Cleaning Out The Garage… 3

… and moving things to the hard drive.

My shop is full of all sorts of home-brew contraptions: some of which were never useful, some of which fulfilled their purpose and now sit tucked in a corner waiting for future opportunity. Amongst that pile was an old splitter from my WRX. Although the car is now gone, I had saved the splitter (though it was slightly damaged) hoping that Andrew might want to use it again on the car that it came from, or at least use it to make a shiny new one. Instead, he has gone with a much less fashionable, protective aluminum undertray. I spent an hour with a tape measure, and then moved the old splitter into the trash pile.

My first creation of the splitter, was done with 12mm aircraft grade birch plywood (SEE HERE). I wrecked on the lake one day and blasted a basketball size hole in it. The second version was constructed from a balsa and fiberglass sandwich. This was a helluva lot of work, and ultimately heavier and flimsier than the straight wood piece.

Wood on a car gets a lot of hate, but as I’ve noted in the past, it works quite well and is an obvious choice for how little it affects your bank balance and for how easy it is to work with. Guys who don’t get that will try poly-metal, alumalite and other composite aluminum sandwich plates. From my experience, those products are either heavier than birch plywood or no where near as stiff. Spending a meaningful amount of money… honeycomb core carbon fiber or FRP sandwich is lighter and stiffer, but in no case does anything that performs comparably take a beating like wood can. Formula 1 uses wood. It’s perfectly cool on your car.

I’m convinced… and if I ever own another GD Impreza (which I almost certainly will someday) I’d do it all again. This piece fits very nicely to the stock U-brace, bolting at the back to two existing M8x1.25 holes in the crossmember, and three existing holes in the U-brace underneath of the rad support. The drawing describes a front radius that fits the Bugeye bumper and a Prodrive V1 lip nicely. If I had a kouki or chouki car it would be easy enough to cut the back section out and leave the front edge square and mark a new leading edge on the car to fit a different bumper. Also, should I want to make the leading face any larger, I would probably add some additional bracing or mounting points. Perhaps a couple turn buckles from the front bumper beam forward. Perhaps a couple bolts through the splitter into the rear corners of the front bumper.