DR Motosport

So the new record is 7.53:08, and the old record was 7.55 by Tommi Makinen in a standard STi with 320bhp that's half the price. Think I'm missing something here, no??? Maybe Tommi had pace notes

For top and bottom radiator hoses, I've used the cheaper ebay ones on a few cars and never had any problems. Both track cars have had them fitted. They're usually 3 ply compared to single ply for the original ones, so always an improvement. Relatively simple to do, remove undertray to get at bottom hose, pliers to undo clips (I use strong longnose plier to help access), have a container ready to catch all the coolant. Remove the plastic trim above the alternator air con belts, pliers again to remove top hose. Replace with new, and fill up coolant. Use genuine Subaru at a 50:50 mix. Will take you about an hour, you'll have new hoses and replaced your coolant at the same time.

Hi Cathy, Yes just call knockhill booking office, and arrange a date that suits. I actually bought my voucher at The Gyle when Knockhill had a display stand with Christmas offers, think it was £110. But well worth it, I'm now looking forward to the SIDC track day in June Donna

His better half here "Donna", Had an hour on track with Jamie and well worth every penny. Nerves vanished really quick and he kept me at ease at all times. Would recommend to anyone as he takes you lap by lap gradually building up braking points and raising speed also on each lap. He also gives you a quick guide with a few laps with him driving on what would be classed as a bad/good lap which again only highlights what not to do. From 1st lap to last I could notice my confidence and ability increase and really didnt want to come off at the end. He broke down ever corner, every gear change and every breaking point to my and the cars ability. Go for it!!! Donna

I'd say replace them anythime now. I've just done a set on a 2006 Hawkeye WRX with 60k, top hose was ok but the bottom was starting to break up inside.

My other half Donna has one of these booked for this Friday, so will update on how it goes. She did about a dozen laps last year at a Track Scotland day, but felt she was too busy watching out for other cars and staying out the way, that she wasn't learning anything. So booked the tuition, so she can get used to the car a bit more and learn the track better.

Millers adds 2-3 points, Halfords phone app lists some of millers products with a description. They won't be the cheapest but your likely to pass a shop somewhere

Excellent photos as always John, planning a weekend at Duns myself next month for a bit of rallying action

Heading down to Croft to watch the Time Attack on the Saturday, see if I can make knockhill on the Sunday.

There's a group buy over on S/N for proper foam lances at £40, plus options for buying lance and snowfoams. Have the flimsy bottle too, but doesn't put it on very thick and it just runs off quickly, so thinking I'll go for one on the group buy. Have a 20litre container of snowfoam already, spotted the AutoSmart delivery van at a petrol station one day, and asked the guy if I could buy one, £20. Not sure if it was legit though, wasn't given a receipt

No worries Phil, happy to help

Just dropped you a message

Double post oops how did that happen

I've got a set you can have. They're in the back of my van so easy pick up in Livingston. They are Inovite Tarmacs with 215/45x17 tyres. Any good?

I've got a set you can have. They're in the back of my van so easy pick up in Livingston. They are Inovite Tarmacs with 215/45x17 tyres. Any good?

Purely for cosmetic purposes and the fact the originals were a bit worn, Colin at AA AutoBreakers let me help myself to a set of pedals from a new-age STi. The left foot rest is a 2 bolt straight swap over, the clutch and brake pedals also just clip/slide on easily enough with a squirt of WD-40 for lube. However the accelerator pedal isn’t a straight swap, as the whole bracket is different so it’s a bit more awkward. You have to swap them over at the pivot pin right on the back of the pedal. So knock the pin out with a pin punch, swap the pedal, and replace the pin, but it’s a very tight fit in a limited space, so a few sweary words were used. But they do look much better I think.

If its your own car and if you haven't had them off before, I'd pop off the rear discs, have a look at the shoes, adjust properly and clean up the adjusters.

The handbrake shoes inside the rear discs are self adjusting and have nothing to do with the calipers (unlike an audi or vw). If this is at the end of adjustment it will need new shoes and that's pretty rare to wear them out. If the cable needs adjusting that is done under the handbrake with a 10mm spanner If that's at the end of adjustment, pack it with a few washers.

