I've Spent Every Spare Hour On This Lada Project But I Still Think I'm Screwed

Haha, well it looks like the last time I updated you on the K-swapped, chassis swapped Lada build it was October. That can’t be right, can it? The good news is that I’ve been working on it. The bad news is that somehow over the last ten months I went from confidently checking things off my list to panicked thrash ahead of a rapidly approaching deadline. This is of course, entirely predictable and entirely my fault.

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Let me give you an update on what I have been able to accomplish:

When I last posted, I didn’t know what I’d do about a fuel cell. In the Lada’s last life as a LeMons car, it had a huge plastic dirt track cell that was unbaffled. When you cornered, the fuel would slosh to one side and try to take the car with it. It was fine for LeMons and the size was nice for endurance racing. But for a hill climb, it didn’t make sense. The guys at Fuel Safe actually read about the Lada and emailed asking me what I’d planned to do with regard to fuel. I told them I needed a small cell, 5-gallons or less and that I needed a good one because I planned to mount it where you’d usually mount the passenger seat. They decided to just send me one. Because this is among the most safety-critical parts I’d be using, I wouldn’t accept anything that I didn’t feel great about, even for free. I’m happy to report that the Fuel Safe unit is built like a bank vault and I have total confidence in its ability to keep me from being burned alive.

Photo: Rory Carroll

I’ve learned that when you buy race car stuff, you really don’t get much in the way of instructions. I think it’s assumed that if you’re buying this stuff, you know what you’re doing. Au contraire! But, I was able to determine that I wanted to mount it low in the chassis and that I wanted it to stay put in the event of a crash. Initially I planned to mount it halfway through the floor. I’d seen other racers do that and it made sense from a packaging and CG standpoint. But a friend who’d raced at the same hill climb I’ll hopefully be racing at asked if I wouldn’t rather have it inside the cabin where it had an extra layer of protection in a crash.

So, I welded up a steel cradle for it and bolted the whole thing next to my seat. Plumbing it all has been reasonably straightforward, YouTube showed my how to make up some AN lines and I ran them through the firewall through some nice grommets. As of now, there’s a fuel pressure regulator on the firewall and a fuel rail on the engine. Once the engine is in, I’ll finish the AN lines and call the fuel system done.

Photo: Rory Carroll

The steering system is also operational. After a long time goofing around looking at various fab-it-yourself racing setups, I decided to just mount a BRZ wheel, EPS motor and shaft I had laying around the shop. I made a dumb, late night decision to lengthen the shaft with square tubing instead of round, but it all seems to work just fine. Except for the EPAS. I’m told that if you send 12v to the power pins, it’ll operate in a medium assist mode, but I haven’t looked into it. We’ll see if I get to that before the hill climb, I definitely don’t need it.

Photo: Rory Carroll

I also have a brake system installed, a real racy setup that, like everything else was more expensive that I’d guessed it would be. It required me to remove and relocate large sections of the firewall, which I could have probably avoided by going with another pedal configuration. It’s mostly plumbed with PTFE lines, something I’ve never done. The brake calipers are standard BRZ units I found on Ebay and refreshed with new rotors and pads.

Photo: Rory Carroll

I’d planned on using a set of VW Avus wheels I bought from a guy who’d previously owned a MK1V Golf, but they’re narrow, the hub diameter is off and the lug nuts won’t work. Now I have a Bassett racing wheel on its way to me, it may or may not work but it should look really good with the 225 section Bridgestone RE71s autocross tires that Bridgestone sent along for me to evaluate.

Photo: Rory Carroll

The ECU and wiring were a huge question mark until very recently. At the idea stage, the project was to be reasonably easy because KPower Industries and others make a lot of parts to enable BRZ K-swapping. Somehow I didn’t realize that these kits require a BRZ ECU to plug into a Halltech system. I didn’t have a BRZ ECU, I had “no electronics of any kind” which led me to call a lot of people who would then hang up confused. Halltech didn’t reply to my email and I even used my Jalopnik e-mail address. Finally, someone at Hybrid Racing called me and made a list of everything I needed to buy, then gave me his phone number in case I had any problems. I now have a beautiful wiring harness, switch panel and fusebox ready to hook up to a Hondata ECU.

Oh, and I spent several nights giving the engine a light internal refresh and replacing the alternator and starter.

After a long wait for a flywheel that’ll allow me to mate the Honda engine with the Subaru transmission, I have the drivetrain ready to go back in the car. Then it’s wiring time, which should be at least sort of straightforward since I’m connecting a harness and not starting from scratch. Then it’s a million little things to button up. What coolant lines do I use? What wheels? What restraints and nets do I need? Can I make an exhaust out of the old header I have laying around? Will the engine run at all? Oh, I need a driveshaft.

My list isn’t terribly long, but the event is less than thirty days away and I have at least 7 days of travel between now and then. I think it’s doable, provided that everything I’ve installed so far actually works. It’s a tight timeline, and I don’t know that I’ll have time for a major rework.