Bolting down the Passenger Footrest

The alloy-plate in the passenger-footwell has become an annoyance as people always seem to find a way to kick it around and wedge it under the seat so its time to fix it in place. I've been hesitating because I'm reluctant to start drilling holes and screwing through the cabin-floor in case I hit something like wiring or a fuel-line, but it turns out that floor carries on flat to the engine-firewall and the bit the slopes up for the footrest is just a thin steel false-floor.

I think it's worth noting in case I decide to remove the heavy false-floor later and completely replace it with my slimline alloy job when I decide to get the weight down. It's only held in place by 4 bolts and I don't think it stiffens the body enough for the softer metal not to work just as well. For now though I've just plonked the alloy over the top. I took one bolt out from each side of the false-floor and fixed down the alloy-plate through the existing holes with 2 more allen-head alloy bolts. I countersunk the holes in the alloy-plate, but the heads are quite deep so they only fit flush to the bumps not the plate itself.

Carbon-Fibre Test - Dash Panel

Custom Alloy Footwell Plates!

I got hold of a nice big sheet of checker-plate aluminium so I'm fabbing up a few nice little touches for the car. I've already made a few under-bonnet styling pieces, but with the lions share of the plate I've started making some rally-style alloy footplates for the driver and passenger.

Its a great racing-car look [no chrome-plastic imitations here] and really suits the Impreza interior. Its a lot harder wearing and easier to clean than the mats, but the downside is its a bit slippy when its wet, as I've discovered with the recent bout of gloomy weather. Checker-plate is pretty cheap to buy, but these footrests aren't cheap items - eBay has some budget pieces starting from about £20 per side, but if you want a brand, Demon Tweeks have a Sparco set @ £91 for the passenger footrest and £34 for the tiny driver's clutch-rest!

Making them was a doddle. The whole driver's side footwell had to be covered, but I didn't have enough plate for both so I decided to give the passenger a large footrest and just cover the bottom wall of the well. I took a few measurements of the footwells, cut the plate to fit and rounded the edges off with a file for a neat finish. For the driver's side I bent the thin end of the plate up about 45 to match the floorpan and cut a gap out to fit round the plastic-stopper under the go-pedal in case I stifle the throttle. [restrictor-plate? :)] Well my measurements we're a bit off, but without scrutinising the fit doesn't look too bad at all. A boss bit of rally-bling for the cockpit - not bad for a free off cut of alluminium!

Sparco Carbon-Fibre Pedals!

With the serious MOT work out of the way it's time to throw on some more tacky parts, starting with these ultra-light, 100% carbon-fibre racing pedals from Sparco. I've always wanted a set of these range-topping pedals, but figured £55 was a bit much. Luckily I tracked down an unused set on eBay for just £24 delivered - win.

There's one small catch though, the set only comes with 8 of the 12 nuts+bolts and one of the stick-on grips is missing. Oh well, I doubt I'l be using the grip tape anyway [it'd ruin the look!] and I got away with just using 2 bolts for each pedal [for maximum weight-reduction, obviously] so I've 2 spare anyway.

Its clear to see why these are for motorsport use only - form definitely follows function here. I've always thought the teutonic carbon look is fantastic, but the finish of the lettering, screw-holes and the entire back surface is pretty poor. I guess these aren't a styling piece then, but the real beauty of the carbon is that they're ultra light, weighing less even than the rubber OEM pedal covers and are a fraction of the weight of Sparco's alloy-pedals [like on my BMW], which cost half as much. That's the difference and damn it feels good to be elitist!

As with all bolt-on pedal sets, these were a doddle to fit. My rubber-pads had already completely worn away so it wasn't hard to find somewhere for the 2 drill-holes on the steel pedal in the space either side of the lever itself. I'd planned to cut the long plastic accelerator pedal down a bit for the carbon pad, but its a tilting one, so I just managed to cover the whole thing with the Sparco and didn't bother - it interferes with the brake pedal though unfortunately. I thought I had the clutch pedal bang on too, but its a bit close to the footrest on the left so I can't quite squeeze my foot down to it - this might be in need of a quick move to the right.

Prodrive Seat Emblems!

The seats are all in good-nick and that deserves celebrating so I thought I'd spruce them up with some emblems to make them look like the embroidered Prodrive ones.

The emblems cost just £12 from eBay from a guy called Movi-Star - bargain. The grey Prodrive writing is made of a thick, rough suede-like felt and the blue strip is a very nice smooth alcantara type felt so they look and feel like they came on the seats, not like a cheap add-on and from outside the car of course, there's no way of telling them from an embroidered original ;)

The emblems are very easy to iron on, provided you have the right heat setting. They recommend you start on a very low heat and work up so you don't burn the seat, but the transfers won't stick at all unless the iron is pretty darn hot. It took me a good hour of working up the heat for fear of damaging the fabric, but these Subaru seats are tough stuff and in the end I had the iron almost on full heat to finally make the transfers stick, with no burning of the seats at all. Nicely nice!

[To look like the seats in the Prodrive Turbos that is, not the P1 style seats - I saw a pair of those beauties for £300 on eBay, but they're blue and have P1 embroidered, wouldn't suit. Besides, if you wanna talk whole new seats then its got to be Bride 'Holding Monster' all the way (http://www.brideseats.co.uk) - they are the Recaro of the JDM world, shame a pair costs a grand and up!!]

Custom Boost-Gauge Proposal

I always knew I'd want a boost-gauge when I got a turbo car, so I've priced up some nice JDM ones on eBay - I've always been fond of the APEXi EL range (blue-glow) dials, costing over £120 new and going for about £50 used online. The OEM gauge, fitted to STi/Type-R Scoobs, is actually a GReddy piece and is styled to match my white Subaru dials and labels. Hard to find new, but there is a nice used one on eBay at the moment, complete with the vacuum-tube, T-piece and bracket to fit my car @ £60 - ultra tempting!

I just can't see anywhere to mount it though so I've had to consider my options...

Bracket: I can mount the gauge anywhere in front of me, but the vacuum-tube and backlight wires would be exposed and drop through holes drilled into the dash, which would be messy and the lone dial sticking up would look out of place anyway.

A-Pillar Pod: This makes the gauge install far too substantial and I can't see myself putting in any more expensive gauges so no point. Besides, these are so unbelievably cliched in car-world, [I've seen someone with pods on both A-pillars of a standard car and not a single gauge between them] that I couldn't stoop so low!

Centre-Panel Cluster: The full rally effort, but this means doing away with the cubby-hole lid and losing the storage space and, again, I won't be buying another two gauges to fill the pod.

I guess the bracket is my only option unless I get serious and do a custom install into the dash. I've seen this done on plenty of early 93-96 Imprezas, [in the ash-tray spot and on the top of the centre-panel] but my 98 dashboard is just too cluttered with extras and compact for storage. People have suggested losing one of the middle heater-vents and making a flat panel - easy, but with British winters I don't think so...

This is the solution I've come up with, although it's a bit on the ambitious side... Sink the gauge into one side of the cubby-hole on top of the dash so the tube and wires are hidden away and cut a recess into the lid of the cubby-hole to show the dial-face through. The dial would have to sit proud of the lid to be seen, but it's only a 60mm gauge so not by a great deal and, most importantly the lid can still open to use the cubby-hole, and inspect the gauge if I need to. To be extra tidy I could build a cowl over the gauge and smooth it into the lid with body-filler. This would look absolutely siiick and cost pennies to do, but I can't match the textured-surface of the lid so maybe cover the whole the whole lid in a sheet of real carbon-fibre @ about £25... :)

I've made some rather crude virtual images of how it might look soon, perhaps: