• Took the car out for its first autocross! Had blast and the car did surprisingly well. I thought it would be twitchier based on how it turns in on the road, but it seems like that feeling is just an initial turn in thing. As usual, found a few things here and there to fix/improve and the big bumps on this course shifted my toe alignment a bit so I need to check what slipped. My guess is the rear lateral arms.
•  Small improvements
• Noticed a week ago my rear wiring tie downs were failing and risking burning the wire on the exhaust. So I bought these epoxy zip tie mounts from McMaster and these things are freaking awesome! They come with this plastic casing around them with small adhesive strips that clamps the mount to the surface while the epoxy cures. Then you remove the casing and you’re left with just the little swiveling mount. Very cool. They seem like they’ll hold up super well.
• Added the rear mesh trim and surround.
• Working on building my intercooler ducting this week in preparation for track time.

The post November 2020 Update #2: Autocross Debut appeared first on Lawson's 818C.

The post August 2020 Update: Stereo, Center Console, Dash Install appeared first on Lawson's 818C.

• I spent HOURS sanding the body seams on the side of the car. And…it still looks meh. You can tell where I had to add gel coat paste to repair the thin areas or big voids. It’s better than it was though for sure and once polished it looks fine. It’ll certainly look just fine from a few feet/in photos. I haven’t finished the passenger side yet because I got tired of sanding but will return to it and also fix the seams on the front fenders. Bodywork is indeed as bad as other builders say it is.
• I had to re-fit the front fenders at the a-pillar since I’ve moved my top. Required a good bit of extra trimming
• Shimmed the rear fender area to make it fit better.
• Doors still need some fitment help in a couple areas. I think I’m going to switch to countersunk screws for the whole door area because of clearance issues. My passenger door also has a habit of locking people in when you use the inside handle. The inside handle doesn’t release all the way sometimes which causes the door to get stuck closed.

• Starting to work on the interior now as something to allow me to go back and forth on the bodywork sanding. Used some time the last couple days to work on electrical items as well as plan out some of the upcoming work for the center console.
• Installed my keyless entry controller (Amazon chinesium part for $20). Works great! The instructions were next to useless but thankfully I’m good enough with a multimeter to figure it out. For $20 this is worthwhile for any 818C/S build since they’ve already got the actuators.
• Installed 3/4 of my vintage air vents. Waiting on the placement of the last one because it will depend on if a radio screen goes in the dash or the A/C controls do. I don’t really understand how these are supposed to be held in place securely…may need to give Vintage Air a call.
• Installed my backup camera. Haven’t run the RCA wire for it yet because that’s going to be a pain.
• Trying to decide whether to mount the radio in the dash or in front of the shifter. Dash has better visibility but might interfere with A/C ducting. Shifter area is harder to see and reach but a little easier to fit. If you’re a builder and have already tackled this issue let me know what you did.

• My ABS system continues to have issues that confuse me. It sets a code as soon as I drive forwards at any speed. Code is for motor/relay failure. It’s also blown a fuse in the past, but it’s not blown right now. I honestly can’t remember if the ABS system worked with the current pump in the past. I know my last pump, that had some messed up threads, worked with the same wiring setup. I may try to re-read my older updates to see if I ever had ABS working with the new pump because if not my issue is likely that the pump is bad. 
• The only other diagnosis I have is that there is a capacitor wired into my iWire ABS harness and it seems to be open-circuit so possibly bad as well? Not sure if it is the cause of the issue, or like the blown fuse, is a result of a pump issue.

The post July 2020 Update: It’s Road Legal! appeared first on Lawson's 818C.

• The car isn’t quite as far along as I had hoped it would be at this point considering how much time I’ve had to work on it. Particularly the paperwork part, so it will not be coming with me to Michigan for at least a little while until all that gets processed. It’s also looking like the interior might not get done by the end of this week either, although I plan to try if I am able to. I’ve got no other plans this next week other than working on the car so I should at least be able to get through the bodywork. All the little tasks add up to a lot of time though so we’ll see what I’m able to knock out. I might try to work some kind of plan to get the car up to me later in the Summer.

