flaps, Borla hush. Whiteline endlinks


Even my 5 year old sister has a better bucket seat than I do! just look at that lateral and head support!


SPT SRI, Hella Supertones, DIY grill, carbon fiber eyelids, ebay strut bar


Rear ebay strut bar, painted black like the front.


Couldn't find any whitewall tires so i covered mine in mud! (also roof rail delete)


Cleaned up rear end + upstanding citizen plates! 8) (also roof rail delete)


Custon shifter, fire extinguisher (which is usually mounted just in front of my driver seat), 06 sti head unit,


Look at all the pretty colors! calipers, end links.


Took out the headliner to do the roof rail delete and haven't put it back in yet. Trying to diagnose and fix my broken dome light.


Not sure where this sticker came from. Someone stuck it on there last week while I was parked at work.
[/QUOTE]

Gancherov

iTrader: (13)

As promised, here are the pictures. I'm sorry about the crappy quality pictures but I had to either drive or take photos and that's not a choice. I had my friend take some photos and I did what I could with them in post.

New mods:
15x6.5 +45 Braids Winrace T Acropolis (thanks Team Illuminata for the great prices and quick shipping!)
205/65-15 Kumho r700 gravel tires (thanks to UP2MTNS rally team)
Helix up pipe
Helix bellmouth downpipe heatwrapped and painted with DEI products
v-band clamp between downpipe and cat-back for exhaust-free track days
Samco intercooler hoses
McGard lug nuts
Rear subframe lock bolts
Subframe delete

And i've got a bunch of bushings, a CSS TMIC (freaking huge!), and a hybrid boost control setup to install next. Hopefully get that done and start on my skid plate by October.

After the stage 2 exhaust install and the new wheels/tires, I definitely had to put my car through it's paces and re-discover my limits. I drove out to Bass Lake near Yosemite for a week and spent 3-6 hours a day for 5 days looking for all the dirt roads and gravel I could find. Only found a little bit of gravel, but I found tons of jeep trails. Some had pretty large bumps and valleys which cause me some trouble as you can see here...



But there were some great trails that were just dirt and 2-3inch rocks. I managed about 30mph on average with some sections where I reached 45, this was definitely on the border of out of control even with these tires.



I must say that I really enjoyed how very easy it was to get sideways and how much steering control I had with just modulating the throttle and brake. Trail braking was amazingly simple and instantly responsive; imagine steering with your foot. It's like flying a plane and stepping on the tail pedals, the back end just pivots around the front wheels.

Gancherov

iTrader: (13)

So a few months ago there was a guy on the forums here that was selling what he claimed to be Travis Pastrana's extra/spare tires from the previous X-games. I ended up buying a set of these for a very fair price (read: economy tire prices). They seemed to be nearly small enough to fit on my 17x7's with mostly stock suspension, yadda yadda yadda "it seemed like a good idea at the time"

Michelin RC001 24/64-17 with custom siping (some were done a little better than others)







Anyway, so I get these tires and they are INCREDIBLY light. I would say 5-10lbs each. No steel belts of course. I did all the research I could manage over the internet and even called a few tire vendors and NO ONE had heard of the tire model number that I had in front of me. I had no information on these at all really. The only google result was for some UK racer who set a new track record or something with these tires, and they made it sound like they were experimental or new in that article.

So I spent a few weeks staring at the tires trying to decide what to do with them since I could now clearly see that without fender rolling and more camber adjustability I wouldn't be able to get them on to my car.

In comes my friend Andrew. He also has an 02 WRX in WRB with 17inch wheels. His is more of a street setup than off-road but it's raining even here in California and he needed new tires for the winter. His car had the additional suspension mods to adjust camber and he already had rolled fenders. He bought the Michelin's from me and we got them mounted on his car. This is on Ohlin fixed perch struts with STI wagon pink springs, and the wheels are 17x8 Rota Slipstreams.









The ride is AWESOME. Amazingly comfortable and smooth ride, though it is a little noisy due to the siped design of the tread. They stick on any and all surfaces, and there is almost no loss of traction in wet weather. Obviously these are tires meant for an entirely different class of power, but they are fantastic even on a 250whp/tq 2.0L turbo wrx!

In the meantime my car is being pummeled with daily duty and furniture duty.





And my awesome rally wheels/tires are just sitting around and waiting to bring the pain.



And I'm just waiting and saving my money. New v7 sti suspension is off at FEAL getting a revalve, Hella lights showed up, turbo inlet tube is coming in the mail, and I still need to install my big top mount, check for exhaust leaks, and get a protune.

Hopefully I can get all that done as well as either a custom made or Primitive Racing skid plate in time for the CRS Rally school in Ridgecrest this February which I hope to attend.

Oh well, back to work.

Gancherov

iTrader: (13)

So back in January I crashed into a boulder in the local mountain twisties. Went up and over the boulder, and caused some front end damage. I went up there with blown rear struts, practically bald tires, and too much confidence. I should have been able to stop in time but it had just started lightly raining and once I broke traction I had no chance.

I did a pretty good number on the front end. The tube bumper beam that Jon made for me took a bunch of the impact force. I'm convinced it saved my car, or at the very least my engine.




The accident tweaked my passenger frame rail, front crossmember, and all the front body panels except the hood. Somehow the only engine components damaged were the radiator/AC condenser and the timing belt cover. And all that camber on the front passenger wheel is from a bent strut. I was surprised the damage was so limited given the ride I went on.

Suddenly the big pile of parts that I was planning to install seemed very small.

Gancherov

iTrader: (13)

Well, I happen to have a few jobs right now and a little disposable income so I decided to move forward with no regrets. I accepted a long time ago that I was probably going to end up stuffing the car into a tree or wall, but I'm glad this wasn't it's final show.

This is how the car sits as of today:




Will at TSS was kind enough to put together a prototype front subframe for me with oem-style sway bar mounts and the engine mount points lowered 1" which I think should help a little with handling.



So, i'm rebuilding the front end with more tubing than ever before and pulling as much efficiency and safe power as I can from my engine. I'll be PnP'ing the TGV's, exhaust manifold, and intercooler myself. Lots of heat shielding stuff, a nice big intercooler that I had coated with heat dispersant by GrimmSpeed along with a new MRT automatic intercooler spray system. The ABS is being removed because it was damaged and I don't wanna fix it. Same with the AC system.

It's coming back faster, stronger, and better than ever. Stay tuned.

Gancherov

iTrader: (13)

The front end starting to come together.

Gancherov

iTrader: (13)

The work has picked up pace lately and the car is nearly assembled. The body panels are mounted, engine and drive train assembled and installed, and the last few projects are being finished up.

Here is how the frame ended up



Was surprised to find that my flywheel was replaced by the previous owner with a Exedy lightweight chromoly piece. So I've been using a lightweight flywheel (12.7lbs according to website) along with a lightweight crank pulley (Gimmick motorsports 1.2lbs) and I've had no CELLs or issues, just great throttle response. Sweet.


Still need to mount the battery in the trunk, modify and mount the fuel cell for methanol/wiper fluid in the trunk, and figure out where to mount the intake filter. Tons of other little stuff.





My mechanic's wife is a photographer and they had a little photo shoot at the shop. Some of the photos happened to include my car.



New legs for my car! JDM V7 STI struts with 04 sti takeoff springs/tophats revalved by FEAL Suspension, finally installed








Meanwhile my friend is having no luck with his car at all. It was a Saab 9-3 aero before he crashed it. Here's how I found it that night.