Broadfield’s Old Subaru Sti

I thought it might be cool to post up some info about one of my old builds instead of always talking about the S13. Most of you that follow this blog probably only know about my current vehicle since I have owned it for for over twice as long as this blog has been in existence. In 2003 I purchased a 2004 Subaru WRX Sti. It was a dream of mine to own one since up until the 2004 model, it was not available in the United States. I learned in 2002 that the Sti model would be coming to the USA and I quickly came up with a time frame to sell my current car at the time, a 2002 WRX. Everything worked out and I picked it up on July 5th, 2003. I will never forget the day and the feeling of literally driving it off the showroom floor. I bought a white one with the gold wheels… which were about the only two choices you could make when ordering the car: 1) exterior color and 2) wheel color.

A couple of weeks after owning it I tossed on a Turbo XS full turbo back exhaust with test pipe. Needless to say it sound awesome!

Fireballs were comical:

Next mod were some gauges. I was chomping at the bit to up the boost a little on the stock turbo, so I figured at least a boost and EGT gauge would be a smart investment. This was long enough ago that Defi only offered the BF series gauges in white. Defi also made a killer triple hood for the top of dash that went in place of the recessed clock pod. I decided to flush the Defi controller to the left of the cup holder. It was just blank plastic there, but unfortunately it was a tad too wide… so I cut into the face of the cup holder to accomodate it:

A little less than a year of owning it, I finally picked up a set of Work Emotions and the rare Cusco front lip. I was a Cusco dealer and had probably the first one in the USA. I think I also tossed on a set of Sti lowering springs… just to lower it a tad. I was still waiting for some Cusco Zero 2R coilovers to come in from Japan. I also wasn’t adverse in real good wheel/tire fitment back then, but it was what it was. I also dropped in a VF-22 turbo that I port and polished.

Next up was a huge ass Turbo XS FMIC setup. Which allowed me to ditch the hood scoop. My goal was to get the car scoopless, wingless, badgeless and so on. I hadn’t sourced anyone to trade for an RS hood yet, so I went with a reverse cowl for the time being. I also de-oranged the headlight assemblies and deleted the center post in the grill:

A couple pics with my installer’s basically stock EVO. I love these pics just because of them both being white and the fact that the EVO and Sti are direct competitors:

The Cusco Zero 2R coilovers finally came in. Which meant getting this thing a little closer to the ground. At the same time I also installed a wingless trunk lid and WRX sideskirts. The WRX sideskirts actually hang a little lower than the Sti skirts. So I was able to get a more agressive look without going to aftermarket skirts.

Shortly after, I found someone with a mint white RS hood that was somewhat local and willing to trade for mine. So I met him half way and swapped hoods in the Tirerack parking lot in South Bend Indiana:

I finally decided the blue interior had to go. I was able to find a WRX owner that was willing to swap me his OEM black interior with my OEM blue interior. Consisting of four door panels, carpet, rear seats and fronts seats. He also paid me I think around $500 on top. At the same time I tossed some Brides in for good measure:

The dark Emotions were growing old on me and I wanted something with a little more pop. I ordered up a set of Volk LE328N’s. I also landed a full titanium exhaust setup that was just gnarly sounding… I loved it! At that time I installed a set of GT-Spec headers and up-pipe.

I owned the car for 3 years before I sold it to a good friend in 2006. I had some big engine plans for it, but I wanted to start building the S13 instead. So unfortunately I never got to experience it with a ton of power. A random shot of the engine bay when I sold it:

Custom Mitsubishi EVO VIII Gauge Panel

Recently finished up a gauge panel for my good friend Damon Young. As most of you will know, he use to own the black S13 hatch that was on the cover of Modified Magazine along with mine. However, he has moved on from that and into an EVO VIII. He needed a killer place to install his (3) 52mm Defi gauges and I hooked him up with a nice solution. I typically like to make my custom interior pieces appear to be something the OEM manufacturer would have made… but weren’t cool enough to do so. When they see it, I want people who know nothing about cars to think it came from the manufacturer that way. I want it to look so integrated that it doesn’t look like I did much… even though I spent hours and hours modifying and fabricating it. Well, Damon’s gauge panel demonstrates this philosophy.