• I have begun, and nearly finished what I hope is the last of the work on the doors for quite a while.
•  I installed the power windows and while the hardware installation itself wasn’t too bad, I really struggled to get the window alignment right. It’s still not perfect and there’s some inconsistency between the two sides as far as alignment and stuff but they both work fairly well right now and seal fairly well. After several days of messing with it that became good enough for me. The biggest frustrations were cutting the window cutouts in the doors and then getting the window to seal while not hitting things going up and down.
• I wired in the power locks thanks to some connectors sent by another 818 builder. I used the oem Subaru door wire rubber grommet thing for my 818 as well to route the door lock and window wires through. It helps it keep a more oem look and be well sealed so it’s a good (and free since I had the parts) solution.
• I made an addition to my door panels, I had already planned to waterjet some aluminum inset piece with a design, but since I lost my waterjet access due to covid plan B was to just make a decent piece out of aluminum that will suffice for now. It helped fix my driver door handle mis-cut as well so I went ahead and made the stand in piece. FFR sends one of these with the kit, but its for the 818S which uses the Subaru door handle so it’s useless for the C. Why they couldn’t modify it slightly to work for the 818C I don’t know…

• I’ve begun the body work with the doors and door sills. Right now I’ve filled some holes and voids in the sills and started sanding the doors. The good thing is the bodywork definitely isn’t terribly difficult. It’s time consuming, but if I follow all the steps I’ve been getting pretty good results thus far and it’s the first time I’ve done much of this. I’ve finished part of the passenger side sill and polished it out and it looks really good! I think the body part lines shouldn’t be too hard to tackle after this. Next up will be doing the front fenders and part of that will be adding rubberized undercoating and foam mat to the underside to protect from rocks and reduce sound.

The post May 2020 Update: Door windows and bodywork appeared first on Lawson's 818C.

• Body
• Finished the headlights and checked the wiring. Everything works except the running lights on both sides so I need to look into why that is. Fuse perhaps? I honestly don’t even know if they’re supposed to just turn on with the low beams or what.
• I played with the hood and fender fitment. Attached the upper fender mounts but there’s still adjustments to be made.
• I painted the door frames and installed the gas filler neck to the gas cap.
• Coronavirus
• Well, this is certainly something I never could have foreseen with the build. It’s looking extremely likely that my Georgia Tech classes post-spring break will be moved online. Meaning I will be at home, with the 818, everyday…so the silver lining to this imposed quarantine is that the odds of me getting the car into a Michigan road-trip ready state by May have increased significantly. We’ll see how it plays out from here.

The post March 2020 Update #2: COVID-19 Quarantine Edition appeared first on Lawson's 818C.

• Body 
• Rear bumper has been fitted. Overall pretty easy because they mount it on the body for shipping so some of the work is already done. I did trim around the trans mount because the build manual just showed it going over the studs and I did not like that. Easy to dremel around so it sits flush.
• Side panels riveted on the underside of the car to free up some of my clecos.
• Electrical
• iWire sent me the terminal lead to the ECU for AC. I spliced it into my compressor wire.
• My engine died when running it yet again due to electrical issues. Looks like those 3 wires were somehow not my issue or at least weren’t the only issue. The car started working again after wiggling the fuesbox wires so I think a ground or some other terminal connection on the backside of the fusebox is loose. I will take them off soon and investigate the issue. 
• I am replacing one of the cam position sensors that keeps filling itself with oil for some reason. I cleaned this once before but it must have some type of internal leak so it had oil in it again.

The post January 2020 Update #3: Rear bumper install appeared first on Lawson's 818C.

• Engine
  • So I spent yet another weekend mostly troubleshooting engine issues. I had hoped that the ECU swap would be a nice 10 min fix-everything solution but that was far from the case. I swapped the ECU’s and everything stayed exactly the same which was quite disappointing. I quadruple checked my AVCS wiring and found that I had switched two of the sensor wires side-side (second time I’ve done a similar thing because the plugs change orientation in the pinout instructions). With that fixed, I still had the check engine light but AVCS was working as it should on the new ECU when I logged. So I logged, looked over the logs, logged some more, looked again, got friends to look, etc. I nearly gave up until I remembered someone casually mentioning that some EJ207’s had a IAT sensor in the throttle body which was redundant when the USDM and other cars had one in the MAF as well. Sure enough, unplugging that allowed the check engine light to go away! With how common this swap is, I’m not sure how that info was so hard to find or diagnose. I still have not determined which versions of the EJ207 have the different IAT sensor and which don’t.
  • The car with full boost is fast, very fast. I never drove the old engine at WOT before it died, but this one is quite the thrill! Should be plenty of power for me.
  • I hope my engine work is wrapped up for a while. Ready to move onto something else, anything really, on the build.
• ABS
  • ABS is fully functioning. Wiring all worked perfectly and I can hear the pump run as it activated. I’ll have to get to some better testing facility than my driveway to really evaluate it.
• Seats
  • Seat brackets were cleaned up and painted. Should be ready to go back in the car soon.
• 3D Printing
  • I’m designing revised radiator mounts and a mount for my airbox using CAD and I’m going to 3D print them. The airbox really needs to be secured before I drive it too much more and my radiator mounts could just use some aesthetic improvements.