The good news Lewis is I seem to get on quicker with the car than I can type, so it will be usable. So........ The STi 6 spoiler was next for the chop. Anyone remember Stephen on here, big lad from East Kilbride I think it was, he had a black blob-eye WRX. Anyway, my mate Gavin bought his car a few years back, and it had a copy S202 carbon rear spoiler on it. Finally last year I talked him into replacing it with an STi spoiler, there’s a surprise, and I ended up with the old carbon one. However these sit really too low to be of any use, so I bought a square of 8mm thick aluminium from ebay for £16, and had a friend mill it to make 2 leg supports up so it sat about 12” above the bootlid, I didn’t want it to look too mad up at roof height and this was the same height as the white cars carbon spoiler. Carbon competition type spoilers go for quite a few hundred pounds, so at £16 this was a bargain, and another 5kg saved. The electric folding mirrors were next to go, replaced with lighter DTM style ones from ebay for £22 and a saving of 2.5kg, and should give at least 10mph more top end due to aerodynamics, or maybe that should be 0.1mph.

Cheers Barry, not seen any updates for yours for a while now I hope so Peter, lots of cheap classics about nowadays, and nothing that can't be done in a garage at home. Pretty sure it will be at the next SIDC track day in June John, Just been keeping quiet for a while Archie. Dont think I'm planning on doing anything, always had it in the back of my mind, but never get round to it. Maybe Nick will have other ideas, and I'll change the cage then, but for track days it's fine for now .

Time for some more updates, At this point I was pretty happy with how it looked and how it went, it has somewhere in the region of 280bhp, it handles ok (not as good as the white car though) and it stops well with the Brembos. So from that point back in 2010, it literally stayed that way til now. The main reason was my son Nick was coming up to being 17 and desperate to get out on track, so I didn’t want to go mad with it, and in the back of my mind was the thought it could end up in a few gravel traps . So for 2011 and 2012 we did a variety of track days together at Knockhill and at Kames with the car in that spec. But towards the end of last year, I decided it was time to do more work to the car to make it quicker. More power (50+ bhp), less weight (50kg at least) and better handling (too much understeer on tight corners), but still trying to keep it to a £2000 budget, and so it begins. I had been through most of this before with the white car so knew what I wanted and the best way, hopefully to do it, learn by previous mistakes, etc. A couple of bits of luck were that the bonnet and wing still had scratches from that original crash and the door had a small dent. Then Neill54 put a post up with a bonnet for free uplift in silver, and later a door too, perfect, cheers Neil. That just left the wing, and I picked up a silver one for £20 from a lad on Track Scotland that was breaking his car and who also stayed in Livingston. He also had a rough looking Whiteline rear anti roll bar for £20 and a rear tow hook another £20. Both were rubbed down, repainted and fitted. New SuperPro anti roll bar bushes were bought for £12 A bit dirty now At this point Nick had found a Bomex rear bumper I’d had for at least 10 years. I think the plan was to use it as a mould for a modified bumper that incorporated a diffuser. As it was originally silver it just needed a freshen up before fitting. Not 100% sure if I like it fitted, but it’s a track car, and looks a bit different. Nick says it’s cool, teenagers – what do they know. This now allowed me to finish off the graphics. They are very similar to that of the white car, 1) to keep it with a similar theme, and 2) I still had loads left over from the white car, so there was no expense. Those with a keen eye will notice the SIDC stickers are red trimmed rather than blue, a sheet of graphics paper and a sharp knife, the blue didn’t match, oops. Actually taken before the tow hook was fitted A standard road trim WRX weighs in at 1230kg, so first job was to remove the rear seats, the carpets, all the boot trim, tools and spare wheel, seat belts, stereo, speakers centre dash, anything that was no longer needed. I modified the rear section of the roll cage to remove the bends and replaced with straight ones together with a bar joining both suspension turrets that would also be a mounting point for harnesses. I bought a pair of Sabelt 5 point harnesses for a friend who had them in his Subaru rally car and was selling them as they were just out of FIA dating £60. For now these are fitted with the standard seats until I decide what seats to get, and more to the point since the seats would be the largest purchase so far, could I find a bargain. One very cold and frosty Saturday morning during the Winter with the car out all night I set about on the sound deadening with a chipping hammer, 2 hours later it was all done, it literally came off in huge chunks, a full 10kg removed. A quick rub down with paint thinners removes any residue. With the white car I did this job in the Summer with a chisel and heat gun, took a full day and what a pain, so a really cold frosty morning is definitely the way to go. When the sound deadening is removed, you’ll find it holds in place a dozen or so metal discs, these will now be loose, so need to be bonded back in. I used a liquid metal, but only because I had a tube already open. When I get some time, I'll pull the interior again and paint the floor to tidy it up.

