How to rally

March 16, 2:48 PMTampa Sports Car ExaminerMichael Berenis

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This article is a guide on how to safely practice rally style driving in your spare time. Finding an off road path is sometimes a challenging event. You must find a path that your car can successfully navigate but have fun off road at the same time. Most paths in Florida a rally car can navigate. Sometimes paths will start out soft, and end up having big rutts in random places. Keeping the speed low your first time around can help extend the life of your alignment and suspension components.

Video content: "Stay with her Johnny"

I use Google Earth to find paths. The paths in Florida are bright white or tan colored. This color variation makes paths stick out in satalite imagery. Don't see any paths around you? Just keep looking! When finding paths, never trespass. Trespassing can get you shot, arrested, and fined. Using a GPS to help find roads this will help you identify private from public roads. Your GPS unit is the first line of defense for "What are you doing here?" should the question arise.

Second, get the county GIS road map report. These can be downloaded via PDF for your local county, and is usually part of the city planning department. If you can't download it, all counties carry this as public data and upon request they must furnish documents. This GIS report has all of the public roads mapped out, print it and bring it with you.

I have not been harassed yet for trespassing because I make sure I use only county roads according to GPS & GIS information. If I get pulled over, I have documentation to prove I was not trespassing. This allows me to legally enjoy off roading in my rally car with out worrying about getting in trouble.

Tip:Always remember to obey all speed limits and traffic laws while using your vehicle off road. Take it easy where people live, they don't want to hear the noise. Most paths have a 45mph speed limit, which is fast enough at times. These challenging zones is what I look for to stay legal and have fun at the same time.

Why rally? "Rallycross is a form of sprint style automobile racing, held on a closed mixed-surface racing circuit, with modified production or specially built road cars, similar to the World Rally Cars, although usually with about 200 bhp (150 kW) stronger engines, due to eg. their 45mm turbo restrictor plates. It is mainly popular in the Nordic countries, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Great Britain. An inexpensive, entry level type of rallycross is the Swedish folkrace or its Norwegian counterpart, the so-called bilcross. Rallycross can also be referred in Europe as 1:8 scale off-road radio-controlled buggy racing."-wikipedia (Continued below "How to prepare your car")

Video about rallycross:

 Want to talk about rally with other enthusiasts? Talk about it with the best community online for rally, DirtyImpreza.com

Preparing your vehicle for rally

-Example vehicle for this write up:

2002 Subaru Impreza WRX USDM

Complete Modifications List

It is 100% possible to use a stock form WRX and other rally inspired vehicles for off road use, but after time things will break. For prolonged off road use you should do a few upgrades. The wrx particularly will also be more capable if you make a few modifications. Where do you start? First think you need to do is get protection, let the car breathe, keep it cool, and get a tune.

PROTECTION
Skid Plates
Get yourself some proper plating under neath. A front skid plate and rear differential skid plate is enough. I chose to go with the 3/16" in the front and 1/8" thick for the rear differential plate by "Primitive Racing".
Suspension Stiffening
You want to restrict travel of your wheels to prevent the CV boots from ripping. This means you will need to have an adjustable sway bar, and some tower braces. Get front and rear tower braces, endlinks, the whole kit and make sure it is of high quality. This is the most important piece otherwise your car WILL be damaged after repeated uses offroad.

LET THE CAR BREATHE
Intake
The stock air intake can handle up to 400 whp and is very good at keeping the intake clean. However, the stock silencer located in the fender is a nuisance and very restrictive. You need to remove the stock intake silencer, and get a good K&N air filter element. If you plan to get extremely dusty, you might consider a good Perrin Foam element. Either way, the silencer needs to come off. Also, you'll notice a hole in the back of the ram air duct that is the first piece in your intake to breathe fresh air. At the back of that piece, there is a hole. This sucks in hot air, plug it.

To take the intake modification a step further, a custom performance silicon MAF hose and Turbo Inlet hose will do wonders. You can actually hear your turbo with these modifications. The turbo inlet is not an easy install, but it does not require that you remove the intake manifold. You will need about 6 hours worth of patience and a buddy, with some good quality inlet silicon tubing you can get rid of that restrictive stock intake tract. Use rubbing alcohol as lubricant, NEVER use grease because it will cause your piping to slip apart. Advanced users can remove Tumbler Generator Valves (TGV) but this requires port& polish and intake manifold removal.

Exhaust
A good down pipe, up pipe, and cat back exhaust in combination with the intake modifications will let your subaru breath marginally better. You can change the OEM headers or turbo manifold, however, the OEM flows pretty good and you can get by on the OEM one if you do the other mods. If you chose to change your headers, the equal length headers will create a higher pitched poppy noise, while the unequal length headers will keep that boxer rumble. This sound difference draws a unique line in the sand amongst rally fans, even though more HP can be gained from using equal length headers. (ELH)

Catalytic Converters
There are three catalytic converters on the subaru wrx. One is located in the up pipe, one in the down Pipe, and the third in the normal place found in the mid section of exhaust under the car just below the drivers/passenger area. Removal of the up pipe catalytic converter will extend the lifetime of your stock turbo b/c there is no cat to break down and shoot garbage into your turbine. I strongly suggest removing all three catalytic converters as long as  your using this car offroad then there is no legal issues.

After you have completed this section, please install a WALBRO 255 FUEL PUMP to max out stock injectors for your tune. This will maximize the setup and keep it safe! Increasing the flow of air through your engine with a stock fuel pump can cause lean conditions which lead to engine failure. Remember: Lean is your enemy.

