Hi!
Always wanted to start a build thread but never had enough time or interesting things to write about. Now looking back I thought that I have something to share, some ideas for this season in local racing series, and it will be good to start a journal just for my own record and as a motivation to move forward.
Short background story.
It all started in 2013, by that time I already owned Impreza STi type-R for couple of years and found myself a bit confused with it. Here I need to mention that I live in Cyprus. It's rather small island in Mediterranean Sea Cars are RHD here and before country joined EU lots of JDM cars were imported. So, sometimes you can spot quite rare japaneese cars here. When I saw my Type-R I was amazed because in Europe you rarely could see 2-door Impreza. At that point I wasn't even aware of existence of these models, I thought that type-R sticker is just a bad joke of some honda fan. Also, I wasn't big subaru fan at that time. Imprezas were just much cheaper than similar vintage EVOs.
So, after owning this car for some time I was confused. It was old (1997), poor market value, not very reliable but eating money really fast. Insurance was expensive, fuel costs were crazy... Then I ran into head gasket problem while trying to sort out mess with vac routing. I had engine rebuilt only to get a dropped valve 6 month later (the next week after I got car mapped after prolonged break-in period). So, I just put in used engine from salvage yard and thought "what to do next?"
I wanted to mod the car but I kept questioning myself, why do I need to do that? Well, at that point I ran onto local time attack series and it was perfect. Owning this car become full of sense in one moment and participation in "Street" class with strict regulations promised to save me from expensive mods. Basically I had to keep engine stock and no lightweight parts were allowed, so I could only get suspension. I was happy with this because I wasn't excited in modifying good and quite a rare car extensively. I even bought DZ03G tyres in size that fits without any modifications like arches rolling.
On local track where all time attack events are held I got lap times around 1:18 after I changed some shitty lowering springs for stock sti ones and I managed to get nto 1:15.xx on the first event I took part with coilovers and group N bush kit installed. It was mid-season 2013 and I even managed to win that event in my class although I knew that there's one EVO 6 lapping the track in low 1:14.xx, he just wasn't taking part in that event.
Then my Dunlops arrived. That was the day when I realized that tires are probably the most important single thing that will define your lap time. This time fast EVO came to the event and did low 1:14.xx lap again. I managed get to 1:13.xx. (he had same tires btw ) It was a shock, for me in the first place. The next event was on the next day and some guys came to check the car asking if turbo was stock and so on, because such time for street class car was rather surprising
Long story short, this car took me to second place overall in 2013, and win in 2014 in AWD (Unmodified) Street class. The car won every race it participated in. In 2014 I managed to set fastest unmodified street awd class time ever and if I recall it right - second fastest time among all street cars time loosing more than 0.5 sec to GDB from senior "Street Modied" class (engine mods allowed + removing aircon and stuff) and winning just 0.03 sec from Corvette ZR-1 in third place.
This is how it looks like
And this is one of the most fun videos - free ptactice session before final 2014 event, in wet
2014 Time Attack 5 Practice:
At the end of 2014 season I decided that keeping a track dedicated car in good looking condition capable for driving around city is hard, expensive and not worth it. I promised myself to stop tearing good rare car in competition.
So, this journal will be about this one:
I don't plan anything extraordinary, it's not going to be record breaking project, rather story full of pain and suffering about fixing old cars
hope you like it.
Always wanted to start a build thread but never had enough time or interesting things to write about. Now looking back I thought that I have something to share, some ideas for this season in local racing series, and it will be good to start a journal just for my own record and as a motivation to move forward.
Short background story.
It all started in 2013, by that time I already owned Impreza STi type-R for couple of years and found myself a bit confused with it. Here I need to mention that I live in Cyprus. It's rather small island in Mediterranean Sea Cars are RHD here and before country joined EU lots of JDM cars were imported. So, sometimes you can spot quite rare japaneese cars here. When I saw my Type-R I was amazed because in Europe you rarely could see 2-door Impreza. At that point I wasn't even aware of existence of these models, I thought that type-R sticker is just a bad joke of some honda fan. Also, I wasn't big subaru fan at that time. Imprezas were just much cheaper than similar vintage EVOs.
So, after owning this car for some time I was confused. It was old (1997), poor market value, not very reliable but eating money really fast. Insurance was expensive, fuel costs were crazy... Then I ran into head gasket problem while trying to sort out mess with vac routing. I had engine rebuilt only to get a dropped valve 6 month later (the next week after I got car mapped after prolonged break-in period). So, I just put in used engine from salvage yard and thought "what to do next?"
I wanted to mod the car but I kept questioning myself, why do I need to do that? Well, at that point I ran onto local time attack series and it was perfect. Owning this car become full of sense in one moment and participation in "Street" class with strict regulations promised to save me from expensive mods. Basically I had to keep engine stock and no lightweight parts were allowed, so I could only get suspension. I was happy with this because I wasn't excited in modifying good and quite a rare car extensively. I even bought DZ03G tyres in size that fits without any modifications like arches rolling.
On local track where all time attack events are held I got lap times around 1:18 after I changed some shitty lowering springs for stock sti ones and I managed to get nto 1:15.xx on the first event I took part with coilovers and group N bush kit installed. It was mid-season 2013 and I even managed to win that event in my class although I knew that there's one EVO 6 lapping the track in low 1:14.xx, he just wasn't taking part in that event.
Then my Dunlops arrived. That was the day when I realized that tires are probably the most important single thing that will define your lap time. This time fast EVO came to the event and did low 1:14.xx lap again. I managed get to 1:13.xx. (he had same tires btw ) It was a shock, for me in the first place. The next event was on the next day and some guys came to check the car asking if turbo was stock and so on, because such time for street class car was rather surprising
Long story short, this car took me to second place overall in 2013, and win in 2014 in AWD (Unmodified) Street class. The car won every race it participated in. In 2014 I managed to set fastest unmodified street awd class time ever and if I recall it right - second fastest time among all street cars time loosing more than 0.5 sec to GDB from senior "Street Modied" class (engine mods allowed + removing aircon and stuff) and winning just 0.03 sec from Corvette ZR-1 in third place.
This is how it looks like
And this is one of the most fun videos - free ptactice session before final 2014 event, in wet
2014 Time Attack 5 Practice:
At the end of 2014 season I decided that keeping a track dedicated car in good looking condition capable for driving around city is hard, expensive and not worth it. I promised myself to stop tearing good rare car in competition.
So, this journal will be about this one:
I don't plan anything extraordinary, it's not going to be record breaking project, rather story full of pain and suffering about fixing old cars
hope you like it.