I have decide to go the WRX route for a number of reasons.

1. It is the smaller more compact one with the faster ratio.
2. Far more commonly available
3. Far lighter than the Cortina one
4. I will be able to polish and detail it heaps nicer than the Cortina one which is pretty high on my list of requirements.
And finally
5. I actually think the wider inner balljoint spacing will suit my final suspension geometry better as I am widening the track by 25mm.

WRX rack setup on the bench to find the centreline (this needs to line up with the centre line of the X-member)

The WRX rack uses the rack ends to limit travel so you make sure there is equal travel either sides between the rack housing and the rack end and you know the rack is centred. Alternatively, you can run the rack to one end, mark the spot on the bench and run to the other end of travel and then find the midpoint.

I did both and both gave the same centreline to within 1mm.

On initial trial fit before cutting anything the rack was about 28mm too far forward and about 14mm to the passenger side of the car. It looked like the drivers side engine mount was going to be a real hassle so I removed the bottom webbing.

As you will see a bit further below, this was not neccessary and just enlarging the existing hole in that webbing would suffice but that is what this old subframe is for - a bit of R&D.

It looked to me like the rack would fit nicer if I undid the 2 set screws on the rotarty valve and flipped it over so I removed the hydraulic lines to the cylinder and swapped the valve over.

This got the valve under the engine mount and about 10mm further back but means the 2 lines to the PS pump will be going through the middle of the subframe which I am happy with as I wanted to hide the lines anyway (and my options were limited)New lines to the cylinder will be needed but I would have changed them for S/S anyway.

The rack still needs to go down, rearward and towards the drivers side some more.
A bit more of a trim on the engine mount to move to the drivers side and see what I could do without cutting into the frame itself.

I am getting closer the pic above shows I am now at about the correct hight but I still need to go back more.

These pics show top and bottom view - I now have the inlet and outlet to the pump sitting hard against the X-member so it is time to cut into it to move the rack back further.

The first cuts into the crossmember - I took this a bit at a time to see the minimum that needed to be removed.

The cut into the Xmember allowed the rack to move back - now about 10mm further forward that the original torana one and the centre lines now lined up. The rack now needs to go down about 5mm and rotate back a bit to line up the steering shaft as it was sitting a little too vertically.

I lost track of where the steering shaft went so I chucked the Torana rack back on and traced it out with nicco pen. Starting to show now I didn't need to get stuck into the engine mount bracket except for the webbing bit. The pic on the right showing the centre lines nicely lined up in top view and rack tucked nicely in against the x-member - now positioned approx 6mm further forward than the Torana rack originally was, on centre and at the correct height.

I really need a Holden engine to verify clearances now as the Torana rack although mounted at the same rack centre (vertically) the WRX one is flat right across the top whereas the Torana one narrows through the middle so I am really only guessing without an engine block and sump to dummy fit.

This pic below shows the rack hard against the crossmember and the cut out for the lines. I trimmed a 2mm casting lump from the alloy ridge next to the square rubber mounting bush to get the rack back another 2mm. I reckon another 2-3mm could come off the alloy lip to get it back slightly further or mod the crossmemebr slightly in that spot but I am going to rectify it by moving the lower control arms forward instread as I am using a clean sheeet approach with my front end and this will allow me to really wind up the positive castor so I am happy with 6mm from original mounting spot.

The next pic shows the required cutout in the corssmember.
Note also the slight panel beating below the engine mount to
let the rack lower down to the correct height. A nice bit of tube sliced diagonally and holes drilled to clear the hoses will strengthen that up - I will also put a nice stiffening rib internally (full width if possible which will actually be my new lower control arm mounts) but that comes later.

Pics showing how the original wrx mounts go - slighly longer versions of these will work sweet by the looks of it and be very easy to make. The pic on the right shows how much room from the engine mount and how I didn't really need to remove very much at all.

I got stuck into making my LT5 engine mounts - this is the easiest bit about fitting one of these engines.

A bit of blacksmithing work and the 6mm steel was nicely bent up - I forgot how much fun bending steel with an oxy is.
I gave them a shotblast and a paint and they look really good - better than the ones in my car infact - much nicer cuts with the 1mm cut-off wheels.

