Project Supreme Sti

[supremeweb]

Ok so the project name sucks, but with good reason! I own a web design company called Supreme Web Solutions and wanted to do something for advertising purposes. We already have a 02 plate WRX STi PPP with branding for another company on it and it seems to work. I had looked into advertising locally and nationwide on busses / billboards / mail shots / taxis and decided that none of them seemed that fun. So thats how it started, bit of a stretch I know but any excuse to spend money on more toys gets my vote. The plan is to build a practicle(ish) car with a few toys, a bit of power and some great graphics. I started this thread to document my progress and to help answer some of my many questions. Here goes.

I wanted a classic Impreza as I like the look and we already have a newage. I hunted through the scot ads, checked forums and even looked at ebay. I had almost given up as most of the cars I had gone to see had already been modified/thrashed and/or had underbody rust issues when I got an email from a friend who knew I was looking for a classic Impreza. Someone at her work was selling a classic, I gave him a ring and went round for a visit. I could not resist, no rust, no modifications and a not bad price. So here it is as it looked the day I bought it.

I drove the car for a month the way it was to get a feel for how it drives and to plan out what I wanted to do. I was quite impressed.

Being in the I.T industry I decided that I wanted to do something a bit different and add a computer to the car, its been done before but wait till you see what I have planned!

I added a 9" touch screen to the dash with a custom made bracket. I had tried the screen in a few other locations but my final location seemed to work best. The actual P.C at present is under the passanger seat but will eventually be placed in the boot. Its intel based and fits nicely into a micro ATX case. I initially added a wireless card so that the computer could backup to my server when I was near work or my home network but have since changed this and have added a Netgear prosafe 12v router with a 100m range. The router is permanantly on and broadcasts a hidden wifi signal. This is in turn connected to the pc and a custom made and programmed microprocessor. The microprocessor once testing and development is completed will unlock and start the car via my iPhone. The computer will read, log and display live engine data as well as access the internet and handle my music.

Next up came the windows, my good friend Scott owns a window tinting company and as I was doing a new website for him decided to get the windows done while I was visiting. This stops glare on the P.C screen, stops thiefing chavs seeing what I have inside and looks quite mean! Notice my car being tinted on his website http://www.srautotints.co.uk/.

Edited May 27, 2010 by supremeweb

[sti_steve]

Not to put a downer on this but are the tints on the drivers and passengers windows not illegal?

[RA Dunk]

Not to put a downer on this but are the tints on the drivers and passengers windows not illegal?

look a bit dark to me, officer Dibble and co have a hard on for things like this

[arch]

As mentioned take the tints off the front windows you will get pulled especially since the whole idea is to make the car an advertisement thereby attracting attention

[supremeweb]

I got pulled over the other week as I had a bulb out, traffic cops did not mention it then. Was quite a plesant experiance actually - I think the younger one was a Subaru lover lol. I also had the same level of tint on my BMW for over a year without problems. I will look into a lighter tint though because I dont want any problemos with the 5 -0.

[Ovv]

The bobbies in 'fit like ken country' seem to be blind when it comes to dark tints, well at least when I lived up there they were.

btw, the link back to you own website from your mates website isnt working.

[oobster]

the link back to you own website from your mates website isnt working.

I don't think htpp exists!

[supremeweb]

LOL. Nothing gets past you guys! Someone will be getting a telling off on Monday - all links normally get checked when we put a new site out.

[mystery machine]

Car's looking nice - removing the 'WRX' sticker from the boot was a good move

Losing the wind deflectors would clean things up even further, IMO - but each to his own.

[supremeweb]

Gunna remove them later today and see what it looks like. I noticed one has a small crack in it anyway.

Had a busy week working on the car, removed the Air Con system to remove weight and give me a bit more room in the engine bay.

I put the parts on Ebay but guess I aimed a bit high, only sold 2 out of 4 parts.

I then started on the clutch change. I removed the intercooler.

Then the battery, I will be cleaning this area up before I put it all back together. Thinking of moving to a smaller gell battery or two with a dual charge system to help with all the computer systems that I will be installing. Another option is to put them in the boot? Then put a oil catch system where the battery is at present.

I then removed the starter, gearbox stabaliser and the clutch cylinder. Next I moved onto the downpipe, unfortunatly the most inacessable nut on the turbo decided not to come off and eventually became rounded. I used a nut splitter to remove it because of its position, I will replace the stud as this had a few damaged threads. With the downpipe removed I was able to remove the prop shaft and central bearing. This gave me access to disconnect the gear linkage. At this point I remembered from my instructions to remove the thrust bearing pin. I tried to pull the gearbox back on a trolly jack but this was just not happening by myself so will have to wait till later in the week when I can get a hand from a friend.