For this write-up, I also decided to strictly use my iPhone 5 to take the progress pics. It’s WAY easier than getting out my Canon 50D, setting it up, getting it dirty etc. It worked out great and I will continue to do this for all of my progress pics on future projects… except for my S13 project of course. It receives the full treatment at all times

Damon sent me his radio/HVAC trim piece to retrofit the gauges into. The radio is getting relocated which gave me a nice spot to mount the gauges. Here is the original piece that he sent me:

The first thing I did was increase the size of the rectangular opening. The three gauges actually sit in the OEM opening fine, but they do not flush into the opening. When possible, I like to flush gauges into the panel I’m modifying. I think it gives an overall finished look and also keeps with the OEM theme. Sure it takes a lot longer to do it, but the results are always worth the hassle in my opinion. So I enlarged the opening on the top and bottom. Next I bonded in a piece of 1/4″ ABS with some Norton Speed Grip 5 minute. As usual, I roughed up all the edges to be bonded with some 80 grit or harsher sand paper prior to bonding. I made sure the ABS had a large enough footprint to squeeze the gauges in while not cutting into any of the surrounding OEM plastic. As you will notice, I had to work within the confinements of the recessed area in the OEM panel. It would have been easier to simply fill in the entire recessed area and then flush the gauges into that, but again, it will look MUCH more OEM if I keep the recessed area intact. Here is a shot of the ABS bonded into place:

Next I sanded all the joints, ABS and the surrounding OEM plastic in the recessed area to give a nice smooth/seamless transition from the original plastic to the new plastic. This is going to receive a smooth finish for the final paint, so it needs to be perfect:

Using a digital caliper, I carefully centered the gauges in the proper spots:

I then used a hole saw to get the hole sized as close as possible. Since there isn’t a hole saw that is exactly the same diameter as the outside diameter of the Defi gauge, then I had to make it small and then enlarge it with a 50 grit sanding drum on an air grinder. I then sanded the hole by hand with 80 grit:

Test fitting the gauges… I didn’t realize the following pic was blurry when I saved it, so sorry about that. It’s unacceptable to me, but it’s the only pic I have where I show them test fit straight on:

Showing off the flushness… Zilvia would be proud. Well, except for the lack of stretched gauge bezels:

I scuffed the entire trim piece down with a red 3M scuff pad. I then sprayed a heavy coat of Dupli-Color Cast Iron Engine Block enamel over the entire piece. I have found in the past that this paint color, Cast Iron, is a very close match to several OEM interior trim panels:

After that dried I wet sand it with 500 grit. I then sprayed a heavy coat again and did the process a few times to get it perfect without any defects, dust etc:

Damon is a very smart man and supplied me with brand new HVAC stickers to apply to the finished piece… and here it is with the gauges mounted in and stickers applied:

Working On My Air Conditioning Setup

I actually had some spare time to work on the car yesterday… that hasn’t happened in like 3-4 months.

I’m working on the air conditioning setup at the moment:

My quest for a clean tidy engine bay has led me to doing a “tucked” air conditioning setup. I don’t really like the idea of lines going everywhere in the bay. So I’m going to simplify it by running the lines out of the compressor directly to some custom bulkheads on the firewall. I can run the lines down the same path as my heater hoses alongside the block. Typically the firewall fittings are at each end of a giant loop that takes place in the engine bay. I will essentially relocate that loop to behind the dash and down the inside upper portion of the passenger fender. Then the dryer and condenser will be up front out of site behind the bumper.

I want to use all XRP air conditioning hose and fittings. Which means I have to convert everything over to o-ring pilot fittings. Since I bought an aftermarket dryer and condenser, I had the choice to get them with o-ring pilot ports… so those were no big deal. However, I had to figure out what to do with the compressor, evaporator and the ports at the firewall. I’m still in the middle of all of this, but I’ll show you my progress so far.

First thing was to figure out how to modify the evaporator to work in the “tucked” setup. As it sits from the factory, the evaporator hard lines come out through the firewall. These have to go bye-bye since I’m going to use the firewall locations for my compressor lines. Which means that the connections for the evaporator lines will now need to be done inside the car instead of at the firewall. So I cracked the evaporator plastic housing open to see what I was up against. The evaporator core sits in the middle of the housing as seen below. You can also see where the hard lines exit the housing and normally would protrude through the firewall:

As luck would have it, the evaporator is square. I rotated the evaporator core, inside the housing 90 degrees, so that the hard lines would now point down over the passenger foot well. This would allow me to do my connections inside the car and leave me room on the inside of the firewall for some custom bulkheads. I cut off the plastic protrusions that held the OEM hard lines in place:

Housing back together… I will simply seal over that figure 8 shaped hole with some thin ABS plastic and epoxy:

I cut the hard lines down so that the new 90 degree fittings would hug the housing as close as possible. As mentioned, these are going to exit right above the passenger’s feet. So I don’ want them hanging down where they are going to get kicked. Had some aluminum male o-ring pilot fittings welded on:

I hogged out an area in the bottom of the housing for these to exit:

Some closed cell foam on the inside around the fittings and some machined 90 degree o-ring pilot fittings… this part is complete:

Test fit back in the car… they really don’t hang down lower than the surrounding items:

