It's Alive! Penny is Alive!!

I decided not to post this on the main technical section but it is worth a write-up in our local chapter.

Some of you know I started building a $2010 GRM Challenge car. Of course, life gets in the way and it quickly became a $2011 car. I have been challenged by my wife (read: ultimatum) to not let Penny become a $2012 car. So... a few details on my fun project.

The car is a 1975 914 that I bought as a roller here in Austin. The price was cheap enough that I decided I could play with it a bit. Penny is her name since she is faded copper metallic with creme white interior. I bought a JDM Subaru EJ20G 2.0 Turbo motor and transmission for the transplant. That's right still a flat four but with 5X the original HP rating of the Type IV. Even better is that the 901 variant will be gone in place of a stout modern 5sp that won't have a problem with abuse.

Target for the competed car is 2000# and 250HP. Considering she is mid-engine I think I have a chance to do well at the challenge provided I have enough rubber for the drag and autocross competition.

It did not take long to get the motor installed in the chassis. What took a while was paring down the entire wiring harness into just what was required to make the ECU happy. After months of searching for wiring diagrams and tracing every single wire I got the car wired up and turned the key over July 4th weekend. Bummer, no start. The O-scope showed that the ECU was dead. No output signals despite power on everything.

After getting this fixed I finally started the car this weekend for the first time. There was a huge feeling of relief when she sputtered to life.

Now I can move onto the fun stuff like building custom drive axles and figuring out how to install a hydraulic clutch with almost no money left in the strict build budget.