TUNING
Recommended Tuner for Off Road Subaru Impreza WRX: 3Gsucks
Why 3Gsucks? Look at my Dyno Chart--@19.5psi Td04 no knock!

Types
There are two ways to tune your WRX. The easy expensive way of using COBB hand held programmers, or the harder less expensive way of using Open Source tuning and a laptop and tuning it yourself or with a friend. I like the Open Source (OS) tune because this is an actual tune for your car, and not just a generic tune for all cars like yours. The open source tune allows you to tune for atmospheric conditions, and the variables on your car. Combine this open source tuning with a professional street tune by 3gsucks to reach optimal tuning for rally.

AFR Air Fuel Ratio
You want your car to run wide open throttle at 11.2-11.4 AFR (Air-fuel-ratio) and cruise around 14.7 AFR-- and this can be read/monitored by installed a wideband air fuel ratio gauge. It MUST be a wideband!!! Yes they are expensive but well worth the money, because you can watch your motor to see if its running the right AFR's and check against timing pulls. All tuners recommend using a wideband AFR.

Keeping it Cool
You need to think of every single imaginable way to keep your engine cool if you intend on going off road. There are several free tricks, and a few not so expensive mods that can help. First, start by cooling down the engine bay. This is not an easy task. Start out using phenolic gaskets between your intake manifold and heads.

Wrapping the coolant lines under your intercooler and intake will help cut down on engine bay and intake temperatures. Using exhuast wrap on the header, cross over pipe, up pipe, and down pipe will drastically reduce temperatures while adding a similar force to suction to help move gas through your exhaust system. The increased speed of gas traveling to and through your turbo will help reduce turbo lag.

(Also see free mods below for more engine bay cooling tricks such as throttle body coolant bypass, clip mod, and more.)

Larger Intercooler and Water Spray System
Swapping out your stock wrx intercooler for the STI's intercooler is a good way to keep subaru parts in your car and upgrade to a cooler intake. However, this is not always affordable. Ebay intercoolers work just as good too!

Whether or not you buy a larger intercooler, you can still rig up an intercooler spray system. This is a system using the stock windshield washer fluid reservoir with water in it, pumped through a system of tubes and then through nozzels which atomize the water turning it to vapor and cooling the surface of your intercooler. This will work for both top mount and front mount styles, but you see the most results using a top mount. You can find the nozzles at lowes or home depot for $5.00 for a 6 pack, but I only used three. They are called "FOGGER" nozzles and can be found in the plumbing section of each store. You want foggers and misters, not spray jets. The key is to get the water to vaporize so that its cooling the air in the intercooler intake tract. I placed on in the center, and one on either side. See an example comparitive illustration of this system here. (Tip: use oem fuel pump from walbro 255 swap to drive the intercooler spray system, you'll notice huge gains in psi.)

Free Mods

1. Move the coolant lines away from your intake. A simple snip and trim will relocate and remove excess hose.
2. Bypass the coolant going through the throttle body.
3. Remove the clip that holds your front wideband sensor wire lead (in your up pipe). This clip comes out from the motor and can be seen from above. Use a zip tie and secure the lead to your brake lines. Don't overtighten.
4. Clean Idle Control Valve and MAF Sensor
5. Remove air intake silencer
6. Expand the chimney port in your hood scoop to let more hot air out and more cool air in. Cut out the grating and make it about .5" wider on all sides, this will increase flow and you wont loose rigidity of the scoop plate.

Gauges

You need to be able to monitor boost pressure, voltage, oil temperature, RPM, coolant temperature, intake temperature post intercooler, and AFR. The worst thing you can do is overheat, and lean out your engine while offroad, and this happens all the time to people that don't take proper measures to monitor and prevent in the Florida heat. Watch your coolant temp, and make sure your intake temp after intercooler is alright. Heatsoak will occur naturally, so use that intercooler water spray to cool down your intercooler when doing hard offroad use. I've seen my intake temps go up to 186F and then I sprayed water, brought it back down to 110F within seconds. I can't stress it enough, keep your car cool!

Keep an eye on your oil temperature gauge to let you know another point of refernece of temperature. When I see my oil reach 90C I start looking for a way to get some fresh cool air into the motor. Usually reaching constant speed of 60mph for about 30 seconds will do. These cars aren't designed to go slow down hot trails. They are designed to go fast. You will need to make appropriate modifications to prevent harm to your engine.

SUMMARY
By completing the above steps, you can have a similar WRX (all theories and practice apply to other rally inspired cars) to what I have and somewhat safely take it offroad. Things will continue to break, wear out, etc. Oil changes will be needed more often too. Expect to spend lots of time fine tuning your modifications, securing hoses, repairing leaks, etc. This is not for someone who wants to modify and forget. Rally is a life style, keep that in mind when you get ready to build your car. It sounds tough, but you will have much more fun with your car and it will last longer if you do it this way! I have a fairly fast, mostly stock wrx, tuned to 19.5 psi and pushing about 225whp, 250 tq. I take it offroad and its great fun. When things start to break, keep the mind set "This is rally life."

Related articles and websites:

Cheap insurance for rally cars

What is nitrogen enriched gasoline?

Cheap gas for rally cars

Everything you need to know about how to rally the Subaru WRX

Intercooler spray kit

Learn more about rally life at DirtyImpreza.com

The best off road street tuner: 3gsucks

Florida Rally School

 Example videos of finished product:

For more interesting articles, check out http://subaru-offroad.blogspot.com