I decided to get stuck into the front end and get it set up for a few different configurations before doing any more measurents to save having to pull it apart again to make those changes.

I noticed a while ago that the Lower control arms do not pivot on a true axis, the front bush was twisted over a few degrees which makes the bushes bind. Since I am going to run Del-a-lum bushes on my finished setup this is no good and it needs to pivot on a true axis or it would split the del-a-lum ones or jam the suspension arm.
This used to be done to introduce anti-dive into the front end for when you are braking. The better way to do this is to angle the upper control arm mount back a little by redrilling the back hole, that way you can have bind free geometry.
It turned out being the rear hole on the front bush which needed to be lowered about 3mm.

It is amazing how much free-er the suspension pivots with the lower arm on a propper axis.

Since the WRX rack is approx 12 to 15mm wider between inner balljoints than the Torana one and my front track on my car is about 40mm narrower than the rear I decided to drill an additional set of holes in the subframe which are 16mm per side further out than the original ones to compensate. If you look at the offset of my front wheels, this will even it right up too as I have about 32mm from the tire to the fibreglass flare whereas the rear ones are only about 6mm away.
This will widen my track without stuffing up the front scrub radius which is sweet. The only downside is I need longer upper control arms - since I am going to use the HR stubs anyway with 7 degree KPI, chances are I would need longer upper control arms anyway so this is no big issue and solves lots of problems for me.

I am going to make tubular upper control arms to my custom length but for geometry measurement purposes and for making a jig - here are my new upper control arms :)) I estimate 20mm longer than standard will be about spot on to compensate. Yes they were a perfectly good set of UC arms :)

I might need to adjust these again so I have only tacked them on.

I didn't want my new subframe bending as I welded it as there is a fair bit of welding to be done all up so I made a strut to keep it in shape.

Finally onto steering arms so I can get it setup for some bumpsteer measurements with the WRX rack.

The pics below show my new tapered reamer to suit the mitsubishi Tie rod ends - I used a pair of UC steering arms for this since hopefully they will give good results for the standard Torana front end - they are also a lot cheaper than the Harrop A9X ones for test purposes but if my calcs are right, I will have to do this to the Harrop ones for my LX. Very easy to ream out - nice new carbide reamer went throught the steel like butter.

I tried to get the tie rod pivot as close to the original UC Torana tie rod height for starters - there is a bit of scope to ream them about 3mm deeper or I could have stopped about 1mm earlier but this is a pretty good starting point for measurements. Allows me some fine tuning of bumpsteer anyway if I need it.

Back onto the rack mounts.
I measured up arrimar's SLR5000 the other day to check rack clearance under a 308 as his is totally stock - they have about 22 to 23mm from the standard rack to the sump which is plenty, the WRX rack will be about 5 or 6 mm closer to the sump than the Torana rack since it doesn't narrow out in the centre section and it is also a few mm bigger diamter but that still leaves between 16 and 18mm clearance which is plenty.
The 308 sump also sits nicely down in between the mounts on the WRX rack so that is no worries at all - not even close enought to be a concern.
I hunted sown some black polyurethane rack mounts - not sure which ones I will use between these or the rubber ones but they were only $16 and they do look good.
I got the steel to make the mounts with - they needed to be 30mm wide - of course steel only comes in 32mm so I had to machine them down and also machine a radius down the 2 edges where it sits in the rubber bushes. I will probably make the top half in SS when I am finishing it all off - at least it comes in 30mm standard width

The brackets starting to take shape, these are going to be very easy in the end by the looks - I will have to sink them down into the subframe for my LX to lower the rack but for a 308 these have plenty of room.

I have the rear bits trimmed off and just need to drill the holes and weld in the encapsulated nuts. The mounts will just weld straight onto the face of the subframe down one edge and a small filler piece on the other edge. You could almost use the original WRX pressed steel ones with a spacer in them but I reckon it would be better to make longer ones which encase the rubber bushing for that extra 25mm height. I also need to make flat steel ones for mine as I can make the bracket about 4mm lower if it is 5mm solid steel, not 2mm stamped with a 9mm raised edge like the WRX ones.

Finally got some more Acetalene gas so I could make my mounting brackets. They ended up being pretty fiddly to make. Took me about 3 hours to bend these up.

