First off, everything you wrote is excellent. And I love the Halloween vids below too - particularly the night shot with the flame bulb!
I did go the bigger turbo route with mine, and was autocrossing & doing track days with it for probably the first 10 years of it’s life. So, I wasn’t exactly being easy on the trans. So hopefully you’ve got more life left in yours. Also, good to know that if I ever have issues with the block, it sounds like I have a lot of options.
Only piece I can add is I did also look into STI transmissions. The bell housing side will bolt right to the block, but nothing else fits. The gear ratios are wrong compared to the rear diff, and the mounts for the halfshafts are different as well. In order to do the swap, you need the whole STI drivetrain all the way out to the hub & wheels. Sure you can do that, but finding all those parts is going to require a donor STI. And if you have a donor STI, why aren’t you building that out instead…
Ah yea. I suppose you could get the rear diff and find a driveshaft shop to fab up one with the correct mounts so you don’t have to completely rebuild the rear end.
A custom drive shaft might be a lot cheaper than going to the hubs. But whatever you do, at least there is a lot of previous work that you can read and learn from before you start.
And I love the look and size of the bugeye. I wasn’t a big fan of how large the STIs got. After a while, the ones I saw felt disconnected from their rally cross origins.
First off, everything you wrote is excellent. And I love the Halloween vids below too - particularly the night shot with the flame bulb!
I did go the bigger turbo route with mine, and was autocrossing & doing track days with it for probably the first 10 years of it’s life. So, I wasn’t exactly being easy on the trans. So hopefully you’ve got more life left in yours. Also, good to know that if I ever have issues with the block, it sounds like I have a lot of options.
Only piece I can add is I did also look into STI transmissions. The bell housing side will bolt right to the block, but nothing else fits. The gear ratios are wrong compared to the rear diff, and the mounts for the halfshafts are different as well. In order to do the swap, you need the whole STI drivetrain all the way out to the hub & wheels. Sure you can do that, but finding all those parts is going to require a donor STI. And if you have a donor STI, why aren’t you building that out instead…
Ah yea. I suppose you could get the rear diff and find a driveshaft shop to fab up one with the correct mounts so you don’t have to completely rebuild the rear end.
A custom drive shaft might be a lot cheaper than going to the hubs. But whatever you do, at least there is a lot of previous work that you can read and learn from before you start.
And I love the look and size of the bugeye. I wasn’t a big fan of how large the STIs got. After a while, the ones I saw felt disconnected from their rally cross origins.