Tamiya Subaru Impreza (not WRC but Cannonball Ruse) with Hobby Design engine

[89AKurt]

This is bending the rules, since the kit is originally a Subaru Impreza WRC race car, but it's being converted into a street legal car, that is intended to race in the '21 Cannonball Ruse Run, think this is the correct forum section. ?  Always wanted to build a street version of this little monster.  The Tamiya kit is awesome (as expected), parts not used or details to be removed have masking tape.  Got the Hobby Design EJ20 engine kit some time ago, don't see that anyone built it on this forum.  I also noticed it's not readily available, is it because it's an early offering from HD (acquired a long time ago)?  I also got the Scale Motorsport photo-etch awhile ago.

First thing to butcher is the body, cutting out the hood.  Over the headlights used a #11 blade, a saw over the emblem, the Tamiya scriber on the rest of the panel line, finished off with a Tamiya photo-etch saw.  Got three sides almost cut through, then worked along the cowl.  Something I learned from the project Sintegra was the cowl can break, and then it's impossible to get right again (which is why that project sat in the dark for years), so I reinforced with coffee can lid steel.  Made a paper pattern, marked the steel and cut with scissors, roughed up the contact side with sandpaper, even used the Dremel disk to make little notches to bolster the adhesion.  When I glued on with superglue, sprinkled baking soda on.

I first scribed with the new #11 blade, short segments at a time, very carefully, the cut line.  The scribe followed along really well, but again in short segments.  Worked from the corners to the center, finished with the saw.  Used one at a time. ?

Then sawed the rest of the line.

First part to glue on, the scoop.  Noticed half is blocked, so used the Dremel to open up.  This is my favorite bit.  Have removed the hood pins, the photo-etch has nice ones, but will not use to keep stealth.

Next to hack out was the engine bottom.  First I used the hot-wire, disconnected to thread through, then went around being sure to not screw up the suspension mounts.

Still needed to grind away, but was able to break out.  There was not much to clean up.

Race details to remove were antenna and vent doors.  Didn't want to get too many scratches at this stage.

Wanted to mock up the suspension, glued with Tacky glue so it can come apart for painting.  I'm amazed how nice Tamiya does this sort of thing, really don't need to remove mold lines.  I'm going to revise the tailpipe with a bigger muffler.  I see the wheel wells need to be filled in.

Oh yea....

A pet peeve with Tamiya, it's minor and easy to remedy, *have to* remove the inside lip.  The only ejection pin marks that bother me (that I've seen so far) are on the wing.

I have the caliper locked so all the wheels have the same width and are even.

Now the Hobby Design engine!  The parts are cast resin, with crude "sprues" which tells me this is an early product, their current stuff is usually grey and more refined. (the McLaren F1, and Pagani Huayra Super-Detail-up Sets for example)  Their instructions are awesome.

Just a little cleanup involved.  Found out one part was not shown in the instructions (knife pointing to).

Sort of a minor issue, the radiator and firewall are warped.  I was planning to build up the interior with sheet styrene anyway (or cool looking Celica floor pan if it looks good).  The radiator may need some extra work.

So this is when I decided to halt.  How stupid to glue the transmission on! ? There is no comparison.  I'm sure Tamiya got this correct, so next thing to do is separate.   I hear acetone dissolves superglue.....

I like the blue, shame that it's going to get painted over.  Thinking flat black exterior, white interior with flat black roll cage.  Also thinking of adding a Thule roof container, just to help fake people out, which will have a retractible rally light, and stealth electronics.  Also would like to switch the tires for Pirelli P7s.

Edited January 4, 2021 by 89AKurt

[Pete75]

Fascinating stuff - a really useful insight into advanced surgery! Will be following closely ?

[89AKurt]

21 hours ago, Pete75 said:

Fascinating stuff - a really useful insight into advanced surgery! Will be following closely ?

Like open heart surgery.  ?

Separating the transmission was easy, thankfully.  Made an engine stand, figuring it will help for painting, then since it's aluminum and we know what handling does to that.