Second order of business are the bulkheads for the compressor lines. It will be a o-ring pilot #10 and a #8 on the firewall. Unfortunately the two holes on the firewall are huge. Had I known I was going to do a tucked setup, I would have welded those closed and made new smaller holes for a pre-made bulkhead. Oh well, time to do something slightly custom and make it work. I bought one of the aforementioned bulkheads from Vintage Air just so I could use the male-to-male fittings. This is what they look like once pulled off the Vintage Air firewall plate:

I figured I would do somewhat of the same setup I did for my heater hose bulkheads… custom machined aluminum plates that would cover the OEM holes and house the male fittings. I came up with these:

Coated with the some black epoxy paint:

Mounted in the car:

This is what I’m looking at inside the cabin:

I now need to get all of the XRP AC hoses and fittings ordered up so I can start mocking everything up. I also need to buy a CTS-V compressor. I have both a C5 and C6 compressor and neither one of those are going to work. The C6 compressor fittings exit out the side into the frame rail. There’s not enough clearance by a long shot. The C5 compressor fittings exit out the back. But by the time I add a compressor o-ring pilot adaptor block, the fittings will hit the #2 primary on the header. The CTS-V compressor angles the fittings out the side and angled up.. perfect!… I think!?!?! Once I have the compressor squared away, I can make the two compressor lines for the bay, the lines inside the cabin and the lines down the fender to the front of the car.

Customer’s Fiberglass 10″ Sub Enclosure For Subaru STi – How To

I typically don’t take build pics of projects as basic as this. But I figured it would make for some good write-up material since this type of enclosure can be used in virtually any vehicle. The goal is that if I can just show some detailed step-by-step instructions, I think it will convince a lot DIYers that they can accomplish this on their own. The most common size of driver that is going to work in an area like this is a 10″.

First off the area I’m working with:

Once you pick your area, use quality masking tape to cover the entire area and go past the actual area you are going to lay fiberglass mat. It’s important to keep the tape as flat as possible and not to kink up on you. It’s obviously not possible to make it perfect, but do your best:

Next, and actually a really important step, is to use a marker to mark out the shape you want the back of the enclosure to be. Now there is no rule to where you make your mark, but the following picture should give you an idea of why I made it where I made it:

My New S13 Cluster Build – AiM Sports MXL Strada

My cluster build is complete. Although the finished product looks very basic, there was a lot that went into keeping the simple look. So bear with me while I post a lot of build pics during the process.

The first hurdle was the size of the MXL… it’s too damn tall to fit within the constraints of the cluster framework. As you can see in the photo below(don’t mind the crappy cell pics in the next four images) it is about 3/8″ too tall overall. The top is cut off and at the bottom the buttons are smashed into the lower lip of the framework. Note: the framework has obviously already been modified to the specs of my standard clusters I make.

I knew that I wanted to keep the front edge of the framework as is because I need the OEM cluster surround to butt up in front of it so it fits like stock. So essentially I need the front lower edge to stay put, but the back lower edge that butts up against the plate needs to drop down 3/8″. First I slit the bottom ledge at each corner just inside the lower mounting points:

AiM Sports MXL Strada

Received my display yesterday… courtesy of Jeff & Jordan Innovations. Thanks again for the hookup! As most of you know I kind of build clusters from time-to-time, so I’m looking forward to building one for myself to house this bad-boy. It should actually be a bit more of a challenge than the clusters I have fabricated in the past, considering it doesn’t exactly fit into the confines of the OEM housing. But I prefer a challenge over easy… the reward is always greater!

I chose the MXL for a few reasons:

AiM Sports appears to be the leader in race displays

I like the clean look of the MXL

I like the fact that the display is completely customizable via a computer

The MXL supports CAN bus hook-up. Which means I can simply wire 4 wires and it will read every sensor off the LS3 ECU. Hookup consists of: IGN, GND, and two CAN wires.

Customer’s S13 Radio Trim w/(4) AEM 52mm Gauges & Greddy TT

Finally had a customer request molding something into the radio trim bezel of a S13. The customer wanted the four AEM 52mm gauges flush mounted in the double din area where the radio/pocket normally reside. However, the gauges will not really fit in that opening… especially flushing them in. So I enlarged the area and bonded a 3/4″ piece of MDF into the opening. I went ahead and marked/routed out the gauge locations prior to bonding. At this time I also cut the opening to flush in the Greddy turbo timer. Once the MDF plate was bonded/cured, I took a couple different sanders and sanded down the MDF plate to match the contour of the S13 trim panel. At first glance it simply looks flat across the entire thing… but it’s not. And since the bottom gauges extend down so far, it gets into to the curved area right before where the shifter opening is.

All bonded and shaped:

Next I used a thin coat of body filler to fill in any imperfections. Sanded that all down then hit the panel with several coats of high build primer. Once that fully cured I wet sanded it with 500 grit:

Several coats of SEM Landau black and we have a finished product. Note: I also coat the back with several coats to prevent the MDF from absorbing any moisture at all.