Edited February 21, 2010 by supremeweb

[mystery machine]

How much weight do you reckon you saved removing the air con, out of curiosity?

[supremeweb]

2KG Radiator

12KG compressor

700g Filter looking thing

500-1KG pipes

Lets say 15KG in total so far. Not to mention the power it saps from the engine!

[supremeweb]

Took a look over the suspension and brakes this afternoon to see what needed replacing/upgrading/reconditioning.

Brake calipers seem fine but pads and hoses could do with being changed. I also want to take this opertunity to clean and paint the wheel wells and calipers. I knew that the springs had a bit of rust on them as there was an advisory on the last MOT but was not expecting this:

I think that I will use this as an excuse to upgrade to coilovers, one of the seals is also blown so it seems the sensible thing to do.

Can anyone tell me what this round filter like thing does, I have not seen one in anyone elses engine bay pics:

[Big 'D']

The filter thing is the carbon canister for the fuel tank purge system.

Removing the engine is by far easier when changing the clutch mate, by thurst bearing pin do you mean the clutch release lever pivot pin (next to the starter under a plug?), as you have gone down the gearbox road anyway you will need to either tie back the engine or have someone pushing back on the engine so that it is alligned with the angle you are trying to remove the box at otherwise it will jam on the dowels and studs, with the weight of the box off the engine the engine will sit forward.

Cheers Iain

Edited February 21, 2010 by Big 'D'

[supremeweb]

Ta Iain

Is this carbon canister a required part? if not what harm would removing it do? any advice?

by thurst bearing pin do you mean the clutch release lever pivot pin (next to the starter under a plug?)

Yup thats the bit!

kinda wished I had done the engine out method now but I had been advised by a few people that the gearbox removal method was easier.

Guess you live and learn. There will be many more questions to come!

[supremeweb]

Bit bored at work right now so thought I would write up the spec for the carPc and what I plan to do with it all. I had started with a Intel based board but swopped this out for another I had at work.

The new carPC is a micro ATX AMD based system running a Athlon II X2 250 3.0GHz SKT AM3 CPU with 4GB of 800mz DDR2 RAM, 2 motherboard LAN ports and a 320GIG laptop sized hard drive.

At present the system runs a chopped and severely modified version of windows XP, this was to get the bootup time to under 10 seconds! The hard drive is far to big for its purpose and will be getting changed to a Kingston solid state 64GIG drive. This will have faster read/write speeds of about 200mb/sec and will help with improving the boot up time and will not be effected by bumps like a traditional drive is. I could have gone for a faster processor but was a bit worried about the amount of heat it would produce and the power it would consume. The new AMD draws just 65w.

To power the pc, usb hub and toutch screen monitor I have a Carnetix CNX-P2140 Dual Output 185W Intelligent Power Regulator. This connects directly to the battery via an inline fuse and takes a feed from the ignition to sense when the ignition is on. I have this set up to start the pc wait 5 seconds and then start the monitor when the car ignition is on. The power supply constantly monitors the cars battery level and will auto shut down the car pc if this gets to a user defined lower power level. When the ignition is turned off the car pc will go to sleep for 30 minutes before fully shutting down, this is incase you are fueling up or just popping into the shops or dare I say stall. Nothing worse then having to wait for the system to start up every time you just nip out.

At present I do not have a CD drive in the car but intend to have a disk drive and usb/card reader built into the dash where the radio is currently located.

Thats pretty much it for the actual car pc. I want to upgrade to windows 7 when I manage to get the time to minimise an installation, there are other operating systems available to me and some specifically built for car pc's but being in the it industry its handy to be able to run other programs from the car in a windows enviroment.

Thats not by any means it for the tech stuff in the car! I am at present making a power supply and modified router to put into the boot or behind the glove box to provide a constant wifi signal. I will be mounting a high gain wi-fi arial where the pop up radio arial is as I no longer use the radio. This is the first step in the new car control system I am building/writing as the current one is a bit basic.......... more of that later.

The goal is to have a car that can be started/stopped and viewed remotly. I also want it to take a picture every hour and update its own blog! Be interesting to see what a car does in a year.

This system has a more practacle side however as it will also take a picture if it senses anyone nearby for any extended period of time. The car computer itself will be used for gps / data logging / music and internet.

Better get back to work!

[mystery machine]

Is this going to be a car or an internet café?