I know this is unorthodox, putting a Thule cargo box on a race car, but for long distance driving, when the trunk will be filled with dual fuel cells, need a "trunk".  I also wanted to use at least one of the killer rally lights, designed a retractible unit.  After doing the Auto Union C it seemed natural to rotate direction, since the wing needs clean air, right?    Also shortened an inch (picked that because the masking tape wrapped around was used to mark the cuts).  The other box in the Fujimi kit is being used on the Hellcheetah.  I'm planning to make the mount with brass wire, slightly more aerodynamic than the Thule unit. ?

I dropped the engine block into the bay, need to whittle down the suspension mounts right off the bat.

[steveracer]

Kurt, no need to worry about a "race" car meeting the rules of the road.

As you know, all RALLY cars have VIN's, are licensed, insured and road legal, so you will pass tech.

Are you going to install that engine in the model?  I have this kit but the lack of engine is kinda lame....so I will be watching.

[89AKurt]

1 hour ago, steveracer said:

Kurt, no need to worry about a "race" car meeting the rules of the road.

As you know, all RALLY cars have VIN's, are licensed, insured and road legal, so you will pass tech.

Are you going to install that engine in the model?  I have this kit but the lack of engine is kinda lame....so I will be watching.

The rallies I have worked on in AZ, all the teams use road legal tires.  Many of them use the Michelin rally tires.  These slicks have minimal grooves, not good in rain.

Heck ya I'm putting this engine in!  Got the engine before the car.  It's the first aftermarket engine that will get done, the Hellcheetah is also aftermarket but is on hold at the moment.  Have several other kits with engine detail kits, namely the Audi Quattro S1 that I hope to build this year.  Have done four models with kit bashed engines, subjects I like with no engine don't stop me.

Edited January 5, 2021 by 89AKurt

[Pete75]

I have to say, a Thule box with a hidden spot lamp is brilliant... Give the man the trophy now! ?

[89AKurt]

20 hours ago, Pete75 said:

I have to say, a Thule box with a hidden spot lamp is brilliant... Give the man the trophy now! ?

??

Used Milliput to fill the front of the box.  Fabricated a hinge using wire, and aluminum plate.  I'm hoping this will be adjustable when glued in.

I know there are issues to cram the engine in, namely the suspension mounts.  I'm thinking of relocating the front ones.

Look at those gaps! ?  And cat hair. ?

I made paper patterns, cut plastic, and think this works with the hood.

This was actually easier than expected.

[Jhedir6]

Looking good.

Love the work on the engine bay.

Following along.

[89AKurt]

18 hours ago, Jhedir6 said:

Looking good.

Love the work on the engine bay.

Following along.

Thank you.

Made the roof rack.  Used a punch to flatten the connection points, clamped down, and soldered with the stained glass iron.

I channeled someone who builds mountain bike frames the old school way. ? First used the cutoff disk on the Dremel, then files, sanding stick, Flex-i-file and finally steel wool.  Should be good enough in flat black.

After looking at these pictures, will cut the feet down a couple millimeters.

Started back on the engine, minimal cleaning up a few parts, and glued on a few parts.  Could start painting next.

[Steve H]

Hi Kurt, this is awesome, I love these cars. They have a bit of a muscle car look to them. I did a curbside last year, love that you are taking this to another level. I lowered mine about 4 scale inches. The roof rack/light assembly is awesome. I’ll be watching...

Cheers, Steve

 

[89AKurt]

1 hour ago, Steve H said:

Hi Kurt, this is awesome, I love these cars. They have a bit of a muscle car look to them. I did a curbside last year, love that you are taking this to another level. I lowered mine about 4 scale inches. The roof rack/light assembly is awesome. I’ll be watching...
[...]

Cheers, Steve

Cool!   Like the lights, what is the source for those?  You blended in the lower light blank too.  As much as I like the color, won't be doing it because it's almost like RED.  ?

[89AKurt]

Lights, camera, action!  First thing today was look in the scavenged electronic parts, specifically named "optical" that came from cameras.   Picked what is circled.  (I'm trying the graphics to point out details)

Destroyed this part because the lens is so small, and has the optical tint.  Discovered it has tiny rare-earth magnets!  The video screen will be, well that's what the sensor in digital cameras looks like, found out the "frame" it's in is extremely hard, the cutoff disk doesn't touch it!