Nick is now a typical teenager, more interested in booze and woman. I think he also thinks it's an arrive and drive set up for track days. I sort everything out, get the car to Knockhill, he arrives - late, drives the car for a few sessions, then goes home. About time you were back on track yourself, we had a good few dices with those cars

Cheers guys, will try and post more about it later tonight once I sort out some photos Rich, I think Grant sold it on to someone who used it at Crail, but its been sold again, and has been at a few SIDC track days. JohnS posted some photos last year. I know it no longer has the AP brakes (Grant ) or the GAB coilovers, shame they were brilliant.

At this point I took it to its first track day to set a base point. Mechanically it seemed strong but the suspension was hopeless, and it highlighted a few other issues. The plastic header tank on these early classics had a crimped on top and this leaked, so it was replaced with a metal tank from a later model I had in the garage. This is a simple enough job, make up a new mounting bracket and use the samco hoses also from the later model. The radiator also had a small leak so a replacement from ebay for £65 and new some uprated hoses at £30 were fitted. At this point I had 2 strokes of luck, Adam from Track Scotland was selling his Tein coilovers for £150, so these were soon fitted together with some Eibach camber bolts I still had from the white track car. The following day a local garage called me to say they had a classic WRX in and it needed a km to mph speedo convertor and the owner also wanted a boost gauge and pod. His car had come in from Japan with a bolt in cage fitted which the garage was removing as he didn’t want it, so a deal was done I supplied his parts in exchange for the cage (£112). Although it’s a dash dodger and no longer any use for any type of competition use, for a fun trackday car it was fine. The cage was a straightforward fit and had come with all the under floor plates, all I did was replace the old bolts with new stainless ones and lock nuts. The intercooler was the early slanty type, pretty useless for track days and when the turbo pipe popped, I bought Bravehearts old FMIC for £100 and had new pipes made up to suit mine at £60. Since the front bumper was still looking worse for wear from the original accident, I had a tatty looking later MY99-00 bumber that was then cut to take the FMIC, and given a coat of paint. I also had a set of crystal headlight in the garage that I fitted with a later grill. I still had a spare set of rear lights from the white car that I also fitted. They look better than the originals and since STi ones would set me back £150 I would rather spend that money elsewhere. The rear spoiler was also swapped to a damaged STi 6 one I had after I fixed it up and repainted.

I think in general most members enjoy reading build threads whether it’s a mega bhp big budget build or more modest “I could do that” project. So this is the later and I hope it shows that for a couple of grand you can build a fun track car. Some of the older members may remember my previous track car, I had a Classic WRX ra from 2005 til 2009 when Grant at AWD bought it for a price I really couldn’t refuse. Previous Track Car As I still had my new-age JDM STi road car, it took me a full 8 months to miss a track car, and indeed started modifying the STi for more power. But from an advert on these very SIDC pages I bought another classic WRX with a pretty decent spec. It was a 1995 model imported in 2007, with 98000km, a rebuilt engine to a better spec, new-age STi Brembo brakes front and rear complete with new Performance Friction 2pc discs and pads, Apexi Power fc with hand commander, 3” decat exhaust, HKS induction kit, blitz bov, blitz turbo timer, 17” inovit tarmac alloys and lowering springs. All the above had been fitted during the previous year. Now adding up all the receipts (engine build £2500, brembo’s £800, performance friction brakes £700, apexi ecu with mapping £800, alloys £400) and that’s just some of it, but all in it was easily over £6000 spent including labour. Unfortunately the previous owner had had a little bump with it, nothing serious. He had gone down a bank and hit a fence through no fault of his own as he was avoiding an oncoming car. The post had damaged the rear quarter panel and the fence wire had also scratched the paint on the corner of the bonnet and also the front wing. The front bumper also had some damage. I think this was the final straw and he’d become a bit fed up with the car and put it up for sale, so I got the car for £1650. Happy Days At first I wasn’t sure what to really do with the car, it was worth more in parts so the original plan was to break it and indeed the Performance Friction discs and pads went to another project car. So in reality I had the car for less than £1000 at this point, but it was such a decent base car I decided to see where I could go with it as a budget track car, and see if I could keep to a £2000 budget. First job was to repair the rear quarter panel, the dent was knocked out almost flush, a light fill, then a quick spray.