2026 Q1 Review - Hillclimb Car

The first quarter of 2026 was a quiet time for the hillclimb car, however, some minor tasks were undertaken. A Killer B motorsport super G sump was purchased to improve oil control and capacity for the 2026 season, along with a HPS staggered silicone 100mm to 90mm reducer to simplify the turbo's intake piping.

Wiring is something that needs to be simplified for the hillclimb car, and both an engine bay wiring loom and a front loom was purchased from a version 9 (hawkeye) Impreza which has drive by wire (DBW) throttle as standard. The methodology here is to free up some input pins on the Link G4X ECU, as some inputs and outputs are taken to use DBW on the hillclimb car, which is fitted with a drive by cable throttle as standard. After much deliberation, we are planning on merging the version 9 engine bay and front loom with the hillclimb car's body loom, which saves making a whole new loom from scratch. It turns out that the version 9 EJ25 imprezas use a four plug ECU, which necessitates purchasing a different Link G4X model to the V7-9 G4X installed in the hillclimb car - the Link G4X V10. There are two types of V10 G4X plugin ECU for the GD-GG chassis cars, the WRX104X if ECU pins A1-A3 have wires, and WRX107X if ECU pins A1-A3 are empty. Having purchased and watched an online wiring course from the brilliant High Performance Academy, we are confident to go about removing the non-essential plugs and pins from the version 9 loom and to use some motorsport grade wire sheathing to protect the engine bay loom. This wiring project will be a slow burner for this year, but we are hoping to finish and install the loom before the end of the year. Another task to be undertaken prior to our first event is to insulate both the turbo up-pipe and down-pipe. At the time of writing, these have been removed from the car and are ready to be wrapped in Funk Motorsport's excellent titanium heat wrap. All that is next is to knuckle down and sort out the car prior to the start of the sprint and hillclimbing season!