Used a sanding stick to trim down the tiny lenses.  Glued together with Testors canopy glue.  Drilled a hole in the cargo box.  Will see if it's convincing enough, and not too obvious that's for spotting cops ahead.  ?

I've heard Subarus at rallies, with this size exhaust pipe and little silencer, they make enough noise to know they're coming.  Parts box Lexus muffler, will cut a longer steel tip for final assembly.

This may never be seen, but the hollow top of the transmission bugged me.  The Milliput blob bugged me more. ?  The Celica transmission was hot-wire cut out of the chassis, ground to shape with the Dremel.  Also cut out the starter, and stuck on top, similar to what the Hobby Design transmission has.

Didn't want the hood to simply lift off, that's a pet peeve of mine.  Used fusee chain:

Used the Tamiya scriber to create a groove to glue under the hood.  Drilled holes in the cowl (a little bigger than shown here, need adjustment and operation latitude).

Put two of those magnets to use, glued on the radiator support.  Cut out coffee can lid steel and glued under the hood.

Will glue the other end of the chain to the body during final assembly, but this gives a good idea how it works:

Next is the interior.  Hope the roll cage can be assembled in one piece, so it can be painted and put in after the other stuff is done.

[Steve H]

10 hours ago, 89AKurt said:

Cool!   Like the lights, what is the source for those?  You blended in the lower light blank too.  As much as I like the color, won't be doing it because it's almost like RED.  ?

“Evan Designs” is the light source, great site, very simple to use. If you have a look at my recent Gremlin WIP thread, it shows how simple they are. 
 

Cheers, Steve

[Pete75]

Very interesting stuff. Don't get how the bonnet/hood shut lines look tighter than the moulded lines on the kit before you cut it?! (Knife > scribe > razor saw, if I read correctly?) I've got a really fine saw but it looks wider than that... ? 

[Spottedlaurel]

Great to see so much thought and attention going into this build, looking good so far.

I have a built one in pieces to rebuild as a fast road car one day, I rather doubt it will be anywhere near as thorough as this......

[Mattilacken]

Looks really good!

[89AKurt]

15 hours ago, Steve H said:

“Evan Designs” is the light source, great site, very simple to use. If you have a look at my recent Gremlin WIP thread, it shows how simple they are. 
 

Cheers, Steve

Cool, thanks for the tip.

11 hours ago, Pete75 said:

Very interesting stuff. Don't get how the bonnet/hood shut lines look tighter than the moulded lines on the kit before you cut it?! (Knife > scribe > razor saw, if I read correctly?) I've got a really fine saw but it looks wider than that... ? 

I used the Tamiya scriber, green tip (does .015" sound right?).  I have the Xacto saw blade for the knife, it's wider, also have a bigger saw with a narrow blade, but still to wide and hard to use.  Doing the old school dragging a #11 blade is still a viable technique.   I treated four areas differently on this cut.

9 hours ago, Spottedlaurel said:

Great to see so much thought and attention going into this build, looking good so far.

I have a built one in pieces to rebuild as a fast road car one day, I rather doubt it will be anywhere near as thorough as this......

Appreciate that!  I make mountains out of molehills, don't worry about it.

5 hours ago, Mattilacken said:

Looks really good!

Thanks!

[89AKurt]

Upper roll cage was modified.  First to go were the pads on the side bars.  But after looking at it, decided to remove the diagonal tube by their heads, more for convenience than increasing stealth.

Fixed a usual pet peeve, incomplete wheel wells.  I know why they don't do this, makes it much harder to get together.  Hot-wire cut the Celica floor pan wheel well, almost the same radius.  Used the divider to scribe the cuts.  I have also added the fuel filler, one of the first parts I copied when getting into resin, from the Isuzu Vehicross.

Could have saved some time not dealing with those pads.

Think I need to do the front wheel wells next, just the rear part against the interior.

[89AKurt]

Front wheel wells are done.

Could not toss the X-brace, so put it out-of-sight on top.

I better not add any more stuff to the chassis, it's a challenge to put the body on now.  ?  Nobody is going to see any of this either.  ?

