Hey Michael, glad you're taking care of the car!

I ended up with an STi swapped GC8 impreza.. sorry everyone.

And... if it's ready for sandblast 2015, I might be in the passenger seat yelling notes!

The goal for the first rally event is the Waste Management Winter Rally in Wellsboro PA on Feb 21st (www.wmwr.info). I will hopefully have many weeks of ice racing before that but we need more cold weather.

Work on the car is coming along very slowly but that's not for lack of trying. I took 5 days off of work but don't have much to show for it.

I'm wondering what to do about the broken front engine mount.

Here are pictures of the broken mounting locations on the block (it's a 7-bolt) along with pictures of how a 6-bolt looks.






I was thinking of using the three locations in the picture below to make a plate extending towards where the engine mount should be. I talked with a rally friend who has done this before to a Talon block but it was a while ago.



Has anyone done this modification before?

The oil pan was bashed in pretty good so I pulled it off to try to bang it out.



The pan was deformed enough to hit the oil pickup screen and wear a hole in it. I found a couple metal shavings and RTV stuck in the hole of the screen. I'm convinced the screen is important.



I ended up ordering a new strainer from STM Tuned who happens to be in New York State like me: http://www.streettunedmotorsports.com/parts/oem_dsm_oil_pick_up_strainer.htm

I'd get a new oil pan but the dealer wants over $200 and it doesn't look like any aftermarket companies make a cheap replacement for the 7-bolt engine. Does anyone know of one? I found 6-bolts but no 7-bolts?

I found that the timing was incorrect when I checked it:



One interesting side effect of this timing error was that the engine would not rotate smoothly by hand. There were hard sections and easy sections when rotating it. I reset the timing with the same components and the rotation was much smoother.

After not receiving the oil strainer I called STM. They told me that the strainer was no longer available and they had sent me an email. I didn't receive any email so I had them refund me the money. It annoys me when vendors don't keep their websites up to date.

I'm trying Mach V Motorsports this time: http://www.machv.com/tudsmoilpitu.html