Brackets finished and drilled. The Conelock nuts will be welded onto the brackets before the brackets are welded to the subframe.

I now just have to trim up the tie rods to the correct length, align the test front end up and start taking some bumpsteer measurements to find the optimum mounting point for the steering rack. I am going to start with it in the original position of the Torana rack. Now that I have the mounting brackets done and I can see how they will line up, I can grind a couple of mm of the alloy from the steering rack mount to get the rack about 2mm further back.

Okay been a very long time between drinks but I had a few months off this project doing other work things. I hate the cold too and winter hit us for the year.

After blowing the dust off and pulling the covers off the test bed and a few hours working out where the hell I was up to - I have finally got a set of bumpsteer measurements for the WRX rack mounted as close as possible to the original Torana rack mounting positions. Very surprisingly it has resulted in a really good bumpsteer curve - infact almost identical to the A9X bumpsteer curve. If I was fitting this rack with a 308 in my car, I would mount it in the original position of the Torana rack. The 308 will sit nicely down between the 2 mounts and clear the larger drivers side sqaure mount by at leas 10mm going by some measurements I made on a standard LH Torana.
I was quite surprised how critical the location of the rack is fore and aft on the subrame.
As I have mentioned before, Toranas hava a shite turning circle - on full lock the outside wheel turns approx 31 degrees and the inside one turns about 34 degrees (and needs more). By moving the rack 6mm forward, you almost have parralel steering - i.e. 31 degrees outside wheel, 32 inside wheel - you would need a football field to hang a U-ey, not to mention the tire wear and squealing!

Since my engine has a grand total of 9mm clearance to the Torana rack and subframe and the sump is far wider than a 308, I need to drop the rack about another 20mm to clear my sump.

Time to get brutal with the old test subframe. I need to see if I can find a combination which gives nice bumpsteer with the rack mounted that low before getting any more carried away.

Although I like the idea of hiding the high pressure lines to the pump, I have decided for maintainability I will flip the servo valve back over to it's original position. Since I am cutting and modifying the subframe so much I figured it didn;t really matter if I chop into it a bit more to let the lines exit nicely.

It sits very nicely in the 20mm lower position now I have notched the subframe out.

Input shaft lines up nicely with the original position of the Torana one.

It looks a little close to the drivers side engine mount but for the LT5, those mounting brackets get removed completely and I weld on my custom ones about 15mm further up the subframe so clearance will be no worries.

Now to see if I can find another nice geometry setup - if the initial measurements look promising, I will do the painful Job of reaming out a different taper in the $300 Harrop steering arms as I think they will be the final setup but I want to be very sure before doing that :)

Update 3/12/07

I have been really slack and havn't updated this page for ages.

I now have canned the idea of CRS drop stubs and have achieved a better result using some HX stub axles with taller top and bottom balljoints from Howe racing.
These are the top ones.

The ball stud in the bag is 0.5" longer than the standard balljoint. There was 5 longer studs available in .1" increments so I have got 2 of each for both upper and lower balljoints so I can fine tune my camber curve and roll centre height.

This is the bottom ones.

These are my new steering arms to suit my extra low mount rack.
They are LH/LX arms reamed out larger from the bottom to suit the pinto adjustable stud.

I had a bit of a go polishing up one of the steering arms - not too hard. Not sure what coating I plan to get on these yet but they will all be smoothed out first.

I wanted to use Del-a-lum bushes in this front end so I go some Chev uppers. They were about 5mm too long for the stock Torana cross bars so I have made up some 4340 chromoly crossbars with 5 mods from the original Torana ones.

I am very happy with them and they allow me to use standard Torana upper control arms and front subframe and the bushes did not need to be modified at all to fit.

All bolted up they look and feel superb. I machined each so they were a really nice fit to each cross shaft.

Notice the shafts are offset - this is the same as the stock ones.

Since I can bolt mine on either way since they are flat through the mid section, this will allow me to easily adjust between Torana or HX stub axles by flipping the cross shafts over which is a neat feature.

I think I am going to polish and Por15 clear coat these cross shafts and see how well they last.

Now I need to bolt it all together and think about making my tubular control arms.

I also have a big project on the go to clean up the engine bay of the hatch.
It has just been in for a new alloy radiator, all cooling pipes revised and hidden where possible and new cooling fans, both on the rear of the rad.