[Mattilacken]

Great progress! Thanks for the tip on cutting the hood out. I plan to do that on the C5-R and will definitely need to reinforce it. Tacky glue, is that similar to school glue or canopy glue? I have been using tack-it ,white almost as gum for pre assembly but it tends to get lose and build a little height here and there. 

[89AKurt]

20 hours ago, Mattilacken said:

Great progress! Thanks for the tip on cutting the hood out. I plan to do that on the C5-R and will definitely need to reinforce it. Tacky glue, is that similar to school glue or canopy glue? I have been using tack-it ,white almost as gum for pre assembly but it tends to get lose and build a little height here and there. 

Welcome.  Be sure to reinforce BEFORE cutting off, everything will remain aligned.  Tacky glue is like thick Elmers white school glue, it does stick parts together better too.  It's almost like construction caulking.  I've used Titebond carpenters glue too, but it dries hard, and can break pins when parts are pulled apart.

Started painting tonight.  I want to assemble the engine, might as well paint it.  Then I will get it mated to the chassis.  Need to research what the engine mounts look like, don't see such a thing on this "kit".  Since many parts are normally semi-gloss black, painted everything except the intake.  Some of the aluminum paints need to be over black anyway.  The radiator will be the next part to fuss with.

[89AKurt]

Second color of painting (technically 3, aluminum, steel, polished aluminum) session.

First parts to test fit, the shock towers have pins intended for the strut holes, so that located them about 0.01 mm too wide for the strut brace.  Going to cut those pins off and locate closer together.  Now that I'm looking at this picture, compared to the Saturday post, this is way too high, so I better grind down these tower braces.

I dislike brush painting so much, that I'll mask and airbrush everything.  ?

Since I know nothing about Subarus, other than they are boxer 4 cylinders, researched engine mounts.  Lots of pictures of cool looking aftermarket mounts, but no clear pictures of where on the engine they are, and chassis locations, so I'm still clueless.  I guess it's good enough to let it hang off the transmission.  Thinking of using magnets to hold the engine to transmission, a trick that Mark D. Jones (Scale-Master) uses, it would be so much easier for test fitting.

[89AKurt]

Making progress on the engine.  I'm finding out some reasons it may have been discontinued.
One side, the recesses for the coil/plugs were reversed, just a couple of cuts (pointing to the incorrect recess) with the knife corrected the fit, won't see it.

Getting the intake pipe, coolant hose, and intake to fit around each other needed judicious removal from the a/c pump for clearance.  No positive pins or tabs for that pump, so it broke off a couple of times.

Started on the photo-etch parts.  One fret is thicker than the other.  The intercooler has a stencil for painting the STI.  Have the magnets on the transaxle.  Used a wire for the little hose.

Needed to drill the hole in the engine block to fit the round magnet.  Since this mating plane is the kit and the engine, needed to modify the transaxle to clear the starter.  Holds really well, but should add wire pins so there isn't any slop.

Temporary glued the transaxle on the chassis with Tacky glue.  Next step is to get the shock tower parts ground underneath so that assembly comes down, so fingers crossed there is clearance.  The radiator is a big part that will need kit bashing.  There are some tiny parts that were duplicated , which is a great idea.

[Mattilacken]

You are making good progress! That engine is looking realy good, the details in the casting is so much better than wat we se in the standard kits! Keep it going!

[89AKurt]

23 hours ago, Mattilacken said:

You are making good progress! That engine is looking realy good, the details in the casting is so much better than wat we se in the standard kits! Keep it going!

Thank you for the encouragement.  ?

I knew there would be more than just sticking the engine in there.  Don't know what kit they used for a development mule (that's a prototype term for when manufacturers engineer a new car, I think), must not have been this one.  The exhaust pipe interferes with the cross member.

The strut bar mounts, completely removed what was the top of the strut towers.  But the bar arches up too much, so will have to fabricate a new one.

I have about a billionth of a millimeter clearance, I know paint will fill the gap. ?

Ground and sanded down the tower struts.  Also opened up the engine bay along the sides, and also removed some of the radiator top and a slab behind it.  The resin radiator will cover the scar below.

Added steel pins so the engine/transaxle will not slop around.  I better grind them down so I can get the engine in, will tape over the magnet because the sparks will get caught.

 I'm wearing the metallic paint off, which is annoying.