The post November 2019 Update #2: No More Check Engine Light! appeared first on Lawson's 818C.

• Haven’t been able to work on the car in a few weeks due to my college club’s (Georgia Tech Wreck Racing) competition a week ago. We built a turbocharged LS-Swapped BMW E28 for competing in the GRM $2000 Challenge. Now that that’s over I have a few weeks to get some work in before finals come around.
• Exhaust
  • I finished the exhaust modifications needed for the EJ207 swap. I welded the exhaust bracket back together and welded on a secondary O2 sensor bung just before the muffler.
  • Painted in the same silver VHT exhaust paint that I used before. Doesn’t look quite as good as before but still looking pretty nice for an exhaust that won’t be terribly visible with the body on.
• ABS
  • I ran the iWire ABS wiring harness that I’ve been putting off for a while. Thankfully, nothing too complicated to it. Just mounting the small fusebox and routing the wires to their respective destinations. Seems to be hooked up correctly- no ABS warning light- but I have not tested the system yet.
• ECU Issues
  • I’m almost certain that my ECU is no good. The JDM place I bought my engine from said it was not the original one to the engine and I have been unable to fix the flashing CEL issue (no codes displayed though) despite deleting O2 codes, correctly installing both O2 sensors, confirming AVCS wiring is correct, and trying different EJ207 ROMS. Internet says bad ECU is a likely outcome, so I’m going to replace it and see what happens. I did not have any of these issues with the last setup and the only wiring that has changed is the ECU and AVCS wiring.
• Seat Brackets
  • I’m cleaning up and painting the seat brackets for final install this week. Brought them to school with me to work on that. One of the many small things to take care of so I can get the car into a “complete” go-kart status.

The post November 2019 Update: Exhaust finished, ABS Wiring appeared first on Lawson's 818C.

• Engine
• So…I attempted to start the engine and things did not go as planned. It turned over fine at first. It backfired a couple times for the first crank or two but the engine never started. Then I heard the timing belt slip followed with a noise that I’m pretty sure was the piston and valve hitting but could’ve been some other kind of metallic carnage. So I began the process of pulling spark plugs, timing covers, crank pulley, and removing the timing belt. The passenger side exhaust pulley is very difficult to turn. Hopefully the pistons are alright, but I’m likely replacing the passenger side head. Not sure why any of this happened exactly. I quadruple checked the timing before installing the engine and the tension on the belt was good.
• Cooling system is complete.
• Wiring
• Wiring is finished for all the components currently on the chassis. Only issue I had was diagnosing why the starter wouldn’t trigger. Turned out to be the starter relay in the fusebox.

The post December 2018: First start attempt (ended poorly) appeared first on Lawson's 818C.

• Finished my work term with GM, so I’m back working on the kit. Planning to work pretty extensively until the school semester starts back up in January.
• Engine
• I’m hoping to get the engine running this week. Wiring and cooling are the big tasks that still need to get completed.
• Alternator and AC compressor are mounted and the alternator belt is installed. I’m waiting to install the AC belt until the entire system is setup.
• Wiring
• Repaired the ignition switch wiring that was poorly spliced by the previous owner.
• iWire Harness
• I’ve unpacked the harness and begun figuring how everything is going to route and mount. The fuses and ecu will mount with 6mm rivnuts and I will cable tie the harness to the frame as it’s routed.
• My fusebox is located on the front side of the passenger firewall rather than within the footwell because I plan on installing a Vintage Air AC system there.
• I drilled a 3″ hole through the aluminum firewall to route all the cabling through, Brian from iWire suggested splitting the firewall in two pieces so the hole could be smaller but I found this to be more work than it was worth after looking at it. The cabling did indeed squeeze through the 3″ hole though it was a close fit towards the bulky part of the harness,
• Initial impression is very good regarding the harness and the service!
• Chassis
• Throttle pedal mounted. I chose to not use the Factory Five pedal mount because I didn’t like the location it put the pedal and because many have complained that it’s flimsy. I mounted directly to the aluminum firewall and added a piece of the FFR mount to support the backside. I may add a better bracket later if I decide it needs it.
• Fuel System
• I made the FFR modifications to the fuel pump and sending unit. I also modified the fuel pump to move the pump up higher to accommodate my hydramat at the bottom.
• Fuel tank has been installed and the fuel lines have been run to the engine. 
• I plan to setup the fuel vapor canister somewhere but I haven’t decided where just yet.
• Fuel filler neck installed
• FFR does not include any instructions for the new-style filler neck. So I had to figure it out based on some scattered forum photos I could dig up.

The post December 2018: Back from work, back to work… appeared first on Lawson's 818C.