Leaderboard

Some folks have baked their ECUs just enough to get the solder to loosen up and reset. Also check every ground for good metal contact. And if the general field that a ground lands on is a rusty area that’s not considered a good ground. Folks add ground wires. Usually see the braided type, nice and thick. That would be a starting point. Good luck. Post back.

Small tangential update... Firstly, got the slots on my camber plates adjusted to where i can install all the mounting hardware. Hooray! Secondly, and more importantly - I took a little side quest to investigate using similar coilovers as replacements on a more OEM setup using these camber plates. Seems to me one more part combined with a slight modification to the lower bracketry/threaded tube on the coilover would be all that's needed to fit these into the original knuckles. The lengths are nearly perfect, the coils would still have a decent amount of adjustment in them after, and I think this will allow for a very no-nonsense approach that gets a lot of older cars a much-needed suspension refresh up front. I'm going to get a draft done, once I have that and some initial parts turned out I can test fit them off the car myself, but I will need a brave volunteer to try the kit on an unmodified EA setup. Reach out if that sounds like you!

It's been a busy couple weeks, and today was another rough Monday so again I stopped what I was doing to work on the Brat a little. Got the second attempt at the camber plates in for the front suspension late last week. They need one more revision (slight widening of the distance between the bolt slots, i overcorrected just barely from the first version. I'd make them again if I were putting together a kit for sale or if this were not my personal car but again, for my purposes, a little filing and these will do the job. Once I get the filing and all the bolts in their respective places I'll be putting in the front knuckles and figuring out the second mounting point for the lower control arms. As far as length and diameter goes, these coilovers look like they were made to fit this application now. Very excited.

Well, I got the crossmember bolted in late yesterday afternoon/early evening. Looks like my measurements for the holes and slots were close enough to make it work - I did have to knock the passenger-side/right-side stud out of the stock rubber transmission mount to get things to bolt on properly. This is temporary, again due to the offset of the stud pattern on the mount. I'll most likely install a replacement stud in parallel with the existing one for this build, and if/when it comes time to put in a new mount i'll adjust the crossmember to suit. (The CAD file has already been updated to match so other future builds should be just bolt-on.) I'd be very interested to get in touch with one or two more individuals doing Gen 1 builds like this so that I can further beta-test this crossmember design. If you're looking to do similar, get at me! Once I've got the *new* new camber plates on hand it's going to be a hard charge forward to put the impreza suspension in and the front wheels back on the ground so I can start cutting out the impreza transmission tunnel, rear suspension, and anything else I might need so I can reclaim its current parking spot. Truckin' right along! Thanks for following!

Well, parts arrived, and i have some iterating to do, but progress is progress. I made a slight mistake on my CAD draft of the camber plates 😕 The stud locations are dead nuts on, as is the center slot, but the slots for the plate-to-strut attachment screws don't line up. I'll have to get a second set made, oh well. I might hack up the original ones that came with the struts to get me by until they arrive but the turnaround time on these was so fast I just might not bother. Similar story for the trans crossmember but it's less serious there. I didn't design the slots in the middle quite far enough forward to accommodate the offset of the stud pattern on the transmission mount. From where I was measuring under the car on my back things seemed to be much more in line than they actually are. I'll be making the slot a little longer on my current build out, but the likelihood is high that I'll want to remake this part too later down the line as well. If anyone needs or wants one of these transmission crossmembers from me in the future I will have it fixed by that point. Photos in the car to come as soon as I'm able to spend some real time under there, maybe this evening, maybe tomorrow.

Been on a bit of a stall since the last little update for some event travel, but over the last few days I got out the tape measure and CAD and have modeled up a new crossmember. Finally bit the bullet and had it sent out for CNC cutting, and bending this afternoon. Also have the camber plates for the new suspension included in this parts order - so hopefully I'll have a good bit of progress after those parts get in, probably a little over a week. This'll be done in 1/4 plate and the final piece has had a bit width removed for weight savings so I'm hoping I can get away with building this without too much additional fabricating. I suspect if anything I'll want to add in some gussets to the bend areas as a belt-and-suspenders approach. On the flipside I'm also hoping I don't get this thing in and say to myself "man I really overbuilt this thing" - aiming for the Goldilocks zone here, so to speak. If other folks have other Gen 1 cars of similar body style, I'd be interested to see if the crossmembers and bolt locations are the same across 79-81 and across the brat and wagon platforms. If they're the same or not too different I'd be able to put a more commerically-viable version of this together pretty quick with the right datasets and measurements.