Just kidding mate, sounds ambitious

[supremeweb]

Is this going to be a car or an internet café?

The programing part for me is the easy bit. All the electrical stuff I am also fine with, The bit I am having a hard time with is the engine bay. Whilst I do understand how everything works its all these sensors and breathers/vacum tubes that I need to get my head around.

[supremeweb]

Started putting together a few of the new electrical parts last night. Got the router up and running/broadcasting and talking with my iPhone just fine. Connected that up to an Arduino programable microprocessor with an ethernet board/shield. Again got that talking to the router just fine. I started to write a few test programs to see just how usable the iphone controls would be and the speed/delay of the system. I tested the system up to 80m and because of the high gain ariel all seemed fine. There was no noticable delay at any range or with any button/function combination.

This got me thinking! Obviously arming/disarming the alarm, starting the engine, honking the horn, flashing the lights would be really cool and quite easy but what about reving the engine!

I need to think why apart from the cool factor I would want to do this and what would be the best way. I do not want this to interfere with the cars throttle response during normal operation or perhaps even cause safety concerns with it jamming open! I think I maybe watch way too much mythbusters!

New turbo studs came today to replace the old damages ones. May fit them tonight if I can persuade the old ones to come out. Should I copperslip or grease them?

[stum450n]

So what happens when your phone gets nicked or you happen to leave it with the car..?

Surely that'll be like handing over the keys and saying 'well done, you stole my phone, now here's my car as a reward!!!'

[supremeweb]

LOL, I like your thinking but had already thought of that. Security is a major concern to me. IF someone were to gain access to MY iPhone they would first have to unlock the phone by knowing my 8 digit pin number (car keys dont have codes). However there is a 5 minute delay on that so supposing someone was to grab my phone from me knowing that my car had this system installed then selected the control app and went to start the car or open it they would have to punch in another code.

Additionally the wifi network will not be in public broadcast mode so could not be searched for. However, if someone was able to guess the network ssid, channel and security details they would be foiled as I the system checks the mac address of the iPhone to make sure its me. I am using an opensource communication protocol that anyone could download to their iPhone however they would need to know the vairable names I have set on the microprocessor for it to work. So from this point it is VERY secure, a theif would be better using their phone to smash the window and try their luck that way. Although congratulations they now have their picture being emailed to the local police!

[stum450n]

LOL, I like your thinking but had already thought of that. Security is a major concern to me. IF someone were to gain access to MY iPhone they would first have to unlock the phone by knowing my 8 digit pin number (car keys dont have codes). However there is a 5 minute delay on that so supposing someone was to grab my phone from me knowing that my car had this system installed then selected the control app and went to start the car or open it they would have to punch in another code.

Additionally the wifi network will not be in public broadcast mode so could not be searched for. However, if someone was able to guess the network ssid, channel and security details they would be foiled as I the system checks the mac address of the iPhone to make sure its me. I am using an opensource communication protocol that anyone could download to their iPhone however they would need to know the vairable names I have set on the microprocessor for it to work. So from this point it is VERY secure, a theif would be better using their phone to smash the window and try their luck that way. Although congratulations they now have their picture being emailed to the local police!

Mmmmm, I like your style! Most people don't think about such things, they just want the gadgets!

[bmwhere?]

... Arduino programable microprocessor ...

I love the Arduino boards! Playing with one at the moment to build a light/sound operated trigger system for my DSLR!

[supremeweb]

I love the Arduino boards! Playing with one at the moment to build a light/sound operated trigger system for my DSLR!

I tend to prototype with an arduino before making a custom PCB and PIC chip to make it all so much smaller - and cheaper lol.

If you need a hand with any programming just ask.

[supremeweb]

Today at work I ordered new brake pads, brake fluid, stainless brake lines and some of that lovely POR 15 paint that I have heard so much about. When I got home I decided after a 14 hour day at work that I did not want to do any more programing so I decided to do a bit of work on the car instead.

I removed the front brake calipers, suspention, disks and brake lines to give me some space to paint the wheel wells and install my new parts.

I am going to fit new stainless lines and give the calipers a service and paint too. I also intend to fit some coilovers but cant decide what to go for. A few friends of mine have got some of those D2 coilovers from ebay and swear by them. Any thoughts?

Ohh forgot to mention that I recieved a stud extractor set in the post today so used that to remove the ****ty old damaged one. Easy with the right tools!

************ Whats the best way to put a new stud in? ***********

Edited March 4, 2010 by stum450n
Removal of link to competitive forum