This was to clear up as much room as possible behind the grill for some up and coming plans.

All up it took about 15 kg out of the car with the new setup.

Update 2/4/08

I have been doing heaps of work on the new suspension geometry in the last few weeks.

Since I want to run much more Castor on the front end, I am using UC upper control arms but these still only allow up to around 6.5 degrees Castor and even then you don't get left with much camber adjustment at that setting so I am going to use spacers to offset the Lower control arms up to 10mm further forward - this will allow me to go to about 8.5 degrees positive castor - I am going to shoot for about 6.5 degrees for starters as then I will still be able to have a decent range of Camber adjustment left in the top arms.
To do this, I needed 8 - 5mm round steel shims and the front half of the brackets for the lower control arms all needed to be moved forward 10mm.

Before getting too carried away on my good front ends - this is being rigged up on my old test setup.

The pics below show the front half of the brackets cut off and spaced out using my shims and the poygraphite inner sleeves to get the brackets in the correct spot - they were then dodgily welded back on so I can measure eveything up.

This is obviously too dodgy for the final setups so for the real thing on my good front ends, I have made up these new brackets from 3mm steel sheet.

These brackets will fold up to be the same as the now modified rear lower control arm brackets with the extra 10mm spacing already built in. You will notice I made 2 sets of these brackets - 1 set will have the original front track, the other set are 15mm wider so I can increase the track by 15mm per side which I am hopeful will be my final setup.

A similar set of brackets for the front will be made up also now that I have modified the test setup, I can see exactly what it needs to make the front ones all work with the steering rack mounts.

I had a spare set of lower control arms and polygraphite bushes so I shotblasted the control arms and pressed in the bushes along with my new Howe lower balljoints. These balljoints solve so many of the issues I was trying to overcome with the Torana front end. You can also adjust the preload on them and they operate with such a small amount of friction.

There are 6 different length studs available for the balljoints so I am running the longest one possible (15mm longer than Holden balljoints) with HX stub axles so these stubs are now effectively a 42mm drop from a standard Torana stub axle and keep the 7 degree KPI I was after.

The only hassle is they need a different steering arm to get the bumpsteer correct - that is my next mission to sort that out. If I have trouble finding the correct arm, I can still use a Torana stub for a different set of combinations but I will have to concede on the KPI and use the 9 degree stubs or hunt down some HR ones.

The top balljoints also have 6 stud lengths available so I am trying the 3rd from the shortest - sort of the middle setting.

This gives me a stub axle which is now effectively 25mm longer than standard Torana one between balljoints - that with the upper control arm mounted as low as it can go, is effectively the same as using those spindle extenders I mention in the last page.
This gets the Roll centre and Camber curve just where I want it and I have good adjustment as well.

Since the Howe balljoints are large displacement types, I no longer need those wedge spacers under the top balljoint which is another plus.

The top balljoints need the next size drill run throught the 4 holes in the upper control arms and then they fit perfectly.

I am nearly ready to line it all up and take some measurements to see if all these ideas are going to come together as I have been planning.

I ran into 1 slight hiccup - the Tie rods from the steering rack to the steering arms are too long now because my neat bumpsteer adjusters are about 30mm longer thant he Magna tie rod ends I was using - even the shorter Subaru Tie rods I have are only 25mm shorter than the WRX ones so I need to go and hunt down some new tie rods which are 10mm shorter again when I can get to my parts guy again.

Update 3/4/08
I have been off to Driveline services today and got some Camry Rack ends which are the perfect length to use for both my planned setups with the standard track and the wider track - the fit perfectly and just need a couple of airbleed holes drilled in them.

Since I removed the antidive geometry out of the lower control arm pivots and made them pivot on a true axis, I have now built in 3 degrees of antidive into the top control arms. Notice the rear hole for the upper control arm is now drilled 6.5mm lower than the front hole.

This will also ensure that the Castor remains constant through out the suspension travel when running 6.5 degrees positive Castor for more consistant handling.

Just visually, it is starting to look like some UC steering arms may be the best setup for me once modified in the same manner as the LX steering arms I have on there now but I will do a set of measurements before I get too carried away and change things from where they are now.